Concept
We live in a world that has been made and adapted to sustain human life. As a collective we are slowly taking that asset away from the planet and destroying the world we are living in. With an increase in CO2 making the Earth warm, melting the ice caps and causing freak weather to occur we are slowly turning the Earth into a non-habitual planet. I wanted to capture this to make the audience aware of what we are doing to our planet and how we can sustain life on this Earth for longer.
Influences
Many of my influences did not come from photographic examples. My main influence was the Disney-Pixar film ‘Wall-E’. The film focuses on Wall-E a robot designed to clean up Earth after humans have catastrophically ruined it and had to migrate into space. Wall-E meets another robot called Eve (Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator) who finds the first sign of habitual life on Earth, meaning that the humans can return. The plant Eve finds is in a rugged old boot.
Above image: http://pixar.wikia.com/wiki/The_Plant
My aim for this project was to recreate this signature representation of how human life is destroying the planet. It’s scientifically proven by researchers such as Al Gore that with climate change and global warming us as humans are destroying the Earth’s natural processes leading to catastrophic consequences. Within the film it’s shown how humans have lived off Earth for hundreds of years not knowing the past culture of humans and instead living in a rut of consumer society focused on technology and little face-to-face human interaction. This is what I wanted to draw attention to in my work, and make the audience fear that this consequently could be our future. The imagery of the boot and plant is recognisable to many as an ideology of life and sustainability on Earth thanks to this film, and so it stands out to audiences in my work. This is encouraging and makes a wider audience be interested in the work I’ve produced and in result hopefully change the way they treat our planet.
Furthermore, Anthony Kurtz is a Euro-American environmental photographer. He specialises in environmental portraiture photographs that incorporate natural light and display occupied space in beautiful and thoughtful ways. “Anthony sculpts light to create a mood, an atmosphere, a photograph that tells a story and, hopefully, sparks curiosity in the viewer” (Kurtz, 2018). The way he composes his images using the subjects in the photo engage the audience and make them truly think about the purpose of the image. This is what I aspired my work to do as well. I want the audience to be consistently engaged into the meaning they want to attach to the image, as this can be different for everyone, and is one of the prominent features I thoroughly enjoy in Kurtz’s work.
Kurtz’s ‘Beautiful Decay’ portraitures have been my main inspiration. He’s taken locations that look rundown and dirty and made them into small short stories that are up for interpretation from the audience. His images of landfill display how much rubbish we throw out and how that has an impact on the land around us. He makes audiences think about what we are doing through his photography but also makes it look bittersweet and beautiful at the same time. His shots are perfectly balanced in shot composition, white balance and shadow depth of field that they are incredibly beautiful to view. This helps engage the audience and make them really react to what they are viewing.
Above images: https://www.anthonykurtz.com/Landscapes/Beautiful-Decay/5
Moreover, Instagram photographer Sean Gallagher regularly posts images on the impacts of climate change on our planet and how we as a community contribute to it (Gallagher, 2018). He uploads pushing and thoughtful content on how climate change is changing the physicality of the Earth. His main focus is on less developed areas of the world, highlighting issues such as rising sea levels but he also reflects on how governments are reacting and handling these environmental issues.
Above image: https://www.instagram.com/p/BSEA77NguvR/?hl=en&taken-by=sean_gallagher_photo
I enjoy the modernism of his work and how he doesn’t just focus on the negatives but also how individuals are coping with this ever changing atmosphere we now live in. It’s also a refreshing look upon how more undeveloped countries deal with climate change issues as more media outlets focus on the richer, more developed countries.
Reflection
This task was very open ended and gave me the possibility to experiment with all sorts of meanings and stories. Entropy stood out the most to me as I feel like it gives the biggest opportunity to develop such a meaningful and thoughtful photograph. There’s also a slight overlap with globalisation too within my project thinking of how this can affect the whole world especially within my artist research. I immediately came up with the environmental imagery that I wanted to produce and thought about what media source I knew most about reflected the ideology I wanted to portray, leading me to Wall-E. I put a lot of thought into the shoot and scouted locations for it and found the most effective was around the back of student accommodation close to the bins. This gave a more destroyed and landfill feel to the piece,
The photos themselves I’m proud of. I focused a lot on shadow depth of field and wanted to have the boot as the prominent focus but also have the bins and rubbish as a distant reminder that it is one of the main causes of climate change, so that it’s always on the audience’s mind. If I was to reshoot I’d take more photos of different shoes in different locations as the location I chose became quite restricted as to where I could comfortably shoot. I’m disappointed at how all my photos look very similar as during the shoot I was so focused on producing good quality photos I ended up staying in the same place.
Overall, I’m happy with the composition and technicalities of my photos but in hindsight I would change up the location more and the props that I used to get different view points and to make the images more individual and less uniform.
Bibliography
Gallagher, S., 2018. Instagram, sean_gallagher_photo. [Online]
Available at: https://www.instagram.com/p/BSEA77NguvR/?hl=en&taken-by=sean_gallagher_photo
[Accessed 18th April 2018].
Kurtz, A., 2018. Kurtz Photographer. [Online]
Available at: https://www.anthonykurtz.com/
[Accessed 18th April 2018].