Quick Mask Quick Tip: PHOTOSHOP #73

I been following this guy for a while now, I love his simple straight forwards calm way of explaining and teaching techniques.

I think his compositing techniques are awesome, they all have this certain style, detailed and seamless.

Elger Esser Interviews

http://eastsidefm.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/01-Track-01-1.mp3

It was interesting to hear him talk about how there is no more untouched nature, he is talking about how people have always been there before. He feels like this because when he grew up in Rome, he felt that there was so much history there that nothing is purely untouched nature anymore.


http://eastsidefm.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/02-Track-02-1.mp3

time delay long term breath, a kind of beauty that we are looking through, but we are looking at them today like a time delay, its like time travel. You cannot date the image, they are not so much romantic.
He says he has to understand the landscape, and he can only do that if he can travel through the landscape - deeply European view on things

http://eastsidefm.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/03-Track-03-1.mp3

He wanted to work with photography, but not be a photographer

Listening to an interview, helped me to appreciate his work more. It is a European look on the touched natural world around him. In france, as he needed to look on something European, it is a work of time somewhere in time, but not quite defined. It could be anywhere between the present day, and the birth of photography.

Elger Esser Research

The son of a German author and French photojournalist, Esser grew up in Rome. "I grew up with German values, but with a certain Italian and French spirit," he explained. And because of that, he had a different perspective on the world. "If you're a child growing up in a city like Rome, where you are confronted with over 3,000 years of history, you have a very different concept of time."

Esser always saw modernity as fractured. His critical take on modernity didn't only win him friends, Esser explained.He was surprised when he first came to his father's homeland, and was irritated by the German attitude towards modernity. Modernity was seen as a panacea, not only in art but in architecture, too. A thirst for the future may have been understandable after the First and Second World Wars, but it caused a lot of damage after 1945.

This view of history, art and of culture permeates Esser's work - and his life. "Germany is a very dear country to me, I much admire it. I don't know whether I love it though," he said.

He lives in Germany "in order to retain a sense of longing for the other." One "other" would be France, his mother's homeland. Esser travels there five to six times a year to photograph. At some point he wants to chart the entire country in photographs. "Landscapes are like states of mind," he said, "Everyone carries a landscape within them, one they naturally idealize."

http://www.dw.de/elger-esser-captures-the-landscapes-of-longing/a-16085726

Elger Esser’s pale, luminous landscape photographs, which are almost entirely unpeopled and frequently feature a straight, low horizon line, have been compared to both early-19th-century photography and Dutch landscape paintings of the 17th century. Like other German photographers such as Andreas Gursky and Thomas Struth, Esser studied under Bernd and Hilla Becher in Dusseldorf. His images typically capture European lowlands— softly lit beaches, wetlands, valleys, or riverbeds—in which Esser evokes the sublime. Imbuing his landscapes with a quiet romance, Esser models his style on postcard images, which have fascinated the artist since childhood.

https://www.artsy.net/artist/elger-esser

I am not sure how I feel when I look at his images, maybe as I write this I feel tired and unresponsive, I do feel that I wish I saw his work when writing my dissertation because like the text talks about is relative to dutch painting. As I know little about Dutch landscape painting, this would have been the best time to get properly informed so I could reference this in my dissertation.

I did a little research into Dutch Landscape painting to find this:

It is "A Wooded Landscape" 1663 by Meindert Hobbema. This almost looks like a modern English landscape around Guildford or something, the dirty road running through the picture reminds me of farm tracks or paths that I have encountered on the North Downs Way.

MA Photography Brighton - James Dobson

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/photography/11090368/Mythopoesis-An-exhibition-by-Photography-graduates-from-Brighton-University.html?frame=3035433

I have been thinking about studying an MA for some time now, and during my research into MA courses I found this article on some previous work by former students of Brighton.
The images by James Dobson are interesting and related to my work on the passage of time, here he presents work in the form of a narrative into his journey along the Thames Estuary.

Jörg Sasse

Jörg Sasse was born in 1962 in Bad Salzuflen, Germany. He attended the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf from 1982 to 1988, where he studied under Bernd Becher. His early work comprises images of display windows and their multifaceted reflections, and still lifes of mundane domestic interiors. Beginning in 1994, Sasse stopped taking his own photographs and began digitally manipulating found images—primarily land- and cityscapes taken by friends, acquaintances, and unknown others. He developed a process of scanning images into his computer, changing them, and then making film negatives of these manipulated images, from which the final prints are made. In 8144 (1998), the beachside lamps shine brightly even though night has not yet fallen. The carnival ride rising over the edge of a wall in 8246 (2000), originally still, seems to be in motion, its lights blurring into curved lines. Silhouetted figures await arriving passengers within the structured glass confines of an airport terminal in the triptych 6287 (2006). By naming his works with only four-digit numbers, Sasse underscores the fact that they are machine-made (he uses the numbers for keeping track of the images on his computer).

Sasse had his first solo show at the Kunstverein Region Heinsberg in 1989 and has since shown throughout Germany and Switzerland, as well as at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (1997), Lehmann Maupin Gallery in New York (1997, 1999, 2000, and 2001), Mai 36 in Zurich (1998, 2002, and 2004), and Musée de Grenoble (2005). In 2007, a major retrospective of Sasse’s work was mounted at the Museum Kunst Palast in Düsseldorf. His work has appeared in many group shows, including Kitsch-Art at Markthalle für Moderne Kunst in Stuttgart (1992), De Andere, De Andere, L’Autre at Het Nederlands Fotomuseum in Sittard, the Netherlands (1994), Sightings: New Photographic Art at Institute of Contemporary Arts in London (1998), Biennale d’Art Contemporain de Lyon (2001), Moving Pictures at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao (2002 and 2003), andObjectivités at the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris (2008). He has received grants from the Deutscher Künstlerbund (1996) and the Centro Tedesco di Studi Veneziani in Venice (1997), and in 2003 he received a Kunst Köln-Award. He lives and works in Berlin and Düsseldorf.
http://www.guggenheim.org/new-york/collections/collection-online/artists/bios/3960/J%C3%B6rg%20Sasse

I have had discussions with my peers and tutors about my work, they wondered if it would be a good technique to scan in my images, then print them to acetate, to the make darkroom prints as if they were negatives. I didn't not reject this idea but I had many considerations to this practice. I was not concerned that they would not yield good results, in fact I am confident they would, however this isn't a practice that I have previously explored, and I don't think it would add a greater 'meaning' to my work. The work being a process formed of my relationship with the camera, doesn't need additional steps to make a final print. I have kept any digital manipulation to a minimum as the negatives are tiny prints, they are beautiful by themselves and have a distinct pure quality that would be lost in the realm of digital Photoshop. I feel making fake negatives to mask the process of shooting on darkroom paper destroys the simple concept of time moving. If I was to do darkroom prints I may as well have shot on film and used the tiny aperture to create a slightly lengthy exposure and argued that this worked. I feel the use of darkroom paper is necessary to shoot really long exposures that truly represent my time with the camera and my time without the camera.

The camera as a diary, as an event

Today,  I am lost in the modern world. Everyone has expensive mobile phones, computers, cars, holidays. Everything can be fixed in photoshop. People follow fashion as if it's an important thing, like there is some deeper meaning than the surface. People listen to the wrong music, like the wrong art, read the wrong newspapers, support the wrong political parties. I mean fuck ukip seriously.
Fashion is as deep as selling cloth, music is as deep as selling sound, newspapers sprout misleading ideas to make the owners richer preying on the publics stupidity, politics are a business.
Style is not real, it is a tax on people with a broken sense of self worth.
What happened to unadulterated music? What happened informed debate?
Am I Victorian? I certainly don't feel victorious. I feel part of a lazy population, I dream of what is outside.
I realise that the camera is like a diary too, to record all my moments of excitement and boredom. not just so I can remember it, but photography is part of the event itself.
I could take self portraits but I feel that would not be an accurate description of how I feel in each event. All the time I am looking outwards from myself. I look outwards as an escape from what is me. Growing up at home and outside I often did not feel valued for my person or my abilities. I think this feeling has continued somewhat in my adult life. I have struggled to find a job and to make strong friendships. In these times I previously found release in a toxic escape, now I turn to the window and the event of photography is my escape. In these moments photography isn't merely part of the event, it is the event itself.

Thomas Demand

Thomas Demand studied with the sculptor Fritz Schwegler, who encouraged him to explore the expressive possibilities of architectural models at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, where Bernd and Hilla Becher had recently taught photographers such as Andreas Gursky, Thomas Struth, and Candida Höfer. Like those artists, Demand makes mural-scale photographs, but instead of finding his subject matter in landscapes, buildings, and crowds, he uses paper and cardboard to reconstruct scenes he finds in images taken from various media sources. Once he has photographed his re-created environments—always devoid of figures but often displaying evidence of recent human activity—Demand destroys his models, further complicating the relationship between reproduction and original that his photography investigates. 

Demand (born 1964) has been the subject of one-person exhibitions at The Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin, and he has represented Germany at the Venice Biennale and the Bienal de São Paulo. Demand lives and works in Berlin
http://www.matthewmarks.com/new-york/artists/thomas-demand/

http://www.tate.org.uk/context-comment/video/meet-artist-thomas-demand

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/3653101/Why-this-isnt-a-picture-of-a-cavern.html
In Richard Dermonts review of Thomas Demands work, he argues that all of photography shows things that are both real and unreal. Like Dermonts work, which directly represents things that are  real place, which is then photographed, which he then see's, which he then makes a model out of, which the then photographs, which is then displayed without having the model as it has been destroyed by him each time. Photographs stand in for the true object, they are a tiny snapshot into the present and past at the same time, the present when the photograph was taken, the past when you come to view the image afterwards.

richard mosse

he also used infrared photography:

http://www.jackshainman.com/artists/richard-mosse/

http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/may/12/deutsche-borse-photography-prize-richard-mosse-enclave

http://www.openeye.org.uk/main-exhibition/richard-mosse-infra/

He used it for different reasons that Florian Maier Achen, this is to challenge the view of black and white images, and what is wrong with pink as a colour? It is also to reveal the unseen, watching the video on the first link, I feel that the video is much more telling and engaging than his photographs, it makes me feel for the people and see into their way of life, the tragedies surrounding them, that the photo series doesn't.

Florian Maier-Achen

Florian Maier-Aichen was born in 1973 in Stuttgart, Germany. He studied at Högskolan för Fotografi och Film, Göteborg, Sweden; the University of Essen, Germany; and earned an MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles. Alternately romantic, cerebral, and unearthly, Florian Maier-Aichen’s digitally altered photographs are closer to the realm of drawing and fiction than documentation. He embraces difficult techniques, chooses equipment that produces accidents such as light leaks and double exposures, and uses computer enhancements to introduce imperfections and illogical elements into images that paradoxically “feel” visually right, though they are factually wrong. Often employing an elevated viewpoint (the objective but haunting “God’s-eye view” of aerial photography and satellite imaging), Maier-Aichen creates idealized, painterly landscapes that function like old postcards. Interested in places where landscape and cityscape meet, he chooses locations and subjects from the American West and Europe—from his own neighborhoods to vistas of the natural world. Looking backwards for his influences, Maier-Aichen often reenacts or pays homage to the work of the pioneer photographers of the nineteenth century, sometimes even remaking their subject matter from their original standpoints. Always experimenting, he marries digital technologies with traditional processes and films (black-and-white, color, infrared, and tricolor), restoring and reinvigorating the artistry and alchemy of early photography. Maier-Aichen’s work has appeared in recent major exhibitions at Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid, Spain (2008); the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2007); and the Whitney Biennial (2006). Florian Maier-Aichen lives and works in Cologne, Germany, and Los Angeles.
http://www.art21.org/artists/florian-maier-aichen?expand=1

Unlike Florian Maier Achen, I have been trying to do as little digital manipulation as possible. Often only to correct dust and the colour balance, sometimes not even to make dust disappear. I like that he does big prints. These allow the viewer to really taken in what you are seeing. By doing this you can try to spot the digital manipulation, but it doesn't matter about that really, it matters about the thing as a whole and the details within the image. The border of landscape and cityscape, and the techniques and alternative processes used to make a print. I much prefer his Infrared work to that of Richard Mosse. Although I massively enjoy his work too, I engage with Florian Maier-Achen's work more as the subject matter is more intriguing to me. He is interested in the processes and the traditional cameras and the representation of the land, and the dissection of it between urban, rural, waste and change - something that has always drawn me to photography and continues to interest me in my vocation.


http://www.saatchigallery.com/artists/florian_maier_aichen.htm
this has great descriptions with his photographs

Florian Maier-Aichen: Infrared Landscapes | Art21 "Exclusive"

Stephen Vaughen

I like how this image reminds me of my times spent in the highlands of Scotland on Munro's there, it reminds me of small rocky outcrops, where the snow is resisting the thaw and staying frozen in the shadows caused by the rugged nature of the dense volcanic rock there.

These two pictures (above and below) remind me of Paul Corcoran's work, with the decay of the landscape. Paul Corcoran's photographs are a representation of how he feels about current events. These are more directly linked to the way volcanic lava forms new rock and how over millions of year this is slowly broken down.

This picture reminds me of Edward Burtynskys work, though not as epic in scale, it reminds me of the red of the iron decaying in one of his photographs.

I like how his photographs have a structure to the narrative, it is quite circular, with each image connected to another earlier, or later in the series, they have similar compositions, and similar subject matter, such as small rocks in the foreground and ice and mist blowing through the image, until it is almost washed out to nothing. I think he framed his series like this to represent a circular nature in volcanic activity and the repetition of the volcanic eruptions and decay of rock formations by wind and weather over millennia.

Ultima Thule:

The exhibition takes its title from Ultima Thule, a term used in ancient history to describe the mysterious northern frontier, representing a distant unknown region at the extreme limit of exploration and discovery. Vaughan’s work is inspired by the actual voyage made 2300 years ago by the Greek explorer Pytheas, who travelled to the edge of the then known world beyond Britain, towards Iceland and the Arctic Circle. 

Over the last four years Vaughan has revisited the Icelandic landscape, to sites that are the nearest equivalent on Earth to the surfaces of the Moon and Mars, and which were used for training lunar astronauts. His work links Pytheas’ ancient voyage of discovery to the present day and the persistent human urge to explore unknown territory.

Using a cumbersome large-format Gandolfi camera, Vaughan made richly detailed, monumental studies of this otherworldly region. These awe-inspiring images reveal landscapes marked by volcanic activity, shifting tectonic plates, vast glaciers and steaming, sulphurous pools.

Vaughan says, "My photographs depict some of the rawest and youngest surfaces on Earth, allowing the viewer to imagine the prehistoric beginnings of the landscape, void of any human presence or history."Ultima Thule was part funded by The National Lottery through Arts Council England and The University of Plymouth.
http://www.impressions-gallery.com/exhibitions/exhibition.php?id=13

I think this project has informed his next projects, surrounding earthquakes and Tsunami's in Japan:

Ultima Thule
Stephen Vaughan's work explores the connections between geology, archaeology, history, and memory. In Ultima Thule, the persistent human urge to explore unknown territory is considered within the context of complex geological processes, over vast periods of time, and the formation of the Earth itself.  The potential for discovery or transformation from beneath the surface or beyond the threshold is a central theme in much of  Vaughan’s work. His photographs are concerned, on one level, with the scrutiny of natural phenomena and, on another level, with the landscape as a site of encounter and revelation.

Ultima Thule was initially inspired by the exploratory voyage of Pytheas, in 325 BC, from the Greek colonies of the Mediterranean to the far north Atlantic, beyond the edges of the known world.  Vaughan's photographs were made in Iceland, which is thought to be the location of Pytheas' Thule. His images of volcanic fissures, shifting tectonic plates, vast glaciers and steaming, sulphurous pools, also connect Pytheas' ancient voyage of discovery to contemporary inter-planetary exploration.  They describe landscapes that are the nearest equivalent on Earth to the surfaces of the Moon and Mars, including sites that were used by Apollo astronauts for field training before the first Moon landing.

Ultima Thule is a study of some of the rawest and youngest surfaces on Earth.  Vaughan's photographs retreat in time to the imagined primordial beginnings of landscape and the formation of the Earth itself, void of any human presence or history.

A Catfish Sleeps
In 18th century Japan, the belief emerged that the Shinto deity Kashima held a foundation stone (kamame-ishi) upon the head of a giant catfish (Namazu), thus protecting the population from the terrors of earthquake when the catfish stirred. Drawings of the Namazu showed it as an ominous threat before the great 1855 earthquake, but also as a source of redistributed wealth for post-catastrophe developers and craftsmen. The photographs in A Catfish Sleeps have been made with this metaphor in mind.

The images record a journey that corresponds with significant points on the tectonic map, where the Eurasian, Pacific, Philippine and Okhotsk plates meet in a complex subduction zone that moves beneath the landscape of Japan and the seismically threatened metropolis of Tokyo. The relatively new science of plate tectonics provides a heightened awareness of the dangers caused by movements in the earth’s crust. In Japan, the complexities of the underlying geology are apparent in the form of numerous active volcanoes and the ever-present threat of major earthquakes. Nevertheless, civilisation pushes forward relentlessly above the geology. Human efforts to mitigate disaster and to control the forces of earthquake, eruption and tsunami are evident. Yet nature in its rawest state remains a focus for pilgrimage, fear and spectacle.

http://www.stephenvaughan.co.uk/Statement.html

A Catfish Sleeps explores the environmental and also the personal effects of natural disasters.

In 2011 he went to carry on the project about an earthquake that had happened in around 1700 in Japan, which is what the first part of A Catfish Sleeps is surrounding. While he was there a massive earthquake arrived, which caused him to photograph his new surroundings, it turned a historical legend into a real life event happening in the present.

There is a connection between the historical nature of his photographs and the personal nature, it isn't just an environmental project with the photographs of the people to tell the story, he is involved in it too, and these photographs are his story. 

I wonder how Edward Burtynsky would photograph these scenes, probably, build a scaffolding to lift him above the scene, and the photograph would have something more vivid about it