‘Absence’ is a project relating to cityscapes and the history based in the city. This is an ongoing body of work in which I will be looking at famous historical architectural structures including St. Pauls, Buckingham Palace and Tower Bridge. These places all have specific functions; places of worship, home of the Royal Family and transportation for pedestrians across The River Thames. Without people coming to use the facilities, these architectural structures would be without purpose. I am taking photographs of these places without people in them for the audience to think about this theme. In such heavily populated areas it is difficult to take a photograph that documents the location without bystanders, to create this scene I have removed the people from the image. In doing this, I want to question does the place still exist in the way it was intended to?
History is a topic that has always fascinated me. I studied history of art for two years and this is where my interest in architecture and design comes from. Whenever I have the opportunity to explore somewhere new I want to investigate what happened there; what is the function now and how has this changed from what it once was? Has it simply been reduced to a tourist attraction? My interest has been reenergised since moving to London because of how saturated in history this city truly is. I live in a flat on the sixteenth floor with a 180º view of the London skyline. It interested me seeing the London Eye, St Pauls Cathedral, The Shard and Tower Bridge from above and not having my view obscured by seeing all the tourists.
For a long time, St. Pauls Cathedral was the tallest and most important structure in London having gone through four reconstructions, because of this I wanted to use this as the prime location for my project. The architectural design of the St. Pauls we recognise today is the brainchild of famous British architect: Sir Christopher Wren. The dome has something called “the whispering gallery”, due to the acoustic properties, if you whisper to the wall on one side, someone on the other side will hear it like they were next to them.
The photography in this project is a reflection of the structures I photograph, by this I mean that I am trying to work in the tradition of historicalphotography to represent the historicalbuildings. To this end, I am using the cyanotype process, one of the earliest experimental photographic processes. Scientist and astronomer John Herschel invented the cyanotype process as a way of copying his notes and diagrams, giving us the blue print. As the blue print became used for architecture I thought it would be the perfect way to represent my photos. I am also cropping my images to 10x8 format in the tradition of documentary photographers such as Ansel Adams and Alec Soth. This ratio comes from large format cameras, it is a classic documentary format. For the images, I am using digital negatives, this is a play on the combination of digital/analogue and historical/modern.
To create the illusion that the locations are empty I am taking multiple photographs and then in Photoshop adding all the photographs into one working PSD file, from here I am able to use layer masks to eliminate the people from the composition. Throughout the process I tried other methods such as long exposure and video, but in my opinion layers have worked out the best. I then transformed the photo into black and white, then a digital negative, and printed it out on transparent paper. How this then works with the cyanotype is that where it is transparent, which is where it is meant to be white on screen, lets the light through onto the paper. Placing some glass on top of both of them helps press the two sheets of paper together which brings out the exposed image clearer and better.
I bought the chemicals Potassium ferricyanide and Ferric ammonium citrate (green) which are mixed with water separately. The two solutions are then blended together in equal parts. Once the chemicals are mixed, in a darkroom, I used a paintbrush to paint on Fabriano 120gsm paper. After letting the paper dry overnight in a dark room, I used a drawer, I then stored the papers in a box and took one out at a time to expose. I have done multiple tests, using the sun and UV bulbs, the sun is a lot stronger and exposes the image a lot better in a shorter amount of time. After doing a test strip of exposures on one piece of paper, I found out that a 20-minute expose was the perfect amount of time for the image to show enough detail. 30 minutes overexposed the image causing loss of detail in the shadows, and 10 minutes is good enough exposure time if you are going for just an outline of the image and not a lot of detail. Because I want to show that there is no people in the photograph, I need to be able to see detail.
To conclude, I have used cyanotype to represent the historical side of the photographs, but I have used digital negatives to represent the modern age. Having no one in the photograph, having the place “deserted”, is a play on what the architectural structures represent now and how it is constantly surrounded by people and without the audience, you can focus on the place itself without getting distracted. I enjoy the peace and quiet and due to the busyness around London this is something quite hard to find, especially by famous landmarks. This is something that has inspired me along the way of making this project. My personal history with landscapes and passing it on to the cityscape.
