Lena Bartolomeu

BAP Student

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Self Evaluation

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Chris Ould: Photographer Inspo

Chris Ould is an artist and tutor who has worked within the photography department at UAL Central St. Martin’s College for over 15 years. He shoots mainly on film and that is what drew me to his work. His shots are often blurred but to the extent where you can still make out the subject of the image.

his photography is great at capturing mood and atmosphere and that’s especially what makes his projects work extremely well as a whole. Although I do not plan to distort my images, it is worth exploring if I can capture mood and atmosphere within my project.

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Second Shoot: Printing

this photoshoot was more influenced by the style of André Kertész. Here, I paid more attention to detail, but I still wanted to experiment with composition to make my project look more personal and original. Here are some images that stood out.

although blurred and slightly underexposed, I like this image as it appears that the store is empty, even through the CCTV monitor. I won’t be adding this to my final images however, as I feel as though the shot looks rough and unprofessional.

this is a personal image because this is exactly the kind of details that I leave behind. I feel this is a very strong image, high in contrast.

both images here could do with an increase in contrast but overall, I am happy with the composition and detail.

 a stack of magazines left behind in the library

an empty shelf someone neglected to refill. I particularly like how there is an empty space in this image.

I will continue on to do another final shoot.

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black and white negatives (processed) from my second shoot

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Photographer Research: André Kertész

What drew my eye to Kertész’s photography, was his simple still life photography. As you can see he achieves a simple minimalist aesthetic whilst paying close attention to detail. Here are some of his examples below:

This image, titled The Fork, or La Fourchette, was taken in 1928 and is one of Kertész's most famous works from this period. What I like about it is its sheer simplicity and bold contrasts. I feel this is an appropriate photographer for this brief as this image makes me feel as is someone simply left the fork like this and is absent in the present tense. I feel like it is a small mannerism that someone simply left behind without knowing. I want this to be the main theme running throughout my photographic project.

This image also has given me more ideas about the different ways in which I can capture my images, not being limited to just still life photography, I can venture into street photography. I like the way this image has a wealth of emptiness and the two people being present brings the image together quite well.

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Negatives from my first Absence/presence shoot. As you can see I was not that confident with shooting on film as some images are either underexposed or overexposed. Next I plan to carry on shooting “the details that people leave behind” but paying more attention to the camera functions.

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Time - Space - Light

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Absence/Presence: Rut Lees Luxemburg

We were asked to  return to the original powerpoint from the first workshop and choose a photographer that will influence our work on the  Absence/Presence breif. I came across In Deeper from the seires ‘Libeslied’ by Luxemburg. What stood out for me was the attention to detail and how she managed to capture the absence and presence of people in a single shot.

Rut Blees Luxemburg  is a German photographer. Her technique is to take photographs at night, mostly exploring the urban landscape. She employs long exposures to allows her to use the light emanating from the street only, for instance from office blocks or street lights in her photos.[2] Luxemburg created a series of images for the London Underground in 2007.[citation needed] Many of her photographs and prints deal with nocturnal themes, although, I am shooting on film so it would be best if I shot in good light.

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Feedback received for my project

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Time - Space - Light : Evaluation

Project Title: A Walk in Peace

As the brief suggests, I took time to slow down and capture my environment. I wanted to reflect my own personal interests whilst simultaneously keeping in line with the brief. I thought that focusing on light would be a good starting point and I wanted to experiment the manipulation of light and how it affects atmosphere.

My subject matter is members of the public engaging in debates in Speakers’ Corner. Initially I had researched political protests and demonstrations happening in London and I was introduced to a Walk for Peace situated in Hyde Park. It was from there that I discovered Speakers Corner and the potential for my project to be centred on it.        

I aimed to capture conflict and illustrate different cultures and beliefs which I think I did successfully. I just wanted to get up in people’s faces and document such a bizarre environment happening in the heart of London. The people in my project are driving the force of social change (forwards and backwards) and it is interesting to document this.

I chose to print my images on A4 matte paper. I think the matte paper goes hand in hand with the general aesthetic of my images, staying true to the meaning and purpose of my project.

I mostly used the internet and visited exhibitions – it helped me greatly to see different experimentation with portrait and documentary photography

References      

 Richard Mosse – initially gave me the idea to do    a socially themed project

Henry Cartier-Bresson – his concept of the “decisive    moment” really encouraged me to slow down and wait for the perfect image

What is Speakers’ Corner (Video) – helped me better understand how    Speaker’s corner came about and why it is still influential today

Internet    research led me to find the initial location for my first shoot (walk in    peace)

Douglas Brothers – their unique style really helped    me form a coherent body of work. In their work you can clearly tell it’s by    them – I took note and selected images that had a lot in common such as    subject and colour so they could easily be sequenced and flow together.

Thomas Ruff – his work at first appeared basic    to me but I understood that that was his personal style. It was a learning    opportunity as I would’ve never have noticed how much we – as the viewer –    take in the smallest details. It is these details that make a portrait    unique, no matter how basic the mis-en-scene or composition

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What is Speakers’ Corner - a brief history

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A test print for my final submission (matte paper print)

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my favourite images from my second photoshoot at Speaker’s Corner. Compared to my original shoot, you caan tell my ideas are more developed and focused and it is starting to look like a more coherent body of work. I think I will return to Speaker’s Corner one last time to shoot some more portraits just to ensure I have variety.

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Lecture 4: Editing and Sequencing Photographs

This lecture was vital to me because I struggle to select my images and sequence them as a body of work. Some points that are relevant to my work:

visual communication & expression consists of:

- strong compositions

- visual interest

- ideally, it should communicate the appropriate idead to the assignment (time - space - light)

- variety, without losing coherence (e.g. subject matter, colours or orientation)

- visual rhetoric

- aesthetics

Coherence of selected images:

- stylistic coherence

- consistent visual “quality” of the image

- coherent message communicated

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Lecture 3: Reading the Urban Landscape

This lecture focused on urban photography and explored how photographers have treated the architecture and urban landscape of major cities. We’ll looked in particular at their deployment of space and light.

Urban space – how it’s constructed and organised, and how it’s captured by the camera. This means a concern with space itself – shallow, deep, vast, or endless space. Perspective – how the camera sees and represents space. Architecture - We’re necessarily involved with buildings and how those buildings are arranged within urban space. Light – how it’s used to create atmosphere and meaning. We’re concerned with how urban space is constructed, how it evolves, and decays. And we’re concerned with how people occupy and use that space: social relationships, power relations, etc.

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Lecture 2: Street Photography

During this lecture we explored the origins and the meaning of street photography. Colin Westerbeck and Joel Sternfield define street photography in terms of: ‘pictures of people who are going about their business unaware of the photographer’s presence […] … candid pictures of everyday life in the street’. (Westerbeck and Sternfield, Bystander. A History of Street Photography (1994))

A photographer that really struck me was Henri Cartier-Bresson and the term he coined “the decisive moment”. “There is nothing in this world that does not have a decisive moment,” wrote the 17th-century cleric and memoirist Cardinal de Retz, “and the masterpiece of good ruling is to know and seize this moment.”

Today, the idea of the decisive moment is synonymous with a certain kind of photography, exemplified by the Cartier-Bresson. He used the phrase as the title of his – and European photography’s – most famous book, published in America in 1952. (The simultaneous French edition was, intriguingly, called Images a la Sauvette – Images on the Run.)

As a street photographer, I can totally relate to the decisive moment that occurs when I finally capture a scene perfectly. It takes some time and skill to achieve but it encourages me to slow down and think about my surroundings which coincides with my pratical element of the course: Time - Space - Light

What The Decisive Moment did above all was enshrine the term in the collective photographic consciousness, shaping several ensuing generations of photographers. What Cartier-Bresson understood by the decisive moment is best explained by the famous quote from his lengthy introduction to the book: “Photography is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event as well as of a precise organisation of forms which give that event its proper expression.”

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This is my favourite image from my initial photoshoot as I feelit highlights conflict between religions.