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From the beginning of my project my aim has been to capture some of what remains of the architecture of the industrial era in an attempt to represent this period of time through modern digital technology and in this way make a connection between our current digital revolution and the industrial revolution of the 19th & 20th century.
This essay is a reflection on my two year journey into the project, on my learning, development and contextualization of ‘Industrialism brought forward’.
This is the link to the PDF file of my essay
I discovered this photographer not long after I finished my earlier composition and in many ways his work relates to the technique I used on mine. I guess the idea is also related to HDR. He even has a name for the technique!! I haven’t been able to find out too much about him but I would like to as his methodology and subject matter are very inspirational and, I feel, close to my work.
Thomas Weinberger was born in Munich, Germany, in 1964. He studied architecture at the Technical University of Munich and at Università di Sapienza in Rome. In 2001 he started to dedicate himself to photography which is now his sole dedication. He photographs industrial architecture, roads and deserted streets and railways. His images have been called spectral arquitecture. The surreal lighting that envelops his work make this images feel like an alienated reality, empty spaces that in the absence of human and animated presence become the main protagonist.
The technique used in his photography has been described as Synthesis, he photographs his motif twice. He does this once at nighttime (using a large format and long exposure) and the other during daylight. He then digitally superimposes both images, creating an artificial fictional lighting that gives his images a fascinating atmosphere.
Marina Dubai, 2006
Below is the image I was talking about at the start of this blog:
Edward Burtynsky (1955) is a Canadian photographer who has captured with his incredible mastery of a large format camera, a large series of “manufactured landscapes”, showing human’s debris and materials. He documents the ecological devastation brought in by globalization. His locations include mines, ship-breaking yards, quarries, factories, recycling yards and dams. He creates landscapes that show us the extent of human intervention on the earth, landscapes that are beautiful awe-inspiring images with a duality, they both seduce us and at the same time they bring us to the realization of how much our lifestyle is impacting on the earth. The message that Edward Burtynsky wants to transmit with his documentary work is that there are no easy answers on how to improve the sustainability of the planet but by being aware of these issue, we can be inspired to do something about it.
Shipbreaking No. 10,
Chittagong, Bangladesh 2000
This photographic work deals with the effect that man has in its surroundings, and it can be linked with photojournalism, a kind of photojournalism that David Campany calls ‘late photography’ , the photograph of the aftermath. This kind of work appeals to me as my practice has a documentary base to it, as it tries to record and capture the effect that the industrial revolution had in functional architecture and through it the vast change in our society. Here is where I explore this further:
‘ …amongst a few other photographers, such as Sophie Ristelhueber (known for her series ‘Fait’, illustrating Kuwait after the gulf war) and Joel Meyerowitz (series ‘Reflections on Ground Zero’, New York after the 9/11 attack), whose work is mostly characterized by the recording of events after they have happened. David Campany refers their style as ‘late photography’, the photograph of the aftermath. He examines the role of photography in our current time; he implies that ‘late photography’ is a new form of photojournalism. Photojournalism has evolved from the times when war photographers went out in the battle fields, the Gulf War being a turning point were photographers stopped being involved. Photojournalism has diversified in the new technological environment. Sometimes documentary photography is found as part of a new medium, such as the web where it is blended with other forms of media like audio, text, video and databases; other times, as it happens with ‘late photography’, it results being exhibited in museums or galleries. It is a current dialogue with documentary; by having its outlets in museums, galleries and books it offers a reflection on the photograph as evidence. It allows us to see the indexical nature of the image and provides us with a narrative, a narrative that is historically charged, as it is in the case with J Meyerowitz ‘Reflections on Ground Zero’ series, where the recording of these events was commissioned by the Museum of the City of New York to be the ‘official’ images of the scene for posterity.
‘The contemporary stockpiling of images to ward off loss –of species, of habitat, of culture, of the past in general- registers the acute anxiety affecting memory in the present. Where the nineteenth century invented history, late twentieth-century imagination is gripped by melancholy. Nostalgic visions of the past as a time of lost innocence have proliferated in the cold light of social dysfunctions and environmental destruction which diminish the allure of progress. Often what photographs, films or video recordings preserve today is merely this sense of irredeemable loss’. (Scott McQuire,1998)
Campany argues the fact that photography’s privileged status to represent history is due to a certain nostalgia for a time before new media, when photography was invested with a power to convey memory. He makes a comparison between photography and moving image referring to the feeling of ‘pastness’ that photography presents us when in contrast to the feeling of ‘presentness’ of the moving image. In moving image the use of freeze frame is commonly used to evoke the memorable. This asserts the tenet that a photograph and its simplicity, in a world of moving image where there is a sheer amount of information, can in some manner relate to the process of our memory, photography being given a memory function with a wish that its muteness will appear to be uncontaminated and serve as a memory trigger.’
Research paper: Pursuing the archiving of history
‘While its (photography) privileged status may be imagined to stem from a natural capacity to condense and simplify things, the effects of the still image derive much more from its capacity to remain radically open, radically laconic. It is not that a photograph says a thousand words, rather that a thousand words can be said about it.’ (David Campany, 2003)
