Brassai

Brassai was a Hungarian photographer; he moved to Paris in 1924 after he moved there he started to photograph Paris during night time focusing on street photography. As it was hard to get a good photograph at night because of how dark it was, he used a flash blub to light up the area, when he opened the shutter on the camera he would flash the light so he was then able to capture the image. I like Brassai’s night time photography as he has captured Paris for itself and how beautiful it is. I also think it’s really effective how he lights the scenes; using street lights (and a flash bulb) Paris is almost in total darkness, yet the photographs he produces have a very strong impact on me as a viewer due to the composition and the atmosphere produced within the photos. 

"Gyula Halász's job and his love of the city, whose streets he often wandered late at night, led to photography. He later wrote that photography allowed him to seize the Paris night and the beauty of the streets and gardens, in rain and mist. Using the name of his birthplace, Gyula Halász went by the pseudonym "Brassaï," which means "from Brasso." As Brassaï, he captured the essence of the city in his photographs, publishing his first book of photographs in 1933 titled "Paris de nuit" ("Paris by Night"). His efforts met with great success, resulting in his being called "the eye of Paris" in an essay by his friend Henry Miller. In addition to photos of the seedier side of Paris, he also provided scenes from the life of the city's high society, its intellectuals, its ballet, and the grand operas. He photographed many of his great artist friends, including Salvador Dalí, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Alberto Giacometti, plus many of the prominent writers of his time such as Jean Genet, Henri Michaux and others".

http://www.masters-of-photography.com/B/brassai/brassai_articles1.html

Stephen Gill

Stephen Gill is a British photographer he looks at both landscape and portraiture. I really like his landscape photography because of how his photos are so simple, yet effective. He finds random everyday things that we wouldn’t necessarily take much notice of if we were there, and he photographs them in a way that you can see something different within them. He also has a series called ‘Outside in’ where he has gone to different places and picked up random items off the floor and them placed them inside his camera, meaning that when he took a photograph of something, the items that were in the camera would appear on the image, creating something more effective that just a simple landscape photograph and it gets me thinking a bit more about what the environment there might be like.

Quote from Iain Sinclair:
“Stephen Gill is emerging as a major force in British photography. His best work is a hybrid between documentary and conceptual work. It is the repeated exploration of one idea, executed with the precision that makes these series so fascinating and illuminating. Gill brings a very British, understated irony into portrait and landscape photography.”

http://www.stephengill.co.uk/portfolio/about

Sergey Larenkov

Sergey Larenkov is a Russian photographer. Within his work he takes photographs that were taken during the war and puts them on top of photographs that were taken during this time period. By doing this he is creating a then and now type photograph, showing what that same scene was like many years ago, and what it is like now during present day. This makes me feel quite strange as you are seeing what that area within the photos looked like during the war and it is hard to think that it is the same place that you see today, looking completely different. There is a strong contrast within the two images; you see the mess within the photo taken during the war and the calm and peaceful scene within the present day photograph, which is quite surreal. This is why I really like his work, he makes something that is simple really effective, the combination of two photographs creates a strong atmosphere and gets the viewer thinking a lot more about what they are seeing, and I feel that by having the two photos together Larenkov has been able to make a stronger impact.

“Russian photographer Sergey Larenkov is a master of a technique called, alternatively, perspective-matching photography or the fancier computational rephotography, which consists of precisely matching the points-of-view of vintage and modern photographs and exploring what happens where they merge”.

http://www.geekosystem.com/tag/sergey-larenkov/

Richard Wentworth

Richard Wentworth is a British Sculptor and photograph, the reason I like his photography is because he capture unusual compositions. He goes around the city he lives in and finds items that have been left in odd places where they wouldn’t usually be found. I think the fact that he does this, rather than making something up himself makes his photographs effective, as he is making the most of what he is coming across whilst out walking, rather than being specific about how he wants to see something.

“Wentworth's work is an ongoing conversation with his native habitat, fuelled by daily walks down the Caledonian Road and expeditions into the hinterlands of King's Cross. In photographs, objects and lectures he charts the contours of the inner city, the ebb and flow of urban life, the things that change and the things that never do”.

http://www.artangel.org.uk//projects/2002/an_area_of_outstanding_unnatural_beauty/about_the_project/an_area_of_outstanding_unnatural_beauty

 

 

Rut Blees Luxemburg

Rut Blees Luxemburg is a German photography who lives and works in London. She takes photographs at night, rather than during the day, she explores urban landscapes. Due to her taking photographs during the night her photos have more of an impact, due to the way in which the street lights light up the area she is photography. She also uses long exposure meaning that only the light from the street lights will appear within the images. Luxemburg also uses different angles within her photograph, by not taking a photograph straight she is able to produce something more effective for the viewer as they have to look at it a bit more trying to figure what the photograph is about, which I think is really good and works really well. 

The Boyle Family

The Boyle family are based in London; they are Mark Boyle & Joan Hills & their children Sebastian & Georgia.

“Their best known work, however, continues to be their Journey to the Surface of the Earth. Begun in 1964, each of these series has involved various random selection techniques to isolate a rectangle of the Earth's surface. The random selection serves several purposes: nothing is excluded as a potential subject; the particular is chosen as a representative of the whole & it reduces their subjective role as artists & creators to that of "presenters". To present a slice of reality as objectively & truthfully as possible. They call this "motiveless appraisal".

http://www.jameshymanfineart.com/pages/biography/14830/boyle_family.html

From what I understand about the Boyle families work, using a map they pinpoint a specific location. They then go that that one location and the photograph the floor, directly showing what they see at the location pinpointed on the map. I feel this quite an interesting and effective way of working, as they are not specifically looking for a certain thing to photography, they are simply using a map to choose where they are going to go, no knowing what they are going to see when they get there, and they make the most of what they find by using interesting and effective compositions.

Eugene Atget

Eugene Atget - February 12th 1857 – August 4^th 1927. He was a French photographer who was noticed for his photographs documenting the architecture and street scenes of Paris. He was an inspiration for the surrealists as well as other artists, his work only started to get noticed a lot more after his death. Atget photographed Paris using a large-format wooden bellows camera with a rapid rectilinear lens. The images that he took were exposed and developed on glass dry plates. Because of how he took and presented his photographs they appear quite dream like, he used long exposure which helps to make his images look this way. His photographs documented the environment in which he lived in, and how he viewed it, some of his photographs have more detail than others. There sense a lot of stillness within his photographs as they don’t have people within them due to the fact he is using the long exposure time. These are the reasons that I like Eugene Atget’s work, I really like the stillness of them, and how you can see what he felt through his photos, I think the fact that he uses long exposure time makes his photos more effective, they don’t capture the movement of people therefore the streets look empty and very lonely and kind of ghostly, it gives a very early feeling as it looks like the city has been deserted and nobody lives there anymore.