Ansel Adams

Ansel Adams

Dunes, Oceano

Ansel Adams was an American Photographer born in San Francisco, California in 1902. He died in 1984 aged 82. He is best known for his black and white photographs of the American West and primarily Yosemite National Park. In 1927 Adams created his first portfolio in a different style than what had been seen before. Ansel Adams is considered a huge influence to photographers around the world. Exhibitions are still put on to show his work even though he is dead to continue inspiring young photographers. He took many photos over his career but today I am going to talk about one taken in 1963 called Dunes, Oceano.

This photograph is one of his most famous for many different reasons. The shot brings the picture out of the image, the way the photo is taken it actually feels like a 3D image. I feel the shot shows a good vs. evil, right vs. wrong feeling. The photo also feels incredibly isolated.

There is a clearly noticeable contrast in the image, changing from light and easy going on the left to dark and hard on the right. There is a wide variety of shades in the image though the top right side of the image is more solid black.

The texture looks as if it’s soft at the top yet rough at the bottom and there is a contrast there from top to bottom. The roughness looks as thought you could touch and feel the image and its roughness. The sky looks very soft along with the left side of the sand. It looks untouched as if no one has ever been there before and has just been discovered.

There is a wide variety of shaped in this photograph though I can see a lot of triangles. It’s as if the image is made up and put together with lots of triangles, thus creating many different shapes. The shapes are a very important part of the photograph as it is one of the very first things you notice when looking at the image.

Tommy Wilson

Post-Punk

The ethics of punk were continued in the late 70s and 80s through the form of post punk. Holding the same roots as the original punk movement post-punk brought in a new experimental and complex sound.

Public Image Ltd. rose from the ashes of punk band Sex Pistols, with singer John Lydon bringing the band together after Sex Pistols split. Public Image Ltd. are considered the innovators of the post punk movement and the first Post Punk band. Creating eight studio albums they received critical acclaim but never rose to the legendary status of the Sex Pistols. The band went on an indefinite hiatus in 1992 with John Lydon refusing to admit that the band had "split". Jeanette Lee from the band has went on to co-create Rough Trade Records with Geoff Travis and John Lydon from the band has went on to contradict his original ideas appearing on shows like "I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here" and an advert for Country Life Butter. For some people this has ruined his original status as a "Fuck You Front man".

Joy Division are one of the most well known Post-Punk bands. Originally trying to create the typical punk music they eventually found there own sound in a slower with a bassy ethereal sound. They became better known after the band ended, when singer Ian Curtis hanged himself in 1980. “Love Will Tear Us Apart” became their most popular song after the death of Ian Curtis. The remaining members of Joy Division went on to form New Order, who are a New Wave, Post-Punk band.

The Cure are a post punk band with a goth like image. They have released 13 studio albums over the course of there career and in 2009 received the God Like Genius Award at the NME awards for their contribution to Music. In a few of their albums they managed to make their music light and cheery whilst putting forward a dark and meaningful message. The bands second album “Seventeen Seconds” has a much darker sound than most of their other albums. This time in their career has been described as their “goth phase”.

The post-punk revival came in the early 2000’s, with bands like The Strokes, The Libertines and Franz Ferdinand shooting to mainstream success. These bands made music with obvious post-punk influences, using Mod like fashion copied from the original post-punk and new romantic bands. There are many bands trying to mimic the success of bands like this but none to as great success.

Tommy Wilson

The Beginning of Punk

The first established punk rock group was The Ramones. Started in 1974 in New York City The Ramones recorded a very low budget first album and received little attention outside their home city. Their first gig outside of New York only had an audience of 10. It wasn’t till they played their first show in the UK at The Roundhouse in London on the 4th on July 1976, that they started to receive critical acclaim. The following night they played a second gig at The Roundhouse and met members of The Clash and Sex Pistols.

This meeting inspired these bands to take a new direction in the form of anti-establishment. The Clash were an instant success from the release of their debut album “The Clash”. The UK punk scene was now alive. The Sex Pistols then released what is claimed to be one of the most influential albums of all time “Never mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols” on 28th of October 1977. It went to number one in the UK and 106 in the USA, and became their only official album released.

Punk rock music continued after this with The Jam but they made it sound a lot more pop and were more image conscious than the previous mentioned bands. Singer Paul Weller’s lyrics were in contrast to the lyrics of The Clash and Sex Pistols. Where The Pistols called for destruction and The Clash called for revolutionary change, The Jam sang about the idealistic England from a socialist’s point of view.

Another influential Punk band of the 70s was The Buzzcocks. They received mainstream success with their most famous song “Ever Fallen In Love (With Someone You Shouldn’t’ve)”, which remains one of the most covered punk songs of all time.

Siouxsie & the Banshees were a band who merged punk and gothic rock. They were fronted by a woman, which was very different for a punk band at the time. They were very experimental and alternative to anything heard before. Siouxsie Sioux and Steven Severin met at a Roxy Music concert in September 1975 and decided to get a band together.

These six bands changed the face of music forever and influenced musicians everywhere.

Tommy Wilson