Deconstructing Environmental Photographers; The Contemporary Urban Environment

545 8th Avenue, looking North, 1994

Vera Lutter (b. 1960) is a German born New York based conceptual artist who makes city scapes by taking negative photographs with a pinhole camera obscura without a lense. Lutter's first series of New York were taken in Lutter's apartment, where Lutter had placed a sensitive black and white wall size photographic paper on the opposite wall to capture the view. of the city seen from the window The work looks haunted: the blacks of a positive print are in the negative print white and whites are black, the long exposure that can take from hours to weeks and months to maintain the focus makes the photograph filled with different tones. Result of the mechanism used is melancholic; toning of the photographs ranges from white to black; the grey areas are full of moments passed whereas the black and white are stable sculptures of architecture and human creations and light. It feels as there has not been any movement or life and won't be, even though the photographs are full of traces of human presence and life, yet the photographs won't show or reveal any concrete human beings. The city scapes are almost as drawn images of ghost towns; the stillness and the graphic approach makes the photographs look like one piece comic strips.

Zeppelin Friedrichshafen, I: August 10–13, 1999

Lutter's more recent work of aircrafts uses the same method by using a container as the camera obscura. Lutter's interested in travel and transportation, transfer and exchange can be seen in this body work not only in the subject of the work but also again in Lutter's photographic language; the long exposure, small aperture and the negative silver gelatin print has a notion movement - the transfer and travel of light. In Zeppelin Friedrichshafen, I: August 10–13, 1999 one can see the movement of the zeppelin out of the hangar as the zeppelin is see through; half of the zeppelin is missing due it was taken away for a flight in the middle of the four day exposure. Even though Lutter's subject matter has changed due the course of her artistry, the camera placement, its position, keeps the same view; an eye that is looking at places and objects from a perspective one wouldn't look at these places and objects in one's everyday life. The everyday has been shifted into something magical, not only because of the position of the camera, but the transparency of the places and objects thus creating a secret yet known to all landscape of a city.

Richard Wentworth (b.1947) is a British artist who works mostly in the area of sculpture. Wentworth's photographs are documentations of city's everyday objects that are without a use such as rubbish cans, which in his work turns into city's sculptures. These left out sculptures creates a trace of humans without any people in the photographs; in another level Wentworth's photographs are part of street photography, just without any people in the street.

Bottlestick

Wentworth's photograph Bottlestick is a photograph of two sticks with a bottle in between them in the foreground in focus of the photograph. The background of the photograph is blurry but noticeably a pavement. The photograph is in colour and has been taken from eye level and it appears as a snapshot. The framing of the photograph is tight. This way of photographing something as everyday for everyone shows the everyday in a different light; it reveals something of the city that often times people just pass by without noticing - the everyday changes into something exciting. Wentworth shoot many of his work in Caledonian Road, London, which again shows something different about London - not concrete people and their appereances but what they have done and with what.

New York, 2000

In the photograph New York, 2000 a shopping trolley is lying upside down in a supermarket floor along side with fruit section. The photograph is in colour and is taken from a slightly distance point of view, again from the eye level. It also has the same aesthetic of being a snapshot; it has been taken in this exact moment, not in the moment the trolley fell and not in the moment it had been put back to its right position. The framing is tight; it only shows its milieu, but not its people nor nothing else irrelevant. In this way it speaks a lot about the people in the same way as Bottlestick does; what has been left out comes across by the results and actions made by these left outs. In this sense it also questions why has these accidents and actions happened and why do they keep happening, yet without any pressing judgement. Wentworth's photography is only to show what happens that we don't necessarily keep track on because of its mundane quality.


Rut Blees Luxemburg (b. 1967) is a German photographer who takes urban city photographs in the nighttime. Luxemburg uses long exposure and street lights as her source of light, which creates tones of yellow and green in her colour prints. This way of photographing the city changes into something different than it is in the daytime or in the nighttime with flash; the city is something more psychological, something exotic and one can almost sense a notion of danger.  The places Blees Luxemburg has decided to take the photographs are unusual places to take photographs of; empty interior parking lots, black of flats, underground ways and drive ways with puddle with camera positions that make the photographs as still photographs of films are to show something else in the nighttime city. It's dark and no one to be seen - anything could happen, but who else is to see it other than the viewer of the photograph.

Vertiginous Exhilaration

Vertiginous Exhilaration is a photograph of a half parked parking lot, taken from the upper level of the building, showing a view of cars and tips of lower levels. The framing of the photograph is not with the same angle as the building is, which creates a sense of movement as does the camera position with it looking straight down to the lowest level. While looking at the photograph it almost feels like the viewer is falling down to the pointing ground lovel; it's stillness of not being in the level of the framing itself makes the viewer in tension, it makes the viewer feel uncomfortable of the movement to be had if one really was in the position of the camera. The way Blees Luxemburg photographs the city positions the viewer to see the urban mundane as something more meaningful than just a carpark or a staircase. It shows the people behind the carpark and the staircase after the people have gone to their houses and away from their transportation, and this way questions, where has everyone gone to?

Liebeslied, 1997

Liebeslied, 1997 is a photograph of the interior of the underground where the upper staircase changes into the lower level. The photograph is divided by a corner before the lower staircase. In the upper staircase wall is a text that looks more like a piece of poetry rather than graffiti. The camera position is looking from chest level. Toning of the photograph is yellow in the upper level and red from the lower level. There are no people in the photograph. The framing is tight and does not show where the stairs will go to, it only shows the in between of the stairs, the break between the stairs, and the piece of poetry. This break in itself feels almost as a narrative of the photograph because in that same moment it breaks it also changes colour from yellow to red. The photograph has the same kind of texture as a painting because of its long exposure; it looks haunting and beautiful and not anything like a stairway level in the underground. It also begs the question, where are the people who use this staircase to take the tube to the place x.


All of the photographers has the same sort of take in the city, they all are observing its pulse and state of what has happened and is happening, when and where. As the photographs are documents of architecture, they are also documents of time and space with different aeshetics. When Blees Luxemburg's photographs look like renaissance paintings, Lutter's work looks more familiar to ultrasound photograph taken in the doctor's, whereas Wenthwork's photographs look like snapshots of a sculpture gallery.