Month: April 2020

Jonas Bendiksen is a Norwegian photojournalist, born in 1977. He has received various awards, being from The World Press Photo, International Centre of Photography, National Magazine Awards and Pictures of The Year International.

The work of his that is particularly relevant to the development of my photographs is that of ‘Greenlands Vanishing Villages’. This collection of photographs is one that I admire and greatly appreciate. Despite depicting contrasting icy terrains, I can see how much of my work so far shares similar properties to this collection even before discovering his work. The use of man-made structures surrounded by ice and snow creates a truly remarkable aesthetic effect. Interestingly, the element of disorder to the photographs, in which the human objects have been covered or affected by nature, gives the images a further beauty. This almost chaotic property, accentuates the aesthetic effect.

Convincingly, after seeing how well executed a collection containing open natural spaces and human structures can be, I will continue to utilise this technique in creating my upcoming sets of photographs. Contrastingly, rather than capturing white snow and buildings, I shall be capturing the combination of human structures and vibrant flowers/greenery.

For my photographs I have chosen to use open spaces from my hometown of Kingsworthy in Hampshire. During my time in lockdown I have been considerably more appreciative of the natural beauty of the area in which I live, as a relatively rural village Kings Worthy is surrounded by various walkways, forests, and open fields. All of the photographs in this collection demonstrate a very clear sense of place to me personally.

Convincingly, Bieke Depoorter’s work with open spaces has contributed to the creation of my photographs. Similarly, I have amalgamated aspects of both man-made structures and objects with the natural settings of Kings Worthy in the creation of my photographs.

My photographs can be viewed in sets of threes, in the rows presented, as they interlink with each other through similar properties. The first three photographs are from the one particular route to walk that has great sentimental value to me. Whilst they appear contrast in content, the middle photograph contains the paths displayed in the other two from a different perspective. The second row of photographs shares both a natural and man-made element to the content within. Moreover, the natural part of the images is their key feature. Cohesively, the third row is solely images of nature, all depicted from the same route as each other. I was intrigued in how lighting could be effective in displaying these trees, thus I decided to choose a different time of day for each image. Following on from the other rows, my fourth row of photographs focuses on perspectives and time of day. All three of these images are taken from the same spot, yet facing different directions and at different times of day.

Whilst individually unique, all of my photographs are from places of great sentimental value to me. Perhaps I can credit Mark Powers’ work on ‘Leaving Home’ for influencing me to use something meaningful to me in my collection so far. Initially, I had decided to leave out photographs of people from my collection. However, using my Mum in the first photograph, the person I associate the most with Kingsworthy seemed fitting to my project. I chose my fascination with natural settings, complimented by the use of a variety of meaningful human features.

 

Bieke Depoorter, born in 1986, is a Belgium photographer. She received a master’s Degree from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Ghent. She has won various awards, such as the Prix Levallois, the Magnum Expression Award and the Larry Sultan Award.

Bieke Depoorter has released many books, one of which that is relevant to my work is that of “I Am About to Call it a Day”. Specifically, what I admire is Depoorters use of lighting in a few of her photographs. The use of an orange tinged lighting creates a certain homely feel to some of her images. This may prove to be useful to my upcoming portfolio as I have chosen my theme of my hometown, and may potentially influence my techniques of lighting in some of the photographs I create.

In the collection “I Am About to Call it a Day” I admire the choice of time of day, in which the evening and night is chosen. The landscape images of a snowy terrain are impressive when combined with a dark lighting. I believe that for the creation of my own images, daytime lighting will be better to portray my rural green hometown.

Mark Power, born in June 1959, is a British photographer from the city of Brighton. He has been awarded the Terence Donovan Award and an Honorary Fellowship from the Royal Photographic Society. In addition he has been awarded the World Press Photo Award for Arts and Entertainment.

There are a number of Power’s collections that I am impressed by. Perhaps my favourite, ‘The Sound of Two Songs’ captures a variety of open spaces in an aesthetically pleasing way. Each photograph has a unique feel to its content, all of which include man-made structures and objects. These are combined with elements of nature to create some remarkable photographs.

Power’s collection of ‘The Sound of Two Songs’ use of open spaces has influenced me in the  creation of  the theme of my portfolio. I will focus my work upon the area in which I live, using a mixture of both natural and man made objects to give a clear sense of place to my work.

A particular interest of mine in creating my own work is that of his ‘Leaving Home’ collection. His choice of positioning for the objects within his photographs is admirable. The ability to use an array of colours in the collection, whilst linking the individual photographs together, can be commended.

An aspect of this collection that I shall utilise in my portfolio is the mundane realism captured within Power’s images.