.jpg)
Alexandra Ene
I’m a photographer with a deep interest in architecture, the way the natural environment adapts to it and learns to coexist with it, and that has been my inspiration for this project.
My project explores and documents the concept of architectural spaces and their significance to both the viewer and the location where they’re found. In order to find such significances and create the links to identify the spaces, the project reached a stage where researching the history of the place became significant to the narrative of the project. Every space has a history, whether it’s a major event that’s happened to it or its simply had a makeover, but it all contributes and makes it important, and so to make the relationship clearer between the narrative and the space, in the book each image is accompanied by a piece of text that details the location and something that has previously occurred to the structure and is now evident on it to this day.
Evie Webb
My project aims to depict the damage that we, as humans, do to the world. I felt the need to do this in a subtle way, allowing those viewing it to reflect on their own recycling habits without being prompted by my own words. I wanted to create a visual and subtle relationship between the theme of death and decay and the plastic shown in my work. With this project I wanted to explain why people should think more about where their plastic ends up after use, as a society I fear we have become desensitised to the harm we are creating by using materials that will be here long after ourselves; I hope that through this project I can create awareness and change.
Liv Sanderson
This year has been different for many and it has also affective us all in lots of different ways. The fashion industry is one that has had to adapt to these changes. This project aims to show aspects of fashion photography tied in with the new main fashion trend, masks. These masks are now part of the majority of people’s every day attire and therefore we should normalise this. The lighting along with the facial expressions are important within my images as they correspond to the atmosphere of the world at the moment. During the shoot I asked my models to describe the pandemic in two words, these words are displayed alongside each portrait. I thought it was significant to ask the individual models as each person has a different perspective/view on the current situation that is occurring throughout the world.
Jack Bowman
This project is about aura photography, this is because I believe there is a relationship between the auras and photography as auras are forever changing so to capture on is an in the moment shot and they won’t always be the same just as photography is a way to capture a moment and more often than not no two photographs are the same. An Aura is the energy that surrounds every living thing and is represented by colour, each colour has a meaning and these meanings relate to a person’s personality, what they need and their true inner self, this is why they are always changing as we as people are always changing.
Jack Tyler-Kennedy
Technology is the fastest paced evolution society has ever seen. With this in mind, a new form of technology has recently emerged in the art industry, potentially threatening the future careers of many photographers. This threat, referred to as ‘Artificial Intelligence Art’ sees photographs generated entirely by an AI. To delve into what the world can expect from this new, advanced form of art, I have offered up my own images as comparison, and instructed an AI to replicate my photographs to the best of its abilities. Essentially, we are catching a glimpse of what these new AI’s believe the world, and our art, should look like based on the information it has been fed through a segmentation map (a digital painting version of my own photographs which is fed into the AI, for it to try and turn into an AI generated photograph).
Jake Stephenson
This Project looks at the developing architecture throughout Leeds city centre, Leeds has been transformed from a market town to an industrial city and now a financial and business centre.
The architecture was previously driven by the needs for the building but now the architecture has a more elegant approach, with the designs not just reflecting the times but also reflecting the cities spirit.
Jay Villacci
Winter Show Statement
Project – All You Do Is Lie
My project aims to express the younger generation’s relationship with the United Kingdom. I wanted to base this project around the fears we have regarding our voice and our future. The social and political forces that press upon our Countries have a large effect on the youth, especially in times were Brexit will isolate the public to a larger extent, our island has never felt more desolate than now. Throughout this series there is a strong atmosphere of entrapment and dystopia present, my approach to photography is quite poetic and naturalistic which I feel really stands out in my work this semester.
Lena Gorglewska
My Project is called Liberation; it focuses on the freedom from limitations on thoughts and behaviour. In my project I worked on portraying beauty in flaws and insecurities. This is due to my own personal insecurity with body image and in my project, I wanted to empower bodies of my models whilst keeping them anonymous through expressive poses and body language. The use of colours reflects on thoughts and feelings since different colours represent different states of mind and has been used since the ancient Greeks and Egyptians in order to affect the mental state by decorating rooms in a certain colour. The body language expressed from my models displays their comfortable state in one’s self in their environment and displays their emotions and thoughts through the way they are executed.
Luca Roys
Throughout my studies at York St John, I have been developing my practice within photography regarding night studies. I would consider this an area of photography in which I am highly interested in. Throughout this practice I have made the change from digital to 35mm film. This is something which I have heavily focused upon in my current project entitled, “Curfew”. The concepts incorporated within my night study projects include desolate streets often early in the morning. I try to portray narrative through my images as much as possible. The narrative within my images often focusses upon time in correlation with the environment and human emotion. This is an interesting subject matter as these elements are often affected by one another, something in which I wished to capture in my project. The reason behind the use of film was to highlight the realness of my images, as film is an organic process. Inspiration for my work more recently has came from surrealistic painters such as Giorgio De Chirico. I believe there is a certain element of surrealness within my photographs.
Penny Park
.jpg)
.jpg)
Artist Statement – Penny Park
Penny Park is a Northern-based film photographer who explores the tension between nature and manufactured structures by capturing neglected environments. By working with film, she reflects on the earth and the medium’s natural components concerning the twenty-first century's global climate crisis. Park highlights how humans interact with their surroundings, exhibiting how humans see disregarded nature as an impediment to the environment.
Poet John Keats describes it admirably with "The poetry of the earth is never dead.", the worlds beauty never ceases, and not because of a fallen leaf. To Park, the earth is art, and she exhibits this through her ongoing photographic project 'Nature Reclaiming'.
Rachel Howard
This project is about anonymity as a concept and has evolved from looking at the fear of anonymity in contemporary western culture into looking at the censorship in media from a feminist perspective and other ways in which the media makes women feel anonymous. Anonymity is part of our everyday lives in today's environment, for many this is way of protecting yourself, but for others it is a fear of being known... and the fear of not knowing. The fear of the unknown is an innate fear. All humans have it due to our survival instinct so when people choose to be anonymous it can cause the public to fear them, as it begs the questions, why? However, with anonymity this fear can go both ways as people often choose to become anonymous out of fear themselves, such as the fear of social situations, the fear of being caught, and the fear of catching something. Fear can be a vicious cycle and people can become dangerous when acting out of fear. It's easy to turn someone unrecognisable into a creature or an object but there is always someone behind the mask.
Sjon Barnes
"These selection of photographs looks at the idea of a ‘non-place’, and their role in our capitalist society, these spaces have no inherent value and significance to the human race other than to sustain the economy around it. We never really notice them in life and the anthropologist Marc Auge would regard these spaces as too insignificant to be called 'places' this gives the spaces a bland, beige identity and the thought process while these images were taken and edited are of a grey vision of our society becoming less and less ‘real’ and more monetised."
Sophie Cown
Sophie Cown’s project focuses on the complex architectural designs of curvature within modern buildings. She has compiled a series of city architectural images for this show. Having been inspired by Zaha Hadid’s captivating architecture, she decided to focus on curved architecture as an alternative approach to her usual geometric clean lines that is what she is often drawn to but staying true to her preference of close-up photography. Her practice favours minimalism over cluttered images and this helps her to focus her images to showcase the curves and patterns of buildings in their truest form. To enhance this minimalism, she has retained a neutral palette throughout keep them looking professional, clean and refined. She decided to concentrate on just the organic forms of the buildings for this project which is consequently represented throughout her book and selected images.
Sophie Rothwell
Tom McGlrl
Little Big World is a submission that explores the minimized abstractions and landscapes in subjects we take for granted in our daily lives. Being constricted to the four walls of my apartment, I began seeing beyond fundamental sight and used macro photography to identify the intricacies and textures of items like moisturiser, bed sheets, tissues and soap to construct an unexplored and overlooked world within a familiar and old world. This fabricated world allowed me to narrate the journey of an entity, traversing these environments with wanderlust and an aspiration to find fortune. The poem leading the submission hints the semiotic connection between the subject and the fabricated environment as well. The project as a whole is phenomenological as it drives the intention of experience towards the imagery.
Lauren Summerson
