The best photographs of city landscapes. Cityscape
Landscape as a genre is very popular and has been written about great amount articles and book volumes that cover different kinds art - from painting to photography. To a large extent, everything that is written tells about natural landscapes, while the urban jungle remains deprived of attention. But city landscapes have an individual beauty and poetics that is completely different from all other genres. Of course, you shouldn’t compare natural landscapes with urban scenes. This is absolutely various phenomena. Let's talk better about the beauty and expressiveness of urban views.
Postcard format
For many, the city landscape is associated with glossy postcards full of lights. Such tourist and souvenir photos become inspiration for novice photographers. To some extent this is not bad. Everything that is depicted on postcards looks like the ideal state of the city, which is in a festive atmosphere. This is his most attractive look. For such a photograph, the photographer painstakingly selects a subject, guesses the weather in order to express certain emotions inherent in a given place in certain time. The viewer, viewing such a photograph, can imagine the terrain, atmosphere as accurately as possible and get positive emotions. The disadvantage of such photographs is that they are devoid of feelings, experiences, and emotions. They only contain mood and the perfect picture.
Portrait of the city
If advertising photography is not promising for you and you are not a tourist who is trying to make another report about the places he has visited, then there is no need to waste your precious time repeating what everyone has already seen a long time ago. Try to fill your photo with emotions. Try to use it to tell the viewer a story. This will fill the photo with expressiveness and feelings.
Photo by Alexey Pishchikevich
Feeling the urban spirit and conveying it in photos requires expense large quantity strength, flair, attention and artistic thinking. The city lives its own life and everyone sees it in their own way. He has many faces and a multifaceted character. The city demands special treatment. There is no need to try to transfer the picture onto a postcard. Treat the city like a living organism.
Photo by Ekaterina Verbova
When photographing, shoot not a city landscape, but a portrait of it. When shooting a portrait, we are trying not just to create a beautiful composition, but to convey emotions, mood, and feelings. So when photographing a city, look not only at its appearance, but also at its character. As soon as there is a “pulse” in the frame, open the shutter.
Where can I find poetry?
Before you take a photo, remember that art is not only a transfer of reality, but also a flight of imagination of the photographer. Show your imagination. Fill your photos with feeling and meaning. Try to imagine pictures like:
- Night. A park. A snow-covered bench on which the fence and trees cast their shadows...
- Autumn. Pavement. A puddle reflecting a lantern and the autumn sky...
- The golden domes of the old church, the view of which opens from the windows of an abandoned house...
- Blurred and smoky reflections of cars and people in shop windows...
After that, think about from what angles it is better to shoot all of the above, what kind of lighting should be to convey emotions, how the picture will be transformed if you shoot with a different lens or filter, what effects can be added in a photo editor.
Photographer - Ivan Isaev
Before you release the shutter, think about the composition and use your imagination to bring the photo to life. A wonderful example is the work of masters of urban photography. Let's get acquainted with the work of two completely different similar friends on a friend of photographers. They made a great contribution to the development of photography. These are Atget and Rodchenko.
Eugene Atget
Initially, Eugene worked exclusively for commercial purposes - he founded a company called “Documents Pour Artistes”. Eugene was engaged in selling photographs to interior designers, as well as decorators and artists. Then, photography really fascinated him, and he took more than 100,000 photographs of the city landscape.
Atget photographed streets, entrances of houses, courtyards, squares, shop windows, mansions, parks, gardens, monuments and hotels. Sometimes the inhabitants of the city were in the frame - these were workers, garbage collectors, beggars and prostitutes. Eugene often photographed buildings that were about to be demolished. The attractiveness of the photographer’s works lies in their naturalness, openness and attempt to absorb everything, without dividing into social significance aesthetic stamps. Thanks to this, his photographs are restrained and lyrical.
In Atget's photographs, Paris is presented in a more in real form than the one everyone knows.
Alexander Rodchenko
This photographer is one of the most prominent figures in the art of photography in recent years. He is famous not only in Russia, but throughout the world. Rodchenko said that each object can be photographed from different angles, and each of them will be own point vision, because it is chosen consciously and individually. In the master’s photographs, individuality is expressed in oblique, unusual angles.
The techniques that Rodchenko uses and his findings were initially unusual and slightly shocking. Over time, this technique took root and turned into templates and stamps that are used by many. Posters and photographs were imitated many times by other masters of that time and even today, but Rodchenko’s works have not lost their novelty and even today they look impressive and modern.
And finally, don’t forget that the city has many different places, and in pursuit of the next shot, try to pay attention to the fact that filming is not allowed everywhere, so read the signs and warning signs. This will help get rid of troubles.
Based on materials from the site:
We, modern people, we often criticize the city. The city is fussy and stuffy, it is dangerous, its streets are crowded with people, cars, garbage, there is not a trace of free air in it pristine nature…. Yes, that's all true. But! If only this were the case, it would be impossible to live in the city! The city can be different - magical, alluring, cozy, beautiful! The city is a creation of man and, like man, it can be anything. And who, if not the artist, can feel and see all the beauty of the city!
Artists have always painted, are painting and will continue to paint the city landscape. Darling, homely atmosphere of provincial streets, sovereign harmony classical architecture European capitals, the dizzying height of skyscrapers in megacities - for different people city shows different beauty and few people remain indifferent to her.
Thanks to artists of many eras and many styles, we can see times and cultures, visit hundreds of cities and towns and understand how different they are from each other! Here is the town of Haarlem in Holland at the end of the 17th century, Gerrit Adrians Berkheide.
And here is beautiful Venice, 18th century, view of the Ducal Palace, Giovanni Canaletto.
Fyodor Alekseev, view of old Moscow in 1800.
Each city has its own rhythm, its own aura, its own color. Great impressionist artists sought to convey this in their paintings, Claude Monet "Parliament in London".
Vincent Van Gogh "Night Café Terrace".
Auguste Renoir - "Piazza San Marco".
Nowadays, the city landscape is more diverse than ever: it can be both ancient - sweet and kind, and ultra-modern - energetic and bright. Paris and New York, Prague and Rome, Marseille and Tokyo will give your home part of their aura. Oil painting depicting a city view, will highlight the style of your interior: elegant Provence or laconic minimalism, ironic art nouveau or functional high-tech.
In the online store you can buy a painting for every taste! Our cityscape is presented in a wide variety of artistic styles: from realism to avant-garde.
: in 1997, in the ruins of the baths of the Roman emperor Trajan (whose construction dates back to the 1st century AD), researchers discovered a fresco measuring 10 square meters depicting the port city from a bird's eye view. Whether this image is a real port or a fictional one is still unknown. In the Middle Ages cityscape was introduced into the plot of paintings as a background for portraits or canvases on biblical themes. In the XVI-XVIII centuries. maps and city plans were printed in engravings and etchings.
Lucas van Fankelborch. Spring landscape(1587)
Garcia Fernandez. Holy Martyrs in Lisbon (1530)
In the middle of the 17th century. In the Netherlands, the genre of urban landscape became independent. See how accurately Jan Vermeer conveyed the portrait of the city of Delft. The appearance of cities such as Amsterdam, Haarlem and The Hague were also captured on the immortal canvases of Dutch masters. They were followed by artists from other European countries.
Jan Wermeer. View of Delft (1660-1661)
Jan Vermeer. Little Street (1657-1658)
Giovanni Antonio Canal (known as Canaletto). Grand Canal and Salute Church. Venice (1730)
Francesco Lazzaro Guardi. St. Mark's Square. Venice (circa 1775)
Thomas Cole. The Past (1838)
Albert Benoit. Vladimir Palace in St. Petersburg (1870s)
Edward Gartner. Market square near St. Nicholas Church in Ghent
Alberto Pasini. Cairo
IN late XIX V. impressionists focused on the atmosphere and dynamics of the city Everyday life. Cozy cafes, colorful streets with passers-by, suburban and industrial areas, construction sites have become subjects for plein air painting by artists.
Ludwig Munthe. Düsseldorf City Theater (1891)
Camille Pissarro. Rue Saint-Lazare (1893)
Alfred Sisley. Bridge at Sainte-Mammes (1881)
XX century became a time of abstract, conceptual art and the genre of urban landscape was transformed and received new forms. IN THE USSR great attention was given to the industrial landscape; in a country where “all-Union construction” was in full swing, the realism of factories and high-rise buildings was part of propaganda.
Anatoly Akiimovich Nenartovich. Laying a gas pipeline (1959)
Edward Hopper. Owls (1942)
Richard Estes. Madison Square (1994)
Be that as it may, it is difficult for a cityscape to exist without images of people. Even insignificant figures make the landscape lively, dynamic, and subject-matter.
Lee Ching-Che
