Levi Wedel

Invisible City - is what Levi Wedel titled this photography on his website, the art of something being shown directly in front of you, but out of reach. The light inside these buildings inviting you in yet we can clearly tell they're all closed. Levi Wedel is an artist and photographer residing in Calgary, Canada. While his age is unknown it is know that he was in the class of 2010 in the Alberta College of Art and Design in which he got an MFA for Photography. Wedel is described as the greatest living left-hand photographer of industrial alleyways. He uses a  Kodak Portra 100T which is specifically used for industrial photography as it's a slow film that is tungsten balanced, helping to balance lightings such as street lamps. it is a perfect camera for night time photography. 

This image is from Levi Wedel's invisible city photoshoot with it being published on 10th June 2008. Wedel wanted to express the unobtainable wares depicted in store fronts at night and how it creates a simulation. The visual details of each store front signifies the lack of its physical presence. Almost as if they are a symbol of everything we could want, just barely out of our reach. This type of photography I would say is quite an eerie genre as it depicts a desolate world lacking people and it very easily can make you feel alone, yet on edge as the darkness that isn't being lit up is only full of mystery for a viewer.  In the image I can see the insides of what looks to be a furniture shop with no one in it yet it appears to be having a sale, I think this was done intentionally to emphasise the lack of people in this world Wedel has created. He purposefully stands back in order to create the effect of the darkness surrounding the area, combined with the technique of framing I can infer that the items in the shop appear as though they're behind bars with the way the windows are set up. Wedel has used a long shutter speed to allow the light into the image, to do this he has likely used a tripod in order to prevent any blur from the inevitable shaking of a hand. This creates a dream like atmosphere as everything looks just slightly out of place for a normal society and that's mainly due to the contrast between light and dark that isn't usually apparent in landscape. This photographer has manipulated the formal elements of tone by creating the sense that this is a black and white image with white and black being the most prominent colours, however other colours are still present which distinguishes this piece into a category of its own. I really like this piece because the thought behind it adds to the image, with Wedel describing it as a "transparent simulation inside a transparent simulation captured inside an image". highlighting the unavailability and conveys the message that desirable times will be so close to your grasp but you just aren't able to reach them. I chose this photographer because I want to expand on this idea of unobtainable wares being shown, and want to experiment with a wide variety of buildings which demonstrate this unobtainable idea.