The Assignment 3 asks to choose five or six buildings and for each produce between two and four images that describe effectively and attractively the way in which these spaces are used.
I can choose to include people in the images, or not.
For each building, it is important to conduct some research beforehand, either archival or personal (or both), in order to have:
- a good understanding of how and why it was designed in the way it is
- an opinion on its effectiveness as a usable space.
It is important to try to encompass variety in the choice of buildings, including in size and purpose.
I am also supposed to write a short statement demonstrating my understanding of the function of each building, the way in which it was designed to achieve that, and how well I believe it succeeds.
In addition, I am asked to describe briefly how I initially set about showing the important features of each building photographically, and what I learned during the course of shooting the assignment.
In Assignment 1 I had the opportunity to carefully plan and execute 7 images of a single subject. Assignment 2 was completely opposite, an exercise in street photography, few hours to try to describe the energy and colour of Jazz and Rally Festival in Luxembourg.
This clearly needed quick thinking and camera handling skills, but much more time was spent in editing both from an inclusion perspective as well as framing and exposure adjustments.
Assignment 3 brings me back to a more measured approach, but with some of the elements of Assignment 2.
My understanding of this assignment is to try and show how a space is used, from a practical point of view, even when devoid of people.
It is about observing human activity within a building.
Therefore, my assignment will be as much about people, even if absent from the image, as the buildings they inhabit.
I decided to take advantage of three trips, two to France and one to Italy, in order to try to respond to this assignment in the most accurate way.
1. Saint-Vincent-de-Paul College - Cuvry
When a group of friends proposed to me to go and visit the old Saint-Vincent-de-Paul College in Cuvry, I looked at them wondering if this was a joke.
Cuvry is a very small village in the Moselle department (North-Eastern France), close to the city of Metz and, besides its seminar and church, the only other major building is the abandoned Saint-Vincent-de-Paul College that was opened in 1922 and closed down in 2008.
In the past decades, the college used to host between 180 and 200 students coming from all the region, but following the merge with Mazenod à Augny college in the early 2000, the institution was forced to close due to a lack of students.
So, the only reason why I accepted the invitation was that I saw this as a very good opportunity to take some good shots of an interesting haunted building.
I do not know how one of my friends managed to have a guided tour into the building, but once we were there, very quickly I found myself projected into a sort of parallel world.
For about one hour we were guided through a forgotten world made of dusty details and beautiful broken memories of a student life that does not exist any longer.
Like Virgil did with Dante in the Inferno, our guide made us discover the place telling us interesting anecdotes and I was able to shoot with an intensity that rarely I had before.
Image 1.
f 4, 1/60 sec, ISO 1600, 28 mm
Virgil, the guide, our way through Saint-Vincent-de-Paul, with his fancy hat, his golden hearing and his timeless waistcoat.
He is the speaking soul of this place, the master of the building, the one who deserves my first shot.
I like this photo for its masses of dark and light and for the mystery.
The hidden face in this photo is like the unknown place I am about to visit, the abandoned building that I am about to discover, with its stories and its forgotten details.
Who is he? Where will he bring me? What am I going to find?
Image 2.
f 5.6, 1/6 sec, ISO 200, 18 mm
The crack in the wallpaper that starts exactly from the upper part of the chair and goes up to the ceiling is like a wound in the wall.
The time seems to be stopped and there I think to be able still to hear the voices of happy students laughing and talking aloud from one dormitory to the other.
The style of this shot (like the following two) reminds me a bit Alec Soth's deadpan photography.
I very much appreciate the narrative of the image and some details like the green baseboard, the colour of the wallpaper and the floor: everything is so full of emptiness.
Image 3.
f 3.5, 1/30 sec, ISO 200, 18 mm
Going on discovering Saint-Vincent-de-Paul College I found myself in the old lavatories.
Also there the atmosphere was unreal.
Image 3 is probably my favourite shot.
The overexposed wall gives me the impression of a cloud and reminds me the photos of Massimo Vitali's beaches.
The mirror is like a window bringing the viewer back from the cloud to reality, a sort of time travel.
Image 4.
f 4, 1/45 sec, ISO 3200, 20 mm
The last shot I took in Cuvry was Image 4.
The photo of the old college probably is from the early 1940s and I found it on the floor leaning against a wall.
The wallpaper is clearly from the1970s and it shows the time which passed by.
I perceive a lot of melancholy, the image of a world which is gone and that it will never come back, like our youths.
Few days ago I learned that Saint-Vincent-de-Paul will be soon demolished in order to build a residential center.
2. Louvre Museum - Paris
The Louvre Museum is one of the world's largest museums and a historic monument.
A central landmark of Paris, France, it is located on the Right Bank of the Seine in the 1st arrondissement (district).
Nearly 35,000 objects from prehistory to the 21st century are exhibited over an area of 60,600 square metres.
The Louvre is the world's most visited museum, and received about 10 million visitors last year.
The museum is housed in the Louvre Palace, originally built as a fortress in the late 12th century under Philip II.
The building was extended many times to form the present Louvre Palace.
During the French Revolution, the National Assembly decreed that the Louvre should be used as a museum to display the nation's masterpieces.
The museum opened on 10 August 1793 with an exhibition of 537 paintings, the majority of the works being royal and confiscated church property.
Because of structural problems with the building, the museum was closed in 1796 until 1801.
The collection was increased under Napoleon and the museum renamed the Musée Napoléon, but after Napoleon's abdication many works seized by his armies were returned to their original owners. The collection was further increased during the reigns of Louis XVIII and Charles X, and during the Second French Empire the museum gained 20,000 pieces.
Holdings have grown steadily through donations and gifts since the Third Republic.
The collection is divided among eight curatorial departments: Egyptian Antiquities; Near Eastern Antiquities; Greek, Etruscan, and Roman Antiquities; Islamic Art; Sculpture; Decorative Arts; Paintings; Prints and Drawings.
Image 5.
f 11, 1/350 sec, ISO 200, 50 mm
The most fascinating aspect of the Louvre's architecture is its contrast between modern and ancient style.
I consider the juxtaposition of contrasting architectural styles a real successful merger of the old and the new, the classical and the ultra-modern and I tried to depict this in the most original way possible.
First, I took several photos from the inside, where it is possible to see only the juxtaposition of the structure of the pyramid and the ancient palace.
Then, I decided to shoot it from the outside.
The result is Image 5 that I like for its unperfected symmetry, its colours and the mix of architectural styles.
Image 6.
f 4.5, 1/45 sec, ISO 800, 18 mm
When I think about the Louvre I immediately think about Leonardo Da Vinci's Monna Lisa.
I can not help it, it is a reflex in my brain.
When I found myself in front of this world wide known painting, I was surrounded by hundreds of tourist taking pictures in a compulsive way.
It was amazing how they tried to pass in front of me pushing to get closer to the painting.
So I took my photo. What I saw, what I felt and lived in front of the Gioconda.
This is one of my favourite shots because of its perspective and philosophical meaning.
In life often we see only the day to day banalities we have very close and we miss the masterpieces around.
Image 7.
f 5.6, 1/20 sec, ISO 400, 21 mm
I like a lot this shot taken at the Egyptian Antiquities department because of its graphic narrative.
The tourist's arms recall the position of the statue's in a sort of modern remaking of the Egyptian ritual where the only relevant religious instrument is the smartphone held with care in order to take the picture.
I appreciate the not straight cut, the warm (solar) temperature of the shot and the round "burned" window on the top, which reminds me about Ra, the God of the Sun and Radiance.
I am not sure my tutor will appreciate it as much as me due to its technical issues.
Image 8.
f 4, 1/80 sec, ISO 3200, 23 mm
What strikes me in Image 8, taken at the Italian art section of the Louvre, is the apparently precarious balance of its different subjects.
The huge golden painting held by two transparent ropes looks not straight and almost about to fall.
St. Francis looking at God has got a rather unnatural posture which could suggest a possible loss of equilibrium.
And also the tourist taking a photograph looks unstable in her posture.
In my opinion, paradoxically, this mix of precarious balance gives a peculiar balance to the image and makes it rather interesting to me.
3. Caffé Fiorio - Turin
The Caffé Fiorio is an historic café in Turin, located in Via Po, in the heart of the city.
Founded in 1780 it became a fashionable meeting place for the artistic, intellectual and political classes of the capital of the Kingdom of Sardinia.
Frequented by such as Urbano Rattazzi, Massimo D'Azeglio, Giovanni Prati, Camillo Benso Conte di Cavour (who founded the Whist Club here), Giacinto Provana di Collegno and Cesare Balbo, it became known as "the café of the Machiavellis and of the pigtails."
"Codini", literally "pigtails", is a term applied to reactionary politicians, apparently with reference to pre-revolutionary French hairstyles.
Besides its historical vicissitudes, its most relevant characteristic is that Caffé Fiorio serves the best ice-cream I have ever eaten and every time I go back to my hometown I go there for having one.
The place's atmosphere is very decadent, but it is still possible to breath the old intellectual air from the nineteen century.
I do not think that this is place is beautiful and probably I do not even like it so much, but its charme is so intense that is really worth a visit.
Image 9.
f 2.8, 1/30 sec, ISO 2500, 24 mm
In my view, the backlit shot of these window and chairs is a sort of quintessence of Caffé Fiorio.
The symmetrical order of the well disposed chairs makes me think about the times lived by this place during the Italian unification.
How detailed must have been the plan to chase the Austrian from the North and the Spanish from the South in order to get a united country back on his feet.
The light coming from the window is a sort of vision back from that glorious and challenging time.
Image 10.
f 2.8, 1/13 sec, ISO 12800, 24 mm
I really like the cut and the perspective of Image 10.
The stairs, the line accompanying the look of the viewer down towards the chair and the chair itself which is a lonely point in the image, make my eye travelling the space and the time of this shot.
I also like the colours, the different shades of orange and the feeling of "old" that they convey.
Image 11.
f 2.8, 1/40 sec, ISO 4000, 24 mm
The posture of my son Max lying on the sofa reminds me of a photo I discovered at the Robert Mapplethorpe's exhibition in Paris last year.
His arm lost in the empty space gives me a kind of serenity which is very well framed by the nineteen century style stairs around him.
My parents sitting decorously close to him provide the image with a contrast that I do very much appreciate.
Image 12.
f 4, 1/4 sec, ISO 400, 18 mm
Caffè Fiorio is a kind of magic for me.
This shot is centred on my reflection in the mirror taking the photo of my mother sitting at the table after her ice cream.
The light, the posture of the woman, the old furniture with out of fashion design is a real travel in time for me, back at my childhood when I used to go there with her and my grandmother after school.
4. Sacro Cuore di Maria's Church - Turin
One of the major churches in the San Salvario area (the area in Turin where I grew up) is the Sacro Cuore di Maria.
The church was realised in 1889 by Carlo Ceppi, likely the best architect in Turin at that time (he already worked for the four chapels of the famous Consolata church).
Ceppi, inspired himself to the gothic architecture and developed modern constructive techniques particularly in the interior of the church.
Despite the writer Natalia Ginzburg, who used to live in the same street, in her book "Lessico Familiare" describes Sacro Cuore di Maria as "a big and ugly church", in my opinion it is a beautiful building with a remarkable architectural style.
Image 13.
f 2.8, 1/40 sec, ISO 5000, 24 mm
Are those the heaven's door?
The golden lines on the wall and this sort of waiting room at the side of the central nave of the church made me wonder if this is not the place where the departed souls gather for their final judgement.
I like the atmosphere and the light of the shot.
I had to help myself opening the shadows in post production in order to be able to see the golden lines.
Image 14.
f 2.8, 1/60 sec, ISO 2500, 70 mm
This shot has been taken behind the altar in a rather uncomfortable but original position.
What I think it is interesting is the composition.
I tried to conceive and cut the photo in order to have different areas: a bright and mystic square in the left upper part, a "down to earth" clear entrance of the central nave in the bottom left part, a marble severe ecclesiastic space on the right half.
The idea behind would be to reproduce the photographic style of Alex Webb.
If I could categorize some of Alex Webb’s work it would be “orderly
chaos”.
He often fills the frame with so many things that it almost
feels too busy.
This
is what makes his images interesting- as I think his photographs tell
lots of small stories inside the frame.
Image 15.
f 7.1, 1/400 sec, ISO 100, 70 mm
Salvador Dalí in front of a church with his crazy look and moustaches is really bizarre.
I like the idea and even the pigeon flying around giving the same impression of frozen time that is given by the look of the Spanish master.
I think that the composition is original and the colourful painting is an interesting subject.
However, what I regret and I do not like is that we can not see the church which is literally few steps away.
Image 16.
f 5.6, 1/250 sec, ISO 100, 70 mm
In this shot I tried to capture the graphic effect of the marble steps of the altar.
The different shades of grey and the lines of the floor fascinate me.
It is something which is almost hypnotic and reminds me about the prayers repeated constantly by the believers, a sort of mantra reiterated to infinity.
The marbles and the architecture of the church plays an important role during the mass and this detail witnesses it.
5. My parents's flat - Turin
I spent in Turin the first 23 years of my life and all were happily lived at my parent's flat.
As an excellent Italian mother, mine always kept the house in a perfect shape, more like a museum than a normal house.
That is the reason why at my parents's place I can find incredible objects like an old rusted scale or a sword hanging on a wall.
I very much enjoyed this photography session because it allowed me to look through the eye of my lens to my past and the place I lived more than half of my life.
Despite I often find their objects old and useless (sorry Mom, I am happy you can not read English!), the feelings I nourish towards my parents and their things are huge and I believe the four photos I choose show it at least a bit.
Image 17.
f 2.8, 1/60 sec, ISO 3200, 63 mm
I do not really know where my parents found this old scale, but I believe it was bought on a flies market in Southern Piedmont.
For me, this old useless object has been there since ever and it is well representative of my former house.
Looking at it I can still hear my mother shouting at me:"Stop playing with the old scale, it is fragile!".
That is why I framed my photo like that: I never had the real chance to look at it and, for me, the shape of the object is fleeing like an objet looked while running away.
Image 18.
f 2.8, 1/40 sec, ISO 1000, 24 mm
My father sitting at his desk with the sword of a dead uncle hanging on the wall looks very funny to me.
However, the friendly but determinate posture, the yellowish light, the honest and opened look, the sleeves rolled up, make an interesting and loyal portrait of the man and his house.
Image 19.
f 2.8, 1/40 sec, ISO 12800, 70 mm
They are the home, they are my home.
No need to take other details because my parents at their place are what best represent the place and the feelings I have.
I like the perspective and the light of this spontaneous family portrait.
Image 20.
f 2.8, 1/30 sec, ISO 2500, 28 mm
This vase is rather new to me and probably has been bought after my departure.
However, what stroke me taking this shot was the light.
Another very important peculiarity at my parent's place was always the light.
Lack of light in winter, too much of it in summer (what a heat in Turin during summer!) and always a lot of contrasts.
The light and the sun simply shaped my youth in Italy.
Conclusion.
I have found the assignment far more enjoyable than I anticipated, and I have certainly needed to think far more laterally.
It took a lot longer to organise than I expected (almost two months!) and I took hundreds of shots until I got what I felt was representative of how I, as the photographer, wanted to portray buildings in use.
Choosing what to photograph, and how, took quite a lot of planning, this has made me realise how important is for me to consider prior to doing any photographic project to have a basic idea of what I aim to achieve, and how.
I already understand how light can alter an image, returning to the same spot at different times of the day can be tedious but for my chosen locations I rediscovered just how important light is to transform an image of the same space into something quite new.
I have found fascinating to see how human activity can be represented in a people-less building.
I feel this has helped make me become more visually aware and given me renewed inspiration.
As I have worked through this assignment, I have started to look at and consider genre more.
This has encouraged me to read and think more about how I wish to develop as a photographer.
I realise I have used what are different genres for the various buildings and spaces I have chosen for the assignment, not just one style throughout.
However, I feel this is a good thing as by experimenting with different methods of recording how I see the world around me and how I choose to interpret this into a visual representation I will start to then, hopefully, develop my own personal style.
I feel style is an elusive concept that grows into a more individual distinctive form with experience.
During this assignment I learned few lessons that I could summarise as follows:
1. The importance of knowing what you want to show.
It is difficult to overstate this idea.
I have generally tended to simply shoot what felt right at the time, and while this has its place, if you are trying to satisfy a brief it is important to do the research, decide what you want to show and take your time to get the shots you need.
2. Small cameras are less intimidating.
I am, at last, beginning to feel that photographing strangers is not outside my comfort zone, but it is still considerably easier with a small, discreet camera rather than a big black SLR.
3. Take more photos with people in.
In this assignment I have about half of people pictures and I think that is the most interesting half of my work.
They provide the places I shot with context and life.
This brings home the importance of that lesson: without the inclusion of people I would have a set of very dry architecture photos.
I believe that it is the interaction of people and place that makes the difference.
