Andrew Brooks, a
photographer from Manchester, uses his images to show us the ‘bigger picture’.
He can sometimes spend months and even years re-touching his images to create
the perfect moment for the viewer. He wants the viewer to look deeper into the
image rather than just what’s first seen. He has expanded into large panoramic
scenes of the natural world and largely detailed cityscapes that are
captivating. One of the most recent works was Hidden City Series and
commissions by the BBC, working with the Philharmonic Concert Series 2011-2012.
With his work with
the Hidden City project, which included Manchester, which was a commission by
the Urbis for 2008-09, was able to explore the unseen parts of our busy and
bustling English cities, as well as parts of Europe such as the Netherlands. To
create images that can cause even the everyday user of these cities, people who
have lived and grown up here, look at it in a completely different way.
Brooks was able to
find the hidden parts of Manchester for a number of his images in this series. Exposing the forgotten spaces in the cities, the images show a
number of derelict theaters, roofs, and underground tunnels that haven’t been
touched in years. One image shows the roof of the Palace Hotel in Manchester, it
shows the bright red lights of the hotel name sign lighting up the pillars of
the balcony, bright and boldly. A small gap in between the letters show a
glimpse of the city further beyond the roof. The image captures the viewer’s
imagination. Unless you knew where this image was taken, you would be un-aware
of what is on the roof of this Manchester landmark. Brooks uses a special
technique that is very labor intensive to create his elaborate images. He uses
a composition technique, which is done by layering up to around 200 shots of a
single space or object to create one final high-resolution image.
Brooks
says: “It's great for capturing
the whole of a space and works perfectly for large prints. It's also a really
useful technique for shooting in dark or pitch black places – with a simple
flashgun, you can create bursts of light that bring a space to life”
His work draws you in to look closer into the
subject, especially areas you think you may know well. He wanted the ‘bigger
picture’ to be shown, by showing hidden and unseen parts of our cities in his
images. The theme of his work in this collection is shown so well, every venue
is eye catching and make us want to investigate into the locations and look
around more often as we go through our day.
Wired Magazine says how ‘Although he arguably makes it look rather different, the
world's scenery remains Brooks' inspiration’
Brooks ultimately
makes us look at the world in a different way. With the highly detailed images
showing us hidden parts of the world we live in. By being from Manchester,
Brooks would have to research deep to find these locations. With his high level
of detail, it would have taken a lot of planning and structure to create these
elaborate images for the Hidden Cities series.
