Ansel Adams“When words become unclear I shall focus with photographs. When images become inadequate I shall become content with silence.”
Today I visited the Ansel Adams exhibition at the Greenwich Maritime Museum. Ansel Adams was an american photographer and environmentalist most famously known for his black-and-white landscape photographs of the American west. At the start of Adams career the older generation still clung to the photography style dating back to the 1800’s that only photographers who made pictures look like paintings or drawings (pictorialists) could be considered true artists. But after the First World War many people started to see pictorial photographs as hopelessly sentimental and nostalgic. So gradually, harder-edged forms took hold. Artists embraced photography’s mechanical qualities and ‘let the camera speak’. This new attitude came to be known as photographic modernism. Adams was one of the leading figures in this movement. The works in this exhibition explored water in all its forms. I especially loved the photographs of water rapids and the sprays of water as it crashes against the rocks. Another thing I liked was the contrast in the black-and-white pictures it completely transformed the images from being rather average landscape scenes to being really interesting and brilliant landscape scenes. After seeing this exhibition it has inspired me to go out and take some pictures in a way similar to Ansel Adams. |
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On the left are a few photos I took in Bournemouth which are inspired by Ansel Adams' photography. I edited the pictures by putting them in black & white and increasing the contrast. I think these images worked quite well as the black and white effect gives the image a sense of depth.
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Landmark: the Fields of PhotographyI went to see this exhibition at Somerset house by a variety of different photographers. It told a kind of story about the brutal ways in which the environment is changing and how we as humans have caused it. There were lots of images of man made materials in great quantity such as roads, tyre yards and wind farm which looked quite ridiculous and unbelievable. There were also photos of environmental change which have not been caused by humans such as, land erosion and river valleys. This exhibition was really interesting because it opened my eyes to things happening in the world that I have never seen before. I liked the images because they were very beautiful despite showing a destructive process in action.
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