Black White Photography - UK (2019-11)

60
B+W

SECTION 1: THEMES TO CONSIDER

If you’ve not considered looking critically at a cultural or historical

venue, make a start by visiting a local museum, stately home or estate.

Use your camera to make visual notes of any or all of the following.

We are surrounded by buildings, artefacts and clues to the past.

If you’re interested in exploring cultural history with a critical eye,

why not give our latest project a go? Tim Daly is your guide.

timdaly.com All images © Tim Daly

TECHNIQUE THE HERITAGE INDUSTRY

PROJECTS

IN VISUAL

STYLE

O

f course, there’s no such singular thing as

the heritage industry but the phrase is an

interesting way of thinking how museums

and heritage centres present the past for

our reception. Although we’ve all studied the

basics of history at school, it’s interesting to

note that our past is continually being re-evaluated and presented

back to us through new objects, collections and renovated sites.

Sometimes, the grim realities of the past are mediated and

sanitised into a more palatable version of events for visitors today.

In fact we could think of our cultural history as an ever-changing

narrative where former official collections are now competing

for footfall with the booming industries of tourism, retail and

selfie-taking thrill seekers.

How one culture presents its past in the present day can be a

really interesting topic for a visual project, so for this assignment

we will be exploring different concepts, approaches and ideas

around how the past is presented to us today.

1 VISUAL MERCHANDISING 2 CULTURAL PROJECTIONS

Many cities with a rich cultural heritage and tradition invested heavily in

classical statuary and symbolic public spaces, such as this example of the

famous Adam and Eve sculpture in Florence’s Boboli Gardens. Grand civic

monuments such as these tell you a lot more about a society’s aspirations

and how they wanted to project themselves as sophisticates.

In addition to remembrance and celebration, public sculpture in all

forms can also communicate complex notions such as confidence,

creativity and cosmopolitanism. Visit your nearest city and see if you can

find and document examples of civic sculpture. What do they tell you

about the city?

In the high street many luxury retail brands use a special form of visual

merchandising that adopts the look and feel of a museum display.

Conditioned as we are to thinking only artefacts of high cultural

importance are displayed in vitrines and cabinets, arrangements such as

this example, deliberately play around with our perceptions of rarity, value

and price. Do some research into high-end brand window displays and

see if you can find examples that evoke a heritage feel. On location, play

with your framing and shoot examples with and without branding or price

tag. See if you can capture the essence of luxury in your images. Shops

that sell ultra high value goods often have very few objects on display.

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