London 2025 - Themes

 

 

A still from Orson Welles' film The Trial (1962), based on the book by Franz Kafka.

The imagery in this film made a big impression on me when I first saw it.

The Trial (1962) Directed by Orson Welles [Film] Paris-Europa Productions, Hisa-Film, Finanziaria Cinematografica Italiana 

Blink and it’s Gone.

London 2050. 

The city is a peaceful, orderly, clean space with beautiful houses and green spaces.

The reason for this is that the majority of its former inhabitants now live in monolithic tower blocks ringed around the outskirts, able only to view their former dwelling from a distance through what are known as ‘aspiration windows’.

My proposal is to present my work as an exhibition, with framed photographs and an interactive installation piece.

The exhibition will include these three (connected) elements.

Interiors of people’s homes, as they live in the vast tower blocks. 

The portraits will be posed in front of windows which overlook from on high the city of London in the distance. They will give some clues to the quality of life and the surprising diversity of people who, despite being ‘Londoners’, can no longer afford to live inside their city.

Exteriors, taken from the viewpoint of London, showing these monolithic structures on the outskirts.

They perpetually loom on the horizons, a constant reminder to those whose income falls short that they are not immune to being shipped out to the outskirts.

The installation piece will be a model of London, flat and whitewashed, with disproportionately huge residential tower blocks ringing the outskirts. 

These tower blocks will be hollow inside and have the back walls missing, so that viewers can place their faces in the hollows and peer through the windows at the city of London inside the ringed cordon. This will be the only way to view the city, as the tower blocks will be so close together that only very few glimpses of London will be possible.

As the model tower blocks form a ring, viewers will see the eyes of other viewers through windows of buildings opposite, creating an amusing and eerie spectacle of a community united in its rejection.

The idea is to create both a voyeuristic and isolated viewpoint, empathising with those unfortunate enough to live in the structures.

Sketches, Dominik Klimowski 

I took this photograph of what was once a council block in Acton which a friend of mine lived. They are being torn down to make way for more expensive privately rented flats. The council tenants will be relocated to Northolt, 8 miles away in the direction of the outskirts of London.

Buildings - intitial ideas

These are initial ideas  based around my ideas of buildings, specifically tower blocks. They have fascinated me for a long time, since my early childhood living in a block of flats in communist Warsaw.

                                          Warsaw, Praga district, 2013

I aim to make a project around people living in huge tower blocks. Maybe how the drab cold exteriors could contain a multitude of very different , colourful lives.

I am interested in exploring the following:

• ‘Mockumentary’. A way of presenting my work so that it brings up a point of discussion, rather than being based in what we see in real life. This could maybe mean the setting is a fictional place, or the place is real, but it is set in the future. 
• Making sets, so that I can create places (interiors) which don’t really exist.
• Making models, to suggest unusual landscapes.
• Combining models or sets with real places. For example using Photoshop to place model buildings in real landscapes, or to show real landscapes through fake windows.
• Using darkroom techniques, such as painting models with light-sensitive solution (‘liquid light’) and projecting images onto them in the darkroom.
• Projections (onto buildings, then re-photographed) 

Vera Lutter

Vera Lutter is a New York-based photographer who has created large-scale prints using the 'camera obscura' technique. It is a technique which originates at the very beginning of photography and is an awe-inspiring effect which consists of the outside world being projected through a small hole, into the inner walls of a darkened room. 

Lutter would make these projections in rooms around New York, often in urban or industrial areas, and capture th negatives on photographic paper hung on the walls within. Displaying the negatives, rather than making positive images, was prefered as it captured the immediacy of the image. It was an original of one.

333 West 39th Street. (2010-12) Vera Lutter

My own camera obscura, set up in my son's bedroom

 

Lutter, V. (1994-2013) Works. http://veralutter.net/works.php

Rut Blees Luxemburg - London Dust

I contacted the photographer Rut Blees Luxemburg, whose work I admire due to her style of taking photographs in London at night, using long exposures and ambient light. I was hoping she may agree to come to the college in Rochester where I teach and speak to my A-level Photography students. To my surprise she replied at once, saying she would be unable to come but why don‘t we meet her in London where she had an exhibition at the Museum of London.
The exhibition was small, but Luxemburg’s photographs are the kind that you want to stare at for a while. 

Photos: Dominik Klimowski at the Museum of London

This particular exhibition centred on the juxtaposition between advertising hoardings featuring slick computerised visions of the city of London and it‘s gritty, crappy reality at street level. From a technical point of view their sharpness and detail complement the minimalist compositions. Luxemburg described her methods and techniques, using a large format film camera with a slow shutter in order to use only the light available from the streets at night. I was particularly interested to discover that she sometimes changed and manipulated what was in front of her for aesthetic purposes, while still maintaining a natural ‘found’ look.

from London Dust (2015) Rut Blees Luxemburg

She talked about feminism, how her work meant she would go out on her own after dark. Also about the importance of titles, and how they provide further meaning and a backstory to her work and can give her pieces more grounding.

Towering Inferno (1995) Rut Blees Luxemburg

Towering Inferno (above) has made a lasting impression on me. It is almost like an 'urban dolls house', and I intend to use this effect in my work.

Luxemburg, R. B. (2016) London Dust. Museum of London.