Category Archives: Positions and Practice

21 02 08 Methods and Meaning – Reflections

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I have enjoyed this week’s course work as I feel I have been challenged to think hard about how and why I take photographs and to consider much more carefully the link between the “how” and the “why”.

In his introduction to Photography Changes Everything, Marvin Heiferman makes the following observations:

              “Photographs don’t only show us things, the do things. They engage us optically, neurologically, intellectually, emotionally, viscerally, physically. They demand our scrutiny and interpretation. Photographs seduce and motivate us; they promote ideas, embed values, and shape public opinion”.1 

              “While we tend to think of photographs as rearview mirrors, the reality is that photography aggressively moves us forward and changes everything”.2

It seems to me that in these two statements Heiferman sums up the way I feel about photography and how I would like my photographic work to be seen – I have a long way to go!.

But this week I started to understand the importance of the “how” as opposed to just the “why”. Whilst I have tended to take photographs that interest me and are linked by general ideas about location, time and particular situation, I have not thought about my work in terms of concepts – a body of work undertaken with a specific concept in mind. Equally, I have tended to just go out and take photos. I might choose a particular lens because I know it will work well for a particular task, or go out at a particular time of day, because I know the light will work well, but I have not thought beyond this into looking at photographs as a complete project, and building up the methodology around the whole project.

For example, in the chapter “Photography changes what we long to see” from the book “Photography Changes Everything”, David Haberstich discusses the way that stereographs were mass produced for an eager and captivated audience, and often “photographers composed and directed sequences, like a motion picture director creating a fictional film”. At the time, many of these sets of photographs were seen and accepted as educational travel documentaries, but looking back now we see that they were also creating a constructed reality,  reflecting very much the mores of the time, and which we would now see often as questionable in their representation of cultures and people. So methodology does matter, as does the intent and the output.

In the chapter on Authenticity in “Why Art Photography”3, Lucy Soutter discusses a wide range of methodologies adopted by photographers across the last century, from the dead-pan images of Bernd and Hilla Becher to the “selfies” of Amalia Ulman. Soutter discusses both the approach they take to the matter of taking the pictures and how the ultimate presentation of the body of work is an important element of the underlying methodology. For example, Wolfgang Tillmans has developed a radical and distinctive style of presentation of his work in galleries, where he “recycles various favorite images from show to show and indiscriminately mixes in his own postcards and magazine spreads. The governing logic is Tillman’s own sensibility and his preoccupations of the moment”.4 She goes on to say that he “uses photography both as a mode of documentation and also as a means of processing and sharing his findings. Tillmans’s constantly evolving installations encourage active, participatory reading”.5

I am particularly interested here in the importance here of “how” images will eventually be shown, and getting the viewer to be involved in a process of investigation and maybe discovery.

I also decided to read Henri Cartier-Bresson’s “The Mind’s Eye”6 which is a compilation of his writings on photography over forty-five years. Whilst best known for methodology encapsulated in the “decisive moment”, this book also brings out other aspects of his approach to his work. In particular I like the approaches in the following quotes by him:

              “For me the camera is a sketch book, an instrument of intuition and spontaneity, the master of the instant which, in visual terms, questions and decides simultaneously”.  Ibid pp15

“One must always take photographs with the greatest respect for the subject and for oneself”. Ibid pp16

“I owe an allegiance to Surrealism, because it taught me to let the photograph lens look into the rubble of the unconscious and of chance”. Ibid pp98

I particularly like this last quote. It is very easy to be bogged down by rules in photography. Looking at the approaches of Robert MacFarlane, Chris Coekin, and Gillian Wearing I can see that while planning does have an important role in some circumstances, it’s sometimes important to let chance take a place in the creative process and build in an element of randomness and spontaneity.

Looking at mistakes in photographs was a surprising revelation, seeing how an “error” in execution of picture can turn up unexpected and idiosyncratic results, even better than might have been planned for. I like the idea of treating the camera as a functional box and using its capabilities to challenge the accepted norms of photographic output.

I hope this will bring a new angle to my work.

Notes

  1. Heifer Man, M. Photography Changes Everything. Singapore: Smithsonian Institution and Aperture Foundation, 2012. pp16
  2. Ibid pp17
  3. Soutter, L. Why Art Photography. 2nd edn. New York:Routledge, 2018
  4. Ibid pp92
  5. Ibid pp93
  6. Cartier-Bresson, H. The Mind’s Eye: Writings on Photography and Photographers. South Korea: aperture, 1999.
Photo: John Martyn – accidental slow speed resulting in a passable abstract image

21 02 07 The Provoke Movement

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I wanted to have a quick, closer look at the Provoke Movement, which I hadn’t come across before, and its impact on contemporary Japanese photography.

The Provoke magazine series was first published in Tokyo in 1968 by Daido Moriyama, Takuma Nakahira (1938–2015), Takahiko Okada, Yutaka Takanashi, and Koji Taki. Only 3 issues of the magazine were eventually published, but the revolutionary style of the work contained in the publications had a profound effect on photography at the time both inside Japan and in the wider world.

Describing the style of the photographs in an interview with Tsuyoshi Ito in Aperture in March 2017, Simon Baker said: “If there is a unifying characteristic, it is an openness to chance, to experimentation, and to a radically different kind of photographic image—whether more like a screen print or a film still, an abstract painting, or however else we might think of it. It’s about being open to photography having different characteristics, potentials, and possibilities beyond the descriptive use of the photographic image”1.

Looking through the images in Takuma Nakahira’s book “For A Language to Come”1, and “Overflow”2, the images are indeed raw, edgy and bleak, but they are also bold, exhilarating, uncompromising and visually arresting. This was a radical new style, a definite and intended break from previous stylistic norms in photography. At some point I would like to look more at Nakahira’s own philosophy at the time as set out in “Why as Illustrated Botanical Dictionary” published in 1973.

Daido Moriyama (1938-    ) is an internationally acclaimed photographer, best known for his street photography, and he continues to work in Tokyo. In his book about Moriyama’s street-craft, Daido Moriyama How I Take Photographs3, Nakamoto describes how Moriyama encourages his students to get out into the street and just take photographs. Nakamoto quotes Moriyama as saying “The photographer should just shoot whatever he observes, using all his senses, and if possible unselectively”4. And asked what a snapshot photograph was, Moriyama replied “Its like a cast net. Your desire compels you to throw it out. You throw the net out, and you snag whatever happens to come back – its like an “accidental moment” ‘5. Later in the conversation, Moriyama does qualify this direct approach though and stresses the importance of knowing a subject well. “You’re not going to develop a discerning eye unless you hone your ability to give something your full and undivided attention”5.

I would like to take both these pieces of advice into my photographic work. I like the synthesis of two seemingly opposing approaches, combining both a planned starting point and then more free-flow activity in the field.

I would like to spend a lot more time looking at Moriyama’s photographic work and methodology.

Notes

  1. Aperture: The Provoke Moment. Interviews by Tsuyoshi Ito https://aperture.org/editorial/provoke-simon-baker/. 2017
  • Nakahira T. A Language to Come, 1970. Overflow, 1974.
  • Nakamoto T. Daido Moriyama How I Take Photographs. Laurence King Publishing. London, 2019
  • Ibid. pp22
  • Ibid. pp22
  • Ibid. pp24

21 02 04 Stanley Green and Bieke Depoorter

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Following links from this week’s forum, I was deeply impressed by the work of Stanley Green (USA 1949-2017) and Bieke Depoorter

Stanley Greene was a photojournalist. He witnessed and photographed the fall of the Berlin Wall. He photographed the decline of communism and the break-up of the Soviet Union and was caught up in an assassination attempt on Yeltsin in October 1997 in Moscow. In the 1990’s he also reported variously from Chechnya, Bhopal in India and covered the famine in Southern Sudan. IN 1994 he covered the cholera outbreak in Zaire and Rwanda.

Open Wound: Chechnya 1994-2003 (Trolley 2003) – this is a collection of photographs documenting the plight of Chechens as they suffered following the collapse of the Soviet regime in the 1990’s. The images are direct, haunting and powerful – mainly in black and white, they depict harsh landscapes, the impact of the Chechen War and intimate portraits of desperation and despair. What comes across in all the photographs though is a profound sense of humanity and the photographer’s urgent please for the suffering to be recognised by the world.

Katrina: An unnatural disaster – this collection portrays the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina which decimated New Orleans and the areas around it in August 2005. The images highlight the shocking destruction at the time but also the profound subsequent suffering as attempts took rebuild the area took so long and were mired in corruption and racism. The photographs are visually gripping but again full of humanity and huge empathy with the plight of the people and the region.

https://www.noorimages.com/stanley-greene

Bieke Depoorter (Belgium, born 1986) has published a number of photographic books to date including: Ou Menya (2011), I am About to Call it a Day (2014), As it may be (2017) and Sète#15 (2015 Le bec en l’air). All works explore the relationship between the subject and the photographer and are often intimate portraits of her subjects in their homes. Ou Menya was the result of 3 trips to Russia, photographing the people that she randomly met and stayed with. I am About to Call it a Day is a similar collection taken whilst hitchhiking and driving around the USA.

In Sete#15, explores the nightlife of the French seaside resort of Sete. Depoorter’s approach is to photograph people she does not know in night settings. There is an acknowledged element of staging between the photographer and the subject but the warmth and poignancy of the images is striking and palpable stories emanate from each of the colour photos, inviting the viewer to linger and reflect on the scene. I am very taken by these portraits and how much depth of story is captured in a photograph of a single moment.

https://www.magnumphotos.com/arts-culture/art/bieke-deporter-sete-15/

21 02 02 Reflections on Methods and Methodologies

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It is quite clear to me at the moment, that I have not really adopted specific methods or methodologies in my work, and I don’t work particularly with a “project” in mind, except in the broadest terms.

So I would categorize my photographic archive to date in the following way:

  • Family Album and Holidays – not intended for public dissemination but it’s a rich archive of memories, family history, events, travel and places – interestingly, as a family we have very few “family” photos from the 60s- 90s as they were rarely taken, and no “cinematic” footage. BUT, I have carefully catalogued old photos of long dead relatives from the family tree as genealogy was a passion of my father’s. Its critical to identify and write names against the people in the photos as they are remarkably quickly forgotten within the family (even back just one or two generations). For me the photos bring alive the social history of the family beyond just names in a tree, and it would be interesting to take this archive further at some point.

In contrast to this, families these days have myriads of photos either on phones or in social media – whole lives lived and recorded in minute detail – is this a good or bad thing – what will those people who’ve grown up in this culture look back and feel about it – is it a gross intrusion of privacy, who own’s the intellectual property, now or in years to come?

Into this category too goes holidays with friends, university, early work.

But see “books” below for what digital storage has changed in my approach to “family” photography.

  • Travel – I am passionate about travelling and getting to see new places. I’ve always be interested in photography and carried a camera with me, but before the arrival of digital, most photos ended up in albums that in the end were rarely looked at. I’ve taken the best memories and digitalised them, but hoards of photos remain in dusty albums. They are a personal archive of memories in themselves and one day I will try to do more with them. Since having a digital camera, they have been much easier to store – but as I look back through them they are a random collection of travel photographs – much in the style of recoding places and people, than trying to convey cultural understanding or awareness or sheer pleasure in being there.
  • Printed Books – I have found the ability to self-publish photos in books (using Blurb and similar) transformative in how I look at and approach photography. Whilst I can still be annoyed when someone asks me to “take a photo” of something, actually knowing that I want to publish a book of a holiday, or trip or event at the end of it – gives me a much better framework to think carefully about the photos I’m taking – I do want the result to be a memory for everyone involved, but I want do it to be a visual feast as well, and to portray the event in the best possible way that I can. With elderly parents, fading memories and time running short, I now see these books as critical family documents that will hopefully provide enjoyment for future generations as well – and to some extent, a family’s social history within the bounds of the family itself.
  • Landscape (in a broad sense) – I am passionate about getting out in to the countryside and recording photographically what I see and find there. In this area, my heroes are the great landscape photographers of the past (Ansel Adams…) and of more recent years (Michael Kenna, Brett Weston, (son of Edward Weston) and David Brooker)). But in saying that I cannot say that I have studied any of them in depth or tried to emulate their styles directly. It is more that I am aware of their work (and would jump at any chance to see it directly rather than in books) and it’s the level of technique and insight that they bring to all their work that inspires me to want to get outside and take photographs myself. It is only as a result of starting this course that I have really starting to think about their “methods” and “concepts” and technical skills and how they deploy them, and I would like to pursue this much further now.

But I sense that landscape photography in itself is not enough in contemporary photographic world – I love the rich colours and senses that the countryside abounds with and I do want to be able to “capture” these attributes and use my photography to bring other to the same landscapes (and open window, not a limited view finder). But I am acutely aware of the fine line between “art” and “postcard” – and I need to work much harder now to bring something far more passionate and compelling into my landscape work.

I work in both colour and black and white in my landscape work. There is so much astounding variety of colour in nature, in all its forms, that it deserves to be preserved as such. But I do find that black and white photography brings out a completely different personality of the countryside as it necessarily focuses on shape, texture, relationships, patterns etc. And I find that its more challenging to look harder and sharper to find those intrinsic attributes and bring them to life. This is where I would like to focus a lot of my creative time over the next two years.

  • Black and White – over the last few years my photographic output has shifted from colour to black and white and with it a great sense of creativity and abstraction. This is the area where I know I create projects for myself – and much more defined methods or approach.

My typical projects, and the way I tend to group photographs in my own archive is:

                Trees and woodland

                Seascape, coastlines

                Flowers – often macro

                Wildlife

I am not an artist in the sense that I can draw or paint. Photography is the medium for my artistic output, and at the moment I find black and white photograph offers me the most creativity. I am intrigued by how looking at “mistakes” in photos actually creates a wealth of opportunities in itself and I definitely want to explore the camera’s functions themselves now artistically, rather than having to rely on post-production. In this area as well, I feel I can organise my thoughts most coherently in terms of concepts and methods and I will work on this.

  • People and Portraits – I have never really tried to take pictures of people in a serious and methodical way. I think this is a shyness and lack of trust in my own ability that makes me hold back from this. However, as part of this course, I would really like to undertake some training in portraiture work.

I’m happy taking more candid pictures of people though and strangers and where I’ve been asked to photograph people’s weddings, I make it clear that they may get a very personal view of events. But I actually enjoy these events in the end – perhaps because its carte-blanche to photograph people who generally want to be photographed and are relaxed in their surroundings.

  • Dissemination – Up to now, I have only ever thought of my work as an overall archive of what I enjoy photographing. It has not been meant to tell a story in any way, other than in its own reference in time. It had no obvious audience. But as I look now more at how contemporary photography practice is organised it is clear to me that in making work more public the pattern is through defined projects, displayed in exhibitions, art installations, books (and less targeted perhaps in websites, blogs, Instagram etc). I can visual projects as being stand alone or within greater overarching themes that may or may not overlap.

Opening a Photographic Studio recently (www.guildhallstudio.com) was a radical step for me as if forced me to think about the body of my photographic work and what its over-arching themes actually are, and what I wanted to say in displaying them. I will explore this much more in a later journal entry as I think this will form part of my major project in due course.

Final Thoughts

  1. Work within defined projects – consider the concept for the project and think about the right methods to achieve its aims; but don’t be afraid to change course on the way, and keep reflecting on how its developing to see if there’s a better process or direction.
  2. Look at a number of photographers in more depth – what are the concepts and methods behind their body of work.
  3. Portraiture – make it a challenge to become more proficient in the techniques of good portraiture and produce a portfolio of insightful work.
  4. Try working out of the box – set up some random challenges to see where they go. Let chance play a role.
  5. Try out techniques exploiting the camera’s capabilities – not be bound by them. Forget the rules of composition, exposure, etc and see what happens.

21 01 30 Windows and Mirrors

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First, a bit more about me, just for background. I live and work in the UK, near Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk. I have been interested in photography for a long time as a hobby, but recently opened a Photographic Studio in Bury to exhibit and sell my own work and that of other local photographers (www.guildhallstudio.com). This has now become the main focus of my photographic work which is both exciting and challenging. There’s nothing like a member of the public telling you in no uncertain terms exactly why they like or dislike your work to focus your mind and make you think hard about what you’re doing. (I’ll talk more about the studio in a later post, as I want to make sure that the work I do on the MA course feeds into the life of the studio and vice-versa).

This is the first time that I have undertaken a more serious, academic approach to photography. My main interests in photography have always been landscape (and particularly the coastline), travel and the natural world and it’s been interesting to reflect on where I think I am on the window/mirror spectrum and the relative influence this has on the images I take and how I take them. My initial reaction was to side with the window metaphor, but in a positive and not negative way. I do not agree with the proposition of a window/frame/lens being a limiting and coercive force (I disagree with Susan Sontag’s view of photography as “appropriating the thing photographed”), I see it rather as a window opening onto a new place, creating new opportunity, pushing out the boundaries of the horizon – essentially the photographer inviting the viewer on a journey into a world perhaps not previously experienced. For me it’s an open window, not a closed one.

But having initially rejected the idea of my work being an internal mirror, and being more concerned about looking outwards, I reconsidered what the mirror metaphor meant. It seems to me that every piece of work must necessarily be a reflection to some extent or another of the person creating the work. What has brought me to this spot on this loch in Scotland to take this image of the scene in front of me? What has brought me to be walking down this path through this woodland in Suffolk at this moment in time, and seeing an image which I think is worth recording? I would probably say it’s impossible to dissociate the image from the image-maker completely, but that there’s a huge range in how much of yourself you choose to reflect into the image or not. There’s a whole debate to be had on what influences you can choose to bring to the image (location, method, acquired knowledge, preferences) and those you consciously or subconsciously bring to the image almost unavoidably like metadata (culture, background, life experiences,…).

I really love the concept of Amalia Ulman’s Excellences and Perfections – the whole self thrown into the images and the story, though I wonder how “cheated” many people may have felt to discover that the “self” was itself a creation1.

I came across a different metaphor recently as well which I also like. Jeff Wall (Canadian artist) “divides photographers into Hunters and Farmers, the former tracking down and capturing images, the latter cultivating them over time”2. Most of my photography falls into the Hunter category, but I do also enjoy creating more abstract images, though still based on the natural world around me.

Notes

1      Ulman A. Excellences and Perfections, 2015

2      Cotton C. The photograph as contemporary art. UK: Thames and Hudson, 2009

21 01 29 First Post

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21 01 29   First Post

This journal is part of the MA Photography course at Falmouth University which I have recently started.

This is an exciting and challenging adventure for me into the more academic world of photography. Up until now photography has been just a hobby, albeit one I am passionate about and from which I have derived huge enjoyment.

I’m looking forward now to challenging my thinking about photography and taking a new look at what I do and why I do it. It’s going to be interesting to see where it all leads to and I suspect it will be a somewhat daunting, but hugely exhilarating roller-coaster ride!