Obsessionsportfolio

Developing Practice in Photography 1 Obsessions

Idea 1 Obsession with New Topographic style, and chasing the visuals of the American dream.

A personal obsession of mine within photography is the style of New Topographics. I love trying to achieve an American Dream era sort of quality to my photographs. While obviously not completely achievable, I’ve been trying to a type of visual atmosphere similar to the likes of Shore, Eggleston, and Meyerowitz through the use of film, subject, and composition.

I’d like to explore this further, while branching off into the similarities and differences in the United States compared to the UK, and how this translates in photographic form. While in the United States I shot some industrial parks near where I was staying. These shots could work as excellent visual research, or even become a part of the work if I felt that they fit together properly.

Idea 2 My own obsession with my mental stability, my reality, and future.

An undeniably negative obsession I have is with myself.

Around three years ago I suffered a stress reaction and developed through stress, anxiety, and some drug use. I developed an unhealthy obsession with the legitimacy of my surroundings, which later evolved into an obsession with my state of mind.

While I suppose I am ‘better,’ I’ll never feel exactly the same as I did. My mental situation was/is not easily explainable, and attempting to explain thoroughly would most likely come out as a self-indulgent sob story. I feel that it

would work a lot better heavily abstracted, without an on the nose explanation. It could work well as a multimedia piece, or

many other forms depending on the precise route I took.

Chosen Idea and Pathways

I’m going to be following my visual obsession with the style of New Topographics, and how I should translate the style effectively to suit the visuals of Britain. My underlying theme is likely to be focused somewhat around United States Architecture, but how this takes form in the work is not yet clear. An option I have is to focus on the ideas behind the homogeneous Neo-Eclectic housing in the US. The buildings are extremely homogeneous throughout the entire country, and are essentially a visually appealing yet tired mishmash of many eras of architecture. This means that most of the United States suburbs effectively look exactly the same.

This can lead to interesting ideas about the American Dream, the human condition, and many ideas about cultures of different areas. I’d like to explore if the UK, specifically England, to see if we have this equivalent in our culture, and if not - why?

Another option I have is to make a comparison between US and UK industrial architecture.

Contrary to the previous idea, this would likely be looking more at the similarities between US and UK industries, rather than the differences. I’ve noticed personally that industrial districts in the United States look incredibly similar to what we have here,

almost identical in fact. Once again I’d be looking at homogeneity, but in this case even more so, rather than a translation or equivalent.

In my opinion, shooting industrial districts would work better as a more ‘purist’ piece of photographic work, and would need more focus on shape and form, with less room for social commentary.

Mindmap of keywords Building and Architecture of Bristol

Megasite Industrial Park/District

Aztec West

Business/Office Park

Modernist Architecture

America and Architecture in Relation to Photography

New American Color Photographers

Industrial Architecture

Americana/American Dream Architecture Revivalism

Catalog/Sears Homes

Lewis Baltz

Neo-eclectic McMansions Hungarian Cubes Katharina Roters

Little Boxes - Malvina Reynolds

Bechers

Urban/Suburban or Office/Industrial, Shooting Approach

Relating to what I was talking about previously, the subject of my images could focus more on work spaces like office and industrial parks, or living spaces like neighbourhoods, towns, or cities. To me, all these subjects feel like they’re on the same spectrum, but work and living spaces are at opposite ends. I came to this conclusion when brainstorming ideas, but it’s a pretty obvious conclusion. While it’s certainly possible to have both in the same body of work, I believe that it would heavily hinder the flow of viewing the work. This sentiment is mirrored by the works of many famous practitioners. For example, you won’t find anywhere too industrial in Stephen Shore’s ‘Uncommon Places’ and you certainly won’t find and photographs of suburban living in a Bechers typology. For now, I’m going to continue to research and experiment with both approaches, and then see how well different images can work in series.

There are multiple approaches to shooting I can take during this project, and they ultimately boil down to how much of myself I want to insert into the work. I usually try and take an objective approach to shooting, and while true objectivity is impossible, I find it a good exercise to try to get as close as possible.

The SeeSaw Magazine interview between Aaron Schuman and Alec Soth has presented me with a challenge to this mentality. In the interview, when talking about a disconnected and objective viewpoint, Soth states “I’m also getting a bit worn down by that methodology. I mean, science is great, but sometimes you want to see some passion, listen to a love song, and so on. The scientific approach just seems so easy.”

Here, I don’t think Soth is objecting to a scientific approach per se, but is trying to encourage exploration, for photographers to shoot how and what they really want to. For me, this certainly is what I want to

be shooting, but perhaps I should consider taking a step back from a scientific approach and shoot what comes naturally. Though, of course, to a large extent it is what comes naturally, but I should take care not to pigeonhole myself into shooting overly forensic if I don’t need or want to. Lewis Baltz was one of the earliest photographers I came to love, which was likely due to the fact that his work looked like mine. This being said, I feel that shooting unapologetically deadpan with no exceptions can massively restrict what can be read in the images. Compared to works by Joel Sternfeld and others, it can be said that Baltz work may occasionally be lacking in wider visual context, and instead focuses more on man made shape and form, more similar to art styles like constructivism and cubism.

Styles of Architecture and Their Relationship with Images

Part of my initial research naturally needs to have a strong focus on architecture as it’s such a heavy visual subject of what I plan to shoot. Different styles of architecture are often treated very differently by the photograph. This may be true in part because photographers may perceive that a certain photographic style may compliment certain architecture styles better, but I imagine it’s most likely due to the state contemporary photography was in at the rise of each different type of architecture, and what purpose that piece of architecture serves.

For example, brand new postmodern office buildings are viewed through a distinctly modern commercial photographic lens, with focus on cleanliness and wide angles to dramatise any odd structural shapes. Similarly, 70s houses - with little actual need to be photographed, were viewed through the eyes of 70s artist

photographers. The popularity of these images have created a sort of bond between the subject and the photographic style, leading American suburbs to kind of lend themselves to nostalgic large format colour slides. This relationship between architecture and images is certainly something

that exists, but what I’m saying here is my take on this idea. I imagine that this relation will also differ heavily based on location.

Industrial/Office Near Me - Aztec West, Liberty, Wadehurst and Lawrence Hill Industrial Parks, Avonmouth.

Looking at a map, it’s clear to see that I’m not lacking in potential subject matter, especially on the work side of things. Avonmouth strikes me as a goldmine for industrial buildings, and even contains an enormous Amazon distribution centre. It’s a fair distance away, but is easily accessible by bus. Alternatively, there are many smaller industrial parks around central Bristol that are within walking distance. While none of these are on the same scale as Avonmouth, they may be a lot easier for me to get to, and provide a good place to start. The biggest issue if any with shooting industrial buildings will be private property. While all the space I’d be shooting them from may technically be private property, I imagine this will only be an issue if they are in a fenced off area. If warehouses are just off a road, stepping a few steps into their car park shouldn’t prove difficult, but stepping within

the gates of a fenced off business is a completely different story.

Moving slightly further away from heavy industry, office parks strike a good balance between work and home. While they’re still places of work, building architecture is generally less industrial and more modernist and postmodern.

This makes it feel slightly more connected to home. The first example of this I came across was Aztec West, a large office park proving masses of jobs to the surrounding area and further afield alike. It’s quite north in Bristol, meaning it’s around a

two and a half hour walking or an hour by bus. While this is quite inconvenient, I’m unlikely to find anywhere quite like it any closer, and it could provide some amazing opportunities. If I was to shoot anywhere even close to suburban as well, I’d end up having to travel this far from home anyway.

British Suburbia and the Relationship Between Workplace and Home

Finding somewhere urban or suburban around to shoot is a bigger challenge than places of work. One significant challenge I feel that I face personally is terraced houses. While to some this may feel pedantic, I personally believe that an important and distinctive aspect of nostalgic American suburban photography is the use of space. Frames are often filled with space around large detached houses, intensified by the use of large format film to create a sense of vastness and freedom. Trying to do the same here may often result in an image that feels cramped with windows and doors of houses chopped in half. To an extent, you could call this an interesting and perhaps honest translation of living in America to Britain. We do have a lot less space after all, and our idea of ideal living is certainly different. Despite this, I feel that if the distinctive features of this type of american photography are translated enough, the image may completely cease to feel the same.

To really get a feel for this however, I’m just going to need to shoot and see how the images feel to me.

Thinking about industrial and office spaces in regards to living also made me think more closely about the connections between them. While I’m still not sure how they would work together in a series or book, certain types of work and living spaces would definitely work better together, visually and contextually. For instance, I’d wager that people that work in warehouses have more similarities to each other over a teacher in terms of how and where they live. This isn’t a be all end all, but is a reasonable connection to make. In the same way, someone working in an office in Aztec West is more likely to live in a larger an more modern home. As I’m trying to focus on preferred living and a British equivalent of the American dream, it was recommended that I look at Bradley Stoke, a newish town in north Bristol.

Unsurprisingly, it turns out many of the people living there, have jobs, of all places, in Aztec West.

Little Boxes and Hungarian Cubes Two massively relevant and related pieces of work are Malvina Reynold’s 1962 song ‘Little Boxes’ and Katharina Roter’s photography book ‘Hungarian Cubes’, the latter being something I have looked at previously. Little boxes is, as well as a catchy song, a political satire about suburbia and the attitudes of the middle class population at the time - though this longing for the same American dream may not have changed all that much. The lyrics to the song include “Little boxes on the hillside, Little boxes all the same.”

As well as other lines like: “And the people in the houses All went to the university, Where they were put in boxes And they came out all the same” She is describing a very conformist society, which is essentially a description of the middle class American dream; everyone wants the same sort of house, in the

same sort of neighbourhood with neighbours similar to themselves.

It’s a very ‘white’ sort of culture, with deeply rooted racial reasons.

This is far too complex to talk about without focusing the entire project on it, so it’s not something I will be tackling. I will however be attempting to look at why many people, Americans in particular, chase this conformist and idealist dream, including if us Britons do.

Moving across the North Atlantic to Hungary, Katharina Roter’s ‘Hungarian Cubes’ looks at similar ideas, but from almost the opposite direction.

The book contains only photographs of communist era Hungarian houses built following the First World War. All the buildings were extremely similar, creating homogeneous looking communities, mirroring the communist power structure of the time. In a display of individuality,

many residents chose to paint their houses with interesting patterns.

The patterns are very similar in style for the most part - obviously taking massive inspiration from constructivism, which was growing in nearby soviet states at the time.

In this sense they are perhaps less of a non-conformist viewpoint after all, though they are certainly more individual than hundreds of identical

Little Boxes and Hungarian Cubes, Continued brick houses. American and British people certainly do take measures to try to make themselves seem unique, but not usually anything on this scale. When we try to

display our individualism in the western world, a lot of the time we inadvertently place ourselves into a rather strict visual category anyway. To an extent, this may have

happened to those living in these ‘Hungarian Cubes’. In terms of the books visual style, it is heavily based on objectivity by the looks of it, and has strong visual links to my work, though as I mentioned previously, this may be something that I begin to stray away from.

The images have links to works from Baltz, Gursky, the Bechers and others. It’s essentially a book of typologies, providing a pure and almost scientific look at what these decorated houses look like in the current day. Like Gursky, the images, while being shot on film, have been altered digitally to remove distractions like power lines. I don’t personally have a problem with this if it’s done correctly, but it is not something I intend to do with my work. The scientific approach works well here in my opinion, as many of the buildings are apparently being demolished. Having a completely pure image feels like a record of their existence.

Conformity and Culture Moving on into something more in depth, I’d like to take a closer look at ideas around conformity and how it differs in different cultures. At a psychological level it’s not completely understood, but the basic ideas seem to be well documented. The two major cultural differences that make a big difference are collectivist or individualist cultures. Nations described as a collectivist culture, like the far east, generally have ideals that value the community over the individual, with a strong sense of unity, though these ideals can lend themselves to communism. Individualist nations, like much of western Europe and the United States, generally promote individual rights and liberties, as well as independence. This naturally makes the nation more suited to democracy. It tends to follow that collectivist cultures are naturally more prone to conformity, though this hasn’t been tested enough to provide conclusive proof. In a set of 1962 experiments performed by Stanley Milgram, he

found that subjects from Norway, a more collectivist culture, were more likely to conform than French subjects of the same demographic.

More specifically, the subjects listened to two tones of different length, and were asked which was longer. All other answers were unanimous and incorrect, and the test was to find out their likelihood of conforming when they were under the impression that the people that had given the other five answers could hear them. On this test, Norwegian subjects conformed 62% of the time on average, with the French subjects conforming 50% of the time. Even this rather weak conclusion provides some proof that there can be different degrees of conformity between cultures. Exactly why or how isn’t easy to gauge, and a section in the Encyclopedia of Applied Psychology titled ‘Conformity across Cultures’ goes into more detail but ultimately describes literature in the subject of providing a mixed set of results. Though the results are weak, the general

consensus is that individualist cultures perhaps conform slightly less that collectivist. Personally, I could see this as being true, but with some caveats. The experiments into conformity are in a sort of abstracted state for the most part, and are more relevant to people conforming on a topic that has an answer. The type of conformity that is more relevant to my work would be conformity in people’s interests, what they wear, and how they act socially. On this topic, I would also imagine that the western world would conform less than the eastern world. That being said, we still have a certain amount of style conformity, some of which we want, and some of which is a conformity in non-conformity. For example, you want to like the same things as your friends, obviously, but you may find yourself consciously or unconsciously conforming to your friend group, forcing yourself or growing to like something that you previously didn’t. This is something that while I’m not particularly well versed in, is an

Conformity and Culture, Continued observable phenomena and seems especially common in children and teens. There is undoubtedly written texts on the subject. This type of conformity is likely present everywhere, and I imagine we in the western world may have just as much as more collectivist cultures.

On the other hand, western independence comes into play a lot, with people consciously trying to seem different from one another and unique - a sort of hipster art student that is especially common in city universities. While the ideals may be completely at odds to conformity, it’s perhaps an even more conformist culture than other western styles, as it is often so forced, this is something I have witnessed first hand. I perceive this as being much more common in the west, though that’s just a theory.

The American Dream is more like the former type of conformity in my opinion. Being more pertinent to my project, it is something that I want to be looking at a lot. The American Dream almost mirrors children trying to impress each

other at school, demonstrating the conformity and homogeneity that happens with children but in adults. For many it seems, particularly Americans, there is a sort of stereotyped ‘Grass is Always Greener’ mentality that has middle class people improving their property more to try and impress their neighbours rather than themselves. This squabbling etc. is completely contrary to the traditional American Dream, but is observable, in life as in tv and film.

It remains a kind of pipe dream however, though it is perhaps more held onto by the older generations, Baby Boomers and Generation X, rather than Millennials and Generation Y. It also happens to be the case that these latter generations are also generally the people trying harder to express their individuality. It’s also accepted that conformity in the United States has been gradually dropping over the years.

Photography and the American Dream

Photography has strong ties to the wartime and post-war American Dream - it was a was a way for many Americans to really visualise it, more so than with a illustration for example. It would have been rare for Americans to really be able to see what looked like a real life that they could have.

At this point in time photography still held a much stronger power to appear to be real. Photographs from this time were just as staged to push a narrative as they are today, but the average magazine reader perhaps may have been less aware of this. Especially before and after the war, photographs held incredible sway over morale.

More effective than a motivational wartime poster, the ‘realness’ that appeared in images had far more potential to change public opinion.

Of course, the ties photography had to the American Dream go both ways, and in modern times we get a sense of nostalgia from saturated large format colour photography due to the strong ties. In a sense,

early architectural landscape and garden photographers in the mid 20th century such as Maynard Parker were real pioneers, taking from art and translating it into modern photography, having a large but mostly unnoticed impact on photographers of the future. This is evident in part by my personal line of thinking while moving forward with this project. Older large and medium format colour film often showed a utopian like visual.

The era was far from a utopia, but that idea clung to the aesthetic, leading me, and I’m sure much of the photography community, to hold that association.

This plays in a lot

to technical aspects of modern photographer’s projects, such as this one, as leads people like me to using colour film to achieve a certain look.

First Shooting Around Bradley Stoke

I recently visited Bradley Stoke for the first time, and it was exactly what I was looking for. While the buildings look recognisably British, the way the area is set up is very reminiscent of American society. Everything is in distinct sections rather than integrated, meaning it’s often required to drive everywhere, even if you just want to get some essentials from the shop.

The town ‘centre’ is unlike any other English town I’ve seen, and is simply a retail park and a very large car park. It felt more like a suburb of Bristol to me rather than an actual town. In this way it’s a lot like much of America, where nowhere can be reached without driving, the centre of towns are just shopping malls, and everyone has to drive miles to get to work. Most of the houses look incredibly similar to one another, which is exactly what I was looking for really, though there obviously needs to be differences to keep each frame from being the same to look at. A lot of the streets aren’t really wide enough

to get interesting compositions on, but it’s a surprisingly large place, and there are definitely enough photogenic scenes dotted around. It was very empty for the most part, which is a good thing for me, as I’m really looking at the places and spaces we live in, not the people living there. It’s not that I’m disinterested in the people, but more that I don’t want to spread myself too thin, as I really want to

take an in depth look at the spaces we inhabit, as this is my obsession after all. After walking around some streets, I moved a little further away to Three Brooks Lake, a man made nature reserve and lake at the top of Bradley Stoke. It was a nice discovery, and having a mix of the Suburbs as well as the surrounding land would work well towards crafting a narrative in a book.

Bradley Stoke In-Depth

Bradley Stoke has a perhaps, patchy, not so long history within Bristol. Claimed to be the largest private housing development in Europe, and touted as being some sort of utopia before it was built, things obviously didn’t go to plan.

Just as Bradley Stoke got to its feet, the early 90s housing price crash and recession hit, causing all the residents newly built houses to depreciate heavily in value. This led to the infamous nickname, ‘Sadly Broke’. While the house prices may have gone back up a while ago, the town still has somewhat of a bad reputation, and can’t seem to escape the nickname.

In 2005, Dr Steve Melia, a senior lecturer at UWE, called Bradley Stoke “The Town With No Heart” and detailed how he believe it all went wrong. By ‘No Heart’ I’m assuming he is not only talking about the lack of emotion and life in the town, but also the fact that the ‘Town’ literally didn’t have a town centre, a heart, at the time.

He pins the blame for the town’s failure on multiple different factors, including the project being led by private developers and lacking community involvement. It seems that different parts of the land was in the hands of different developers, leading to houses popping up all at once in different places, which left neighbourhoods severely lacking in facilities. The town eventually sorted itself out, but when Melia was writing in 2005, it still lacked a town centre.

One of the first things I noticed about Bradley Stoke when I first visited, was the ‘Town Centre’, which now appears to be complete.

The “Weeds and Bracken” that Melia states was occupying the centre of town, seems to have mostly been replaced with an enormous car park and a few shops. It’s just a small to medium sized retail park, with the same sort of shops you would expect; a big pet shop, and big home store, a big supermarket.

Whatever the initial plan for

Bradley Stoke town centre was, I don’t think this was it. Steve Melia writes that the town was intended to be a small self-sufficient town outside of Bristol. This is news to me, and it certainly feels more like a suburb. Unless you are in the middle, nowhere seems to even be within walking distance.

Bradley Stoke, in its current form actually reminds me very much of small town America.

The similarities are surprisingly consistent: A suburban area, with nothing within walking distance.

You have to drive 5 or 10 minutes to go shopping, but there isn’t much of a town centre, the real centre of the town is effectively just a large retail park. But here’s the kicker This is the modern day American Dream. Why is something so integral in American lifestyle seen as a complete failure in the UK? Perhaps this is one of the reasons I’m so intrigued and drawn to the area. This begs the question, is Bradley Stoke really a failure?

Bradley Stoke In-Depth, Continued / Thoughts

Perhaps I’m not the correct person to be answering this question. The residents of Bradley Stoke and the surrounding area would probably be the best spokespeople. Rather than using a personal viewpoint from townsfolk to help craft a narrative about the happiness of the area, at this time I’m crafting a narrative through my view of how the area feels to me. It seems I may be working in direct opposition to the idea that Bradley Stoke is a happy and lively place, most of my images make it feel like a ghost town. To me, that is how much of the area feels.

Despite this, and if I end up portraying the area in a bad light, I don’t hold any resentment toward the area, and I actually feel that it’s the sort of place I would be drawn toward to live. If the 2011 Census data is anything to go by, it seems like a good place to live. The area is young, low in unemployment, well qualified, and in great health compared to the rest of the uk.

This is a very clinical view however, and statistics often mean very little in reality. Overall, it feels like a very odd area compared to much of the UK, which may be why I find it so interesting. Steve Melia states in his piece “An early marketing leaflet described it as “a flagship for new developments throughout Europe”.” I like this statement, and the apparent irony that it seems to

hold. A sinking flagship perhaps, if public opinion is anything to go by. http://www.stevemelia.co.uk/ bradleystoke.htm http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/ england/bristol/6227609.stm

Constructing Worlds

An important work to look to when thinking about what you’re trying to convey with landscape, and specifically architectural landscapes, is Constructing Worlds, an exhibition and book of the same name. The foreword in the book states that the exhibition“looks beyond the medium’s ability to simply document the built world and explores the power of the photographic medium to reveal something else - something about who we are and the future that we are constantly shaping” p.13

This is a sentiment that I believe is inherently true to an extent in all architectural focused landscapes whether intentionally or not. What we create has to say something about who we are, and this world we have built for ourselves. This notion that architectural photography inherently holds this power is the whole basis of the exhibition, being described as “fundamental to the

work presented in this publication.”

Though is followed by the assessment that it “stands in direct opposition to conventional notions of architectural photography”. p.17

I find this to be true, though not so much in the art world of photography. The reason architectural photography is so often seen in this way isn’t particularly ambiguous in my opinion, and is due to it’s famously objective job of, as the book states “to describe a building accurately so as to be understood and appreciated by as wide an audience as possible.” p.17

The photograph tends to do a very good job at this, but how well exactly can it say something about us as it can about buildings.

Obviously it creates meanings to some extent, though these meanings are through interpretation, rather than being fixed the way the meaning of the literal building in the image is. The question then

becomes what exactly is done in order to change this interpretation, if anything actually has to be physically changed at all. As the book describes, it contains work from a variety of practitioners, from conceptual or commissioned approaches. Yet all of them are claimed to challenge the orthodoxy of usual architectural imagery. This challenge, Pardo and Redstone claim, is achieved by “not simply interpreting the intentions of the architects, but by revealing through the photographic medium the lived experience and symbolic value of our built world.”

This, for me, is one of the main takeaways from the book’s introduction. The photograph never just shows the structure or architect’s vision, it’s simply not possible. These structures have been used, and created, and ultimately tell at least part of a story, even with nothing else of interest in frame. Everything has been interacted with, and

Constructing Worlds, Continued if it hasn’t, that says something in itself. Every image will inherently say something about our society, as they contain something that we have constructed for a specific purpose.

Hence, constructing worlds. This is a big part of what I’m trying to do. My work isn’t in a vacuum, and takes direct inspiration from the ideas raised here, as well as artists involved in the exhibition, including Walker Evans, Struth, Gursky, Nadav Kander and many others. My goal is to have this come across in my work, while keeping my personal aesthetic.

Thomas Struth, Le Lignon (Horizontal), Geneva, 1989

Hiroshi Sugimoto, World Trade Center, 1997

Photo Format

Choosing the format of the photographs I’m making shouldn’t be difficult, but unfortunately it is.

Due to the sort of style and era I’m taking after, large format colour should be the obvious choice. A large part of the reason that so much of the New American Colour photography feels distinctly similar is due to the technical process of using colour large format. The film has a certain quality that is frankly irreplaceable.

Shooting large format is a whole lot more work, but it is something I believe I could achieve. The problems that arise are due to my plan to create a book to finish up the project. Taking large format images takes a long time, and in order to create a hardback book, it’s likely I’d need a minimum of 32 slides in order to make the pages thick enough, which means unless I didn’t cut out a single image, I’d need to have taken even more than that. This would take a lot of time and effort, as well as multiple trips to my location an hour away, despite this I do believe

it’s doable. Unfortunately, the amount of images I’d need to take brings me onto another image, that being price. At around £5 a frame, 40 images would cost me around £200, which is simply not a feasible investment for this project.

So what is the solution?

I could shoot the project on a different format - 35mm or 6x6 for

example, or I could use a mix of formats, perhaps mostly 6x6 with four to eight 4x5 frames. Initially this seems as if it may not work, but providing the film was the same stock- Portra 160 for example, hopefully the images should share similar enough qualities to be used alongside in the same piece of work.

4x5 in.

6x6 cm

35mm

Edgelands An eye opening and immensely impactful read for me, has been Paul Farley and Michael Symmons Roberts book Edgelands. While the book is written by poets and is thus not about photography, the ideas they discuss are absolutely captured within photography, and feature heavily within my work, as well as the work of many other photographers. The essential ideas focus on the spaces between urban and scenic landscape, and celebrate the hidden beauty and human impact in these spaces.

The subjects range from dens to paths to retail. Not all of the topics are related to my work, but many of them are, and it’s quite something to see how accurately some of my subjects are described in the book.

The ideas in the book have opened my eyes to my surroundings when shooting, and will likely have a profound impact on this project.

The opening subject is cars, which are a prominent feature of edgelands.

Cars

Cars are everywhere in life, and are obviously unavoidable in many images containing roads or urban areas. In situations like these, however, I personally find them to be an annoyance, a nuisance that I’m constantly trying to get out of shot. Rows of cars often form lines across images that can completely disrupt the composition, assuming they are not the focus of the image. In the edgelands though, cars become something completely different.

Here, cars are generally fewer and further between, and, rather than getting in the way, can make for an interesting subject - of thought, or in image. Edgelands talks about the different reasons a car may be found there, providing many different examples; A car may be having an MOT, or it may have gone there to die. It may be an expensive company car towed there, or a boy racer’s pimped out Corsa. Whatever it is, cars in any scenario in the edgelands

inherently provide a much more thought provoking and interesting story behind them - a story that I believe can come across in an image. On the topic of cars, roads are obviously synonymous with them. The roads of the edgelands are strange, often morphing depending on time of day, and day of the week. They are regularly used simply to travel through, as a rat run, major, or minor road, though rarely are the destination. This is similar to edgelands themselves, travelled through, yet rarely stopped at. There is visual beauty to be found here, and a part of that is in the roads themselves, a time consuming human creation that is often empty at certain times, or almost all the time if a larger road has come along as a replacement.

An interesting statement about the roads and vehicles of the edgelands talks about learner drivers. The book states “Between the hours of afternoon and evening ... the leaner drivers head for the business parks.

Edgelands, Continued Out here, there is a relative calm, and the place is laid out like a model town, a microcosm of urban driving” This idea is very relevant to my work, as not only am I planning on shooting a business park and can fully picture this scene, but it’s almost an idea that I can apply to a lot of my imagery. This idea of a model town, everything calm and empty, is often the sort of aesthetic that can come out of my work, and also completely relates back to what I’ve been looking at, the American Dream.

The idealistic vision of the American Dream is essentially just a scaled up model town after all.

On this topic, the work of photographer Vincent Laforet comes to mind.

In his series Life, he has used aerial photography in combination with a tilt-shift lens to create

photographs that look like miniatures. Some of these photos are of typical American suburbia, and coincidentally are taken in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, a

place I visit for 3-4 months each year.

While suburbia isn’t edgelands, they are closely related, often with the edge of suburbia being the beginnings of the edgelands.

Lancaster County, PA (Laforet Lancaster County Suburbia Tilt-Shift Aerial 02)

Edgelands, Continued Paths Paths are the second chapter in Edgelands, and while I was unsure on their significance initially, after reading the ideas presented by the book, I was intrigued. Paths inevitably show up in many images, so it’s interesting to think about exactly how much we say about ourselves through our paths. A main point made is the idea of ‘Desire Paths’. These are described as “lines of footfall worn into the ground, tracks of use.” These are basically the short-cuts we have created across grass instead of using the ever so slightly longer path we were meant to use, so much so that they become a permanent fixture. It is noted that they are often actively discouraged, being seen as “scars and deviations.” They certainly are deviations, sometimes unconscious ones, sometimes purposeful, especially if we are being told not to by something with as little authority as a sign. It says something about us as people or

our culture I think, and relates back to the ideas of conformity I have talked about previously.

Deviating, while being an act of non-conformity, seems more likely to be committed when conforming to something else. Notably, a child purposefully deviating from a path when being told not to because their friends are doing it. After reading about this idea of desire paths, I became immediately more interested in them, and looking for them in my surroundings when walking or talking photographs.

They are everywhere after all, but I think most people don’t have a real name to put to them. For something so mundane, they do carry a sense of human interaction with them. This “record of collective short-cuttings” may be found in a perfect man-made and landscaped environment, which, while being completely constructed by us, feels far less human than the paths we have carved into them. Desire paths are surprisingly well documented, and heavily linked to photography,

with whole online communities dedicated to photographing them - Some seemingly incredibly lazy, some incredibly neat, and some even made by cats.

Business “One software company has a small lake on the corner of its plot, on the junction of two identical arterial roads. The lake is surrounded by bulrushes. Willows weep into its shallows. There may be fish, but no on fishes here. And nobody walks by the lake, no pavements or paths trace its banks. It is there to be seen from a distance, by car, or from the high, smoked-glass office windows.

Code-crunchers, strategists and accountants are meant to glance out between tasks, catch sight of the company lake, and be reminded that their business is a big fish, a veritable great white in a world of minnows.”

Edgelands, Continued

The most relevant words from Edgelands in regards to what I’m currently working on come from near the end of the book, and the chapter on business.

Much of the section is focus on business parks and ideas around them. Having literally just come back from a business park before reading, I was blown away at how accurately the book described what I had just photographed. The conclusion I draw from this is that business parks honestly are all just that similar. Yet again an example of how homogenised some parts of our culture can be, this sort of dream scenario for some, living in a nice neighbourhood where all houses look the same, going to work at the same place that everyone else does. And while at face value perhaps they do all look the same to begin with, there are so many rich visual stories to be found in the area.

An idea linked to Business Parks discussed in the book is the

‘M4 Corridor’, and is described as being “synonymous with England’s burgeoning digital economy” in the eighties. It’s essentially describing the M4 as a sort of horizontal corridor, with the ‘rooms’ being the innumerous business and technology parks branching off to the side. This is something that I’m going to look at in more detail in the future, but it instantly rang true with me as an idea. I felt like I was within one of these rooms, a place filled with stories untold that are unobservable of the corridor just outside.

I suppose the ideas that I’m going to be trying to tackle with my work are around this sort of idealised utopia that we can see in Aztec West and Bradley Stoke.

This utopia has failed, obviously, as a perfect utopia always will, but it’s only really failed at what it was really trying to be. What it’s ended up being is a kind of Frankenstein’s monster of a place, sat in the

middle of nowhere, with drastic changes in scenery and landscape at every turn. While it may be hated by many for this reason, as a visual practitioner I find it an incredibly enthralling location. I’m drawn to it personally, and I feel that it actually has distinct personality, despite being seen as some lifeless area to others.

Painting, Space, Light and New Topographic Style The work of George Shaw is, as well as being a feat in photorealism, eye opening due to how well it captures the aesthetic of New Topographic imagery.

Not only does it achieve this using English locations rather than the distinctly American ones that are typical, but it also manages to achieve it medium of painting.

This seemed odd to me at first, because I heavily associated the contemporary American colour photography aesthetic with the unique qualities of the film used. It seems that while the film may have an impact, it’s not the determining factor. The colour may still play a part, and it may be that Shaw has purposefully selected a certain,

perhaps muted, colour palette. It seems that the New Topographic aesthetic is not as easy to explain as I thought. The main factor is this type of visual may in fact be the more about the artist’s perspective and use of space within the frame.

I often find there are elements of humans or human interaction in the landscape in any work of this type.

While Shaw’s work doesn’t contain people, he’s painting almost completely man-made landscapes.

He contrasts these building heavy scenes with occasional green spaces, adding a splash of colour and reality to the scene, something that is common in colour style contemporary photography. A lot of these visual ideas have been around for a long time, and can be seen in old English painting, like the work of John Constable for instance. His pastoral painting may be drastically different in visual styling to contemporary photography at first glance, but there is in fact a lot of similarities you can find comparing constable’s

Painting, Space, Light and New Topographic Style, Cont. work in 1800s England to a modern photographer’s landscape shot in 1990s America. Early landscape painters it seems were pioneers in visual aesthetic, shaping the future of photographic techniques like choice of subject, the composition of the scene and colour palette. In the most basic form, these painters were simply documenting our surroundings, the places and spaces we live in and enjoy, and the impacts and changes we have made. In doing so, their work has created a much more in-depth set of visual characteristics than perhaps they first desired.

These pictorial images have translated across into photographic imagery with huge success.

The way the space is filled within the frame, the balance of land and sky, the focus on shapes in the landscape, the beauty of what may be our common surroundings. This early pictorial and seemingly honest perspective employed by pastoral landscape paintings gives them much more power to be seen as real and honest compared to other styles of painting at the time. This association may have played powerfully into the New Topographic photographic style, with us as viewers treating this same approach to imagery as being more objective and accurate than other forms of photography that we are exposed to.

Aztec West Shoot Analysis

My first shoot in Aztec West went well and I believe I got many usable images, though it certainly was not without potential flaws and there is a lot to consider and analyse about the shoot and the resulting images.

The biggest things to think about, as I found out, are time and light.

This obviously isn’t news, but the power of these variables is massively exemplified due to the clock change, and the fact that my subject location is an hour away. This can lead to an odd and frustrating scenario: Shooting handheld isn’t always possible due to the fading light, and using a tripod is far more time consuming, so the light fades a lot more between shots. Afternoon light is fine, but it can create a completely different aesthetic from the light during the rest of the day.

On top of this, once the light has faded past afternoon to early evening, it quickly draws closer to the realms

of night photography. These different aesthetics can work perfectly in tandem, though it’s important to acknowledge that more thought will be required to shape these photographs into fitting the narrative that you are working toward. Hand-holding in fading light can also mean you’ll have to open up your camera aperture, which can lead to the foreground becoming out of focus.

The four images on this page, as well as many of the others, have an obvious warm evening light quality to them. It wasn’t actually evening when I shot them, I believe it was around 2PM, which goes to show how fast the light fades.

This isn’t a bad thing, and I personally love the atmosphere created by the warm afternoon light and long shadows from a clear day. To get great images like this, however, I’ll need to start using a tripod as to keep the foreground in focus.

Most of the images I am still happy with however. I like having human involvement in the scenes, like the rusty bins against the industrial styled building, and the tyre tracks from a repeated path against the idealised modern office buildings. In scenes that are particularly detached from real life, elements of humanity can add far more to read within the frame. There are many frames that are nice, but ultimately just don’t really do it for me.

The shot down the road on the last page for example doesn’t really say anything in my opinion. It’s okay visually, the colour and shadows are attractive, but I just don’t find that the image says anything to me.

Other frames, like in the bottom right of this page, I was initially unsure of, but I’ve grown to like more. When I was shooting in the location, the amount of water and grass didn’t particularly interest me, I felt like it would just look like a visually pleasing image that anyone would take in the same scenario. In the context of a series however, and after reading Edgelands, I find the image to have far more meaning, at least to me.

The frame almost perfectly encapsulates what Aztec West wants to be, an incredibly clean and lovely utopia, instilling happiness in the workers to increase productivity. Judging by some of the other images, perhaps this isn’t the case.

The blurry foreground in frames that I have talked about previously becomes very apparent in some frames, especially those taken later in the day. I’m not against more shallow depth of field, I think sometimes it looks better, and sometimes is required to remove distracting elements.

In frames where the floor becomes less and less sharp towards the camera, I find it becomes a distraction.

Generally, I don’t like to make major crops to images for various reasons, but in images such as the ones shown on this page, it almost becomes necessary. One of the most obvious reasons against cropping is the associated loss of detail. Less of the frame at the same size obviously means less detail, and larger grain/pixels.

At medium format however, the film is large enough than unless it’s blown up to a massive size, it’s unlikely to be noticeable.

Another negative about

cropping is that you’ll lose more than you want to, providing you want the aspect ratio to be the same. So though I only need to crop the bottoms of some frames, I also have to lose some of the sides unless I want a rectangular image.

My biggest issue with cropping personally is the change to focal length.

Cropping simulates a longer focal length, which can be noticeable and look out of place if all your images were shot at the same focal length.

Cropping into corners is also not an option unless it’s extremely minor, because the perspective in the corners of an image will look stretched and odd if cropped into the centre.

At the end of the day, I only think crops work if they are minor enough. If that’s the case with a few of my images, I’m not sure yet honestly. If it means that I have to re-shoot, so be it.

As well as making images of Aztec West on this shoot, I also wanted to shoot some of the surrounding area. Unlike Bradley Stoke, where many of the Aztec West workers apparently live, the Coniston and Patchway area feels far older, and much more working class in comparison. It would be interesting to find out if many of the residents of that area work in Aztec West, and how they feel about the business park in general. I’d be willing to bet many of the residents still live in the same house as they did before the park even existed.

Regardless, without even knowing these things, there’s an incredibly stark contrast in environment, in just a few hundred yards of space. I feel like these close spaces are important to capture and show, to give some more context to the surrounding area, and to make a more nuanced impression on the viewer.

John Davies

The older black and white large format work of John Davies is a particular inspiration for me, and the shots that I’d be trying to achieve with large format.

Rather than my inspiration stemming from the black and white or the overall aesthetic, it’s more about the composition and choice of subject and placement.

This is something that I feel he does far better with his older large format work.

His more recent black and white large format seems to have a bigger focus on modern architectural structures, often with wide angles dramatising the structure, though the perfectly perpendicular verticals do remain.

His approach may have actually not changed at all for all I know, and the change in the style of the images could simply be due to the change in content, leaving his older work feeling reminiscent

of the ‘good old days’ of 80s Britain. Perhaps it is this that is our equivalence of the American Dream, though admittedly they are drastically different ideas. One of the many strengths of Davies’ work in my opinion, is the use of height, and the scenes he chooses. Large format holds incredible potential to

‘set a scene’ as it were, while still holding immense detail in those areas. Davies work seems to do this in almost all of his images, at least in his British Isles series.

He’s regularly shooting from high places, and lifting the camera front will give him even more potential in this area.

John Davies, Continued

What it ends up with is a vast scene, filled with detail, containing enough of the surrounding to give a fairly accurate depiction of the area in a single image. I do know

of a few raised spots around my shooting area, but certainly nothing to this extent. I also don’t have the budget to shoot an entire small book on large format film.

A good alternative could be to take vast, defining, Davies style shots of an area on 5”x4” and use 6x6cm shots for inside said area.

Utopias and Space

The actual concept of a utopia is of great interest to me, and highly relevant to this work. A utopia is a fairly simple idea, and is just that - an almost literal idea.

Despite this, utopia is most closely related to works of fiction, and is generally regarded as such. I’m going to be attempting to unpick these ideas somewhat, though some may be complex ideas than others. Our reasoning as a people to want to live in a utopia feels as though it stems from some of our more primal instincts, like safety and security, being in a controlled, fair environment and being able to have what makes us happy. Such basic principles may have been the reason why it was so powerful as a scary idea when writers and filmmakers completely flipped the idea on its head, giving us a dystopia, which is effectively the opposite - huge imbalances, with people in a constant state of danger.

Utopian and Dystopian ideas have been so used (or perhaps overused) in storytelling, that their

visuals are almost exclusively tied up with a futuristic setting and aesthetic. Despite this notion we have about utopias and such, in reality the utopia is just an idea about a perfect and comfortable society, but something that is obviously not possible. Michel Foucault has written in great depth about complex utopian spaces, and our living spaces in general.

The following selections of his, I’d like to try to interpret and relate:

perhaps our life is still governed by a certain number of oppositions that remain inviolable, that our institutions and practices have not yet dared to break down. These are oppositions that we regard as simple givens: for example between private space and public space, between family space and social space, between cultural space and useful space, between the space of leisure and that of work. All these are still nurtured by the hidden presence of the sacred.”

“In any case I believe that the anxiety of our era has to do fundamentally with space, ... Now, despite all the techniques for appropriating space, despite the whole network of knowledge that enables us to delimit or to formalize it, contemporary space is perhaps still not entirely desanctified ...

To be sure a certain theoretical desanctification of space (the one signaled by Galileo’s work) has occurred, but we may still not have reached the point of a practical desanctification of space. And

There’s a lot being said here, and it relates to utopias, human axniety, and control. When mentioning the ‘anxiety of our era’ I don’t know whether Foucault is speaking metaphorically, perhaps about change, politics, etc. or literal anxiety within populations, which seems to have been steadily rising for a long time now. Different interpretations can lead to different lines of reasoning, but could make equally sound arguments. That aside, what I feel Foucault is getting at pertains to our need as humans

Utopias and Space to categorise and control aspects of our lives, as individuals as well as a society. That perhaps in order to curb anxiety, we feel that we must be in control of everything, including our inhabited space. As our knowledge as a species grows, so does our need to appropriate and formalise. He refers to these actions, as ‘desanctification’, a desecration of the sacredness of these spaces. Perhaps he is implying that in order to ease our societal anxieties, we purposely try to desecrate, simplify, categorise, perhaps homogenise our spaces.

This description sounds a lot like a utopia to me, but he presents an argument that perhaps this full desanctification of our spaces is yet to occur, with complex hidden sacred value to many of our spaces that we aren’t completely aware of or in control of, like cultural and private space, areas that must be broken down, de-constructed and rationalised to achieve some strange ideal utopia. These ideas around utopias, to control of every

aspect of our spaces in order to ease some kind of anxiety, can absolutely be applied to Bradley Stoke. It’s an area that feels so meticulously designed, so analysed and formalised, designed as a type of utopia, but ended up being far too disjointed and reliant on the other spaces around it. Bradley Stoke certainly feels like a desanctified place, but not quite enough to become this efficient, functional machine of desire.

Bradley Stoke, 5x4”

My second real shoot was a return to Bradley Stoke, with a large format camera as well as my medium format Bronica. I feel that through some large format practice from last year I can use the Toyo quite effectively.

It’s a very slow process, obviously, and this isn’t generally a bad thing, as it gives you time to carefully consider and compose your shots, though when the sun sets so quickly and it’s cold outside, it’s not always a pleasurable experience. When I was out shooting, my biggest fear was composing badly and not being parallel to my subject, things that I wasn’t sure how well I’d be able to manage because the camera ‘viewfinder’ is upside down. Despite my fears, five of my six images came out well, with the

only mistake being that one of the frames was blurry, likely due to me knocking something before shooting.

The actual set of images are a mixed bag in my opinion.

I had six frames that I had to shoot that day, but the weather took a turn for the worst fairly soon after I arrived, but I was able to grab a couple of great shots before it got too bad.

Following on from what I said I liked about the work of John Davies, I returned to vantage points I had found previously to try and fully utilise the immense detail of the slide film. I didn’t manage this with all the shots, but I got a few from vantage points, which could work well as large printed centrepieces to give a huge detailed visual of the area in all its ‘glory’.

Bradley Stoke, 6x6cm

The medium format shots from the same day were also a mixed bag unfortunately. I like some of the earlier shots I achieved before the weather became completely flat, but once it became overcast, the thick cloud layer obliterated any vibrancy in the images. I was handholding my camera for this shoot, and what I believe is the real power in hand-held shooting compared to tripod shooting is the freedom to explore more. I found that when I’m not carrying a tripod around, I have far more opportunity to evaluate my surroundings and current experience. I have found this evident due to the fact that I have so many strong memories associated with this shoot. I had the freedom to saunter around, looking at small details in the landscape and having powerful memory of them. The top left image on this page was the first shot of the film that I took. Houses run down the right and a bank runs along the left, with a fence at the top designed to block out the sound of the M4, which is directly on the other side. The sound isn’t blocked very effectively, and the powerful drone of the M4 lingers constantly. There is a fog in the air, captured in the image, spilling over a garden fence.

This is from a barbecue, and the extremely distinctive smell of barbecued sausages fills the air. The image of the roundabout, below the previous, I find to be uninteresting, flat visually, and badly composed, but also represents a strong visual memory for me. As I walked the empty neighbourhood streets, a crow sat on the ground, pecking a small round yellow object.

Bradley Stoke, 6x6cm, Cont.

It obviously wasn’t edible, but it seemed to want it regardless. It repeatedly flew off with it before dropping it, then having to land and pick it up again. I was about two streets over at a roundabout when I took a shot, noticing that the crow was still around, almost as if it was following me. The crow is actually captured in the image, but small and very difficult to see. These personal memories of images aren’t necessarily relevant to this project, but noting my experiences when shooting was an extremely enjoyable exercise, and something that I believe could be extremely potent in a very personal project. In the future I think it could be a good idea to take a voice recorder to read out my experiences to better remember them. What could be seen as a powerful visual narrative is in the two images in the centre of this page. Two street corners with picturesque scenery - Clean hedges and green spaces, lovely trees and fancy houses, even with the idealistic street names ‘Rosemary Close’ and ‘Lavender Way’.

The disgusting weather seems to bring the scenes back into reality, the reality of British weather, as well as the apparent 90s reality of Bradley Stoke itself. The weather challenges the idealised utopia, but perhaps in a slightly obvious way. As well as this, the weather does of course make the shots quite flat visually. The left shot is also badly composed in my opinion, though the shot on the right has a bit more value to me.

Project Progression, Book/Prints

I’ve been around Bradley Stoke and Aztec west numerous times now, but it’s starting to feel clear that to make a book full of images that I’m happy with would take many, many more visits. I’ve instead decided to change my approach, and use the rest of my time fitting in as much shooting as possible to end up with the strongest set of images I can. If I was to make a book that I feel would be truly suitable for this project, I would have to start about now. The type of book that would suit this project, I feel, is a dense medium sized hardback. The first step to creating the book is having all the necessary images, and it’s simply not possible to progress without them. Making a hardback generally requires 50+ images, as there generally has to be enough thickness of the pages to match the spine and thick cover.

Coincidentally, I do seem to have exactly 50 images, I have nowhere near that amount that I believe are strong enough to go in a book.

To make a book type project at this point I would either have to start making a hardback now with a weak set of images, or shoot more but end up having to make a softback/zine style book. Having a more zine style mock-up book is something that I’m open to, but I don’t believe it’s suitable for the content and theme of my images, that being very formal and perhaps bland. I’m leaning towards large high quality matte prints, presented professionally in a box. I would like to have a title slide or two, with a project name and perhaps a logo or design, and a paragraph of text about my project, which could go at the beginning to give viewers initial insight, or at the end to give people a second viewing from a new perspective.

As for the title itself, the name ‘Flagship’ really appeals to me. This comes from when I was reading about the area, and the quote from Steve Melia “An early marketing leaflet described it as “a

flagship for new developments throughout Europe”.” I can’t seem to find much about this, or the original source of the quote, but going forward and extending the project in my own time, I’d like to make contact with people like Steve, with more knowledge about Bradley Stoke than is available online and within my grasp. First hand research like this would have be great to have right now, but given the time taken to find people with more knowledge, the process of a back and forth correspondence would likely take far too much time and not come to fruition before the project end. I do love the idea of seeing Bradley Stoke as a flagship, whether it be a successful one or not. The namesake fits in from a design perspective as well in my opinion, as I find an outline of Bradley Stoke looking oddly like the sail of a ship. I think this would work great visually, and can see it printed, burned, or engraved onto a book cover.

Mark Power and Daniel Cockrill - DTLFTSOTE

Destroying the Laboratory for the Sake of the Experiment was a collaborative project between the two mentioned artists, and carries great relevance to my work in different areas, and also happened to come to my attention at a very coincidental and convenient time.

During my most recent shoot I was mid-way through reading parts of Edgelands, and I was busy trying to apply the poetics of my surroundings better into imagery, through deeper thought and analysis of what was around me. As I read through incredibly descriptive scenes in the book, I was thinking “I want to see a picture of this place.” The books writers went on walks together describing their surroundings and finding poetic inspiration, and it was at this time I was imagining how successful it would be to have one of the pair be a photographer instead. A day or two later I learned of DTLFTSOTE, which was essentially what I was thinking of, so naturally it’s something of interest

to me. The images themselves are mixed in my opinion. They are strong images with what appears to be a semi-clear narrative - at least on the surface. The set of images is obviously of things around the country that Power found interesting, and contains a

lot of juxtapositions within them.

Juxtapositions within images are a common thing to see, and are naturally occurring all over if you pay attention. They can be a powerful visual tool, but are too often ironic, which in my personal opinion takes away from the image,

Mark Power and Daniel Cockrill - DTLFTSOTE turning it into some obvious political statement told through a gimmicky image. I even believe some of Power’s images appear guilty of this, but when viewed in a multimedia piece alongside Cockrill’s poetry, the implications from the change in context are huge.

The seemingly ironic juxtaposed and political images, such as the playground and pylons in London, suddenly becomes a true embrace of serendipity, which I believe is

what the project was meant to be about. The images cease to try and seem like some political statement, and take on a liquefied state of being. They are completely open to interpretation, allowing themselves to be torn apart and put back together again by Cockrill’s words, the same, but changed.

Stories emerge from images that may not exist, and the images lose their preferred meaning that the artist would have given them and

succumb to the power or words and text of another. Cockrill’s spoken words have the same treatment, their meaning warped by the visual of Power’s imagery on-screen. Ultimately, this is what the project is about, and its name starts to become clear. It isn’t what I would aim to do exactly if I used poetry, but is an amazing example of the power that photography and poetry have when used in tandem.

The M4 Corridor, Ballard, The M25, London Orbital

The M4 is proving to be incredibly relevant to my project, though I’m not sure if it’s what I’m going to focus on at this time.

Assuming my project goes beyond university and into my personal time afterwards, the resulting book could potentially use the M4 as a vessel, with the project branching out much further along the motorway. At this time I’m focused a lot more around Bradley Stoke, and while the M4 literally runs alongside and is very relevant, having a photo of it may not fit if my final submission consists of 8 or 10 prints.

An interesting piece of theory on Motorways is ‘London Orbital’, an Iain Sinclair book which resulted in a collaborative feature length film with Christopher Petit. The M25 is fundamentally different to the M4 and many other motorways, because it’s also a ring road, and a ring road that orbits one of the most major cities in the world. Despite there being huge differences, the

points made about the M25 will be interesting to apply to the M4, and really compare and contrast their differences - or similarities. The M25 being a ring road means that there is instantly so much we can gather and interpret about people as a species, our construction habits and use of space, and this is before even thinking about the numerous other scrapped ‘orbital’ projects designed to circle London. The London Orbital film seems to view the road in an extremely critical and negative light, going between brutal poetic descriptions of experiences, and tales of happenings from all around the road. The M25 is even described as “negative space, an energy drain, to enter it is to enter dead time.” Often accompanying the narration is haunting music, or the muffled sound of the all too familiar driving radio stations.

Many of the thoughts about the M25 at first seem to be purely a reference to its endless orbit, but I think the application can be made elsewhere. For example, take:

“My theory, that viewing the overfamiliar as a form of alien landscape would transform it, is undone my the pointlessness of endless orbiting...Road is nightmare. Road is purgatory. Road is hell.” This quote, while directly referencing the orbital nature of the M25, could be seen as holding true with many roads in our lives. The M4, for example, is travelled twice a day by a huge amount of people on their way to work and back, and could arguably be seen as more repetitive, though perhaps more like a pendulum between work and home rather than an endless orbit. A rather powerful and poignant sentiment is expressed toward the end of the film, in a piece of audio and video of who I believe is J.G Ballard.

Talking about the motorway, culture, and developments, he says something along the lines of:

“There is no past, there’s no future. The average science park, or industrial estate, people sit in offices, there’s no social

The M4 Corridor, Ballard, The M25, London Orbital, Cont. hierarchy... Out on the periphery of Greater London, there have been huge developments. Not just even motorways, and science parks, and industrial estates, and so on, but also in a kind of, diffusing airport culture that involves CCTV cameras and dual-carriageways, video rentals, marinas, endless low cost executive housing. A new kind of England, often very, you know - quick access to the nearest airport, this is the world, out on the M25, where a new kind of transient England has come into being.”

What Ballard describes feels fairly accurate, and while it may sound like some terrifying dystopian future from one of his novels, (or at least does with the film playing dread-filled ominous music in the background) it doesn’t feel so nightmarish in our reality, and I believe Ballard knew this himself. He famously lived in Shepperton mere minutes from both the M3 and M25, and apparently enjoyed their “perverse

beauty”. Still, these negative ideas are very relevant to my current work, and this apparent dystopia is arguably true for Bradley Stoke, Aztec West, and the M4. It’s even a narrative that I absolutely believe I could take with this work, implying through imagery that everyone is miserable living the same hightech life. While my narrative dances with these ideas, looking at many people’s apparent identical ideal life, I’m looking to question how positive or negative these spaces are through how they feel and present themselves. Rather than try and present some dystopia, I’m taking a more nuanced approach, more about asking questions than making statements.

I feel that the M4 is potentially open to some different themes than the M25, some more lighthearted, and some far more dark.

The M4 presented by Edgelands, which I have mentioned previously, is a bit more nostalgic and fun, and less dystoipan. It’s presented

as being heavily interwoven with technology, more specifically an 80s or 90s cutting edge technology era, which now is seen as a sort of fun golden age by some. A quote I find quite powerful is as follows: “If silicon had a smell, you might wind down the window, let the wind ruffle your perm, sample the metallic tang of early mobile phones, early computers, the scent of a new age.”

Of course, we are in this new age now, it’s something you can feel in an area like Aztec West, and it comes through in some images.

It’s not as scary as people thought it would be, but perhaps it’s a little more work driven and serious than in the past. I personally feel that perhaps the M4, particularly the M5, are open to the theme of death. Two large motorways with an intersect in Bristol, each home to some of deadliest road incidents in British history, 70 miles and 20 years apart, killing 17 people in total. 51 People were injured in the M5 crash in 2011, and 51 cars were involved in the M4 Incident.

Third Bradley Stoke Shoot

Mt third shoot at Bradley Stoke went well and will once again has produced some shots that I’m happy enough with as final prints. The weather was terrible once again, but it has been cloudy for so long I think I’m going to have to completely embrace overcast weather, so I went anyway. The darkness from the clouds would be an issue with 160 speed film, so I decided to take my tripod. Working in the freezing cold wasn’t great, but it didn’t hinder my practice. I’m done with large format for now, as not only do I not have the budget, but I managed to get some great shots previously that could stand as centrepieces. I tried to explore sections of Bradley Stoke that I’d never visited before, as I do on every shoot. Once again, I stuck to my narrative of shooting and shot scenes without pedestrians in them. While this is a conscious decision to push my personal narrative, it tends not to be a lot of effort to avoid people, as there really isn’t many people around. A few people around compared to zero however does have a strong effect on the narrative. The only visible living thing in a shot was actually a dog, which gives a sense of people and life breaking narrative. In truth, that image is actually a hand crafted scene I set up to try and craft a narrative.

Todd Hido

Todd Hido represents an area I have not yet tackled - darkness. I don’t feel that I have anywhere near the time required to integrate it into this project, though if the project ever extended into the night, Hido’s series ‘House Hunting’ would be similar to what I would look to achieve. Something dramatic, perhaps emotional or atmospheric, while still being more real and representative of the place than a Crewdson shot. At the moment I’m generally shooting buildings and the spaces around them, so shooting the same subjects at night may involve a similar process, but with a big difference. Due to the change from natural to ‘manufactured’ light, the face of the landscape changes, and as a practitioner you will find shots and tell stories that were previously invisible. In my imagery I’m often finding ‘human-ness’ without humans. This takes many forms, from places we inhabit, to things made by community or government, to something changed, altered or made by an individual.

Hido’s work adds another layer of human life, through the use of light. The scenes he shoots already contain human imprints - footsteps in snow, from a person trudging home, skid marks at an intersection, from

Todd Hido, Continued a car enthusiast tearing up the tarmac in the middle of the night.

These stories are presented as something that has happened in the past, perhaps not even too long ago. But what we see is

another story within the frame, the story of the building in the frame with the light on. There is almost undeniably life here, and while it is nowhere to be seen, the viewer has a strong sense of its existence. We don’t know much, if anything about the life within, but the small bits of information we do get makes us as viewers all the more interesting. It’s an extra layer of narrative and storytelling in an image, and while I certainly don’t have time to turn my project into a day and night project, it’s something I’d consider in future projects as well as if I extended this one.

I’ve always had a love for night photography but found it hard to explore due to time, temperature, and safety.

Surrounding Areas of Bradley Stoke

My project started in Bradley stoke and Aztec West, and the focus is going to remain there mostly now, but I have no intention of showing the areas in a vacuum, devoid of the context surrounding them. I like to shoot in a very explorative manner, so I have no problem with overstepping some technical boundary of a place.

I’ve explored areas both north and south of Bradley Stoke, like Little Stoke and the boundary of Stoke Gifford below, and the moors and M4 above. This all stretches north west past Patchway and to Aztec West, giving my images a sort of loose overview of what is in actuality a fairly large yet varied area. It’s important that I give a nuanced view in my narrative, because all these different areas around Bradley Stoke do have their own spaces and stories to tell despite many of them essentially being in Bradley Stoke. In my final edit of images, it’s important that it’s clear enough to viewers that the set also contains the surrounding area, so I’m not

providing a completely false view of a place. The spaces may naturally differentiate themselves purely on the scenery, but a foreword or paragraph about the set may be useful to get my personal narrative across. A lot of the surrounding areas are interesting in themselves, but are especially so when put in the context of Bradley Stoke and the way I’m analysing it.

Little Stoke, for example lives up to its namesake of being little, but is actually a small suburb of Bristol rather than being its own town. Little Stoke feels like the little (and working class) brother, who was fine at what he did, but got left behind by his big brother Brad because he wanted to become his own middle class fully functioning town, only that apparently didn’t go as well as planned, and now Little Stoke sits humbly as ever, though a little rough around the edges.

Bradley Stoke, while trying to establish a whole new

town and infrastructure, seems to have just ended up being a more modern and polished version of Stoke Gifford just below it (Gifford being mostly a commuter town.)

It’s not for me to say whether or not this is a failure, but it is interesting to note and explore.

Further and Final Shooting

Costs are running up and time is running out, so this shoot to the Bradley Stoke area will be my last. Looking at the results though, I’m happy with this, and I think I have more than enough strong images to present as a portfolio.

This shoot went especially well in my opinion, I explored slightly wider than I have previously, into little stoke which feels much poorer, but a lot more grounded in English Reality. more variety to the set of images, gives some deeper insight and context into the area as a whole and what’s surrounding it. I explored Little Stoke, Again, the weather was poor during this shoot, but so many of my images have overcast skies that it’s started to become more consistent, as well as more representative of the overall narrative and metaphors I’m discussing, especially when the workplaces I’m shooting have sunny weather and the homes are cloudy. I gained some technical skills on this shoot too, which was due to me trying new techniques,

learning about my camera, and countering the wind. I used a tripod on my previous shoot, but wasn’t sure where a shutter release would connect, so I just held the camera steady and pressed the shutter.

This ended up being fine most of the time, but had the potential to blur images. I later figured out that the shutter release plugged in the side of my camera body, and started using it for this shoot.

Unfortunately, just using a shutter release isn’t good enough to use a small aperture and long shutter speed, as the force of the mirror creates shutter shake which gives images motion blur. After figuring out how to use my camera mirror up mode, I was able to crank the tripod up to maximum height, wait for the wind to calm, and shoot with a long shutter speed and achieve maximum sharpness. The high tripod height allowed me to have my camera perfectly parallel to my subject, giving me perfectly straight verticals and true visuals without compromising on composure.

Further and Final Shooting

Further and Final Shooting

Further and Final Shooting

Final Edit and Sequence

The editing and sequencing of images is arguably one of the most important factors of all, and you decisions can literally end up with a completely different set of images. Before the edit session I had edited my images down by about 50%, which was mostly just me removing any images I was completely unhappy with or were weak technically, so I’ll admit I hadn’t had to make any difficult decisions yet.

The group edit session was perfect in my opinion, and allowed me to cut my selection down from almost 40 to just 15, which I believe is a good amount for a print portfolio. Being as a group is extremely powerful, and allows people to voice opinions that come from completely fresh eyes and new angles. People that had just heard my idea were able to look at my images and help choose the strongest, and the images they felt fit the narrative best. I was happy with the edit we made

together, and went forwards with it as my final edit. If I wanted to change the narrative, the selection of images I had previously would absolutely allow me to do that. My current edit isn’t necessarily all of the strongest images and nothing more, it’s the best selection of images that are the strongest to give an impression of the overall area. If I wanted to create a more light-hearted narrative, or perhaps a much darker one, I believe I would have the necessary images to do so, using images that aren’t in my current edit. Similarly, if I carry on to make a book, many of the images that had to be cut to make the edit concise, could be great at filling a book full of strong image content, where being concise isn’t as important.

After the edit, I had to go through and choose a sequence for my images, which I believe is nearly of the same level of importance. I had 12 medium format and 3 large format, so there was immediately a

lot of ways I could section up the shots. The large format prints were obviously larger and more detailed, and stand as sort of centre-pieces for the set. I didn’t want to have all three at the beginning or end, so I naturally sectioned them up evenly. I wanted my narrative to perhaps rely on visual strength and flow of images into one another, but not try to portray some kind of metaphorical narrative. I spent a long time trying to get a flow I was happy with, laying images out on the ground to try and get a better sense of how they will view.

I couldn’t get the set to read how I wanted, so I eventually decided to go with pairs. Being someone who likes to create books, often with photographs on each page, I love the dynamic of side-by-side images, how they can alter and add to each other, but as can still be viewed alone. I managed to get a flow I was happy with, starting with a large format print with two pairs of medium format behind it, repeating 2 more times afterwards.

Evaluation

My experience with the Obsessions brief has been great overall, and has gone through an incredible amount of development from what started as just a simple idea. While starting focused on my own obsession, it has developed into something far more, and aims to take a critical look at our obsession as a species to obsess over the spaces we build and occupy.

The beginnings of this project came from my own obsessions.

Firstly, the visual aesthetic I’ve been obsessing over in the past year, based on the incredibly distinctive style of many contemporary American colour photographers William Eggleston, Stephen Shore, Joel Sternfeld and Meyerowitz.

These are photographers that I haven’t explicitly looked at in my supporting coursework, due to the fact that I’ve looked at them so many times previously, and they’ve already had a huge impact on me as a practitioner. Instead I’ve looked

to find visual artists I hadn’t been previously aware of, to add a fresh batch of ideas that could influence my practice. My other obsession was around Americanism and the American dream, something with strong visual ties to the aesthetic I was working with. I was drawn to how and why it was such an American ideal, and keen to unpick and analyse these ideals, before trying to apply them to modern day Britain, and figure out what our equivalent is.

I was advised to take a look at Bradley Stoke, which really did seem like a physical British equivalent of ideal American living. It was a physical equivalent, and by this I mean layout, living space, and how daily life is lived.

Houses make up the bulk of the town, everywhere looks nice and neighbourly, everyone owns a car and must drive to the shop, and just hops on the motorway to get to their job. Speaking from experience, this description is the

standard and ideal living in the United States. In the UK however, this style of life seems looked down upon, and the segmented nature of Bradley Stoke has been seen as a failure. I’ve heard accounts from people about the area, and read articles analysing what went wrong in the town creation process. The town is generally seen as a failure by the rest of Bristol, and has the nickname ‘Sadly Broke’ which arose from the 90s housing crisis.

I haven’t used accounts of people from the area, at least at this stage, as I wanted to go to the area to assess it myself, and personally challenge the outside perception. I started going to Bradley Stoke to scout and shoot the area, beginning with digital for test shooting. It helped me get a feel for the area, but I regretted even testing with digital when I knew my final format was likely to be medium format.

Even a quick shot on first visiting a place has the potential to come out well enough to use as a final image, and has a chance to capture a

Evaluation serendipitous moment that won’t happen again.

After first visiting Bradley Stoke I wanted to explore the work side of the American dream, and thus looked to Aztec West, where I’d heard a lot of the aforementioned town residents work. The strong segmented lifestyle was very prevalent at this point, and didn’t seem like it was necessarily a bad thing to me, so I was confused as to why it seemed far more idealised in the US over the UK. I did feel that it seemed a little automated, where everyone would just drive to and from work every day, without much free time, but with a well paying job.

This seems to be lusted after by some, while others are perplexed as to why someone would want to live that kind of life. I did some in-depth research in this area into conformity and how it manifests within cultures, as well as looking at Katharina Roter’s book relating to the same subject, ‘Hungarian Cubes’. Studies tended to show

that people from individualistic nations like the United States or Britain tend to conform less with the thoughts of their peers, though this is at odds with the idea of the American dream, which is a very conformist ideal. This is explained in part due to the American dream essentially being a utopian ideal, that perhaps a life so perfect is a lot easier to conform to. Through this thinking I came onto ideas about utopia and space, analysing some in depth words from Michel Foucault, and thinking about why exactly we crave these utopias.

I continued to shoot around Bradley Stoke, mostly using medium format, but also making some vast large format shots designed to give an overview of the area, an idea I got after looking at John Davies work, and as a way to incorporate some large format without having to use purely 5x4 film and break the bank. At the time I was also reading Edgelands, which gave me a huge appreciation for

the area, the hidden visual stories I could find in seemingly mundane spaces, and helped me understand the atmosphere of the places I was shooting, which were always in an odd boundary between nature and living space. This poetic look at spaces naturally led into a look at Mark Power and Daniel Cockrill’s DTLFTSOTE, which provided some visual inspiration, and gave me a real insight into the power of photography alongside poetry. I was interested in how the M4 cut through the landscape, shooting past Bradley Stoke and Aztec West, providing a corridor for residents and workers to get where they are heading at extreme speed. At the same time it’s home to countless hidden and interesting places, all with the same thing in common - the sound of cars and a tall brown fence. I went into a lot more depth on roads like the M4 and M25, using London Orbital as inspiration, exploring some disturbing yet interesting theories about roads and motorways. It led

Evaluation into a look at J.G. Ballard, which looped back to the idea of utopias and dystopias.

All these ideas and theories I was reading fed back into my process and informed the images I took, which, even if it doesn’t make an image stronger alone, changed my perception of what I was shooting, allowing me to better pick my subjects and give a more nuanced view of Bradley Stoke and the surrounding area.

I’m happy with what I’ve achieved, and feel that my project is in a presentable state. That is to say that I consider it ‘finished’ at this time, but intend to continue the project to truly finish it. My original intention was to create a book after all, and while I failed in that regard, I’d much rather wait until I have enough images to make a good book, rather than just for the sake of it. My choice to change from a book to prints was nearly a month before the project, as was a considered decision that I think

massively benefitted the project as a submission.

I’m actually fairly proud of myself this time around, and feel that there is a lot of things I did right, though the project and my undertaking of it is obviously not without fault. Technically I believe my images are strong, but not perfect, and while that may come across as negative, I actually feel very positive about my images, not only am I happy with them, but I feel that my process of creating them has given me a surprising amount of technical prowess. I had already considered myself very technically capable, but making a coherent and professional project completely out of self shot, processed, and scanned colour film turned out to be a real challenge. My manual camera skills developed a lot throughout the process, with me initially shooting handheld and running into issues with too blurry a foreground as I was having to use wider apertures.

I swapped to a tripod, and learned how to most effectively stop down my images for sharpness while managing to eliminate camera or shutter shake. I also really picked up more large format skills, which is admittedly a long process with absolutely no margin for error, but was something I enjoyed and got some great shots from. My editing process has also developed a lot, with me now having a much more indepth knowledge of colour. Digital images generally tend to come out with perfect colour and amazing coherency, but film was a real challenge to get accurate colours on every frame. This is something I struggled with at first, but have a much better understanding of now.

With all that I learned, I believe that I was able to make a concise set of powerful and intriguing images, that tell the story of a space, with an open ended narrative so that the viewer can draw their own conclusions.

As with many projects, a

Evaluation slight regret I have is simply my amount of shooting. While I did manage to get a good amount of shoots in, especially considering the location, more would have been better. It is a fairly large place after all, and there are certainly many areas of Bradley Stoke that remain uncharted territory for me.

Perhaps my amount of shooting was perfectly reasonable in the given time, but if I was to start over, I would want to visit a new area on every visit, shooting with medium format from the outset. A perceived weakness could certainly be my narrative, which I understand.

I haven’t drawn a crystal clear conclusion, but this really wasn’t my intention anyway. I hope that I can give viewers a look at the area, with my images perhaps suggesting different conclusions that a viewer can make. Perhaps a mistake I made was not going into enough depth on the background of the area. I wanted to come at it with fairly fresh eyes, but it didn’t occur to me until later in the project

how interesting reading more of the area history could have been, or indeed still be. Older local papers and magazines could have added some incredible insight into events in the area, and is something I may have missed out on.

I think I really succeeded on what I set out to do, even though what I ended up with may seem far from my starting point, my origins were purposely open ended and vague to give myself and my project room to evolve, and that’s something I believe it did. The ideas and philosophers I’ve learned of, new techniques and skills, have all given me masses of inspiration for my future projects, even if they aren’t that related. I think this project has a real future; at the moment it sits as a completed body of work as ‘Flagship’, a reference to an apparent old leaflet advertising the development, with a design based on the shape of Bradley Stoke, that’s also reminiscent of a ship’s sail. The project has a lot of

potential to continue to grow in the future, perhaps to become a book on the same subject, or to grow into something else entirely. I could continue in the same area, going more into the history of the place as I explore and map out the entire space with photographs. I could even expand the project to other ‘New Town’ type developments, making it an almost catalogue of modern development towns. I also like the idea of collaborating with a poet, which I discovered while recording my surroundings while wandering around. A poetic, story like description alongside each image appeals to me, but is beyond me in terms of ability. Whatever happens, I feel that this project has real potential for a strong future, and would love, and am likely to, continue it. I enjoyed exploring this new space, and I’m surprised at the immense amount of skill and knowledge I have gained along the way.