Environment/City: Critical Appraisal

For my environment unit, I chose to look at the effect that we have on the environment. I started by researching the artist Mitch Epstein. His work depicting the growing population of China, and its effect on their landscape was my main inspiration for the project. After the critique of my first shoot, I realised that I needed to continue shooting, as my first images didn’t show this idea of expansion. I wanted to build up a much larger collection of images for this project, but I struggled in finding places that matched what I wanted to photograph. After my second shoot, I had 3 images I was happy with, although I had had to shoot them on a 35mm camera. Due to this I printed some of the images smaller to retain detail, but I was overall happy with my final prints.

The city I found a lot more difficult. My initial thoughts for the project were to look at the unseen parts of the city, but due to an error whilst shooting, I had to complexly rethink my approach with the time I had left. It was at this point that I came across the work of Bruce Gildan, who specialised in street photography. I started to shoot around the city of Canterbury, photographing people walking the streets without making myself to obvious. I shot a single roll of black and white 35mm film, and managed to take 5 images I was happy with. I had wanted to use medium format for the shoot, but the relatively small size of the 35mm slr meant that I could be as inconspicuous as possible.