is this real..?

wow, what is this? a massive sculpture, photoshop image...? don't know yet. it seems other-worldly, futuristic, awesome...

BERGENOBLIQUSAML by NICOLAS MOULIN, 2008

Brutalism Web Links

Hi Guys

Found today's Lecture really interesting as Brutalism/Modernism is the area my essay is based around. I have added some web links on the subject that you may find interesting. Hope you enjoy. Rich

www.open2.net/modernity
www.open2.net/modernity/4_15.htm
www.riskybuildings.org.uk/index.html
www.sarahjduncan.com/index.html
www.english-heritage.org.uk/server/show/nav.00100300200l003
www.bbc.co.uk/southyorkshire/content/image_galleries/park_hill_gallery.shtm

Very tasty spaces

Carl Warner, British photographer love to play with a food, bulding up the real land of milk and honey. http://www.carlwarner.com/index_small.html ,
http://www.moillusions.com/2008/06/carl-warners-food-landscapes-or.html have fun :)

Thomas Demand

This is a link about a Fine Art Photographer whose work is considered to touch on some of the ideas discussed in yesterday's lecture: Baudrillard's Simulation/Simulacra.  Demand's life-size models construct simulations of real-life spaces derived from popular culture or mass media and, in particular, focus on sensational news media 'sites'.  Think of the media shots of Josef Fritzl's house/bunker, the Oval Office etc. which are somehow ingrained into our memories through saturation broadcasts by the media.  His work 'suggests a tension between the fabricated and the real' and in doing so questions the veracity of the medium of photography itself and the camera, as an instrument historically relied upon to convey the 'truth', is thrown into doubt.

Thomas Demand, Klause/Tavern 2, 2006,

Further information is available at:

http://www.cmoa.org/international/html/art/demand.htm

Mapping and Photography

I probably made my first connection between mapping and photography around the age of five. In this case, the mapping was not for my benefit but for my distraught parents. Faced with a rising five year old who could not be kept in the house, or indeed the neighbourhood, my father, a professional photographer, showed me how to use a simple camera and instructed me to take photographs during my travels. I realise now that this was his way of mapping my illicit journeys. All went well until he developed images of me several miles from home, happily making my way through the North Tyne canal with the local narrow boat community.

I've never looked back, almost literally, and have been walking the landscape ever since; I'm sixty-three now. I loathe being indoors and, contrary to what was said this morning, do all my daydreaming, reflection and contemplation in fields, moors and woodland, where I am most at home. I relate very little to other people, but often feel an instinctive, almost supernatural, connection with place and landscape. It's interesting to me that this morning's lecture brought up the idea of 'soul'; I think that this is what I try to find in my landscape images.

Given the restrictions of lens coverage, landscape photographers must always choose which part of a 360 degree vista to photograph. I do this by internalizing a mental map of the whole view and it is to this map that I turn for my choosing. My images are thus as much part of an internal landscape as an external one.

I am hoping that my Final Major Project later this year will be a book about 'Real Back Gardens' and will concern how people value and use the external spaces around their property. The back garden, rather than the front, is of interest to me because it has no public persona ; a bit like seeing someone before they put their makeup on.

It occurs to me that interesting research for this book might include mapping the ways in which people in a small neighbourhood use this space - drying washing, parking, refuse bins, wildlife, planting etc. It's a line of thought I'll be pursuing as a result of this morning's lecture amd seminar.  Liz Rowett.

The Spaces between Buildings

In the book The Spaces between Buildings, Professor of geography Larry R. Ford analyses the role of Space. The book encompasses three photographic essays: Buildings and the Spaces around Them, Lawns, Trees, and Gardens in the City and Places for Driving, Strolling and Parking.

Ford focuses on particular aspects of Urban Spaces, highlighting the importance of the Spaces in between buildings, as well as the actual physical buildings themselves. For instance, Ford questions 'when does "space between buildings" become "open space containing buildings?"...

Well worth a look...

Ford, L. (2000) The Spaces between Buildings. London: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

Centre For Spatial Analysis and Intervention: Follow This Link...

Some broad ideas that may be of interest. We might have only 'touched' on these issues, in the seminar, so here they can be considered further...

Steffi Klenz - Untitled from the series 'Nonsuch' http://www.steffiklenz.co.uk/work/nonsuch/?lang=en&imageID=0

Ghosts in modern photographs

Photographs from WW2-era Russia blended with modern day recreations. An interesting examination of the transitory nature of the lifetime of various spaces/places, and the unseen history inherent to their character.

http://fima-psuchopadt.livejournal.com/2564781.html

[Via Jim Rossignol's blog.]