RESEARCH & ESSAY
I have chosen to explore urban issues for my second unit and look at the dereliction and then redevelopment of industrial cities, by taking shots of a heavily industrialised area and how that sits side by side with new modernised “trendy” development. I Am aiming to do this by capturing images that take in the landscape, shapes and textures in both areas. If I can I’m hoping to show both the bustling hub of a media based thriving social centre and contrasting how that sits side by side with a vast sprawling “gritty” industrial powerhouse.
For my unit 2 project I have chosen to explore urban issues, and the way society has changed and moved on over the past 100 years. In the early 1900’s we had a mainly manufacturing and industrial base, as we approached the end of the 20th century we have moved towards services and media, and other parts of the world took over being the factories for the planet. This has meant that the urban landscape has changed, and towns and cities that were filled with industrial plants and warehouses are now being regenerated into media centres and social hubs driven by the explosion of social media, the internet, and a digital age.
I plan to explore this theme in a couple of ways, I’ve looked at the work of several photographers and like the approach they use and will try and incorporate some of their techniques in my work. I intend to go on three shoots, 1 exploring an industrial environment during the day, a second shoot showing a vast social and media centre and a third night shoot split between the two sites.
Urban issues
Introduction
Artist selection
The artists I have decided to focus on for this project are Angie Mc Monigal, Keld Helmer-Peterson and Alexey Titarenko. I feel that this group of 3 artists all offer a unique perspective and have approaches that can help me convey my ideas.
Keld Helmer-Petersen I like Keld Helmer-Peterson as his work uses architecture and colour to help bring images to life, it helps images “pop” off a page. Angie Mc Monigal Angie Mc Monigals work shows shape, pattern and form and by using vantage points with leading lines I think can give an interesting view of both the industrial and modern world. Alexey Titarenko I like the way he uses long exposure to show the movement an interaction of people in his pictures, by using a similar technique I hope to be able to do the same.
Keld Helmer Petersen (1920-2013)
Keld Helmer Petersen is a Danish photographer from Copenhagen. He explored photography as an art form and not just a way of capturing an image but as a means of artistic expression. As well as exploring his environment and expressing the industrial nature of Copenhagen he takes his photography further by looking at shape, form and colour in an industrial environment be it in a row of oil drums, the curvature of a stair well or industrial venting. If you look at his work, his images vary between black and white and colour.
In his monochrome images he uses light and tone to emphasise shapes and pattern to great effect. Using black and white also helps with high contrast images giving hard lines and solid shapes. If you look at his picture “fence” (below left) from the 1950’s he uses black and white to provide a high contrast “hard” looking image, for me the fence is holding in the industry behind (the silhouetted structure) and it feels like its protecting the viewer from the harshness inside. His image “wires” (below right) also from the 1950’s for me is in the same category, it’s a harsh image, again in monochrome but stronger than “fence” – there are no shades of grey just a flat, hard two-tone image. I also think this enhances the “Gritty” nature of the urban environment.
Although I like his colour images, for me they seem to be more of an abstract nature and don’t seem to convey a message or mood but are just pleasing images. If you look at “tomatoes” from 1946 for me its just a pleasing image, the bright vibrant red of the tomatoes contrasted against the “plain” crates is just nice to look at, his use of the rule of thirds with the crates creating the lines divides the image nicely, providing a contrast with the fruit. The light coming in from the side gives the tomatoes a shine helping to show the smooth texture of the skins.
I think his work from around the docks at Copenhagen offers a style and technique that will help me in my first shoot to convey an industrial and gritty mood as I explore Trafford Park, and at the same time I hope to capture some abstract images, as I’m shooting in late November I also think the “grey” nature of daylight will help me convey the mood.
Angie Mc Monigal (1976-Present)
Angie Mc Monical is an American photographer based in Chicago, she specialises in photographing architecture both interior and exterior, as well as showing the scale of big cities and skyscrapers, she also uses her photography to show shape and texture to great effect. If you look at her cityscapes below she has divided the frame using the rule of thirds, dividing the picture this way and allowing the sky into the top 2 thirds helps emphasise the vast size of the city below. In the second picture the same technique is used whilst at the same time the pathway running from the front and into the picture helps take your eye on a journey into the city.
Her interior shots are predominantly bright and vibrant, and seem to lack a human or natural element, the shots below feel very cold and clinical, the train station platform, would usually be a place full of people and life but she has pictured it completely empty, the black line of the roof following the line of the train below give it a futuristic feel that only emphasises the lack of nature in the image. Even in the images below where people are involved they have been blurred using long exposure, I can’t decide if that’s to show the speed with which modern life moves or its used deliberately to take away the human aspect of the image. Like Petersen above she also has some great abstract images, where the shape and form of an object or building mean it doesn’t have to be identifiable to be a pleasing image.
Her images both interior and exterior I think will help me explore my second shoot as I look around the more modern areas bordering Trafford park, the Trafford centre and media city at Salford quays, which although being centres for people to meet, shop, socailise and congregate can also be vast unfeeling places with very little natural influence or feeling.
Alexey Titarenko (1962-Present)
Alexey Titarenko is a Russian photographer who was born in St Petersburg (formally Leningrad) in 1962 and grew up living his formative years in the Soviet Union, he used his photography to try and express what life was like under the communist regime, his use of monochrome images can give the subject matter a ghostly and ethereal feel, in most of his images the people are blurred and a lot of the time not even recognisable as people.
His most famous work “City of shadows” is a social commentary on the transition of the old soviet union into what it has become today after the fall of the Berlin wall, showing the struggles that still remained and the hardship the transformation caused. His use of long exposure blurs the movement of people against a usually stationary background and foreground, his work has a very bleak a desolate feel, and is filled with melancholy and sadness.
I think his work will be the hardest technically for me to emulate, finding the right crowds and movement of people could be quite difficult, and I may have to look to a slightly different location to get what I need.
Review
After completing the 3 shoots for this unit I think I have learned a lot and developed my photographic abilities further, going forward I’m hoping to put this into practice, and combine the techniques used. Using depth of field in shoot one, vantage points in shoot two and especially long exposure in shoot three has helped me develop my composition and camera technique further, combining both technical skills using setting on the camera and from a compositional and artistic viewpoint.
Bibliography
Alexey Titarenko
Home page/selected work/about
29/1/2023
Alexey Titarenko
Angie Mc Monigal
Home page/commercial/fine art/ about
29/1/2023
Keld Helmer Ptersen
Home page/history/gallery