Why London
This project started out as a documentary seres about why people came to / live in London and why they choose to stay. This project came to me one day last year as I was taking photos in Bethnal Green, and noticed the abundance of shops, people and restaurants originating from different countries. They had made their own community as if they where in their own county. They had made London their home as many others have done before. The place was filled to the brim with different generations all living together.
Further researching into this, I discovered that later on that year (2020) that around 65% of residents in London weren't from London, 35% having english as their second language.
I had discovered that London had this gravity, pulling people from all over in, letting anyone in the gates. London wasn't this grey, gloomy city as portrayed by the rest of the world.It was vibrant with culture and different ethnicities.
With this at play, I wanted to interview as many people who had moved to London. Ask the the question 'Why London' ?
For this project, I have been tasked create a body of work around the word 'Connection'. I will be creating a photo series containing 5-10 images based around this. My university has partnered up with the Sony world photography awards competition and will be the basis of all work produced in this unit.
Winner of the documentary series:
Fusco - The killing daisy.
Fusco - The killing daisy.
The artist above is the winner of the documentary section for the 2021 Sony world photography awards.
I want to gravitate towards a documentary based body of work. I mostly do street and architecture, so I am already practised in being observant of my surroundings, but only at an image standpoint. Showing off the world from my eyes through imagery comes more naturally to me than writing, so by doing this documentary series I will be as descriptive as possible within the images I take.
I don't plan on using any artificial light, in order to keep the images true and realistic to the original environment.
Project Ideas and Advocate Advice:
In this class we had to present two ideas to a group and then would split off into two's. We'd then ask the advocate to present their ideas in full detail. With this we'd then present to the class which of our advocates ideas we liked the best then give our advice on how they can better the project and produce enough work in the limited timeframe we have.
Idea 1:
My first idea was on the connection between people and social media. Both the negatives and the positives. How it's distracts people on average up to 4 hours a day, causing mental health issues and advertising false realities. In turn taking over some peoples lives. On the flip side, social media has created so many opportunities for the creative industry. We have so much information at our fingertips and are now connected to everyone.
Although the editing style may differ from my image compared to the example I have chosen from 'Vito Fusco', the sence of reality between them, with both having a natural movement to the image, is enough to brand them as "Environmental".
In Vito Fusco's image he uses all natural lighting, and shot during the low light hours of the day, so that the natural light can pour into the scene, painting everything in golden light.
I wanted to replicate this in my shot. However with it being England, my 'golden painted scene' was actually more of an image exposed in grey, unflattering light.
This doesn't take any of the character out of the image as it still reflects the same movement throughout.
In Vito Fusco's image he uses all natural lighting, and shot during the low light hours of the day, so that the natural light can pour into the scene, painting everything in golden light.
I wanted to replicate this in my shot. However with it being England, my 'golden painted scene' was actually more of an image exposed in grey, unflattering light.
This doesn't take any of the character out of the image as it still reflects the same movement throughout.
Shown above is a photo series I did in China Town, Piccadilly. The top photo of the two workers
Over 250 languages are spoken in London, making the capital the most linguistically diverse city in the world.
In London alone, just over 690,000 people considered a European language which wasn't one of British origin as their main language and almost 150,000 of these were Polish speakers. In total, 1.7m recorded a language other than English as their main language in London.
More than half a million identified a south Asian language as their main language in the 2011 Census and an additional 100,000 identified an east Asian language. More than 130,000 people identified their main language as one native to Africa.
