January 02nd, 2017

Ben Roberts- Occupied spaces

The occupy protests which have spread all over the world came to London by St pauls in Finsbury square, the press said at the time of the protests that thermal imaging picked up by helicopters showed that a lot of the tents were un-occupied which was quite ironic. So instead of photographing the protest, he went inside the tents and took images of the space that the protesters were living in before and after they were protesting. all of the images he shot have no people in them, this is staged photography and he deliberately took everyone out of the shot just to show the spaces that they occupied. What i like about this photography is that Roberts has played around with the whole meaning and story of the occupy protest, instead of focusing on the movement he focused on people individually and the spaces the occupied while at the protest. I can tell he has used a lot of flash in his photos, a very small aperture of around f/22 as everything is in focus and there are quite harsh shadows from certain objects. The flash is quite important in this as there would not be much ambient light in these tents, so the use of the flash also has a connotation to show a quick peek into the lives of the protesters, thats how i see it… Roberts has used s wide angle lens, my guess would be 24mm to get as much as possible in the frame. this would be a very good idea for a project to document at a festival or a protest, i will take this one into consideration when thinking of what to shoot later in the year.