I started this project by investigating two of my favourite photographers Joel Meyerowitz and Stephen Shore. I analysed a set of very striking images Meyerowitz had shot of Ground Zero in the weeks after the terrible incident that permanently scarred the cityscape. These images had a big impact on me as they are very dramatic and raw photos that do not hide anything, they show the carnage and obliteration that occurred in the true light. Although this is not something people want to think about I am very glad it has been captured by him as it might otherwise be lost in history.
I then looked at Stephen Shore and a series of photographs taken around the U.S. titled Uncommon Places. The warm and dusty colours are what stand out to me with Shore’s work, they capture a period in time which I feel is now lost. He documents his surroundings, architecture, food and automobiles, each photo has a strong 1970’s feel to it, a time when the world was a lot less complicated, cleaner and free. I love the signage in his images, they are very graphically pleasing to look at, far different from the cheap, plastic modern signs they have today, because of the style of signage it immediately gives a clear time frame to when the images were taken.
I next went out on two separate occasions and took some photos inspired by both Meyerowitz and Shore. I focused on documenting my surroundings in a dramatic natural light, that gave a strong contrast. I mainly photographed bright objects such as the road work signs from the current maintenance being done to the roads around Kidbrooke. I also liked to shoot the bright blue sky and the cranes on the building site. I knew once edited these would be very saturated, dramatic photographs, with emphasis placed on the angles to overdramatise the images. I was extremely pleased with the outcome of both experiments as they showed the images just how I had imagined them.
To help decide upon my chosen topic I went back to the roots and investigated photography in the early 20th Century. I realised that technically all images are edited, even in the early days of photography, photos were not showing scenes to be exactly the way they were in real life. The second the light enters the camera an image is being created that is not quite identical to real life, whether that be the colour, tone, contrast or shadows. You could even call this editing a photo due to it not displaying the 100% truth of what is in the frame.
I then discovered the Truth Claim, which is a term Tom Gunning used to question the belief that traditional photographs accurately depict reality. I found this very interesting and decided that the topic of questioning the truth and reality in a photo suited my chosen genre of photography. I am interested in exploring the physical relationship between the object photographed and the resulting image. I intend to experiment with a range of formats such as 35mm, digital, film, etc and investigate the idea of photo manipulation and the feature it plays in photography.
I have realised I naturally work towards photographing the city, the architecture and people within it. So I will carry on exploring this subject with my photography as it is something I enjoy.
For my latest project “The Photobook” I experimented with photo manipulation by editing the negatives in the darkroom to create high contrast black and white photography. This was something I enjoyed and I definitely wanted to experiment further within my Personal Investigation. So I decided to make my next experiment black & white. I used my time carefully and shot all my images in the same area. I tried to capture the natural branches of the Birch trees against the stark bare walls of the man-made building. I felt this was similar to Stephen Shore’s work in which he shoots a combination of natural countryside with street scene photos mixed in.
While experimenting with black and white photography I discovered the Provoke magazine photographers of Japan. Fascinated by their work I decided to visit the Yutaka Takanashi exhibition at the Tate Modern. Here I was able to view many sixties black & white images, similar to those used in the magazine, I loved the depth of tone and contrast in Takanashi’s work. His photography is well composed and thought out, he creates a dark mood in his photos that shows the clash between the well respected upper-class gangsters and lower class citizens. One of the main features that stood out to me in Takanashi’s work was the sense of movement and how he intentionally blurs this, by using a slower shutter speed. I was inspired by this style and decided to use elements of it in my next experiment.
I found myself with a DSLR camera at the shops near my school, the public obviously found the large camera to be too intrusive as I found everyone turning away or becoming agitated when I took a photo of them. I then decided it was best not to make it obvious I was photographing. I instead chose to take images of passers feet as they walked by me, this way they would hardly realise I was taking a shot. I stayed around the same area making sure all my photos captured the same black drain cover and red leaves in the frame. The photographs turned out very well and only required some subtle editing to increase the saturation and make the blurring more pronounced. As a set of 6 images, I felt they worked really well together and I would class them as a typology due to the similar surroundings in each image.
The blurred legs were captured exactly how I wanted, the whole person is not in focus, only part of them or one of their legs. I did not want them to be completely out of focus because the image then loses the raw feeling I felt from viewing Takanashi’s work.
On the 19th August following my trip to the Tate Modern, I decided to visit The Photographers’ Gallery in Soho. On my way to the gallery, I used five rolls of 35mm film in my Olympus Trip 35. I experimented with double exposure photography, to do this I rewound the film midway through, this was very experimental as I did not know what images would mix with which photos I had already taken. I focussed on capturing the neon lights in the casinos around Soho, I felt these would show up very well on a double exposed image. I also photographed the reflections in shop windows, as to imitate a double exposure. These all turned out very well and after editing them on Adobe Photoshop it is almost impossible to tell the reflection images from the double exposed images.
The current exhibition on at The Photographers’ Gallery was Terence Donovan’s Speed of Light, this was the first major retrospective since his death in 1996. I felt very inspired by his black and white 60’s photos as they were far different from the photographers I had been studying so far. These images were planned and composed shots of people that Donovan had chosen or been asked by, whereas most of my chosen artists so far have been street photographers of a different kind. The next week I went to an underpass with some fellow school pupils I then positioned them in the tunnel and photographed them from various angles. My favourite image was actually the one of the man walking his dog, which is the only image that is not composed in the way that the others are.
My favourite photographer from my investigation was a local photographer called Sam Kemp. I loved his photos of the Ferrier Estate so much that I decided to purchase his book. The images in the book are beautifully lit and make the Estate look almost like it is from another planet with a bright lime green sky and orange tinted walls. This led to my next project in which I attempted to recreate these powerful, warm colours by creating a paper sculpture using transparent coloured plastic. I then placed the model in the dark room and used only the torch from an iPhone to illuminate it. The cut-out shapes projected coloured shadows onto the ground, once edited these stood out very clearly from the dark shadows that cover most of the image.
Next lesson I found a book by photographer Matthew Brandt. In this book, I discovered some amazing images that had been left in lake water for weeks or even months. I had never seen this type of experimentation before and I was amazed by the result, a swirl of abstract colours created a psychedelic trip of various lakes. These colours looked beautiful lying over the photographs and I decided I had to replicate this myself. I used six 35mm prints that all consisted of bright colours, I then left them submerged in a tray of water. After 3 weeks there was still no change, to speed up the process I decided to add 3 drops of bleach to the water. This helped to release the ink from the paper and blur it across the image. My favourite image is of the child's tricycle which is left discarded on its side. Once the ink had come loose and shifted on the print it created a flame like appearance which looks almost like an explosion on the paper. I feel this fits together with the discarded tricycle to give an apocalyptic feeling, as it is the type of object you may see left behind at the end of the world.
A few weeks later I started investigating performance artists and watched a short documentary video on Bristol based artists Harrison and Wood. I found their short performance videos to be both clever and creative usually with an element of comedy. I then approached my next experiment of portraiture in a style I felt appropriate to performance art. I did not want to take standard photos of faces, so I instead decided to capture ‘faceless’ portraits. I chose to photograph people’s hands as I knew this would make the person easily identifiable to the people that know this person and in a different way act as a portrait.
This set of images worked well in a series of six and on close inspection reveal a lot about the person they are of.
Following on from performance art, I decided to make my own video. I wanted to explore Threshold Concept No. 5 which is “Cameras ‘see’ the world differently to the way we see the world with our eyes” I felt this would be an appropriate area to experiment with, as using a dog's eye view of a dog running is not something one would normally experience.
For this experiment, I used a GoPro and mounted it on an RC car. I then managed to get a friend’s dog to chase the car while I attempted to control the car to keep it close to the dog and in the centre of the frame, this proved tricky on the bumpy ground and because of this, the video turned out quite shaky. To counter this I purchased a GoPro stabiliser, which I then used in my next experiment: The Kensington Crawl. Carrying on with the city theme I decided to make my next performance video in the streets of Kensington. For this video, I wandered the streets to and from Kensington Park. I held the camera down low to get a different angle from normal eye level that everyone views the world at. I then pieced the video together to show a clear journey and changed the speed of the video. I increased the speed of the street footage and slowed down the footage of the birds by the lake. Varying the speed of the video made it much more interesting and helps to keep the viewer engaged in watching it. I am very pleased with the way this video turned out and the how well the music works with the footage. For the music I picked two Booker T songs, I chose these because there is no singing just instruments and I felt the speed of the songs worked well with the speed of my walking.
For my next final outcome, I decided to make a Photo Zine. I liked the idea of photo sequences and I did not want to use only a single image for a final outcome as I felt this would not fit in with my previous projects. For this book I continued the cityscape theme and shot all photographs around my local area of Kidbrooke and Blackheath, I enjoyed walking the dark underpasses and tunnels in the early morning sunlight. The light was low in the sky which meant it glinted and reflected off the sides of the shiny brick walls, this created a strong contrast once changed into black and white. Next, I edited the images in Photoshop to increase the contrast, the final photos work well together due to the strong tones and contrasts between the bright white light and jet black shadows. For the cover I used a photo I shot of a passing dog, I then wrapped the image around the front and back covers.
When planning my final piece I stumbled across the photographer Bob Collins. I really loved his long exposure photographs and decided to incorporate this into my project. I decided to document my local area, in particularly Lee Gate as it is where I have grown up and I wanted to document it one last time before it is knocked down. I like the 1960’s architecture of Lee Gate and in the centre is a very cool spiral stairwell which is my favourite part of Lee. I photographed this using a Canon DSLR, wide angle lens and a tripod to make it steady enough to take some long exposure shots. I then instructed my friend on where to walk to create his blurred figure in the image. I next chose the four best photos and edited them in Photoshop. I was aiming to completely change the feel of the images by removing the perfect HD quality and instead of making them very gritty, high contrast, grainy photographs. With a lot of experimentation and trial and error, I eventually achieved my desired look. I then trimmed and mounted the four images onto foam board. Next, I taped the four pieces together to create a hollow cube which I plan to hang on invisible string when it is displayed in the school exhibition.
Overall I am pleased with my project on the Claim to Truth and feel I have explored this topic widely and fully using multiple different formats and techniques. All of my shots have been edited and changed in some way in order to hide the real appearance and distort and manipulate them, to create what is effectively a new image. I feel my quality of work has definitely evolved and improved during this project and my final outcome clearly shows this.