We started the lecture off today by watching George Carlin, Jammin in New York. Today's lecture was based on the environment and how well we as mankind are helping save/ not saving the environment. He spoke about how the government say that we need to save the trees and the oceans etc but were not doing anything to help. He was basically joking about it but it's not actually funny. The video was filmed in 1992 so about 25 years ago and were still talking about this now so his talk didn't really help people to save the planet it's actually done the opposite which I think is what he was trying to do. Looking back on it what are we doing now to help the environment?
Not using plastic bags
Not using plastic straws
Sugar tax
Using our own travel mugs instead of paper cups from coffee shops
Recycle
Using more things online, eg paying online and having bank statements emailed not sent using paper
Can we as photographers do anything? We are in the least sustainable job for the environment as we throw chemicals down the drains when developing film. Analogue equipment doesn't get recycled that fast and digital doesn't get recycled at all.
Photograph the damage that mankind is creating on the environment
Political Landscapes and Sustainability
Landscapes are thought of as 'pretty' but they are actually highly political as every landscape will have a story behind the photograph. The word landscape actually is a dutch word 'landschap' which originally meant 'region, tract of land'. It started to become popular in the early 1500's when the rich and protestant started seeking art to decorate their homes, back then it was all about money when landscapes started to become popular.
Have landscapes always been about money?
Yes and no. Landscape have to be sold for the artist to earn money but I don't think they need to sell for thousands of pounds. When photographers make images they sometimes make images that they never even expect to sell and make money from so I think they're made for money but with no intention.
During the Civil War in the 19th century was when everyone saw the birth of landscape photography which really influenced the landscape painters compositional choices. Since it came about photographers have turned to landscapes as a source of inspiration. Since then the change in artistic movements and the endless technical growth in photography have provided opportunities for the artists to approach the subject in diverse and imaginative ways.
André Giroux, (French 1801-18079) was an accomplished artist who scratched and drew on his negatives to heighten painterly effects and soften his camera's recording.
In the second half of the 20th century the definition of landscape was pushed to it's limits and four different types of landscapes were made:
Urban landscapes
Cultural landscapes
Industrial landscapes
Landscape architecture
By now they weren't just pretty pictures they were images that were made by people who had a passion for the environment.
Two American photographers Robert Adams and William Garnett used landscape to raise awareness of conservation concerns. William Garnett (image on the left) was 'hired commercially to illustrate the growth of that housing project. I didn't approve of what they were doing. Seventeen thousand houses with five floor plans and they all looked alike and there was not a tree in sight when they got through'.
We went through a lot of photographers during the lecture who all focused on the same story of the environment. I found them all interesting but I have found a few more interesting than the others.
Political approach:
Fay Godwin
Godwin came up in last week's seminar as well but I felt she fitted in with this week slightly more instead. She very much believed in people's right to land. People buy land with a public right of way but the land owners try to block it off which is illegal, because of this she used her photography as a campaigning tool to conserve the land. As well as campaigning through her photography she also looks at man's impact on the land. Her work has ranged from atmospheric studies of prehistoric sites to images of refuse-strewn and polluted rivers. It is a celebration of the British countryside, a regret for what has been lost and a warning about what will happen if action is nit taken to preserve it.
She had a love of walking which eventually inspired her to pursue landscape photography. Se produced many beautiful rural scenes as well as contrasting urban landscapes. She was President of the Ramblers' Association from 1987to 1990, where she campaigned for access to public rights of way.
Documentary approach:
Anthony Haughey
One of his projects focused on Ballymun tower, an area with lots of council houses on the northside of Dublin. Haughey used to live in one of these houses. He said 'My cousin Michael constantly spoke of “leaving home”. He was fifteen years old at the time and already knew his future was in America. He was completely obsessed with the idea. I realised later that his aspiration was not unusual. Michael like most of his school friends in Ballymun Senior Comprehensive School had already realised that there was no future for them in Ireland. Many commentators including journalist Fintan O’Toole had argued that Ireland’s young citizens were being educated and prepared for a life abroad'. Between 1989 and 1990 he lived and worked in Ballymun where he produced a series of images called 'Home' which was ironic given that its underlying motivation and energy was to examine the very conditions which forced this particular group of Irish citizens to emigrate.
http://anthonyhaughey.com/info/
Another series he did was called 'Settlements'. He took the ghost estates which haunt Ireland today which stand as cruel reminders of the excesses of the boom era and the economic devastation that followed. The houses connote the presence of people yet these houses are deserted. Forgetting their evocative subject matter for a minute this series of images are visually gripping and through their misled aesthetic reveal the effects of the economic growth on the landscape.
The last photographer I was intrigued by was Gideon Mendel who I researched last year. Gideon Mendel
He has photographed people who witnessed and lived through the Somerset Levels and any other flooding. I really liked his images because they're really simplistic and I was intrigued because I remember when the flooding happened and I never thought that it would happen that bad so close to home really as I only live a couple of hours away from Somerset. The series is called 'Floodlines', the project 'records the physical incursion of rising water by documenting the rising floodlines drawn through intimate living quarters, public spaces and through landscapes turned liquid. Globally the invasive presence of the flood is represented by the repeated physical line of floodwater at its highest level or the residue of lines left after it subsides'.
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