Typology
"Typology is the study of types, and a photographic typology is a suite of images or related forms, shot in a consistent, repetitive manner; to be fully understood, the images must be viewed as a complete series."
(Kristine McKenna, "Photo Visions," Los Angeles Times, 29 Dec 1991).
(Kristine McKenna, "Photo Visions," Los Angeles Times, 29 Dec 1991).
A Typology is a set of images made with a common subject or idea in mind, repeated through out the set. This can include for example, photographing very door with the number 1 on it in a 10 mile radius or maybe photographing every food imported from Africa on a supermarket shelf. There are an inconcievable number of approaches to making a Typological set of images and therefore, putting the definition into words is particularly difficult so instead, Watch this video and look at some of my examples and hopefully you'll understand...
August Sander
My First Typology- Keys
My Second Typology- Middle Back Section, glutes
Michael Wolf
http://photomichaelwolf.com
Above is some of Micheal Wolfs earlier work and below is some of his newer google maps street view work. In my typological response, I attempted to re create his methods, photographing the actual screen of my computer.
Michael Wolf is a photographer most well known for him work where he photographs scenes from google maps directly off of his computer screen. I decided to make my photographic response to his work a typological one. For this I decided to travel around south London in google maps and photograph the houses, flats and areas in which I used to live. With directly photographing my computer screen came a lot of obstacles. Firstly, the glare on the screen from the surrounding light made it increasingly difficult to get a clear image every time. To get around this, I changed the angle I was photographing at, although sometimes this seemed to distort the shape of the subjects in the image. This is sometimes interesting, but I was trying to capture them from more of a direct angle making the only thing hinting that it was a photo of a screen the pixelated effect on the image. I then closed the blinds- which had a great impact. Secondly, Framing the image on the screen was a challenge. Due to the nature of google images and how street view works, you are only able to zoom out to a certain extent, making it difficult to get the perfect angle and therefore image. A a result of this you can see my computer hotbar, search panel and some notifications that popped up as I went to take the photograph. So I need to further crop these images. I enjoyed taking these photos. Through taking them, I found that google's street view feature allows you to do and see so much. At one point whilst trying to think of a good typology to follow, I was able to scan through streets of China, Texas and India- all photographed by the google street cars so that I could see them form anywhere in the world. I found that you can spend a lot of time in this view. Below are my images.