To further experiment, I’ve taken my work outside. I’ve been working at night, because I wanted empty spaces and I love the quality of light that you get at night time in the city.
I chose these spaces because they’re relatively secluded in the evening, and I’m more comfortable working like this. I’ve also kept working with someone with me that I can stick in images if I feel it would work.
They’re all working on quite different levels, and with varying degrees of potential.
This image is the first time I’ve created the convex effect you can achieve with panorama style shots. It gives a nice flow to the image, and provides a strong through-line, even if things don’t quite line up around it. This is a far smoother effect than I’ve been working with.
The presence of a figure is also pretty successful in this image. At a glance, it’s not necessarily evident that there even is a figure in there; it blends in with the image and almost has the same structural qualities of the lampposts. Once this is noticed, it alters the initial reading of the image. The viewer then either places themselves in the position of the figure, or becomes a voyeur. A number of questions are raised by the figure. Who are they? Why are they there? What are they doing? This leads the viewer to construct narratives around the image, with little to point to a certain reading. I like having this ambiguity in the work, and the idea of an open narrative.
The positioning of the figure works better than I feel it should; usually I don’t tend to like central things, but here it seems to work because it leaves a long stretch either side of the figure, and they become isolated within the image. Due to the nature of time created in the panorama, it also raises questions of how long the figure has been there. A brief pause during the instant of the photograph, or far longer?
I picked this location for the qualities of the wall; I like (most of) the graffiti on it, the long string of numbers which gives a sense of mathematics, and the lighting, and the grimy feel work well (and obviously subvert the idea of mathematics.)
The images have ended up very disjointed in their execution, and although a slight disjoint works, this is too much, especially because of the flat wall, and the lack of objects.
What does work is the flat plain contrasted with the depth on either side of the wall. It creates two worlds within the image; this flat canvas, that almost feels like a stage – like something could be about to happen – and then the ‘real’ world remaining behind this. I think the tree enhances it – the grimy feel of the image contrasted with nature, this brightly lit tree.
I feel like this second image isn’t working, but there’s a certain quality to it that I do like. There’s a definite flatness to the image which is very different to where I started, and it does something very different to the other images. It raises more questions about why these images have been joined together – it’s not to create a greater sense of scene, movement and time like the others. Perhaps it’s more about non-spaces, and the figure existing in a repeated part of the image starts to ask what it is to be somewhere.
I also like the quality of the image – parts of it do not feel like a photograph, such as the way the shadow falls around the legs. It’s fluid and I like this.
This was just an experiment in trying to purposefully jar the viewer by having an unexpected aspects completely interrupt the flow of the reading. It doesn’t work like this but the idea’s still intriguing, if I could find a much more subtle way of doing it. There’s something here about the brief flash of a presence that could be likened to splicing something into a film reel that doesn’t belong there. However, this is going to be much harder to achieve through still image, because you can’t make the thing go away again.
It looks like I've inadvertently begun working with liminal spaces. Car parks are a functional space - we use them, we pass through them, but they're not places we tend to stop in. The same is true of places such as corridors, train stations, airports... these are places we just pass through, or wait in - we use them as a means to an end. This spaces can be used as blank canvases, a space in which to create metaphors. It's interesting to use these spaces as settings for my images because it draws attention to a space we usually don't fully notice. It could also be interesting to explore what happens in these spaces, both in terms of their intended use, as well as more non-standard uses that may take place there.
