While Minneapolis-based photographer Cameron Wittig is probably best known for his intriguing portraits of musicians like Haley Bonar and Andrew Bird, I discovered him through his humorous project, “Duluth Typologies”. The series features houses built on steep hills in the small town of Duluth, Minnesota. Using a simple adjustment of angle, the houses in “Duluth Typologies” appear to be sliding into the flat ground beneath them, creating a humorous commentary on the potential of imagery to lie.
In order to create the series, Wittig simply angled his camera to make the steeply sloping ground appear flat. This caused the houses, in return, to appear as though they were sliding into the ground below. In a feature about the series on Exposure Guide, Wittig is quoted on the origins behind this project, as well as his other personal work. “My personal work plays with perception and how photography is often presumed to be 100% honest when in reality it can be easily manipulated to lie. If you use it correctly, it is just as good [at] telling untruths as it is truths.”
While Wittig makes a good point about the potential for photographs to lie, I don’t believe it can be said that photography is assumed to be “100% honest”, especially in the age of rampant digital manipulation. What struck me about Wittig’s series was the fact that the “lying” was not done in the editing process. Rather, it was done on-site; in-camera. “Duluth Typologies” reminds us that something as simple as camera angle can have a huge effect on the outcome of images, and the messages they send.
Via Exposure Guide
Why are the garbage cans in first red-bricked building upright?
well, since they are on the curb, an hence probably full, my guess is the weight of what ever is in them is keeping them in place.
Good point. Look at the trees. The trees should be slated, going up towards the sky. Why are the trees perpendicular to the ground?
the tree in front of the white house is slanted in line with the windows it is growing in front of. The trees in the background, to the left, of the last image are also slanted. You can't see the ground or enough of the trunk on the other trees so it is impossible to know which way the should be tilting or if they are or aren't.
Because the ground is going up just like the street, they are sitting flat on the ground.
Weird. I like it. SImple yet different.
I did a variation of this last year with a hill near my house...