Urban landscapes have a language of their own. Compared to natural landscapes, they feel much harder to read, as it were, full of shapes and signs, overloaded with information.
Signs
The convenient thing about urban environments is that there is an almost overabundance of words in them. From road signs, posters, to shopfronts, there's a lot of information to process in a city. I started out by sorting through some older photos, as a starting point for myself, finding some that fit the criteria, and editing them to focus more on the text within them.
With these photos, however, I found that they didn't feel like they were focused enough on the text, even through editing (given the the intent of them wasn't directly to focus on the text). It also showed that a different approach would likely work better, so I resolved to go with a more objective approach to photographing signs. In this way, I wanted to document them all in similar ways, front-on and central to the frame.
I used a trip to Cardiff as an opportunity to focus on photos of signs, and focusing on making more objective photos of the signs.
I much preferred these photos over the initial images, as they shared similar lighting (utilising overcast weather to this end), felt less busy and more focused on the text, and given the intent to make the text the dominant feature of the image I feel this was successful.. Of the photos, I felt that the images of street signs were the most effective for this project as they have (pretty much) the same design (Black text and border, White background), the only key difference being the location of the sign, which adds an interesting element to the photos. |
I went out in search of street signs in my local area, with the main intention to document as many as I could find, in an objective manner, and keep the photos visually similar. In this process I found myself being influenced by the work of Bernd and Hilla Becher, in that I was trying to document each sign in the same way. I took two photos of each sign, one portrait, one landscape, initially with the intent of displaying both photographs together. However I came to the conclusion that I should display each set of photos separately, in two grids (one portrait grid, one landscape grid), presented next to eachother.
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I experimented with typologies for these photos, again emulating Bernd and Hilla Becher, and their style of presenting. I made one in colour and one in black and white, to compare and see which one would be more effective for presenting the photos, resolving to black and white to present them. As a basic method of presenting I think the typology works quite well, particularly for the signs, as it allows the viewer to see each one, and compare them.
Skyscrapers
Skyscrapers are interesting to take pictures of. Different shapes and sizes jutting into the sky, mirroring shades of blue. Landmarks of Urban progress and its identity.
One of the main challenges with taking photos of skyscrapers is trying to get a sense of scale inside the photographs. Part of what makes them so interesting is their great height. I set out with two methods of trying to give a sense of scale to these buildings mind:
- Taking a picture from the base of the building
- Using other buildings in the frame
Through experimenting I worked out that using reflections on the buildings can also assist in giving the viewer a sense of their scale, providing a comparison to other buildings, and in some cases blending them with the sky around them.
What I wanted to achieve with these works is better integration of words and text, and try and achieve something that didn't just involve the photos accompanied by the text, but brought them together in a more meaningful way.
I looked at some of the work of Edward Ruscha, in particular the piece "Pay Nothing Until April", which depicts a typical/imagined/idealistic mountain scene, with the seemingly unrelated phrase "Pay Nothing Until April" plastered evenly across it. In his words: ‘They’re ideas of mountains, picturing some kind of unobtainable bliss or glory … tall, dangerous and beautiful’.
Part of the appeal of this image to me is the combination of a typically beautiful landscape, and the boring, almost monotonous, phrase. |
My first attempt at replicating this style was relatively successful, but the text held less significance to the image than I would have preferred (stemming from the fact that I had no idea what to write over the photo), though this made it more similar to the original work.
I then thought of using words relating to/describing the photo over the top of the photos, as a way of combining more thoughtful writings, but stripping them down to a far more objective form. Taking that idea a little further, I thought about using a descriptive or more thought-provoking phrase in front of the image, in order to meaningfully combine the image with text, while still keeping it objective but not overcrowding the picture. |