Mathew Merrett
Adam Burton
Ronya Galka
Bas Losekoot
Bas Losekoot is a dutch born artist and photographer who specialises in documentary photography. His work often contains themes of the socio-cultural issues within cities around the world. His works have taken place in cities such as New York City, Sao Paolo and Istanbul. His "Urban Millennium" project is one I have particularly focused on, as it concerns the growth of density in the world's most crowded cities. I wanted to look at Losekoot in more depth as his topic is very close to mine; he looks at the effects of urbanisation and the lifestyles, which is something a large amount of my project focuses on. Also, his style of documentary photography varies to most documentary photographers, as it is common to shoot in black and white in order to not distract the viewer from the subject matter; Losekoot goes a different way, shooting in very saturated and high contrast colours. This is something I will attempt throughout my project, which I feel will create a variation and contrast to the some of the grittier black and white images I will feature in my series.
This Photo appears to have been taken from behind a window with an advert printed onto it. Losekoot has focused the camera sharply on the background, leaving the glass in the foreground out of focus. The advert being out of focus and the buildings being in focus could be attempting to express a dislike for the increasingly commercial nature of urban environments, suggesting that the main focus should be on the sights of the city such as buildings rather than advertising products. Also, the architecture of the buildings suggests that the location is historic and has been there for a long time, which creates a contrast to the advert, which is a sign of modernity. The presence of the two together suggests that modern ideas of commercialism and consumer lifestyles are starting to become dominant within urban locations. The image also creates a suggestion that consumerism is a large part of urban life, as the advert takes up a large amount of the frame; despite not being in focus. This image has inspired me to focus parts of my shoots on the presence of advertising and commercialism, which is further shown in my physical experiments.
This was likely a candid photo, meaning the subject was not positioned there by the Photographer but happened to be in that position when the photo was taken, as this is often the nature of documentary street photography. Losekoot used the rule of thirds composition rule to capture this image, taking the image as the woman was positioned in the focus point to the left, meaning your eyes are immediately drawn to her. The woman is wearing fairly smart clothes, suggesting that she is likely from a middle class background. The architecture also suggests that the area this was taken in is fairly wealthy too. This is clearly contrasted by the graffiti shown in the foreground, which is often a sign of deprivation and poverty. The presence of the graffiti could suggest that the working classes are trying to sabotage the richer areas, as they feel that they didn't get the same opportunities. Also, the graffiti present is not images, but text in the form of tags. The presence of these tags could represent that some of the people in the working classes have created their own status as they feel the class system has failed in giving them status. The influence of this can be seen in my project, as I have captured both the wealthy and poor sides of urban life.
