In conversation with JH Engström
During the conversation between the exhibition curator (name promptly forgotten - sorry...) and Engström, the Swede seemed to be uncomfortable and it has been mentioned that he was introverted (hence my supposition Petersen would take over), however he generally seemed to be quite candid in his responses to the curator’s questions (unless he genuinely didn’t know the answer...), and also in his photography which is often quite revealing. From his body language, his photography and his comments, it is apparent that Engström would rather let his photography speak for him - photography, as he said in the talk, is his language.
Closeness is something that was mentioned early on in the talk, and re-surfaced a few times. Petersen was described as being closer to his subjects than Engström, not so much in physical terms but in emotional connection; he often stays in touch with his subjects. That said, the photograph of who I’m led to believe is Petersen’s mother on the cover of the book is quite detached, and many of the other images feel quite cold. The subjects are accepting of his presence, but not necessarily showing warmth to him. It was mentioned at one point that Petersen seeks to get close to his subjects because of a fear of loneliness, this fear really shows through in his images, which can be very dark.
In Engström’s photographs, he’s looking at himself in a way; the photographs could be of himself and indeed sometimes are. He talked of soul-searching and of questioning and doubting himself. This doubting of what he has been doing makes him step backwards and look at the wider scene, of what is going on. He said “I’m always looking for presence.”
Engström’s photography is “free”, far removed from the work of the Becher’s (and others) whom I’ve been looking at recently. He uses a variety of formats and types of camera, from 5x4 large format to disposable cameras, but all are film, not digital (although he did concede that the images for the slideshow were taken with a digital camera, photographing the printed analogue images). I found it particularly interesting that he uses both colour and black & white together, sometimes carrying 2 cameras each with different film. This made him feel schizophrenic. He was questioned about this mixing of colour/b&w in the narrative, something normally frowned upon (and indeed, it was commented on my work for TAoP). Engström retorted that why should it not be the case? 35 years ago, the first colour “art” exhibition took place, prior to that photography art was exclusively black & white: “Photography is so rigid!” This has changed though, and colour is now accepted as art, so perhaps it is time for another change so that a mix of colour and b&w will also be accepted.
There was a slide show from the forthcoming series (name not recorded, which was a shame) and the first image (a view of some trees) really appealed to me, there was just something about it - low fi but compelling. The presentation progressed with an eclectic mix of styles and subjects, it seemed random and certainly not compliant with any form of chronological order (he had a disagreement with Nan Goldin at Artles about this). The result is intriguing and energetic, and certainly something that will not be forgotten, or to everyone’s taste for that matter.
I’ve been looking at the work of the Provoke photographers recently, and of Japanese photographers in general. Engström’s work (and to a lesser degree, Petersen’s too) reminds me of this work by Moriyama and Nakahira (et al) in that the technical quality of the image is very much secondary to the narrative qualities. I also feel quite schizophrenic about this: some of my photographs are quite regimental and precise, others fuzzy and dark...
The video (A Film With About Anders Petersen) was a change from the planned one, but interesting nonetheless. It showed Petersen as an exuberant performer, but I can’t escape from a feeling this is perhaps a façade he hides behind, and in reality he is a troubled individual. Beyond the poster of Moriyama on the wall (mentioned in the OCA post), there were a few interesting quotes I pulled from the video, and in the order of appearance they are paraphrased below:
“Aim to remove the boundary between private life and photography.” In many respects, there are close similarities between the work of the 2 Swedes and Nan Goldin (and others). Everything is open to being recorded, and this slots in quite nicely with the comments about “Facebook photography” that had been made on the two visits I have made to the exhibition (initially with Stan, Janet and Fiona and now with Gareth and Amano). It also ties in with the concepts of observation and surveillance recently discussed in UVC (how everything is now open to being recorded, either surreptitiously or openly).
“There is a difference between ‘posed’ and ‘aware’.” This has been the subject of discussion on the Flickr forums, and also ties in with the same thoughts of observation and surveillance, together with the subject of ethics. It all depends on the final use and how it is presented (as posed reconstruction/unposed, etc.)
“When photography is calculated it becomes false.” I know what is meant here, and out of context I could easily disagree with it, I’m not sure I do agree with it anyway. He was talking in terms of social documentary, and can even be questioned in terms of prior thought and intention. In the post-conversation chat over coffee, Stan reported that Petersen often goes out with quite a developed idea of what he wants to photograph, so if that’s the case, the photography is calculated. Maybe not to the same degree as a Becher winding structure, but it is still planned. I do like the apparent ‘freeness’ though...
“Photography is not about photography - it’s about life.” Petersen’s comment in the video is in opposition to Engström’s in the earlier conversation with the curator, in which he said “Photography is a language, not life.” I think both are true, photography is a language used to depict life. It can be that the more freely it is used, the more natural the language and the closer to real life the images become, but it was strange that these opposite comments were made by the two men. Makes you wonder how Engström would have developed without the mentoring of Petersen...
On the whole, I found the talk highly informative and enlightening, making me look at the images again (Engström’s in particular) in a new light. It’s also planted the seed of an idea in my mind for my Your own portfolio major project. I’ll ponder this for a little while though, before releasing it to the world in the YOP blog...
Around the world in 2000 pictures
Zed Nelson: Love me
The images are printed large, without window mounts and in white frames which reflects the current fashion with a move away from small photographs, in (off) white mounts and in simple black frames. This in itself reflects the subject matter and the overall message, that of optimum presentation to the viewer. I had a problem with some of the prints and the size though, as purely from a personal aesthetic view, for example there was ugly colour noise in the photograph of the loser in the beauty pageant. It could be argued that this was also intentional though - the ugly noise used in conjunction with a photograph of the loser, and the tearful face she was pulling. Unsympathetic perhaps, but perhaps in line with the context...
Another technical “glitch” I spotted and commented upon (I attended with a few other OCA students) was the blowing out of some hair detail in the high key portraits. The first wall featured a 9 year old winner of a beauty pageant, an anorexic woman, a body builder, an adult beauty pageant contestant and an older woman from a rejuvenation expo. Particularly with the old woman, it was noticed that these high key hair faults were present, but again, could it be argued that this was intentional, that there is some representation of frailty or something. In a magazine fashion shoot, these would have been photoshopped. Another type of comment perhaps? These details aren’t so obvious in the on-line gallery, it must be said.
I’m not going to go into too much detail about the slight tilt in many (all?) of the images. Suffice to say it was noted, and I’m not so sure it’s a positive thing...
One photograph in particular spoke to me in terms of the recent readings for UVC (Fanon’s “Black” and Dyer’s “White”). There was a photograph of an advertising board for “Diva: le coiffure du stars” which featured a coloured woman. The man in the background is very dark, and whilst I’m no expert on the fine detail of how light or dark the typical Senegalese person is, the impression I took away is that the woman had been lightened (through Photoshop?). The view that people should conform to the white ideology came across, that black people should try to conform, to want to be white and that would make them “better”. This also came across with the Iranian school girl having a nose job, although it wasn’t quite so obvious here to me (there may be other cultural forces at play that I’m not aware of). My mind also moved to the “westernisation” procedures to change the shape of the eye that has been reported as being popular in China; the exhibition leaflet also makes reference to this.
Some (many) of the images didn’t appeal to me on an individual basis, but you can’t escape the fact that the photographs as a whole do give a powerful message, and are very cohesive despite any initial thoughts I may have had about possible differences in picture styles (white background, still life, on location, etc.). Something that would help the exhibition for me though would be the addition of further notes, the type of thing in the book and on the website...
Think of England
Anyway, I was pointed to the Martin Parr documentary “Think of England” which has made interesting viewing. There’s some typical Parr composition in there, and as an Englishman, I found myself both smiling and cringing at the people in the films...
Derby Format Festival: Take to the streets
In the Cathedral Quarter, there was a collection of photographs by Magnum photographers. I liked the idea of an outdoor exhibition, especially of the street images. Displaying them in their own habitat seems to be natural, it also serves to make the printed images less “precious” and more tactile - these are images you can touch and get close to, unlike a fetishised Gursky or similar.
Looking at the images here was a little less intense, partially because I didn’t realise we would be moving on quite so soon and partly because I was still in the post-lunch malaise. The ones that particularly caught my attention were those by Trent Parke, whose work I’ve seen before through my encounter with Nick Turpin and iN-PUBLiC. There was one image that provoked a discussion because it is essentially about nothing, yet looks fantastic because of the light (here). These came at just the right moment as a group of us had just been discussing photography in soft light and the comments made in the course notes for TAoP (and others?) but here we have strong directional lighting and deep shadows contributing to making the ordinary look interesting.
Moving on quickly to the Derby Museum and Art Gallery, there was a specially commissioned collection by Bruce Gilden that was particularly interesting. These photographs had all been taken in Derby a few months earlier, and were taken in Gilden’s trademark style of almost ambushing people with his camera and flash. This is a style that I would never feel comfortable working in, but it suits him. Far from being a lot of startled people, some of the photographs looked surprisingly like posed portraits. Obviously they weren’t though, and I was intrigued by the result.
Anyway, here’s a video of the artist at work:
Bruce Gilden "Head On", presented by British Journal of Photography from Olivier Laurent on Vimeo.
After Gilden, it was the iN-PUBLiC members, and to be honest what I thought was a mixed bag of photographs. There was some really nice stuff, from Andy Morley-Hall, Nick Turpin, Jeffrey Ladd and Nils Jorgensen. There was also an image by Amani Willetts that I had to bring in the tutors to discuss. The photograph featured a number of people walking in a section of street, some fully in the frame, others cut off. It just seemed so mundane, and yes we stood there a while looking at it, trying to decipher it - the composition, the narrative and what have you. In the end, Clive said we were too mundane to understand the mundane (tongue firmly in cheek I hope) and Jose admitted he wasn’t particularly a fan. Looking in the book 10 years of in-public, Willetts’ entry declares a liking to present photographs that ask more questions than they answer, and it was certainly the case here!
There was also an exhibition of work by an Iranian woman photographer, Mehraneh Atashi. I admire her for pursuing her craft in what would appear to be a hostile environment for a woman, but I just didn’t gel with the photographs. It’s not the reflection/double exposure style thing that was the problem, rather I think it was the images being layered. I don’t know. They just didn’t work for me.
I’m struggling to get more down at the moment, writing it all up was almost as draining as the day itself!
Would I go back next year? Most definitely.
Would I want to spend more time there? Possibly, although I must say it’s a balancing act between seeing what is on offer and reaching mental (and physical) saturation. I was knackered at the end of the day. Perhaps age is catching up with me...
Would I go on another OCA event? Without a doubt.
Derby Format Festival: Quad
Saturday was spent at the Format Festival in Derby, and before going on any further I must say that thanks are due to Gareth, Jose and Clive for organising the day and elucidating on some of the questions that came to mind. It was just a shame there wasn’t a bit more time, not that I would have managed it - it was a 14+ hour day out for me anyway, thanks to train delays and what have you. Not too sure Jose would have lasted either...
Before I go headlong into rambling insanely about what I saw there, I need to confess that I didn’t take notes. I had fully intended to do so, bringing my OCA Black and Red and a pen, even scribbling some thoughts on Nakahira Takuma (and therefore Moriyama Daido) on the train across to Derby. However, once at the exhibition, the notebook remained resolutely in my pocket and I enjoyed the discussions with various people far too much to be distracted with note-taking. Maybe I’ll regret this at some point, but maybe not...
The visit consisted of 4 venues, the first being QUAD. After walking through into the downstairs gallery, the first thing that struck me was the darkened viewing area - this was no white walled gallery location! It wasn’t black, but it was comfortably dark. For some reason, I tend to walk around gallery exhibitions anti-clockwise, and I’ve really no idea if this is going against the grain or not (at the Irving Penn exhibition last year it did mean I was travelling backwards in time). The first set of work was by Giacomo Brunelli, whose work I saw a larger collection of at the Photographer’s Gallery in London last year. I still like the wild dog looking like it’s coming through the fence...
The next group of images was very interesting, and sparked a certain amount of discussion with Jose, Stan and Penny (and a few others who dropped in and out, sorry - I don’t remember everyone’s name...). Anyway, the work was entitled Tales from the Data Stream and was by Nate Larson and Marni Shindelman. The discussion centred mainly about the way the images were viewed as they were tightly arranged in a 4x3 grid, mounted onto to board and not framed and with a black text bar across the bottom featuring the tweet that drew them to the location (the photographs are taken from the geo-tagged location embedded in the tweet). There were a number of ways in which the ordering of the images were interpreted: was it down to location, or the date taken? Was there a natural/manmade alternation? Was the top row showing diagonals into the photograph, the middle row all very planar and the bottom row connected with windows and looking? Or something else? In the end, I wasn’t sure as each option seemed pretty valid. As for the photographs, interesting although not particularly awe-inspiring. This is not a negative comment though - the photographs were of the mundane and everyday so awe-inspiring wasn’t the intention. The images are still thought provoking, and the concept is interesting with the interplay between text and image. There’s also images that remind me of my Night Walk series, which can only be a good thing...
WassinkLundgren showcased an interesting way of displaying their work (a series showing Chinese people picking up empty bottles) in that each of the images was a spread from their (“award winning”) book - a blue page and a photo page made up that spread. The images were arranged in a grid on a single wall. Personally, I think this suffered somewhat as the upper row of photographs were difficult to look at, they were just too high. Perhaps 2 longer rows at a more comfortable height instead of the 4 rows used would have been better? This decision would have been down to available gallery space, and it would be interesting to know what the photographers thought of this.
Peter Dench’s England Uncensored was a video installation. My first thought was “Martin Parr Lite”. Perhaps this is a little cruel, but unfortunately if you choose to photograph England in this way, then there’s going to be comparisons and Parr got there before and he is a tough act to set out to follow. That’s not to say the photographs were not up to scratch or anything, there were some good observational images that showed exactly what it was intended to show - I thought the old couple snogging in the tram shelter in front of Blackpool Tower interesting, perhaps because it showed a different view instead of the easy targets of some of his other images. Saying that, is the “kiss me quick” mentality of Blackpool considered an easy target even if from this angle? He’s made it on to my list of photographers to track on the basis of what I saw. [UPDATE: I’ve just heard a podcast with Dench when it was revealed that his inclusion in the exhibition was pretty much an afterthought, there was no wall space left hence the video presentation. He did say that the 15 second display was a little too long...]
The next set of images was small and to the point. Four photographs of people running on the streets (of New York, I’m guessing) by Jeff Mermelstein. The photographs are tightly cohesive on a singular theme, even with this small number of images, the theme is undisputed. Whether or not a series of 20 images would begin to feel a little tired is another matter though... The photograph of the chap in mid air, looking at his watch in front of the red tour bus (here) is a perfect moment captured, I like it a lot - it’s something we’ve probably all done at some stage, so we can relate to it, but it’s also humorous.
Street view: a series of unfortunate events by Michael Wolf came next. When I first came across this idea, I thought it was an interesting and original application of appropriation art (the Rickard images I used in UVC assignment 2), now in a very short period of time I’ve seen a few different artists doing the same thing, albeit in slightly different ways. Having said that, I’m thinking of using it as part of my research in YOP should i chose to follow the Boring Postcards idea... Presentation-wise, I’m not sure about this installation; the images seemed to be placed randomly all over the place. Now, I know there’s not a hard and fast rule about placing images in rows, grids or whatever at a gallery, but this was not really to my liking. Yes, it had the effect of leading your eyes around the images in a certain way, because they weren’t in a grid, there was no real compunction to compare images side by side or to read it in an array, so the eye moved around. Still, I’m not so sure I’m a fan. As an aside, it looks like this style of random installation is becoming popular in the home too, judging by what I saw at Focus (I didn’t like it then either).
One set of images I enjoyed looking at and making up a narrative for each was those by Martin Kollar (from Nothing Special). There were 4 or 5 photographs that the more you looked at them, the more bizarre the situation seemed, a dog standing on the awning of a building on a deserted street, a man wearing his underwear picking fruit whilst in the background people gather around a crashed lorry, or a man’s legs sticking from a manhole. The photographs are in a deadpan style, which makes the actual scene within them feel even more absurd. A really interesting series of photographs displayed in a very matter of fact way, an aesthetic I really appreciate at the moment. This could be a photographer worthy of looking at in a little more detail later on.
Will Sander’s photographs probably didn’t get the attention they perhaps deserved as there was a small crowd in front of them when I got to them, so I moved on (see the photo at the top). I didn’t come back to them due to the lack of time, and perhaps also because the random display put me off. They did get some good reviews from other students in the lunch time discussions though, so with hindsight I should have made time. Also, with further consideration, the apparent randomness of the display does reflect the apparent randomness of the quirky events he looks to have captured (leaping dogs, an old person in an electric wheelchair stopped by a wall, etc.). Context is important with display as well...
Meyerowitz was given a cursory glance - time was slipping away and the half dozen-ish photographs were not new to me. What was interesting was the white frames and no matt approach; I was aware that the classic black frame/off-white matt combo was losing that ubiquitousness that has pervaded for some time, but I must say I do like it. Maybe I will start to experiment with other things now. I guess I should do!
Jun Abe’s photographs sparked some discussion, or rather one of his images did, that of a row of people standing below a traffic light. The people are subject to strong shadow, yet the post for the traffic light is not. To me, it feels like the figures and background are from separate photographs and have been brought together in a composite. This is street photography though, so this is unlikely to be the case, a more likely explanation being some form of processing, whether in the darkroom or on the computer. Whatever, it certainly forms an interesting image.
I found the images by Polly Braden to be quite poetic. I particularly liked the large image with the woman on the bicycle. The colours were, in general, quite muted but with a few green accents that really caught the eye. The wooden frames were nice too, as were the variety of sizes, although I’m not sure why the sizes were chosen for the particular images. Sometimes it would be really nice to have some notes form the photographer to explain some of these things... One thing that I found really unusual was there was a print at very low level. To me it almost felt like a poor relative to the others just because of this position - if it is so far away from the viewer’s eye, is it really worthy of looking at? Maybe it was there to give a reward to those that made the effort.
I didn’t get to look at all of the exhibition as time passed quickly. One thing I wished I’d found time to look at was a long strip by Frederic Lezmi which received universal praise from those that had looked at it. I briefly thought about buying the book, but at a whisker shy of €100, it’s a little beyond my budget for a book of images I didn’t get the chance to look at first.
Lunch beckoned at this point, and good discussions progressed throughout the break, from the questions asked by Jose about Peter Dench’s work and how the English saw it (shame I didn’t get Jose’s point of view though) to how different cultural perceptions can exist, including how the photographs are read directionally based on the way the language is written (left to right, top to bottom or right to left).
Assuming my memory does not leave me (ahhh, the notebook should’ve been used), I’ll add some thoughts on the other exhibitions in the next few days.
