Evaluation

For this project Space and Place i got the place Wymondham to photograph. As things began i was unsure of what to photograph there and looked at the place online to find out more about the town before travelling there. I began by photographing different areas in the town but avoided the housing estates. From looking at people such as Stephen Shore with his Uncommon Places project, Sarah Jones, Lewis Baltz and George Shaw i was interested by how they photographed the exteriors and interiors of buildings it made me want to look at photographing both however i found that once i had visited the town that the exteriors were interesting and appealing to the eyes. When thinking about the project in terms with the theme of space and place i wanted to capture spaces within the town to capture the essence of time within the place through the architecture as it progresses from as early as the 14th century to the current day. Throughout the course of this project i had been intent on focusing on the architecture and structure, though the Abbey was a key element of the town to me as its part of what the town is known for however though i photographed it i decided not to include it towards my final outcomes as some of the images were weaker than others along with this it detracted from the rest of the imagery that i produced. I have taken more of an objective approach to this project, this was impacted on by looking into the photographers that were part of the New Topographics, how they photographed their subjects for what they were and didn’t try to romanticise them. So here i produced a body of work following this style of approach, not trying to make the place seem “pretty”, giving it an unromantic feel, following this i strayed away from doing much post production mainly straightening images and making them black and white. If i were to have been able to go to the town more often i would have liked to explored around the town further as i feel that the more that i went to the place different things seemed to stand out to me. 

Coming up with a title

When considering the title for the project i didn't want it to straight out say that its ages in Wymondham in architecture but to be more subtle to it. Along with this as it doesn't show all of the ages i feel that that wouldn't represent my project as well as different title would. Since i have been looking at how the architecture has changed over the years i want to relate it to that as in my final images that i have chosen the earliest structural building is from the 14th century right up to the 21st century with a modern home. With this i want to sum up the project in a few words;

• Times are changing
• How things have changed
• The things we have seen
• Stories behind the walls
• Ever changing

I have decided to go with the title Ever Changing as i feel that this best represents the body of work that i have created. This goes with how that as humans our idea of what is appealing and to some degree the idea of beauty to buildings with the belief of the current day being a time of the modernisation of architecture. Our creations of buildings along with other things are always changing, and will continue to do so, with this in mind i want to give the thought that with the how i have displayed a range of eras within my final selection, that though there is more modern buildings there that soon there will be something that is newer than that. As we are always developing and expanding to towns and cities, particularly as Wymondham over the past few years or so has really expanded and has been pushing out, occupying more land than it used to. 

Ever Changing summaries how there is constantly change within the architecture and this is still a progression which we are going through as we are always developing and coming up with new ideas.

Final images | layout

When choosing my final images i had to consider the layout that i wanted to have. These pieces show rough representation of the possibilities of the images and which to place by each other. Once choosing I will neaten up the borders and such to make it more presentable but for now these are rough ideas. At first i considered only having 4 images but then i felt that i was leaving too many images out that could be used to represent the body of work. So i then decided on 6-8 images; i tried 8 images first but it seemed to crowed and too much going on so i chose to have 6 images.

This bottom piece is the selection of images that i am going to use as my final images however i am thinking of moving the bottom right image within this to be the top left image with the current top right image next to it as to represent the earliest and most recent buildings design then below them is everything in between these two time eras. With influence from looking at Paul Strand's work in exhibition among others, i am going to print the photographs as A5 size; makes the viewer come close and look in at the details.

Paul Strand

Paul Strand is an American photographer, it is said that he helped define the canon of early American modernism and set its premium on the elegant print. In 1950 when he relocated to France, landscape, architecture and portraiture continued to inspire him to embody the spirit of his subjects in the very materials of the photographic print.
In Strand's exhibition for Photography and Film for the 20th century show at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, the images that he has presented in this are all small and around A5 in size. They have large frames, these can make them seem smaller than what they are.
In his architectural photos, there is a sense of repetition through the geometric shapes seen in the architecture, particularly with the perspective as the light enhances this with distinct light and dark areas making these patterns/repetition more noticeable. His work is in black and white, grayscale, this highlights the dark and light areas as there is no colour, the lighting also impacts on the light and dark areas in the images. In the images above you can see that Strand hasn't taken the photographs looking straight on at the subject but at an angle to give a different perspective, as though looking in at the scene before him, they can also be considered to be taken at eye level which enhances this feel of looking in at the scene.



Sources:
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/pstd/hd_pstd.htm
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/in-pictures-35823949

Post-production | thoughts

Originally i wanted to keep my photographs in colour however with looking at many peoples work such as people from the New Topographics exhibition, it influenced me to experiment with editing my photos into black and white, these outcomes i found to have more potential and worked well together as there was a constant flow to them without the intrusion of colour. As i found that colour created contrasts and prevented certain images from being able to be placed next to one another, where as taking this element away i no longer have that element to consider and there is a better fluidity throughout the images which will help when it comes to choosing my final images. For the images that i select as my final images i want them to show different architectural traits as to demonstrate the time periods that are seen throughout Wymondham in the buildings there, if possible it would be interesting to present them in a way to see the order of progression, or it could be interesting to place them in a different order to what their time era is as it could make the viewer think about how they view the former structure designs to what is currently seen and often built around us nowadays. Want to look into presenting them as one large print in a grid format of 4-6 images as i don’t want to have too many images within the grid format as i feel that there would be too much to look at and only displaying a small part of the range of time through architecture shows an element of how time is always passing and this will always be added to as things change, more time will have passed. Older buildings will potentially  be knocked down/become ruins or have modern parts built onto to help them stay intact along with new modern buildings being built in the future, expanding on what is already there. This constant change and progression links as to why i want to display a small range of images as to show how the town is now, what still stands after so many years compared to the new modern buildings.

Andreas Gursky

Andreas Gursky is a German photographer who's work is characterised by tension between the clarity and formal nature of his photographs and the ambiguous intent and meaning they present, occasioned by their insertion into a 'high-art' environment. He was influenced by the documentary approach of Bernd and Hilla Becher; he was one of the first photographers at the Becher's school to use colour photography. He is known for his enormous architecture and landscape photographs, often he'll use an aerial vantage point, frequently identifying systematised aspects of culture. Before the 1990's Gursky did not produce his work on a digital platform, however he discusses his dependence on computers to edit and enhance his photos, as well as for the purpose of increasing the apparent scope of his subject in terms of size. This use of post-production has a dramatic impact on the scale . Patterns are often seen in Gursky's images through geometric shapes and their repetition, sometimes they act as leading lines, guiding your gaze. In his images he doesn't always show the whole of the scene before you, only revealing part of buildings and such before you however through the colours and patterns within these images it results in being visually intriguing and appealing to the eye.




Sources:
http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/andreas-gursky-2349
http://c4gallery.com/artist/database/andreas-gursky/andreas-gursky.html

Stephen Gill | Archaeology in reverse

Archaeology in Reverse was photographed in Stephen's "cherished" area in East London. He photographed this project with the camera that he brought a Hackney Wick market for 50p, focusing of things that do not yet exist. It features traces and clues of things to come in a poetic, sometimes eerie and quiet photographic study of a place in limbo prior to the rapid transformation that this area faced during the build-up to the Olympics in 2012.

“Stephen Gill has learnt this: to haunt the places that haunt him. His photo-accumulations demonstrate a tender vision factored out of experience; alert, watchful, not overeager, wary of that mendacious conceit, ‘closure’. There is always flow, momentum, the sense of a man passing through a place that delights him. A sense of stepping down, immediate engagement, politic exchange. Then he remounts the bicycle and away. Loving retrievals, like a letter to a friend, never possession… What I like about Stephen Gill is that he has learnt to give us only as much as we need, the bones of the bones of the bones…" -Iain Sinclair

Many of the photographs in this project are out of focus and blurred to the human eye, creating a soft focus as you can still see what everything in the images are, they just appear a lot softer due to not being in focus, the edges of objects merging together. These images display objects and part of scenery in a popular city which appears to be not as loved as other parts of the city, documenting imperfections that people don't often see or tend to overlook and act as if these things aren't there. However Gill has photographed the subject straight on showing the unromantic side to the city and showing it in a time where things are beginning to change, before it's reconstruction to show how the place once was before it was developed, it shows that how "unpretty" places may seem they can be adapted and good made from them rather than leaving them to waste away. Shows how us as humans always see the chance for adapting and changing areas before us.

Sources:

http://thephotographersgallery.org.uk/3375/Stephen-Gill-Archaeology-in-Reverse/240