Lewis Bush works on projects, spending years collecting evidence, making a case and telling a story from it. He tells this story in his book, using a lot of text to reflect his research to the reader. He uses images he has taken but also uses other images, such as off google, such as in his book 'Shadows of the State', and photographing other peoples pictures, such as in Metropole. He uses his own images and collected images to create his books and portray the story and narrative he has created.
Metropole
'Metropole' is based heavily on the architecture around London, focusing on the new builds and how marketing and housing is being affected. Bushes projects begin with "being bothered about something", and this one was fuelled by the ever-changing landscape of London. Bush sees the housing crisis as a bigger thing, and questions why decent housing isn't a basic right, like healthcare. This is what 'Metropole' is inspired by. Bush carries a notebook with him wherever he goes, and this means that when he gets an idea, he can write it down straight away and save the idea for later. Not only is Bush inspired by his surroundings, he is influenced by films such as Paul Strands 'Manhatta'.
Bush tried to think of a way around just photographing the buildings in the most common way, as he felt this was the way people wanted him to photograph their architecture and wouldn't help to portray his idea and thoughts, so instead he tried to think of a more abstract way around this, and came up with his double exposure idea, seen heavily throughout 'Metropole'. The process is a very important part to Bush he enjoys not knowing what his end result will be, and creating his project with no process or plan. The books images start off very clear, and gradually become more and more distorted, and the subject harder and harder to understand due to the way Bush has experimented with double exposure. The end images create a feeling of being lost and this really helps to portray Bushes idea of the housing crisis and how people who do not have a home are being lost under people higher up with money. Most of the images in the book are black and white but this is contrasted by a few colour images slid into the book. These coloured images are photographs of billboards around the site that Bush was photographing, showing the developers ideas of what the building will look like. At the end of the book, there is a series of images that Bush has appropriated. He photographed publicity images of new building developments off of a computer screen and mixed them in with information he had researched and found at the back of the book. This research showed things that perhaps companies didn't want people to know about, such as fraud. Bush is challenging authority by doing this meant that he had to make sure his information was good and correct. This approach meant that Bush had to seek legal advice to make sure everything he was doing was within guidelines and he couldn't be sued. Before publishing his book, Bush made 200 copies of it as zines, as a way to test peoples interests and how well the book would sell. The zines sold very well and this is what encouraged the publishing of the book and grew peoples interests.
Shadows of the State
Bush had the idea that the Cold War did not end in the 1990s and this was his inspiration to create this book. He feels that, despite the break-up of the Soviet Union and the fall of the Berlin Wall, the war still continued. He found out that spies still communicate through radio broadcasts, consisting of a series of numbers which could be de-coded by the receiver to receive a message. bush conducted detailed research about the source of the radio signals by using information found online and in books to locate a place on google maps. He listened to the late night broadcasts and uncovered where they were being transmitted from, sometimes only taking days and sometime taking weeks. Bush felt that these radio signals could be turned into a form of photography, and did this by using the analogous radiant energy produced by the broadcasts. He converted these signals into images using computer software.
Bush became very interested in the nature of secrecy, realising that some google maps images had been tampered with to disguise the location of masts and stations. He often had to spend time looking at individual pixels and trying to find any trace that it had been edited, things such as a repeated pattern or drastically changing scenery over a period of time, indicating that someone had been editing it.
By doing all of this research and piecing together the information, Bush was able to create his book which included the radio broadcast images, birds-eye views of the transmitting stations and images of the surrounding area taken from Google Maps. All these images combined create a narrative, showing insight into a world we had no idea even existed. While this book may have been risky for bush to make, it turned into a very powerful and effective book, striking interest across many scenes.
W v.B (Not yet published)
W v.B is a working progress, focusing on Wernher von Braun, a high ranking Nazi rocket scientist. Later on in his life however, he became a hero of the United States space programme, becoming a pioneer of space technology. Working for the Nazis and then to come and do the work he did for the United States creates a great contrast and this is something that Bush looked at and focused on.
This book aims to present Wernhers double life through the use of archived images. Bush looked at Wernhers timeline and identified the war being in the exact middle of his life. Instead of looking at his timeline in such a straightforward way, Bush decided to take this middle point and bend the timeline in half. He presented images next to each other of the same points in Wernhers timeline, creating the contrast of how his life played out.
This is a book which is currently being tested for the best materials to use and what the design should look like. Bush intends to self publicate, using Kickstarter to raise funds.