An
Investigation into A destructive world through photography
Introduction:
This project is an
investigation into how our world is destructive and is being destroyed every
minute through conflict and global warming. I am extremely interested in this
topic as it has a variety of aspects and can look at both the past and present
and from research we could manipulate pictures to presents our predictions of
the future. It is important to study this topic to highlight the dangers of our
actions and how we are damaging our beautiful planet, through multiple things
like global warming and pollution. A part of this topic is a prime news topic
in society today and has been the main subject of many protests. The Climate
Change protests have started to push for the urgent and radical action we need
to prevent the catastrophic destabilisation of global climate. The
destabilisation of global climate has become the very greatest threat to our
planet and everyone on it. On the other hand, our world has become destructive
overtime, having many wars.
I’m hoping this study and
investigation helps our world realise how destructive it is and how peace is
better. Even if it stops people from doing things that’s ruin the world
environmentally, even the small actions like littering or graffiti.
Brief
History:
There has been many wars and
conflict in the world, including two world wars that have led to a destructive
planet. However, there is no way of knowing the exact moment that climate
change begun, it was a process overtime on the human’s existence. We can tell
that industrialisation and the uses of the modern techniques have increased the
deadly gases and destroying the nature. The dramatic rise in global warming
came in the early 1980s, when there was a sharp increase in global
temperatures, with 1988 having the hottest summer on records.
Ever
since then, global warming has destroyed our planet, with wildfires and more
becoming an occurrence. From January 1 to October 4, 2019 there
were 41,074 wildfires,
including the raging fire of the amazon rain forest and the Massive California
wildfire. Photographers have looked
into this topic overtime. However, the rise to photograph such matters was
recently, in the 21st century.
Below is an example of Josh Edelson’s work of
wildfires. The silhouette is of a firefighter
who is helping save lives from the flames as a house burns in the Napa wine
region in California on October 9, 2017. This photo is very dramatic and hits
the audience harshly as it shows how the blazing fires doesn’t effect just
humans, but the animals that lose homes or even die in the process. The colour
and tones are very strong, it highlights how the fire is more important and too
strong to fight. It even shows how in the process of a strong fire, the details
of who you are don’t matter, no matter if your rich or poor, weak or strong-
everyone is equal and stand together. The firefighter being a silhouette
portrays no features of their face, making the hero anonymous. This will
attract the audience more as the unknown is more fascinating due to the viewers
being able to make up their own ideas of the story line of what is happening in
the moment.
However, history of photography showing a destructive
world is easier to research. Photographers of war are seen throughout time in
different cultures. The history is believed by many to have started with
Matthew Brady, the celebrated 19th century photographer, who captured more than
10,000 images the American Civil War. Similarly, Roger Fenton, a British
photographer, took hundreds of photos of the Crimean War in the 1850s. However,
they were actually not the first to capture conflict on film. A handful of
pioneers had attempted it years before either man had set foot on a
battlefield.
Instead the
very first war photographer was an American. Sadly, the artist’s name has been
lost to history, yet we do know that he was attached to the U.S. forces
fighting in the Mexican War in 1846 and 1847. These first wartime images were
captured using a technology known as daguerreotype,
which was first developed in 1839 by a French inventor named
Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre. “It involved a rudimentary camera-like device
that could project a scene onto a glass-encased polished metal plate that was
treated with light-sensitive chemicals.”
Daguerreotype is a
direct-positive process, creating a highly
detailed image on a sheet of copper plated with a thin coat of silver without
the use of a negative.
However the process,
which could take up to ten minutes or longer to complete, required subjects to
stand motionless for the duration of the exposure, meaning the photos could not
be taken during a battle. This meant the photos were staged and not as
realistic as taking photos in a war battle today would present.
Photo above is
the American photography from the Mexican war.
Overtime, a destructive world photographers have more
opportunities to photograph conflict. In the early 2000’s terrorism took its
flight, meaning a destructive world turned from a battlefield to everyday lives
with citizens in the arms way. For Example, 9/11 was the first big terrorism
attack that affected many. Footage of the day can be found throughout the
internet due to live news reals and photographers taking images as it happened. Allan Tannenbaum is an
esteemed photojournalist and fine art photographer, who moved to New York and
serves as the chief photographer and photo editor for the SoHo Weekly News. He
photographed the explosion of the second plane and Ground Zero between tower
collapses. Though he was covered in dust and debris when the first tower
collapsed, he stayed at the site to keep working. His photographs of 9/11 were
published all over the world.
This photo uses different tones from the zone system.
The angle of the photo is very effective as it makes the viewers look like they
are there in the moment looking up at the towers. It also connotate’s how the
people in the towers are higher than everyone else as they are going up to
heaven. I like how the building on the front is dark black because it makes the
burning towers stand out more. The dark sky highlights how a destructive event
in a sense of conflict is also destructive within pollution as the smoke filled
all of New York making it hard to stay in a place with clean air, effect a lot
of New Yorker’s health.
Artist Research:
A photographer called Benoit Aquin did a study into
the deserts in China. The Study called The Chinese "Dust Bowl" looks
into how 18% of China is now covered in desert. The photos present how the
environmental change affects peoples life and can be dangerous as the air they
breathe into their lungs can affect their health. By climate change causing
droughts, People have to leave in unsuitable conditions, with hot temperatures,
droughts and poisonous air around them.
The way the photograph captures the movement of the dust creates a connotation of a dark and deadly gas with unknown danger.
The rubbish and litter add an extra effect of the unclear are air and destroyed country who are facing damage of their bodies due to the poisionous air.
However, a destructive world doesn't mean only the chemical side of
environmental damage- like climate change- but it also the physical affects we
make and have control over. For example, a destructive world through graffiti
and war and conflict. This is another aspect of a destructive world that I
would like to present through my investigation as it is an aspect that people
many feel for more due to the emotional side. I automatically knew that photographing
conflict would be hard as we are not living with wars in England and it would
be hard to pinpoint conflicts nearby that I could take photos of as they are occurring.
So I decided to take photographs of the aftermath of conflicts and how is
destroys the world.
My Artist research for the conflict
side of a destructive world is Eadweard Muybridge. Eadweard Muybridge was an
English-American photographer important for his pioneering work in photographic
studies of motion, and early work in
motion-picture projection. I like Muybridge’s
photos because they show the destruction war has left and the ruins of a once
beautiful place. This photos make the viewer quite emotional as the dark tones
and little colour presents a dark time and a horrible event. From this research
I have found that I would like to edit my photos in a black and white effect to
create more tension. The black and white
effect also highlights details in buildings take can easily be ignored in normal
colour.
I like the darkness of this image as I shows how a horrible act has just occurred. This contrast between this and the lightness shining through the broken roof gives a strong tone range The details in the broken walls in the dismel broken walls add sharpness to the image.
Relevance of the photographers research to my personal project:
This image was taken by Eadweard
Muybridge, called Ruins
of the Church of San Domingo, Panama, taken in 1875. Muybridge was one of the great
photographic thinkers and technical pioneers of all time, whose mind reached
beyond still photography and anticipated the rise of the moving picture.
However, this image is a more Landscape, ‘Ansel Adams’ type of picture which
presents more emotions than Muybridge’s normal work. This image portrays the
emotion from the scene where it was taken to the audience in present day. From
my Research into the Church I found that it was built in 1678 but destroyed in
a fire in 1756, and has been ruins ever since. This image shows the most famous
part of the Church, The Arco Chato, which spans from one side to the other at
35 feet high and spanning 49 feet. Although this original did eventually fall
in November 2003, but has been reconstructed.
This image has had an inspiration
on me because I find the dull tones helps convey a really
interesting image. This is because it makes the ruins look more depressing and
adds emotion. This can be helpful when I come to edit my pictures as I will
know that less saturated colours look better. Below is my image, from my sixth
shoot, which I believe is rather similar to the work of Eadweard
Muybridge because of the similar use of tones in my edited picture. Whilst
editing this photo, I changed the image to black and white in order to make a
more dark and eerie, unlike the original image which was saturated with green
grass that has overgrown onto the buildings.
However, my technique of taking the
photo may be different from Muybridge. Due to the fact that Muybridge took
photos over a Century ago, finding information on how he took the images is
difficult. However, I was able to find that his other work with motions involved setting up several cameras on
tripods in a location where a movement would be happening. So he likely used a
tripod to take this image.
When I took my image, I couldn’t have a
tripod due to un-level ground, and having to hold my camera high and close to the
fence to be able to focus out the metal fence in front of the camp ruins.
The future
The
topic of of destructive world could definitely develop in the future. The is
because if there will always be conflict occurring- and sadly in today’s news
we are not learning from past mistakes and going back in time, e.g. the China
Concentration Camps. Furthermore, if our actions do not improve the climate of
the world and global warming will only get worse. This means more people will
have the opportunities to capture moments of the destructive world we live in.
I would like to improve me project in the future by taking my opportunities
like this.
If I were able to/ have get
access to, I would like to continue my
Studies of a destructive
world through historic events happening right now. For example, going to
protests for climate change or politics in London. Furthermore, in the future I
wish to experiment with
not just different places,
but also different techniques. This is because I
believe it could be a really
interesting to approach topics like this in a different style to the still
landscape image I normally take. Also, I believe it would be really interesting
for me to
experiment a destructive
world photography with different editing techniques. For example, maybe
physically distorting the photograph. I could do this by ripping images up,
chucking paint over them or layering images on top of each other.
Conclusion
The further into a
destructive world photography I research, the more I came across things which inspired
me and influences me- for example inspiring me to try new techniques. For
example, when I originally set out to do this project, I thought the environmental
damage side of photography would be more exciting and easier to find however,
it ended up being more hard accessible than I thought. Yet, it has given me
more experimental opportunities in editing. I also originally intended to focus on landscape style
photography but this changed to be more experimental.
For example, my chimney shoot in
Work Record 1. My final aim for this
project in photography A level is to achieve a full series of photographs which
all coincide with each other- with the running theme of A destructive world
through damage of the world.
Another time I experimented was in shoot 8. In this experiment I used my images to edit rubbish on top of beautiful
images. I did this in front of Buckingham palace and in Trafalgar Square.
To do this I quick selected the rubbish and pasted it onto the image. I then
went onto blurring around the image slightly to make in blend in a bit
more.
My Photographers
research has also impacted the variety of styles that I am shooting and editing
in throughout the project. I originally intended to mostly stick to black and
white when shooting in order for the project to have a uniform theme and
aesthetic of darkness. However, throughout my project, due to the influence of
my research, I explored a variety of styles. For example, some of my shoots I
edited to make the colours more saturated and desaturated in certain points and
higher contrasts. This
is shown in my Work Record 4, where I have saturated the graffiti to stand out,
inspired by Martha Cooper, a New York street photographer. The
variety of artists I have researched has mean that I could take my project in
many ways, I did this to make sure that I wouldn’t be stuck on what I could
shoot and I could explore the many aspect of how we destroy our world.
Links:
