Deconstructing Environmental Photographers, The Contemporary Urban Environment

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Rut Blees: Picture 1 and 2 are pictures of buildings taken as we see them everyday. Blees used long exposure to get these images, sometimes 10 minutes long.
For picture 1 Blees used an ambient light and went to an opposite building on the 16th floor to be in level with the building shown in the picture. She explains that in Germany, her home country there are many buildings like so, but that they are rare in places like London. Out of the three images I chose this is the most frontal picture. The rectangular block almost looks sculpturesque, the random lighting of people living there add to the picture.
Picture 2 is very similar, expept it is taken from bellow, looking up at the building. again the random lighting seems to work with the rest of the picture. The branch on the top of the photograph reminds me of Steichen and Alvin Langdon Coburn's pictures of the Flatiron, it makes it look more artistic that picture 1 which looks slightly more documentary.
Picture 3 is very different from the previous two pictures. Its a close up of part of a building. Blees photographed public spaces, especially areas with several layers of different history apparent, like in this picture, the modern looking building with its straight rectangular angles in contrast of the old looking advertisement shown underneath it.

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Richard Wentworth: Richard Wentworth is originally a sculptor, but he did a series of photographs called Making do and Getting by, in this series he took pictures of random object randomly placed around in very peculiar ways. All the pictures are very similar, they are taken in a documentary style. Picture 1 shows a park-meter with a stuffed paper inside the coin slot saying: lost my $, tues 3:30. Picture 2 shows us a cork holing a door open by having been balanced on the pavement. Finally Picture 3 shows an empty bottle cleverly stuck between two trees. Wentworth's pictures show more absurdly place items. He shows us the sculptures of everyday life, and reminds us that art really is all around.

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Vera Lutter: Vera Lutter Uses extremely long exposures they can go up to weeks. she directly exposes onto the paper through a very small lens.

Picture 1 is a construction worksite you can see the different places where the cranes moved and stopped for a period of time. Picture 2 shows a series of boats on a river the reflection of the boats are extremely blurry from the constant movement of the water but strangely enough the boat themselves are apparently in focus. Picture 3 I a simple building seen from the same level, it must be the clearest picture of all as it didn't move, but it actually looks blurry. Vera looks at the idea of time and movement, two very close subject as time is ever moving and so are we. Her long exposures ,makes her lose all trace of human beings and only capture what has been still for a certain amount of time. Normally long exposures would mean a ghostly feeling to the picture, but the lack of human presence in Vera's pictures takes that eerie feeling away and leaves a rather interesting outcome.

Deconstructing Environmental Photographers

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Picture 1, Edward Steichen, The flatiron new york, 1905: This picture like the next two, is taken at ground level looking straight at the building with trees in the frame. It is taken during the the night with a long exposure. This picture was taken shortly after Steichen started to use colour in his pictures. There is almost a painting feeling to it; Steichen was one of the few photographers at the time who saw photography as an art.

Picture 2 Alfred Steiglitz, The Flatiron, 1903: Like the first image, it is taken on a street level with a tree in a frame. This picture however does not centre on the building, which is in the backgrounded slightly faded out, it gives the picture more of an artistic sense. Steiglitz worked with Steichen before, and like him he wanted to make photography into an art.

Picture 3 Alvin Langdon Coburn The Flatiron Building 1911: Again this picture is taken on a street level with a tree in the frame, but it resembles Steichen's more. There is only a branch shown of the tree on the left of the picture, just like Steichen's. However this picture differs to the previous two which were quite flat with low contrast. In this picture we can the the lamppost lit up, so night is falling, but there is still a very strong sky in the background which indicates that this picture was taken in the early hours of twilight. It has much more contrast than the previous two and is out of focus, giving it an eerie feeling to it.

Picture 1 to 3 are almost like a criticism of the building itself, weighing it against nature and always putting it in the background as if unimportant. When the building was build many people rejected it, it was a good opportunity for Steichen and Steiglitz to use photography as mean in art to depict that anger towards the building. Compared to the last three pictures these three are far more artistic.

Picture 4 Walter Gropius The Flatiron Building New York 1928: This image is very different to the previous ones. The Flatiron is is only thing in the image, no surroundings or other buildings. Also Gropius used a large depth of field enabling him to get the entire building in focus. The camera is tilted upwards making the Flatiron look taller than in the previous images. Unlike the previous three pictures Gropius is admiring the Flatiron, looking up towards it and implying that it is a positive thing instead of a negative one. Gropius was an architect from the Bauhaus, which would explain why he was so exited about the new, modern looking building at the time.

Picture 5 Walker Evans Flatiron Building seen from bellow New York City 1928: Like Gropius, Evans took a flattering image of the flatiron. Looking up at the building but with other things in the image giving it a bit more of an artistic feel to it. However Evans made the building look bigger than Gropius, more sturdy and safe, another architectural feature of it. His picture has more contrast as well, loosing some of the detail but making the flatiron more overbearing.

Picture 6 Bernice Abbott  The Flatiron Building 1938: Like the previous two photographers Abbott is looking up at the building but not as dramatically. the camera position gives a sense of being on the street opposite looking up at it. Again the Flatiron is the centre of the image but like Evans there are some other buildings in the picture. Abbott used a bit of contrast in her picture but not as much as Evans finding a right middle between Evans and Gropius. Contrary to others it looks like the photograph could be between a documentary and artistic sense.

Picture 4 to 6 have more of an architectural approach to them. instead on focusing on it's negatives, the pictures depict what a great building this is, they have a sense of documentary to them, s if the picture were taken to record such a nice and new (at the time) building.

Environment Test Shots

Test Shots I did for the environment project, although they came out fine i'm not too happy with them, they don't really the point that i'm trying to make, but it is very good practise!



And for some reason I cannot seem to be able to upload them!

Pastiche research

I originally looked at two artists for this project, Peter Kennard and Friedrich Caspar, I did get slightly inspired but I felt that I had to go in my own way for this one.

Caspar's empty landscapes were probably the most influential to my project, that vast empty space, I wanted to see if I could subtlety insert my idea in there. But after a while I realised that his view was too beautiful, my project wasn't about something pretty but something rather ugly. Although it made me want to take empty landscapes and add my idea to it I knew it wouldn't work.

I liked Kennard's work especially his Santa's Ghetto, but again his view was completely different to mine, it was still a start.

Object Research/Shoot

I decided to look at a whole style for my research as I din't have any artists to research in the beginning, I wanted to look at Still Life in general an get a better idea of which direction to take for this project.

After looking through many, many pictures, I found that two artist appealed to me the most: Daguerre, and Kalf. I liked Daguerre's pictures and his sense of contrast between black and white, but Kalf was more inspirational for this project. It was the way he used dark backgrounds in contrast with bright objects for his still life. I like the appearance it gave the picture and decided to try that for my shoot.

Whilst in the room shooting it looked fine, but with the first contact print it already looked like the pictures may have been far too dark. But after a lot of playing around with the enlargers I managed to get the right combination between the colours and the light. Although the prints still look maybe a little too dark I think it gives a certain feeling to them which I quite like!

Environment Project Self Evaluation

I found this project harder to approach than the object. I didn't have an idea for some time, until I realised that every morning I wake up to a river covered in large container boats and industries covering it. It didn't bother me at first but it made me think about industrialism on the river. I looked at Peter Kennard's work and although I found it interesting it was too strong for me. I then tried to look at a more traditional approach of landscape portraiture and research Friedrich Caspar, I liked his method of portraying landscape so vastly, but it was still too different to my idea. So I took some test shots and worked from there. I wanted the industries and other human pollution to be noticed but for it to be too obvious. I used the Bronica SQ-B and only shot with aperture F8 or F11. I also decided to Take the pictures in black and white as I thought it made more of an impact than it would have done in colour.

For my pastiche I decided to use Robert Adam's work, it was the one which I thought I could reproduce best. After a lot of exploring I found a location which resembled Robert Adam's picture, two trees with Oxford city in the background.I used A Bronica SQ-B for my pastiche and took all my shots between F16 and F8, taking most of them at F8 or F11. Adam's pictures look quite foggy and gave me an impression of morning, so I decided to take my pastiche during early morning. The negatives came out very dark, but I was able to work around that by testing many different grade settings, aperture stops and different times of exposure. In the end I made a 7s long exposure, with the aperture at F8 and grade 5.

Object Project Self Evaluation

 My object project is about being foreign in a country for a long period of time. Having been in England for over ten years certain things start to come up, people suggest that your more English than you're original ethnicity; but what struck me the most is that my friends back home in France take certain privileges for granted. I came to realise in the past few years that I was far more patriotic than most of them, maybe being a little too proud of being French. A big part of that is rugby, I thought it made a good base for the picture as it is where I started to be very proud of my country. I then thought about what made France home for me and decided to go with some pictures of people I left behind there, of course I added a cook book for a traditional approach as well. I did put in an English book, this was the book I learned how to speak English from, for me it really represents my transition into England, and the moment I accepted I would living here for a long time. Of course I added the most important thing that separates me from English people, my identity card. This is one of the last things I have that actually proves I'm still French.

I didn't look at any artist in particular, I focused instead in traditional still life, I did look at artist such as Willem Kalf from the 17^th century, or Daguerre's artist studio from the 19^th century. I was automatically more attracted to the still lives similar to Kalf's dark images but with a range of colours in. I tried to reproduce a similar piece of work with a very dark background and some contrasting colours with books and pictures.