Alongside capturing images of historic ruins in my hometown, I wanted to further my project by including representations of Old Vs New by finding old pictures, whether online or in my local museum and library and editing contrasting images of what these places are like today. As many of the photos I found for this shoot were taken between 1909-1940, the camera techniques were going to be different than the ones used in today's society, which means I had to prepare to keep this in my mind when choosing the camera settings, although editing did massively help in the work of this. When taking the newer images to contrast with the old, I believe the key influence for this was photographer Lewis Baltz who in present in the exam paper because of his simplistic style and "old" appeal to the photos I thought these were good inspirations, however as my work in this shoot will be contrasting new and old photos, I found in my research log a couple of photographers who have already done this in their work including Jason E. Powell and Juilen Knez.What I actually achieved:
When doing this shoot, I wanted to research as much context into it as possible because otherwise it would have just been photos with no information. I decided to choose this as one of my strongest images in this shoot because I think the context behind it helps add to the symbolism. The date of the original image is unknown however it is made aware that this was before the war. When I found the images before going out on my shoot, I thought this one was so shocking as you can see the high amount of graves which used to surround the church ground and now there are very little. However, the reasoning behind this that I found out was not because the graves were removed, but because in the war the church was bombed quite badly damaging both the church and the surrounding grounds- this is why in the more modern image there are less graves and also that you can see the difference in the church- it has been developed. Another aspect which I find interesting about this image is because even though it isn't completely clear within the images but when looking into the context of the differences it shows a difference between not only the location itself but the society. The main windows at the back of the church shown in both images are beautiful stained glass, however, they are more visual in the older image than the more recent image because they have had to board up the glass from the outside because children used to throw rocks damaging the windows, thus showing a change in respect which people have to their home town in today's society.
I personally think this is another image which is successful, even though I think the one above is my strongest image, I do think this is the best one is showing the sheer amount of change over the years. The first factor in this image that I find interesting is the way the building in the right hand corner is still the same- as it is a listed building it is unable to be changed on the outside. Although past this building what is now a restaurant there is now a road which splits up the row of buildings, although it is a little unclear in the images. The main aspect of this image which shows change is the idea of the modernisation of transport, the road in the old image shows it wouldn't be busy- a time where traffic lights weren't around/ weren't really needed because not many were lucky enough to use transport as this would have been a sign of wealth, although Waltham Abbey was never a "rich-town". However now Waltham Abbey houses thousands of different cars, to which a bigger road is needed. A way this image could have worked better was to include lots of cars waiting at the traffic lights because this would have highlighted this difference, however, at this point in time the roads were quite empty and I do believe due to being lower to the ground than the older image, if I were to take an image of a car passing by, it would have hindered the image by blocking out the other differences which have been made throughout the years.
I do believe this image is a good representation of how aspects have changed in societies- for example a lack of care in appearance, letting the tree over grow, or this could show the change in funding priorities, instead of spending money of cutting trees back nowadays the council spends money else where else. However, I do believe this is one of my weakest images within this shoot because as the newer image is so overgrown with trees, it hide the church as my camera couldn't actually focus on the clock tower in the church front this meant that the church was much more over exposed than I had wanted it to be, making it basically am image of a path between trees which I do not think has a very strong effect on an audience in comparison to other images which I was able to capture.
What I am doing next:
Due to the success of the outcome of this shoot, I think it was improve my project to do a couple of shoots in this style of different aspect of Waltham Abbey because I think they are really good insights into the difference in locations and society- how things have changed in more ways than one. I think a good thing which has came out of this shoot is that it has shown me to progress further, to carry on looking into the context of the older images because this makes it easier and more interesting to both research and for the audience to observe the work.
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