After using the idea of mixing romanticism with abstraction in my own work, it didn’t take long before I was introduced to J.M.W Turner, who is a romantic English painter, and was alive in the late 1700’s, early 1800’s. His landscapes paintings of rural England have there own stunning style, which seduces the viewer because of the monochrome style; the whole painting will be different shades of yellow, with a tiny splash of a blue or a brown to really capture the scene that’s been washed with the evening sunlight. The paintings capture so much movement with the big, washed paint strokes. He mixes unbelievable detail with a sweeping wash of abstract sky or land.


In my own work recently, I have been really interested in using LCD projectors and experimenting with interacting with the imagery that is projected on the wall. The images I have been using are from old black and white films that are well known, classic, romantic films such as Romeo and Juliet, Casablanca and It’s a wonderful life etc. I have been using two projectors to project old black and white films onto the same place, so they become abstracted within one another. When put on a large scale, this technique of using

art- video projection reference

Darren Almond

Another artist who does long exposures at night time is Darren Almond. However Almond doesn’t take photos in the city, he goes much more rural places, places that look like they have never been touched by human hands. In his series ‘night as day’, Darren Almond only takes photos on nights with a full moon, the moon is his only light source as he goes to areas with no ambient light. He uses about a 15 minute exposure to create a sweeping night scene, some photos have been mistaken for being taken during the day, because of the long exposure.

Rut Blees Luxemberg

Rut Blees luxemberg is a German Photographer, who takes long exposure of urban, gritty landscapes at night. She brings to life everything that may have been forgotten or overlooked, such as puddles, rubbish, blocks of flats. These mundane and boring subjects somehow become so attractive through the lens Rut Blees Luxemberg. Her composition and framing of some spaces, opens up the fact that everyone looks at space differently. There are thousands of people who walk through Hackney, east London (which is where she took a series of photos), who don’t even notice or acknowledge these beautiful spaces right in front of them. Blees Luxemberg recognizes herself that her location is key, I quote “from the places, most definitely. It’s hard for me to photograph places where I don’t get the feeling or relation”. This is from an interview that I read. Also there is no people in any of her photos, which is a key element in her photos, it makes the photos what they are. It persuades the viewer mind wonder, its sets up the photos to be questioned, the photos long to have a storyline put to them, and each person will have their own personal narrative to go with the photos.

Photography 1st draft

Both this essay and my own practical photography have been inspired by the work of Rut Blees Luxemburg, or more specifically the way in which she uses long exposure and the absence of people, to create a really eerie feeling when viewing her work. Additionally, her photographs take something that is very banal and mundane, such as a puddle or a road sign, or maybe even something you would never normally notice, and make it look really beautiful and seductive.

Before I was introduced to Rut Blees Luxemburg’s work, I had been interested in long exposure street photography at night; going out to photograph at night opened up a whole new side to taking a picture that I loved. I really liked that empty and vacant feeling of the night, the complete absence of people. In my opinion, long exposure opens up so many options for manipulating the photo in the way you want, before getting it to a computer screen.

The overall lack of human presence makes it quite difficult to construct narrative, which in turn opens up endless possibilities of questions for the viewer to think up; and no doubt every person who views the photo will have a different question to ask. Nevertheless, there is no real anchorage to photographs with no human involvement.

Long Exposure at night can create a real ‘filmic’ quality, especially when photography an urban area in the city. The street lights create this amazing orange glow, which drapes everything in the photo with an orange layer of light. When mixing this orange with the blues, greens, reds and whites of the shops and cars and so on, there becomes this amazingly clash of light that blend into one another, but at the same time almost gives the photo a grid-like quality, with the blocks of different colours. This produces an almost ‘fake’ or ‘untrue’ fairy tale land, because as well as all these layers of colour, you also have the added spectacle of light trails. I have seen and taken many photos that use light trials to create amazing effects, and they are you can get really inventive with them, although if you are taking a photo of an urban city scene, cars are your main worry, if you don’t want light trials. For example:

This is one of my photos taken at night on a main road, with a 30 second exposure. I originally took this photo because I saw a police car coming down the road with its lights on, so I wanted to see how it came out. I really liked the result for the reason that it’s different to all the other light in the photo, it’s hard to work out what it is. Although, the blue light that I was concentrating on getting was not the main attraction in this photo, because there is so many other things going on in the photo, such as the other yellow and red light trials from other cars, the bus going past in the background, but what’s more is the static surroundings of the clashes of light in the middle. I think the motionless surroundings, is what really creates that make-believe image. Another example of long-exposure that I have done, is making light trials, but actually using a torch to draw with the light, for example:

For this particular image, I didn’t try to draw an actual image of an object, it’s just a pattern. Nevertheless, I feel it’s a good example of what I mean. This image was also taken on a 30 second exposure, but with a flash, and also with no ambient light, this was taken in a field when it was pitch black.