Land Use
Land use involves the management and modification of natural environments or wilderness into built environments like settlements and semi-natural habitats like arable fields, pastures and managed woods. Monitoring and analysing changes in land use is an essential part of planning for a sustainable future.
John Davies
John Davies said "To view the landscape as a pictorial composition of elements is simplistic. To perceive the landscape within a set of rules is a way people deal with the complexity of meanings that are presented in our environment." John Davies captures the British landscape, his black and white photographs taken from 1979 until 2005 show the complex scenery of post industrial and industrial Britain. His images capture the way that humans affect land and the materials used to change the land around us, he
David Spero
David Spero travelled around Britain from 2004 to 2015 photographing committed a more sustainable way of living. His project called 'Settlements' focused on houses built from scratch, like treehouses made from canvas and old style roundhouses in Wales. Many of the settlements he photographed the people who lived within them don't use mobile phones or computers they live off of the earth and what nature can bring them. David Spero also did a project on his neighbours garden and how it changed with each resident that lived in the house next door, he did this over a span of 5 years from the same angle, he showed how it changed over time and how the people that lived there changed the garden.
Dorothea Lange
Dorothea Lange photographed displaced farmers during the Great Depression, she photographed the unemployed men who wandered the streets. Most of her work was presented with captions that represented the person within the image and how they saw themselves. Her image 'Migrant Mother' became popular when the woman became a symbol of pain and understanding for a lot of people were also experiencing at the time.
First Experiment
Paul Barkshire
Paul Barkshire's book 'Unexplored London' focused on the quite streets and little villages hidden by the big, busy city. He focuses on the quite parts of London to capture the details, he also photographs abandoned or empty buildings
Eugène Atget
Eugène Atget was a French photographer who photographed architecture and the streets of Paris, he began photographing the in the late 1890's with a large format camera so he could capture the city in detail. His photographs were mainly taken at dawn giving his images lots of light and a sense of space. These images similarly to Paul Barkshire's capture a changing city whilst Atget's images captured a city before the changes Barkshire's were taken whilst it was happening. Eugène Atget's images were all focused on the quieter parts of Paris, he didn't photograph the famous landmarks but decided to capture the streets, doorways and buildings this makes his images stand out. His photographs showed all the different aspects of old Paris the narrow streets and buildings dated before the French Revolution but also the stately squares and bridges, he also photographed the shops and displays, courtyards and stairwells this captured all the details of buildings and the interiors of others. Atget used an old-fashioned wooden camera with 18 x 24 glass negatives.
Vera Lutter
Vera Lutter's work is inspired by the city's presence, light and architecture. Lutter began experimenting with photography to capture her experiences. At the time she decided to turn the room that she was living in into a large pinhole camera, the outside world flooded into her room and projected the image onto wall-sized sheets of photographic paper on the wall. This is how she achieved the large scale black and white images.
Lewis Baltz
Lewis Baltz documents the American Landscape of the 1970's in his series 'New Industrial Parks Near Irvine, California'. The project has 51 pictures and shows structural details, walls, offices and car parks. The main elements in these images are the strong geometric shapes, lines and tones but all of his images have a similar lifeless subject none of his images have any signs of life within them.
These images are inspired by Lewis Baltz I tried to take images in the same style as him using strong lines and shapes whilst capturing the land and how people are using the land.
Gordon Matta Clark
Gordon Matta-Clark photographed the 'unuseless' spaces in New York City each piece of land was auctioned publicly by the city ranging from $25 to $75 each. Some of his pieces of land included a strip of land between two houses and a curbsite, throughout the project he mapped, measured and photographed the land at the time he was questioning the meaning and the use of the land he owned.
These images are inspired by Lewis Baltz. I took images inspired by the way he photographs architecture.
Hélène Binet
Hèléne Binet is one of the world's leading architectural photographers, she works mainly with film usually shooting on a Acra Swiss 4x5 format camera. All of her images are showing parts of buildings focussing on the little details of the buildings she's photographing, there's always lots of light and shadows within her work. Hèléne Binet also focusses on the lines and shapes within her work, the strong lines help to focus on specific parts of an image.
When taking these images I was looking at the way that land is used by people and how populated the area is. Within these images I wanted to show how densely populated one area was and how the landscape had been used by many different people over time. Through these images I wanted to show how populated one area was and how it can be used by many people at one time, I think some of these images show this however, most of them are not what I intended to show.