7/11/11 - Southampton & Processes Project

This week some members of the course were in Southampton, and some Paris. I stayed in Southampton but went to London to visit Tate Modern and V&A Museum. It’s such a satisfying experience seeing the work of photographers first hand. The reason for my visit was to find an image to base my processes project on. In the Tate, I saw Luc Delahaye’s work which was beautiful and detailed. One piece in particular was ‘The Palestine Hotel, 2003’

Own photo of the piece in the Gallery.

 Taken in large format, his works are a wonderfully focused image of a scene that is normally captured on small digital cameras that can rapidly take, delete, re-shoot and so on.

Later on in the afternoon at the V&A museum saw an image by Harold Edgerton called  ‘Milk Drop Coronet’ which was created in 1957, a c-type print. The image was 45x34.5cm, and seemed small compared to the prints I had seen earlier on in the day. However, its strong red vibrancy stood out against the surrounding pictures. I learnt that Edgerton used a stroboscope to light and capture the split second moment of the splash. 

Milk Drop Coronet - taken from V&A website

Finally, another image i noticed in the V&A was Tim Heads 'Toxic Lagoon' with its vivid colours and interesting patterns and shapes. Head's work reflects ideas of pollution and human relationships with the environment. The way we mass produce artificially and create our own un-natural materials is depicted through his collection of synthetic materials in this piece.

'Toxic Lagoon' scanned in from Photography: A Cultural History.

Sources:

http://www.vam.ac.uk/vastatic/microsites/photography/photographer.php?photographerid=ph019&row=4


Warner Marien, Mary. Photography: A Cultural History, page 460. 2010 (3rd edition) London, Laurence King.