Tanya Upton
Throughout my time as a student at BIAD, I have experimented with different approaches and techniques in my photography, both digitally and with film.
For my final projects I used a Holga camera and a Box Brownie camera to create my work. Using the Holga, a rudimentary camera made in China, I created a series of double exposures for the book People Belong. These images were toned to emulate the lith printing process, whereby the image takes on a new dimension with warm golden tones.
My major project focused on using my grandmothers old Box Brownie camera, also quite rudimentary in construction, but by process my images had a feel of being as old as the camera itself. This created an interesting conflict between the subject of the images, being modern, and the look and feel of the images, which looked old. The book Transitions is a series of images created using the Box Brownie, which explores the melancholy of the urban and suburban landscapes.
I enjoy working with simple, sometimes old, cameras as they are able to help me realise my ideas in a way that would be harder to achieve with a modern, precise camera.
My work tries to capture the world around me as I see it and as I feel it, the urban and rural crossing and coming together in a place that has an uncertainty about it.