Sebastiao Salgado
Sebastiao Salgado is a social documentary photographer renowned for documenting the lives and traditions of communities all around the world. When it comes to portraying a space and community he is the photographer I look up to the most because his work speaks to me in a lot of different ways.
Sebastiao Salgado has photographed in several countries, one of his most important projects being documenting the genocide in Rwanda. He was the first photographer to take pictures of the genocide and his work helped raise awareness on what was happening at the time.
I decided to include his work for this project because the first task is to go into a space and document my experience of the space. I will try and take photographs that represent effectively what I experienced and how I see what's around me. One of the things I would like to try is shooting from different angles and always keeping in mind that I am a new person in the space that I am going to so I need to be mindful and respectful of others as much as I can. I think another thing I should keep in mind is also to, perhaps, ask for consent when I am trying to take a picture of someone I don't know.
Gail Brodholt
Gail Brodholt is a painter and printmaker from South London. Her work captivated me because of the precision and detail of her prints and linocuts: I think she combines really interesting visuals with an amazing skill which is why her work is so inspiring to me. I think the subject of her work are “ on-places”, to me that means that these are places where people go but do no stay for too long - transitory spaces where one finds themselves before getting to the place they afctually intend to go to. These “non-places” are places I always go to and visit during my ordinary daily life but learning more about this term and trying to explore this idea is fascinating to me.
I am thinking that perhaps something interesting I could do for this project could be trying to create something that resembles a “non-place” to me but that it’s also a different environment from the ones I usually encounter or see every day.
Ricardo Bofill
Ricardo Bofill is a Spanish architect whose work caught my eye when I came across this article explaining how he decided to turn a cement factory into his residence. I found the project very interesting because I never came across someone who would want to make a cement factory his home. Furthermore, from the pictures the house looks very minimal, the cemented walls give it a very special look that is very rural. Some of the elements and machines such as the big tanks hanging on the ceiling in the picture above found were kept and are beautifully incorporated within his home.
I thought researching more about his work would help me with this project as I could be inspired by the interiors of this house and the way it was constructed to create similar linear shapes and have a very distinctive look for my print. Perhaps I will start thinking more about placing one or more absurd elements together, or incorporating visual elements that I didn't think would fit together to my work just to see how they can co-exist next to each other. After all I think this project will help me fit together 2 or 3 pictures together to create one frame.
Bibliography: https://www.yatzer.com/A-former-Cement-Factory-is-now-the-workspace-and-residence-of-Ricardo-Bofill