The City- Idea for my three Images

Initial Idea

My idea for the second task of ‘The City’ project is too capture the city at night. Our task is too take three pictures based on our personal conceptual approach to representing an urban space. I was inspired by the works of Brassai and his ‘Paris by Night’ series. Brassai captures the city at night to capture the nocturnal side of it. By photographing the city at night it makes it look very vulnerable and sensitive because of how it becomes illuminated by street and building lights which reveal it from the shadows. In my work I want to capture the modernisation of the city. I’m going to use a sense of scale in my work to represent how the city is always growing and will continue to evolve. To symbolise the modernisation of the city I’m going to photograph large buildings using a low camera angle to show the size of them, it will also signify urbanisation and how much the city has grown. By looking up towards the building will represent the way the city is growing and how it is always expanding. My idea to take the images at night this is to help represent the theme of modernisation, the street and building lights will symbolise the modern society and will illuminate the buildings to help show the scale of them. I’m going to photograph buildings that have many of the same sized so they look repetitive to symbolise the structure of the city and how its being controlled. For more ideas for my project I decided to research into modernisation and urbanisation:

Definition for modernisation:

modernization: making modern in appearance or behavior; "the modernization of Nigeria will be a long process".

Definition for urbanisation:

urbanisation: the social process whereby cities grow and societies become more urban

 On the BBC website they have an interactive map that shows urban growth from 1955 to 2015. The map shows how in 1955 more people lived in rural areas then they did in the city,  it also shows that North America and Europe were the most urban areas. 

In 2015 there is a major difference in the amount of area's that have become urbanised. In between 2015 and 2020 the worlds urban population is expected to be 4 billion. The countries that are suppose to have the most growth is Africa and Asia. From doing this research it made me realise how much the world has urbanised in a short period of time by shooting in  a major city such as London will help to represent the theme of modernisation and urbanisation as London is one of the areas that has modernised the most.