STAY HEALTHY – STAY SAFE – STAY FOCUSED
Photographs and Text by Juhong Xia
BA (Hons) Interaction Design Arts
Brutalist architecture is my favorite as the structures gives me a feeling of both majestic and lonely. This sense of lonely brought by brutalist buildings becomes extremely strong during the pandemic. I use black and white photos to show this kind of feeling brought by both the main buildings and the hidden corners of the Barbican.
Photographs and Text Sarah-Min-Tja Wong
MA Design for Art Direction
The series ‘What is love?’ is an exploration of the digital love layer. Shot during the quarantine, where online connections might even feel more real than physical ones, I asked myself the question … Who decides what real love is? The images are a reflection of our daily life and interactions in the digital dimension, celebrating the positive aspects of these moments.
Photographs and Text by Marco-Antonio Grubben
BA (Hons) Illustration and Visual Media
I conducted a small, photojournalistic research project over the summer. It started when I began noticing how many toys were being left behind in all kinds of places. Some were forgotten, others were dumped, but all the toys meant the same thing to me: lost childhood.
COVID-19 impacted everyone without a doubt, but the group I find at most risk are the children. They’re too young to be dealing with so much anxiety, strife and especially confusion. We complained about school when we were kids, dreading going in. Today, school will no longer be taken for granted. COVID-19 has shown us more than ever the importance of education and a space where children can grow, learn and just be kids. This virus has taken away so much more than just school and friends. It affects their physical as well as mental health. Some may experience lifelong trauma from being isolated, from infecting their grandparents or living 24/7 in toxic/abusive households. Some children didn’t have enough food during the pandemic others had too much. As adults we may have better capacities of understanding and dealing with our new normal, I can’t possibly imagine what a child is going through…
I truly hope that children of all ages can move past this pandemic and resume their classes as quickly as possible. I pray their learning and development weren’t stunted, that every child can flourish in the new age that is coming and put all this sadness behind.
Thank you for stopping by and have a great day.
Insta: @marcoantonio_photo
Photographs and Text by Raphaël Castillo
BA (Hons) Interaction Design Arts
Forever inspired by the Ukiyo‐e work of Katsushika Hokusai and Utagawa Hiroshige, each of whom have a series of prints titled 36 Views of Mount Fuji, but also by Burges Park and the parks of London in general, I started working on a series of prints and documentary pictures which focus on the subconscious relationship between nature and the urban citizens reflected in parks. Though nature has always been alluded to in my work, in times of successive lockdowns, many of us have started to perceive parks differently.
In the illustrations of the Japanese masters, I had always been fond of the balance between the attention given to the interaction of the Elements, and that given to the things of human culture. Their way of working in series and the overall process of printing, make their work key influences for the original development of photography and has long impacted my way of writing pictures. Though one major change is to be noticed. Most of the works in the two masters’ series contain human figures, dancing with their respective tools in the middle of intricate landscapes. This adds much liveliness and warmth to their images, one which I feel could be missing from mine. However, photography itself is a technological process, and the technology which was then shown in a sophisticated balance with nature, has now taken over the whole landscape, as well as human activity.
I have found serenity in keeping these images quiet, letting whatever technologically induced noise you already have around do the noise.
www.raphaelfondation.com
Words and Photography by Maria Michaelides
BA (Hons) Interaction Design Arts
This last year has been a difficult time; within lockdown we often wonder why we feel so low and vulnerable. We have become so use to the feeling of isolation that we cannot comprehend why we feel so lonely sometimes. We have now adapted to accepting this feeling.
We find it hard to use our creative platforms in the same ways that we use to. Exploring the feeling of physically and mentally being imprisoned, I revisited places that hold positive memories for me, as a way of remembering how life once was.
I used my shadows to demonstrate how much life has changed now, casting shadows on all my memories and exploring ways of portraying loneliness within my mind. We feel trapped within our own thoughts, and we can be our own worst enemy.
Words and Photography by Nina Żuk
MA Publishing
My name is Nina, I come from Poland and live in the suburbs of Warsaw.
I started shooting on film by accident – I found my parent’s old camera in our house and I thought why not give it a try. I fell in love with the colours, the textures, the suspense when you wait for a film to be developed and the uniqueness of having just a limited number of shots to take!
This mini-project was born quite spontaneously. I needed to get something done in the centre of town. It was a snowy day and I had some black and white film left on my camera. I used the chance and walked around the centre, photographing the famous buildings, as I realised I had never actually shot them before! This was in the middle of the day, but the streets were empty, the snow was falling and there was a very particular shade of grey-white light that’s only present when it snows. The light, the post-socialist buildings, and the empty streets, combined with the texture of the black and white film, which also happened to be a bit scratched, create a grim feeling in the images, which reflects everyone’s mood of starting another year with another lockdown.
Words & Photographs by Ryan Blackwell
MA Design for Art Direction
https://www.beyondphotography.online/
Ryan Blackwell is the co-founding creative director of Beyond Photography, a multidisciplinary platform exploring the way photography is changing in the digital age.
This series of images is part of an on-going project which is being turned into a book called You Will Call it Fate. The book uses glitch, AI, and non-traditional photography techniques to explore our human relationship with the internet and how digital and real-life impact each other. The project developed out of lockdown. Daily walks along the same routes bring your attention to buildings, objects, and the landscape that usually are taken for granted. By playing with the mediums, it was possible to create different results on every walk which formed the concept for this book.
Words & Photographs by Emanuela Passadore
MA Design for Art Direction
Confined Bodies is a project in reaction to what the world has been experiencing.
Confined Bodies is a project in a specific context. Covid19 made us stop, or at least stop moving, stop going out, confining our bodies in our homes.
Self Confinement made us re-question our space, our homes, our objects and our movements. Moving is part of our everyday, something we have always taken for granted. While during quarantine our movements were just from our bedrooms to our living rooms, backwards and forwards. During this period we realized more than ever our NEED to move and exercise, in every possible way in order to keep physical and mentally healthy.
Together with my survey, global figures demonstrate that there has been a peak of people increasing activity during Covid. Home fitness became the new trend: online classes of yoga, fitness classes, crossfit, Pilates classes, on Zoom, Instagram or YouTube. People started improvising gyms at homes using a range of different objects including dogs, babies, brooms, chairs: everything in the house becoming a possible weight in order for training.
My aim with the project is to underline that we can be creative in the way we do physical activity and the objects we use while doing that. Highlighting that training (or better) moving, should always be seen as joy and pleasure and not as I have to go to the gym to be in shape, and probably wearing black clothes to look skinnier or less showy.
This project is a celebration of sport as colours, creativity, and to our bodies conceived as moving sculptures.
IT’S A BODY CELEBRATION
An ode to sport as relief and escape
An ode to creativity
An ode to imagination
An ode to flexibility
An ode to movement
An ode to body consciousness
An ode to serotonin
An ode to playfulness
An ode to colours
And ode to escapism
An ode to diversity
An ode to body positivity
An ode to freedom
An ode to fun
An ode to strength
An ode to balance
An ode to joy
An ode to our bodies as moving sculptures
An ode to joy An ode to our bodies as moving sculptures
Words and Photographs by Urtė Čaplikaitė
BA (Hons) Interaction Design Arts
During lockdown most people were deprived of basic human contact, but got the opportunity to get in touch with their inner self. The goals we said we always wanted to achieve, but never had the time to address were now unavoidable. For me, windows have always been the place of thinking. Where I go to reconnect with myself or others. Because of COVID-19 all most people were able to do for a couple of months was to experience the world this way. Just staring out their window. In the beginning of lockdown I noticed a lot of photographers coming out with pictures of windows shot from outside into people’s homes. However, with this project I wanted to show what the lockdown was like from the perspective of the majority of people. Tranquil, monotonous and Solitudinous.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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].
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.
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.
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.
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’.
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.
Photographs and Text by Hedda Ofverholm Thorén
BA (Hons) Interaction Design Arts (Year 1)
As my starting point, this work became all about exploration for me. At the time, I was spending a lot of time at my family’s summer place in the Swedish archipelago. It’s a nature reserve, allowing the nature to stand untouched; the trees grow tall and the moss covers the ground. It is a special feeling to be there and since the Corona pandemic broke out it has become an even more important place for me, where I can escape the craziness back in my hometown Stockholm.
I spent a lot of time out exploring and studying the nature in more detail, looking for scenes and places I had never seen before. It made me encounter new feelings that I haven’t experienced earlier. It felt magical, but at the same time also terrifying and sad because at some point I realized that there is a possibility that what I have photographed will not always remain. In a few years, everything could be gone.
As a result, my photographic sequence ‘Come Find Me’ is a series exploring new notions of naturally occurring frames, but also a sequence exploring and documenting the uncertain future of our nature.
Moving Photographs and Text by Juliette Stuart
BA (Hons) Illustration and Visual Media – Year 3
Being stuck in quarantine, many of us are now focusing on food and eating more than ever – be it in planning elaborate meals now that we have time to cook, or constant snacking out of sheer boredom. Inspired by Dutch still life paintings, particularly the ‘ontbijt’ (breakfast) paintings, I wanted to create a modern, colourful, quarantine edition of ‘still lifes’ of the food that I’ve been eating a lot of, with a surreal twist. I inverted some of the vanitas imagery and made a series that looks a lot brighter and happier, but I wanted to add in the multiple hands with their constant fidgeting to maintain some level of unease in the otherwise very neatly structured scenes. I only have myself to film, so using a borrowed camera from my flatmate I had to film my hand coming in from multiple angles and stitch the footage together to create the scenes with more than one hand in. A lot of the backgrounds are made of my coats, a large shirt, and an IKEA blanket because I could only use what I had lying around. The cardboard cut outs are made from some old mount board I had lying around, and all the glasses and plates were charity shop purchases I made for a pervious project that I shot before lockdown. I’m happy with the result – using just what I had available to me I think I was able to create something that looks professional and surreal that I am proud of.
reference … dutch still life paintings ontbijt
