Month: June 2020

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Bacteria Evolution

Photography and Text by Mia-Violet Leech

BA (Hons) Interaction Design Art (year 2)

Instagram @meeeeeha

During the lockdown, I became interested in how tiny microorganisms could cause such an impact on our multi-celled civilization. Seeing people obsess over bacteria made me keen to grow a microbial culture at home. Initially to educate myself, but also to physically watch the bacteria evolve and form into something more understandable. These photographs were taken after 5 days of incubation and the samples originated from my personal interactions with the now dystopian outside world. From there I started digitally distorting the microbial images beyond recognition, playing with our programmed reactions of disgust. As the bacteria organically shapes itself in the petri dish it becomes an unpredictable co-creator, the images are therefore a collaborative effort.

Behind the Scenes …

The microlens was added to further investigate the bacteria. Not having access to the high-tech cameras and lenses in the LCC kit room, I had to get a bit more creative. The lens was crafted from a £1 ‘jewellers loupe magnifier’ off the internet and some fluorescent hard-wearing tape.

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Lockdown Strolling

Photography & Text by Marie-Lilien Funk

BA (Hons) Design Management & Cultures  

I am a recent BA (Hons) Design Management and Cultures graduate. I am currently applying for jobs and work opportunities in the creative field. I have always enjoyed taking photographs, though have never thought of pursuing this more seriously until recently as I have received quite positive feedback for it. Throughout my studies at LCC I had the opportunity to engage in the technical side of photography and to try things out and experiment with it. My personal photography is quite a lot about framing. I tend to photograph very ordinary things, though through the framing, people often don’t recognise what is on display at the first sight. I hope to gain more experience within the comings years and I’m very keen to dive into the technical know how of studio lightning. 

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Lockdown Body Painting

Images & Text by Marie-Lilien Funk

BA (Hons) Design Management & Cultures 

Body Painting by Gaia Loglio

This body paint shoot originated from the circumstances of being quarantined with a group of creative friends in the south of Germany. The body paint artist, Gaia Loglio normally resides in Paris having been given the opportunity of an art residency programme. As a native Italian, she wasn’t allowed to go back to her country, so we took her along to Germany. The place were we quarantined together, offered quite a lot of green garden space, so I decided one day to build myself a little photo wall out of wooden sticks and lots of masking tape and a white background from bed linens. My first shooting in my newly build photo studio was a try out session with Josephine as my model. After realising that the pictures turned out quite nice, I asked Gaia if she would be interested in doing a body paint shoot with me. We used Josephine and my little brother as models…and I think they did quite well. As the shooting happened outside in the garden, the light is very natural. I really like photographing in natural sunlight, since it gives images a sensual softness.  

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NO PARKING

Photographs and Text by So Young Kim

BA (Hons) Interaction Design Arts (Year 2)

I first discovered the abandoned chairs while living in Korea. When I moved to a more suburban area, I started noticing these broken-down old chairs by the side of the roads, that didn’t look like anyone was sitting on. I started collecting photos of them because the chairs just looked so out of context. Later, I realised they were used to mark parking spots – preventing cars from illegally parking in front of the shops, restaurants, or houses.

The chairs with wheels are placed mostly in front of shops so that they can move the chairs around whenever their customers needed a parking spot. Also, there were stories of people accidentally crashing into the chairs, and the chair owners would fine them ridiculously for the damage of their ‘already-broken’ chairs. And many of the chairs in front of houses had strings tied around their legs, looking as if the chairs have been captivated! 

It was great to see how these broken chairs were put to use, instead of being thrown away.

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QUARANTINE EXPERIMENTATION

Photography & Text by Eveline Maier

BA (Hons) Interaction Design Arts (Year 3)

End of March 2020, silence entered my hometown swiftly and abrupt. Safely tucked away in my studio in London, an unexpected outburst of limitless creativity and possibilities, promoted courage and experimentation amidst the quarantine experience. Despite the government restrictions, social anxiety and political pressure similarly experienced during the years of the Bauhaus movement in the late 19th century, steadfastness became the aim. Intellectual vigour spurned toward experimentation and problem-solving of visuals, how to convey the complex story of in-equality between Humankind in a simplified way making it easy to understand. Inevitably, a re-conceptualisation of the process more akin to research and science began to solve the task. While the playful experimentation with objects in-house took place, the sole light giver was either the sun or a Vintage desk lamp. Bauhaus inspired, high-class mechanical tools and computers such as the MacBook Pro, iPad Pro, 1850’s antique opera binoculars and a microscopic clip lens produced the emerging Visuals. Each leading to the results with the smallest amount of editing [Apple Photo, video editing program].

As was once stated: The extraordinary created out of the ordinary day to day [vase, tea sieve, a glass bottle, plastic bags].

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The Body Dysmorphic, Mind Atrophic

Photographs and Text by Pier Lim

BA (Hons) Interaction Design Arts

The Body Dysmorphic, Mind Atrophic is a photoshoot on how quarantine/isolation affects the body, creating a visualisation of lethargy, malaise and how we still crave for intimacy even in lockdown. During weeks in social isolation, I start feeling unmotivated, almost bedridden. The feeling is akin to melting and merging in my bed and the confines of the rooms that slowly inure me. It is a meditation on the body politic, and the desire for human connection.

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Social Duties in the Duty-Free

Photography & Text by Edo Buttinelli

BA (Hons) Interaction Design Arts

Porto airport, May 2020. I needed to get back to the UK. I was at the airport for nearly 3 hours and I barely saw anyone. There was stillness and calmness; the scene was as surreal as in the pictures. The text I have written below is in relation to the idea of “non-places”, which are transitory spaces such as airports and hotels, looked at from a sociological perspective and how we inhabit them as humans. I have written my dissertation on the same theme and it is one of the ideas leading my thought as an artist.

After all these years, I might have finally found out: the place in which I feel most at home is not my fatherland or the city I live in, but the transport system that gets me from one to the other, furnished by a team of able in-house designers. I never thought I would miss the obnoxious smell of the Boeing 737’s air filter. Or waiting for hours at the gate’s queue passport-in-hand. Or the very uncomfortable seats or the cubicle toilets, but I now realise that I often found in this and other transitory environments the right setting for creative production. Buses, trains, airports and lounge spaces. Spaces furnished by someone else, cleaned by someone else – non-places. Spaces that would make me feel detached from my own life, and that is a feeling I like: detachment.

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DISCONNECT

Photos & Text by Rosie Simsek

BA (Hons) Interaction Design Arts (Year 1)

The covid-lockdown has created a peculiar separation between inside and outside, and for many of us, the outside has become really unfamiliar. Using scaffolding outside to frame passers by, I took these photographs from my window with the curiosity of this separation in mind.

The scaffolding acts as an urban cover. I can experience the street as an onlooker, with no fear of being looked at myself. There is an unsettling power that comes from looking out of a high up window and observing people below, and an even more unsettling one from taking their photograph. I found it acceptable to take pictures of masked people as their identity is hidden, and this also lends itself to the weirdness that is the outside world during a pandemic. The curiosity extends; who are these people, where are they going, what do they do… Why should I know? And then I walk away from the window into the safety of my indoors.

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Aediculae

Photos & Text by Marta Ilacqua

BA (Hons) Interaction Design Arts

This series of Polaroids focuses on Aeducilae, in Italian known as Edicole, which are small structures used as shrines: niches for sacred statues or images. These function as places of devotion for those who believe in the catholic religion. But also by placing them on the exterior walls of houses, they are ‘taking over the streets’, they are seen by everyone, believers or not, and they have become part of the Sicilian culture in general. Some are big, some are small, they are a very common sight all over Sicily.

I’ve chosen these as the subject of my documentation as I was working on a brief about frames. During the lockdown, I’ve had the opportunity to walk around and examine the frames that were present throughout my childhood, living in a very religious country such as Italy. After selecting the shots that would be part of my series, I started questioning whether the plastic look of the Polaroid wasn’t too ‘modern’ for these ancient frames. I focused on bringing our culture within the photos by rethinking the Polaroid’s frame to fit the subject and taking inspiration from the crocheted doilies very present in our houses. This was done to better represent the cult of these architectonic structures whose function is as places of cult themselves. The last image is an extra addition, with a difference within the series itself, as it is not mounted nor carved into a wall, but is placed on the rocks in the sea, where the area takes it’s name from another sacred symbol, ‘Croce di Mare’.

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Portraits of Isolation

Photos & Text by Lucie Walmsley

Graphic & Media Design (Year 3)

During isolation, on my own in Thessaloniki, I did a self-portrait series depicting my internal struggle, as I had to face my thoughts in isolation; experimenting with long exposures in dark red lighting to communicate the resurfacing of past trauma. The surrounding is depicting the reflection that I was faced with on a daily bases and could not escape from. My movement in the images is to show the different sides of myself that came out during this uneasy time, before the lockdown I could easily just dive head first into partying and socialising as a form of escapism. This escapism is a key theme throughout all my work, I usually photograph people partying on nights out, becoming a voyeur, this series turns the lens on myself and what emotions and troubles I was suppressing. The nudity in the photographs is to show how I was stripped and in my most vulnerable state during the height of the pandemic and the red lighting to show how initially fearful I was to face these thoughts and emotions.

This series was photographed in manual mode using a 10 second timer whilst my camera was on a tripod using ISO 200 35mm film. Experimenting with shutter speeds between 8 and 30 seconds. I was new to using this camera so was getting a general light reading from a light meter app on my phone.

Before the lockdown I started a long exposure night time photography series, being draw to the bright and trashy shop fronts across the city. Having the contrast between the dark sky and the artificial yellow street lights or neon shop lighting. Although I shot these before lockdown, the emptiness and lack of any ‘life’ in the pictures resonated with my feelings when I was shooting the self portraits and the colours and saturation seem to sit well together as well. This series was photographed using a tripod, shutter release cable and light meter app on my phone. This work is mainly just trial and error and I try to take two shots with a different amount of exposure time and the same aperture (bracketing). Taken on my manual 35mm film camera with apertures setting between f16 and f22 and shutter speed between 8-30 seconds. When the lockdown was relaxed I continued to go out in the evenings and shoot. 

I chose to shoot on exclusively film due to the vibrancy of the colours and grain; I also love the surprise element, as you have to wait to get to the developers to see the shots. The cost of the film and processing also means I pay more attention to each shot compared to shooting on digital where you can shoot as many as the SD card can hold.