Presentation of Environment: Landscape and The City

Environment: Landscape

My idea for the Environment series is to question the use of a human made landscape; how every corner habited by humans is made for humans, how there are constructed areas for living as well as there are areas for waste and for corpses of humans. Why are we living within landscape of storage units of dead humans? This notion of making space for something that isn't even alive nor in any use for anyone, just there for sentimental and religious reasons, made me want to make my landscape series by photographing dead people, spirits, in our everyday landscape.

After coming up with my idea of taking photographs of spirits I knew immediately who I wanted to use as my research: Willian Hope and his interpretation of dead humans with his series Spirit Photography. I got interested in his way of showing the dead with the living by using double exposure. That was exactly what I wanted to do with my photographs as well; I took double exposures from one landscape to make the spirit look slightly see-through. This way when looking at the photograph the viewer understands that what they see isn't really there - it's something that was there one time, and now it's only a ghost, a memory. In William Hope's photography this same feeling full-fills the photographs; the spirits are unnatural next to the living.

I wanted to make the photographs as surreal as possible, therefore I did a little more research on other spirit photography by reading articles of "Seeing Is Believing" 2007-2008 exhibition in Photographers' Gallery. What caught my eye was Ben Judd's photography and his usage of two photographs of a same woman in almost same situation placed next to each other; this was what I wanted the photographs to feel like. But as I didn't want my series to be in colour nor to have a feeling of anything real I dwelled into the earlier days of spirit photography by reading about "Haunting the Chapel" exhibition on Daniel Blau's website. While browsing though the web gallery I understood I needed to make my photographs in a shape of a circle to give them a Victorian feel; this way the photographs look like they are out of place like I wanted them to look like.

 

My interpretation of landscape as a storage unit for dead people reflects how I feel about our today's society and how we humans place ourselves on top of everything. We are not be cremated but to placed back to the ground to be dust again if we think about the future generations. Where will they live and with what resourced if we are taking up all the space and energy by placing our dead bodies all around the world?

 

In contradiction of this I still feel the energy of the circle of life that is in my photographs to be experienced as in the memories of the dead generations. We are the aftermath of their lives and their choices before us, but then again our actions will see their results in the future – what will that be? Waste or something that’ll make the world a better and a more beautiful place to live in.

Pastiche

As the pastiche I did an interpretation of Jem Southam's Seaforth Head. For the first shoot (first 5 shots on the conctact sheet) I took in Margate. After searching for a good location in Margate I decided to go to Dover and shoot the white rocks there an another day.  As my final print I used a one from Dover, because of the sea and the quality of rocks. I am aware of the fact that the sky is too bright blue and that the format of the photograph is wrong; Jem Southam's photograph was taken with a large format camera whereas mine was taken with 6x6 Rolleflex. This was only due the fact that there were no cameras left for the time being and I needed the task to be completed in time. While in Dover I didn't experience the sky to be as blue as it came out in the photographs. This is not a perfect pastiche, but I accept it.

City

My initial idea for the city was to photograph le Belle Époque, the time before the WWI (1890-1914), when cities were in the making and the whole world in the bloom of its entity; world was seemingly carefree and full of potential. I was interested in the works of painters' such as Albert Edelfelt and Eero Järnefelt; their usage of light and colour was something that I was interested in photographing.

After thinking my idea in more depth I realised this painting quality was not actually what I was looking for my City Series to look like; I wanted the series to be film stills of the aftermath of le Belle Époque. What does this world look now, what have cities become till this date? 

We're living in an urban craddle - was it populated by 5 million people or 2 000 people, it's all the same. It's made by the people for the people, and it has been lived by the people, and it's not celebrated anymore. What city means to me is more of a dread and suffer, not a carefree place with golden ambititions - the ambititions has been shot down.

This is why I looked into European cinema, such as Aki Kaurismäki, Béla Tarr, Andrei Tarkovsky and Vera Chytilová.

My plan was to shoot photographs of urban spaces that time has shaped them in being what they are now: I'm interested its psyche of time and space relationship, and the human living inside of the idea of a city. As with my Landscape Series, I wanted to use a person in these scenes, to create the feeling of a narrative in the photographs, to make them as they are from a narrative film – as film stills. This time I wanted the person to be wearing black and to be still; not see-through and light, but something droopy and heavily layered. The person is to show the psyche behind the city, and the psyche behind the person, the human living in it.

This is why I am also interested in using my aesthetic reference as Francesca Woodman and her photography in the interior urban spaces, where Woodman is almost hidden behind urban architecture.

I feel that my interpretation of city shows something more than the architecture and real city scape: it reveals the ordinary urban spaces that sometime feel as hidden places for us, they are places that no one recognise to take another look or analyse them further. Mostly that is because these are places that no one goes to anymore, nor use for their purpose they were made for. These places reflect the result of cities becoming into waste. 

The person in the photographs represents this person who is in this new world going her own way. Some of her reflections are a bit dramatic, but I feel they should be – they should create an emotion and questions of what is this all about, and why is this person there, why are we here, in this city. Her character is what cities are about – the cities have turned human behaviour into its current state of shadowy anonymity. 




Pastiche

For the city pastiche I chose Brassaï's 'Paris after Dark, No.27', 1933. I shot my interpretation of the photograph at night, around 9 pm, when it was raining and the streets were shining of the water. I took the photograph with Mamiya 7, f 22, t 60 with ISO 100 to create the contrast of original photograph. I acknowledge the sky part of the photograph is way too dark due it has no houses at the end of the photograph - also the road seems to be too wide compared to the original. I still feel it contains the same emotion of a rainy night, althought it is not perfect.

Self evaluation


I feel my research for the Environment unit could have been more specialized compared to the research I did for the Object and Body unit. Nevertheless I feel strongly that my ideas come through in my visual work. I’m not sure to which context would I place my work in. 

 

I am quite particular with my visual choices, how am I to photograph something and in what way am to make the final print of it. Both of the environment series depicts this: my usage of round shape and transparent figure for the landscape series speaks about the other worldly, dead people from the past, whereas in the city series I embraced the film still quality by making the print as a size of a film still in a large canvas while using the regular sized paper. In the object work my visual approach was not much mostly cause I am not familiar with shooting objects. The portrait’s usage of drawing like quality was necessary while capturing the essence of a moment in a thought. 

 I have managed my studies well and met the deadlines for shooting and printing in time. Shoot production wisely I don’t yet feel comfortable working in studio, which means I need to use more time in the studio to feel more confident of working in that environment. I enjoy working with no limitation in the creative process, using any kind of approach and coming up with any kind of result of the concept behind work is interesting, which is why I at times found it hard to work exactly what I wanted on the Object and Body unit. I also found the pastiches really hard to work on due their lack of any creativity, which took my interest level quite low, which then reflected upon the final result of the work and my work ethics of that project. In the future I will try to work more open minded with such tasks, because I do understand the reason why are we to make such work; to understand technical aspects of photography.