Pictures of You: Free Day Sunday 19th February 2012 Reseach blog Edvardas Poska

The following entry was created by Edvardas Poska based on one of my ideas for the commision project.

The Commissions: Task 2 - Research for Martin Wilby

Our second Commission task was to research other student idea. I was paired with Martin Wilby. We confirmed each other's ideas and Martin was interested in military environment, as bunkers and forts.

First I did research at Paul Virilio (born 1932 in Paris, France). He is a cultural theorist and urbanist. He is best known for his writings about technology as it has developed in relation to speed and power, with diverse references to architecture, the arts, the city and the military. In 1958, Virilio conducted a phenomenological inquiry into military space and the organization of territory, particularly concerning the Atlantic Wall—the 15,000 Nazi bunkers built during World War II along the coastline of France and designed to repel any Allied assault. Paul Virilio's classic book of wartime architectural history –“Bunker Archeology”, you can find in Canterbury or Maidstone UCA Library, or UCA Virtual library. Some images from this book:

Chilling beauty of the "WWII Bunkers" photo series by English photography Jonathan Andrew. His treatment of these stunningly functionalist concrete structures—that appear as is from another world—are a poignant reminder of the scars left by war. He used huge light sources to illuminate these concrete structures.

I think Erasmus Schroter and his astonishing book “Bunker” inspired Jonathan Andrew. You can find this book in our UCA Rochester library. German photographer refers to the colours he uses to appropriately show off the bunkers and bastions of the beaten “Fortress Europe” - or, more precisely, its relics - as "obscene colors".

Photographer Alex Fradkin captured the architecture of war along the coast of the San Francisco Bay area in the book Bunkers: Ruins of War in a New American Landscape. The earliest bunkers date from the Mexican–American War all the way up to the Cold War, these bunkers were built in anticipation of an enemy who never arrived.

Our project can take only in Medway area.

www.undergroundkent.co.uk/ - is a site dedicated to the many underground features that can be found not just in Kent but also in other areas. They are mostly military fortifications that have been built over the last three centuries, but other features that included tunnels can also be found here. All sites are man made, or in the case of mines, heavily influenced by industrial usage. The aim is to provide a glimpse into the rarely seen and often ignored world that exists beneath our feet.

Using this site I create the list of military or weird unusable buildings in Medway area:

HMS WILDFIRE. Location: Medway, Kent. Condition: Very Poor. Description and images: http://www.undergroundkent.co.uk/hmswildfire.htm
GRAIN TOWER BATTERY. Location: The Thames. Condition: Poor. Description and images: http://www.undergroundkent.co.uk/grain_tower_battery.htm
GRAIN FORT. Location: Isle of Grain. Condition: Poor. Description and images: http://www.undergroundkent.co.uk/grain_fort.htm
HOO FORT. Location: Medway. Description and images: http://www.undergroundkent.co.uk/hoo_fort.htm
DARNET FORT. Location: Medway. Description and images: http://www.undergroundkent.co.uk/darnet_fort.htm

My research for Edvardas (below)

Having considered the concept described it was clear that Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) of a key feature to the visual narrative within the concept. Having looked at lots of Environmental Photographers and organisations such as Greenpeace it became clear that this was a media image (with regards to references) rather than a fine art image. I'm sure documentary photographers would have also been worth further research to find further visual references. Below is a varied mixture of ideas that could lead to further and more specific and focused research.

http://trendland.net/jason-florio-documentary-photography/#

http://www.floriophoto.com/ Look at his images of masked competetion/sports handgun shooters

http://www.edwardburtynsky.com/

http://www.hotshoegallery.com/artists/dan-acostioaei/

http://radiophlegm.blogspot.com/2010/03/gas-mask-fashion.html

http://steamw.deviantart.com/art/Gas-mask-100982923

Getty Images

Getty is an obvious place to start to look at commercial and historic images

Jim Naughton

http://steamw.deviantart.com/art/Gas-mask-100982923

The underground goth world often create images wearing masks and deliberately create imagery that makes them out of place within society and the environment.
It would appear that certain fetishists and groups (S&M) also adorn themselves in items of PPE, thus creating that edginess this image requires. Possibly another route to find a photographer to influence the visual layout of the image, although this is an environmental waste image and not a fetish image.

Children at play