Influences and Research
The main influences in the list below are all photographers who are renowned for their quite abstract take on photography and photographers whose stylistic choices intrigue me highly.
Ernst Haas
Ernst Haas was an Austrian-American photojournalist and colour photographer. During his 40-year career, Haas bridged the gap between photojournalism and the use of photography as a medium for expression and creativity.
Haas mainly used to shoot in black-and-white film for much of his career, later moving to colour film and visual experimentalism which became integral to his photography. He frequently used techniques like shallow depth of field, selective focus and blurred motion to create evocative, metaphorical works.
One piece of work that I am highly drawn to by Haas is a photobook entitled 'Abstrakt'. Abstrakt is a collection of photographs selected by Haas for atwo-projector 25-minute film he worked on until his death in 1986. The photographs span his entire career in colour from 1952 to 1984. The photographs in this book show various abstractions, from street detritus, to torn posters and other found objects. This is a piece of work Haas considered to be the culmination of his work in photography.
What really drew me too Haas's work was the originality and abstraction of his photos. He is seemingly able to capture something completely different to what is actually present in front of him, to create a whole new experience when viewing. Haas is able to create that surrealist and dream like atmosphere that I want to be able to encapsulate with my work going forward and the 'Abstrakt' project is an embodiment of that.
The photos themselves do not seem to be that highly manipulated, rather just enhanced by the use of colours, shadows and highlights. The photos seem to be something Haas had found which would usually be seen as near to nothing, however he is able to capture them as much more.
One of my favourite photos from this publication by Haas is the image above, which I interpret as the reflection of the surface of water. The image really seemed to engage me because of how natural and yet unnatural it feels, really encapsulating that almost surreal and dream like state I aspire for my photos. The high contrast of the shadows on the surface makes this sort of unreal image and along with the smooth gradient switch from either shade of blue really makes both parts of the image pop and stand out from one another. Haas's decision to be right close up the the surface rather than further out and capturing what surrounds the water adds to the images appeal and unnatural look.
Florian Bachmeier
Florian Bachmeier, born 1974, grew up in Schliersee, Germany. In 1995 he began to undertake longer trips, taking his camera along with him to places such as Mauritania, Mali, Ivory Coast, Senegal and Burkina Faso. He is known to mainly tackle socio-critical and political issues and travels to various crisis and war regions.
'In Limbo' is a project dedicated to the ongoing struggles in Ukraine and is caught well in the images in the Bachmeier with the design and format of the book as a strong contribution to conveying the plight of the people and their strife.
When you first pick up this photobook, it gets your attention with its unusual format. The images are printed on matte paper, and are presented as a physical continuity from cover to cover. It is like an accordion that has been glued down on one side and has been given gatefold-like cover flaps on each end that enclose the sequence like a capsule. The presentation of the images gives us the feeling that things go on forever without much change. The end fold-outs, when extended on either side of the book, provide views of the vast landscapes of a country that needs to be rediscovered and that holds great promise, currently in limbo.
My influence from this project by Bachmeier is not its contents or its overall appeal, more so how Bachmeier goes about creating a cold and very present atmosphere. Where Haas and Bachmeier differentiate is that Bachmeier does not objectively work in an abstract way as he is trying to capture very real life events but is still able to make it seem alien to an outside viewer. The terrors that go down in Ukraine that Bachmeier was capturing, are done and presented in such a way that it shows how unnatural and surreal the life of Ukraine really is. The name 'In Limbo' was perfectly fitting for such a subject and output as the content of the book gives of that kind of dream like state whilst also showing very real events and people, leaving the viewer in a place between either ends of the spectrum, leaving them in a place of limbo.
Jacques Alexander
Jacques Alexandre is a French photographer known for his artistic photography of women, children, and landscapes in two main artistic styles: First his romantic "impressionism period" in the 1970s, influenced by the impressionism paintings and then his "hyperrealistic period" starting in the 1980s, with straight compositions and strong colours.
Alexandre's initial main themes at the beginning of his career were ones of depicting natural young women, couples and children, while also making pictures of landscapes, flowers and still life. In the 80s is when he began what is often referred to as his "hyperrealistic period", which is where his more recognisable, abstract style with straight compositions and strong colours came to light.
The main influence I want to take from Alexander for my photography is the later work from the 80s, the 'hyperrealistic period' of his work. I find this aspect of his publications the most interesting as I love abstract nature of it. The pure pattern that the photos are I find very pleasing to look at. They capture the viewers eye due to the questions asked when first looking at them, mainly questioning what the image is. All of Alexander's work is about depth and colours during this period. Each image is so unique but give off the same atmosphere, one that is very futuristic and almost 'alien' as Alexander takes these real life things, the buildings photographed, and transforms them into something completely different.
After looking through Alexander's abstractive period of photography, it has encouraged me to when I next take photos, to find the patterns in real life objects, whether that be buildings or small objects, and to focus in on that and see how I can redefine it to create something completely knew.
Daido Moriyama
Daidō Moriyama is a Japanese photographer best known for his black-and-white street photography. Moriyama’s almost rough photographic style makes use of sharply tilted angles, grainy textures, harsh contrasts, and blurred movements to capture the rawness of human experience as seen through the photographer’s wandering gaze.
His first photobook 'Nippon gekijō shashinchō' translated too ' Japan: A Photo Theater' published in 1968, captures the excitement, tension, anxiety, and rage of urban life during this time in Tokyo. The photographs range from ordinary streetscapes featuring blurred faces and garish signage, snapshots alluding to aggression too images of nightlife and darker elements of urban life. As the title of the photobook suggests, Moriyama's approach hones in on the spectacle of everyday life, in all its ugliness and splendor.
One of Daido's most known traits is his use of Ricoh film compact cameras for his 50+ years of shooting on the streets of Shinjuku in Tokyo, shooting mostly in black and white film, but has more recently move onto digital.
Daido expands on why he prefers to use compact cameras compared to big and bulky SLR’s in his documentary.
“If you use a SLR, you see things like this [holds camera to eye]. And when you do this, you want to have perfect focus.
The moment which you want to capture does not fit your feeling, if you do this. If you are using a compact camera, it is simple. Also furthermore, if you many people in Shinjuku, people turn their faces, or flee.”
Certainly the benefit of shooting with a compact camera is the fact you don’t have to always worry about the camera settings. You can simply point, click, and let the camera do the rest (autofocus, exposure, etc) which is why for more public photography I want to capture, I would like to experiment with an easy and quick to use compact camera, to allow more 'in the moment' photos. Not only that, but another huge benefit of shooting with a compact camera is the fact that it tends to be a lot less threatening than a big SLR. It is small, inconspicuous, has a quiet shutter sound, and looks more like a toy than a “serious camera.”
I really enjoy Moriyama's work as it is work that I find very captivating. I really enjoy how he plays around with his photos composition, eg taking photos at angles one would not traditionally go for, at peculiar angles or being highly zoomed in on the object or person being photographed. The use of high contrast in his work makes his photos lead towards the abstract spectrum also as the contrast results in little to no midtones which results in the images being purely highest of highlights and the darkest of shadows.
Frances Seward
Frances Seward was born in London, England and studied Modern Languages at South Bank University. After a career in publishing she explored her true passion of photography and moved to Boston in 2000 and enrolled in night classes at the Cambridge Center for Adult Education and Massachusetts College of Art.
Once Seward fully fell into her photography and got the grasp of what she enjoyed, she has been able to have developed a highly unique style of abstract landscape working with light and glass.
Seward says how she does not try to record the world exactly how she see it. Her goal is to create an internal experience with the camera and photo-based media. She takes inspiration from the photographers such as Stieglitz, Minor White and Ernst Haas, whilst also taking inspiration from contemporary painters such as Turner and Kandinsky. A series made by Seward that includes abstract landscapes that are minimalist and poetic, reminiscent of abstract land, desert, and seascapes. The abstract expressionist series entitled 'Distillation' is a body of work of layered composite photographs that have a painterly quality influenced by the abstract expressionists. A synthetic approach to art making where the 5 senses are incorporated into Sewards process.
I really enjoy Sewards work and how she experiments with the making of her photos. The abstract images really capture my attention as they are so smooth and nice to look at. The experimentation in how she makes the images with different reflections and lights is something I really admire and would want to have a play around with myself as i think it is a very creative way of working.
Aaron Siskind
Aaron Siskind was an American photographer whose work focuses on the details of things, presented as flat surfaces to create a new image independent of the original subject. Siskind was closely involved with, if not a part of, the abstract expressionist movement that developed throughout the 1940s.
Siskind used mainly subject material from the real world, those being close-up details of painted walls and graffiti, tar repair on asphalt pavement, rocks, lava flows, dappled shadows on an old horse, Olmec stone heads, ancient statuary and the Arch of Constantine in Rome, and a series of nudes.
In 1933 he joined the Film and Photo League in New York, who are a group of documentary photographers devoted to improving social conditions in contemporary society through their pictures. While involved with the League, Siskind made some of his most successful and well-known documentary photographs, including those for The Harlem Document (1937-40), but he had a falling out with the organisation in 1941 when his work fell more into abstraction. When his series of work was exhibited at the Photo League, it caused many members to protest his photography outright, resulting in his departure from the organisation. He then later found support among Mark Rothko, Franz Kline, and other painters, who recognised his elimination of pictorial space and his concentration on the arrangement of objects within the picture plane as qualities aligning his work with their own. Siskind's abstract photographs from the late 1940s and early 1950s were a major force in the development of avant-garde art in America. In rejecting the third dimension, his work belied the notion that photography was tied exclusively to representation. As such, Siskind's work served as an invaluable link between the American documentary movement of the 1930s and the more introspective photography that emerged in the 1950s and 60s.
What I find inspiring about Siskind's work is how he chose to focus on textures of objects rather than getting the full composition in on the image. Choosing to get intensely close to things and ignoring it's surroundings really enables the camera to capture the raw details of the object it is focusing upon. The extreme contrast of Siskind's images help to enhance the textures off his work as it allows a wide range of mid tones throughout the image instead of it being seemingly all one note. As Siskind's was before the digital era we are in now, nearly all of his images will have been taken with a film camera which would result in a slightly lower resolution image, which makes shadows become more impactful when the contrast of an image is very high.
