space framed

Martin Parr's Best Books of the Decade

2011-07-25T10:17:00.001+01:00

Tokyo Compression - Michael Wolf

As part of the PhotoIreland Festival, Martin Parr has selected 30 photo books for exhibition at the National Photographic Archive. Exhibition ends 31 July and well worth a look.

Space-Framed 2011 - Final Submission

2011-05-03T10:34:00.000+01:00

Your completed work is to be submitted by 16th May at 12 noon.
The work is to be submitted in hard copy and digital copy.
The hard copy is to be to your own design.
The digital copy is to be sent via email - (.doc format, 12 point type, 1.5 spacing)
Minimum word count = 2500 words, with images used to illustrate as appropriate.

2011-04-25T11:52:00.009+01:00

BENCHES LIFE - through the work of Tod Papageorge -

Architecture is a complex field and it can be associated with other Arts. Day by day to create appropriated space, architects have toexplore the activities and human life. For this project, I’m particularly interested in the public place and I’ll associate this topic with the street photography movement in New York. Through the work of Tod Papageorge and his book Passing Through Eden in Central Park, my aim is to understand the interaction between citizen in the public space and explore how design of urban furniture influence the behaviours of people and human posture. He is an american art photographer whose job began in the New York city in 1960. During his career, he mainly collaborated with Garry Winogrand, John Szarkowski and Joel Meyerowitz. At this period the relationship between a photographer and the social world was particularly interesting in New York. Indeed during the 1970 and 1980’s the city knew a fiscal and social unease and people assembled together in Central Park for some events and manifestations.Through the Papageorge work I would like to analyse the social relationship between people on the Central Park benches. Central Park is composed of several kind of benches and plenty of the framework is built by steel or concrete and the structure is set up by long piece of timber cladding. I have to mentioned the importance of the designer work concerning the choice of material and the surface appearance of each bench. Indeed all of these components influence the usefulness of the benches in the urban space.

For instance in 1991, He photographed two men in natural posture. The distinctive feature of the design is the separation of each bench. Two men were sleeping, one was sitting and leaning against the back, the second was sleeping through the steel arm rest. This picture shows some examples of the human posture and comfort adaptation on the bench. Another picture I would like to compare the different posture of people inside the park through photographies. Indeed the first half of the book is literally a sequence based on the first six chapters of Genesis and for illustrating this event Tod Papageorge photographed people on the grass. The relationship with the grass space and the grass itself promotes different posture and it’s interesting to look at the liberty of bodies according to the environment. The posture on the grass can be similar to animal or primitive position and I can identified the posture on the bench to be more cultural. Indeed, social elements, culture, education and sex influence the behaviours of people and the social practice of sitting on a bench.

In 1980 , four young people are on the same bench and each of them appropriate the bench space and the relationship with their neighbors. The interaction is often determined by the position of body, mainly by the legs and arms. Through this picture I can identify benches like a social furniture where charming incidents occur and where we canperceive a visual noise.

In group or alone, Tod captured emotional sequences and bucolic subject in the park. Compared with the people in the crowd, people are on the benches are more static. I think he photographed static people to show the variety of beauty and narrate events of humor, joy or despair. Photography is not a simple illustration. Pictures are a specific frame and the choice for composition is often a subjective work. For his work he use a medium camera which permits him to photograph a privileged moment. According to Papageorge his technique allows the viewer to see an intense and palpable realm of bodies in Central Park.

Space Framed Review

2011-04-20T09:59:00.001+01:00

Prior to completing the final part of your assignment, we will have a review of your work on Tuesday 26 April at 10am.
For this, you need to write a piece of minimum 500 words, using a maximum of 10 images and read this work to the group and guest reviewers (confirmed so far - Paul Tierney). This piece could give an overall synopsis of your work to date, or expand in detail on a part of it.
Could anyone who has not presented work to the group on Monday 18th please post a summary of your proposals for the review before Monday 25th.

2011-04-18T12:56:00.003+01:00

Lars Tunbjork began his career photographing for newspapers in his native sweden. When he came to refine his techniques in his later work the journalistic style that observes and critiques human existence is prominent. In his 1993 publication A Country Beside Itself he documents the Swedes at leisure. His approach echoes of Martin Parr in Britain, or William Eggleston in Memphis. Capturing the human experience of a place and making it applicable beyond the boundary of its own culture. He Incorporates a slight cynicism that shows a photographic opinion as opposed to pure documentary exercise. Much like animals in the zoo we see the unconscious actions of the subjects photographed as a comment on their way of life. In the way that William Klein provoked his subjects to exposed the their emotion response to their surrounding Tunbjork shows the workers sentiment by showing what they don't want exposed.

Tunbjorks series Office is a collection of images taken in the modern day office. A comical collection that reflects the commercial banality against the individual struggle against the corporate collective. Sterile interiors of different offices that share the generic elements of neon lights, computers, canteens, filing cabinets and wiring systems. Photographed with little reference to the outside world as if this place is a self contained bee hive with workers unconsciously working for some higher power. The anxious tension implies an unseen driving force. Occasional signifier of hierarchy differentiate workers by office size and tidiness, with those at the bottom in cramped surroundings. The human interactions in the surroundings break its rigid outfit. Exposing the unorthodox use of the office assembly makes the whole thing part of nature opposed to a machine. In workspaces designed for a robotic worker, the human inevitable breaks out. Activating the space with human imperfection.

The use of light in the photographs, overexposed and surreal gives a harsh cynical eye to these common scenes. However the overall expression is one of harmonious melancholy. Tunbjork highlights the struggle for individuality in the corporate world. By showing the bleakness of the office infiltrated my the awkward comedy of the human he makes a poignant statement about the 21^st century work habitat.

I propose to curate and write about the work of Lars Tunbjork focusing on the photographers ability to represent typical scenes in a way that reflects his opinion on the modern workspace. I will also focus on how he shows human intervention in the sterile work environment.

Looking in/Looking out.

2011-04-18T00:41:00.014+01:00

At heart we are all inherently nosy creatures. We all have voyeuristic tendencies to observe people from a far. Architects observe to learn from how people inhabit places and spaces. Old women peer out from behind net curtains to survey the activities of her neighbours. There is a thought that through a window, from a balcony or from a garden we put on an exhibition to the world and in turn the world looks in.

A situation arises in dense areas of cities where tall buildings are built close together that, despite being no physical connection; a strange relationship exists between the occupants of one apartment to another at the same level across the street. In his famous photograph from the book The Americans Robert Frank captures this phenomenon with two women looking out at him, one of which’s face is being covered by the American flag.

However this has taken on a new dimension since the widespread construction of high rise buildings with glass curtain wall facades. During the day the city is reflected back on itself from the surface of the glass. In contrast at night when lights shine a whole new depth is revealed and we get an insight into the soap opera that is people’s daily lives. As I said it is as if the habits, rituals and activities of the occupant are put on display to the city.

In his exhibition for the The Museum of Comtemporary Photography in Chicago called The Transparent City Michael Wolf documents this theme with a series of photographs looking from the roof or balcony of one high rise building to another exposing the daily activities of the occupants. He tells of how he had the fantasy that he would spend 5 or 6 hours every night on a rooftop and would look into every window and see all the thrilling things that would happen. But in reality all he ever saw was what he considered boring; people from the ages of 25 to 40 eating, sitting and reading, the majority of the time alone. Disappointed, he became disillusioned with the project until when one day by accident he had zoomed in on one of the photographs and caught a man giving him the finger[1]. Inspired this he went back through every photo picking specific moments where he could the activities of a single person. The findings make for compelling photographs as you can see the stressed, despairing looks on some of the faces of office workers.

Another strength of his work is the number of scales he operates at, sometimes zooming in on specific clusters of activity, other times zooming out to show entire facades. At times he shows the repetitive nature not only the facades but what is going on behind it, demonstrating that a person is no more than a cog in the wheel that is these vertical machines. The flip side to this is when we see a solitary light on in the entire façade where a single man works at his desk, seemingly lonely; on display to Wolf and the World.

Ricahrd Misrach’s work On the Beach is similarly voyeuristic. Instead however of looking into a room he looks out of one; specifically his hotel room in Hawaii. He captures a number of shots of the idyllic beach from an almost plan-like position made possible from his large format camera “eliminating all references to Horizon and sky”[2]. The photographs are sometimes full of people, sometimes focusing on a single person floating in the water, showing his/her relationship with the sand or the water; the surface of which is in amazing detail. Taken relatively soon after the events of 9/11, the photographs display a “sense of unease and foreboding that pervaded the country after the attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon”

[1] Michael Wolf, The Transparent city, 2008, The Museum of Comtemporary Photography, Columbia College Chicago and the U.S. Equities Realty.

[2] http://www.nga.gov/exhibitions/misrachinfo.shtm

Space Framed Week 10

2011-04-11T10:02:00.001+01:00

Just a reminder that there will be no space-framed session today.

We are proposing a final session next Monday at 13.00, a review on Wednesday 27th in the morning, and a final submission deadline of Monday 16 May at 12 noon.

Next week, you will present a summary of your research and work to date with a proposal and work outline for the review on the 27th.

Please post any updates on your project on the blog, and email me any queries you might have.

William Eggleston and his way to document the daily human habitat

2011-04-10T20:40:00.010+01:00

With his photographs William Eggleston succeeds in documenting the human habitat familiar as well as well as unknown.
He documents his life and his impressions, but it’s everything else than an autobiography in a chronological classification.
There is a lot of interpretations scope for the viewer

At first his photographs look like snapshots of an amateur.
But the photographs of William Eggleston memorize.

Why is it like this?

Is it because of these actually really daily motives?
Is it because of the uncommon perspective in some of his photographs?
Is it because of the eye-catching colors and this special technique called dye-transfer-process?
This technique allows William Eggleston to subjectively control colors like a painter.

I want to get to the bottom of the question, what make these photographs so special and how is it possible not only to document human habitat, rather to describe it.

In the end of my essay I want to compare two different styles of documentary photography. On the one hand there is the photography of William Eggleston; the snapshot documentary.
I think especially in the work William Eggleston we can realize that spontaneous unpredictable things in photography could be really important and could develop a deeper statement.

On the other hand there is the photography of Bernd and Hilla Becher. They know exactly what they want to show. They know where, when and why.

Finally I can summarize that my essay is going to be an examination of the person William Eggleston, his form of daily documentation of human habitat and a comparison of his work and the work of Bernd and Hilla Becher under the aspect of documentary photography.

2011-04-10T16:31:00.007+01:00

Alice, you asked me to post this ages ago, Apologies

BACK TO PAPER: relative spaces

Brian Barber 2010

RELATIVITY

‘a state of dependence in which the existence or significance of one entity is solely dependent on that of another.’1

A house consists of a sequences of volumes arranged

in relation to each other according to function and form. Each

room is relative to each other creating a sequence of spaces.

The person inside the building can connect these spaces to each

other by memory. This memory influences the perception of the

next space and influences how you recall the previous space.

‘Memory is recalled to admit continuity into a context of change’2

The attributes of an architectural plan drawing,

enable the architect can occupy a series of spaces at once,

albeit in a two dimensional way, and does not rely on memory

to link sequences together. With photography our perception is

limited to the field of view. However by composing the image

that cannot be seen in reality, be it divide by time or

physical parameters we can gain a greater understanding of

relative spaces This occupation of a series of spaces at once

in my photographs allows comparisons, analysis and an

experience to be translated in a single image.

The images layers crate a physical memory.

To evaluate the worth of a single image to describe

_ dogtrack

This picture is composed of a series of images that are relative to each other but are separated by time. From left to right the image describes the crowd through the length of the 31 sec race. From people not looking at the track, to the excitement just before the traps open, looking for the kick around the first corner, relaxing slight towards the middle of the race and the dogs their furthest away from the spectators, the cheering on at the final bend and the joy or disappointment at the finish line and finally the loss of preoccupation with the track. This experience of the race could not be captured in one transient image, however by linking these series of photographs together, the whole 31 seconds of the race can be perceived by the photographs observer in a coherent way.

_His fridge

A drawing can accurately describe scale. Spaces are seen in relation to each other; however in experiencing a space, other influences can alter how you understand size. I wanted to create an image that we could not see in reality. I became interested in everyday spaces we see but we could really understand. The section through the fridge accurately describes its scale. By blacking out the rest of the room we can, perceive its scale in isolation and appreciate its true size in relation to fixed reference point(the participants head).the image in the exhibition is printed at actually size so scale can be appreciated. This picture follows my way of analytically studying space. Instead of seeing a space in relation to each other, to fully understand its scale we must see it in isolation.

_working traps

Showing a single space over a period of 54 seconds and the different ways it is interacted with from the loading of the dogs, the pause before the release and finally the sprint from the trap

_Train line

There is one image that exists in reality, however can never be seen. This is the sequence of spaces before you get on a train, the train itself and the sequence after. These spaces are separated by time and distance. By composing this picture out of a series of images this space was formed. As with a drawing, comparing scales and contrasting the physicality of the place is possible, however the photograph can describe more. The physical three dimensional world, how people operate in this space, the weather, the lighting conditions are all illustrated. As with the attributes of a architectural drawing, you become able to occupy a series of spaces at once and begin to understand how each space would be experienced as you travel from one to the other

1 http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/relativity (13/05/2010)

2 Taka Architects, TA. (2008)’Mnemonic Tectonics’.In: Campbell,H, Martin-McAuliffe,S, Ward, B, Weadic, N (Ed.)

(2008) The Lives of Spaces. Dublin:IAF and UCD

WORKSPACE

2011-04-03T19:09:00.002+01:00

The Comedy Of Etiquette

Offices expect a certain etiquette. The professional must be business like at all times, this no extreme behaviour of any kind. Serious but not

cold, hard working but not stressed, friendly but not overbearing. Small talk in the break room can be the high point of the social contact as busy workers ignore one another around the office space for fear of being branded a slacker. Human nature prevents people from being perfectly professional all of the time, and when personalities emer

ge it can feel out of context. However it is these moments that make the workplace a human dwelling. A

tired worked may take his shoes off under h

is desk revealing cartoon socks under a grey suit. A joke circulating can break the serious tone. Or a flustered woman can run through the office in her pencil suit and heels, neither of which encourage movement. It could be interesting to search for moments where the clinical office etiquette breaks to show the human habitat it is.

The Desk - barrier, habitat, sanctuary

The most personal space in the office is your desk. With others rushing around it becomes you private space to

get lost in your own thoughts. Each desk it arranged for its user. Layout and content can be a revealing insight into that person. They could be tidy or messy, have family pictures of m

agazine cut outs of thei

r favourite car, do they sit facing the person opposite or intentionally turn away. Each workspace has the unconscious fingerprint of the user. Desks also work as barriers. They separate which gives that sense of privacy. They also show hierarchy. The desks of the office change according to rank. The boss gains authority sitting behind a large desk that is unshared. This leads into the progression from cubical to office to bigger office. In an office one of the things the working strives for. The feeling of importance from you own roo

m. The desk has many different possibilities for investigation. I could either investigate desks from the angle of personal space and how each one is unique. How different professions react to the workspace is also interesting – how no matter the job, we all make the space our own. Or maybe how the desk separates and protects us in the jungle of the w

orkplace.

The Computer

Lee Friedlander took a very interesting series of pictures of people at their computers. Blank expressions deep in concentration staring at the screen. One of the major changes of our time is the introduction of the computer and its dominance in every aspect of out lives. Once architects used drawing boards, now its all computer. Other professions have transformed in a similar way. Despite its definite advantages what Friedlander shows is how the computer can take the activity away from work, and in a way make it depressing. We no longer need to move around the way we used to. Another way of looking at it is that our computer is all we need as a workspace, and it is portable. People can open their laptop and suddenly coffee shops, benches and airport lounges become offices. People get equally lost in work at a coffee shop table as in an office block. It condensed the workspace and means we never leave it behind. Iphones mean emails are accessed as soon as they are received, meaning we are never really disconnected from work. How people interact with the computer is an element of the workspace. The portable office could also be worth attention.

2011-03-28T08:25:00.005+01:00

This week, through the work of Tod Papageorge I analysed the urban benches in Central Park. He is an american art photographer and published in 2007 “ passing through Eden ” a collection of images he took over 25 years. I was interesting by one part of this book where he presents a series of bench photographies.

Every day we have some opportunities to sit down on the bench in the private or public interior place or in the urban space.On the first time I’d like to mentioned the importance of material used for the design. In Central park , the bench framework is built by steel or concrete, the back and sitting set up by piece of timber. The choice of material has to be specific because it influences the shape and the strength of the design. Besides I think that it’s essential for designer to think about the “ surface appearance ” of each material as well as its temperature to promote the best human comfort. The other features are the global measures , depth , length,height. All of these components influence the usefulness of benches in the interior and urban space.

In the urban planning , each furniture have a particular disposition and direction and manage ours activities and attraction. Through the Tod photography I can make out three type of bench practices.

“ the stop bench “ where people make a break

“ the wait bench “ where people wait someone

“ the pleasure bench “ where people make a pleasant and relax activities.

All of these activities involve a particular posture and human behaviors and I think that some factors influence it, like the global design and several social elements. Indeed, men and women often haven’t the same position in the bench and the design must be adapted to the liberty of human body. The different culture and sex of people influence the practice of bench and I can identify benches like a “ social furniture “ where charming incident take place. In the Papageorge photographies , the majority of sitting are long and promote meeting between stranger, young and old people. But through his picture we can see that people sometimes share the same bench without more attraction and discussion. However it’s also funny to observe that people often choose the same bench and the same place. I think that it’s important to mentioned that benches become a personal sitting in the public space where we can maintain ours habits. Moreover since 1986 there is a new concept in Central park called “adopt a bench “, a project where people can buy their bench and write what do they want on the small metallic plaque. I’d like mentioned again the social implication of this furniture in the urban place. Indeed through this project people can enter in the life of strangers and share a part of memory.

To progress in my study I’d like to compare the interior bench space (airport space and private space) and explore how the surrounding can be influenced the behaviors of people.

The man behind the Machine

2011-03-28T06:28:00.014+01:00

Having studied the photographic styles of Abbot and Baltz in closer detail, the idea of capturing the human effect on landscape inspired me most, to create an analogy beyond the survey. Both took worlds which are familiar and isolated fact, Baltz devoid of personal prejudice and Abbott's infused with emotion. I would like to juxtapose both styles. I have always had an interest in industrial landscapes, the unusual forms, noises, smells and robot like movements of the humans that inhabit these spaces. The people become the machines. I am intrigued by the Dublin Docklands. It it is a secret world, hidden from society, a walled fortress which never sleeps. A mini city with its own infrastructure where land and sea have a mutual dependence.

Human habitation is evident by the order of things; stacked containers or rows of cars in a parking lot. It lives and breaths efficiency. A fluorescent safety jacket on a chair in a security hut is the only indication of human presence within that space. People do not walk on these streets. The footpath acts as a threshold, a large curb. The cabin of the machine becomes the room, a mobile office, inhabited space. A trail is formed from loading bay to canteen, a ritual pilgrimage for the workers. Long canteen tables lined with benches and chairs emulate the rigid ordering of the docklands only broken by littered paper cups in the same way silos rest among steel boxes.

A steel ramp forms a bridge from boat to land. Cargo is loaded and unloaded, everything has a destination and a place. The worker overlooks and takes part in this procession. Their life although surrounded by people is isolated, conversation is minimal due to constant noise. There is a unified code, a seperate language for this place. Its identity is formed within itself. There is no hint as to where this place exists, it could be anywhere in the world.

Allan Sekula has captured a non romantic image of the docks, the workers and fishing in his book 'Fish Story'. His images are highly sensorial. He uses flash photography and atmospheric lighting to reinforce the human markation of these terretories. The subject matter varies but maintains a running theme. The images are arranged to tell a story. If they were shown alone one could interperit anything from them.
Taking Sekula's idea of relative matter I would like to create a story of the Dublin Docklands in a similar fashion. I would like to create an analogy of the man behind the machine, to try and capture the alien like quality of docks life in the 21st century. I have started by photographing the routes and inhabited yards along with the machinery. My next step is to trace the movements of the worker and the machine and lastly to focus in on the worker and their habitiation of sole and communal space.

I have also looked at Jean Gaumy's 'Men at Sea'. Gaumy joined the French Fishing Vessel on one of its voyages and maintains a written diary. The images are hugely atmospheric and truely capture the essence of life on the sea. Again, I would like to emulate Guamy's approach to photographing manual workers in their habitat.

Sebastiao Salgado's 'Workers; An Archaeology of the industrial age takes an account of the manual labour from cocao to tobacco plantations. Man is the machine.

2011-03-27T15:45:00.008+01:00

Further Development

As was mentioned last week, my initial investigation into the housing estates of Cahir was heavily research based and confined to the documentation of form, or at least elevation. At the time, I had Walker Evans' series on Victorian Architecture on my mind, and I while it was a worthwhile exercise, the style and format of the images proved limiting.

During my second round of photography, I began to deviate slightly and began photographing the corners of housing rows, the gaps and views in between, and the relationship of building to landscape.

However, while these might have been diverging interests, each image was still ultimately concerned with form and space, without any real sign of occupation or the actual quality of that occupation. Also the method of taking remained consistent, maintaining a high aperture, low iso and consequently slow shutter speed.

I think though, I have a fair idea where I want to go next. Having looked at the work of William Eggleston in his publication "Los Alamos", I'm interested in how he captures a range of everyday objects into a unified visual world, perhaps thanks to his unique use of colour. More particularly though, I'm inspired by the range of his subjects and styles which seem to vary from the documentary to the highly subjective, and from personal portraits to non-specific human landscapes. Yet somehow avoiding a messy eclecticism.

I think this project could be focused on a single concept (albeit a rather broad statement):

If the housing estate is just a place where people live, then what is it like to live in?

Is it good? bad? or really, really average?

Where do kids play? Where do neighbours talk? Where's all the stuff beyond the houses... the washing lines, the strewn toys, the dirty boots and garden furniture?

Whatever emotions and opinions exist perhaps the point is that they're far more kaleidoscopic than presumed and that a greater range of photographic techniques and subjects may be required to express this.

I can't help but think that the face it shows to the world is not all the estate is, or could be.

2011-03-21T02:24:00.009Z

Robert Frank - The Americans

Robert Frank, a Swiss born photographer working primarily in America, is best kown for his 1958 photographic book ‘The Americans’. This book culminates an approach to photography including; the purposeful production of books to display his images in a loose narrative “to be read and re-read like a poem”; an almost irreverent off the cuff style of shooting and a particular existentialist attitude that resulted in a questioning social commentary to much of his work.

Mary's Book

Even at an early stage Frank was compiling his work into handmade books, like that made for his girlfriend Mary in Paris and ‘40fotos’ a book which he used as a portfolio, which got him through the door at Harper’s Bazaar in New York where he worked under Alexis Brodovitch as a fashion photographer. Just as his career in New York was Starting to take off, Frank left for Peru and the Andes. Here, Frank learnt to be a mute outsider looking in on a place and society. He could not speak the language and was unable to engage with his subjects, not that he aimed to, this forced a way of working as an outsider making sense of his surroundings through images alone. Peru was revelatory on a technical level for Frank also; although proficient with most cameras, the Leica allowed him the freedom to pursue his subjects that others didn’t. This could partly have been a reaction to the perfectionist approach to technique he would have experienced while apprenticing in a landscape photographers in Switzerland, in much the same way his contemporaries and friends in the world of abstract expressionism were reacting against the perfectionism of their European heritage. Frank is often said to have been shooting casually without framing the image with the viewfinder but allowing his hand to find the image. He often crops to the edge of an image and isn't concerned with perfect techniques.

Peru

With the help of Walker Evans, who employed Frank at Fortune magazine, Robert eventually got a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1955-56 which allowed him to travel America and pursue his emerging subjects of interest to make 'The Americans'. Frank shot over 28,000 images in all, which he would constantly make contact sheets from to help inform and refine his search in the field. From these he selected 300 images to print and only 83 were used in the book. Subjects included symbols, cars, cities, people, signs, cemeteries and others. The book was arranged in sections each starting with the image of a flag. He wanted the sequence of images to have a cinematic effect, with ghost images that would inform the reading of subsequent images. If Bresson sought to represent all the complexities of life in a single image, Frank sought images with a more singular message that would gain complexity when combined with others in a book.

By this time Robert Frank's initial excitement with America life had grown into a skepticism, a sentiment reflected in the existentialist beat culture of New York, of which Frank was a part. Jack Kerouac, a well known beat writer, wrote the introduction for the book and Frank was already making films with the those in the beat scene. The book aimed to investigate contemporary American society but had undertones that were not always palatable to most Americans and it was heavily criticized. It was said that his book was 'an attack on the United States' and even after he eventually found a publisher it was not an initial success. Much of the images were investigating issues like race and the power of the state over individual freedom. His questioning approach can be clearly seen in much of the motifs used in the book (figures from behind, lone figures in a crowd looking toward the camera, cars, figures in hats but certainly in his use of the flag, not as the typically idealized symbol of a nation and proud patriotism but often cropped and awkwardly draped, oppressive and almost malevolent.

Frank went on to make films and a handful of other book projects but he often returned to the Americans and re-cropped images or reprinted them adjusting their exposure and composition.

Photography and the Human Habitat - PROJECT PROPOSAL

2011-03-20T17:35:00.009Z

1 ; 4 - Tod Papageorges

2 ; 3 - André Kertesz

5 - Garry Winogrand

In the course of my architecture studies in France and in Ireland I learn to work at different scales. Architects must be curious person and they have to explore the human life to create all of appropriate space ( exterior, interior, urban and human spaces ).

At the beginning of the semester I studied the work of Garry Winogrand. After this first analysis, I was interesting by several photographers who work about the street and public relationship between people and their city.

For the project, I propose to work on the photography of the public space and I'm wondering how design of urban furnitures influence the human posture in the street.

Step to step I discovered the work of Garry , Tod Papageorge and André Kertesz and their photos of strangers in public place. They are tree Americans photographer and explore the global street atmosphere . Through these pictures , it's really interesting to see how people live together in the street. It's for this reason that I would particularly work on the urban sitting space. Indeed , if we attentively observe the city , there are different type of sitting, " natural " and " artificial " sitting. I mean by artificial, sitting built by designer.

André Kertesz photographed people on the benches and chairs in the street and studied the chair furniture itself and its urban implantation. Tod Papageorge shows how people find and exploit themselves the sitting in the city. In these photographies I perceive a visual noise and I'm interesting by the moment where photographers capture the movement and interaction between posture of people and the urban surrounding.

At the end of researches , I would like to show a series of picture, like a documentary book which explore the contemporary city life.

Art does not reproduce the visible rather it makes visible.

2011-03-20T14:12:00.009Z

Project Proposal_Philipp Gengenbach

When I was looking into the work of Bernd & Hilla Becher I came across the quotation of the famous painter Paul Klee: „Art does not reproduce the visible rather it makes visible“.

Photography is an art, so it could also be called: „Photography does not reproduce the visible rather it makes visible“.

I think this sentence describes the photographs of the Bechers in really good way. But it applies not only to the photographs of the Bechers. Also a lot of other photographs we were looking at in this course are characterized by the documentation of daily things which happen in our life. We are completely used to it and only because of the photographic documentation we begin to think about it and maybe we recognize the specialty of these things.

I was really impressed by this statement of Paul Klee and it was helpful for a better understanding of a lot of photographs we looked at in this course. I started to look at some photographs in another kind of way.

The art of photographing not only the very special things but rather the things whose specialty you could first recognize at second glance is very interesting.

My Project Proposal should be to analyze some photographs related to this statement of Paul Klee.
I would like to pick some photographs of the photographers we were talking about but also I will try to take some photos by myself which show daily stories in the human habitat.

WHAT MAKES A SPACE A HABITAT?

2011-03-15T18:57:00.009Z

Photographys ability to make us re-evaluate our environment is one of the keys to its success. Throughout the course I have found myself drawn to the photographers that take the ordinary and extract beauty where others see nothing.

Eugene Atget photographed Paris with a no frills style that revealed more about the city because of its honest, non-judgemental approach. He did not adapt scenes to express an opinion, but recorded what was there as a casual observer to create an overview of the city. I am interested in how his pictures focus on the human interventions in a place, but are mostly devoid of people.

Bernd and Hilla Becher photographed industrial buildings and displayed them beside each other, creating a typology for what would be seen as awkward and alien structures. By representing the unique as one of many the strange shape become the norm. This method of photographing different objects using identical photographic techniques to highlight similarities is applicable to my proposal.

Stephen Shore embarked on a cross country trip which he photographically documented. He photographed the beds he slept in, the toilets he used and the fridges where he kept food. This approach captured the human effect on space. Signs of human activity make a space a habitat.

For my project I began to think about habitat. I was drawn to the one space I use most, my workspace. As an architecture student I could spend hours at my drawing board, without realising it I have cultivated a habitat around this 2m x 1m desk. We think of the home as a habitat, we spend a third of our days at work. Our workspace is as personal as out homes. Francis Bacon's studio is now on display in the Hugh Lane Gallery. His workspace had over the years becomes an extension of himself and gives us a deeper understanding of his mind and work. Even in the most sterile of offices stationary, keyboards etc are arranged to the users specific preferences. I want to document a variety of work spaces, particularly desks comparing and contrasting how people personalise them. I want to investigate what makes a space a habitat. By photographing work desks in a documentary style and displaying them in a way that they can be compared I hope to achieve this.

Lewis Baltz; The New Industrial Parks near Irvine, California

2011-03-14T22:48:00.006Z

West Wall, Unoccupied Industrial Structure, 20 Airway Drive, Costa Mesa.

Lewis Baltz's dispassionate eye neither suggests nor implies a hidden meaning in his photography. He documents fact through vigorous clarity and detail. His documentary collection, 'The New Industrial Parks near Irvine, California' allows the viewer an insight into the changing topography of what was once a natural landscape unscarred by man. Lewis Baltz is an icon of "The New Topographics" a movement of photographers who sought to capture "a man altered landscape" in the seventies. These stark photographs isolate fact and do not seek to imitate.

South Wall, Mazda Motors, 2121 East Main Street, Irvine

Baltz believed in viewing the series as a collective whereby one single photograph did not have precedence over another. This reinforces the idea that the suburban typology was to be read as a whole, its physical reaction with landscape and vice verse. Baltz does not hint at the use of the building nor its habitation and labels all photographs. They are what they are.

East Wall, McGaw Laboratories, 1821 Langley, Costa Mesa

Baltz plays on stark contrasts, barren landscapes and strong geometric planes. Lighting plays an important role, most photographs are devoid of shadow. Reflective surfaces capture the horizon. The skyline blends into the plastered surfaces of the building and photographs are devoid of human occupation. The framed space although truthful in expression becomes almost surreal, devoid of human emotion, perhaps a pun on American suburbia?

East Wall, Western Carpet Mills, 1231 Warner, Tustin

South Wall, H&K Industries, 1611 South Boyd Street, Santa Ana

Posted By; Lisa Halton 140311

Project Proposal_Conor Maguire

2011-03-14T20:07:00.004Z

Le Corbusier's Unite d'Habitation, 1959 - Rene Burri

O'Donnell + Tuomey's Timeberyard_Stephen Murray

http://www.flickr.com/photos/funkymonk2000/

Photography and the Human Habitat

Project Proposal_Conor Maguire

Architectural photographs of today are almost always taken when the building has just been finished and before the clients properly occupy the building. The images can be the culmination of weeks of pre-planning, site work and post production when they are subject to the rigours of photoshop; being edited, cleaned up, stitched or sandwiched. The result is a constructed sleek image demonstrating the key ideas or design principles of the building, something architects rely heavily on when discussing their work.

I’m not criticizing this process but instead what I’m interested in is what happens after the initial burst of excitement when a building is finished. How do people inhabit the building? How does the building change or adapt, expand or contract over its lifetime? How do people make it their own? Alice recently presented a lecture that talked about photographing O’Donnell + Tuomey’s Howth House years after it had been finished. The pictures, untypical of the original shots, showed relatively little of the overall house but focused more on the life of the building at a smaller scale through texture, surface and material. It showed how the owner had made the house her home. This was something I found truly fascinating.

Emmet Scanlon also presented his house at a lecture a few weeks ago. It was interesting because he looked at the house not only from his point of view as the architect but as the homeowner. He showed a number of slides demonstrating the lifecycle of his garden over the course of a year and how it changed from season to season. Architecture and time, be it long-term or short-term, is something that we talk about all the time but rarely document. Even we consider a building finished when in reality it’s only at the beginning of its life-cycle, an empty shell ready to be inhabitted.

My proposal is to curate an exhibition where architecture is represented in the everyday, where we see a home in a different manner and a different time than we architects usually see them, where we look at a building at the scale of a person rather than the scale of a site. Rem Koolhaas made and released a film recently where he examines the famous “lift house” he designed in Bordeaux from the point of view of the cleaner (possibly inspired form the famous shot of the cleaner in Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona Pavilion), at a time after the owner of the house had passed away. It sets up an interesting (and funny) play between time and scale and thus is a good reference for what I want to do.

Houselife - Rem Koolhaas

Berenice Abbott; Changing New York

2011-03-14T17:28:00.018Z

Photograph of Berenice Abbott (1898 - 1991) taken by Hank O'Neal in his downtown studio, New York, 1979

Berenice Abbott's anxious energy led her to the playground of the avant-garde artists, Greenwich Village, New York from her home state of Ohio in 1918. She pursued journalism and later became enamoured with the world of sculpture and poetry, possibly due to her association with Man Ray, Eugene o'Neill and the poet and critic Sadakichi Hartmann. It was not long before the vulgarity of capitalism slurried the streets of their bohemian haven and so Abbott left for Paris along with her dadaist counterparts.

Abbott studied sculpture in both Paris and Berlin however it was not until 1923, due to a chance encounter with Man Ray, was Abbott to cultivate her future as a successful photographer. Ray, requiring an assistant with no experience and who would "do what they were told to" hired Abbott in his studio in Montpernasse, Paris. Abbott flourished in the field and to "be done" by Man Ray or Bernice Abbott was a passport to prestige.

Man Ray introduced Abbott to the work of Eugene Adget, a documentary style photographer who had captured the "sobering effects of the depression" in Paris. He became Abbott's unwitting mentor, "Adget's photographs somehow spelled photography to me". On his death in 1927 Abbott aquired Adget's entire collection of plate glass negatives and a total of 7,800 prints for fear they would be lost. Adget's ability to capture the complexities of human emotion through the banal settings of the Parisian streetscape aroused Abbott's psyche so much so that she sought "to do in Manhattan what Adget did in Paris" on her return to New York in 1929.

Requiring the inherent clarity that transposed onto Adget's prints Abbott bought an 8X10" large format camera. Dispelling her peer, Pierre Mac Orlan's definition of photography as 'plastic' and 'documentary' Abbott sought to emulate the "feeling lurking beneath the the surface of ordinary experience".

Abbott studied the photographs of Mathew Brady who created a photographic record of "a turning point in American history". Abbott failed to get financial support for six years until the Federal Arts Project hired her in 1935. This allowed Abbott to photograph New York's physical ascendancy and "capture disorientating sensations of city life". 'Changing New York', Abbott's masterful collection of New York City life was finally exhibited on October 20th 1937. 111 prints mounted in a series from one to four were exhibited for six weeks due to demand. Her collection along with Walker Evans for the International Exposition of Photography at New York Grand Central Palace for the FSA 'How American People live' was seen as "the most exciting and important photographs". Changing New York is the definitive anthology of Abbotts legacy as a photographer who captured human identity through the poetry of contrasts.

My photographs are to be documentary as well as artistic,

the original plan, this means that they will have elements of

formal organization and style, they will use devices of abstract

art if these devices best fit the given subject, they will aim at

realism, but not at the cost of sacrificing all esthetics's factors.

They will tell facts...but these facts will be set forth as organic

parts of the whole picture as living and functioning details of

the entire complex social scene

Ref: Berenice Abbott; Changing New York Bonnie Yochelson, New Press 1997

Posted By; Lisa Halton 140311

Stephen Shore

2011-03-11T22:04:00.007Z

Stephen Shore

Stephen Shore is best known for his pioneering use of colour in art photography, at a time where colour was only used by the press. His work generally documents seemingly banal scenes taken while on the road exploring North American culture.

From a young age Shore showed a passion for photography. By age 9 he owned his first 35mm camera. 2 years later he was given Walker Evans' American Photographs and by age 16 he was selling prints to Edward Steichen, then curator of photography at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). He never went to University, instead started spending time at the factory with Andy Warhol in New York where he gained an interest in photographing everyday culture. There he learned of the benefits of working consistently in series, something that translated into viewing his journeys as photographic sequences.

Shore’s early work in American Surfaces consists of quick point and shoot pictures taken by a 35mm Rollei, generally on small Kodak size paper (something which was very untypical for art photographers of the time) and gave an account of his activities as a traveller. They were spontaneous and un-mediated documenting everything from hotel rooms to the pancakes he would have for breakfast.

In the follow up publication Uncommon places we notice a shift in style. His work becomes more deliberate, calculated and precise. Shore puts this down to a conversation with his friend and curator of MoMA John Szarkowski in 1973 where he questioned the viewfiender of his 35mm camera. Shore took this as a criticism of his framing of photographs. He began using 4x5 and 8x10 format cameras which were associated with press photography of the time and generally required a tripod. He describes being “fascinated with the subconscious or conscious decisions that go into a photograph that working with a view camera would produce”. This led to a change of subject from people and moving objects to scenes that lent themselves to an 8x10 plate camera like buildings, empty streetscapes and carparks.

THOMAS STRUTH

2011-03-10T22:16:00.005Z

Struth trained at the Dusseldorf Academy from 1973-1980. His early works consisted of huge black and white shots os streets in Japan, Europe and America. Through photographs he attempts to show the relationship between people and their modern day environment

In the mid-1980s Struth added a new dimension to his work when he started to produce family portraits. This was after a meeting with psychoanalyst Ingo Hartmann. These works attempt to show the underlying social dynamics within a seemingly still photograph. His photos are usually praised for their clinical objectivity. He said that a photograph "has a clear language, one that speaks openly not only about its subjects ... but also very much about the attitude of the photographer toward these things. In this regard, a photograph is always objective."

Trained as a painter he even seems to imply that the best photography aspires to the condition of painting. Critics usually contrast these scenes of geometric serenity with the passionate cinematic photographs of Andreas Gursky. Unlike Struth, Gursky clearly believes that photography has surpassed and displaced painting

Like Atget his pictures are without people. Atget populated his pictures with the cities character in the form of objects and compositions. Struth's pictures, with their balance and perfection captures the essence of the city in a different way. The Crosby Street, New York (SoHo) (1978) and Sommerstrasse, Düsseldorf (1980) make these two very different cities look identical.

This is why, in Struth's museum photographs, the figures in the paintings seem uncannily more real than the actual, living people looking at them. In a photograph of people standing before a Seurat painting the painting itself is active, not the people staring at it. We recall that Seurat based his paintings on photographic principles. His famous photograph of The Chicago Art Institute has a balance that makes the frame almost become like a window on the wall, and the woman viewing an active member of the painting.

Walker Evans

2011-03-10T20:46:00.015Z

Walker Evans

Despite rejecting the claim of “fine artist” like his French counterpart Eugene Atget, Walker Evans is widely viewed as the pioneer of the photographic art in America. With his seminal work “Ameriacn photographs” he became the first Photographer to have a standalone show in the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York. He is renowned for his documentary almost anti Photographic Style which is summed up by his mentor and friend Lincoln Kirstein when he says “Photography in itself almost probably does not interest him”

Evans always dreamed of being a writer and was heavily influenced by the work of T.S Elliot and Ernst Hemmingway which is evident in the dramatic anti-romantic nature of his work. Coming from a wealthy background, being the son of an Advertising Executive allowed Evans

to travel to Paris in his early 20’s where he learned from the photography of Eugene Atget. Returning to America after a year in Paris, armed with a new found French intellectualism and in the words of Kirstein began photographing “the contemporary civilisation of Eastern America and its dependencies as Atget gave gave us in Paris before the war” with shots of clear, hideous and beautiful detail.

American Photographs although lacking obvious continuity and physically existing as separate prints can be read as a series or collection of statements deriving from and presenting a consistent attitude. The opening picture of a photo-booth proclaims "Photos" and points us in ironically in the direction of what’s to follow. The photographs are almost always shot front on, with a rigorous directness. His eye is open and visible. There is no need to dramatize the material. It is already intensely dramatic.

The relationship of man and machinery in industrial America is a theme that is consistent throughout. Evans is obsessed with mans reliance on the machine and the obvious scarring of the landscape that results. He is concerned with the psychology of the people who use them. He shoots Architecture with a view to looking at the people behind it, those who use the building or those who built them. In the barbers shop picture he does the opposite simply shooting two empty chairs suggesting instead an absence of people.

Evans pictures to my mind have a humorous aspect to them. He sarcastically questions “good taste” architecture of the time, mimicking post revolutionary New England and colonial architecture moulded with stucco instead of being sculpted from stone. Symbolic fragments like that of the cracked iron cast moulding or pressed tin Corinthian capitals demonstrate this.

2011-03-10T15:40:00.009Z

SPACE FRAMED: PHOTOGRAPHY AND THE HUMAN HABITAT

Project Proposal

Michael Hayes

My proposal is to make a project concerned with contemporary patterns of habitation in the Irish landscape i.e. The housing estate.

During the course of this seminar I've found myself naturally drawn to the documentary style of Walker Evans and the survey-like work of Robert Adams. While it remains to be seen whether their approach to photography is appropriate to this project, I think it's a suitable starting point.

For me the housing estate is a subject that encompasses many of the topics we've already discussed such as the observation of the ordinary, the comparison of typologies, and man'scolonisation of the landscape. However, at this point, I'm probably most interested in capturing human occupancy at a smaller scale; how individuals' attempt to live within the boundaries handed to them, whether its just leaving a pair of shoes outside the front door or sitting on a garden wall having a chat.

In terms of presentation, I feel that a book/catalogue represents too unified an object given the subject matter. Therefore I propose (for now at least) that the final images will be presented as individual postcards on a typical, revolving newsagent's stand. There idea here would be that each image, though repeated many times, becomes an object itself which may transfer ownership from exhibition to audience and thereby leading to further fragmentation and decontextualisation.

Below are a series of preparatory images (taken from our studio project in cahir) that just show a number of different approaches to the subject and which might give a better idea of what I'm thinking of...

2011-03-10T11:29:00.002Z

"The landscape is the place we live... we cannot therefore scan it without scanning ourselves."
- John Swarovski, introduction to The New West

Robert Adams work is focused on how the western landscapes of North America have been shaped by human influence. His photography takes a stance of apparent neutrality, refraining from any obvious judgement of the subject matter.

Adams' was a professor of English at the University of Colorado before taking up photography. This background is clear in the way he addressed the destruction of the western landscape and discussed some of the attitudinal shifts that would be necessary for its future preservation,"if we call places by names that are accurate, we may ultimately find it easier to live in them". In a similar fashion Adams photographs offer a lesson in the value of candor. His picture make fresh what we think we have seen and know. He rediscovers the known landscape and returns it to a state similar to that found in survey photographs: strange, unknown and unnamed.
Unlike typical survey publications though, Adams' pictures are not accompanied by diagrams or maps. However the minimal amount of text serves to underline the scientific and informational purity of the pictures themselves. Their seemingly prosaic, unpictorial character gives them the semblance of images made for the purpose of date alone.
Meanwhile, Adams skillfully and subtly plays with the would-be objective and seemingly non-selective character of survey photography and uses it to his own subjective ends. For example, the separation of title from image, and the image's consequent isolation allows for a symbolical representation of a much larger idea of the West rather than a limited geographical area. For Adams, space is a stage without a centre, and his lack of a singular, clearly established subject corresponds to the apparent infinity of western expansion.

Garry Winogrand

2011-03-07T12:23:00.006Z

Garry is born in 1928 in New York city and died in 1984 in Mexico. He made his first rentable appearance in 1963 at an exhibition at the museum of Modern art in New York . He was influenced by Walker Evans and Robert Frank and theirs respective publications. American photographs and the American . His first book is the Animal in 1969 which is a collection of pictures where he observes the connection between Animal and human. These photographs capture the evolution of the 20th and 21th century phenomenon . He photographed incessantly , mostly on the street and publishing journalistic images in numerous magazines. The main subject in this book The man in the crowd in 1998 is the relationship between people each other and the town. For Garry the street is as an enigma, a theater where everything is possible and he photographed the men , women, unknowns people. Most people who walk through in a city ignore it but he said the absolute opposite and spent most of his walking like hunting down and fellow citizens watching , looking and photographing. The famous picture of Winogrand shows women on the bench where we can see different groups and affinity on the same bench . He recording here so spontaneous , complexity as the banality of the city life. Through his book he shows some people alone or not and at the end of the book he submits a work on the crowd. In the crowd , the affective life made legible in faces and bodies in motion. In this part of the book , we often see violent and political scenes. The variation in the crowd picture are, in fact, so strenuous, the poses of bodies in motion so dissimilar.

CANDIDA HÖFER

2011-03-05T17:00:00.006Z

(

Candida Höfer (*1944) is a german photographer.

From 1973 to 1982 she studied at the Academy of Arts in Düsseldorf.
First she was studying film and from 1976 photography under Bernd Becher.
Along with Thomas Ruff, also from the Becher-Class, she was one of the first of Bechers students who took color-photographs and showed her works as slide-projections.

In the beginning Candida Höfer photographed the Turkish Immigrant Workers in Germany at different places like shops, cafés and parks.

Later the people disappeared completely from her photographs.
Höfer began to take color-photographs of interiors of public buildings. First there were rooms like offices, banks or waiting rooms. Later she specialized in large format photographs of "empty" interiors and social spaces.

She has been really interested in representing public spaces such as museums, libraries, national archives of opera houses - devoid of all human presence.
The presence of human beings has become ever more keenly manifest in her "empty" rooms, attested to by the absence of those for whom the interiors or exteriors were actually built.
Höfers photographs of public spaces are sober and ascetic in feel.
The atmosphere is disturbed by neither visitors nor users. There is a great silence in the pictures.Also the colors attract more attention.

Often the photographs present the significant work of famous architects but this seems to be not really important.

If you look to Höfers photographs maybe you can imagine a world without people. Maybe you can just see these "empty" rooms in another way and forget everything what actually happens in these rooms.

BERND & HILLA BECHER

2011-03-05T16:03:00.012Z

Bernd Becher (*1931; +2007) and Hilla Becher (*1934) are an photographer couple from Germany.

They are really famous for their black&white photographs of framework houses and industrial buildings like watertowers, blast furnaces, gas tanks, winding towers etcetera.
Both oft them studied at the Academy of Arts in Düsseldorf from 1957 to 1961.
There they get to know each other and began to work together.

Bernd and Hilla Becher are two of the most influential visual artists of our time.
Since the beginning of the 1960s together they have documented industrial buildings all over the world with unparalleled systematicness. This passion has resulted photographs that are documents of cultural and technological history from a vanishing industrial era.

The most interesting thing for the Bechers is the fact, that the architecture of these industrial buildings is totally dictated by the function.
Once Hilla Becher said it is like "sacred architecture of technique".

For the Bechers it is also very interesting, how different the buildings are in different countries.
The buildings have got many small details and that is what the Bechers want to show with their also very detailed and precise photographs.

Their famous work should not have any social critic, only the documentary work is important for them.

It's all about the different basic forms of these industrial buildings.
That is also the reason, why the Bechers decided to take only black&white photos.
Something like for example a blue sky would only distract.
The best conditions for there photographs were diffused light, as little shadow as possible an no bright sun.

To describe the great work of the Bechers maybe these words of Paul Klee would be right ones: "Art does not reproduce the visible rather it makes visible".

Joel Sternfeld

2011-03-01T00:14:00.006Z

1. Wet n' Wild Aquatic Theme Park, Orlando, Florida, September 1980

2. After A Flash Flood, Rancho Mirage, California 1979

3. McLean, Virginia, December 1978

4. The Space Shuttle Columbia Lands at Kelly Air Force Base, San Antonio, Texas, March 1979

Joel Sternfeld is born in 1944 in New York city. he is a fine art color photographer noted for his large format documentary pictures of the United States.

He has influenced a generation of color photographers including Andreas Grusky who borrows many of his techniques. Indeed , for his pictures he used a 8*10 view camera to render detail and the distance also allows Sternfeld to put more information in this pictures.

He write some books , the first is American prospects in 1987 which he explores the irony of human altered landscape in the united states , to make this books he photographed ordinary things , including unsuccessful towns, landscape and people. By the title he might be referring both the America's future with the relationship between the human and industrial, agricultural landscape. We can see , with some example that the work of light and color is an important element of his photographs. Color is for Joel never arbitrary and it's to connect elements and resonate emotions. For him colors add another level of complexity and he always maintains a balance between shade of colors and loaded details. To make this work he choose the time of the day and the quality of light. Many of this photographs are taken in the suburb , rail , road , river way, factories , gas station, motels and old buildings appear in these pictures. It's interesting because all of his photographs have a title , sometimes some text.

The other of this book is On the site, landscape in memorial , which is about the violence in America where is photographed sites of recent tragedies. He studied and photographed also the social class and stereotypes in America.

This primary tools are : distance, color, disjunction and humor !

William Klein

2011-02-26T20:06:00.002Z

Klein was born in 1928 in New York. His approach to photography was revolutionary and changed the way the photographic document was perceived. He describes his work as “in search of the straightest of straight documents, the rawest snapshot, the zero degree of photography”. Originally a painter he won his first camera in a card game. This casual approach to the medium was define his style as a photographer.

He was part of a Jewish immigrant family. His father lost his business in the 1928 crash. As a Jewish boy growing up in an Irish neighbourhood he experienced anti-semitism first hand and always felt alienated from mass culture. At the age of 14 he enrolled in college to study sociology. He then enrolled in the US army at 18 at was stationed in Germany and France as a radio operator. After the was he enrolled in the Sorbonne in Paris, here he studied painting under Fernard Leger. As a teacher Leger encouraged his students to revolt and reject conformity. Notably he said they should go out and work in the streets. When Klein returned to New York in 1954 he feel in love with the city. All the sights and sounds that he had forgotten or never seen suddenly inspired him. He set himself the challenge of photographing New York in a new way. As an american who had living abroad for 6 years he felt “oddly foreign”, and wished to capture the essence of New York in a photographic Diary.

The Book 'New York – (Life Is Good And Good For You In New York) was a scandal. His photos were blurred and out of focus. Just as important as the content of the book is its layout. “Like a movie I thought the book should be”. Pictures are cropped, pasted together and extend to the very edge of the page. This approach to bookmaking has influenced every photographer since. Vogue who commissioned the project saw it as crude, aggressive and vulgar – not the image they were trying to promote. The art world saw it a photographically incompetent. Klein earned the reputation as the “anti photographers photographer” for his rebellious approach. Having been received badly in America he to the book to France in search of a publisher. When finally they managed to get the book published it went on to win the Nadar prize.

“A technique of no taboos: blur, grain, contrast cock eyed framing, accidents”

Paul Seawright - Volunteer

2011-02-26T17:57:00.001Z

Paul Seawright was in conversation with Professor Colin Graham at the Kerlin Gallery yesterday evening to open his exhibition Volunteer.

Seawright discussed the project, both in the context of his own practice and methodologies and global politics. His interests lie in conflict and cities. This body of work addresses recruitment for the Afghanistan war across America. The photographs are taken at recruitment centre sites across America.

Seawright spoke about how he researched and thought about this project for over a year before beginning any work on it. He discussed the long inception some projects have, and how some never make it to fruition. With this project, he was wondering how to address issues around American policy in relation to the war, and the resulting human cost, particularly in certain strata of American society.

Navy Recruiting Centre, Post Office - Butte Montana. 1956 - Robert Frank

He talked about how, when teaching one day, he was showing his students Robert Frank's The Americans, this photograph (above) of a Navy recruitment center came up. He knew then how he would proceed with the project. He decided to document the recruitment centres, conscious of the often controversial recruitment techniques and short timeframe between recruitment and deployment to Afghanistan. His photographs never address the centres themselves, but look back into the surrounding territory, as though the viewer is looking through the eyes of one newly recruited.

Untitled (UPS) from the Volunteer series, 2011, Lightjet mounted on aluminium, Framed with UV Plexi-Glass, Edition 1 of 6 +AP, 99 x 124 x 5cm framed - Paul Seawright

Seawright discussed how there are rarely people in the series as he thinks the viewer finds it harder to empathize when confronted directly with photographs of people. By putting the viewer firmly into the context in which recruitment takes place, Seawright enables some understanding of the predicament the recruited found themselves in.
Graham then linked this back to Seawright's much earlier Sectarian Murder Series made in Northern Ireland in 1988. In this he photographed sites of Sectarian murders in the 1970's, which also bring the viewer firmly into the situation.

Tuesday 30th January, 1973 from Sectarian Murder series, 1988 - Paul Seawright

Seawright then talked about how when photographing the American landscape, or indeed anywhere, he finds it really important to make authentic photographs, something that is voicing his concerns. When photographing the American landscape, he said he found it hard to ignore the resonances, both physical and theoretical, with New Topographics and Frank's What We Bought. He said that photographic references always come with him, and sometimes he makes deliberate references to them, as when he took this photograph (below) in response to the Afghanistan war in 2002 for the Hidden series, commissioned by the Imperial War Museum in London.

Valley 2002 from the series Hidden, Collection Imperial War Museum - Paul Seawright

Valley of the Shadow of Death, 1855, Salt Print 10 7/8 x 13 3/4 in. - Roger Fenton

But Seawright emphasized that while photographic work is always about photography, he is not interested in his work being solely about photography.

He finds he works by bringing his own narrative to the places he works in, so his work is a response to the issue he is researching, not directly a response to the place. He mentioned Szarkowski when talking about photography as an editing process to support his narrative, to enable constructed meaning in the photograph.

Untitled (Hooters) from the Volunteer series, 2011, Lightjet print mounted on aluminium, Framed with UV Plexi-glass, edition 1 of 6 +AP, 99x124x5cm framed - Paul Seawright

Seawright discussed his Invisible Cities project in Nigeria, and he talked a little about how, inspired by Calvino's Invisible Cities, he sees cities as being made of small moments, connections and fleeting spatial relationships.

Crossing, from the series Invisible Cities, 2005 - Paul Seawright

Seawright also talked about how his work is always personal, even when dealing with themes very far from his own personal experience. He described how in Calvino's Invisible Cities each of the multiple cities described by Marco Polo was always his own city, Venice. In some way, Seawright feels he is always photographing Belfast and that a photographer is always photographing his or her own memories and thoughts.

Stains, from the series Volunteer, 2011 - Paul Seawright

Paul Seawright at the Kerlin

2011-02-20T23:47:00.000Z

Paul Seawright - at the Kerlin Gallery
25-Feb - 02 Apr 2011
Volunteer
Volunteer is a survey of sorts, landscapes from today's fraying, centreless post 9-11 North American cities. Each photograph has been made at the location of a military recruiting station, where a different battle is being fought - to find young men and women to volunteer for service in Afghanistan Made at the locations of military recruitment offices in 15 states including Texas, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, Arkansas, Kansas and Mississippi, these new works comment not just on the ongoing war and the battle to recruit new soldiers, but the contemporary North American city, a landscape littered with thrift stores, gun dealerships, strip malls and pawn shops.

Photographers discuss their work

2011-02-20T23:38:00.001Z

Garry Winogrand

Stephen Shore

Robert Adams

William Klein

Week 4 - New Topographics

2011-02-20T23:23:00.000Z

This week we will be looking at New Topographics, edited by Britt Salvesen. The essay in the book is particularly important.
We will then look at four photographers from the exhibition and their work in more detail:
Stephen Shore - Uncommon Places
Robert Adams - What we Bought
Louis Baltz - The new Industrial Parks near Irvine, California
Bernd & Hille Becher - Basic Forms of Industrial Buildings

2011-02-15T02:49:00.006Z

Eugene Atget wasborn in Libourne, near Bordeaux, in 1857. Only at the age of 40 did he quit a rather unsuccessful career in acting and became a photographer. Little is known of his absolute intentions, though a lack of theorizing and experimentation might suggest that Atget saw little to value in his own workbeyond a commercial products sold to artists.

Atget's technological approach was outdated before he even began. He photographed Paris with a large format, wooden bellows camera with a rapid rectilinear lens. His photography, consequentially, is characterised by a wispy, drawn out sense of light due to long exposures; a fairly wide view that suggested space and ambiance more than surface detail; and an intentionally limited range of scenes.

Atget occupies a unique position in the history of photography, being claimed as the father of two diverging ideologies. One the one hand, he is presented as the forerunner for transparent, no frills, unpretentious photography. His work a recording of traditional French life on the old back streets of Paris before they were bulldozed by modernity. On the other, Atget is seen as the first Modernist photographer. His images of snatched glimpses, tangential perspectives, odd reflections and bizarre details providing the basis for Surrealism.

The truth maybe somewhere in between. Eugene Atget ought to be viewed as a hinge joining the 19th and 20th centuries. His work bridges the gap between photography as a transparent, almost anonymous record of reality and as an artistic construct practiced self-consciously and intentionally. His genius lies in this synthesis.

Richard Avedon; Portrait of Erza Pound 1958

2011-02-13T16:22:00.003Z

One of America's most influential photographers, Avedon was born May 15^th 1923. When he died in 2004 the New York Times said "his fashion and portrait photographs helped define America's image of style, beauty and culture for the last half-century." Originally a fashion photographer he went on to photograph the fall of the Berlin Wall, Vietnam war protestors and patients in mental hospitals. He had always been interested in portraiture and how it captures the personality of the subject. During sittings he would ask probing questions in an effort to evoke something that others could not. He is identifiable by his minimalist style. Sitter look straight into the camera in front of a white background.

Erza Pound is an American Poet who was a major figure in the early modernist movement. After the extreme loss of life of WWI he lost faith in the West, blaming capitalism for the War. He became a supporter of Hitler. During WWII he made radio broadcast condemning the USA and criticising Jews. When the War ended he was arrested for treason in 1945. This picture is taken in 1958, the year he was released from prison after a campaign by his followers.

Week 3 - Robert Frank

2011-02-09T23:19:00.000Z

There was some very insightful research last week on Atget, Abbott and Evans. This should be posted on the blog this week.

Next week we are looking at Robert Frank - The Americans (ucd library link), and the book about the work - Looking In: Robert Frank's The Americans, which will be put on temporary reserve.

Alongside this, we will aslo be looking at William Klein - Life is Good and Good for you in New York (ucd library link), Garry Winogrand - The Man in the Crowd, and Lee Friedlander.

Chpts 17, 19 & 20 of Bystander (ucd library link) by Colin Westerbeck and Joel Meyerowitz should provide a good overall background.

2011-02-08T02:09:00.003Z

Eadweard Muybridge - Sequence of bird in flight (1883 - 86)

Eadweard Muybridge was an English born photographer who worked mainly in the United States. He had early success as a landscape photographer and became widely known, under his psuedonym Helios, for his images of the West including Yosemite and his early panoramas of San Francisco.

Muybridge is most remembered for his pioneering work on animal locomotion and his early motion picture projector which he called a zoopraxiscope.

After he was challenged by the Governor of California Leland Stanford to capture an image of a horse galloping with all it's hooves off the ground, Muybridge developed a technique to capture the motion of animals using a bank of cameras timed to release the shutter in quick succession.

Following the success of these images Muybridge spent a number of years working with the University of Pennsylvania and the local zoo capturing over 100,000 images of animals and humans in motion.

Many of the these images work together in sequence to show the mechanics of motion and were a form of early videography. This image doesn’t show the motion of flight of the bird as clearly as many others do but seems instead to examine the figure of the bird at various stages of flight. Each frame can be read in isolation to examine the figure in abstraction or the group of images can work together to show a typology of form and figure from a single perspective.

Untitled Film Stills

2011-02-06T20:30:00.002Z

This is a self portrait of Cindy Sherman in the Untitled Film Stills in 1978.

In this picture she is on the foreground , she seems pensive and lost. Her posture is clear , her look is distant and she is anxious about the modern society. This picture calls into question the role of the woman at this period.

On the background , there are a fuzzy building and the relationship between the town , the architecture and Cindy is interesting. Everything is straight, the building and her posture are vertical whereas her look is more horizontal.

This black and white picture could be a political and advertising picture.

2011-02-05T13:20:00.002Z

Charles Négre: Henry le Secq at Notre Dame cathedral, Paris 1851.

In this picture Négre captures his friend; artist and photographer Henry le Seq as he looks out over Paris. Although the photograph is most definitely staged, I feel it captures that moment of awe or the payoff having ascended up though the Cathedral.

Le seq is the focal point in terms of both 2 dimensional and 3 dimensional composition and depth of the shot. The sharpness of the gothic detail plays against the "softness" of the forground and background and sets up an interesting relationship between man and Gargoyle.

Close No. 61, Saltmarket - Thomas Annan, Glasgow 1868-1877

2011-02-05T10:56:00.003Z

Thomas Annan was a Scottish photographer (*1829, +1887).

This photograph is part of a commission from the City of Glasgow Improvements Trust and is called "The Old Closes and Streets of Glasgow" and was created between 1868 and 1877.

The collection of images of the working class areas of old Glasgow helped document the impoverished living conditions of the working class at the time.

The vanishing point is the black wall break in the back.
Everything aligns in it and the viewer brings this "black hole" into focus.

At the first moment you are not oblivious to the fact that the alley is very narrow and high.

Week 2 - Walker Evans

2011-02-02T23:30:00.003Z

Licence Photo Studio, New York, 1934 - Walker Evans

This week, we will be looking at Walker Evans: American Photographs. The essay by Lincoln Kirstein in the book is important to read, as is an essay by Allan Tractenberg in Reading American Photographs: Images as History, Matthew Brady to Walker Evans. (pp231-286, A Book Nearly Anonymous).
Walker Evans: The Hungry Eye by Gilles Mora and John T. Hill provides a good background to Evans as does Walker Evans: Lyric Documentary by John T. Hill.
All four books are on reserve in Richview Library.
Also, check out this essay written by Walker Evans for Hound & Horn in 1931 - 'The Reappearance of Photography'.

We will also be looking at a photographer that influenced Evans - Eugene Atget, and a contemporary - Berenice Abbott.
Have a look at the books on Atget in the library, as well as the following for Berenice Abbott:
Berenice Abbott: Changing New York - Bonnie Yochelson (ucd library link).
Two essays by Berenice Abbott in Photographers on Photography - Nathan Lyons (1951 It has to Walk Alone & 1951 Photography at the Crossroads (ucd library link).

2011-01-30T23:31:00.003Z

Andre Kertesz: Billboard, 1962

Space Framed 2011

2011-01-26T10:16:00.000Z

This week we will look at the second of two seminal texts on photography - Stephen Shore's 'The Nature of Photographs'. Select one photograph for discussion at next week's seminar.
Last week, we started with John Szarkowski's 'The Photographer's Eye'. Please post your selected photograph plus text on the blog this week.

The two books are related to each other in that Shore used Szarkowski's book to teach a class at Bard College. His book developed from this class.

You will get a good overall introduction to photography through these two books and the bbc series 'The Genius of Photography'. This is available online and in the library (with accompanying book). Watch Episode 2 - Documents for Artists before next week's session.

Below is a the seminar outline for this semester. This may change as we progress, but touches on the basic themes and reading material.

Photo Ireland Festival 2010

2010-06-28T23:47:00.000+01:00

Opens 1st July, 8pm, Meeting House Square, Temple Bar, Dublin. (Programme)

End of Year Exhibition at UCD opens May 28 at 5pm

2010-05-28T14:15:00.002+01:00

2010-04-18T22:47:00.004+01:00

“We know the world by what we see”

- Anne Friedberg, The Virtual Window

Spatial experience is kaleidoscopic and necessarily so. Inhabiting or exploring a building involves perpetual movement in or out; up or down; beyond or between by a body in constant flux with shifting visual field. It is fleeting. A space becomes more a mosaic of multiple relationships than any particular fixed point of view. Photography then, in essence, is framed and fixed for an immobile viewer. This is why, I often think, it struggles to represent any spatial experience accurately.

Windows, however, can be an exception to this. A window is a reflective screen onto which an image is cast and whose edges hold a view in place. It is traditionally an aperture, used for light and ventilation. But since Alberti explained perspective in painting, as an ‘open window’ on a rectangular frame, they have been recognised in their ability to capture three-dimensional space on a two dimensional plane.

To look through a window, is to perceive different spatial locations simultaneously through predetermined framed and fixed views. To look at a photograph of a window, is to do the same. I became interested in the photography of windows as a means of realistically describing our perception of a window space.

Exhibition Proposal:

I want to investigate this - can a single image really capture a window space as we experience it or does it have to be an installation, an artistic endeavor or composite construction?... Hopefully the former... I intend to photograph one of the windows on the stairs as one might experience it, and exhibit a single image near the window. I would like people to experience both separately, then simultaneously, to compare them.

Reality and Memory

2010-04-18T20:18:00.003+01:00

Reality and Memory are two things I am analysing in relation to the work of artists Oliver Boberg, Thomas Demand and Carl Zimmermann.

Although their works have similar processes - all taking photographs of models and not “real” spaces, their aims are varied.

Oliver Boberg makes models of fictional generic spaces, the type that we see all the time in sub-urban landscape (examples). The repetition of these types of spaces in modern day architecture causes the viewer to feel like they have seen them before, but they are unable to place them.

Thomas Demand re-creates real spaces of historical importance, many from media photographs. These original widespread images may be familiar to the viewer, triggering the memory of what they were told happened at that place. Demands lack of detail in his painstakingly made models suggests that there was something left out of the story, and encourages the viewer to rethink what they might know. All histories leave out something, history might not be over. Demand encourages this continuation through his images.

Carl Zimmermann images are purely fictional, based on architectural trends in two historical periods, the span between the two world wars and the Victorian period around the mid 19^thC. Both periods have strong attachment to monumental architecture. Lost Hamilton Landmarks explores Government Institutional buildings such as hospitals, power stations, post offices and schools in the 1930’s. These type of buildings “appeared to exist on the margins of collective memory” as many of them were demolished before the time of making the models. During the exhibition at the Irish Museum of Modern Art , Zimmermann took control of the exhibition space, the description and advertising and created a fictional history in order deceive the viewer.

I propose to have series of images without captions along the staircase followed by a short text. I want people to see the images first to and to form an opinion before they read about their background.

2010-04-18T19:33:00.010+01:00

FORMATION OF SPACE

In a recent interview for the lives of spaces exhibition,Hugh Campbell curator of the Venice Biennale describes the meaning of the exhibition title,

‘The lives of spaces, partly because it suggests a plurality, a multiplicity to any space, and we talked about the phases of the life of any given space: from out of the mind’s eye into this kind of magical process of design, where it starts to become something, somewhere, and then its life in construction, its life in use, and another layer beyond that where a space takes on another symbolic life....reinvention’1

Space is open-ended, never existing on its own but only in relation to other elements. Defining space as a contained specific volume is difficult as it continuously flows through a building relative to the observer’s movements.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Spaces are in a constant state of flux. The idealistic vision of the architect is in tension

‘with the exotic circus of real life’.2

The architects control over a design is terminated once it enters into the reality of the city. Spaces are never in isolation but exist in relation to each other. Experiences of one space flows into the next. Edmund Bacon in one of his first essays ‘Awareness of Space as Experience‘ illustrates that

‘There is an intellectual parallel of deepening perception which is based on becoming connected with larger and larger systems.’3

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Finding it difficult to confine a space let us explore what contributions alter its perception.

Space is informed by, enclosure, light, approach, scale, time and position. Altering just one of these conditions transforms the observer’s dialogue. Rafael Moneo ‘An intense life and consummate work’

‘any construction that has been able to survive the passage of time is by definition an ongoing transformation’4

Irrespective of the procession of time, centuries or a fleeting moment, how a space is perceived changes due to uncontrollable external factors. The concept model begins to explore this theme. The space inside the model is constant; however its perception differs each time it is viewed. Each window into the space has a different scale, the light changes, the window size is different. We can see that this space can be described in a series of differ ways

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

William Curtis in ‘Mental Maps and social landscape’ about the work of Enric Miralles identified a clear intention of the architect,

‘The idea is that the new building should bring out these latent forces (geographical or historical traces-contours river beds, road, building) and bring them to a point of high tension while also encouraging interactions between people’5

Miralles identified that spaces are never in isolation. They call on their relationships with the site, time, scale and history. Designing, Miralles never viewed his work as ‘his intervention’ but as urban acupuncture. Seeing his work as a contribution to the whole and never ‘falling prey to its perimeter’6

‘...to dissolve the building into its environment, losing any relationship with the perimeter’ 7

Stephen Shores, ‘ American Surfaces’ exhibition explores the power of the collection as opposed to an autonomous image to describe a space. Exploring the quality and value of a single image to describe.

EXPERIMENT

The dart line can be seen as a collection of individual spaces along the east coast. Developed in the past as separate settlements, independent and to an extent culturally different from each other. With the introduction of the dart line, these series of town lands became connected to each other. A series a space once separated now formed a longitudinal single space. As you travel along the dart line these series of spaces now influence the whole. Each contributing to the perception of the next sequential space, a series of relative space.

AIM

The purpose of this investigation to propose a new way of capturing and exhibiting architectural information. If architectural photography is about capturing the maximum amount of information, should the way they are collated and captured describe something more than just the instanteous image. Moreover the possibility of describing the experience of the building, the sequences, the architectural intent in terms of movement, time and light. Architectural photography to translate how a building influences you, the sequence you see the images is vital to your understanding of the architects concept. A series of spatial photographs combined together to illustrate a holistic narrative, to reflect the tensions between the real and the intention. Examining a building not as a isolated collection of volumes but a single space.

PROPOSAL

Capturing time and movement in the translation of spaces into the photographic medium has influenced the choice of subject . The train station, a space influenced almost solely by external events. Your experience of that space is always altered by the quantity of people travelling in, out , resting, waiting and working in that space. A volume always constant but the space it captures always in a constant state of flux. I have chosen to examine Heuston station. To photograph the space in a way that will inform the observer more than a single image. Using photography to capture the image that can never be seen and therefore the most informative.

INFORMATION AND ITS TRANSLATION

Why is a plan or section more informative than a picture of a single space? They allows us to see, if only in 2dimensional way, a series of spaces at once. We can see the building in series. The type of space we enter into before and after. We are able to contrast one space with the next. With the power of scale, we can approximately gain an appreciation of time and distance. This type of approach is how I wish to develop my original concept. With Photoshop, the view that is impossible to see can be formed. A space is never experienced in isolation, so therefore should never be viewed in isolation. Therefore i propose taking a section through the Heuston Staion constructed out of images. Translating all the photographic information of each space and arranging them in series. Being able to understand the scale of the space both before and after. As an architect draws a series of spaces in section to examine their relation, I hope to construct the reality of this section. A view impossible to see but capable of translating sequential special experience.

BRIAN BARBER

1 Campbell,H, Martin-McAuliffe,S, Ward, B, Weadic, N (Ed.) (2008) The Lives of Spaces:IAF and UCD

2 Campbell,H, Martin-McAuliffe,S, Ward, B, Weadic, N (Ed.) (2008) The Lives of Spaces:IAF and UCD

3 Bacon, E.(1967) Design of cities.London:Thames and Hudson

4 Moneno, R(2009)’Enric Miralles ‘An intense life and consumate work’’El Croquis Editorial. EMBT 2000-2009 El Croquis no. 144. Madrid:El Croquis Editorial

5 Curtis, W(2009)’Enric Miralles ‘Mental Maps and Social landscape ’’El Croquis Editorial. EMBT 2000-2009 El Croquis no. 144. Madrid:El Croquis Editorial

6 Moneno, R(2009)’Enric Miralles ‘An intense life and consumate work’’El Croquis Editorial. EMBT 2000-2009 El Croquis no. 144

7 Moneno, R(2009)’Enric Miralles ‘An intense life and consumate work’’El Croquis Editorial. EMBT 2000-2009 El Croquis no. 144

Exhibition Proposal - Helen Levitt

2010-04-18T16:35:00.004+01:00

In the beginning I was interested by something that John Szarkowski mentioned in his forward for ‘The Idea of Louis Sullivan’ where he talks of the best architectural photographs being found in the casual products of the photojournalist because “the life that surrounds and nourishes the building is seen and felt.” This idea, along with an interest in how photography can put a frame on the theatricality in space, led me to the work of Helen Levitt.

For this seminar, I intend to curate an exhibition of 12 to 20 photos taken by Levitt in Spanish Harlem, New York. The focus of the exhibition will be on her black and white photographs, which were taken in the 30’s and 40’s, and these will be juxtaposed with her colour photos taken later in the 70’s.

Spanish Harlem was a vibrant place in the 40’s – full of new post-war immigrants, Spanish, Puerto Ricans, and Italians. Living in tiny tenements – social and family life pored over onto the street. Filling the streets with life. The lyrical and timeless black and white photos of Levitt captured with natural ease, the essence of these new inhabitants.

The people in her photographs embody with great beauty and fullness, “a natural history of the soul’ according to one of her biggest fans, James Agee. She captures the essence of a free, unselfconscious, untamed people fantastically misplanted in the urgent metropolis of New York.

Again in the words of James Agee, her photos are; “The record of an ancient, primitive, transient, and immortal civilization, incomparably superior to our own, as it flourishes, at the proud and eternal crest of its wave, among those satanic incongruities of a twentieth century metropolis which are, for us, definitive expressions and productions of the loss of innocence.”

Her black and white photos of this period are full of grace, drama, pathos, humour and surprise. For Levitt the street was a stage, and its people were all actors and actresses, mimes, orators and dancers.

However, by the time Levitt was taking her colour photos, 1970’s Spanish Harlem struggled with race riots, drug abuse, crime and poverty. The tenements were crowded, poorly maintained and frequent targets for arson. This change coincides with Levitt's use of colour in her photography. Although still lyrical and bursting with natural choreography, the colour photos add to the story. Facial expressions and gestures can be lost in the colours of the surroundings. The buildings are perceived differently in this coloured medium. To me, there are unmistakeable signs that things have changed. The buildings and people look more worn, the cars are no longer shiny, indeed the streets are not as bustling. Of course the question can be asked - has the society changed or has colour photography removed some of the romance from the images? This is something that the exhibition intends to explore.

In keeping with the theme of the seminar - ‘Space Framed’ -my interest is in how Levitt captured occupied space and how the buildings are used. The essential motif running through the exhibition will be an exploration of the urban stoop…the element that projects outward into the great theatre of the street, an elevated platform ideal for observation, courting, a chat, or gossip... This is the essential space that is framed. Her photos capture the potential of the stoop as described by Jane Jacobs in her writings on the Death and Life of American cities.

The placing of the exhibition takes this in mind. My ideal location would be along the stairs from the mezzanine to the second year studio. Another alternative is to space several exhibits at each stretch of four steps.
(Hopefully in pausing to take in the photographs, opportunities for social interaction on the stairs will increase!)

Also for the exhibition, and drawing inspiration from the format of Szarkowski’s book ‘The Idea of Louis Sullivan,’ I am thinking of adding text to the work. So full of drama, dance and theatre are the streets of Spanish Harlem as described by both Levitt (and Jane Jacobs) that they have also inspired the world of music and theatre. Songs such as Spanish Harlem by Ben E King and Spanish Harlem Incident by Bob Dylan also capture the spirit of this place. I feel that extracts from such examples could add further meaning to the photographs. I also intend to write a short introduction for the exhibition.

The format of the exhibition will be A4 or A3 landscape with an image in portrait and text to the left hand side…examples of which I will bring tomorrow. I intend to experiment with this format and background colours to explore which works best with the light of the stairwell.

John

2010-04-18T12:57:00.004+01:00

Cliffs of Moher, Eason and Son Collection

Timothy O Sullivan, Great Surveys, 1878

Into the West.
Landscape Photography; an ocean apart.

For my project I am creating a series, comprising of photographs taken for the “Great Western Surveys” of the American West in the late nineteenth century and the Eason and Son and Lawrence Collections of photographs of Ireland in the early twentieth century.

The “Great Western Surveys” comprises photos from Timothy O Sullivan, A.J. Russell, Alexander Gardner, William Bell, William Henry Jackson and John K. Hillers. Though these photographs were taken for “recording purposes” they were also used as a predictive medium. They were used to predict the West of the Future, a West where economic investment that would be rewarded and immigrants would meet a prosperous future.

The Lawrence and Eason Collections were produced in the early 20th century for commercial purposes, primarily as postcards. Their intent was to advertise the Irish countryside and villages as places to visit and enjoy. This explains why towns, historic sites, scenic views and tourist attractions were repeatedly photographed while those areas that were sparsely populated and “less attractive” areas were ignored.

The Lawrence and Eason Collection together accumulate approximately 44,000 negatives; consequently to narrow it down I am focusing on photographs of the West of Ireland only. Upon examining the photographic collections I came to a conclusion that though the “Great West” and the West of Ireland though an ocean apart have a number of astonishingly similar landscape photographs. Thus I decided to compare and contrast these collections to find out firstly, why we take photographs and secondly, how that will influence how we take the photographs.

By going through the series of each collection I have picked out a number of photographs and I am juxtaposing the photographs from each continent against each other. I will now analyse the photographs; the intent behind them and also the method of photographing, the content, the framing and so forth. From this I hope to begin to find a methodology or way of thinking behind the similarities of the landscape photographs.

Exhibition proposal:

I would like to place my images around a window which has a view to a landscaped area and also near an exit to give the viewer some food for thought as they exit into their own landscape. Perhaps I would use the inner wall surrounding the large window beside the exit from the eating/exhibition space beside O Brien’s. I would place the images beside each other on an A4 sheet, with a short caption under each. I would include a brief text at the beginning regarding my intent of the project.

Space Framed Week 12

2010-04-14T23:47:00.002+01:00

We will meet for individual tutorials on Monday 19 April.
Please post an exhibition proposal plus work outline/update to the blog by Sunday 18 April.

Timetable for tutorials is as follows:
10.30 Caroline
10.45 Su
11.00 Orla
11.15 John
11.30 Break
11.45 Sarah
12.00 Luke
12.15 Stefan
12.30 Brian

2010-04-12T10:14:00.001+01:00

We will meet with interior prospect in the staffroom today @11am

2010-04-11T18:32:00.008+01:00

Henri Cartier-Bresson

Tête à Tete

Walker Evans

Many Are Called

In the book ’many are called’ photographed by walker evans, are photographs of people who were unaware that they were beeing potographed The series of pictures were taken in the subway of new york. The sitters are sitting in the subways given different unposed expression of their inner, personal feelings.(show them as an individium) Through the serie you get a sense of a across section of one moment in history the depression of america as expressed through the people feelings who lived there.

In the book ,’Tete a Tete’ photographed by Henri Cartier-Bresson, are shown famous people who were aware that they were beeing photographed. The series of picture were taken in the homes of the people what is a more formal atmosphare than the subways. Most of the sitter’s work has influenced our time in a spezial way. the obsever is reminded of this history as expressed through the moment as the pitcure was taken and the sitter’s personality itself. Spite of the important history the sitter is shown as an individium supported by the familiar atmosphare, facial expression and body language.Through the serie you get a sense of a section of one moment of personal history but regarded alongside a sense of 50 years history.

In both books the sitters staring at the camera to engage with the sitter’s opposite, people are looking away, people are dreaming, people seems to engaged in lively conversation, people are observed in a pensive mood, people have a similiar air of resignation ....

The people in Walker’s book you can believe that the people present themself. Most of them allow themself to reveal their deep inwards in natrual way and unposed expression. Instead of the people who are shown in Cartier-bresson’s book. you have everytime the impression that the people know they are getting photographed, they try to hold something back what shouldn’t be revealed and they show an expression that they would like to present in a conscious way.

Space Framed Week 11

2010-04-06T15:26:00.001+01:00

Next week, we will be joined by The Interior Prospect for a discussion on European photography, focusing on in particular, the 'Dusseldorf School of Photography'.

We will be looking at the following photographers in detail:
- Bernd & Hilla Becher - Luke & Su
- Andreas Gursky - Orla & Stefan
- Thomas Struth - Brian & Caroline
- Candida Hofer - John & Sarah

In each case, we will be examining how the image works as a photograph and related ideas about reality, objectivity and the role of a photograph as a cultural record.

Some books to look at:
On temporary Reserve:
The Dusseldorf School of Photography - Stefan Gronert
Cruel & Tender - Emma Dexter & Thomas Weski (Ed)
Bernd & Hilla Becher: Life and Work - Susanne Lange
Andreas Gursky - Thomas Weski
Andreas Gursky - Peter Galassi

Architecture Collection:
The Architecture of Absence - Candida Hofer
Basic Forms of Industrial Buildings - Bernd & Hilla Becher
Bernd & Hilla Becher: Life & Work - Susanne Lange
Typologies - Bernd Becher

Interim Review References 09 - Representing Internal Space

2010-03-30T20:03:00.003+01:00

Brian is working on how buildings are represented, and the translation of three-dimensional space into two dimensional image..

Gordon Matta-Clark and his work was mentioned, plus the series 'The Places People Live' by Jonas Bendiksen.

Rene Burri's images of Le Corbusier's work also provide an approach to representing inhabited space.

Le Corbusier's Unite d'Habitation, 1959 - Rene Burri

Interim Review References 08 - Work Spaces

2010-03-30T19:48:00.001+01:00

Su is looking at workspaces, and the dynamics behind how people space and arrange themselves in public. Examining the work of Edward T Hall and his theory of proxemics through the work of Garry Winogrand, he's begun looking at how camera can expose or fabricate spatial relations between people, those around them and their environment.

Garry Winogrand - From Arrivals and Departures

- Massimo Vitali's photographs of people at leisure in public spaces also explores this subject.

Picnic Alle - Massimo Vitali

Piombino Jump - Massimo Vitali

Viareggio Polyptych (B) - Massimo Vitali

Interim Review References 07 - Representation of Landscape - The West

2010-03-30T19:16:00.000+01:00

Orla's project is heading in an interesting direction...

Comparing Timothy O'Sullivan's photographs taken of the American West for the US Survey Project 'Geological Exploration of the Fortieth Parallel' in the late 1860s

with

photographs of the Irish West taken as postcards in the Eason Collection of the National Library of Ireland, looking at the visual language, technological restraints and how these shaped the perception of the landscape...

Ambulance and photographic Wagon, Carson Desert, Nevada, 1867 - Timothy O Sullivan

A fuschia hedge near clifden, Eason Postcard Collection, National Library 1900-1940

Interim Review References 06 - Representation of the Man-Altered Landscape

2010-03-30T16:16:00.002+01:00

There were a few references in relation to Luke's project - which touches on how man affects the landscape, and how this is portrayed.

- Bill Owens series 'Suburbia'

Untitled, from the series 'Suburbia', 1972

Untitled, from the series 'Suburbia', 1972

-Ed Ruscha's series '34 parking lots in Los Angeles'

- From the discussion, a study into Ansel Adams & Robert Adams with an emphasis on continuities rather than contradictions in their bodies of work might prove the most interesting direction to go in.

Interim Review References 05- Paul Graham

2010-03-30T15:46:00.002+01:00

Paul Graham's images from the series 'Beyond Caring' were mentioned in relation to Stefan's project.
They were taken with a hidden camera in dole offices in 80s England and are similar to Evans' subway images in catching the subjects unguarded, unaware and within a specific built environment.

Interim Review References 04 - Oliver Boberg

2010-03-30T14:48:00.002+01:00

Oliver Boberg was mentioned in relation to Sarah's project.
His work touches on similar themes of the image, illusion & space as Carl Zimmerman, who had been the main point of reference in the project.

Brucke/Bridge

seite IV/page IV

Interim Review References 03

2010-03-30T14:30:00.001+01:00

Alfred Hitchcock's Rear window came up in relation to Caroline's project, particularly the opening few minutes. (attached below in bad quality)

References were also made to
-the upper floor of John Gerrard's exhibition in the Gallery of Photography in 2003(a viewing platform presented views onto a landscape)
-Canaletto's images of Venice
-Bosselmann's book - Representation of Places

Interim Review References 02 - Helen Levitt

2010-03-30T14:11:00.002+01:00

Exploring Helen Levitt's later work in colour in relation to her earlier work in black and white on the streets of New York may be a good direction for John's project. She captures the city as habitat, its stoops, streets and steps appropriated with a domestic and familiar ease by its inhabitants.

Interview with Helen Levitt here

Interim Review References 01

2010-03-30T13:57:00.002+01:00

Thank you to Paul Tierney, Ros Kavanagh & Gul Kacmaz Erk for a good series of discussions yesterday..We hope to invite them back again for our exhibition of work later in the semester.
Through the discussions, some really interesting references came up, in relation to each of the 8 assignments. I'm going to post them up in separate posts to follow this one.

Below are some books references sent to us by Paul after the session:
Photographs and Photography in Irish Local History - Liam Kelly
Reconstructing Space: Architecture in Recent German Photography - Gerda Breuer, Rolf Sachsse, Neil Leach and Hubertus von Amelunxen
Building with Light - An International History of Architectural Photography - Robert Elwall
Representation of Places: Reality and Realism in city Design - Peter Bosselmann

Also, some films mentioned by Gul & Ros:
The Belly of an Architect (1987) by Peter Greenway
Things to Come (1936) by directed by William Cameron Menzies and written by HG Wells
Rear Window (1954) by Alfred Hitchcock

2010-03-27T14:21:00.002Z

Just a note on what I'm looking at for the assignment...

I am interested in the photography of windows, and how it can be used as a means to realistically describe our perception of a space. I was looking at 'Picture Windows' , a series of photographs by John Pfahl, and how each window space is captured in it's individual photograph and translated differently within its series

Space Framed - Interim Review 29 March

2010-03-26T13:09:00.000Z

On Monday 29 March, we will review the work on the assignment to date with Paul Tierney & Ros Kavanagh at 11am.
Each student has 5 minutes, and should bring books, pictures etc to explain their assignment topic.
Try to address these questions
- What's your subject matter?
- What are you trying to find out?
- How are you trying to find this out?
- How will you know when you have found this out?

Space Framed - Week 7

2010-03-26T13:04:00.001Z

Fiona Hackett joined us for a discussion on photographic practice-based research in relation to her on-going work in California, entitled Terra Incognita.
Fiona elaborated on photography and its relation to a mapping/ordering of the world, describing how we can 'never knowingly know anywhere', but how we can use photography to add layers of knowledge to our understanding of the world
This, combined with Hugh's analysis of how he compiled a research paper, relating to the Swarkowski's photographs of Louis Sullivan's work formed an interesting discussion, and one that will inform the work on the assignment over the coming weeks.
Fiona also referred to Taryn Simon, and her book 'An American History of the Hidden and Unfamiliar'
Simon photographed sites and sights in America that underlie the society there, but are unknown, undiscussed and sometimes undisclosed to create this series of images.

White Tiger (Kenny)Selective Inbreeding, Turpentine Creek Wildlife Refuge and Foundation, Eureka Springs, Arkansas

Cryopreservation Unit, Cryonics Institute, Clinton Township, Michigan

Transatlantic Submarine Cables Reaching Land, VSNL International, Avon, N.

Simon discusses this work here:

2010-03-24T11:53:00.008Z

Island of silence

Donata, Wender

published 2006

The fact i am attracted to and identify with many of Wenders photographs rests to a large extent upon shared feeling that we are looking at ourselves in particular moments of inwardness and reflection.

Wenders photographs capture sitters who are generally fully aware of their own presence or lost in their own thoughts. The potographs show diferent age of people in a familiar subject matter. Each of them are reflected through windows, mirrors, images, water and shadows which implies their figurative meaning.

In addition the photographs seem to exist outside a time because of the reduction of black and white and expressive elements.

All these components leads us in the sitters moment of withdrawal which let us think about ourselve in the past, present and future as well.

All the picture seen together create a meaning simply through their recurrence.

Wenders photographs reminds me of the book from walker evans, it is called "the americians". I could try to relate it to them?!

Space Framed - Assignment

2010-03-11T14:19:00.002Z

Helene Binet - The Shadow Exhibition - Two Photographic Essays

Series/Serial Imagery

'The series is what gives the individual photograph its interest, ...tiny details within them become very interesting'

-Gohlke on Ed Ruscha in New Topographics

'All contempoarary usage of Serial Imagery, whether in painting or sculpture, is without either first of last members. Obciously, at one point there had to be a beginning – the first painting of sculpture made – but its identity becomes subsumed within the whole, within the lacro structure. The same principle applies to the last memeber. At any given point in time one work in a series stands last in order of execution, but its sequential identity isirrelevant and in fact is lost immiediately on the work's completiion. The basic structure of Serial Imagery, then, can be likened to a pack of cards, in which every card is the Ace of Spades; all cards are of equal value and all imprinted with the same emblem, which may or may not vary in size, colour or position'

- John Coplans in Catalog – Serial Imagery – Coplans, John (Pasadena, CA: Pasadena Art Museum and the Art Alliance 1968)

Developing our discussions on photographic series, produce/curate/analyse a photographic series.

Timeline:

Thurs 18 March: Post your intention for the project to the blog

Mon 22 March: Space Framed - discussion with Fiona Hackett plus practical demonstration, co-inciding with assignment tutorials

Mon 29 March: Review with Paul Tierney & Ros Kavanagh

Mon 12 April: Presentation of work to 'Interior Prospect' Seminar

Mon 26 April: Completion of Assignment/Preparation for exhibition.