Dead Space. Final piece.
This work will act as my final piece for this unit and will tackle the issue of how due to the economical climate factories and large buildings have ended up closing, becoming dilapidated and sometimes being demolished leaving voids or dead space in the middle of built up urban areas, lying unwanted and unused.
Dead Space is (as my final piece) an accumulation of everything I have learnt and researched throughout this unit of work. I have taken influence from numerous aspects of each of my researched photographers works, these include basing the idea on a more important societal problem such as my main research photographer Alejandro Cartagena. I have taken influence in my processing of my images and the style in which I shoot from all of my research photographers sticking to a more desaturated and understated style letting the images speak for themselves. In essence this project is a product of the rest of my unit three work but also improves on everything at the same time.
Dead Space is a photo essay on urban holes in society, where buildings have being demolished leaving vast waste grounds, gaping and ugly in the middle of a built up city. Dead Space is a metaphor for the current economic and political climate with more and more voids appearing in society every day in not only this form but many others such as businesses closing, corruption, and debt to name a few. This is what Dead Space is about, how our entire society is being systematically destroyed.
In this project I shot my images in a style not unlike that of Rebecca Norris in her project My Dakota, this I believed would lend to the overall feeling of doom and almost mourning as that is a prominent feature in her project as it is half and exploration of her home state and half a homage to her brother who died shortly before she shot the project. In my case the mourning would be for society instead of a true person. however the feeling I believe because of this is there.
This shoot took place at one of the many deserted, demolished factory sites around Leeds I am not disclosing which of the sites this shoot is of for two reasons. 1. Despite that as I have previously said the sites are abandoned and left untended to these sites are generally still private property and I have had to trespass to shoot them. and 2. If you do not know where or which site it is then it could be any of them showing just how common and similar these urban holes in society are.
I shot this entire piece of work using my DSLR as I needed a fast and efficient means of capturing this site due to the nature of the shoot and the fact that I did not want to have to go back and reshoot any of my images. This would not have been possible if I had shot on film as I have done for other projects in this unit of work. I chose this specific day for the shoot as the shy was overcast but bright lending itself to even lighting and less contrasting tones in my images. I wanted this effect in my images as I believed it would help put across the abandoned and run down feeling I wanted to achieve in my images.
I believe that this project has been a great success and is a product of the rest of my work and my research as it has taken possibly the best aspects from all. There is also a quite obvious improvement in the quality of my work which is the result of me taking lessons from each of my projects as I have shot them.
