Journeys

Walker Evans Walker Evans was an American photographer

during the 1920s – 50s. During 1938- 1941, he

took to taking photographs of people on the

subway without their knowing. He used a hidden

camera in his coat. Many of the subjects seem to

be looking straight into the camera, as if they were

posing for the photograph.

Christian Keenan I stumbled across this photograph on Google

Images but it has had a huge influence on my

project. Keenan took photographs of his two sons’

first train journey on their way to the Olympics.

In this project, I will be taking photos of both friends and strangers on public

transport, and walking. A journey is in between the place they’ve left and where

they are headed. I will have all the photos in black and white and try to recreate

the feeling that the subjects do not know they’re having their photograph taken.

Developmental: Ariane Iligan

Like Christian Keenan’s

photographs, I also stumbled

across Ariane Iligan’s photographs

of a carnival. She took

photographs of people on the

Horror Train as they re-emerged

from the ride. Iligan said she

wanted to ‘capture the emotion of

the scene in the frame’. I love this

photograph because of the motion

blur. It really changes the

photograph. It is no longer static,

but has movement to it. We can

see the fear and joy in the rider’s

faces.

For my developmental, I will re-take the photographs, but introduce a motion blur. I

want the people’s faces still to be recognisable but to have that movement in it also.

Final Outcomes: Li Hui Li Hui is a self taught photographer from China. She is also a sculptor using lights and

scaffolding in her installations. Below is one of Hui’s photographs from a set called

‘Hidden’. She has overlaid photographs of the environment/ landscapes onto people.

The people’s shapes blend in with the landscape behind.

Recently, I visited Arran in Scotland and took some landscape photographs. I will use my

motion blur journey photographs to overlay onto these landscape photographs, just as

Hui has.

Project Review

This is my second set of photographs for the Inside, Outside and In Between

brief. My first set of photographs worked really well. I was able to take many of the

photographs on an eight hour journey to Scotland. It was very had to conceal my

camera as it makes a really loud noise. In a few of the photographs, the subjects have

spotted the camera. When I went on London Transport to take a few more journey

photographs, I noticed that people noticed the camera but then pretended not to have

seen it and looked away. I really like the contrast and brightness of these images and I

think they worked really well.

My second set was inspired by a horror train photograph. I think my set of

images worked really well as I used a slow shutter speed to create the motion blur. It

was during the day when I re took those images so some turned out burnt out in some

areas. I think I fixed the problem however by changing the contrast.

I wanted to incorporate my landscape photographs from Scotland, I have

found a way to do this. Li Hui has become one of my favourite photographer as she uses

many different ideas to create some amazing artwork. I like my set of finial outcomes

due to the colours, contrast and interaction of the landscape photographs and the

journey images.

If I was to re-do my project, I would try to do the motion blur on the initial set of

images. I would also have taken photographs of the view from the train window to them

use as the background for the people on a journey photographs.