OUR CREATIVE PHOTOGRAPHY ESSAY
PRODUCED DURING OF THE COVID19 PANDEMIC
BY ESZTER PAPP
OUR
SOCIAL
DISTANCE
Our Social Distancing by Eszter Papp experiments with ways to create images amidst a pandemic. Eszter is a Hungarian photographer and Far Features producer, who figured out a way to connect with people around the world and shoot them via live webcam. She manipulated the images through layers and colours echoing a sense of distorted reality the viewer and the subject have formed under isolation. Using this new way of making images, Eszter was able to make portraits of subjects in Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, India, Italy, New Zealand, Pakistan, Singapore, Thailand, UK and USA.
RATIONAL
During the pandemic, everyone has had to adapt to a new normal. As media production professionals, we asked ourselves how can we turn our inability to travel into an advantage for the sustainability and conservation movements? Enter Zero Carbon Portraits — a new media project created by professional documentary photographer Eszter Papp. Since the start of the pandemic, the Hungarian has been experimenting with new modes of portraiture photography via live web-cam video calls with subjects around the world. Her series Our Social Distancing has already received media attention for its creative use of non-travel and innovative use of socially-distanced art direction, costume, clever location scouting, collaborative photo documentation methods and use of in-lens filtering and distortions. Now, she is adapting her methods to help the sustainability and conservation movements with this new project Zero Carbon Portraits.
ZERO CARBON
With no travel needed, Eszter is proving that technology can enable sustainable art to also thrive. She is “travelling the world” to take portraits vicariously via live video calls and still creating artistic visual images. With no travel needed, no carbon is used during the media production process. She has even calculated the carbon calculation of her equipment, and offset this via carbon offsets.
ZERO CARBON PORTRAITS PROJECT DETAILS
Project Date
August 2020-October 2020
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Book release TBC
Photo Exhibitions TBC
Photographer/Producer: Eszter Papp
Writer: Fraser Morton
Designer: Ali Kelly
Produced by: Far Features Ltd
MEDIA & EXHIBITIONS
ADAPTING TO A NEW NORMAL WITH SUSTAINABLE ART
A new photographic project is proving ‘new normal art’ can adapt to lockdown limitations imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic — and help the environmental movement. Zero Carbon Portraits is a sustainable art project for the sustainability movement in 2020.
ZERO CARBON PORTRAITS PHOTO PROJECT USES SOCIALLY-DISTANCED WEBCAM CALLS TO TELL SUSTAINABILITY & CLIMATE ACTION STORIES
A new photographic project is proving ‘new normal art’ can adapt to lockdown limitations imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic — and help the environment.
Zero Carbon Portraits is a sustainable art project for the sustainability movement in 2020.
The project has been created by professional Hungarian documentary photographer, Eszter Papp, as a creative response to the pandemic.
Zero Carbon Portraits is an offshoot of Eszter’s first lockdown series, Our Social Distancing, which began in early 2020 during the height of the pandemic, and has since garnered media attention as well as being selected for The Man And The Machine exhibition in Rome in November 2020.
With her “Our Social Distancing” series , Eszter experimented with new ways to create images amidst a pandemic by photographing subjects via live webcam video calls.
She manipulated the images through layers and colours, echoing a sense of distorted reality that the viewer and subject have formed under isolation.
Using this new way of making images, she captured portraits of subjects in Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, India, Italy, New Zealand, Pakistan, Singapore, Thailand, UK and USA. Now, she is turning her attention to the sustainability movement and subjects who are working to tackle climate change.
“The pandemic is taking so much attention away from other important issues facing our society and the environment, “Eszter said, “And I want to explore the continuing work of people working internationally within the sustainability movement, working on issues related to climate change.”
Zero Carbon portraits is a portrait series of people working during the pandemic in the sustainability and climate action movements.
There is no travel involved at all to produce this series. And the entire project, including photo kit, is being offset via carbon capture partnerships to bring the whole footprint of the project to Carbon Zero.
The project is independent and currently self-funded. Partners and sponsors are being sought after and can reach out here if interested to learn more and support this project.
By Far Features staff
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THE MAN AND THE MACHINE TO EXHIBIT ‘OUR SOCIAL DISTANCING’ WEBCAM PORTRAITS
The Man And The Machine exhibition has selected images from Far Features’ Eszter Papp to be exhibited at the Millepiani gallery in Rome November 10-18. Images were selected from 1,478 submitted entries for the exhibition.
The Man And The Machine exhibition has selected images from Far Features’ Eszter Papp to be exhibited at the Millepiani gallery in Rome November 10-18.
Images were selected from 1,478 submitted entries for the exhibition.
Eszter figured out a way to connect with people around the world and shoot them via live webcam.
She manipulated the images through layers and colours echoing a sense of distorted reality the viewer and the subject have formed under isolation. Using this new way of making images, Eszter was able to make portraits of subjects in Hong Kong, Hungary, Iceland, India, Italy, New Zealand, Pakistan, Singapore, Thailand, UK and USA.
THE MAN AND THE MACHINE EXHIBITION
Since the first complex and automated technological inventions (starting from the experimental science of the sixteenth century up to the current electronic and digital machines) the relationship between man and machine has characterised every evolutionary development of civilisation.
Each new invention indelibly marks not only the course of technical development, but also the same vision of the world of man. A distinctive sign in the man-machine relationship is precisely the determined will of the individual and his mental structure to accept the instant modification of his habits by virtue of a new technological discovery.
Today the dependence on intelligent machines is made manifest in every field concerning human activity. Especially since the 19th century, art has represented an important cultural field through which we may reflect on the relationship between man and machine, starting from the futurist experiences in the pictorial field, passing through the film productions of Fritz Lang with Metropolis and Ridley Scott with Blade Runner, up to the contemporary images of Thomas Struth in the photographic field. This exhibition invited photographers and visual designers to propose works capable of offering a vision of the current historical and social context and responding to the theme of the relationship between man and machine.
Exhibition by @Loosenart Exhibition details here
Eszter’s projects here
