Referral: Cityscape

For my cityscape referral I had the initial idea of shooting a journey between King's Cross and Camden Town through the canals at night, a journey I had previously made with two of my friends. I found the canal very interesting, especially the underside of the bridges we pasted, every single one is different. They each have a different feeling to them, some feel darker than others, some had murals, some had graffiti, some had collages, some had a blue neon light, etc.


 I took this idea along to my tutorial, along with several artists I wanted to research for this idea, as I hadn't had a chance to do it properly. These included: Brassai's series "Paris After Dark"; Dan Holdsworth for his images involving night photography and different ways of using artificial light, Alan Delaney's series "London After Dark" as the place I wanted to shoot was London at night and finally Naoya Hatakeyama and his series "Underground/River" really had me intrigued. Steffi, at my tutorial then told several artists I could look at to help me with this idea. In specific she told me to have a look Francis Alÿs, Hamish Fulton and Richard Long to really think of the idea of a journey. She told me that just shooting the underside of the bridges would not reflect the idea I wanted to transmit and that I should think of something else.


I researched these photographer as well as David Hockney. I came to the conclusion that in the time I had to go to London and explore, then go back and shoot I did not think I would be able to transmit the idea of a journey and instead would look like random shots. I then decided to look at the idea of mass consumerism that cities have taken, where everything is mass produced. I find it hard to find a shop that is not a franchise, or a shop the just sells branded products. Everybody looks for the cheaper products to live their life, this in turn makes products look worse by even making the wrapping cheaper making the over all product look like plastic. This has also started to transmit into arquitecture, new hotels and buildings don't use materials such as brick anymore they use a metal that looks like plastic. The sun reflects weirdly off it and paint makes it worse.


For this project I researched three artists: Olivo Barbieri, Thomas Struth and Gabrielle Basilico. I was inspired by the work of Olivo Barbieri, especially by his capability to transform the city and the perception we have for it. Gabriele Basilico and his great ability to let the building speaking about a deep human condition, without the presence of any human figure in his images.

Gabriele Basilico is an arquitectual photographer. He is among the leading international photographers, after studying architecture profession as a photographer began devoting himself to landscape photography, and more particularly to architectural photography.

He works mostly with view camera and black and white film. His work in Beirut, photographed after the war, is especially celebrated. This quote, translated from italian, speaks about his work: 

"With his images, the controlled, conscious metaphysical tension, he has effectively worked for in recent years, the post modern taste, visually noting someforgotten industrial architecture and suburban, revalued as archaeological and fastened with a heavy chiaroscuro and a perspective, and fleeting gated,sophisticated style in the '30s ". I particularly looked at his cityscapes, were he focuses on mundane buildings, places that can be found anywhere and don't have any significant fame or history, and shoots them in a way that highlights them and makes them look like a great and important arquitectonic pieces of the century. The style of taking the photograph from below, in my images, came mainly from Basilico. 

I also used Thomas Struth as an influence because of his work ,Struth states that he seeks to record the face of urban space, seeing the architectural environment as a site where a community expresses it history and identity which was something that I was also keen to express in my work. This relates to my idea that nowadays people want to spend less, making everything look cheap.

I traveled to London to find some of these buildings and found them straight away, even before I stepped off the train, as to go to Victoria you go straight past a selection of new buildings in Chelsea that had differente designs. When I got off the train I turned back on myself and walked towards the direction of the buildings. On the way I made another discovery, Victoria's Bus Station is a building exterior is made out of metal girders and glass windows, giving it a very industrial look, a basis of consumerism. I then continued to the buildings I had seen on the train and took a few photos on my digital camera as test shots to see how they would look.
I then went back on Wednesday 29th of February with a Bronica SQ-B. I went back to places I had been before but got kicked out from one place by a security guard, saying I could not take pictures. The day was overcast that made the light quite neutral helping me show the plasticity of the buildings.