Hengki
Koentjoro is a Indonesian videographer and editor who majored in
video production and minored in fine art photography at the Brooks
Institute of Photography, Santa Barbara, California. Although his
primary profession is working with the video medium, Koentjoro is a
part time fine art photographer who works solely with black and
white. Koentjoro has a statement on his 500 px profile saying
'Photography can never be separated from the
aspects of making the common things unusual, welcoming the
unexpected, indulging and embracing ourselves with the joy of
photography.' (H. Koentjoro. http://500px.com/hengki24. [Accessed:04/01/14])
After
looking through Koentjoro's images it brought a fresh perspective to
my idea of a unnatural landscape. A lot of Koentjoro's work on
landscape features misty, dark, quite dramatic scenes. The scenes are
of what you expect from a landscape, but using the aesthetic that he
does makes them something more. It gives them a unnatural look, a
look you don't normally witness, perhaps a scene that only the camera
can see. This got me thinking about another perspective to take on my
project, another way to photograph landscapes and make them appear
unnatural. Using the dark and misty aesthetic of Koentjoro to make a
natural scene seem unnatural. Utilising extreme weather, or perhaps
shooting at night could create a unnatural look about environment,
basically finding a different way of depicting the scene as to how
its normally seen in daylight would make any landscape look
unnatural. I think shooting solely in black and white adds to this
effect as well because we don't see the world through back and white,
we see colour so thats what were use to, presenting in black and
white adds yet another seeming unnatural element to the photographs.
As
well as shooting landscapes Koentjoro also shoots a lot of work
underwater. This opens up new possibilities as its a scene not often
seen, so nearly anything seen underwater can be depicted as unnatural
in someway. Particularly of the photographs portraying the reefs,
some of those images looked just like landscapes because you couldn't
see the water, and so looked like something from another world,
something unnatural. Although underwater shots will be a bit extreme,
costly and take up too much time for my project, perhaps another
project in the future.
Hengki
Koentjoro's work can be seen on his 500 px profile here:
Particular
photographs by Koenjoro that attrated my attention are:
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