Black Light
Black light photography was campaigned by Keld Helmer-Petersen. It mostly consists of highly contrasting photos of black and white. This creates a very striking look of the object being a clear attention of the photo, due to its contrast with the white background, it makes me stand out. Keld Helmer-Peterson was inspired by such photographers as Albert Ranger-Patzch, Harry Callahan and Aaron Siskind. These photographers all had a somewhat similar taste in how they presented life through photos, black and white, industrial and high contrast. The industrial style of the photos almost mimics the brutal nature of this photography style, bold with hard, striking lines and jump out of the page.
Keld Helmer-Petersen
Black Light
Keld Helmer-Petersen was a Danish photographer known for his experimental photography, being just on the border on what is normally considered photography, using techniques that don’t even use cameras such as a photographer. He began to be more known in the public eye with his work, 122 Coloured Photographs, which led him to both study and teach at the Institute of Design in Chicago. This gradually led him to creating a series of black light photography which, as explained above, is when there is a high contrast in black and white photos, with no mid-tones, this creates a striking and bold image. Helmer-Petersen would create these images, at first, through the use of photograms. Photograms being images created without using a camera, instead placing objects onto a light-sensitive surface or material such as, photographic paper, this would then be exposed to light giving it the effect which is black light. Specifically in Black Noise, Back to Black and Black Light he placed old negatives and found objects on a flatbed scanner, which was done digitally, compared to what he was doing before with photograms. These books were interesting in their layouts as there is minimal explanation to the photos and how they were created, as well, photos were varied in how they were displayed Some of the photos would spread across double pages, some would only be portrait or, as a viewer, you would have to turn the book to its side as the image would be landscape. This make the book more interactive, leading the viewer in and engaging them which would be different to most books.
Photoshoot
In this photoshoot I attempted to emulate the style of Keld Helmer-Petersen by using straight lines and industrial themes, for example, using cranes and metal to give off the idea that the area of which I was taking photos was under construction. I believe I had done this successfully, I used the buildings, rails, benches to create strong, straight lines. I used nature to contrast this, like in the photo with the building behind the tree, this shows a contrast between the ruggedness of the human made objects in comparison with the tree.
Photoshoot Edited
I belive out of the 23 photos from my photoshoot that these are the best 16. This is because they show more of the common links in Keld Helmer-Petersen's work, in the way that bold, straight lines were used as well as a feeing of an industrial space in which he worked within would be present to the viewer. I have done this by using the buildings and rails to create the bold, sharp lines. However I also used nature, the obvious being tree, to experiment in how they can contrast with the buildings. This is demonstrated in the 10th picture where the tree is in front of the building which has the sharp lines almost going through the tree. If I had the chance to do this again I would have maybe experimented more with that idea of contrasting nature and the human-made.