Exhibition

I visited the Illuminating India exhibition at the Science Museum in London.   The exhibition was a series of images that depicted the history of India over the past hundred and fifty years and was ordered oldest to newest.

The very old photographs were largely posed images of people that resembled what might have been expected from a painted portrait of that era.  However, by the time I had reached the 1960’s there were images that were essentially documentary in style and it struck me how much more interesting they are when seen 50 years later

An example of this type of image is shown below where an Atomic Power station has been captured by Henri Carter Bresson (see Fig 1).

It’s a great image and obviously taken by a very well known photographer but I think it has improved with age.

There were also some more recent images captured by Bazaar showing a range of scenes in Bombay.   For these images, I love the way in which they capture the emotions of the location, particularly the colours and the bustle or pace of the environment.  But, again, I feel that the images have improved with age. An example is in Fig 2 below.

Reflection

I think looking at these images transports the viewer into the scene and age and makes the viewer ‘feel’ something.  I have never really thought of images in this way before and it adds a new perspective to my consideration of image selection within the context of the skills I have developed during EYV.

I have grown an interest and developed skills in deadpan and straight photography over the duration of EYV, progressing from considering only the aesthetic and onto expression of concepts.

I think that this new insight can expand my skills further.  I think that even with aesthetics playing a secondary role, I may still have been discounting scenes on the basis that they are not interesting.  I have now realised that something may become interesting over time.   There was a bit of this in Assignment 4 where two of my images in the submission to my tutor were less applicable to the theme of the collection compared to others in the contact sheet; I had allowed aesthetics and perceived interest value (of lack of it) to influence my editing.  I corrected this in my revised set however I think I may not have made that error had I had this new insight.

Figures

Figure 1.  Carter Bresson, H. (1966). Atomic energy plant.. [image] Available at: http://pro.magnumphotos.com/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult&VBID=2K1HZO4SAUPUPU&SMLS=1&RW=1280&RH=742 [Accessed 28 Feb. 2018].

Figure 2. Bazaar, Z. (1989). Jeweller’s Showroom, Bombay, Maharashtra. [image] Available at: https://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/1991.1285/ [Accessed 28 Feb. 2018].