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Neil Matheson’s lecture - 03.10.2018

Colin Westerbeck and Joel Sternfield define Street Photography as ‘picture of people who are going about their business unaware of the photographer’s presence … candid pictures of everyday life in the street’. (Bystander. A History of Street Photography, 1994)

When we are photographing someone, as photographer (especially in street photography) we have a certain power of representation over our subject. From not being aware, they automatically don’t have any control over what we decide to photograph. But if they do know they are being photographed, they take control and will show whatever they’ll want to communicate. Photographing someone blind, could be a way to keep “the power” over the image, after it might not be really ethical.

Philip-Lorca DiCorcia, Heads, 1999-2001. André Kertész, Meudon, 1928

‘I just go and watch the people and photograph them  and try to do it so people see me … it’s a way of photographing. It’s very quick … That’s one of the reasons I think the picture succeed. None of [the subjects] is really conscious of the camera’   Robert Frank

We can also find narrative in many street photography images, often the viewer will make his own narrative when reading the image. The use of visual rhetoric will make images more interesting to look at.

Vivian Maier, Untitled,  n.d. Robert Frank, Drug store, Detroit, 1955,  from The Americans, 1958.

Henri Cartier-Bresson

Author of ‘The Decisive Moment’ (Image a la sauvette) and very well-known photographer. He used to find an interesting place and wait for something to happen. His composition was always really thought through and the fact that Cartier-Bresson trained as an artist before taking on photography is visible in his work. He used to work with a 35mm camera and a wide angle lens. Cartier-Bresson had an sort of way to humanised any of his subjects.

Henri Cartier-Bresson, Hyères, France, 1932.

Subway Photographs

Many street photographers such as Walker Evans, Helen Levitt or even Bruce Davidson have tried to photograph people in the underground. This started to raised issue about consent. There was this idea of invisibility that I guess is still seek nowadays.

Gregory Crewdson.

GROUP PROJECT

We decided to make our version of Gregory Crewdson staged photo with Julianne Moore as Model

For Dream House, Gregory Crewdson continues to take elaborately staged photographs exploring the underside of American home life. He uses suburbia as the backdrop against which his own psychological dramas unfold. Theatrical lighting and special effects de-familiarize scenes that could take place anywhere in middle-class America. What differentiates this series of photographs from Twilight and other earlier series by Crewdson is the introduction of celebrities into his melodramatic and often uncomfortable world. Actors such as Gwyneth Paltrow, Julianne Moore, and William H. Macy pose for photographs that are intended to invert their celebrity image and explore the themes of sexual desire, personal obsession, and social alienation.

I personally love the lighting of his series, but in this photo lights are just perfect. They give that sense of drama or anxiety and they draw beautiful lines and shadows in the subject’s face and body, thanks to them the picture become more interesting of the reality as often happens in paintings.

Shizuka Yokomizo - Dear Stranger (1998-2000)

Dear Stranger, I am an artist working on a photographic project which involves people I do not know…I would like to take a photograph of you standing in your front room from the street in the evening. A camera will be set outside the window on the street. If you do not mind being photographed, please stand in the room and look into the camera through the window for 10 minutes on __-__-__ (date and time)…I will take your picture and then leave…we will remain strangers to each other…If you do not want to get involved, please simply draw your curtains to show your refusal…I really hope to see you from the window.

This series by Yokomizo was done by sending people a letter explaining her project and asking them to stand in their window at a certain date and time if they wanted to participate and if not to merely close their curtains. 

Doing my monthly press review...

Mojo, January 2018

Review

After being given the theme of time space and light, I wanted to use Simon Norfolk as an inspiring interpreting my theme in his style of work. So, this led to me with the idea of documenting the development of London side by side with its old roots, allowing the viewer to see both new, and old. However, in review of this shoot I decided to change my theme to explore the new developments and their flaws as they at face value seem almost utopian.

When shooting/editing I was faced with lots of challenges, the most prominent being distractions in my images. For my pictures I wanted them to be clean and free of distractions, such as people in the background of any sort of art or advertisement. The reasoning for this was that my images depend very heavy one their composition as simplicity, for the reader to find and fully understand my subject. So, with any sort of distractions the viewer will immediately be led to them which is very undesirable as it takes away from the impact and depth of my images.

In my images I found success in a wide range of ways however I am most pleased with the use of two dimensional pictures. As these flat looking images bring a different angle to the series as they show the flaws of this utopia close up. The reason for their success is that with these two-dimensional nature of the images means that the viewer is given little to no context to depth or orientation. So, the viewer is encouraged to explore the textures and lines of the image to get a reference to what is happening in the image and the perspective it was viewed from. Another success was the composition of my images. This was because the architecture of the building has lots of bold lines running through out them I can manipulate them so that they ether separate the image or act as leading lines, guiding the viewer to my subject. Making my images well composed but more importantly balanced and feeling natural, not like the subject has been forced upon the viewer.

However, I would change some aspects of my series as I feel that they are not perfect. The main change would be to the overall flow and development of the images as how the series is now, I feel that the images to not flow from one to the other and feel that as you progress through the series ones leads from the other. I feel that this could be achieved by having more similarities between the images, this could be found be composition, colour or the subject.