City & Landscape

RPHC4001-Commission Part 1 Environment Franceska Shirka

Intro - City & Landscape

For the past 11 weeks, I have been taught a bombshell of things. From dissecting images, understanding paintings and photographs, studio practice with amazing cameras and professional lighting and so on, which has prepared me for my projects. I will be talking about my landscape and city and my development, difficulties and successful aspects during this task throughout this presentation as well as going through my research and artist influences which helped me throughout the task. I am required to submit a set of 3 images based upon my personal conceptual approach to representing the landscape and City.

LANDSCAPE -

CONCEPT

My idea to represent the landscape didnt come to me easily, in fact I had a bit of trouble deciding what direction I wanted to go into. I decided to embrace the land around my home, and its historical context. I wanted to look into how these remarkable historical landmarks around us are being taken advantage of, being layered with crap, such as fairs, events, missile sites, and so on. I decided to go into this direction to begin with. Through my series of landscape shots, I am looking into how humanity take land that should be appreciated for granted and how they are destroying what it actually is. This inspired me to concentrate on the landmarks which have a great number of tourist attractions, and have been associated with historical people or events.

Research landscape
Through my journey to my final piece I have come across several artists who have influenced me, such as; Simon Roberts-Olympiad Joel Sternfeild-Walking the highline Thomas Struth

Martin Mooney
Throughout my research I stuck to these artists for the visual side of it all.

However I had to research the historical background of my landmarks, and from there on, my research became more background based as well as artist based.

Images of inspiration

Simon Roberts. Simon Roberts produced a series of photographs during the Olympics names Olympiad. I was introduced to Simon Roberts by Jonathan which I was extremely happy about as he was someone I was searching for. These two images have been taken at the location of my shoots too, however they are the before to the images I have produced, which are the aftermath of the horse stadium.

Developing research
I also looked at artist Martin Mooney which has been one of my favorite landscape painters. Unfortunately I cant find much information on him when I try to look him up anywhere, I own 3 of his painting catalogs at home, which is where I got my visual inspiration. In my first test shoot went down hill, and was not at all successful, I shot Blackheath in the style of martin Mooney's landscape paintings, shortly after I realised that I didnt like the straight horizon line on the landscape photos, as it is almost predictable but I tried to work around this later on thought out my project. A second idea that I had was to try portray Blackheath what it really is for. By using the weather to my advantage, using the fog to represent the death and mystery of the heath itself, but the weather wasnt on my side and there was no fog to be seen so I dropped this idea and started to look at other landmarks.

Development landscape
I first started shooting In Blackheath, which then developed onto Chatham Dockyard, which then ended to my final location Greenwich park. Here are some test shoots I experimented with at these locations;

Chatham Dockyard
For 414 years Chatham Dockyard provided over 500 ships for the royal Navy, and was forefront of ship building. HMS C17 was launched at Chatham in 1908, and during WW1 12 submarines were built at Chatham Dockyard, but when hostilities ceased, uncompleted boats were scraped and 5 years passed before a further ship was launched.The Dockyard is now a visitor attraction.

The Royal Park

Greenwich Park covers 183 acres and is the oldest Royal Park. It is situated on a hilltop with impressive views across the River Thames to the Docklands and the City of London, between Blackheath and the River. Greenwich Park is the home of several historic buildings, including the Old Royal Observatory, the Royal Naval College, the National Maritime Museum and the Queen's House . Greenwich has always been strongly associated with royalty. Since the land was inherited in 1427 by the Duke of Gloucester, brother of Henry V, generations of monarchs have taken this magnificent park to their hearts .Greenwich was the birthplace of Henry VIII who introduced deer to the park. His two daughters Mary I and Elizabeth I were also born here and his son Edward VI died in Greenwich before he reached his sixteenth birthday. In the early 1600s, the park was laid out in the French style with many trees planted, some of which remain today. James I gave the palace and the park to his wife, Queen Anne, who commissioned Inigo Jones to design her a special home which became know as the Queen's House Today Greenwich is a World Heritage Site and is most famous for Greenwich Mean Time. During World War II, there were anti-aircraft guns in the Flower Garden and the tips of some of the trees were cut off to widen the field of fire. Evidence of this can still be seen in the truncated shape of some of the trees. After the war, the park was restored to its former glory.

The Royal Park.

To me I have taken this project on much more personally than I should have, as growing up in Greenwich, Greenwich park was and still is every kids most favorite destination to play and seeing it in the state it has been in for the past couple of months encouraged me to take on this project the way I did. Unfortunately I was not in the UK during the Olympics but I was here to watch the park getting blocked up, and torn apart, which put not only me but so many other people in the public in a upsetting mood. I wanted to portray through my images how Empty land can easily be torn up and turned ugly despite its historical meaning, you can only dig something up enough times before it means less that it did before. The next slide will contain My test shots for my landscape.

Test shots and locations etc

Through these images I wanted to portray the restrictions of the park, and how 80% of it has been blocked off due to construction work since the Olympics.

The weather was terrible, in fact it was pouring down with rain, but this soon came to my favor as it created a thin layer of fog in the distance, which gave it a sense of not only is the park being engulfed by negativity but so is the city behind it.

Was that it?

Unfortunately due to the severe weather conditions and me not having a tripod, my strongest image from my test shots was out of focus, so I had to set out again to reshoot this. I took out more equipment, different lenses and hoped for the fog to be there in the morning, which it wasnt. Reshooting my Landscape I was too involved with this one image I had forgotten I should have had a series of three and by the time I had realised it was too late to reshoot it again for the third time.

Final Landscape Shoot.

Final Landscape Shoot.

Final Images.

Final images landscape

My Main focal Point in the image in in the center. The surrounding space draws your eyes directly to the middle of the image. I has hoped that there was fog when shooting my final landscape, to create a scene of the unknown, the sublime in the distance. To show the uncertainty of full life returning to this beautiful park.

When shooting I intentionally focused on the Queens house due to the distance I was at from my subject, my camera was put on infinity focus, therefore not 100% was sharp which I would have liked.

My shooting location was at the top of the royal Observatory, I chose this location because I didnt want the normal flat plain landscape type of composition, I wanted to look down at it, portraying it at a more venerable state, which it is.

The day was pretty much dead, dull and flat, therefore there was nothing going on in the sky, which Im quite happy about, as it lightens up the image and makes the focal point the most interesting aspect of the image overall.

Im not that pleased with this photo as it isnt as strong as my main.

When shooting the image I had to extend my tripod to a maximum height and stand on a bench, this made it difficult to keep the camera steady.

This is the location I shot my main photo, which I have also decided it to be the centre of focus despite it being so small and in the distance, I decided to shoot right opposite my other location in order to portray the other side of the story,

This area has been cropped in the prints as it was just plain uninteresting space which didnt enhance the photo at all.

What this image mainly represents is seeing the park and damage done at a different perspective, looking up at what is still standing in the distance, and its importance it still holds. From this angle you can also see less of the torn turf which gives the image overall a much calmer atmosphere compared to the previous photo.

Concept city
My idea for my city came to me by luck, infect it was during the large format workshop that it all started. I unintentionally came across a book by photographer Slinkachu and his little people, and from there my thoughts burst into different ideas and possible images I could create almost instantly. We think we know the area we live in, we assume that we know how to get everywhere, and underestimate the size of out surroundings and the city we live in, I wanted to portray the city at a much different perspective that is not at human eye level, but miniature sized.

Research city
Slinkachu

The First artist I have looked at, which was my main inspiration, is Slinkachu. Slinkachu is a London based artist who creates small street based installations and then photographs then from far away and then close up. He modifies tiny human figurines from model train sets and places them in real urban situations. In contrast to the propaganda posters of Shepherd Fairey or the subversive stencils of banks, Slinkachu's approach to street art is more subtle, more sensitive. His photographs are key: The close-ups make you feel like a participant and the far away shots make you feel like a spectator I also wanted to give my viewer a sense of participating in the photo as well, which is my Slinkachu was the best artist to refer to. Slinkachu has created installations in Amsterdam, Barcelona, Manchester, and Scavenger in Norway.

Slinkachu
This style of photography really intrigues me and how an angle of the camera can change the whole images perspective and context.

Liliana Porter Forced Labour.

Liliana Porter is a Argentinian conceptual artist that has created a series of installations, titles Forced Labour, in which tiny figures engage in everyday tasks using common materials, that are completely out of proportion to their size. The Sweeping woman shown below seems incapable of tackling what to us looks like a small line of dust. Porters work has constantly explored the junction between the real and the art object an how to represent the world through fictions processes.

I discovered Liliana Porter on a unplanned trip to Tate Modern, Lilianas work gave me more ideas of how I could place my figures, without them having to be doing something significant, or be in conflict with the environment, but just casually enjoying the city like any public member. I soon ended up basing my ideas around this, however I extended my research a bit more. I ordered some Toy figures from eBay to test out, and how I could link this concept into the city, I thought of, having major city landmarks in the background, such as Big Ben, houses of parliament, London eye etc. I went outside and did some test shoots on how these would come out, with no major concept behind them.

Test Shoot

Seung Woo Back.

A series by Seung which inspires me is his series where he uses toy soldiers invading public spaces. The figures march beside streets, across lawns, and line up on kitchen windows, where people inside are engaged in quiet domestic activities and seem unaware of the pending threat. Back plays with scale.

The toy solders are miniature, yet powerfully evocative of the presence and the memory of war. In this case the memory of war concerns him the most. As a korean in the west, he is repeatedly encounters people whose primary association with Korea is the Korean civil war of the 1950s

Soldiers in London
One of my initial first test shoots was in fact with toy soldiers as they were the only miniature figures I could get my hands on. I went out into London, specifically Big Ben and The Houses Of Parliament as a location for my miniature soldiers to have a war to represent the war going on within the government and in our society as a whole. I didnt like the idea much as I didnt want to portray the city in a negative way.

By now I had an idea of how I wanted my focal length, and composition for my final images, which I tested out with different lens such as the Wide angle and macro. I also did some test shoots on film camera which can be found on my blog, but they came out terrible due to camera movement and no use of tripod.

The Final Shoot.

Nearly there
For My final shoot I chose Tower Bridge as a location, I feel like, The London Eye, London Bridge, Big Ben, are too overused within photography to represent London and the city, so using tower bridge I gave myself more space to work with in my image, not particularly having to distinctively show it within my photos to show what I am representing. All Three of my photos are shot at different locations, to suit the figure I was using. I had packed with me, a Bronica with a 40mm Wide angle, Standard Bronica, and 200mm Macro lens. throughout my shoot, I swapped the lens around so I could capture the right distorted perspective I was going for, I found out that the standard and Macro worked best, the wide angle didnt have a large enough focal length which I had of Corse expected. I was using a light meter throughout my shoot, metering from the subjects and sometimes towards the subjects, so I had a variety of photos which were not all the same.

One thing I would like to go back and redo is buy much more miniature figures and create a social event with them, something that has possibly happened at my location before, I am thinking about doing this as a personal project during the holidays.
Overall I am quite pleased with this shoot and can say that I have 3 strong images which portray what I wanted to quite well.

Self Evaluation
My understanding of both of the environments has broadened , as prior to going into this project I would have instantly casted both environments as the same thing, however researching and exploring the landscapes and cityscapes personally I came to realize they are both their own beautiful space around us and we can portray them in countless ways we want to by just the use of different camera angels, focal lengths, and positions. I chose to portray both of these from a personal point of view. The context I would possibly place my work in would be, in a small exhibition or a small children's book if my project decides to develop into a personal ongoing idea which is quite possible. For my landscape shoot, I knew what shot I wanted and could have easily portrayed what I wanted to get across with one image, I chose the most distanced photo fro my subject to let my subject be engulfed by the space around it, the way the park is suffocating with the fencing and limited facilities it once had, I feel that I have metaphorically shown quite a strong point of view through my images. On the other hand for my city, I chose the series, as it shows the city at peace, the muted soft tones within each image make the city look quite fairy tale like, which if we all opened our eyes and saw it from a different perspective, which I tried to enhance using mini people, we could really appreciate the beauty behind the gray clouds and constant rain.

Time Management was quite an issue with me throughout this project as I was unable to go out on location and shoot as much as Id have had liked to, however I produced decent prints in the end and on time. My contextual side of my studies for both have both been simple as I myself have background knowledge of my locations being a resident here for the past 14 years, I could reflect and give my own opinion on most aspects of my research both long term and short term.

The most difficult challenge was making the final prints, being stressed and in a stress filled printing lab, all the negative energy rubs off on each other which makes it an obstacle for everyone including me to keep their head straight and on the ball, but in the end everything got done to a high enough standard and I am very pleased with the outcome. However in relation to this, I was confused as to if we could produce final prints in black and white and had forgotten that a series of 3 minimum was needed, and by the time I had realised it was too late to shoot, I spoke with Jonathan and he helped me decide on the two strongest images I could use for my final landscape. The disadvantages I had through out this project was traveling to my location and home as I was maximum 30 minutes away, which had helped me save allot of traveling time, another advantage I had throughout my project was the prints, luckily my negs were correctly exposed which made it easier and quicker for me to produce the final prints within one day.

What I would like to do to improve my City and/or Landscape submission is possibly add more artist research which I have now recently come across that can be related to my work, also in the future I hope to manage my time more carefully so I will not have any nervous panics and have to rush all my work making me work lower than my actual ability to work. Overall I am happy with how both of my series have turnd out and they both portray exactly what I was aiming for.