SEMINAR TASK 3: “BETWEEN FRONTIER AND BACK-GARDEN”

The two photographers I am going to compare and show the similarities of their work are Robert Adams who was born in Colorado in 1937 and Edward Burtynsky who was born in Ontario in 1955.

The first photographer is Robert Adams who is best known for his series of photographs which shows the urbanisation into the landscape of the American West. His work shows the good and the bad as he tries to balance the hope for Nature’s determination against the despair felt by man’s destruction of the wilderness.

His photograph entitled ‘Burning Oil Sludge’ is a good example of this. As Adams was driving home one winter’s day in Denver, he was drawn to the sight of a huge plume of smoke in the distance. The blackness of the noxious cloud, billowing gracefully into the sky became a surprisingly beautiful sight against the snow-coloured Colorado Rockies in the distance, whilst making a near-by elegant tree a feature of the image. 

My second choice is Edward Burtynsky who makes nature transformed through industry a major theme of his work. His work features global industrial landscapes such as mine tailings, quarries and refineries.

His skill as a photographic colourist is evident in his work and in particular in a series of photographs taken of nickel tailings in Ontario. Vibrant orange contrasting against a glossy black background enables Burtynsky to achieve spectacular images from a landscape in danger. The startling colours put us in mind of an erupting volcano which is why we can relate this image to a natural disaster. However, the intense colours of the reds and oranges are caused by the oxidation of the iron that is left behind in the process of separating nickel, along with other metals, from the ore.

The two men are very similar in their how they want their work perceived. Both Adams and Burtynsky see their subjects as the human destruction of the environment. However, both photographers are drawn to the beauty that the image provides, almost like a guilty pleasure.

Burtynsky said “you know everything in the picture is disgusting and terrible and, worse, you are part of the cause but you can’t help being awed by this beauty. If we destroy nature, we destroy ourselves.”

Adams wants us, as the viewer of his photographs, to consider where we live and how we relate to our environment. The ‘Burning Oil Sludge’ photograph is a fine example of his vision – the simultaneous existence of harmony and discord, of beauty in ugliness.

Both men want the viewer to appreciate their work for its beauty, but at the same time, they want the viewer to understand the underlying message that man is destroying our environment.

Both men have won numerous awards for their work.

Area to be visited seen on tube map

Second Environment Mind Map Ideas

Environment Project Inspiration

For my environment project I wanted to pursue the theme of abandoned or disused buildings and how nature adapts to abandoned places the longer they are left derelict. 

 I began my research by looking at various websites showing these types of buildings. However, once I began to look further into this I found sites showing disused railway stations and found this began to appeal to me more than the buildings.

I then researched a photographer called Joel Sternfeld, an American photographer born in New York in 1954. He is noted for his large format documentary pictures of America and had produced a series of photographs entitled ‘The High Line.’ His photos showed various railway tracks and surrounding areas in a state of decay.

More research led me to an area of north London where I intend to visit and photograph. The northern heights line ran from Finsbury Park to Alexander Palace, which in its heyday carried 60,000 passengers one Bank Holiday. London Underground published plans in the 1930s to incorporate it into the Northern Line but the work was stopped at an advanced stage due to the outbreak of World War II. The development plan was abandoned after the war but passenger trains ran on this line until 1954. The service was then reduced to freight haulage and tube traffic until its final closure in 1970.

The abandoned area gradually became home to a variety of wildlife including deer, bats and foxes so the local authority converted the trackbed to the Parkland Walk, London’s longest nature reserve, running along the top of the embankment and through deep wooded cuttings of the original railway.

Bibliography

Henning, M. (2009) ‘The Subject as Object, Photography and the Human Body’ in: Liz Wells (ed) Photography, A Critical Introduction, USA and Canada: Routledge

The Subject as Object

Photography and the human body

The body, when photographed as an object, relies on the relationship between photography and reality. It also relies on the extent of which the photograph is understood by the viewer of the image. Photography has the means to convey an individual as a social subject. Different meanings for the body are constructed by the way the photograph represents them, such as the use of props, and how the image is circulated.

Whereas some photographs may represent dominant ideas about what it is like to be human, male or female or even about race and sex, others will challenge the same ideas. However, there is no particular method, technique or style that achieves this. The significance of photographing bodies will alter according to the context. For instance, the muscled male body and the classical aesthetic could be associated with either a coded homoeroticism (in American physique magazines of the 1950s) or the deeply homophobic culture of Facism. (Henning, 2009 : 204)

I felt this chapter could relate to my project as photography historian, John Tagg, discussed photographs of criminals using the work of the French social historian Michel Foucault. He wanted to understand how photography is used to ‘discipline people’ but the disciplinary uses within photography can relate to methods that I shall need to use for my portraits. For example, I shall have to consider the way I want my subject represented and arranged for the camera. I need to make them available to be gazed at and ensure that the photograph conveys the individual as the social subject that I intend him or her to be.

“A repetitive pattern, the body isolated; the narrow space; the subjection to an unreturnable gaze; the scrutiny of gestures, faces and features; the clarity of illumination and sharpness of focus; the names and number boards. These are the traces of power, repeated countless times, whenever the photographer prepared an exposure, in police cell, prison, consultation room, home or school.

                                                                                                            (Tagg 1988: 85)

Although Tagg was focusing on criminals, his observations work for the effect I shall need to achieve.

Initial ideas and inspirations for Body and Object Project

Song Chao 1979 –

Song Chao is a Chinese photographer who grew up in a coal-mining community. In 1997 he began working in the coal mine. He was uneducated, but in 2001 as an amateur photographer, and working 12 hours shifts down the mine, he set up a white background and using the natural light near the exit of the mine, he began taking images of his fellow workers. As well as the miners, his photography focuses on their families and the community and landscape that surrounds them. The images portray a powerful and personal portrait of life within a small mining community.

Chao’s series Miners has been compared to the work of Richard Avedon, the American Portrait photographer, but Song was unaware of any western photography or photographers when he began taking the portraits. His black and white images quickly achieved fame and his work now is displayed in galleries around the world.

His images appeal to me as the workers are shown unwashed and in their working clothes. I can take inspiration from the way the miners are portrayed when I begin my ‘Body and Object’ project as I shall need to show my choice of subject in their working environment, wearing their everyday working clothes.