'The City' Assignment - brief proposal

‘The City’ Assignment Proposal

For this assignment I’m going to produce a series of photographs disclosing details of variety of unnoticed objects hidden in urban environment.

My aim for next few weeks is to improve my observational capabilities (picking out interesting objects/details from the whole landscape) and ability to construct considered compositions by focusing on the form of an object in relation to its surroundings. Also it will be a good chance for me to convince myself to start using my 70/300mm telephoto lens and develop my skills towards that. ( I always tended to use prime lenses with focal length around 50mm).

The main purpose for this project will be to show people that there are a lot of little objects in every City environment that are very often ignored or unnoticed, however they can be very significant in our lives or just simply beautiful and intriguing.

Wall paintings & graffitis

Wall paintings & graffitis are inherent elements in urban environment. Graffiti style became very significant subject in contemporary art and design.

I found this book quite interesting in terms of imagery which it contains.

The main photographer whose pictures were used in this book is called Kriebel. In his work he focuses on wall painting and murals.

You can find his work on his website: http://www.kriebel.tk/

Ludovic Zuili

Ludovic Zuili 

Life is in the Urban Details

I decided to add this photographer to my blog because his work turned out to be quite inspirational and similar to my concept in terms of theme and technique. 

The City Assignment- first photographs

Here I've uploaded my first photographs showing 'the City'. This series does not have any particular theme because my aim was to combine different themes (close ups, landscapes) to see which style will be more suitable for me.

I think that the background is a little bit distracting in this image. I should have set bigger aperture (f2) to blur the background and separate the main subject from the rest.

Strong vignette, a lot of dark tones and subtle  highlights give a quite cinematic look to this image.

One of my themes could be a 'movement'. By using slow shutter speed and creating motion blur I could produce a series of photographs showing dynamics and rush of the city.

Here I like the contrast between this blue pet bowl with little paws and dark, dull background.

My another concept is to produce a piece of imagery disclosing unnoticed details of the city. By using telephoto lenses or setting big apertures to create shallow depth of field we can isolate efficiently  details from the rest of environment.

 

Philip-Lorca diCorcia

Philip-Lorca diCorcia (born 1951) is an American photographer. He studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Afterwards diCorcia attended Yale University where he received a Master of Fine Arts in Photography in 1979. He now lives and works in New York, and teaches at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut.

DiCorcia alternates between informal snapshots and iconic quality staged compositions that often have a baroque theatricality. Using a carefully planned staging, he takes everyday occurrences beyond the realm of banality, trying to inspire in his picture's spectators an awareness of the psychology and emotion contained in real-life situations. His work could be described as documentary photography mixed with the fictional world of cinema and advertising, which creates a powerful link between reality, fantasy and desire.

I like this pictures because they have very cinematic look and reminds me off an old American cinematography from 80's. 

Daido Moriyama

 Daido Moriyama

Born in Ikeda, Osaka, Daidō Moriyama studied photography under Takeji Iwamiya before moving to Tokyo in 1961 to work as an assistant to Eikoh Hosoe. He produced a collection of photographs, Nippon gekijō shashinchō, which showed the darker sides of urban life and the less-seen parts of cities.

I like this kind of documentary, situational photography. By looking at this photograph we really get a sense of tiredness and exhaustion that these people experience. Dark tones and strong contrast add quite dramatic look to this image.

By looking at these dark clouds we get the idea of extremely hard and unpredictable weather conditions which some cities have to struggle with.

This photograph makes me feel like I almost want to take this child out of there. Dark surroundings tell me that this child should not be wandering around these streets.

 I like this work because of the fact taht it's causing a lot of feelings and emotions. Vintage, analogue quality adds very atmospheric, dramatic look to  Daido Moriyama's work.

The Boyle Family

 The Boyle Family

Boyle Family is a group of collaborative artists based in London. Mark Boyle and Joan Hills met in Harrogate, Yorkshire in 1957. Joan had studied art and architecture and was bringing up her first son Cameron whilst running her own business. Mark was in the army, writing poetry. After a period of working separately on visual art pieces, they incrementally moved into a natural collaboration - agreeing that art should not exclude anything as a potential subject.

Multi human being studies

In 1971 we began a series of attempts to record and fix the movement of people in certain social situations. We made photographic exposures for periods from a few minutes to half an hour on a variety of locations, the entrance to a tube station, a road crossing, telephone kiosk , a children's playground, and so on. It took us 6 to 7 years to complete the processing, but eventually we succeeded in producing density photos which indicate by colour differentiation the degrees of concentration of the people who pass.

* Interesting and investigative idea referring to social issues.

Density photograph of people in movement outside a tube station. The main concentration is in the plum red and magenta part of the plume. Some people were pushed wide, others went up the street, some hovered around the bookstall. Duration uncertain, probably about 10 minutes 71-78.

The City - Brief

 'The City'

(brief)

‘In his now famous essay The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (1936) Walter Benjamin discussed how the camera was the perfect medium for urban spaces, allowing the photographer to walk the streets slowing the world down by purposely stopping and clicking as the world rushed by.’

Over the course of the next six weeks you will become familiar with examples of photographic practice in relation to city life. You will be introduced to a range of critical perspectives that consider photography and the urban environment from a sociological, anthropological, cultural and visual arts standpoint.

You will develop a photographic series (or equivalent) through a process of experimentation, research and reflection. You are encouraged to examine the interplay between urban theory and your own developing body of work.

Walter Benjamin

Walter Bendix Schönflies Benjamin 15 July 1892 – 26 September 1940) was a German-Jewish intellectual, who functioned variously as a literary critic, philosopher, sociologist, translator, radio broadcaster and essayist.