After I met Martin Newth and he told me about his work, I started considering how  long exposure photography will benefit my approach to representing the industrial legacy of the 19th and early 20th centuries. I believe that this photographic method will allow me to get a better result as it will not only provide the final image with an amount of tonality which could not be captured otherwise but it will also reflect the idea of encapsulating time. Therefore, this will follow my idea of linking the past with the present, the industrial era with our time.  I would like to get the appropriate permissions to photograph some industrial buildings but in the meantime I want to learn this method of photographing which involves a few complications such as dealing with reciprocity failure in film and  learning about exposure zones. I am now experimenting with the camera, this process is more mathematical than what I had expected. Another method I have experimented with is synthesis. This will give me quite  a different result, one that will encapsulate the movement of time, from daylight to night light.

By choosing these methodologies I am trying to introduce the factor of time into my images, making a reference through my chosen subject to the influence of industrialism and to develop a personal visualization of what that time now means to our modern society. My work is being informed by surrealist photography, the isolation of scenes and the breaking away from the fabric of reality, bringing in a different set of values and emotions. This will result in the creation of images that can keep the power of art itself.

The subject of my photograph is a remnant from the river side industry that started in the 18th century and saw its decline in the 20th. The industrial revolution led to a rapid expansion of London’s waterways. The Thames became a central trading post for the vast British Empire.  Docks, wharfs and new industries were created along the river to cope with these new demands. This was an era of imaginative engineering and some evidence of the influence upon the landscape of the great Victorian engineers can still be found all along the river. However, there has been a large development of building projects that are transforming London’s riverside areas and this means that industrial sites are becoming more and more rare.

My research into HDR photography  inspired me to create the image I am presenting, which  is the result of a composition made out of two different exposures of the same image, one correctly exposed and the other overexposed. By doing this I was looking to achieve certain similarity in the result to those achieved by the techniques of night time photography.  In addition to this, I have shot a film using long exposures which is still to be developed.  As this is highly experimental ground for me, I am curious to see the results.

I am still debating about using other methodologies such as collage, involving my photographs and borrowed imagery such as old drawings and building blueprints. I would use the digital medium to compose the collage and I would  print them using a silk screen technique; therefore mixing the old and new technologies and images. Another method that I am still contemplating is moving image, but as of yet I haven’t been able to put much thought into how this is going to be realised.

I would like to discuss that, if by isolating remnants of the industrial era – breaking them from reality and presenting them as still images that encapsulate time – gives a sense of their effect on our modern society, acknowledging their duality of, in one sense resting as an uncertain piece of art and conjuring up a strange beauty, and in another being a statement of what industrialism has meant for our current society.


LINKS:
For more information on this picture click here

A turning point post about Marin Newth

A turning point about using black and white negative film