Past and present

http://www.flickr.com/photos/jasonepowell/3283244808/in/set-72157613841045343

I decided that I wanted to look into other people ideas of past and present, seeing similar images before to the one above I already had an idea of what I was looking for. Jason Powell whose flickr account I found these photographs from wrote his own reason for taking these photograph:

'Images are made by finding old photographs of places, printing them out, and then holding the print up in the modern day location that the original photograph was taken. So far, most of the historical images have been available for free at the Library of Congress.
Project was inspired both by my love of history and Michael Hughes' Souvenirs.'

The reason I like this photograph, and others like it; is because it shows how a place once was compared in the same photograph to the present day. You get a feeling for how the world changes around you but also see how it is the same, with building left static through time. Although I like the concept, of showing the difference in time withing one image, I do not like the way the hand is shown held up in the image, this seems to be a common theme within images recently such as some I am going to show later on. I do understand why the photographers have chosen to use the hand, because it is as though they are holding up one image and seeing the rest made up of what is in front of them. The image is leaking out into reality. 

I decided to take a look at 'Michael Hughes' as he inspired the work of Jason Powell example of his work below:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/michael_hughes/14310582/in/set-346406


The image above is very clever, and out of the series one of the more subtle and clever position images. The idea of his project was souvenirs which he would place in front of the objects themselves. The one above is of a lolly in the shape of the leaning tower of Pisa. This idea although doesn't relate to my project directly, some involve postcards as the souvenirs such as the one below.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/michael_hughes/496246900/in/set-346406

  

I like the photograph above because what is in the postcard has completely changed to the way the landscape is now, but the postcard itself holds an imprint of what once was.

Another style of this type of photography is illustrations mixed with photography by Ben Heine an artist I first saw while I was in the USA this summer, and his images have kept in my mind since:

 

 http://www.flickr.com/photos/benheine/5631996970/in/photostream/


The above image is similar to the others I have looked at because of the way a hand is used in the photograph holding an image over a real background. I found a short verse written on Flickr of why the artist has done this type of photography:

'Pencil Vs Camera" is nothing but the result of a long graphic exploration and a logic consequence of my artistic evolution. It's a new concept. My primary intention was to create a "battle field" between 2 disciplines: drawing and photography, mixing imagination and reality. The only boundary is my own perception of the world. It's a very exciting project because I can share "pieces of dreams" with the world through illusion and surrealism.'

I like the concept of using illustration and photography at the same time, as two of my main skills are photography and illustration; I would like to experiment with similar ideas involving both medias. I think this style of work would fit in well with the theme of postcards. I have started to work on my own illustration ideas which could fit into photography, so once i have scanned them I will upload them onto the blog.