Romain Veillon
Romain Veillon is a French photographer who focuses on urban derricked and decaying buildings. He mange’s to catch a post-apocalyptic feeling within his images whilst also creating a beautiful scene. A lot of his images have the same theme of nature reclaiming its space back from man-made buildings. He started taking shots of abandoned areas in his home city of Paris he then extended his passion during his travels around the world, still keeping to the same theme. I feel as though he captures the past and present in one image as well as allowing the view to establish their own narrative for the future of the location.
Veillon also plays on the use of natural light a lot this can set the tone to either be very eerie or come across as very heavenly and innocent.
Veillon has accomplished over 15 series, each series dedicated to a particular area all setting different tones by the use of natural light.
Sometimes he chooses to capture known areas or monuments such as Buzludzha (the neglected building of the communist party in Bulgaria) but concentrates more on places that are hidden from the public eye as it is more authentic that everything is untouched, and truly shows a sense of abandonment in the truest form, in addition to this he avoids disclosing the location to any of his shoots as he wants to preserve the place from vandalism & allow nature to continue reclaiming its space back.
Sometimes he chooses to capture known areas or monuments such as Buzludzha (the neglected building of the communist party in Bulgaria) but concentrates more on places that are hidden from the public eye as it is more authentic that everything is untouched, and truly shows a sense of abandonment in the truest form, in addition to this he avoids disclosing the location to any of his shoots as he wants to preserve the place from vandalism & allow nature to continue reclaiming its space back.
Personally, I like how Veillon captures the beauty of nature reclaiming its space back, the beautiful greenery in contrast to the old decaying buildings which were once beautiful structures themselves now left an empty shell.
I furthermore admire how he uses natural lighting especially in a series called sands of time, Veillon has used the natural light coming in through doorways and large windows to make the image seem light a fine oil painting, all the colours blend very well with each other moreover like how he has used the natural lines of the sand to draw your eye to certain parts of the image it creates its own frame within the image.
I furthermore admire how he uses natural lighting especially in a series called sands of time, Veillon has used the natural light coming in through doorways and large windows to make the image seem light a fine oil painting, all the colours blend very well with each other moreover like how he has used the natural lines of the sand to draw your eye to certain parts of the image it creates its own frame within the image.
When approaching my shoot for the royal docks project I aim to use Romain Veillon as inspiration as I believe he captures the mood of these empty places like a page from a storybook I will try to experiment with natural light like Veillon in the sands of time series I however I do want to experiment with night shots also using the street lights to get the message of isolation across as when exploring the area there are new apartments and masses of hotels lined up next to each other yet a lack of residents and a missing sense of community
