Timothy Allen Case Study

Timothey Allen is a well known and renound photographer who is known mostly for his amazing time lapse videos that he created when touring the world with the BBC’s Human Plant Crew.

T. Allen was born in Tonbridge in the South East of England in 1971.  At age 22, after graduating from Leeds University with a BSc Zoology he left the UK and spent 3 years traveling around Indonesia which was the catalyst that sparked his passion for photography.

In the early 1990’s, after beginning a part-time diploma in photography, Timothy joined an aid convoy to Bosnia in order to shoot his first year reportage project.  Six months later he had dropped out of college and moved to London to begin work for the Sunday Telegraph. This new founeded career that he under took later inspired commissions from all the British broadsheet publications, more commonly known as the BBC. His final stage of his career upto date is a 6 year position at The Independent working predominantly on features and portraits.  Timothy joined Axiom Photographic Agency in 2002 leading him to cover a dynamic and broad spectrum of global stories with subjects ranging from the civil war in the remote Spice Islands of far eastern Indonesia, to the intriguing subculture of The World Taxidermy Championships in Springfield , Illinois.

In recent years, the focus of his work has turned to our planet’s remaining indigenous societies and he currently devotes his time to documenting the diversity of humanity’s cultural heritage. His multi award winning documentaries have taken him to every corner of the globe, from 19 000 ft up in the Himalayas to 40 metres beneath the South China Sea as well as projects within communities in the Arctic, tropical rainforest and remote desert locations.

The image in the below is an images that Allen has captured in Indonesia. 

 

One of his most famous pieces of work can be view from the URL link

http://www.wimp.com/natureminute/

The link plays a video that shows the 4 year time lapse that he created using both a locational landscape and a studio. To create this timescape he created a specially designed rig and studio area for this. For the studio part of the project he had to paint everything blue and place flowers in areas of the locational site that were plain, he did this by blowing a picture up and projecting it onto a wall.

The studio that required the most viewing was the camera itself as if the set or the camera moved more than 2mm the hole lot of the project up to any point would be ruined and him and his team would have to start all over again.

My personal opinion on this video is that it is the most inspirational time lapse video that I have ever watch. This is due to the way him and his team had had o spend a year researching and developing idea’s just in able to make sure that the project that want and are under taking can be a success. I also find the time lapse inspirational due to the way the team had to make there own rigs and devices in able for there project to be a success. Further more looking into this video I am now going to take inspiration and develop my own rig for my Final major projects theme of Time Lapses and Time Scapes.

William Eggleston Case Study

William Eggleston is an America photographer who is widely known and credited for taking pictures of urban or decaying scenes that most people would find uninteresting and horrible to look at. However through out the years he has had them printed and placed in a gallery for an exhibition.

Most of the work he produces is things that are either left to decay or have a strange urban sense to them, For example the image below is of a kids trike that has been dumped and left on the street. The image overall from my point of view has a sense of decay as there is no one around the bike and the bike looks to be in poor condition giving a sense that it has not been very well looked after.

The purpose of his work is to show ordinary life but in an unusual way. His work has been seen in many galleries and portfolios through the world. A list of his publications can be seen below.

·      The earliest commercial use of Eggleston’s artwork was in the album covers for Memphis group Big Star, who was an American rock band. 

·      In 1974, 14 dye transfer pictures that he printed were published by Julian Hohnenburg and distributed by Harry H Lunn Jnr in Washington DC.

·      Seven Chromogenic coupler prints were published by Caldecot Chubb in New York, during 1979.

·      Troubled waters, Fifteen of these images were published by Caldecot Chubb

Eggleston has quote many things about his work like what he finds makes the image and what he found inspiration for taking images. However the quote that stands out for me the most is the following

The Observer News paper developed a piece of work on Eggleston showing the pieces of work that he has done. A quote from the piece that stood out for me is the following :-

“It would be difficult to imagine the world according to David Lynch, Gus Van Scant, Juergen Teller or sofia coppala without the world”.

My opinion on his work is that it is interesting to look at and develop ideas from. This is due to the way he has captured his images, his images are to show life but in an unusual way, and as you can see from looking at his push bike image he does this well as, he shows a normal scene around what can be seen in the background as an everyday human life.

 

Richard Billingham

Richard Billingham is an English photographer and artist who is known for creating a photobook which documents his parents life. The images in which he took were later published into a book called Rays a Laugh. The Book documented and portrayed the poverty and deprivation in which he grew up in.

To document his parents life using photographs, he did it over a period of six years. When capturing the images he couldn’t use a modern camera that was coming out at the time as his family was great for money, so the photographs he captured of his parents were taken with the cheapest film camera, which was a instamatic camera with a built in flash, he could find. This film that he used provided harsh colours and shadows and bad focusing.

In my opinion this added to the effect of his images as it doesn’t make them look all flash and set up, it made the images and the content of the images look as if they were just taken at random when something was going on with either his mother or his father.

Most of his images featuring his father were more or less the most interesting as his dad was an alcoholic and was most of the time hung over, meaning that he didn’t always get what was going on and the emotions of his father would be good to capture.

When Billingham was taking these images he thought himself as a painter and not a photographer, and the images he would take would be source material for his paintings that he would produce. Whilst shooting his parents and creating these images he never took great care of his equipment. His original intentions of these images were to study the human figure in a interior space.

Over the years of taking these images his parents grew to the fact that he could be snapping at anytime.

Over the years since his book publication he has had the images of his parents shown and displayed in galleries around the country. One of which being the Royal Academy of Arts in London during 1997.

Henri Cartier-Bresson

Henri Cartier-Bresson

Henri Carter-Bresson to give him his full title is a French photographer who was born in 1908 and passed away in 2004. He was considered to be one of the best or not the best photojournalism photographer the world has ever seen. His concept of photography for capturing great images was what he called “The Decisive Moment”. The Decisive Moment was tended to give the impression that Cartier-Bresson believed that story-telling, the catching on film of the historic moment, was the essence of good photography.

Bresson also stated that the Decisive moment is the decisive moment, “it is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event as well as the precise organization of forms which gives that event its proper expression”. For capturing his images he used a 35mm Film camera made and developed by the company Leica. He used this camera as it was, small lightweight and easy to use. The company Leica was founded in 1913, in Germany by Alfred Schopf who was at the time the CEO of the company. The development of the technology is in my opinion what allowed him to make this decisive moment using his 35mm film camera.

He described his camera when capturing images an extension on his eye. He often said that the creative part of photography is very short, “A painter can elaborate a writer can, but as its given, we have to pick that moment the decisive moment. “ (Bresson).

Whilst he was out shooting and finding the decisive moment he only ever shot his images in black and white and never changed over to colour when the time came around. He also never used a flash to fill areas he always wanted an image to look as pure as what he could see it through the viewfinder of his Leica, He also only ever used one lens which was a fixed focal length 50mm lens.

After the images were taken and it came to the time were the images were to be developed he never found that his images wanted cropping, he always kept them the same as when they were taken. He saw his camera as a tool and a way of drawing or painting an image just like when you use a brush to create a painter.

In 1939 Bresson was unlucky as he was one of many that was in the war as a corporal but he worked for a special unit, which was the film and photo unit. After joining the war he was captured as a prisoner of war for 3 years, however he did eventually mange to escape in 1943 were he then fled to the French capital, Paris were he worked with the French resistance. He worked with the photographic unit in particular and he recorded the Nazi’s occupation and the liberation.

After the war was over and many years later, Bresson was persuaded to join Magnum photos.

Peter Conrad who worked for the Observer in 2004 wrote about Henri Bresson and stated the following about him, “A great, pioneering photographer his pictures which captured not just Paris but the globe, not just everyday life but world- changing events, are emblems of 20^th Century extensive”.

He had his first ever exhibition in Madrid, Spain, in 1933. Later in that year he also had another show in the place were many people wish to have a exhibition this place is of course New York City in America.

My personal response to his images are mixed as some of his images I found quite remarkable and a thrill to look at were as some of them I find aren’t very good. The image below is one that Bresson has captured of a couple sat on a Hill over looking a river as a boat passes by on it. I find this image uninspirational as to me in my opinion it looks like a typical holiday snap. Were as the image furthest to the bottom is an image that I find is a true image and one that people will enjoy to look at just as much as I do. In the image You can see a set of stairs that run down to a low level street were a passing cyclist can be seen passing in the distance.

When looking deep into the image you can see that the cyclist is slightly blurred and a little out of focus. I find that this technic has worked well in the image as it gives a sense of movement. The way the image is a little dark at one side also works well as it leads your eye down the stairs and to the cyclist that is passing by.

The two lines below are links to some resources that I have found of Bresson, and what people have said about him.

http://www.magnumphotos.com/C.aspx?VP3=ViewBox&ALID=2K7O3R14TE52&IT=ThumbImage01_VForm&CT=Album

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/2004/aug/05/guardianobituaries.artsobituaries

Colin Grey

Colin Grey

In my opinion, I find his work very mined blowing and depressing as you go through his work. The purpose of his work is to show and document his father’s and his mother’s life when very ill and coming to the end of there lives. When it comes to media, technique and materials that he has used to create his pieces of work, it is more or less noticeable straight away what he has used to capture his images as all of his images or well most of them are in a square format, this would suggest he has used a medium format camera to capture the images.

Colin Grey has on numerous occasions spoke out about his work, when viewing his work in the ferens art gallery he stated on a plack “I felt comfortable with the camera square format, perhaps working back to my dads box brownie twin, I now felt that work with my parents was becoming a serious project”.

When viewing his work you get very mixed emotions as from my point of view it was very depressing and mind blowing to look at but to others it was different as some people say it a fabulous collection of images, some say that the set of images is a lot like my comment as it comes across as upsetting and depressing to view in an order.

He hasn’t just created the images that are found in the galleries and art exhibitions, his work can be found over a various number of places ranging from magazines. He also has made different types or genres of photography like Constructive, Narrative and Documentary.

When grey produced his work he had many inspirations but the main ones were the people he photographed in his documentary pieces. The main people being his parents.

The image that I have chosen from his documentary collection to analysis is The Grass is Greener 1989. My thought and opinions on the image when studying it vary due to the way the image has been captured and the way it has been put together.

The subject contained with in the image is an old women leant against a wall with plain white wall paper but with a normal flower pattern contained within it. She is also not, in my opinion, the main subject as in the foreground can be found a rather unique yellow piece of pottery. With the piece been so bright and made to stand out in the image it over powers the lady or women in the background of the image.

The mood for the image is rather plain and moody due to the way the pot in the foreground is made to stand out and the women in the background facing the wall is there to show or suggest how things can be over looked and be placed in the past without and thought of what is going on.

My reaction when viewing the image is a sad and depressing as when you look at the image you get a feel for what it most be like to be alone with no one to look after you.

As a conclusion for looking at his work you get a sense that when his parents were around they were not very well and he wanted to show this through his images. As in most of his collection he didn’t take images of them looking happy like happy snaps, he took images of them when they were struggling or feeling ill.

Thomas Hopker

Thomas Hoepker

The images above are the image that Thomas Hoepker captured of 9/11 the main image that cause all of this constroversy was the thid image down. 

In the Image That Thomas Hoepker captured back in 2001, are a group of New Yorkers sat gracefully chatting in the sun in Brooklyn behind them in the background across the brilliant blue water, can be seen a massive and terrible black smoke rising from the lower Manhattan. This particular place is where the two towers were struck by a hijacked airline that very morning.

Ten years on after the event had took place, the image that Hoepker captured is still seen as the most iconic image of 9/11 even though the history behind the event is still seen strange and torturous.

Hoepker took the image just as the strike of the plain hit the building. Even taking this into consideration, he did not however publish the image he captured of the event until the five year anniversary occurred. Were as most press photographers had there image published the same day it happen so it could be broadcasted to the world showing everyone what was going on.

When the image was finally published it caused a massive and instant controversy. Frank Rich a critic wrote in the New York Times about the image and what his point of view was on the image. He stated “The image undeniably troubling picture an allegory of American’s failure”.

Rich’s view an opinion on the image was instantly disputed. Walter Siper, identified himself as the guy in glass or shades in the right of the image.

He stated that they were not sunbathing and having a relaxing time at the waterside, he was in fact in a state of shock and disbelief. He also complained the image he was in was not taking with there consent and permission when Hoepker capture them.

Hoepker rebelled at what had been said and stated that you can’t photograph feeling. Even when the image was published and people spoke about his misdoing for not ask permission to photograph them, it is still seen as the most iconic and defining image of that tragic day.

It has also since that day that photographers, amateurs or professionals, get stopped in the street and asked what they are doing as it is seen upon that a person might take an image that can once again be seen as the defining moment for an event but for some it can be seen as politically upsetting.

Documentry Photographers Historical and Contempary

Historical Photographer - Thomas Hopeker

Thomas Hopeker USA, Muhammad ALI, formerly Cassius CLAY, boxing world heavy weight champion in Chicago, jumping from a bridge over the Chicago River. 1966.

USA. Brooklyn, New York. September 11, 2001. Young people relax during their lunch break along the East River while a huge plume of smoke rises from Lower Manhattan after the attack on the World Trade Center.

New York, NY, view from Manhattan bridge towards Brroklyn Bridge and downtown Manhattan during aftermath of World Trade Center attacks on September 11, 2001

Contemporary Photographer - Elliot Erwitt