Edexcel, Photography, Exam project, Environment, A level

1. ENVIRONMENT
Unit 4 Externally Set Assignment 2017

2. David Hockney created photojoiners. These are a collection of photographs taken from
different perspectives and at slightly different times of the same subject. The photographs are
then collaged together to create the place, person or object even though they may look
distorted. This work also references the Cubist movement from the early part of the twentieth
century and the Cubists’ depiction of space.
Multiple viewpoints
Cubists attempted to show
several viewpoints within one, flat
plane. Cubists also incorporated
real objects and textures. How
would you do this?

3. Other photographers have
also created one image from
several, smaller photographs.
German Photographer,
Thomas Kellner has remixed
landmarks in a unique
photomontage style. He takes
hundreds of pictures,
scanning the entire structure
one tiny portion at a time,
then horizontally places the
film strips of the individual
pictures to reconstruct the
landmark, creating an entirely
new picture.
What does the number of
images used by Kellner
contribute to the enormity of
the Environment being
photographed?

4. “I think I am more of an artist than a photographer. At the moment I am working on
architecture, but it is not classic architectural photography. There are definitions in art about
‘construction-deconstruction’ or ‘collage-decollage’
but I don’t think any of it really fits what I am doing
right now.” (Thomas Kellner )
Big Ben The Eiffel Tower
Tate Modern
London Bridge

5. Daniel Crooks
Bill Vazan creates grids of photographs that often
form globe like shapes. These are achieved by
standing in a central position and taking a number
of shots at slightly different angles (eg. top, middle
and bottom). He then slightly adjusts his position
and repeats this. He keeps doing this until he has
turned a full circle.
JFK Turner
These works are by Szymon Roginski who said these works were inspired by Cubism. Roginski
produced these works for the fashion designer Ania Kuczynska and began with a series of photo-
shoots. The images were then printed, constructed into geometric shapes and assembled back
together to create the original image. The photo-sculpture was then re-photographed to create the
final piece.

6. Giacomo Costa
Anastasia SavinovaMiles Donovan Iosif Kiraly
Nicolas Kennedy

7. Sohei Nishino
This Photographic joiner of the city of London is a patchwork of around 4,000 Black and
White photographs by Japanese artist Sohei Nishino. Nishino has mapped out ten cities
including London, Paris and New York City. Nishino describes the process as "re-imagining" a
landscape and it begins with a month long walk through the city. He photographs different
sections of a City on Black and White film. He then hand processes the images and
assembles them using scissors and glue in his Tokyo Studio. In an age where photographs
are consumed on glowing computer screens and not printed out Nishino makes large,
physical objects assembled from photographs printed by himself. The images are linked to
ancient maps that abstracted land and our modern world of Google earth.

8. Pep Ventosa
Stephanie Jung Alexey Titarenko
Multiple viewpoints

9. Focus (Photopedagogy Jon Nicholls, Thomas Tallis School)
Ralph Eugene Meatyard made his living as an optician. He experimented with various
strategies including multiple exposures, depth of field, motion blur, and other methods of
photographic abstraction. Two of his series are particularly concerned with focus and depth
of field, both stretching the expressive potential of photography, film and cameras when
looking with the ordinary world.
‘No Focus’

10. ‘Twigs’
By reducing the depth of field, a more abstract composition can be created. This also creates
great mood and atmosphere even when the main subject is something simple like the twigs in
this series by Meatyard.

11. “I decided to trace the beginnings of our age via architecture. Pushing my old large-format
camera’s focal length out to twice-infinity―with no stops on the bellows rail, the view
through the lens was an utter blur―I discovered that superlative architecture survives,
however dissolved, the onslaught of blurred photography. Thus I began erosion-testing
architecture for durability, completely melting away many of the buildings in the process.”
Hiroshi Sugimoto
Seagram Building
Eiffel tower Chrysler Building Guggenheim
Sydney Opera House Villa Savoye

12. Saul Leiter (Photopedagogy Jon Nicholls, Thomas Tallis School)
Leiter was foremost a painter who discovered the possibilities of colour photography. His
images explore colour harmonies and often exploit unusual framing devices - shop signs,
umbrellas, curtains, car doors, windows dripping with condensation - to create abstracted
compositions of everyday street life in the city.
Leiter was fond of using long lenses, partly so that he could remain unobserved, but also so
that he could compress space, juxtaposing objects and people in unusual ways. Many of his
images use negative space, with large out of focus areas, drawing our eye to a particular
detail or splash of colour.

13. Typology
A way to classify
an environment
and it’s
inhabitants.
Bernd and Hilla Becher
Michael PennJason Messinger Mark Able
Ed Ruscha, ‘Then and Now’

14. Kerry Lynne
Hans Eijkelboom
Anonymous
Jim Golden

15. Rachel Levy
Myoung Ho LeeMark Meyer

16. Construct a Landscape
Noémie Goudal makes large scale cut-outs that require scaffolding and a technical team to secure in order to make her
photographs. She uses rope to secure or suspend these elements within the overall composition.
To recreate this, find a landscape in which you can situate your cut-out image. How will you secure that cut-out in its new
landscape so that its support is barely visible? What kind of scale do you want that element to take on within the overall
composition? How ‘believable’ will your image be? How curious?

17. Noémie Goudal’s practice is an investigation
into photographs and films as dialectical
images, wherein close proximities of truth and
fiction, real and imagined offer new
perspectives into the photographic canvas. The
artist questions the potential of the image as a
whole, reconstructing its layers and
possibilities of extension, through landscapes’
installations.

18. Photographers Create Meticulously Faithful Dioramas of Iconic Photos.
Making of “La cour du dumaine du Gras” (by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, 1826) “La cour du dumaine du Gras” (by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, 1826)
Making of “Nessie” (by Marmaduke Wetherell, 1934)
Jojakim Cortis and Adrian Sonderegger’s project, Ikonen, an ambitious
project to meticulously recreate iconic historical scenes in miniature.
The ongoing project includes immediately recognizable shots—the
Wright Brothers taking flight, the Loch Ness Monster poking its head
out, “Tank Man” halting tanks during the Tiananmen Square protests—
because the images have been seared into our collective memory.
“Every field has its icons, guiding stars, which reflect the spirit of time
in form, media and content,” says the photographers. And when
something is photographed, it has a way of transcending time rather
than becoming isolated. Historical symbolism is fluid and our
perception of it can change the same way history can. This, perhaps, is
why Cortis and Sonderegger pull away from their miniature scene at
the very end, revealing what each photograph actually is: paper, cotton
balls, plastic and plenty of their own spare time.

19. Alan Wolfson
The
photos
Remember this? Iason’s exam piece from last year.
The set was
photographed providing
a blend of past and
present.

20. Aaron Farley
Liesl Pfeffer combines her photographs to create abstract nature-
inspired collages.
Angie Buckley
Nick Van Woert
Other photographers who
construct landscapes by re-
photographing their own images.

21. Sophie Calle's work inhabits a space between fact and fiction. She crosses private
boundaries to explore the meanings which might be hidden there and exploits public spaces,
investing them with a sense of intimacy.
Observations: Sophie Calle and Dryden Goodwin
In ‘Cast’, Dryden Goodwin presents portraits of strangers captured by the artist as he has
travelled through London. The title ‘Cast’ suggests a plurality of meanings, all of which have
resonances with the work, from casting a line to casting light or shadow, from casting a film
role to casting a sculpture, from casting suspicion to casting a spell.

22. IMAGINE YOU ARE A STRANGER VISITING THE CITY FOR THE FIRST TIME....
Look around you and describe what you see as if you were seeing it for the first time.
What do you notice first? Look again and begin to see the more complex relationships
between spaces and people. Look at the habits and rituals people go through as they go
about their daily lives, working, playing, shopping etc.
Take a bus / tube / taxi journey and notice your fellow passengers. Who do you think they
are? Keep a diary and photographs of everything you see and everyone you encounter for
24 hours, including snatches of conversation, and the interactions you observe.

23. Covert observation of personal space
Dear Stranger,
I am an artist working on a photographic project which
involves people I do not know…I would like to take a
photograph of you standing in your front room from
the street in the evening. A camera will be set outside
the window on the street. If you do not mind being
photographed, please stand in the room and look into
the camera through the window for 10 minutes on __-
__-__ (date and time)…I will take your picture and
then leave…we will remain strangers to each other…If
you do not want to get involved, please simply draw
your curtains to show your refusal…I really hope to see
you from the window.
Shizuka Yokomizo, 'Stranger' project
The frame is dictated by the shape of the window and
so the choice is not the photographer’s. Are these
truthful, objective representations or the individuals
who are photographed?

24. Surveillance
Derived from the French word ‘surveiller’, meaning ‘to keep watch’ or ‘to watch over’, the
surveillance camera has been used to police borders, to assist war-time reconnaissance, to
gain advantage over political enemies or simply to gather information. Techniques of
surveillance are closely linked to developments in photographic technology – from the
earliest aerial photographs to satellite pictures. In the twenty-first century, cameras on
street corners, in shops and public buildings silently record our every move, while web-
based tools such as Google Earth adapt satellite technology to ensure that there is no
escape from the camera’s all-seeing eye.
Jonathan Olley
Grosvenor Road RUC Police Station, Grosvenor Road, Central
Belfast 1998
Jonathan Olley
RUC Police Station and British Army Patrol Base, Strabane, Co.
Tyrone 1998
Thomas Demand
Camera 2007

25. Laurie Long
Compact, from The Dating Surveillance Project 1998
Laurie Long
Hairbrush, from The Dating Surveillance Project 1998

26. Mary Alpern: ‘Shopping’
With a tiny surveillance camera and a video camcorder hidden in her discreetly perforated
purse, Alpern wandered through department stores, shopping centres, and fitting rooms.
The images in "Shopping" (all 1999) are painstakingly culled from hours of accumulated
footage, are in a sense arbitrary and unmoored - even the camera was detached from the
photographer's eye.

27. Intervention: Paint
Britt Bass and Morgan Blake: Blake’s photos are actually printed on
transparencies, and then laid over Bass’ painted canvas.
Fabienne Rivory
David Hepher

28. The roll of film was left to sit in a ‘film soup’ for 2 days and thoroughly dried in a darkroom
bag.
Film Soup Recipe
300ml hot water
1 cap detergent <–yes cap, not cup!!
1 tablespoon vanilla tea leaves
*film roll left in film soup for exactly 48 hours, dried, exposed, and cross-processed.
Intervention: Film

29. Ajay Malghan
Fascinated by the corrosive effects of everyday acids
and driven by nervous energy, Malghan stepped away
from the digital workflows of his other photography
series and started bathing strips of film with crass
chemicals including coffee, vinegar, soap, hydrogen
peroxide and oven cleaner.
Jennifer West
Jennifer West uses standard products to process her films: coal-
tar dye, eyeliner, whiskey, hot sauce, urine, deodorant,
skateboard wheels. And she likes to finish them in equally
conventional ways, either “rubbed with Jimson Weed Trumpet
flowers, or dripped and splattered with nail polish, or sprayed
with Lavender Mist air freshener”. Or why not with all three?
West explains her approach “more DIY than Heroic Sublime.”
But she also feels very much part of a tradition of visceral film-
making and painting, citing Tony Conrad’s electrocuting and
pickling of film, Carolee Schneemann’s emulsion handworking,
Ed Ruscha’s use of beet juice and Pepto-Bismol in his paintings,
Stan Brakhage spitting on and scratching his negatives with his
fingernails, and so on.
The works in Out of Focus are made from West’s film negatives
and prints, and represent (or as she puts it, “picture”) a half-
second of moving film, meaning around 12 or 15 frames.
Eric William Carroll
Intervention: Film

30. Intervention: Infrared
David Keochkerian: Infrared Photography
Richard Mosse uses discontinued Kodak Aerochrome film to
intentionally subvert traditional photos taken from the Congo to help
draw attention to an often overlooked conflict
Sean Lynch

31. “The photographs were taken in Hackney Wick and later buried there. The amount of time
the images were left underground varied depending on the amount of rainfall…“Not
knowing what an image would look like once it was dug up introduced an element of
chance and surprise which I found appealing. This feeling of letting go and collaborating
with place — allowing it also to work in putting the finishing touches to a picture — felt
fair. Maybe the spirit of the place can also make its mark.”
Intervention: Post printing
Stephen Gill: Buried

32. Intervention: Post printing
Catherine Yass
I floated this image in the canal for a week. It's a
photograph of the place where I floated it. The
water peeled away the layers of emulsion within
the transparency to reveal the different colours
embedded in the film. There's a kaleidoscopic
effect as the light dances and ripples through
them – just as it did on the surface of the canal.
Burnt

33. Intervention: Collage
Chris Kenny Jenny Odell
Liz Orton Jelle Martens Abigail Reynolds

34. Intervention: Stitching
Hagar van Heummen Shaun Kardinal

35. Mood and Atmosphere
William
Eckersley

36. James Frank Tribble Justin Broadway
Gilles Coulon Kasper Bossers

37. Surreal Environment
Man Ray
MagritteHerbert Bayer

38. Refined in the 1970s by photographers such as Duane Michals, fantasy and surrealism
continued to be a fertile ground for experimentation.

39. Lynn Skordal Bene Rohlmann Collage Analogico Toshiaki Uchida
Joe Webb Hannah Hoch
Surreal Collages
Laszlo Moholy Nagy

40. Ex-students responses to politically motivated collage techniques and Moholy Nagy.
Jamie Denny
Florence Clapcott

41. Tom Hunter
Life and Death in Hackney,
John Everett Millais
‘Ophelia’, 1851-52
Tom Hunter: Life and Death in Hackney
This maligned and somewhat abandoned area of Hackney became the epicentre of the new
warehouse rave scene of the early 90’s. During this time the old print factories, warehouses
and workshops became the playground of a disenchanted generation, taking the DIY culture
from the free festival scene and adapting it to the urban wastelands. Hunter’s images draw
upon these influences combining the beauty and the degradation with everyday tales of
abandonment and loss to music and hedonism. The reworking of John Millais’s ‘Ophelia’
shows a young girl whose journey home from one such rave was curtailed by falling into the
canal and losing herself to the dark slippery, industrial motorway of a bygone era.
Appropriating Environments from Fine Art Painting

42. Tom Hunter
Woman Reading a Possession Order
Tom Hunter: Persons Unknown
‘This series of photographs was taken in my street in Hackney, 1997. Myself and the
residents who made up this community were fighting eviction as squatters. The title of the
series comes from the wording used in our eviction orders. The postures and gestures
reference Vermeer's paintings and set out to give status and dignity to our community.’
Tom Hunter
The Art of Squatting
Jan Vermeer
The Art of Painting, 1666
Tom Hunter
The Anthropologist
Jan Vermeer
The Geographer, 1668
Jan Vermeer
Woman in Blue reading a letter, 1662

43. Jeff Wall
Jeff Wall
Gust of Wind, 1993
Hokusai
Gust of Wind, 1832
In the case of A Sudden Gust of Wind the source material is a Nineteenth Century Japanese
woodcut, though Wall also references paintings from Western art history. In the main his
use of historical source material is less obvious – and less precisely referenced – than is the
case with ‘A Sudden Gust of Wind’.
The work is carefully constructed. Wall photographed different elements of the scene over
a period of several months, before seamlessly collaging these together in digital post-
production. It’s not clear what brings the four main protagonists to this place; two look
dressed for the location but the other two look more like businessmen in their suits and
overcoats. Whatever the contents of the file of papers, it seems likely that most will now be
lost to the unexpected gust of wind that has also taken the Trilby hat of one of the men.

44. Gregory Crewdson (27 mins)
Gregory Crewdson summary (5 mins)
Gregory Crewdson works within a photographic tradition that combines the
documentary style of William Eggleston and Walker Evans with the dream-like vision of
filmmakers such as Stephen Spielberg and David Lynch. Crewdson’s method is equally filmic,
building elaborate sets to take pictures of extraordinary detail and narrative portent.
In a Crewdson photograph, the world as we know it has been re-ordered to a perfect, still,
moment. In the Hokusai print, the artist has drawn us another world. We are no longer
seeing the world as we know it, but a world previously unexisting — we are (if the artist is
succesful) excited by line and shape and colour and somewhere in there, content and
narrative. We do not need to believe, only imagine.

45. Ex-student response to Crewdson.
What happened before, what happens next?