Commission Unit RPHC 4002


                                               Waste
Waste, what it is an waste, who should i define waste, is it  somethinght witch lost his value, who begun to be corrupted, lost his values, can it be used some who.

  Initial thoughts

In nature it is an constant cycle, an ecosystem where nothinght is lost, all has his role and get envolved in the normal life.
If my initial thoughts and ideas has time i will try to reflect on idea of peoples, peoples who are not a waste, who besides that somewho are treated as a waste they try to get out of this situation and transform in somethinght good for society.
This is for me more like a soul thing, personal,  to try to proof that even that you are considered a waste  if you have the right help and initiative you can escape this situation and become a better person.
As i said this is a project idea witch i will experiment with in the future, and allow for it my knowledge and a full time in order to make it proper and express the true, but for now as i need to do somethinght achievable i will have 2 main ideas, try a little bit of them, experiment, and doing test shoots and after that i will focus on the one who will work good.
The first main idea, my personal one i want to speak about the childs  who lived in the communist era back home in my country, in childs orphanages, and who we`re treated really badly, and they was put somewho to die, because that was been thinking about them the communist regime, but somewho a part of them we`re adopted by fosters families helped and support to reach a normal life.
This treatment was used after the Communism fall in 1989, a couple of years, but i am not sure the precise moment it end up, what i am sure is that in `92 `93 this was the normal treatment for institutionalised children's, an fact who marked my life and my life view.
I was a lucky guy who managed to escape for a while at least from that place, as i was adopted by a foster family, and for a part of my life i started to become a normal person, but still i have a bit of trauma, and i have my moments when i am scarred on the dark parts(like in the colour darkroom) or by night, this obviously are like a bit of psychological illness, somethinght witch i want to deal with, and solve it.
And as i said i am thank-full to God and to who helped me, and for this reason i try to become a better person, to develop and get experience and try to help the ones who are who i was in my childhood.
I want to do an large research and an properly approach in manner witch i don t think some one does it, because what i saw about this subject on the tv and the mainstream media is not so accurate, is more vague. And for this reason i know that now i don t have the time resource or the knowledge to say a story as it should be done, and i`ll pass it to an future projects list.
As i am aware that the time is limited and now i need to do a bit more serious and elaborate project as i am having big issues on my last projects, and obviously the place should be in medway, i will have an social aspect, witch i will start with an idea doing it in 2 approaches and figure it on the way witch is working the best.
My general idea is to make an story who i will try to say that things, can have an value resource, even thought for some people this is not on the radar, i will try to do some thing like an project about the waste of food, that on some restaurants even though the food is opened and keep or an different amount of time, it is regularly checked and if it is getting over the company shelf life term it is through straight into the bin.
I am not saying that all food is the same, obviously are some who is getting old, badly alter ate, but some food can have some resources and should be some kind of charity organisation who should dealt with, as they can communicate through the booth sides the restaurants, canteens and so on; and to the ones who needs a bit of help, homeless peoples, hungry.
I will want to investigate this to the large scale retailers as supermarkets like Tesco, Asda, Morrisons, as one of them usually have some special prices to some goods witch are nearly to expire date, and perhaps i can ind more details, and there opinion ass well.
My other approach will be on the local charity shops, as here are a lot shops who obviously have a part of profit from this type of commerce, i will try to see again what is the thing that put them together, and witch is the involving rate let`s say from the local community, and if this sort of business is sustainable or it needs actually external help.


     
                                                            Medway Photo Festival

As a part of my waste unit we had to visit the assesment of second year photography students, and choose 2 of them to analyse, i was taking the advantage and i visited all of them and had some pictures (phone) to guide me, more as a reference. I will upload the pictures and have a few words about each exhibition and then i will make my final analyse.


                                                                          Fusion

The first one, called ,,Fusion`` located on the a nearly common, and public used road, was the one i find it first, but unfortunently was closed at that moment. I visited next day and what impressed me, was the condition that the student had to stay, in that place was really cold, nearly illness cold, and the place by himself was one that you can`t find often an exhibition been hold. It seems obviously that it has another purpose, high street shop, and to fit an art reflective exhibition in it looks like a cheap solution.

                                                                     Ephemeral

I found theEphemeral exhibition, in the most common and expected place, in the local art centre in Chatham, Nucleus Art centre, as we can see this is a place made for an exhibition purpose, with chairs, and meditative purpose, but for me, the height it` s a bit weird, as it should be a little bit more heigh and wide, however the work was a big variety and diversity, impressive, less the shoot with the girl dressed in pink witch seems to be a normal photo shoot, not something for an exhibition.

Black Box Exhibition

An intersting exhibition where i visited, black box, was one where i find the biggest amount of students, an general idea of who they are involved and who serious they treated this.

The place as we can see is not the one that you will expect an exhibition to be happen, but however it was more better than the fondu place. For me the bad thing was the ceilling who was opened and on the upper floor was running an gym, from witch you could hear some scarry noises.

Fondu

Last on my presentation, but not least, as this was the first one who i visited was the fondu exhibition, located in a kind of company place called ,, Sun Pier House``, to find it was a bit of adeventure as it was situated in a wide place, and with no indication to suggest that there is a public exhibition going on.

In terms of place this was litterally transformed for this type of exhibition and had some issues in positioning a part of work on the window, however for me scarry it was again the ceilling who looks like a piece of concrete 

For me in the general way it looks the 2 most distinctive exhibitions was Fondu and BlackBox, in terms of comparing i can say that both of them had ups and downs but in general gives me the filling that there was an big amount of hours spent on work and developing.

On the Fondu exhibition the 3 blocks who were situated outside the exhibition looked, normal, almost integrated in the place, so at first i didn`t realise that they are part of the exhibition.

On the BlackBox, the work who reflects on money and has that money scan on notes looked for me a bit silly, and not integrated in the exhibition. The one`s that captured my attention was the mountain landscape, witch looks in a sort of old f64 style, nearly to Ansel Adams, but more an reinterpretation, and the portraits printed on the canvas, i found them an interesting way of technique.

The video was another good point, as he put the people in other time and analyse their gesture and reaction, not judging on the appearence but on the instinctive reactions.

Medway Area Public Transport

Taxi Drivers

           After viewing the class documentary movie, West Land by Vik Muniz, i started to think more about the meaning of my project and the experience i can have, so i decided to focus more on the idea of people involved on this. The target was to discover the waste were is not really accessible to the humans interest, or is not accepted as an waste. 

As i started to do some research on this project idea, i was wanting to have an issue, common for public within the medway area, my first thought was to use the waste meaning as a time (resource) waste.

I was trying to play with this idea in the public transport, and especially for the taxi drivers, for the fact that to be a taxi driver require to be more flexible and have a lot more compromise to make than an bus driver.

I researched on the medway council website (http://www.medway.gov.uk/businessandinvestment/licencesandstreettrading/taxis/drivers.aspx) and the interesting thing i found there is the waiting time for obtaining the full licence, as the exams are twice a year  ( The tests are held in February and August each year. Applications must be submitted at least one month before the test and are added to the knowledge test waiting list ), after they complete to fill a long list of required certificates and and health and safety tests, with a high score, more than 80%, witch will be valid for a period of up to 3 years.

This terms makes for someone who wants to embrace an job like that really hard, in terms of time and resource spent, a struggle for witch you don`t have an certitude of success. This kind of waiting it is on the first place until they can get the licence but after that, they can face another hard times, for instance the high insurance charges. Neither way the most unpleasant moment is when they have to wait for a fair, in different place of the city, some times witch varies for many times, and never can guess an approximate number of fairs per shift, in order to make an profit, not jut money for survive.

I will try to find different stories between the local community drivers in order to sustain my thoughts and help myself making an small survey questions list to be filled by taxi drivers anonymously.

I also find on the medway council website about this special service involving elderly or mobility difficulties people http://www.medway.gov.uk/transportandstreets/publictransport/transportandmobilityissues.aspx,  an useful initiative. I was at first really impressed as i never knew about something like that in my home country, and the thing that there is special buses who has special lower floor, being an special timetable in real time on the bus company website.

Researching the taxi history i find it that from begging, his purpose was miss understand and the peoples who made this service miss treated somehow.

Never rich and powerful peoples did not like to mingle with the common peoples , to make dirty feet through the mud streets, sweat or be rained on their travels through cities . The need to avoid these troubles appeared  the litter , developed and spread , becoming a more affordable means of transport , a true ancestor of today's taxis .

              Litter occurred in some areas of the world such as India, even before our era , being used both for passenger prominent and in religious processions , the platforms worn by people or animals were worn statues of deities .

             As a composition , a litter means a bed or a chair in a structure built of wood, sometimes covered , for the person to be protected from rain worn and sun , was worn by one or more people or animals - horse , elephant , camel .

             Several names designate this ancient means of transport, the best known being : litter ( in ancient Rome ) , sedan chair ( England ) , litter (in Spain ) , palanquin ( in France , India , Ghana ) , liteira ( Portugal ) , KAGO or norimono (in Japan ) , jiao ( China) .

             Evolution of this chair -sized sedan was really fast , so in 1634 we know that people use to rent them in London , the  monopoly on these ancestors of taxis was owned by a courtier of King Charles I ( 1600-1649 ) .

             In 1738, in Scotland , was regulated this type of  transport , establishing a pricing system and  certain rules. There was also an sedan chair used as an ambulance by Edinburgh Royal Infirmary founded in 1729 .

            The ladies of high society could not be worn in any kind of chairs , so the sedan chair sites became more  sophisticated beautiful , decorated in styles of the time, as seen in the painting by G. Borgelli the nineteenth century, where a lady down in a splendid blue chair in rococo style .

          Litter as an  great looking pieces of art , are  still used nowadays, for ritual purposes , as can be seen in Thailand and other parts of Asia primarily.

         Renting vehicles to transport people in European cities i mentioned since the 17th century, first in the French capital , Paris, then in London, where was legislated this service as public . Then in Vienna and here litter fashion type spread across the continent and beyond . In the nineteenth century litter are modernized and adapted to the rapid and comfortable transportation . Taxis, like motorised tranport vehicles first appeared in the streets of Paris , in 1899, then in London in 1903 and New York in 1907. New York taxis were imported from France by Harry N. Allen . Allen was the first taxi painted yellow , after learning that it is the color most easily seen from a distance .

           Unlike other forms of transport, taxis are rented for personal  purpose. The customer decides the destination and propose the route followed the driver , when making a phone order can be established meeting place ( if the time or location of the customer difficult to find a taxi to the means listed above, or from pure customer convenience ) . Taxis can stand on demand , and it will leave the vehicle after he left a deposit and will return to continue their journey.

Garbage Pin. Project

I found this project Garbage pin project Worth vs Waste, helpful to direct me to choose my approach.

In the garbage pin project, was involved persons from different art communities, who was had basically an garbage bag witch they filled with the objects of what represents for them an garbage.

I will be inspired by this approach to make the survey for witch will be filled by the drivers with their thoughts about the difficulties of their job, their opinion of how the local community make an opinion about their job, and other hard times they had to suffer.

Alfie Goodrich

Alfie is an british photographer living in Tokyo Japan, working in the commercial and press environment world wide. He has this project for last years photographing taxi drivers in their taxi or near them mostly on evening-night time on the Tokyo streets, working on digital Nikon Dslrs.

http://blog.alfiegoodrich.com/taxi-driver-shibuya-tokyo/

He usually has an small description of the technical details, place where been made and the drivers name, being a bit empathise with him.

http://www.alfiegoodrich.com/2011/09/14/tokyo-taxi/

I am attracted by this image as it is an good description of time place and working envivroment, clearly you can recognise Tokyo and have an nice reflection of how it`s to be like.

For this sort of image we usually need an certain amount of height witch unfortunently i couldn`t find in the local area, as it has small size comparing to Tokyo, but the image lyric gives me a bit an magic feeling, fascinating.

This sort of image i could say that is the gold shoot, an image i was looking after to get but i wasn`t too lucky to get it, a bit of really sad for me. I still will look to find an image like this because can really represent the idea of wasting time waiting for an new fare. Composition, marks him in the second half of the image, reflections from the behind car makes him an special highlight like the holly halo, and even the yellow colour of the car directs you to watch him having his rest.

An image, with the driver reflecting to unknown, an sort of interesting posing witch makes the driver an more human, an approach witch gives as an clear message, he is an human like us, with feelings, emotions, an human soul who thinks and reflects, not an machine who always should serve us.

Framing place him in the middle of a cars triangle contrasted by the red black and white cars,  standing straight as he is near to defend his dignity.

We have here an beautiful perspective, more of lyrics juxtaposing, the driver and the city as 2 elements in the same envivroment. Perspective made by the white traffic line continued by the buildings silhouette, and ending in the sky gives us an feeling of scale, we are small comparing with the galaxy, divinity entities, no matter how big we rise our towers.

Being an dialogue between drivers, in the middle of an traffic jam, an waiting moment, often gives them the opportunity to discuss small life issues, covered in this whole big world protection.

Finally i found this image interesting for my project as it shows the inside, an inside of the car, car acting as an protective cage, reflecting on his life on his path on plans, or maybe being to tired to reflect his just resting.

Christopher Morris

He is an american based photographer, working with fine art and having an world wide exhibitions, formerly in Europe and America.

New York City subway project, photographed in the 1981, was his important project after graduated uni, trying to reflect on the subway people having an more street photography touch.

I looked into it`s work to find interesting posing of peoples waiting in the stations, and the public places.

http://www.christophermorrisphotography.com

An image reflecting to the others, trespassing the station, an common moment of the taxi drivers who waits in the cars, sometimes having this moment of watching others in rush.

The composition has an delimitation in 3 pieces as the rushing peoples, the mask looking to this scene, and the actual man who has that wondering look.

This image has an wide perspective an different look comparing to the other one giving us the moment of an group waiting, an wait witch could be anticipated, and still the people having different reactions to it.

Donald Webber

Donald Webber is an photographer trained as an architect, being more focussed on the underclass society, the poor part of it, he is an news and media content photographer, primarily working with vii photos.

For his project Drunken bride he traveled further to deep Russia and soviet countries, trying to catch the alcoholic implication of humans in society, this images are quite shocking but still full of interest reflecting on addictions and abuse, body and time waste.

http://donaldweber.com/drunken-bride/

This is an image plenty of contrast and reflection to abuse and waste, an pose of time wasting and future being destroyed, limited to the present moment. I find it helpful as this can be the general public concept about the  taxi drivers, an image witch i want to stay away of, as i want to present a bit more positive attitude.

Anastasia Taylor-Lind

 She is an London based sweedish photographer, working primarily with portraits and fine art photography. 

She has an project reflecting to the post war life of the citizens of Nagorno Krabakh region, looking to changes made and the wounds of the community.

http://www.anastasiataylorlind.com

   

  

Both images are quite the same representation of people sitting together but having different attitudes, an approach we can find in the general society, but here being more obvious because of the conflict.

This type of attitude we can find in the world wide world as a general judgemental thinking between peoples, never giving an chance to analyse more deeply into the subject.

Test Shoots

              My first shooting experience was a bit of disaster to be honest as i was having difficulties with the camera, could not be able to change the lens,  body being jammed somehow , leave me tho only option to work with an single lens type the normal one 90 millimetres for the mamiya system.

This type of situation actually helped me to think less on the technical part, the lens distance and  more to the subject, so i was restricted to change my approach an helpful incident for me as i am more fascinated by the technical side.

Analysing through an one lens perspective give you the time to understand how to solve the framing and be more involved to the action rather than other details. An advantage that i decided to use it further in the final shoots with 2 lenses, using in the same time this knowledge made me more focussed.

I ended up having just an film from 4 of them, one being fogged and 2 of them was actually incorrect exposed as i was lived the dark slide in the camera and at the end of the second film i realised that, still pretty enough with one film to realise that i need to be more precise with the focus and an straight horizontal.

 

                                                          Final Shooting Contact Sheets

I started exploring the local train stations, Rochester and Chatham, as this are the places often used by the taxi drivers, gathered in the busy times up to 6 - 8 cars on the queue.
I was having choosed to work on the square format Bronica, mainly because of Mamiya problems and i chooses to have ass well 2 type of lenses the normal lens 80 mill and the wide  50 mill.
I was wanting to make more of an envivromental and contextual image of the taxi cars, and a few of snapshots of the taxi drivers, watching still as an subjective eye.
My main focus was to have the technical part sorted straight plan, framing and exposure, but the weather was having a bit of changes having clouds who come and go and suddenly changed my exposure every time, so for the most times i tried to do in the cloudy time my pictures.
I was trying to be as much as descreete i can and still to focus on my subject an thing witch keeper me envolved and i thinck i will practice it more often.
Finally the result i thinck could be better, i was happy with the focus and exposure but i thinck that i need still to work more to make the images straighten.
I was shooting an massive amount of pictures describing more cars and cars queuing rather than drivers portraits, an thing witch i realised that was not really good when i started to print my images.

Final Images

In general i was trying on my prints to have an contrast between black and white, keeping an nearly same style between them in order to make it an imaging sequence.

An image describing an taxi driver waiting in his van taxi in front of Chatham train station. He is waiting, reading an local newspaper, an method common amongst drivers, inspired by the tokyo driver of Alfie Goodrich. An moment when he is deeply envolved in other world, waiting in the same time when the others are having a rush.

The 2 taxi drivers have an moment of chat in front of the Rochester train station.

An image inspired by the Alfie image with the queuing drivers waiting and chating.

In that Alfie image we can see clearly the sky as an other envivroment, reflecting to the wide scale, here i was trying to have only the building in order to be more opened to their job, as they are in the same world as us. An scale witch makes them more accessible to the usual life context.

This image reflects on this representation of young and old, having the same position the same style , same concerns, making the young gentleman to reflect on his position in orther to evolve for a different position in the future. 

Critical Appraisal

• using more equipment to have an wide variety of images
• being more accurate to the technical side framing and straighten especially
• doing an more research with different resources
• evaluate between other colleagues my project status, and use constructive the feedback
• facing 2 major projects Fashion and waste i thinck was a bit too much, as i still try to focus on one of them, and i need to prioritise in order to have an certain amount of work for all projects
• an idea witch i haven t explored yet will be to have more of an subjective, envolved approach,  i was a bit nervous and shy and couldn`t approach to a long dialogue the drivers
• using other time, like evening to approach an quite angle on this project