GCSE PHOTOGRAPHY IDENTITY
Kevin Mourad
Martha Cooper
Martha Cooper is an American photojournalist born in the 1940's.She worked as a photographer for the New York Post during the 1970's and started her photography at the age of three. She graduated school at the age of 16 and earned a degree at 19 from Grinell college. She first began with taking photos in Japan of elaborate tattoos. Her most personal and well known work is the graffiti scene in the Bronx and in Brooklyn and all over New York in the 70's and 80's; she later released a book illustrating the graffiti culture she observed, calling it Subway Art - it had such an impact that it became known as the Bible of street art. Her photos are candid pictures of community and young people living their lives in the Bronx of New York.They have low contrast with slight grain providing a very retro feel to her pictures. I really like her work and i feel a personal connection with the style, as it speaks to me on what its like to be a teenager in a big city. Her work reminds me of another candid street photographer, Bruce Gilden, another artist i can relate to. I think that the meaning behind her work is to illustrate how small community's and teenagers within a massive city strive to survive and live life to the full.
The increase in danger across the UK is honestly scary. Gangs and knife crime have had a massive spike in the past two years.Through my work i want to express and illustrate the people you can find in London and what its like growing up in a big city being only 15 years old. Growing up in London brings a mix of sensation, its terrifying whilst being exciting, a lot of the time it feels like its just me and my friends battling against the city. One of my favourite things about London are the markets and free skate parks, both usually full of all kinds of people from different backgrounds. London's borough market has been around for years and the smell of warm sausages is one of the most British things ever. The London underground is renown as of the most iconic things of this great city, built in 1863, the tube line has been used for centuries, its iconic map representing all the different routes which travel around and through the centre of London. It might not be the cleanest method of transport but London isn't a clean city. London is an old, grimey place full of market attractions and diversity, famous for its pubs and classic fish n chips.
Photoshoot plan
Contact Sheet
These are my un edited pictures in the style of Martha Cooper I took these pictures in this style because I like taking photos with the whole object in one landscape photo I have tAken these photos with my phone and some of the other ones are with a canon camera.
I believe these photos came out very well and the way I wanted them to the canon4000d helped me zoom in from far way overall I know I done very good
I took these pictures in the city of London specifically in Camden because a lot of famous street graffities do there work so I was inspired and rook some landscape and birds eye view photos
In some of the images, I have caught areas of the sky, which contrast well against the grainy, dirty walls of graffiti.
Martha cooper developments - Experimenting with hue/saturation/black and white edits
I took these images this way because I feel like its important to try different camera angles and technique to take photos at what you want to. The way I took these photos is by a phone but for some pictures I zoomed out so you would be able to see the whole point of view. I used this technique because I have been inspired my many different artists and I have tried to re create these by using some of their techniques.
The aspects I like about my work is that graffiti is involved because personally I love graffiti and its so meaning full to me because from a young age I have always seen people and the members of my family do it. I would like to improve my work by taking more pictures and I will definitely will be doing that for my redraft or next artist
To edit my photographs, I increased the brightness and contrast to make the photo more vibrant.I then used the curve to decrease and increase the light in certain areas of my development.I increased the vibrance by 25 and the saturation by 7 to make the graffiti stand out much more.I also used the selective colour tool to change some of the colours in the photo, altering his trousers from blue to brown and the graffiti from dark red to a bright pink.I then cropped the image to make the camera man more of the subject and i added noise to give it grain and to make it look vintage.
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Highlighting Success
Experimenting with composition
For this composition I experimented with layering my images, just like the graffiti layers on a wall. I felt the layering of the images, created an interesting composition and all most looks like a magazine cover. I selected an image with has zoomed into the wall and covered in graffiti, this contrasts well with the image of the building and sky which your eye is drawn to.
Contact sheet redraft
For this redraft I have made sure to get more color in to my pictures because my old contact sheet was very dry and basic . I have made sure to bring more characters into the pictures and my self in it because graffiti can get boring if it to basic.
The ones that are circled are the best in my opinion and I chose them because the pictures all add up and its all graffiti. The red ones are other styles of taking pictures and I made it to so I took a picture into a phone an the phone was reflecting on the wall as you can see in the red circled photo's
Developments (Redraft - Experimenting saturation/contrast
Experimenting with composition
I styled these photos on photoshop to try make the work look like a magazine cover I tried to add more work and experiment random stuff to my photos I took. This resulted in adding different photos in one and double exposing them until it don't look edited anymore. I have chose to do these compositions and styled them in the way of Martha cooper.
I personally liked to take different camera angles and different ways to take pictures for example I used two cameras one from a phone and one from a canon. There is different ways you can interpret this piece of art one way is literally and metaphorically by the way I styled them. In these styled compositions I have managed to make some look similar but slightly different due to the color of the day and the contrast on some of these styled edited photos
Experimenting with collage
These are my collage experiments which I then edited on photoshoot to alter the colours. I think this worked well to create a series of striking images. The physical collage I made in the top left hand corner is a series of my area photographs layered together on an A3 piece of paper which I then scanned. This effect has saturated the colours creating a rich and vibrant photograph.