#mpho404

[sofiatopchishvili-blog]

Research Summary, Project 1, Urban Landscape

Urban Landscape is a type of photography that is usually associated with a cliché natural landscape. However, I was aiming to expand the contradiction of this genre and consider documenting collective memories that then depict certain symbolism, that work as a mirror for the society that reflects and responds with their own life experience to the photograph that they observe. My target was to expand upon certain motifs and themes such as dehumanisation, abandoned, decayed, repetitive patterns; themes of quantity.

The medium of Photography is often repressed, still and lifeless, in contrary to the text, where one word can shift from description to reflection. Photography breaks down the continuity of time it is the subject of the arrested part that cannot lead to the present or future. The apparatus that I shoot with helps me to decode the languages of semiotics that are observed in the recognisable patterns of our everyday life.

Thus, before starting my journey of exploration I have started browsing Urban Landscape genre in the library. Starting looking from Eugene Atget Photographs de Paris, fascinating representation of the bourgeois society, photographs of the deserted Paris, almost as the scenes of the crimes - to Andreas Gursky, who concentrates on repetitive patterns of the consumerist culture of capitalism. Andreas Gursky has been my long time inspiration. His laid back photographs are highly contextual. His style of shooting form the aisle view, places the observer above the situation almost as the Big Brother, allowing us to see patterns of life, the never ending tape of mankind on natures premises, detecting the defaults of human ideologies. Alongside with my browsing research of photo books, History and Theory seminars helped me to understand the concept behind the images. Critical Theory is essential part of my reading list; it helped to see the world in different perspective. Walter Benjamin’s essay of ‘‘The work of Art in The Age of Mechanical Reproduction’’ where he stayed that: ‘’It is no accident that the portrait was the focal point of early photography’’. Mechanical reproduction erases the aura of the images creating the world of simulacra. I wanted to concentrate on symbolism in my images, highlighting used manmade object that tell the story of the particular social group within that environment, aiming to photograph the quantity of our social realism.

Continuing researching the abandoned warehouses and the unseen London, I came across the website called the Derelict London, that navigates alienated locations around London. Further one, I came across The Alperton Car Breakers and 777 Commercial Road, the last sail makers loft in the East End - two locations that I was particularly exited to visit. While searching for the derelict places in urban explores forum worldwide I came across the freelance photographer Daniel Marbaix that photographed abandoned locations worldwide with wide angled lens, after emailing him, he gave me useful tips on trespass and shooting techniques, such as shooting with HDR mode and then using dodge and burn tool to exhilarate certain details.

Although, I have visited the Rut Blees Luxemburg, London Dust exhibition in Museum of London, images of London City and its unpolished reality. She concentrated on documenting the fallout of the financial crisis in 2008. I personally find her work quite allegorical and interesting in colour pallet and toning. She elevated gold colour as a motif through the semiotics to highlight the contrast in social groups. My further research evolved artists such as Edward Burtysnky and particularly his book ‘OIL’ that depicts extreme expressions of the Chinese industrialization. As well as that I have looked at American photographer Lewis Baltz and his lifeless grid format photographs that influenced me to photograph pictures of deconstruction, ruin and rubbish, lost properties. So I have selected my previous Russian contact sheet of ruined industrial buildings, open space, dead landscape of misery. Before sequencing my images I came across photo books of Nick Waplington Patriarch’s Wardrobe and Joel Meyerowitz book Aftermath: 2011 that I echoed to as I could relate to the topic, not only appearance wise but contextually as well.

Primarily restricted topic as Urban Landscape ended up as beneficial experience of my photographic skills and interests. Aiming to photograph themes of dehumanisation in our capitalist society through the use of punctum (Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida). This project allowed me to observe the world in different dimension. My aim was not to represent the pleasant image for the eye, however to depict the social realist world that we leave in, nevertheless erasing the humankind and leaving the objects behind as the inscription.

Bibliography

• Eugene Atget, Photographe De Paris by David Campany (author), Pierre Mac Orlan (author), Jeffrey Ladd (author) and Eugene Atget (photographer), Book on Books, Errata Editions February 1, 2009 • Gursky: Landscapes by Terrie Sultan (author), Gagosian/ Rizzoli, Hardcover February 2, 2016 • The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction by Translated by J.A Underwood (author) and Walter Benjamin (author), Penguin Books Ltd 2008 • Edward Burtynsky:Oil by Michael Mitchell (author), William Rees (author), Paul Roth (editor), Edward Burtysnky (Photographer), Steidl; 1 edition October 31, 2009 • Lewis Baltz: Common Objects by Lewis Baltz ( photographer), Paperback November 30, 2014 • Nick Waplington – the Patriatch’s Wardrobe, Hardcover December 1, 2012 • Aftermath: World trade Center Archive by Joel Meyerowitz (author), Hardcover 2006 • http://www.museumoflondon.org.uk/london-wall/whats-on/exhibitions-displays/london-dust/ • https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/ge/benjamin.htm • http://www.sharecom.ca/greenberg/ppaessay.html • http://www.derelictlondon.com/ • http://www.slrlounge.com/urban-photography-abandoned-buildings-dan-marbaix/

[anna-cornish-blog]

Straight Photography

Straight Photography was seen as the preferred alternative to Pictorialism in the early 20th century, but what is ‘straight photography’? It is the so-called “clear objective autonomous and unabashedly founded on scientific processes.” In other words, it is said to be the traditional pure form of photography. However there are problems with this claim, one argument being that there is no denying the contemporary photographic practices of photography should not be dismissed as a non pure form as well. There is also the constant debate between whether photography is a science or art form... The experimentation conducted by artistically minded photographers overtime have opened up an entire new realm to photography. 

[anna-cornish-blog]

David Campany’s ‘Out in the world: Still life photography’

David Campany discusses the relationship between art and commerce in this article and how photographers have become more experimental with the medium throughout the years. Beginning with the still life photograph- a genre which has always been considered to be inferior, Campany says commerce had its roots from the still life genre and this is evident through the advertisements we see printed on billboards, in catalogues that resemble the style of the earliest still life photographs, like Talbot’s fruit bowl for example. 

As the art form went on to develop its modern artistic influence, many well known photographers in the early twentieth century were most commonly reportage based, portraiture based or advertising using the still life genre. Other photographers, like Man Ray however claimed the medium could be an art, and photographers since then have experimented with medium. 

The still life genre has overtime been given recognition and has played a significant role in commerce. In this day and age, advertising ‘hijacks’ the truth/ the idea of natural, as companies need to sell their products. Karl Marx, a critique of political economy claimed the advertising image glosses over and obscures the real circumstances of the labour that produced it. 

[eleonorapontiggia-blog]

The Essence of the Medium

History and Theory, comment on the essential reading

This week the lecture of History and Theory module will be about Straight photography. The essential reading consists in a chapter from the book Trace and transfiguration; American criticism on photography in the modernist period.

Straight Photography was an artistic (more precisely, photographic) movement born at the beginning of nineteenth century. Along with the Pictorialism, was created as a response to the classical documentary photography. While Pictorialism was based on the idea of taking picture which represented a preexistent work of art, Straight Photography wanted to invent a new way to put itself among the highest arts. The purpose of both Pictorialism and Straight Photography was to create a subject which included both a scientific and artistic approach; they were looking for an objectivity which does not exist in photography. Perhaps for this reason, these two movements didn't last for a long time. Straight photography was a niche art and it was used as a tool to explore the Modernism. This movement tried to represent the true essence of photography through images made purely by colours (or tones for the black and white) and shapes. Some of the most famous exponents were Paul Strand, Alfred Stieglitz, Edward Weston and Ansel Adams. This peculiar approach to the world remind me the ideology at the base of the Abstract Movement; Kandinskij depicted paintings made by only colours and lines. Despite the little success of this movement I recognise the interest point of view pointed out by those artists and the great influence they have brought to the future generation.

[eleonorapontiggia-blog]

Evidence of Novel Kind

History and Theory, comment on the essential reading

The essential reading for this week is taken directly from the famous book The pencil of nature, written by William Henry Fox Talbot. The book was printed in six different instalments between the 1844 and 1846 and it was the first commercially published book illustrated by photographs. The structure is composed by an introduction, a brief history of Fox Talbot method of taking and printing pictures and a series of carefully selected prints which were supposed to demonstrate the variety of opportunities that photography could give. Each plate is accompanied by a short text which describes the image and the photographic process involved. Among the pictures we can find buildings, pieces of material (Lace for example), objects from the author’s personal collection, pieces of art, reproduction of drawings, natural elements…All of them are made using the “Calotype technique” invented by Fox Talbot himself; it is a photographic process which involves a paper coated with silver iodide. His approach was considerably different from tho one created by Louis Daguerre some years before. The Fox Talbot technique, however will lead to the fundamental invention of the negatives.

The aim of the book was to celebrate photography as a new and innovative mean of communication; originally it was almost only used as a tool of documentation. For the fist time man could represent reality as it was, without the help of the human manual ability; it was the only machine able to do so. It was a pure scientific instrument which produced art!

[513131ew]

MPHO404 - Image and Text Assignment

Essay Plan - Points to discuss

The idea of memory

How we use images

Discuss Gillian Wearing’s image / project - Album (2003)

Comment on Wearing’s use of masks and suggest to the idea of manipulation

Connections between photography and memory

How we react to images of ourselves

Discuss Valerie Walkerdine’s project - Behind the Painted Smile, suggest to the idea of manipulation

Summarize thoughts

 Bibliography:

Bright, S. (2011). Art photography now, Rev and expanded ed. London : Thames & Hudson.

Campany, D. (2003).  Safety in Numbness: Some remarks on the problems of ‘Late Photography’. Available from http://davidcampany.com/safety-in-numbness/ [Accessed 10 December 2015].

Holland, P. (1991). Introduction – History, Memory and the Family Album. In: Spence, J. and Holland, P. (1991). Family snaps: the meaning of domestic photography. London: Virago.

Robert, E. (2011). Gillian Wearing. The art of everyday illumination. Border Crossings, 30(3), 26-46. Available from http://search.proquest.com/docview/1320423626?accountid=14987&rfr_id=info%3Axri%2Fsid%3Aprimo [Accessed 2 December 2015].

Walkerdine, V.  (1991). Behind the Painted Smile. In: Spence, J. and Holland, P. (1991). Family snaps: the meaning of domestic photography. London: Virago.

Williams, V. (1994). Who’s Looking at the Family? London: Barbican Art Gallery.

Images:

Fig. 1 Wearing, Gillian. (2003). Self-Portrait as my Mother Jean Gregory [Gelatin Silver Print]. Available from https://mcachicago.org/Collection/Items/Gillian-Wearing-Self-Portrait-As-My-Mother-Jean-Gregory-2003 [Accessed 12 December 2015].

Fig. 2 Walkerdine, Valerie. (Unknown). Behind the Painted Smile [Images from an Installation]. In: Spence, J. and Holland, P. (1991). Family snaps: the meaning of domestic photography. London: Virago.