PRACTICAL RESPONSE TO URBAN TRANSFORMATIONS
For my Curatorship Task, I looked at Urban Transformations and focused on New York architectural, economical and social change through out the century. I researched photographers who documented the buildings, the people and historical events of the city. For my own personal brief I want to stick to this theme of change and look at where and how it occurs in my own city - London.
Firstly, I am going to look at change and development through the architecture and document constructions as well as contrasting old and new buildings that can be found in central London. This series of photos links to my theme of urban transformations because it documents the city changing; through photographing buildings and constructions I captured London's changing scenery.
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Firstly, I am going to look at change and development through the architecture and document constructions as well as contrasting old and new buildings that can be found in central London. This series of photos links to my theme of urban transformations because it documents the city changing; through photographing buildings and constructions I captured London's changing scenery.
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MY RESPONSE: Selected photos
In order to create these photos I travelled around London to places like Victoria station, King's Cross Station and Westminster, because I knew there would be a lot constructions and interesting architecture. I think that these photos are a good start to my individual practical project but they're not what I want to do for my final piece. This shoot inspired me to focus on the chaos and motion of the city for my future developments. My composition in these photos helped to support my theme because they capture the contrast between man-made and nature, as well as old and new architecture. As for my technique, I didn't use a tripod for these photographs because I used a fast shutter speed, therefore I was able to be flexible with a hand held approach. Even though I believe this was a good start to my brief because it sparked many future ideas about city's development and movement, I don't think these photos are interesting enough. For future development I want to explore a different locations and think more about my composition prior to shooting.
To develop my idea I want to build on the theme of change and look at the movement within the city. I will focus on the tube for this because it plays a big role in London's transportation.
MY PHOTOS: Some of the selected images
I developed my idea by looking at the movement of the city and how quickly it is constantly changing. I focused on the theme of time and found different ways of incorporating it into my photos. For example, I took photos of clocks and time tables in the city and explored how they they affect the Londoners. This series of photos captures the chaotic atmosphere of city life and its constant movement. I think the subjects of these photos, people and time, suit the theme because they still represent London as a city. This composition really helped me generate ideas about my future developments because I realised that I really like this approach and including people as the subjects makes the photographs more interesting. Shooting on the tube was tricker than shooting architecture because it required more manual experimentation with the ISO, as the light was constantly changing; it was either really dark or really bright. Another challenge I faced was capturing some subjects in movement because I didn't want them to turn out too blurry, and this also made me experiment with the shutter speed.
While taking those photos, I've thought of a better way to capture the movement of the city. In my next series of photos I want to experiment with using longer exposure to create that blur effect.
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MY PHOTOS:
I developed this idea by taking some long exposure shots of transport and people in central London. This series links to my theme because, just like the previous development, it captures the change and movement of the city, although it does start to change my brief to focus more on the people who make London what it is, instead of the city itself.
'm very pleased with how these photos turned out and enjoyed the process of taking them. I took all of these photos in manual mode and setting the shutter speed on 1 second, and then adjusting the ISO according to the location - since I was shooting in natural light, the intensity of light varied a lot causing me to constantly change the settings.
This development made me reconsider my brief title and adjust it to focus more around people, because my favourite photos from this shoot were the ones that captured people. Another reason why I wanted to focus on people in my future photos is because many of the New York photographers I've included in my Curatorship Task done this too - for example Brandon Stanton (the creator of Humans of New York) produced simple but interesting portraits of strangers on the street.
'm very pleased with how these photos turned out and enjoyed the process of taking them. I took all of these photos in manual mode and setting the shutter speed on 1 second, and then adjusting the ISO according to the location - since I was shooting in natural light, the intensity of light varied a lot causing me to constantly change the settings.
This development made me reconsider my brief title and adjust it to focus more around people, because my favourite photos from this shoot were the ones that captured people. Another reason why I wanted to focus on people in my future photos is because many of the New York photographers I've included in my Curatorship Task done this too - for example Brandon Stanton (the creator of Humans of New York) produced simple but interesting portraits of strangers on the street.
To develop my work even more I wanted to take the micro approach, and focus on what actually makes London what it is - the people. I was inspired by two photographers who I looked at for my Curatorship task - Alfred Eisenstaedt and Brandon Stanton. Both of these photographers photographed using the documentary style and took a lot of portraits of random people on the streets of New York.
I then heard about the photographers Marcus Lyon and Richard Avedon who also documented people, but using a different technique; instead of taking photos of people within their environment like Eisenstaedt and Stanton, they actually got rid of the context of their environment to really direct all the focus on the subject.
I then heard about the photographers Marcus Lyon and Richard Avedon who also documented people, but using a different technique; instead of taking photos of people within their environment like Eisenstaedt and Stanton, they actually got rid of the context of their environment to really direct all the focus on the subject.
MARCUS LYON: SOMOS BRASIL
Marcus Lyon is a photographer who travelled across Brazil capturing a wide variety of people in order to represent the diversity in Brazil. His interest in exploring remarkable identities in Brazilian people was sparked by his wife, who was born in Brazil. He paired his photography project with an app that mapped the ancestral DNA, personal stories and visual identities. His photos manage to capture how every person plays a different role in society and the uniqueness of every personality. Through photography he manages to show that everyone in Brazil is an individual with distinctive talents, interests and styles.
RICHARD AVEDON: IN THE AMERICAN MIDWEST
Richard Avedon is another photographer who photographed individuals that he met on his travels in America. He chose to focus on small towns and isolated ranches in order to find the true American West. He places a white studio background behind each person for the purpose of removing any context and making the viewer focus on the subject. He was interested in capturing working class subjects like, housewives, cowboys and farmers instead of what people traditionally thought of when they thought about the West. Avedon published his work in the form of large print, which would be up to 3 feet tall, until later when the prints took on a life form in a book the American West.
As a response to these two artists, I went out to photograph local people and tried to find out their story. My goal was to capture a wide range of people with different personalities, jobs and ages, who lived in Muswell Hill. Just like Avedon and Lyon, I took portraits of people against a white background which allowed me to remove any environmental context, drawing all focus on the individuals in the middle. I decided to edit all of the photos black and white and increase contrast and HDR in order to bring out even the smallest features. I think that making all of these photos black and white eliminated any distractions and captured their true personalities.
EXTENSION
For my extension of this task, I took more portraits of people against a white piece of paper but this time I placed the paper on some sort of interesting background. I thought that by including a little bit of the background, and exposing a bit of the context, I will be able to show more of the individual's personality. I decided to document these set of photos in colour instead of black and white, because I focused on capturing the subject's style and colour plays a big role and is seen in their clothes, hair colour and make up.
I'm happy with the way these photos turned out. I prefer the coloured photos I took as part of the extension because they reveal more of the people's personality through giving away a bit of the context. I think Shoreditch was the perfect place to shoot these photos in because there was a lot of street art and interesting locations around.
DOCUMENTARY PHOTOGRAPHY
I wanted to continue taking photos of Londoners but this time experiment with using the documentary style so for this task I decided to visit London's famous markets and try to capture their atmosphere. The first market I visited was the Columbia Road Flower Market. I mostly photographed people who were at the market.
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MY PHOTOS:
The next market that I went to was Brick Lane Sunday Market
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MY PHOTOS:
The aim of these photos was to isolate specific individuals in such crowded and busy settings. Sometimes this was difficult because there were so many people who got into my frame so I had to take a different approach like shooting through reflections.
As I was interested in documentary photography that contributed to my market photos, I've came across a photographer called John Clang who took a different approach to represent strangers on the street. Thought he may be an interesting photographer to respond to because it was more manual than any project I've done before.
JOHN CLANG
John Clang is originally from Singapore, but currently New York based photographer, Clang is mostly known for photographing people in New York as well as Singapore. Fascination on time, displacement and existence are themes that can be found in his work and therefore his work doesn't just document the world around him but also reflects his way of seeing and thinking. The series of photos that I'm focusing on is entitled "Time" and it captures hand-ripped montages that compress time in one place. For these photos, Clang finds interesting locations around New York City and using a tripod captures the constantly moving people. He then manually rips photos and rearranges them again messily. His work reflects the chaotic atmosphere of city life as well as memorable locations.
MY RESPONSE:
For my response to this artist I took photos in Islington using the same technique as John Clang. I found three different interesting locations and took several photos from the exact same angle and place. After printing, ripping and gluing the fragments together I've created the pieces below.
I really enjoyed the process of creating this response but I think I could've taken a wider variety of photos, such as more photos of people's faces. As I was looking at my printed photos and trying to figure out a way to mount them together I found that a lot of the photos included the back's of people which is less effective than if the photos actually showed the people's faces. Additionally, I think I could've ripped the photos more messily because they are almost done too perfectly, and if it wasn't for the visible rips they would look like normal pictures.
While researching John Clang I've came across a photographer called Nick Turpin. I was intrigued by his work because he presented ordinary settings/situations like a bus journey in an interesting and abstract way, while still conforming to the documentary approach. I thought is work related to what I was doing because he also managed to isolate individuals in busy settings.
Nick Turpin
Nick Turpin is a London based photographer who worked on a project titled "Through the Glass Darkly". He took a series of photos over the course of two winters of people on night buses. He captured the every day routine of taking the bus in an interesting and unique way. What makes Turpin's photographs so abstract are the vibrant colours in the background, the fact that the actual bus exterior is not visible and the blurred subjects. He published these photographs in a book called "On the Night Bus" in 2016.
“I photograph people without interaction and the pictures are un-retouched apart from colour and contrast corrections”, he explains. “It’s amazing how much variety there can be in the pictures, the people, the weather, the age and type of bus all play a part, I even have a shot with blue light in the background from a passing police vehicle. The pictures are intimate glimpses of people during that strange time between leaving the office and arriving home when you are almost between two identities. The project also raises questions about voyeurism and public and private space."
“I photograph people without interaction and the pictures are un-retouched apart from colour and contrast corrections”, he explains. “It’s amazing how much variety there can be in the pictures, the people, the weather, the age and type of bus all play a part, I even have a shot with blue light in the background from a passing police vehicle. The pictures are intimate glimpses of people during that strange time between leaving the office and arriving home when you are almost between two identities. The project also raises questions about voyeurism and public and private space."
FIRST ATTEMPT:
For my first attempt at a response to Nick Turpin, I decided to focus more on the details of the raindrops and make the photographs even more abstract. I went out the a main street when it got dark with a piece of glass and a spray bottle of water that I would use to create a rain effect. However, this did not give me the effect I wanted. The glass had to be really close to the subject in order to look like real raindrops, but I was quite far away from the moving buses so my camera either focused on the water and made the background extremely blurry or when it did focus on the bus it distorted the raindrops too much.
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For my first attempt at a response to Nick Turpin, I decided to focus more on the details of the raindrops and make the photographs even more abstract. I went out the a main street when it got dark with a piece of glass and a spray bottle of water that I would use to create a rain effect. However, this did not give me the effect I wanted. The glass had to be really close to the subject in order to look like real raindrops, but I was quite far away from the moving buses so my camera either focused on the water and made the background extremely blurry or when it did focus on the bus it distorted the raindrops too much.
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PHOTOS:
SECOND ATTEMPT
As for the second I attempt, I decided to take a different approach and photograph people on buses even when the weather conditions were not ideal. I went to the Wood Green bus stops when it was dark and focused more on capturing the reflections that would give an abstract feel to the photos rather than the raindrops.
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As for the second I attempt, I decided to take a different approach and photograph people on buses even when the weather conditions were not ideal. I went to the Wood Green bus stops when it was dark and focused more on capturing the reflections that would give an abstract feel to the photos rather than the raindrops.
CONTACT SHEET:
PHOTOS:
I like how some of these photos came out because the subjects are clear regardless the night conditions that made shooting a bit more difficult. I managed to create this photos without using a tripod because I had a fast shutter speed and high ISO for my settings that allowed me to hand hold the camera and avoid the blurry effect.
DEVELOPMENT:
As a development, I wanted to make my photos more abstract like Nick Turpin's and I decided to recreate the rain effect. I done this through placing the photo on a tripod and putting a glass with water drops in front of it. I also positioned studio lights on both sides of the photo and focused my camera on the photo, not on the water, while taking a photo of it. This blurred out some areas of the photo and made it look like it was raining.
I think this was a good attempt and I liked the effect it created but I think the original photos were stronger. For future developments I'm going to try to get that rainy/steamed effect naturally. I am going to take more photos when it will be raining and the temperature will be lower.
I managed to make a few trips to the Wood Green bus stops again when the weather conditions were colder and this created steam on the windows that made the photos more abstract. When editing I made sure to increase the brightness and vibrancy in order to make my photos more interesting.
I was very pleased with this work because I like how abstract and vibrant it is. However, I also wanted to explore the different perspectives and I came across a photographer called Jon Smalldon who took photos from the bus looking down at the street.
FROM THE BUS
ARTIST & ME:
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PHOTOS:
I think these photos came out alright but I'm not too pleased with them. I definitely preferred the photos of people on buses more. But I will continue to look at Londoners and public transport in my future developments. At this point I think my brief focuses more around Londoners rather than urban transformations, but it still relates to the theme of movement and change within in the city. It was difficult to find interesting subjects to photographed because the bus was constantly moving so a lot of the images seemed 'rushed' and blurry.
I thought it would be interesting to visit the London Transport Museum to see the physical changes in London's public transport over the centuries (just as I researched the changes in New York for my curatorship task).
Here are some of the photos from my trip:
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I thought it would be interesting to visit the London Transport Museum to see the physical changes in London's public transport over the centuries (just as I researched the changes in New York for my curatorship task).
Here are some of the photos from my trip:
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BUS DRIVERS
For my development I took photos of the bus drivers this time and focused on the reflections and colour just as in my previous photos. This series of photos was easier than previous night photos because this time there was plenty of light which also made the editing process easier.
They were inspired by a photographer called Dan Sully, who took photos of Taxis in Japan and documented the drivers and the vibrancy of the city in the reflections.
They were inspired by a photographer called Dan Sully, who took photos of Taxis in Japan and documented the drivers and the vibrancy of the city in the reflections.
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I am pleased with how these photos turned out mostly because they have a slight abstract feel to them due to the reflections in the windows. I also enjoyed editing these photos because there was a lot of colour in them that I can experiment with in Photoshop. I ended up increasing the saturation and vibrancy of the photos. I did find this task slightly challenging because it was hard to capture some bus drivers because of the fast movement of the bus.
Inspired by Stanton's approach to photographing New Yorkers, I wanted to capture the bus drivers as individuals so I went to the bus depo in Wood Green and took black and white portraits of them.
EDITING: When editing these portraits I transformed them all into black and white and then experimented with sharpening the details using HDR toning to make them more dramatic.
For this project I tried a lot of different approaches and experimented with the type of photos I was taking - from documentary to portraiture. I also responded to several different photographers like Nick Turpin, Brandon Stanton and Dan Sully over the course of this project. For my final piece I decided to choose the photos I took as a response to Nick Turpin because they are the photos I'm mostly pleased with and I feel like they capture the theme that my brief developed to.
My brief changed throughout this project from Urban Transformations (which was meant to focus on architectural, economical and social change within a city) to a documentation of the city (which ended up capturing Londoners in their everyday life).
My brief changed throughout this project from Urban Transformations (which was meant to focus on architectural, economical and social change within a city) to a documentation of the city (which ended up capturing Londoners in their everyday life).