An Investigation into Urbanisation and Urban development through the medium of Photography

An Investigation into Urbanisation and Urban development through the medium of Photography

Introduction

This project is an investigation into how Urbanisation and urban development has affected different areas and the people that live in them. I am very interested in how people live the their life in urbanised areas versus how It’s definitely a very important topic to study. While Urbanisation in the UK started as early as the 18^th century, it has become increasingly prevalent in today’s society, with the speed of urbanisation increasing. In 2008, for the first time in all of History, more people lived in urban areas than in rural areas. By 2030, the UN estimated that 4.9 Billion people would be living in urban areas. With the topic of Urbanisation, you can also look at the way urban development forces people to change their lifestyle; moving from a rural to an urban area would mean a change from a lifestyle of production to a lifestyle of consumption. You are able to capture a range of photographic techniques within this topic; for example, you may use documentary style street photography when showing the lifestyle of the people in urban areas. You may also use landscape photography to capture areas that have not been developed upon.

History of Photography

The early developments of the actual printing of an image began in the 1800s. A key event was Niepce’s experiments with light sensitive materials to produce printed images in 1816. He dissolved the chemical Bitumen of Judea into a solvent and coated the mixture onto a pewter place. He then exposed this to a camera obscura and washing it in lavender oil, which created a printed image. This is considered to be one of the first photographs ever produced. FoxTalbot expanded on this in 1834, who invented the salted paper and calotype processes, which formed a light sensitive compound. This became the basis for modern printed photography as we know it, as he was able to stabilise the exposure of the image by adding a stabilising compound. The first commercial photographic process was invented 1839 by Thomas Daguerre. He use copper plates coated in silver iodide to create images that came out as positives. The use of Mercury Vapour meant that photographs could be produced within twenty or thirty minutes. This was one of the key things that made Photography and Photograph development available to a more general audience. During the mid 1800s, Photography began to take off commercially, however, Photographers were limited in the technology they had available to use.  They were limiting to using very large format cameras and had to take images using very long exposures. For example, Niepce’s first photograph had an extremely long exposure; likely in excess of 5 seconds.Roger Fenton was a popular photographer of the time period, and was limited to photographing still objects, including people in a stationary pose, as well as photographing landscapes. Large format cameras are still used by many photographers today, such as Alec Soth. It wasn’t until 1935 that Kodak developed the first commercial process in colour photography. It bared similarities to Fox talbot’s process, however, Kodak’s technique involved three layers of emulsion of light sensitive materials, with there being each being sensitive to one of the colours of red, green and blue. While many photographers during this time period where sceptical of the use of colour, such as Ansel Adams, who was known for his black and white landscapes, there were also some who saw the potential in colour film. An example would be Ferenc Berko, who was known for his colour documentary photography and was immediately a fan of colour film. The next development in Photography came with the introduction of the digital camera, of which the first true development was in 1988; the Fuji DS-P1 was the first fully digital camera to capture a digitalised file of a photo. It was in 1990 that the first digital camera was released to a consumer market, which was the Logitech Fotoman, which could store images digitally to be moved to a computer. My project can be fit into the categories of documentary photography, street photography and urban photography. The earliest development into street photography could be Thomas Daguerre’s “Boulevard Du Temple”, which depicts a street from a high up point. This image is taken more in a landscape style rather than a documentary style, therefore is different to what I hope to achieve from this project. An early development of street photography in a documentary sense would be Paul Martin’s 1893 works. They are candid photographs capturing people’s movements and interactions in the streets of London. A 20^th century example of an urban documentary photographer would be Henri Cartier-Bresson, who was known for his use of a Leica camera with a 50mm lens, and his idea of street photography being about capturing the “decisive moment”, which is something I draw inspiration from. He stated that the decisive moment was about capturing a moment in time that would define an event. Within the digital era, there have been some advancements within the mediums of street and documentary photography. One influential modern photographer within documentary and street photography is Eric Kim. He is a digital Photographer that is known for his use digital technology and techniques in his work. Many of his documentary pieces feature techniques such as multiple exposure and in some cases, VFX have been added to the photographs.

Photographer research

My Photographer Research has a strong influence on how I decided to shape this project. I have researched a range of photographers, including street photographers, documentary photographers and landscape photographers, all of which I will try to factor into my shoots at some point. One of my research subjects is Bas Losekoot, who is a Dutch Photographer and artist. His work features a range of styles, though I will be focusing on his documentary works.

This image has been taken in a very urban area within São Paul, Brazil. The background is a brown wall, which creates a contrast to the architecture can represent earth and this is a heavily urban area. There is a tree in the foreground, which further creates contrast to the architecture of the urban area as this is a representation of nature. On the wall in the background, there are some graffiti tags, which are considered to be a symbol of the lower classes. This is clearly contrasted by the subjects of the image, which have been framed using the rule of thirds composition rule. They are two white men wearing suits, which means they are likely middle class and are reasonably wealthy, whereas graffiti is considered a symbol of the poor and deprived. You can also gain a political message from this image; graffiti often holds a revolutionary or anti-establishment message, and in this image is also an example of what would be considered the "establishment", shown with the two men in suits.

 This was taken in the Wall Street Financial district of New York City, in which many of America's Financial stocks are held. The image shows a man in a business suit walking along a street. He is likely a middle class stock broker judging by his clothing and the location of the photograph. He appears to be walking fast, as his stride is fairly large and the hand that is holding the white paper bag is blurred. This suggests that he is in a rush, and that he leads a busy life within the urban area as an elite. Behind him is a large truck with an advertisement for Bud Light beer on it, which reminds us that urban life involves heavy consumerism, to the point where advertising and consumer products are unavoidable.The lighting of this image further shows a class contrast within an urban environment. In the bright, well lit section is the businessman, which suggests that he is the minority and got lucky, whereas there are a few people that are in the background section that is obscured by shadows, suggesting they are the working class 99% and that they have not had the luck and success of the man in the foreground.

Eadward Muybridge was an English Photographer who was alive and operated during the 1800s. He began his career as a photographer in 1861. He is known for both his landscape images, as well as his images capturing the movement of animals, which were some of the earliest examples of capturing motion in a sequence in photography.

 This image is entitled Man/Horse (Vehicle). To create these images, he often set up several cameras on what was an early version of the remote shutter, which he had developed. This image shows twenty different phases in a show jumper's process of jumping over a hurdle on a horse. This was likely taken using a fast shutter speed, as the movement of the horse has minimal motion blur. Due to the use of black and white film, the singular images that make up this image as very tonally dark, which contrasts to the subject matter of a horse jumping. This was an early development into motion photography, which I intend to capture using techniques such as blur and multiple exposures. There has been a large range of movement throughout the time these image has been taken. The horse he's riding is white, which creates connotations of purity, contrasting the the rest of the image which consists of dark tones.

This Photo is similar in its process to the previous image. It was taken somewhere between 1883-1886 and was printed in 1887 by the Photo-Gravure company. It shows a lion walking across its cage; there is only a small range of movement shown in the photo as the lion is only captured walking a few feet throughout the time the Muybridge was photographing it. This also shows less stages of movement than in the previous image, as this image is only made up of six smaller images rather than
20. As a result, the viewer of the photograph feels much more enclosed, which I feel may be intentional as the lion is enclosed in the cage and this format will make the viewer empathise with it. This image also contains a lot of dark tones, which create a very dark mood, therefore painting a negative light on animals being displayed in cages in the zoo. The dark tones, and therefore the mood of the photo, are furthered by the use of a thick black border around the whole photo and between each individual frame in the lion's movement.

My Photographers research links greatly to the images I have taken. My shoots have been mainly focussed on Urban areas, although my first two animation shoots were shot in rural areas, which I chose to show some contrast between rural and urban areas.

This is one of my animations that I made from my second shoot, in which I shot in Devon. The idea with this shoot was to show a contrast between rural environments and urban environments. I was inspired by Eadweard Muybridge with this shoot, as I used similar concepts in capturing different stages of movements. His work involved setting up several cameras on tripods in a location where a movement would be happening. One of his more famous works was the image of the horse in motion, in which he set up triggers for each camera shutter using string, meaning they would be each set off as the horse passed. His work links the technique of sequencing, whereas mine is stop motion animation. However, my technique definitely had links to his, despite using only one camera. I mounted my camera on a barrier of a moving boat, setting it on to continual shoot mode then holding the shutter down as the boat moves, which displays the movement the boat is making. It is similar to Muybridge's work in that I captured a large range of movement while having my camera on a mount, which in my case was a railing as I didn't have a tripod to hand. However, I have slightly differed from Muybridge's work in that I have chosen a video format, and shot my shoot from a few different locations to make my final result. While the technique is different in that it involves one camera on a continual shoot mode while capturing my movement, and that it incorporates animation, which would have been unavailable to him, conceptually, my work bears similarities. I decided that my concept for this shoot was capturing a wide range of movement with as little time, which was a similar concept to Muybridge's Horse image, which captured a horse moving at a very high speed within only a few frames.
  
Here is one of my images from my fourth shoot, which was a street photography based shoot in Harlow Town. This shoot was a joint shoot, in which I shot both motion blur street photographs as well a few different periods of continual shoot shots which I hope to make into another stop motion animation. This shoot was inspired by Dutch documentary photographer Bas Losekoot, who shoots in very saturated colours. My image was originally overexposed and the colours were more muted, so I saturated the colours more in photoshop and also fixed the exposure, in an attempt to create work that bears similarities to Losekoot. There are definitely large sections within this photo in which there are saturated colours; the shop fronts show some saturated shades of red and blue, however, there are some muted shades of red and yellow on the tiles on the floor that create contrast to the saturated colours that are shown in the shop fronts. Another way I drew inspiration from Bas Losekoot is by subject matter. My subject matter was urban life, similar to a lot of his work; I did my shoot in a very urbanised location, in which there were a lot of people. I made sure that there was a clear main subject of my photo, which are the people in the foreground. I tried to create an image which would make a viewer draw connotations, which is definitely something you can easily do with Losekoot's documentary work. I feel that from mine, despite the subjects being blurred, you can guess that they are in a hurry due to them moving at a fast pace. You can also guess that they are all probably on their own as none of them are close together, and one of them in walking a different way to the others.

I feel that urban and documentary photography could definitely develop in the near future due to fast advancing technology. One of these advancements is the increasing technical ability of the compact digital camera; Olympus' O-MD line of cameras have a built in 12-50mm (24-100mm equivalent) lens, which is suitable for a wide range of settings, including wide angle urban landscapes and capturing subjects from a distance. This will mean that more people will be able to capture urban and street photographs with people as subjects without the fear of having to get close up to people. Also, the world of science has been influencing photographic technology in recent years. Scientists have recently discovered a way for an ordinary camera to be able to capture three dimensional images. The technology for this is present in most digital cameras; the image stabilisation can be use to extract depth of field information to create a 3D image. This could definitely be used in urban photography, both in a landscape and documentary setting, as it could create a sense of intense depth that would be impossible with a two dimensional image. This depth could definitely be used to make urban photography images feel more real and immerse the viewer in the world the image captures. Another technique that could be used more in the future of Urban photography is HDR (High Dynamic Range). HDR involves capturing a very wide range of tones in your image by capturing three images, with one being underexposed and one being overexposed, and superimposing them together. This is something that will likely be increasingly used in urban photography as it can be used to create a wider tonal range, which is particularly useful for capturing the details of urban decay and the neat and clean nature of modern urban architecture.

In conclusion, I am still intending on creating a short video presenting my work, however, I am focusing less on animation than originally intended. Since I have started my project, I realised that I preferred to focus on Urban environments rather than mixing my project between rural and urban environments to show contrast, therefore since my first two shoots, I have been shooting only in urban areas. I also originally intended to focus on documentary style photography, however, I have now expanded to look at a wider range of photographic styles, including architectural photography and urban landscapes. My Photographers research has also impacted the variety of styles I am shooting and editing in throughout the project. I originally intended to mostly stick to black and white when shooting in order for the project to have a uniform theme and aesthetic. However, throughout my project, due to the influence of my research, I explored a variety of visual styles. For example, Some of my shoots I edited to make the colours more saturated and high contrast, giving the images a happier mood, which was inspired by Bas Losekoot, a documentary photographer from my research whose images are very saturated and high contrast. I also explored more editing techniques than I had originally planned, such as tilt shift Photoshop techniques to make images of people taken from a high place look like miniature models. A number of technological enhancements have influenced my project so far. One would be modern digital cameras; for example, I was able to use auto-bracketing to automatically over or under expose my images by two steps, which allowed for me to create HDR images in Photoshop with ease. Also, techniques such as tilt shift, which I would have been unable to do due to the cost of equipment, have been possible for me to access due to programs such as Photoshop. For the remainder of my investigative study, I hope to create two more shoots that link closely to my previous shoots. I plan to revisit my architecture shoot at night, in order to create contrast between different urban locations at different times of day. I also plan to create another stop motion animation, as well as to shoot in a documentary style again, as I feel that my work lacks documentary as a series.