Contextual Study

Throughout this year in my photography i have enjoyed exploring, photographing and documenting places, spaces and objects along the theme of obselesence. Following my theme during this year has really made me think about how objects and places become unwanted or abandoned and whether they are ever entirely obselete.

Over the past year i feel i have really developed as a photographer and have a much greater knowladge of the subject. I feel my ability to analyse images and their contect has impoved alot and so has my confidence in creating and taking images.

As my project developed over this year i found alot of my work taking on a distinct style that can be described as 'Deadpan Photography' and i have enjoyed taking photos and exploring this style over my A2 course.

Exhibition - Video

The other half of the room had a projector which showed another part of my final piece, a short film on the buildings we had visited.

I also wanted this video to give the audience an insight into what we had felt whilst exploring in out project so i tried to choose music and edit the video to suit this: With the intro having an erie feel to it, then slow panning and still shots showing the buildings and environments and some showing how we moved around them. I wanted to show how empty and still these environments felt. Towards the end the pace of the video picks up and there is alot more movement and tension in the images, as there where quite a few tense and exiting moments when looking round places we knew we weren't supposed to be.

The video was projected onto a wall and the audience had a seating area from which they could watch it. I felt if the video where left on loop and constantly playing it would not have the impact i wanted it to have on the audience, so i added a frame at the start of the film that would play for 10 minutes before the film started meaning the video would play at intervals when left on a loop. The blank screen was accompanied by an audio that a classmate had record of the sounds inside the buildings, creating more of an atmosphere inside the exhibition.

Exhibition - My Part

As a class we worked together to decide a good layout for the exhibition and decided to split the room we where using in two by arranging our display boards in a rough circle. this would also give the exhibition a flow to it as people would enter and view the exhibition moving around the circle.

As well as we having our display boards we wanted to create an atmosphere inside the exhibition that the people visited felt when entering. we chose to do this by creating an entrance walkway for people to come through, which i played a key part in creating.

The aim of the entrance was to give the people entering the exhibition try and give the people entering the exhibition an insight into what it was like exploring these buildings.

We made an enclosed passageway that was dimly lit and cut out a board to create an obstacle for the viewer to have to step over.

As a class we had found alot of items that where still left in the buildings, we had decided to use them for our exhibition. I used some of these and placed them in similarly or where you might expect to find them in a building inside the walkway installation. I also put wallpaper over all the board so it would feel more like a room, I wanted it to look as similar to the run down buildings we had been into so I tore away at the wall paper and spray painted words that we had seen spray painted around other buildings.

I had the idea of making an entrance sign to the exhibition with letters from other signs that we had found. I put this above the entrance viewers had to step through.

One of my classmates connected a web cam of the exhibition that was hidden inside a cctv camera with a screen in the walkway which gave the feel that people entered where being watched and i think this worked really well.

In addition to this I also had two boards to display my work on:

My Exhibition Boards

Exhibition

Everybody in my photography class had been working on themes that had continually crossed over into each other. As a group and as part of our final responses we decided to put together an exhibition of our work that was open to the public.

I designed the two posters that where used for the exhibition. they where both made on photoshop, in the poster above i used a class mates photo, Matt Abreu and tweaked it in photoshop to get the colours and composition i wanted.

throughout this project when taking pictures, thinking about my work and reflecting on the photos i have taken, there seems to be a reoccurring theme: a question and thought.

Are things ever truly obsolete?

Home or House or Shelter

This house was once a home and after a fire and extensive damage it looked beyond repair. However there are still marks and traces from people who have passed through and from looking around i could see that the building was still used.

Corridors

When looking back at the photographs i had taken in the hotels i had visited i saw that all the hotels seemed to have similarities i noticed this when i was walking round the buildings too. All with long corridors leading onto other rooms or other corridors.
I like the sense of perspective given by the long thin corridors with banisters and skirtings leading into the distance and thing that these images work well as a set.

Hotel 3

Through investigating consumerism Brian Ulrich discovered closed down and abandoned stores in America due to the credit crunch. There seems to be a similar story in Bournemouth but due to it being a tourist town, its the hotels.

Once a luxurious four star hotel this site has fallen beyond repair. when looking at these images you can see traces of how extravegant the hotel must have been in the architecture and what is left behind. I think this is what has the most impact about these photographs. The state that the buldings are in captures some initial attention but the traces of what the bulding once was realy makes me question what has happened to them.

I came across this picture of the room above in use when the hotel was still functioning, although its a small, low quality image i still find it interesting to see the contrast between how the hotel was then and how it is now.

i also think the fact that the two photos where taken from very similar angles makes it easyer to see the contrast between the two images.

in the two images to the left i experimented with superimposing the two images of the swimming pool (one taken by me and one i found on the internet) over each other. I realy like the concept of putting one picture over the other and think that it could create really effective images because of the contrast between the clean classy picture of when the hotel was in used and the run-down messy picture of what it looks like now.

However i think that the quality of the image i found on the internet compromises these experiment because it had ben compressed and so was very pixelated making it hard to see the details of the picture.

Other hotel shots:

Brian Ulrich

Brian Ulrich is a photographer who has studied consumerism and its economy in America. He has looked at what happens in environments like shopping malls and stores and as part of his series 'copia' he photographed stores that have been closed down across America in recent years due to the credit crunch.

I like Ulrich's deadpan style of photography, his simple but clean compositions leave the real impact of the image to its contents.

Interaction

Items

Before or after these buildings become derelict items are left inside them telling stories of those who have passed through it and what the building was to them:

Hotel 2

This hotel was first build around 1887, a time when the invention of the railway meant a massive increase in the tourist trade, Bournemouth itself grew from a seaside village into a wealthy tourist town. It's strange to see what could be considered part of Bournemouth's grand heritage being left to decay in plain sight.

I took the picture below whilst a friend was stepping over some debris in a corridor and whilst the quality of the picture isn't great due to the lighting and levels of noise in the picture I really like the awkward body position that was captured at that split second when i took the photo. I feel it adds some tension and more atmosphere into the picture.

Henri Cartier-Bresson was a master of split second timing, he coined the phrase "the decisive moment" referring to the moment when the photograph should be taken to achieve the best image. Example 1 and Example 2 along with the photograph I took all show how split second timing can be crucial to making and image.

More Charity Shopping

Some items seemed to group themselves together:

London Again

Recently i got the chance to visit london again on another school trip. and whilst i enjoyed looking around some of the galleries there wasn't much work which i could relate to in terms of my project.

However while looking around the galleries i noticed how much of a clean, organised and minimalist environment they were. The gallery spaces themselves were almost a complete contrast to the busy, messed up and abandoned places that i have photographed previously and this interested me.

Kevin Bauman

Kevin Bauman is a photographer who also photographs abandoned buildings. His work caught my eye not just because of the subject of his photographs but the style in which he has photographed the buildings in his project "100 abandoned houses"

The composition of these photos are simple and clean, leaving the pictures with a detached aesthetic to them.

Baumans style isolated the houses and really brings the focus in on the subject of the photograph, the house. by taking the pictures in this way he makes us step back and look at the houses for what they are and their form and shape.

I like this style of photography and its one that i have already thought about when taking some of my pictures. I the feeling that the simple composition leaves the audience to make what they want of the photograph.

Charity Shops

Charity shops can be a plethora of other peoples unwanted gems.

-one mans trash is another mans treasure-

the same thing interests me about the objects in charity shops as does with the abandoned buildings. the stories behind them. who's where they? where did they come from? how were they used? everything has a story behind it.

while exploring the items in these shops i came across a few quirky compositions. like these ugly but practical wellies put in amongst pairs of women's high heals, which are shoes that are worn purely for the aesthetics.

another amusing composition. these dated lamp shades become quite funny items when taken out of use and piled together.

Further Thought

Reflecting on the abandoned places i have seen and been to and what i have seen there has made me question what we mean when we call something "abandoned" or "unwanted". really, are these buildings abandoned? in the cases i have seen the buildings no longer serve the purpose they were built for. however they are never really unused, whether it be: housing refugees, providing cover for drug addicts or shelter for the homeless, a base for companies or just creating an awe inspiring environment to look at and for curious others like me to explore. these places no longer serve their original purpose, but are they ever truly unused?

Back on Task

Holton Heath is a naval base that was used to make munitions in the second world war many of the buildings it was interesting to walk around the base and think about the people who would have passed through here: soldiers, workers, the impact it had on them and how seeing the base now would impact them.

Sopley:

Sopley army camp was an RAF radar base in the second world war.

After the base was decommissioned it sat unused for some time before being adapted and used to house Vietnamese refugees. It was strange to walk around the hastily build and badly adapted buildings i could sense how vulnerable the people staying there must have felt i think the objects and traces they had left behind really brought home the fact that people had lived here.

both bases also have another use at the present, parts of both sites are used as industrial estates where buildings that are still in good enough condition are rented out. Reuse of buildings for different things and by different people over time seems to be a reoccurring theme.

Night Shots

Many of these places i have visited boarded covered up windows, and in some instances i tripod cant be used. i have enjoyed the challenge of working around the low light.

curious to experiment more, i went out at night to to take photos in conditions where light was low and am quite pleased with some of my results.

Checked Out

Finding these few abandoned or discarded things and desolate places has really interested me. I am intrigued by the stories behind them and how they have come to be as they are.

Bournemouth is a large UK tourist destination but in recent years due to the credit crunch and cheaper flights aboard UK tourism has taken blows. This Hotel has been closed down for a while.

floor tiles

on suite

whilst the hotel had been closed down the left over structure provides a place to stay for homeless and squatters. it is also clear that vandals and other curious people have investigated the buildings. I find it fascinating that it has the building is still used after it is no longer serving the purpose it was built for.