Best of... Darkrooms Magazine - Bas Losekoot
A special newsletter highlighting an outstanding project from one of the previous Darkroom Magazine issues
Because I like to see as many photography enthusiasts as possible enjoying outstanding work, I decided to add an additional (monthly) newsletter: a special Sunday newsletter highlighting one of the past projects featured in an earlier issue of Darkrooms Magazine.
Today I highlight the Dutch photographer Bas Losekoot who photographed humans in the biggest megacities.
Out of Place is a photographic essay born out of a long-term project inspired by the start of the "Urban Millennium". I photographed in the centres of 9 fast-growing megacities to capture the consequences of extreme population density on human behaviour. The project includes images from New York, São Paulo, Seoul, Mumbai, Hong Kong, London, Lagos, Istanbul and Mexico City. This makes it a global time document of modern urban experience, showing how people relate to the city, to each other, but above all, to themselves.
Since the beginning of the Urban Millennium, we have been at the foot of the biggest wave of urban development in human history. This growth with accompanying urbanisation has major implications for the inhabitants of megacities. This prompted a global exploration of densely populated cities. How do people interact in overpopulated areas? What do they show of themselves in the daily masquerade? How do we define notions of personal space and sense of privacy?
Anonymity is an important part of the modern urban experience. I like to think of street life as a stream of micro-meetings. I think we can read a lot in the moment of eye contact. I am looking for an unguarded moment, a non-event that takes people out of their everyday anonymity. This is how I try to find out more about their lives, moods and dreams.
As a photographer, I am interested in the so-called 'we-feeling'. We want to belong to a group but also want to be an individual. We want to be together but not the same. In this project, I think I show that, above all, we are often together, alone.
I see city life as a big zoo where we as humans are trapped behind glass. Where we used to run for the lions, we now run for our work. The struggle for survival remains exactly the same. Now we are not running for danger to our own lives but danger of exclusion from society. I hope this project can lead to a better understanding and ultimately better understanding of the modern city we live in.
I see this project as documentary photography combined with cinematic light. I try to see the world as one big studio, the people as actors with the street as their theatre. I light up street scenes with lamps on tripods but also attached to basically anything available on the street. This is how I mix artificial light with daylight to create a fictional reality. This technique enhances photography's ability to freeze a moment. It allows us to perceive things we only see in glimpses on the street. Now we have time to take a closer look at situations, and we see the drama in the casual poses of passing people, unintentional movements and significant facial expressions. It makes a powerful connection between reality, fantasy and desire. It creates heightened drama to activate the viewer to start looking at reality in a new way. Her project thus straddles the dividing line between fact and fiction, treading the boundary of conventional photojournalism.
See more of Bas Losekoot’s work at his website or Instagram
This brilliant project is one of the 13 projects in issue #4
Till next time,
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Amazing work!!! Thanks for sharing.
This is great! Thank you!