Research

After making the decision to further develop exercise 4.2 on artificial light for my assignment, I have decided to focus solely on the use of artificial light at night time with my subject being “Harbour life by Night”. You can see my initial thoughts here and what helped me to make my decision.

Location Research

Firstly, I decided to undertake my assignment four at Fowey harbour after experimenting with exercise 4.2 at Charlestown harbour where the artificial was minimal due to it being out of peak season. Fowey harbour has been an international trading port since the medieval times and is still a working port these days and holds masses of history within it. In 1347 Fowey harbour provided the ships to London to defend Calais and was one of the departure points for D-day landings in 1944, there looks to be an interesting book called “Fowey at war” by Paul Richards and Derek Reynolds which, is now displayed/available in the museum in Fowey. As well as having a huge importance to our servicemen and women Fowey harbour was also a working mineral port as well as shipping tin, copper and now china clay (Fowey Heritage ND). In 1989 around 1.8million tonnes of china clay passed through which, made it one of the biggest ports in the UK however, now it is estimated around 750,000 tonnes pass through annually due to the reconstruction of Imerys minerals (Major Hicks, B ND. In more recent times Fowey is well known for holding a Fowey regatta week (held every August) as part of a British Sailing event. This includes lots of fun activities for the children, pasty eating competitions, music and other fun events to cater for everyone not just water lovers(Smith, S 2018).

My main inspiration on artificial light comes from Rut Blees Luxemburg, a German photographer born in 1967 in Germany but now living in London. I researched her work for the exercise 4.2 which you can see here. Luxemburg s famous for taking photos at night time and working only with the available light from the city, she also works with long exposures to allow more light into the camera (Archer, M 2003). The image below is of In Deeper – this image was taken when Luxemburg was watching the tide over several hours and noticed that the steps going into the Thames are visible twice a day when only the tide allows thus resulting in muddy footprints becoming noticeable (Campany, D 1999). Luxemburg’s work helped me with choosing my subject for my assignment of ‘Harbour life by night’ as I liked the way she explored the use of artificial light and the reflections to captured.Luxemburg began taking night images of London when she moved there around nine years ago and is using her image to tell the story of decay and regeneration of the city. Luxemburg said in an interview with David Campany in 1999 that she cannot photograph in a place where she has no relation or feelings, I can relate to this and feel that the more you know the location the more intimate the images are (Campany, D 1999).

Jan Staller:

Above is an interesting video of Jan Staller talking in a lecture at Bards College at Simon’s Rock in 2017 about his work and how he processes his image. I really enjoyed this video and felt it allowed me to understand and evolve further information on his work.

Jan Staller is an American photographer who photographs urban landscapes and spent many years focusing on only using existing light sources. He says he was attracted to the mix of artificial light at night time and seeing how they react to different weathers (Bards college 2017). As Prime, R (2003) explains, Staller likes to photograph in remote spots and tends to capture objects that he so happens to come across such as recycled objects. In 1976 Staller produced a photographic book called Frontier New York where he produced a variety of twilight photos of Manhattan (Artspace ND). I have specifically chosen this image from his collection as I like the depth of field which leads to a spotlight, in my interpretation this made it seem like someone was coming to investigate a derelict space. I also like the reflection and the way the light beams through under the construction building. Staller mostly photographs unfinished buildings, on going construction areas and graveyard patterns. He later on developed the technique of taking a stadium lighting set up with him in the back of his car and using this to illuminate what he wanted to photograph.

Brassai:

‘I don’t invent anything. I imagine everything…Most of the time, I was inspired by my everyday life. I believe it is the most sincere and humble depiction of reality, of the most trivial, that leads to the fantastic.’ (The Art Story 2018).

Brassai is a French – Hungarian photographer born in1899 and served in the military until the first world war, he was also one of many Hungarian artists that thrived in Paris throughout both of the Wars. Henry Miller an American writer claimed that Brassai was the eyes of Paris, this came from the project Paris by Night which he produced in 1933. A series of photographs where he captured the good and bad side of Paris. He photographed the Operas, the Eiffel Tower and the Can Can girls but he also captured the elderly and homeless people, people digging for food from bins (France, Today 2012). I found Brassai’s work interesting because in the Paris By Night series in that he uses a variety of artificial light such as; gas lamps, sparks from a workmans grinder and burning buildings. Paul Morand says a quote in Thorstensson, T (2016) article which explains Brassai night photography well: Night is not the negative of day; black surfaces and white are not merely transposed, as on a photographic plate, but another picture altogether emerges at nightfall. At that hour a twilight world comes into being, a world of shifting forms, of false perspectives, phantom planes. There is something eerie, even disconcerting, about the process. I researched Brassai as part of my 4.2 exercise which, you can see here as part of the languages of light coursework.

Todd Hido:

Todd Hido is an American photographer born in 1968 who photographs suburban landscapes focusing on quality of natural and artificial light. Hido takes these images when he is on long drives alone and takes them in an indirected way, it has become familiar that his images never include human figures as he likes to leave his images like an empty shell, so you can fill in the blanks with your own imagination or memories (Kraft, C 2018). Although, Hido’s most recent work has not been of his usual lit up empty houses but instead he visited places that he had never been before and he shot the series called “Bright black world”. This is more of a project that is capturing nature most importantly, the climate change (Grieves, M 2019). Hido produces his images by editing the negatives together then tweaking them until he gets the photo he wants (Artsynet ND). His work is that similar of Bill Schwab’s work which, you can see below.

Bill Schwab:

Bill Schwab is an American photographer and publisher who was born in 1959 and takes photos of urban and natural landscapes. He mostly works in quite difficult conditions; appearing foggy and miserable. Schwab is known for only editing monochrome images. An example which inspired my assignment is the image below taken in Iceland called Late February Thaw (Frazer, A 2007). In my opinion the reflection is a focal point of the image and adds a scary/eerie mood to the image. One of the projects that Schwab has worked on is called ‘where we use to live’, images taken in the night of around Detroit. The message he wanted to get across was to portray Detroit in lights that not everyone gets to see, these places are now in habited. As the viewpoint art gallery (ND) claims “It’s a story about the dignity of human works, not just the fragility of our civilization, but humanity’s stubborn durability as well”.

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