snap.snap.&shot.: Critical Appraisal: Environmental and City

ENIVIRNOMENT

Outside in inside.

My project is about emotions, which are split between two different worlds – outside and inside.

Linking-up these two separated landscapes, such as the outside and inside our homes. I would like to show landscapes that are made up with our imagination, which is kind of a dreamland, and at the same time, a kind of everyday’s life.

Being closed in our private space but taking our mind far away from there, going out somewhere outside the walls.

Is an abstraction of the landscape projected upside down on the kitchen counter. It doesn’t make sense at all, but does our imagination always have sense?

Going through my research, I focused on my favorite (and I guess the most famous) camera obscura photographer Alberto Morell.

I saw his photographs few years ago and I was so amazed. But that time I had no clue how he made that. I thought it’s just a Photoshop work, but inside I knew it something much more than that.

Then somebody showed me camera obscura… And basically I solved this riddle.

'Morell's breakthrough came in his own house in Quincy, a Boston suburb. He set his large-format view camera on a tripod in his son's bedroom, with only a pinprick of light entering, and opened the shutter. He left the room and waited (8hrs). The result was mesmerizing. The developed picture showed inverted trees and houses from across the street hovering over the boy's toys like a scene from a fairy tale. "I was giddy," Morell said. "It felt like the moment photography was invented."'

Something amazing but quite starange happens when light enters a dark room through a tiny hole. Through this hole which is placed in the middle of covered window, light enters, which makes totally black room alive.

Black walls changed to a movie screen, its surface covered with a fuzzy image of people and cars moving along. Everything is upside down and you can feel a little dizzy.

Another photographer which I researched is Marja Pirilä.

I really like her idea of experimenting with shapes, materials and sizes of camera obscura; which makes other shapes and gives us totally different way to look on our surrounding.

Basically it shows how our eyes work outside of our 'brain editor', it may sound quite funny but without this tiny system in our brain, we are supposed to see everything upside down.

Camera obscura is kind of our brainless eye.

Going back to Marja Pirilä’s camera obscura - interior / exterior series, the original thought to create these pictures was born of a nocturnal insight (in a room transformed into a camera obscura). Pirila have found out that she can on the same piece of film, capture a person, his/her room and the landscape going through the windows. Which means to portray the living environment of a human being.

The photographs began to take form not only as the living environment of a human being, but also of the landscapes of the mind: reflections of thoughts, dreams, fears and reveries.

Vera Lutter: I did research of her pinhole photographs and she inspired me, and somehow pushed me to not giving up with my camera obscura idea.

Her art works (silver gelatin prints) are negatives made by transforming room into a camera obscura, using just simple photosensitive paper she had changed popular landscapes, such as the landscapes of the Manhattan, NY, for abstract spaces never seen before.

I'm quite upset about everyday surrounding, so in my project I want to bring some more abstract to everyday landscape.

Outside in inside.

I made my first camera obscura in an empty room, it was an experiment to see how it’s going to look like and how exactly camera obscura is working. Also to check exposure time, where I have to locate the camera and find out how the final image is going to look like.

There were lots of things that were happening on the wall. A strange and quite funny situation was that someone was parking their car in the parking lot, and it was happening on the ceiling of the dark room.

My test shoots were both: satisfying and not satisfying for me. Because I could see everything clearly from the outside, but it was a totally empty room, so the pictures seemed quite boring.

I decided to move to my bedroom, where I could find some pieces of furniture and signs of life.

In the effect picture looks messy and viewer can’t clearly say what is happening in the picture. There are plenty of objects that made the picture even more confusing. After a while, the viewer can recognize that it is some private space inside the house, but still there is upcoming question, what this upside down tree is doing there.

It shows reality and imagination – this is the room (my/your private space, everyday life). Apparently, in this place you would have your own issues, problems and challenges, but in your mind you can always go to the place that makes you feel happy whenever you think about which was represented by the landscape.

Those two images are inside our heads.

In everyday life, each day we can see same interior, same objects and our emotions don’t change at all. Let’s say – everyday you are waking up in the same room but in different place in the world, you are going out and you see totally new spaces which are creating your feelings. Some of these places you want to keep in your mind because they are making you feel good and comfortable, but some of them bring melancholy and sadness and you would never go back there.

My point of view is to keep these good moments with you, stay with one foot in dreamland to keep yourself more optimistic.

Final images

My test shoots are in digital. Nowadays we have our prints coming instantly, so I could see what is going on at my pictures, how it’s going to work and how I should compose my pictures.

I tried in few locations such as kitchen, living room and bedroom, mostly I like the bedroom because I think this is the most intimate space, and because of the objects which are there which tells you a lot about the owner.

Final images

I’ve chosen to shot in bedrooms and living room. It’s because of the space with I found the most likely for people to reflect about their life. Also because the landscape which was coming through the hole. There are trees with have spiritual and religious meaning.

THE CITY

City in itself is a sea of fields which have milions subjects to photograph.

In my project I’ve focused on people. Because without human being there won't any city. there will be big empty field... Totally nothing.

Some hands needed to build some buildings.

People make the city

Research
City as an architecture.

I started my research from Andreas Gursky who represents city as a massive line production. By his photograph he gives a critical look at the effect of capitalism and globalism on life.

His photographs are just pushing to go to the city and find something more than just a building...

I just asked myself ‘isn’t street photography kind of city pictures?’ I look around my room and I’ve found book which I bought in a charity shop. I though why not to look inside. And then my brain stork come over.

Book called ‘a global snapshot for the digital age’ is organized way much better than the Internet, where you sometimes struggling to find something interesting.

In this book I found tones of super random images taken by people around the world. There different themes, such a family or New York. Basically I was more interested in the cities. In the part with snapshots from London I had really weird feeling. Some of this images I knew, I could recognized the place, even I could say

that I spent there a lot of time, but I have never seen this place from that angle.

Stuart is fascinated about people and the way they live their lives. But what is really interesting is that Matt shots photos from perspectives which create an illusion of objects and situations that don’t exist in reality.

He is one of the best examples for being in the good time in the good place. His photographs are taken in well-known places but they capture image which you see and forget in the same second.

Weegee

He was following the city's emergency services and documenting their activity. Much of his work depicted unflinchingly realistic scenes of urban life, crime, injury and death.

‘He will take his camera and ride off in search of new evidence that his city, even in her most drunken and disorderly and pathetic moments, is beautiful.’

In his pictures he include city but people of the city were more important.

Friedrich Kunaths series ‘No, I don’t want to die, I only want to die in your eyes’ from 2004. There are 70 photographs put in one big installation. Pictures are taken from the top of buildings/construction. In each picture there is a person, suicide, in the t-shirt with a character. Pictures are making the sentence – No, I don’t want to die, I only want to die in your eyes.

Basically I took inspiration not from the subject, but from the way of representation of the subject and matter.

Final images

I decided to use my main sentence ‘People make the City’. I wanted to contain person, as a human being and spirit of the city. The word, as my medium. And piece of architecture in the background as a representation of the city.