Oct 2011
Photography and the City
29/10/11 17:04
Earlier today, I attended the RPS lecture Photography and the City at the NMM in Bradford. I’ve listened to Ian Beesley speak before (in February this year), and I found him an interesting speaker, so I was looking forward to hear what he had say. I was also looking forward to hearing John Davies speak, as I have a couple of his books. I didn’t know who Roger Hargreaves or Colin Harding were, so I was neutral on these to start with.
Sure enough, Beesley was interesting again, describing his photography in Bradford (where he grew up) and how that now, looking back to photographs in the late 70s and 80s, his photographs give him the impression that he was recreating his childhood, or at least revisiting situations and locations from it. His photographs were black and white, quite moody in places but I suppose that is perhaps the nature of the industrial town, and the pollution it suffered turning all of the buildings black. His take on “the city” was perhaps in capturing the character and the characters of the place - a “sense” of the place; something that clearly differs from Davies, although there are some similarities in scene and composition in some images, but I think this is inevitable as they were of northern towns.
During his presentation, he came out with a quote from Bill Brandt (thanks Stan). It went something like “Photography is not a sport. There are no rules, and I can do what I want”. I like this. Sometimes I feel there are certain pressures to photograph in a certain way, to aesthetically please the masses, rather than to make them think (perhaps the masses can’t, or won’t think). Sometimes I also like to take photographs for me, and these don’t really get seen, but they are nonetheless valuable to me.
Whilst John Davies spoke third, I’ll discuss him next. He didn’t seem as engaging or as comfortable in his presentation, and walked around rather than “preaching from the pulpit” like the others. He said “erm” a lot. Now this is quite a minor comment, as it was really his images that spoke for him. His photographs are often panoramic overviews, and he said he adopted this approach so as to not explicitly examine where and how people live, the views are frequently more expansive for that. His favoured vantage point is high, looking down so as to create an almost topographical feel to the photographs. He also likes to follow a linear feature (road, river, whatever) in order to string together a form of narrative, and this piqued my interest as I’m planning the Pendle trail this coming Monday.
Another interesting thing he said was that he chose to create images via photographic means rather than painting because he felt that the surrealism he likes to look towards is more powerful due to the inherent realism of the medium. He likes to include some element that he finds disturbing in some way. Now I’m guessing he means “disturbing” in a different way to how I would usually use it, perhaps “visually unsettling” would be more what he meant..? I certainly feel sometimes that the incessant and perfect verticals can feel a little uncomfortable.
Towards the end of the talk, he mentioned his new interest in war memorials and the British attitude towards warmongering, something he also hinted at with the differing interpretation of “satanic mills” that came up with Beesley. He mentioned “War-ton”, where I used to work and I guess he has served to push me towards photographing Barrow-in-Furness where I currently work, although this will have to wait until the lighter nights are coming back. The Barrow I know is an ugly place, but I find it fascinating at the moment.
The other two talks were about Trafalgar Square and “Smudgers”, the old street photographers. Over on Flickr, Stan described these as “interesting at a superficial level”, and yes I’d go with this and leave it at that.
Sure enough, Beesley was interesting again, describing his photography in Bradford (where he grew up) and how that now, looking back to photographs in the late 70s and 80s, his photographs give him the impression that he was recreating his childhood, or at least revisiting situations and locations from it. His photographs were black and white, quite moody in places but I suppose that is perhaps the nature of the industrial town, and the pollution it suffered turning all of the buildings black. His take on “the city” was perhaps in capturing the character and the characters of the place - a “sense” of the place; something that clearly differs from Davies, although there are some similarities in scene and composition in some images, but I think this is inevitable as they were of northern towns.
During his presentation, he came out with a quote from Bill Brandt (thanks Stan). It went something like “Photography is not a sport. There are no rules, and I can do what I want”. I like this. Sometimes I feel there are certain pressures to photograph in a certain way, to aesthetically please the masses, rather than to make them think (perhaps the masses can’t, or won’t think). Sometimes I also like to take photographs for me, and these don’t really get seen, but they are nonetheless valuable to me.
Whilst John Davies spoke third, I’ll discuss him next. He didn’t seem as engaging or as comfortable in his presentation, and walked around rather than “preaching from the pulpit” like the others. He said “erm” a lot. Now this is quite a minor comment, as it was really his images that spoke for him. His photographs are often panoramic overviews, and he said he adopted this approach so as to not explicitly examine where and how people live, the views are frequently more expansive for that. His favoured vantage point is high, looking down so as to create an almost topographical feel to the photographs. He also likes to follow a linear feature (road, river, whatever) in order to string together a form of narrative, and this piqued my interest as I’m planning the Pendle trail this coming Monday.
Another interesting thing he said was that he chose to create images via photographic means rather than painting because he felt that the surrealism he likes to look towards is more powerful due to the inherent realism of the medium. He likes to include some element that he finds disturbing in some way. Now I’m guessing he means “disturbing” in a different way to how I would usually use it, perhaps “visually unsettling” would be more what he meant..? I certainly feel sometimes that the incessant and perfect verticals can feel a little uncomfortable.
Towards the end of the talk, he mentioned his new interest in war memorials and the British attitude towards warmongering, something he also hinted at with the differing interpretation of “satanic mills” that came up with Beesley. He mentioned “War-ton”, where I used to work and I guess he has served to push me towards photographing Barrow-in-Furness where I currently work, although this will have to wait until the lighter nights are coming back. The Barrow I know is an ugly place, but I find it fascinating at the moment.
The other two talks were about Trafalgar Square and “Smudgers”, the old street photographers. Over on Flickr, Stan described these as “interesting at a superficial level”, and yes I’d go with this and leave it at that.
Comments
Red Saunders, Pop UP and Ways of Looking
05/10/11 16:51
After wandering around the Wylie exhibition at NMM, I wandered off to the Impressions gallery for the Red Saunders show - also part of Ways of Looking. I’d heard much about the call for participants for the new works via Twitter, so I had an interest in seeing what had been produced. However, it’s not really my thing when I got to see it.
This are complex reconstructed photographs of historical events, “living pictures” is how they describe them in the blurb (or tableaux vivants, if you want the French). They were printed large - very large and presented unmounted, the prints were curling and, personally, didn’t create a good impression. Almost lazy, if I’m honest, although I do understand this would have been a conscious decision for whatever reason.
The photographs have rich colours and are lit from various directions, giving an unreal effect - the photograph of the peasants revolt for example was lit such that the shadows on people faces were all wrong (in my view), it felt inconsistent, and it’s clear from the video on the Impressions website that he uses Photoshop to composite the images, how much of this goes on I can only guess - more rather than less I would wager.
Don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot that can be said for the images and they’re technically well accomplished, but they just didn’t do it for me, rather I felt uncomfortable with them, but not in a good way, as with Crewdson.
After a bit of a chat with the staff at Impressions, I was pointed in the direction of Pop Up, a space I was previously unaware of, although maybe it was an empty space utilised for the exhibition... In Pop Up there was a display of various photographers work that was submitted as part of the open call to artists. One photographer in particular really caught my attention, Craig Ames (website here) and his series Back There. The photographs are really quite vernacular - a discarded shoe in a gutter, a toy gun in a child’s bedroom or a broken bottle on the kitchen floor. What makes them interesting is the serious incident report from Ames’ time as a soldier in NI. The report and the photograph show how simple things in “civvy street” can trigger memories for ex-service men (and women), and how these things are no longer really “simple” to them.
It also puts me in mind of Barthes and his writings on the death of the author. Here, the image is mundane, and we would perhaps dismiss it in the normal flow of media that we now experience every day. It’s only the words that do not directly relate to the photograph that then brings home that my initial reading of the photograph is based on a relatively mundane life. Far more can be contained there for those who have lived through the fear of armed conflict.
There were others in Pop Up, but Ames was by far the stand out for me.
This are complex reconstructed photographs of historical events, “living pictures” is how they describe them in the blurb (or tableaux vivants, if you want the French). They were printed large - very large and presented unmounted, the prints were curling and, personally, didn’t create a good impression. Almost lazy, if I’m honest, although I do understand this would have been a conscious decision for whatever reason.
The photographs have rich colours and are lit from various directions, giving an unreal effect - the photograph of the peasants revolt for example was lit such that the shadows on people faces were all wrong (in my view), it felt inconsistent, and it’s clear from the video on the Impressions website that he uses Photoshop to composite the images, how much of this goes on I can only guess - more rather than less I would wager.
Don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot that can be said for the images and they’re technically well accomplished, but they just didn’t do it for me, rather I felt uncomfortable with them, but not in a good way, as with Crewdson.
After a bit of a chat with the staff at Impressions, I was pointed in the direction of Pop Up, a space I was previously unaware of, although maybe it was an empty space utilised for the exhibition... In Pop Up there was a display of various photographers work that was submitted as part of the open call to artists. One photographer in particular really caught my attention, Craig Ames (website here) and his series Back There. The photographs are really quite vernacular - a discarded shoe in a gutter, a toy gun in a child’s bedroom or a broken bottle on the kitchen floor. What makes them interesting is the serious incident report from Ames’ time as a soldier in NI. The report and the photograph show how simple things in “civvy street” can trigger memories for ex-service men (and women), and how these things are no longer really “simple” to them.
It also puts me in mind of Barthes and his writings on the death of the author. Here, the image is mundane, and we would perhaps dismiss it in the normal flow of media that we now experience every day. It’s only the words that do not directly relate to the photograph that then brings home that my initial reading of the photograph is based on a relatively mundane life. Far more can be contained there for those who have lived through the fear of armed conflict.
There were others in Pop Up, but Ames was by far the stand out for me.
Breakfast with Donovan Wylie
02/10/11 16:53
Throughout October there’s a photography festival in Bradford entitled Ways of Looking. As part of the opening weekend, the National Media Museum was hosting an informal talk with Donovan Wylie to accompany the Outposts, his current exhibition at the museum.
I knew of Wylie through his appearance in The genius of photography, although I must say I wasn’t really familiar with his work beyond Watchtowers, and even this wasn’t a particularly in depth knowledge. However, this meant I could go in there with an open mind and listen to what he had to say without any preformed ideas. Interestingly, I also started to form ideas of what this current set of photographs would look like, based upon what he was saying.
Wylie started by giving a brief description of his background and why he thinks this led him to photography. To be honest, I think he fits a fairly typical mould for a photographer - a bit of a loner who didn’t quite fit in (in his case, the offspring of a mixed catholic/protestant marriage in NI), and who found the camera as being a way to express his own world, although he did say that from picking up a camera at age 11, for 2 years he didn’t put film in it...
One thing that certainly came across during the talk was his preference of the book as being the finished article, a view I share with him - his first experience of photobooks being Walker Evans which he said he loved for its simplicity. From here he learnt to look rather than just photograph, although as a result of looking more, he didn’t “see” as much, so he had to consciously stop looking and let things just happen for a while... Yes, thinking about things too much can stifle all creativity. His first photobook he produced was 32 Counties, using an idea I’d like to work with at some point - it’s a collaboration with a number of writers, and I find this quite intriguing.
Wylie was quite candid about the crisis he suffered when accepted by Magnum - he’d never had much of a formal exposure to photography, beyond of course his Walker Evans book and his photography o-level. By the sounds of it, Martin Parr’s extensive book collection, and his help and advice, came to the rescue. Now that’s a mentor I wouldn’t mind, just the access to his thousands of photobooks would be awesome...
Moving on to his “military” projects, it’s quite telling that it’s all about surveillance and control. The photographs of the Maze are very objective, and apparently the book gives the structure to how this surveillance and control is achieved - there was only a few images in the exhibition later, and apparently as a full collection they’re very hard to exhibit. The actual images seen later were interesting, very much reminding me of an old computer game in that they were very square and I could easily imagine stepping from one to the next in search of whatever the computer quest was... But in each image there was a watchtower, fences and motion detectors. There is no doubt that the Maze facilitated the monitoring of the inmates.
Watchtowers, the series I mentioned before are also deadpan, and in true Becher fashion, photographed in the same systematic, manner - from exactly level in a helicopter. A typology of structures that, as he explained, were actually transient and have been taken down, much as the Maze prison has been. This transience of architectural forms is another theme running through his work. These structures are designed to be put up and down quickly, whilst also being capable of taking a good deal of punishment - it’s no coincidence that military enclaves are called “camps” these days, and he is picking up on this temporary nature.
In Outposts, again there’s the idea of surveilling all before you. He spoke of the difficulties in photographing this series - everything was rushed so as not to get shot, or to minimise potential exposure as he was standing atop various ridges to take the photographs. The images themselves are interesting on several counts, and one of the first things that I noticed was that they didn’t look entirely like I was imagining - close, but not exactly. OK, not a bad thing perhaps, but one of the first things I did notice was that the sky of the first image (and many subsequent ones) was almost completely featureless almost-white and covered 50% of the image. When I first started working with TAOP, I hated this, and I’m still not a huge fan. Back then though, I would bin a pic for that reason. But now, I’m finding it really noticeable how many photographers have this featureless sky - a few month ago I commented on this with the Spero exhibition, also at NMM. I think the big thing here though is that it commands so much of the frame. It does work though, it reinforces the expanse of land that the outpost is looking over. It also questions how effective this surveillance could be, because of the poor atmospheric conditions, although it must be said, I would expect the military to be using some electrickery, rather than just the naked eye...
The poor atmospheric conditions also had another effect - the mountains in the background looked completely desaturated, especially noticeable because the foreground ran up to the middle of the frame and then above this point, there is no colour (the foreground, being sand, was shades of brown). It looked like it could be the sort of thing that could be done in Photoshop by the uneducated, but I really don’t think this was the case - he’d be putting his reputation on the line if it was!
Something else that interested me was the scale of the images, they were all large, maybe a metre or so across. And this was after he declared his love and preferred media of the book. I didn’t look through the book, but perhaps something would be lost, his Hasselblad (at least, that’s what he used on Watchtowers) captures huge amounts of information that can be seen at this scale - farmers and their sheep for example. I can’t help feeling these would pass unnoticed in a normal sized book.
Finally, he mentioned his earlier book Scrapbook during his talk. In this, he collected visual information about his local community, and put it into a design that was not intended to remain - again it is transient. This sounds like a fascinating project, and with my YOP work in mind, I’ve ordered a copy of Amazon. I’ve not actually seen it, but I’m sure it will help me pull things together...
I knew of Wylie through his appearance in The genius of photography, although I must say I wasn’t really familiar with his work beyond Watchtowers, and even this wasn’t a particularly in depth knowledge. However, this meant I could go in there with an open mind and listen to what he had to say without any preformed ideas. Interestingly, I also started to form ideas of what this current set of photographs would look like, based upon what he was saying.
Wylie started by giving a brief description of his background and why he thinks this led him to photography. To be honest, I think he fits a fairly typical mould for a photographer - a bit of a loner who didn’t quite fit in (in his case, the offspring of a mixed catholic/protestant marriage in NI), and who found the camera as being a way to express his own world, although he did say that from picking up a camera at age 11, for 2 years he didn’t put film in it...
One thing that certainly came across during the talk was his preference of the book as being the finished article, a view I share with him - his first experience of photobooks being Walker Evans which he said he loved for its simplicity. From here he learnt to look rather than just photograph, although as a result of looking more, he didn’t “see” as much, so he had to consciously stop looking and let things just happen for a while... Yes, thinking about things too much can stifle all creativity. His first photobook he produced was 32 Counties, using an idea I’d like to work with at some point - it’s a collaboration with a number of writers, and I find this quite intriguing.
Wylie was quite candid about the crisis he suffered when accepted by Magnum - he’d never had much of a formal exposure to photography, beyond of course his Walker Evans book and his photography o-level. By the sounds of it, Martin Parr’s extensive book collection, and his help and advice, came to the rescue. Now that’s a mentor I wouldn’t mind, just the access to his thousands of photobooks would be awesome...
Moving on to his “military” projects, it’s quite telling that it’s all about surveillance and control. The photographs of the Maze are very objective, and apparently the book gives the structure to how this surveillance and control is achieved - there was only a few images in the exhibition later, and apparently as a full collection they’re very hard to exhibit. The actual images seen later were interesting, very much reminding me of an old computer game in that they were very square and I could easily imagine stepping from one to the next in search of whatever the computer quest was... But in each image there was a watchtower, fences and motion detectors. There is no doubt that the Maze facilitated the monitoring of the inmates.
Watchtowers, the series I mentioned before are also deadpan, and in true Becher fashion, photographed in the same systematic, manner - from exactly level in a helicopter. A typology of structures that, as he explained, were actually transient and have been taken down, much as the Maze prison has been. This transience of architectural forms is another theme running through his work. These structures are designed to be put up and down quickly, whilst also being capable of taking a good deal of punishment - it’s no coincidence that military enclaves are called “camps” these days, and he is picking up on this temporary nature.
In Outposts, again there’s the idea of surveilling all before you. He spoke of the difficulties in photographing this series - everything was rushed so as not to get shot, or to minimise potential exposure as he was standing atop various ridges to take the photographs. The images themselves are interesting on several counts, and one of the first things that I noticed was that they didn’t look entirely like I was imagining - close, but not exactly. OK, not a bad thing perhaps, but one of the first things I did notice was that the sky of the first image (and many subsequent ones) was almost completely featureless almost-white and covered 50% of the image. When I first started working with TAOP, I hated this, and I’m still not a huge fan. Back then though, I would bin a pic for that reason. But now, I’m finding it really noticeable how many photographers have this featureless sky - a few month ago I commented on this with the Spero exhibition, also at NMM. I think the big thing here though is that it commands so much of the frame. It does work though, it reinforces the expanse of land that the outpost is looking over. It also questions how effective this surveillance could be, because of the poor atmospheric conditions, although it must be said, I would expect the military to be using some electrickery, rather than just the naked eye...
The poor atmospheric conditions also had another effect - the mountains in the background looked completely desaturated, especially noticeable because the foreground ran up to the middle of the frame and then above this point, there is no colour (the foreground, being sand, was shades of brown). It looked like it could be the sort of thing that could be done in Photoshop by the uneducated, but I really don’t think this was the case - he’d be putting his reputation on the line if it was!
Something else that interested me was the scale of the images, they were all large, maybe a metre or so across. And this was after he declared his love and preferred media of the book. I didn’t look through the book, but perhaps something would be lost, his Hasselblad (at least, that’s what he used on Watchtowers) captures huge amounts of information that can be seen at this scale - farmers and their sheep for example. I can’t help feeling these would pass unnoticed in a normal sized book.
Finally, he mentioned his earlier book Scrapbook during his talk. In this, he collected visual information about his local community, and put it into a design that was not intended to remain - again it is transient. This sounds like a fascinating project, and with my YOP work in mind, I’ve ordered a copy of Amazon. I’ve not actually seen it, but I’m sure it will help me pull things together...