Demonstration for London No Borders

On 23rd January I shall be attending a demonstration in Piccadilly Circus where, while commuters, tourists and clubbers stare at the never-ending stream of commercials at ground level, they themselves are under constant observation by security and police in their cosy CCTV headquarters below ground.

I think it will be interesting to see the issue of surveillance from this angle. These people are ''protesting'' against the overuse of surveillance. I think i will get some interesting results.

Demonstrations/Protests/Activists

London, No Borders

I went to a talk in Hackney by this organisation. They are planning a protest in St Pancres and Piccadilly Circus. This is a twin protest. Protesting again migration issues, and surveillance.

Comparison

These are some images I produced for my other module. They use the same themes

Peter Kennard - Political art

Enemy of the State Trailer

This is a movie where you can see the extent of the US governments power to evesdrop upon its country.

Restaurant Employees

Markus Hartel- street photography

Have used not only Renaldi to influence the 'street photography' aspect of my project. Hartel's black and white 35mm images are beautiful, I still want to use medium format, I;ve been using mainly colour but will experiment with black and white. Another bonus of using B+W is i can process the film myself.

Ascension Island

I wrote to Simon Norfolk following his talk, I wanted to know how he got to the places he photographed because my project follows similar trends to his own. In his reply he gave me flight details of certain island where much of his work is shot. Its called Ascension Island. The US and British Air forces both have relay stations, among other facilities there. It is a place I'm interested in photographing, however very expensive to get flights. It is something I may pursue for a personal project at a later date.

Simon Norfolk- Acension Island:The Panopticon

I went to Simon Norfolk's talk in Derby, It bought to my attention the work he's done on the US military and the investigation into surveillance. He's used a documentary approach which I may adopt.





This facility is truely amazing. They can literally listen to your phone calls, read information on your computers. If a flagged word comes up within these things, they can bring up a higher level of analysis, which can see your online purchases, where you've parked your car, any loyality cards you have, credit cards. Obviously personal information- where you live/lived, where you work etc

Test shoot

I've started to do some street photography. I've used two different approaches; Asking the subject if they can be photographed, and photographing the subject without their knowledge. Comparing the two different types of survaillence.

Richard Renaldi

I've been looking at Renaldi's work. both 'figure and ground' and 'touching strangers' both really interesting looking features. Both are about obversation of people.

Jurgen Schadeberg

This is exactly the vision I had. This is called ''Portrait of a Village'' There is a second image but I was unable to find it. This image shows the faces of the village, Shows the differences between them. Shows the diversity of the village

Development of Idea

Stephen Gill
I've looked at three of Gill features. Audio, Day Return and Gallery Warders. Alot of his work is about observation. 'Audio' features portraits of people using headphones and listening to music in different locations. 'Day return' shows people sitting on trains. 'Gallery Warders' shows guards in museams. They all observe people. In a he is making artist survaillence.



I like the idea of watching people, showing their diversity but also showing how they are connected. So this carries on from the work I did last year. I followed two subjects around thoughout the day, and showed how they crossed over eachothers lives.

Gill makes sequences of repetitive work to illustrate this. I think I may experiment with the use of sequences.

I want to photograph the people of a group or society, in exactly the same way. Initially im thinking of using studio head shot, fair dramatic lighting. Through photographing them in this process I want it to reveal how different they all are from each other.

Steve McCurry

McCurry is one of my personal favourites. He works mainly in south east Asia. He documents the culture of these countries. His work is less morbid than the work of James Nachtwey. I would say its more a celebration of culture. In some cases he shows negative aspects but generally I find his world vibrant and positive.




The photograph of the Afgan girl used in National Geographic is one the most famous images in the world.

Simon Norfolk

Norfolk looks more at the aftermath of War and conflict. Some really beautiful landscapes, and photographs of people interacting with this 'war stained' terrain.

Research

Now I've started to look at the work of other photographers. I've looked at photojournalism, how those photographers document events. How they watch the world. I've used people like James Nachtwey, Simon Norfolk and Steve McCurry in my research.

James Nachtwey - War Photographer, possible my favourite war photographer. He documents war and famine to bring awareness to the rest of the world