The Brief

“When somebody sees something and experiences it – that’s when art happens” – Hans-Peter Feldman

If photography is an event then looking at photography should also be an event.   Look again at Henri Cartier-Bresson’s photograph Behind Gare Saint Lazare in Part Three. Is there a single element in the image that you could say is the pivotal point to which the eye returns again and again? What information does this point contain? Remember that a point is not a shape.  It may be a place or an discontinuity – a gap.  The most important thing is to try not to guess the ‘right answer’ but to make a creative response, to articulate your ‘personal voice’.

Include a short response to Behind Gare Saint-Lazare in your learning log.  You can be as imaginative as you like. In order to contextualise your discussion, you might want to include one or two of you own shots and you may wish to refer to Rinko Kawauchi’s photograph mentioned previously or the Theatres series by Hiroshi Sugimoto discussed in Part Three.  Write about 300 words.

The Photograph

Response

Cartier-Bresson’s Behind Gare Saint-Lazare is the image that he is perhaps most famous for.  His concept of Decisive Moment is rightly described and appreciated through this photograph, where by his own admission he had not observed the leaping man.

When we examine the elements in the image, there are several that give us information about the scene, in stark contrast to the Kauwauchi’s frog photograph that I discussed in Project 2 [1].  The scene has some symmetry in the way the features of the railway yard are reflected in the perfectly still water.  There is a man looking further into the depth of the image through another set of railings in a similar way to Cartier-Bresson himself.  Intriguingly we do not know what he is looking at, in a similar way to Manuel Àveres Bravo’s Daughter of the Dancers, 1933.  The whole setting is untidy, almost run-down but functional with the detritus in the foreground and the battered poster attached to the railing. When we look closely at the poster, there is an image of a circus performer called Railowsky in similar pose to the leaping man.

When I look at the image, the element that I continue to return to is the closeness of the man to the water that he is trying to jump over.  I keep coming back to that point beneath his foot as I continue to question why he left the relative safety of the ladder to jump and whether he had realised that he would ultimately end up getting wet anyway.   It would be easy to consider the decisive moment here as the ‘pivotal point’ in the picture.  After all, Cartier-Bresson’s timing is perfect and the image’s impact is more about that than the fact that it was accidental.  My conclusion is that the pivotal point of the image is actually the ‘passing the point of no return’.  As suggested by Berger [2], the next frame of the story would likely have us witnessing a man cursing his own stupidity.  Or perhaps he had some kind of emergency that made him leap or maybe he was just inspired by the poster in the background.  We have no way of knowing that made the man commit to the leap, only that he did and that there was no going back.

References

[1] Fletcher, R, 2019, “5) Project 2 – Improbable Images”, Expressing your Vision blog post

[2] Berger, J, 1972, ‘Ways of Seeing”, Penguin Books.

 

Introduction

During a recent call with my tutor, we discussed how my attitude to photography has changed over the first four parts of Expressing Your Vision.  I had already identified a theme running through my assignment work around ‘revelation’; starting with the history of a Yorkshire village, through human emotions and the humour in some decisive moments and on to the illumination of dark places.  My concern during the conversation was around whether my natural tendancy to ‘reveal’ was a genuine photographic voice or whether I was just being technically ‘clever’ in some way.  My question was “am I on the right track with this?” .  The conversation with my tutor was very helpful in establishing where I was in my photographic development.  Being an engineer meant that I could quickly grasp the technical aspects of photography and once I have the subject, represent it in the way the I intended.  However, my artistic voice was less prominent, but increasing in confidence throughout the course.  My tutor challenged me to think about how my experience differs from that of other professions and how easy or hard it might be for one person to do another’s job and vice versa.  If an artist could find engineering a steep learning curve, is it a surprise for the reverse to be the case?   In the final exercise of Part 4, I started to let photography be influenced by other life experience and observation, rather than ‘I think that would make an interesting photograph’.

In considering Part 5, I find myself presented with the camera as an instrument as we discussed in Part 1.  However, this time the camera captures an encounter between photographer and subject, not just as a window on a scene but a connection between the two parties.  When thinking about Alexia Clorinda’s quotation about measurement:

“I don’t pretend that I can describe the ‘other’.  The camera for me is more a meter the measures the distance between myself and the other.  It’s about the encounter between myself and the other; it’s not about the other” – Alexia Clorinda

I can relate to this in a way that I probably couldn’t before this course.  Clorinda is saying that she isn’t using the camera to describe or capture the subject, more to ‘measure’ the encounter between her and the subject.  Naturally, the use of words like ‘measure’ and ‘distance’ suggest the physical property that we can define using focus or depth of field, but the meaning here is about the relationship.  I’m reminded of the research in What Matters is to Look [1], where Aim Deulle Lu​ski was placing multi-aperture cameras in the centre of the scene he wanted to photograph.  He was trying to describe life in a unique way, by making the camera part of the scene rather than a passive viewer.  However, what wasn’t strong in his work was the connection between the artist and the scene.   I then realised that the personal connection that Clorinda refers to is often created by simply viewing.  Her work Morocco from Below [2] describes the political aftermath of the so-called Arab Spring, a period of uprising in the Middle East.  The ruling family in Morocco promised change, which was interpreted by some as a campaign to convince the rest of the world rather than help the people.  The mixture of uprising and consensus among the people was the basis for the series, which Clorinda observed by walking the streets of the major cities.  Clorinda herself describes the work as reportage, but when we look at the images, the personal connection is clearer than any narrative.  In most of the shots, there is eye contact between Clorinda and at least one of her subjects, which is a tricky prospect when taking photographs in a muslim country.  My own experiences in Morocco were that many people get angry when being photographed by a tourist as there is the belief that the image is removing their soul.  When I look at the people in Clorinda’s work, I feel the connection between them first and then gather information on context from the rest of the frame.

My initial conclusion is that photographs can describe more than what is in the frame by drawing attention to the subject in the context of the frame.  The camera is the instrument that describes the why, rather than the what in a way that is visualised by the photographer.  If you have no camera, the experience or connection remains memory which can evolve over time or change when described by the possessor.  I experienced something recently that lends itself to this theory.   While walking into town with my wife, we saw a pigeon chick walking along the pathway in front of us.  It had clearly fallen a long way from a nest above the road, but was developed enough to land on the pavement without being injured.  It walked slowly along the pavement alongside the wall that retained the hillside, clearly lost.  As it encountered each drainage hole in the wall, it peered into it to see if there was a way back to the nest.  During its walk, it repeatedly called out for help.  We watched for a couple of minutes as it made it’s lonely procession along the pathway and it was one of the saddest things I’ve ever seen.  For many years, I’ve had a powerful fear of loss so the scene playing out before me made a strong connection.  On this occasion, my instinct was to rescue the bird which is what we did; returning it to the area in the trees close to where it’s nest was. While I had a camera with me, I didn’t use it to measure the distance between us.  The memory, which is still very strong in its sadness now only exists in my wife and I and trying to describe it to others is very difficult.  The expression “you had to be there” takes on its true meaning.  Had I photographed the bird in a way that revealed our connection, that image could have provoked a response in other viewers.

My reaction to this event and Clorinda’s work prompted me to look into the role of the photographer, something that Azoulay discusses.  In her essay Unlearning Imperial Rights to Take (Photographs) [3], Azoulay describes how the initial promulgation of photography meant that parts of the world that had never encountered the medium were suddenly the subject of a photographers work.  She describes this as being akin to cheap labour.  The publications of the time were clamouring for images, regardless of the subject, context or any emotional narrative that might be at play.  The relationship between photographer and subject changed as the medium became more popular and the challenges of taking pictures that had perceived value became harder.  The photographer now found themselves as a broker or middle-man between the world and the media.  With the recent advances in social media and availability of cameras, everyone who addresses others through photographs can now become what Azoulay describes as a citizen of photography[3].  For me, the photographer has the same thoughts, feelings and emotions as their subjects so the connections made in a composition are more dynamic and frequent now than they have ever been.  Collectively, they make an image that provokes relatable and contradictory emotions in the viewer in the same way that other artists capture the imagination.  As uncomfortable as it may seem, the camera can both connect and disconnect, attract or repel the subject and viewer which is likely unnoticed when taking a selfie, but is much more important when trying to draw attention to what is an important message.

References

[1], Fletcher, R, 2019, “What Matters is to Look”, Expressing Your Vision Blog Post.

[2] Clorinda, A, 2013, “Morocco from Below”, alexia clorinda morocco from below

[3] Azoulay, A, 2018, Unlearning Imperial Rights to Take (Photographs), https://www.fotomuseum.ch/en/explore/still-searching/articles/155338_unlearning_imperial_rights_to_take_photographs

How does a photograph contain information?

In starting this project, my first concern was what appeared to be a generalisation that photographs are all somehow informative.  The quotation by Flusser further suggests a quest to inform through ‘improbable’ images that offer something new.  My instinctive reaction to the quotation when I first read it was “Do I do that?”  When we consider the meaning of the words ‘information’ and ‘improbable’, the quotation makes more sense.

It would appear then that Flusser was referring to the creative process of ‘informing’ the viewer about the subject, but in a way that isn’t quite real or believable.  We have learned already how the context of an image can change the perceived meaning, but when we consider the internal context, that is what is present in the image, we have the ability to shape the meaning further through information or even disinformation.   In the course notes [1], the statement that a well exposed photograph contains more information than one that is under or over exposed is certainly true when considering an image as a technical achievement.  The way that light is represented on the ‘sensor’, whether film or electronic is the something that we strive to do with camera skill, but this achievement has little to do with the information that the photographer is trying to impart in the photograph.  The amount of information about the subject is completely under the control of the photographer, but whether or not that is what the viewer chooses to ‘consume’ is something that is again a potential contradiction.  In their blog article on information [2], the Oxford English Dictionary describe themselves as a vast source of information made more readily available by the internet age.  With all of this information to hand, their top searches for word meanings always include the word ‘fuck’; perhaps then, people’s interest in titivating swearwords means that they are more likely to consume that than what else is on offer.  The article also quotes President Obama as saying ‘information is a distraction’, which points to the way that the message cam be lost in amongst other information.  When we consider the technical use of depth of focus in photography, we can use a large aperture coupled with a long focal length to pick out the subject from the background.  It follows then that photographers can use their technical skill to control the risk of information distraction or overload.   I have found in my photography that landscapes are the biggest challenge to me, because I am striving to describe the beauty of something that I am seeing within the vista in front of me.  However, the usual convention for landscape photography is to include as much detail about every element as possible.  An example of this can be seen below.

This photograph was shot during my recent holiday in California.  It’s pretty conventional in terms of composition with leading lines, rule of thirds etc.  It was also shot at a fairly small aperture at f/11 to preserve detail throughout the depth of the image.  However, what I wanted to convey was the hazy California light and how the mountainous regions are almost always blanketed in a fine mist (or just plain fog).  The challenge is emphasising that without losing the rest of the detail of what is a typical paradise beach on that coastline.  There is nothing about the image that is unreal or improbable, it is just factual.

Less is More

When we look at Kawauchi’s work in her book Illuminance, we are presented with what at first glance looks like minimal information about the subject.  Overexposure and colour saturation create the improbability, but when we look closer, the information that is needed to create that sense is there but just concentrated.   The shot below from her book is my favourite image from the book.

Here we have a very small frog sitting on a hand.  The image is made surreal by the use of shallow depth of field and overexposure to remove the details from the hand and the background   The information, though is the scale and detail of the frog which creates the sense that this tiny creature is lost in its surroundings.  What we know is that it has clearly been picked up by a human hand, but where did it take place?  Without any external context, my initial interpretation is a slightly uncomfortable sensation that the frog has been held for the ubiquitous ‘holiday snap’ in the wild.  The hand, while gently providing a platform for the frog to sit on is that of a much larger and more powerful creature. In my interpretation the image is impactful, sad and almost unreal, but the context could equally be that the frog is an exotic pet that the owner clearly cares about.  The key point is that the information doesn’t have to be vast and detailed to create the context and provoke a reaction.

In Flusser’s Towards a Philosophy of Photography, he discusses the difference between the way we read text and how we look at photographs, the suggestion being that the former is linear and the latter, more of an ‘orbit’.  This theory reminded me of when, as a teenager, I read the original version of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.  Published in 1818, it was beautiful crafted, certainly using language and sentence structure that I wasn’t familiar with at the time.  Shelley also used embedded narrative to structure the story, where a number of characters and the writer herself assume the role of narrator.  The book unfolds with these viewpoints layered and interconnected, which requires ‘care’ when reading.   What I mean by ‘care’ is that important information can easily be missed if the reader is not concentrating.  My experience was that I would have to re-read some passages and even sentences to ensure that I was following the plot this, perhaps the most original horror story ever written.   Surely this is at odds with Flusser’s assertion that we don’t re-read?  In fact, it supports his notion that we consume the words linearly enough to understand what they are saying, where his comment about re-visiting photographic information is very different.   In this case, the viewer returns to the information either to gain further understanding or simply because it is what provokes the biggest reaction.   It could be that the information is not understood or that it is somehow unbelievable or improbable; the continued re-visiting being some way of trying to make sense of it.

As I’ve mentioned previously, my favourite street photograph is Joel Meyerowitz’s Paris France, 1967 because it has always appealed to me.

Looking at the photograph again, the context that I interpret comes from the information in the image.  The man lying on the ground with the hammer-carrying man standing over him and the public looking on.  The scene is clearly of the 1960s time period which presents as familiar but somehow different to someone like me who is in their mid-forties.   When I view this photograph, I keep coming back to the expression on the face of ‘hammer man’.  Is it shock at an unfortunate fall?  Or concern? Or is it the anger of an aggressor?  Meyerowitz considers this to be his greatest photograph and has been reluctant to give any information that supports any contexts.  For me, this certainly preserves the mystery of the photograph and means that I never tire of looking at it every morning (I have a print on my bedroom wall).

We can use this photograph to support the idea that John Berger discussed [4].  In his book, Berger describes the painting as presenting everything in a single moment to the viewer and it being their attention to each element that allows them to draw some form of conclusion.  He contrasts the single frame to a moving picture film where the instant now has time added to it.  The next image on the film strip will have different information that the viewer needs to consume quickly in and in sequence, in the same way as the written word.  For a single image, then this return to the photographs for new information has an almost a cumulative effect on our interpretation of the subject.  When it comes to the improbable, this can be an instant reaction as it was when I first saw Paris France, 1967.   Surely the man could not attack someone in broad daylight.  What happened in the instant after the event?  Did the man help the other up because it was a mere tumble in the street or was he arrested?  What part did Meyerowitz himself play in the scene that followed?  If it had been a movie, we would simply have to wait for the answer.  Like Berger’s comment that ‘paintings are often reproduced with words around them’, the photographer can choose to do the same or provide nothing to support or contradict the perceived context.  What they have is a toolkit to make the believable unbelievable with a single 2-dimensional view of the world.

References

[1] University of the Creative Arts, Expressing Your Vision Course Notes page 108.

The Brief

Select an image by any photographer of your choice and take a photograph in response to it.  You can respond in any way you like to the whole image or part of it, but you must be explicit in your notes what it is that you’re responding to.  Is it a stylistic device such as John Davies’ high viewpoint or Chris Steele Perkins’ juxtapositions?  Is it an idea such as the decisive moment?  Is it an approach, such as intention – creating a fully authored image rather than discovering the world through the viewfinder?

Add the original photograph together with your response to your learning log.  Which of the three types of information discussed by Barrett provides the context in this case?  Take your time writing your response because you’ll submit the relevant part of your learning log as part of Assignment Five.

Introduction

I began considering the concept of context as the ideas for Assignment 5 started to form, effectively working this exercise concurrently.  Reading Barrett’s article begins to make sense of the other side of our response to a photograph from the initial emotional reaction.  In all forms of learning about what is presented to us, we naturally consider any supporting information that might explain it, so it should be no surprise that we do the same analysis of context when we look at a picture.   We are brought up believing that ‘a picture tells a thousand words’, without considering how those words became the truth in the first place.  

When looking at the example of Dosineau’s ‘At the Cafe’, it is clear to see how the different contexts arose for the image.  In terms of internal context, we have the couple seated at the bar with a number of wine glasses in front of them.  There is an obvious age difference and the way they are related to each other in the frame points to a conversation being led by the man; the woman’s expression is fairly impassive but she appears to be listening.  If we ignore the external context, leaving that to the simple MoMA title of ‘Robert Doisneau At the Café, Chez Fraysse, Rue de Seine, Paris 1958′, the original context is a portrait image with the focal point being the woman.  She is both in focus and positioned in the upper left third intersection in the frame.  The man is slightly out of focus, making him secondary to her in terms of what we should look at.    When I first looked at this image, I found it difficult to see the cafe culture as the only element  that pointed toward it was the inclusion of the wine glasses and the way she was touching them.  I didn’t see the temperance context either, as neither appears to be suffering as a result of alcohol despite the presence of the glasses.  The context I noted was the newspaper’s topic of prostitution, primarily because of he being clearly older and her being apparently disinterested.  Interestingly, I showed the image to my wife while writing and without having read Barrett, she instantly concluded that the man was trying to pick up the woman and that she was not interested.  She was going on internal context alone, in the absence of the other two interpretations.

My Selection 

My selected image was the untitled self-portrait by Vivian Maier (below), a photographer that I first became aware of in 2012 during a visit to the Chicago History Museum.  The story of how she was discovered through her belongings being purchased at a storage sale, is well documented.  However, when I first saw this image set in New York it was while watching the documentary film ‘Finding Vivian Maier’, by John Maloof who is the current owner of her estate.

My Response

My Response

My idea for Assignment 5 was in support of my thread of ‘revelation’ that has run through Expressing Your Vision from the beginning, a series of self portraits.  The series would reveal the more intimate aspects of who I am as opposed to a simple documentary style.  One of the photographers that epitomised self discovery in an ironic way, was Vivian Maier.  I chose her self portrait not only because of what is contained in the frame but how she has been ‘presented’ as a person since the accidental discovery of her work.  Considering the internal context of the image to begin with, we have a subject who is reflected in the glass of a shop window but is not looking at herself.  Her old Rolleiflex camera has a chimney viewfinder, that is one where the photographer looks down into it, so the absence of any connection with the camera or herself in the shot fascinated me.  The rest of the frame contains the bustle of New York City going about its business around Maier as she stands impassively before the window.   The square format of a 6×6 camera like the Rolleiflex is notoriously difficult to use when composing an image as using the ‘rules’ that have evolved with photography, means that the space around the subject can be more limited than the 35mm format.  Maier has made the photograph about her but managed to include enough background elements to set the scene.   When considering the external context of the image, Maier is presented in almost every narrative as being a loner; a quiet and observational woman who took many photographs that remained either private or completely unseen for decades.  The fact that picture is called ‘Untitled’ further emphasises the point that we know nothing about her intent with the image and therefore the mystery of her photography.   My interpretation of the image is of a woman who is trying to announce her presence in the world but not being entirely successful.  The lack of engagement with the viewer and ghostly appearance caused by the reflection were the things I first noticed about the image.  When considering the original context,  the image is a straight-forward reflection of the photographer with some additional elements that describe her environment.  Of the three pieces of information, this is actually the one that inspired me to make my picture.

My image is part of a series of ten shot for Assignment 5 and it was the connection between the subject (me) and the setting (the record shop) that was my intention when I made the photograph.  I was trying to bring my love of photography, in particular using film, and my love of music together in one picture.  The series explores me and my often serious or thoughtful outlook from different aspects of my life, so Maier’s impassive expression in her image was a perfect mirror of my own feelings.  I’ve never been comfortable being centre of attention, which meant that the intent of this photograph was to join the dots of the elements for the series, while being its distant architect.  My response to Maier then, is a combination of the external context surrounding the photographer and how she placed herself in the picture (the internal context).  Although I own a Rolleiflex similar to hers, I used a more modern medium format camera from my collection to preserve the contemporary setting.  The other notable differences with my image are that I am looking into the scene as if looking through the shop window and use of a deeper depth of focus to preserve the details of the shop itself.

Conclusion

The introduction of context and the way we interpret photographs has significantly changed the way I look at photographs.  During this course, we have explored the emotional response to an image, asked questions about the what is in the frame, captured slices of time and created narratives for them and also noticed elements that were not part of the original inspiration for the shot.  The fact that a photograph can be appropriated for different purposes by changing context is both powerful in deriving meaning but also inspiring other photographs.  More than simple plagiarism, I’ve realised that the homage is more of a tribute to the meaning of the image.  In the case of this Maier shot, I sought to use my interpretation of the artist to tell my own story with my shot.  I believe I achieved that not only with Nine, but with the whole series for Assignment 5.

References

[1] Image source: https://www.anothermag.com/art-photography/10721/lost-photographs-documenting-new-yorks-streets-in-the-1950s