Research Task – Francesca Woodman

Part 3 introduces us to Francesca Woodman, an American photographer whose work extensively incorporated self-portraiture.  This is not the first time that Woodman has been discussed since beginning this degree course.  In Expressing Your Vision, she was introduced to me during the feedback on assignment 5 [1] because my theme had been self-portraiture.  She was interesting to me because she used her body, often nude, as a contextual element in a broader story without really making the literal connection with the viewer that it was self-portraiture.  Her story was tragic, committing suicide in her early twenties which has been the external context that many people have used since to explain her photographs.   In the course notes, we are presented with S Bright’s quotation:

“It is difficult not to read Woodman’s many self-portraits – she produced over five hundred during her short lifetime – as alluding to a troubled state of mind.  She committed suicide at the age of twenty-two”

In my previous work, I raised the question of whether this common interpretation was accurate.  Woodman’s parents have subsequently denied that she was a consistently sad person [2], which seems at odds with her premature death.  However, mania is now a more recognised mental illness that affect millions of people worldwide (some 46m cases alone in 2017)[3].   If we separate Woodman’s suicide and perception of her mental state from her work and try not to use it as contextual information, her photographs for me take on a different feeling.    Consider the two images below:

Here we have one of Woodman’s nudes, shot in an abandoned house in Providence where she frequently worked.  The unusual composition focuses on the imprint of a body in the dust on the floor, which is clearly female and assumed to be the artist; an actual figure is seen in the top right hand corner of the frame.  For me, the image describes the fleeting trace of a woman in a place where the slow passage of time is clear.  The inclusion of the actual figure suggests observing the impact that one makes on the world in a physical sense while the brightly exposed dust contrasting with the imprint suggests conflict between us and our environment.  The fact that the figure is that of a nude woman further emphasises the contrast by introducing beauty but also vulnerability in the pose.  For me, as a photograph on its own this doesn’t lend itself to Bright’s analysis of Woodman’s mental state but does suggest that she saw human life and that of femininity to be fleeting when compared to the environment around us.

This image for me does support the statement made by Bright.  Here we have the artist kneeling over a mirror looking up into the camera.  She is nude from the waist down and at first glance, this photograph has an erotic sense to it.  The young woman kneeling in an almost yogic pose in a way that would normally result in us seeing her nudity reflected in the glass.  However, her arm obscures any view of her which creates a sense of playfulness and almost teasing.  It’s when we look into Woodman’s eyes that the narrative changes.  Her expression for me is one of sad resignation rather than erotic invitation.  For me, the image tells the story of the way that Woodman feels that people look at her.  There is an intrusiveness to the pose with very little to hide her modesty.  The position of her hands and knees is more submission than eroticism and the way that she looks at the camera suggests someone who is suffering from the feelings of being exposed.   Mirrors featured heavily in Woodman’s work (I looked at another image in EYV that suggested that she had a view of herself that contrasted with how others saw her).  To this end, what I take from this image is a relationship to Woodman’s fragility even when I try to ignore the knowledge of her tragic demise.  This remains one of my favourite of her images, perhaps because it sums up a struggle with mental illness and self-perception with a combination of subtle and conflicting contextual references.

In terms of supporting evidence of Bright’s comment, I think that the retrospective analysis of her work after her death has done a great deal to drive the narrative of her life.  Her photographs range from the playful (Me and my Roommate, Boulder, 1976) to the darker Untitled, Rome, 1977-78 in which she is shown hanging from a door frame in a crucifixion pose.  Her images suggest contrast between young and old, beauty and ugliness and to feminine exploitation, but if we didn’t know how her life ended I’m not convinced that we can interpret her as disturbed without that external context.

Elina Brotherus

The work of Elina Brotherus takes as similar form to Woodman’s in that she frequently uses her nude body as a contextual element in her photographs.   In her work Model Studies, she builds a series of photographs that explore the relationship between the artist and the model as two separate people, despite her being in both roles.  She uses light, colour and the natural world to draw the viewer in to looking more thoughtfully at her body and how it relates to her environment.  Like Woodman, she uses long exposure and contrasts her subject from the background using mirrors and other props.  What I immediately noticed about the series was the lack of actual contact between artist and model; even in the shots where she is looking at the camera, there is no obvious connection.  Brotherus herself refers to it on her website[6], claiming the detachment to be inviting the viewer to look on the figure without anything that could be interpreted as confrontational.  The series is beautifully shot with the themes of ‘everyday beauty’ and vulnerability standing out for me.  There is also a humour in several of the images, where the single physical connection between artist and model is the remote trigger cable for her camera.  Rather than trying to hide it, Brotherus reminds the viewer that she is both people.

The second series we are directed to is Annunciation, which is much more like the storytelling that we’ve looked at so far.  It tells the story of the Brotherus’ unsuccessful attempts at becoming pregnant through IVF treatment.  This is a tragic series, dominated by images of Brotherus and her partner seemingly waiting for good news that looks unlikely to come.  A combination of empty spaces with Brotherus staring blankly into space, create the sense of loneliness and isolation, but not just for her but also her partner who appears as a helpless actor in the story.  The series blends other context too in the form of a calendar for 2008, a message note left on a blank wall and a collection of rubber bath ducks signifying parents and a child.   One of the most powerful images for me is also one of the simplest.

Here we have Brotherus clearly very upset, looking away from the camera as if to someone else in the room.  This photograph actually made me cry as the contextual elements and its position in the series reinforce the utter frustration and sadness that often accompanies something like fertility treatment.  Her nudity suggests a woman desperate to be a mother and the absence of a child in the image, which would tend to a more conventional visual of motherhood is for me, the most powerful part of the photograph.  The combination of her expression and tears asks “why me?” and suggests clearly that the news has been bad.  I loved this series for the linear and non-linear elements to the story-telling.  The use of props along with her relationship work perfectly.   Brotherus followed up this series with another called Carpe Fucking Diem in 2016.  This story documents her realisation and acceptance that she would not become a mother.  Her photographs for this series tackle the themes of life going on, the natural attempts to improve fertility and the realisation that it’s a futile effort as well as a defiant lashing out at the rest of the world who seemingly can have children.  She uses strong metaphors like a snow-covered children’s horse ride and a bowl of rotten tomatoes that invoke a sense of finality to both the dream and the biology.  She uses her partner again, but this time including a child substitute in the form of a small puppy.    While this work still has a sadness, it’s title and some of the more defiant images describe someone who is regaining strength and humour after this miserable series of events.  My favourite image of the collection is shown below:

This image shows a defiant Brotherus who, by her own admission abandoned the preconception of having to act like an adult following her unsuccessful attempts to become a mother.  Her expression and gesture as well as the title, inject a dark humour to the image, which is included towards the end of the series and part of her re-evaluation of the future.

Gillian Wearing

The final artist presented in Project 1 is Gillian Wearing.  Her series Album is a remarkable piece of work whose origins may be in photography in terms of the reference images, but the execution also incorporates sculpture.  Wearing used reference photographs from her family album to create latex masks.  She then used the masks to ‘become’ her family members, photographing herself in similar poses to the original.  What is special for me about this work, apart from the technical challenge, is the way that Wearing connects with her family.  The study of historical pictures and then the painstaking act of ‘becoming’ points strongly to how our families are the origins of who we are.  By deliberately leaving traces in the photographs that indicate that it is her, Wearing plays on the viewer’s double-take and subsequent questioning about genetic similarity.  My favourite from the series is described in an interview Wearing gave to The Guardian[9] where she ‘became’ her brother using a snapshot from their growing up. The double take is even stronger with the conflict of gender as well as the carefully staged setting making it difficult to age the photograph.

It resonated with me because of the strong family resemblance between my father and I, which I’ve been reminded of throughout my life.  That reminder had a variety of impacts and reactions through my growing up, ranging from not understanding through teenage resentment to more recent pride in my later life.  The thing that struck me about the telltale signs in Wearing’s photograph is the fact that while we look like and are shaped by our families, we are not copies of them.  I tried to capture this in Assignment 5 of EYV with the image below:

Conclusion

This project has dealt with the works of three very different artists.  Woodman and Brotherus share some similarities at face value, but Brotherus’ work feels more of a focused set of stories that are perhaps more obvious than Woodman’s.   Woodman has been associated with physical and mental frailty in some quarters and strong feminist expression in others, but we cannot really be certain of her intention for her art.

“Am I in the picture? Am I getting in or out of it? I could be a ghost, an animal or a dead body, not just this girl standing on the corner?” – Francesca Woodman

When I first read this quote, my immediate reaction was that it was a deliberately obscure explanation of her intent, leaving the viewer with any interpretation that they wished for.  We know that too much space to create narrative can be problematic in the appreciation of the photograph, so why even say it?  On reflection, I think that Woodman was actually being all of those things at the same time.  Perhaps her emotional state oscillated between these self-images; we will never really know.  With Brotherus, her projects feel much more signposted without the narrative being spoiled by the more obvious contextual elements.  She uses her body very deliberately in a completely non-sexual and non-sensual way, something that cannot be said about some of Woodman’s work.  Brotherus is the central element of her stories, but using her body and sense of self-image as a mere tool to strengthen the feelings around the subject.  It is rare for an image to prove a tearful response in me, but the shot from Annunciation did just that.

In contrast to the other two, Wearing’s series was using the sense of self but also disguise.  Her strong connection to her family is reinforced by the dedication shown to create the photographs, while the questions raised about family genetics and how people are shaped by their growing up are also powerful.

There are definitely some interesting perspectives here that will help with my preparation for Assignment 3.

References

[1] Fletcher R, 2020, “Looking at Contemporary Portrait Artists”, EYV Blog Post, https://wordpress.com/post/richardfletcherphotography.photo.blog/1420

[2] Cooke R, 2014, “Searching for the real Francesca Woodman”, The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/aug/31/searching-for-the-real-francesca-woodman

[3] Ritchie H & Roser M, 2018, “Mental Health”, Our World in Data webpage, https://ourworldindata.org/mental-health

[4] Johnson K, 2012, “Exposing the Body, Baring the Soul”, The New York Times, https://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/16/arts/design/francesca-woodman-at-guggenheim-museum.html

[5] Artist Profile, 2016, “Francesca Woodman”, ND Magazine, http://ndmagazine.net/photographer/francesca-woodman/

[6] Brotherus E, 2008, “Model Studies”, Artist Website,  http://www.elinabrotherus.com/photography#/model-studies/

[7] Brotherus E, 2012, “Annunciation”, Artist Website, http://www.elinabrotherus.com/photography#/annonciation/

[8] Brotherus, E, 2016, “Carpe Fucking Diem”, Artist Website, http://www.elinabrotherus.com/photography#/carpe-fucking-diem/

[9] Unknown, 2012, “Gillian Wearing takeover:behind the mask – the self-portraits, The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2012/mar/27/gillian-wearing-takeover-mask

Introduction

For most of my life I have seen photography as a medium for capturing visual memories.  My early photographs were all snapshots of a moment I was experiencing, whether a family event, holiday or school trip.  Little care or attention was taken in how they were framed or to the lighting conditions, as I wasn’t skilled in any of the technical aspects of the craft.  Latterly through, my studies with OCA and through researching the works of Parr, Goldin and others, I’ve appreciated the difference between capturing my own memories and evoking them in others.  If I show my past photographs to other people, they may well react in some way, but it’s not really explored through their engagement with the image or in any way by my design.  With the artists I’ve looked at, there is something relatable in some cases and shocking in others, but the thing they have in common is that they allow the viewer to make up their own mind as to what the image means.  In this course unit, documentary series’, such as Lixenburg’s Imperial Courts that we studied earlier  [2], show us things that we have no personal references to, but seek to tell an informed story about the important issues of people’s lives whether they be socio-economic or cultural.  Along with the literal and perhaps obvious, they leave room for a narrative to be created, the contextual elements being visual, but often using metaphor.

Metaphor

an expression, often found in literature, that describes a person or object by referring to something that is considered to have similar characteristics to that person or object, Cambridge English Dictionary [1]

Metaphor wasn’t something I was really familiar with outside of its meaning in the English language.  In exploring how a visual medium like photography can be metaphorical, I’ve begun to let my imagination run more wildly than before.  Visual cues are still needed, but I’ve really started to work hard to move away from the literal signposting of my earlier work.  As I prepare for Assignment 2, the course notes lead me to how other students and artists have approached photographing the unseen.  We are presented with two case studies.

Two Case Studies

Peter Mansell

Mansell suffered a major spinal injury when he was as younger man and the interview with him in the notes explores how his photography evolved to tell the hidden story of the effect of his disability on his life.   What I found interesting in his answers to the interview questions was how he had started in a similar way to me; photography as a technical competence for creating visually appealing images.  His studies too started with the need to meet a brief and evolved into story-telling through photographing whatever had metaphorical meaning.  Mansell’s realisation that the subject matter itself wasn’t the point of the photograph hasn’t happened with me yet; I still struggle to pull away from stating the obvious using what is in the frame.

In his later work for his MA degree, Mansell tells a story of his life as it is now [3].  Factual and matter-of-fact in the way it is presented, Paralysis Unseen: Pictures and Words deals with the unseen management of Peter’s condition, the way the obvious impacts are missed by those who are not experiencing something similar and how his outlook on life is impacted by his environment.  The two images that struck me from the series are shown below:

In ‘My Kit’, Mansell arranges the equipment he needs to function in the world in an almost forensic layout of photographs.  The items are a variety of shapes and sizes and Mansell links them together with a single measuring ruler in the same position in each frame.  The sense of order needed to prepare to be in the world as a disabled person is overwhelming.  The factual presentation shows that it’s something that has to happen almost automatically, but the complexity of the gathering of equipment is the unseen element. I have no concept of how difficult this is to manage, but find myself asking how Peter doesn’t forget something important.  Does it come naturally after all these years or is he facing risk to his life everyday?

In ‘My Street’, duplicated images of the front of two houses are shown.  However, Peter has manipulated the second image to include signage that we might expect to see on any street or facility while out and about.  Here Peter’s unseen element of the implied restrictions on his movement comes through. It suggests that this is the mental appraisal of his environment as he moves through it.  The No Entry area with the clear step up into the porch of the house is a telling sign of how people in wheelchairs must feel when they realise that they cannot get into a space.  It also serves as a message about the lack of consideration shown by able-bodied people to those with physical disability.  Later in the series, there is an image of a disabled parking space sign set against a beautiful landscape.  The title is ‘Your rules’, which I interpret as a protest against being told where  the disabled can be parked so that they can look at the view but not be part of it.

I really loved this series of images.  Mansell’s developed skill at metaphorically suggesting a story is something I aspire to as I work through this course.

Dewald Botha – Ring Road

The series Ring Road deals with a very modern struggle for people who live in urban areas.  Botha had the challenge of fitting into a different culture as well as the contrast of his new, chaotic environment to what he was used to previously.  His use of photography as a documentary tool while looking for places to escape his busy environment, is something I’ve done when I’m under significant pressure.  Walking with the camera and looking for things that interest me has always been a way of relaxing.  What Botha has done here though, is to take a physical object that represents his difficulties and sense of isolation and use it to explore his reaction to his new life in terms of limitations and loneliness.  I found this series to be very thought provoking.  Botha uses the ring road to frame his photographs as well as be a key visual element.  The outside world peaks through the darkness created by the bridges of the road and he frequently contrasts the natural world with the man-made.  The two images that struck me from the series are shown below:

In this photograph, the ever-present road cuts across the frame while the structure of the bridge dominates.  The small amount of natural light that enters the scene contrasts with the very oppressive man-made structures.  Nature is taking back some of the space with the tree going from the concrete, but the gloom is overwhelming.  The metaphor for me is that there may be glimmers of hope beyond the limitation of the experience, almost a sense of ‘don’t give up, it’ll all get better’.  The inclusion of the pipe that runs from the ground up around the structure and out of the frame suggests potential escape from these limitations.

In this photograph, the relentlessness of the road is still present but now we also have the opposite feeling to the previous frame.  The building works that are represented by the scaffolding suggest a narrative where the road is getting bigger and potential worse. The light in the shot is subdued as to hide the natural world.  In contrast to the previous image, this photograph evokes a sense of depression in me rather than optimism.

This series had as great an impact on me as Mansell’s work in that the images describe the mixture of emotions that Botha was experiencing through a much more visually connected series.  The light and composition are similar from shot to shot, with more traditional styles being used.  However, while they have consistent elements (the road, the contrast between the manmade and natural worlds, the sense of restriction etc), the feelings evoked by the series as we move through them vary considerably.  I find myself unable to see the series as a linear sequence in that it’s not obvious to me when my emotional reaction changes.

Conclusion

I’ve enjoyed looking at these two different artists.  Their work definitely captures and represents the unseen and although both deal with personal struggle, their approach is very different.  Where Mansell includes himself in some shots and uses digital manipulation to add the visual pointers to disability, Botha uses just one of the sources of his struggle in what appears to be, but isn’t an obvious way.  Botha’s narrative of isolation, difference and the effect on his sense of self comes through even though there is not physical reference to him or any other human being.

I am about to start Assignment 2 – Photographing the Unseen, so this has given me a great deal to think about.  I want to combine words with the images as with Mansell, but want to represent my subject with what appears to be completely unrelated or disconnected.  It will be an interesting challenge.

References

[1] Unknown, ‘Meaning of Metaphor in English’, Dictionary Definition, Cambridge English Dictionary, https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/metaphor

[2] Fletcher, R, 2020, “Case Study – Dana Lixenburg – Imperial Courts”, OCA Context & Narrative blog post, https://wordpress.com/post/richardfletcherphotography.photo.blog/2043

[3], Mansell, P, 2016, “Paralysis Unseen: Pictures and Words”, Artist Website, https://petermansell.weebly.com

[4], Botha, D, 2013, “Ring Road”, Artist Website, https://www.dewaldbotha.net/ring-road.html

 

Introduction

While completing Exercise 3 of Part 2, I received feedback on my submission for Assignment 1 from my tutor.  For a variety of reasons, there was a delay in having the one to one call with her which allowed me to progress with the work in Part 2 in the meantime.  Generally, the feedback was positive about how I’d approached the assignment, whose brief was to tell two sides of a story.  I had chosen the effects of lockdown, making the assertion that it would have a positive impact on society overall and then using the images to both support and contradict that position.   The resulting set were said to work, but that they were perhaps a little limited in the perspectives that I’d shot from and lighting that I’d used.  The images were shot during the most severe conditions of the lockdown, where only short periods of exercise were allowed and, mercifully we had a spell of bright, sunny weather.  Nevertheless, this was the first thing that I needed to address when embarking on this assignment.  I could not afford to lose the balance of technical skill (light) and freeform creativity (my tutor referred to it as ‘experimentation through the viewfinder’, which perfectly describes it) because I’m trying to tell a story of something that is not obvious imagery.    The second piece of feedback that resonated with me was how the titles that I added to the pictures didn’t really emphasise the subject and hence, served to steer the viewer rather than enhance the message.  Since progressing to Part 2, I’ve learned about the use of text more specifically to enhance the narrative of the series and how that differs greatly from signposting the viewer to its heart.   For Assignment 2, where the brief is to photograph the unseen, I needed to think about how the text might support the series more as Barthes’ relay rather than anchor if I was to use it more effectively.  The images also needed to be more metaphorical than literal, something that engineers find a little difficult generally; reasoning being firmly entrenched in the latter.

Further Research

As well as looking at the case studies in Project 3 [1], my tutor suggested a number of photographer’s works to look at before starting Assignment 2.  These were Chloe Matthews, Michelle Sank and Anna Fox, all of which have created powerful documentary series of interesting, but not necessarily obvious subjects.

Chloe Matthews – Shot at Dawn (2014)

Shot at Dawn was a commissioned work to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Great War 1914 to 1918.  Matthews’ choice of subject was one that had remained largely hidden and not discussed for most of the intervening century; the men of the British, French and Belgian armies who were executed for desertion.  In her treatment of the subject, Matthews elected to research the cases of a number of these soldiers, many of whom are now recognised to have suffered from severe mental trauma on the frontline, but at the time were considered cowards.  She used the historical records of the executions to identify the locations  and visited them at the approximate time of year and day that they took place.  Like Seawright, Matthews’s images are of features of the landscape that in some cases retain a link to the history of the events, but in others are seemingly unrelated to anything having happened there.  However, with the addition of the factual detail of the execution from the records, which often was simply the date, time and location, they take on a more powerful meaning.  I was directed at this work in response to the comment by my tutor about the use of the same period of the day in my Assignment 1.  By making the time of day part of her work, Matthews creates a sense of sombre reflection in her series, which takes the viewer back to the day of the execution.  She also shot the series on medium format film, making use of the response of the film stock to bring out the colour temperature of the early morning sunrise.  When interviewed about the series [2], Matthews added that the narrative of the series could be seen as broader than the victims of the firing squads, instead including the men who were tasked to pull the trigger.   They had been suddenly asked to pause in their fighting of the enemy and instead kill one of their own.  Even though this is an unsaid aspect of the work, the sombre feel to the photographs really evokes that sense of awful duality of the role of the soldier of that time.

My favourite image from the series is one of a street corner in Antwerp.

 The image contrasts the architecture of the old town with the newer post-war developments, shot at around the end of the blue hour, when the sun is just about to rise above the horizon.  In itself, the image is aesthetically pleasing, but when the supporting text is added, it becomes much more poignant.  The text reads:

Walem, Mechelen, Vlaanderen, Antwerpen

time unknown / date 21.09.1914

Soldaat Jean Raes

Soldaat Alphonse Verdickt

When I look at these together, I’m struck by the beauty of the cobbled street and the corner of the building, but also the terrible sadness that two soldiers, undoubtedly young men, were killed so early in a war that would rage across Europe for the next 4 years. A mixture of the photograph, the text and my own knowledge of the Great War, come together in this work to create the narrative.

Michelle Sank – Portraits from a Distance (2020)

The next photographer was Michelle Sank who like many, found herself in isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic.  Her situation was made worse by the fact that she had to ‘shield’, which effectively meant that she had to also be isolated from her loved ones.   Sank decided to document how the people in her local area were coping with lockdown by shooting portraits of them in their space.  As the distancing rules prevented her from getting close to here subjects, the portraits take on their own situational aesthetic because of the physical distance between them.  Sank was also limited in the time during which she could shoot her project, as the government instructions were to spend just one hour exercising outside.  When I first looked at this series, I was immediately struck by the similarity in the conditions that Sank was under to my own project for Assignment 1.  The obvious differences were that I was focussed on the dual interpretations of COVID lockdown, with the virus at the centre of the story being told.  Sank’s work was more a document of the unseen coping of the people she encountered when out walking.  She shot her series as pairs of images, one of the person in some everyday context (walking the dog, looking after children etc) and the other being a more static image of their surroundings.  The pairing produces a view of the ordinary (the environment) and the extraordinary (the people) which creates the narrative.  Here are people going about their lives under unprecedented, difficult times which can be seen alongside the seemingly unchanged environment in which they live. Sank adds text to her images to describe what her subjects are experiencing but I quickly realised that we could simply view them with the time and date captions that Sank uses as titles.  My favourite example is shown below:

Here we have a young man holding a hedge trimmer, standing in front of a half finished hedge.  The paired image is of an untidy front garden and window with a picture of Christ fixed to it.   The photograph contains references to the natural world with the greenery and the man’s machine for controlling its growth.  The religious iconography speaks to the love in the house, but there is something not quite right about the stance and expression of the man.  When we look at the text that goes with the picture.

“Kyle has cystic fibrosis. His job is in a packing warehouse, but as he is very vulnerable he cannot be at work. His mother said they had moved down to this area in the South West as it was better for his health. I remarked that he looked very well and he said that his mother makes sure to look after him and prepare healthy food. He felt frustrated at the moment with the lack of structure in his life because of the virus, and didn’t know when he could return to work”

Now the photographs have a new dimension to them.  The love and care is there, but now we know it’s his mother looking after a boy with a disability.  The greenery now takes on the notion that moving to the area would help with his health and the serious nature of his expression is perhaps a response to the lockdown affecting the normality of his life.   This image appealed to me because of the careful composition of both photographs and how they leave enough clues for the viewer to create the narrative.  The addition of the text offers some adjustment to the assumptions that I had as a viewer, but didn’t change my narrative completely.

I really like this series as my tutor suggested this was a way to look at how a story can be told with common and contrasting elements.  The underlying theme for the series is perhaps not as established as in Matthew’s Shot at Dawn, i.e. the subject is the more broad in its documentary of COVID-19 and the impact on people’s lives, but I think the power of the series comes from the fact that it was created by a photographer who was experiencing her own hardships in lockdown.

Anna Fox –  My Mother’s Cupboards and My Father’s Words (1999)

The final photographer that was suggested to me was Anna Fox.  She had created two works that made some of the points in my tutor’s feedback.  The first was My Mother’s Cupboards and My Father’s Words.  Described as a “an unusual story about family relationships”[5], the series pairs the violent verbal outbursts of Fox’s father as he suffered from serious illness at the end of his life, with seemingly ordinary images of her mother’s neatly organised cupboards.  The contrast of the two components is immediate; the obvious struggle to maintain some order in the face of someone threatening you and the sense that the comments are so outrageous that it can only be from an ill person.  With this series, the imagery is very similar from cupboard to cupboard but there are lots of subtle references to help create the narrative.  My personal favourite is shown below:

Here we have the threat of throwing Fox’s mother down an old well that he regretted removing.  The words are harrowing but in the context of a frail old man, faintly ridiculous.  What is most powerful is the picture of the chair.  It is stored in its own cupboard and looks like a children’s high chair at first glance.  For me, the immediate narrative created by both components is ‘witch trial’.  Medieval history tells us that witches were something feared by all God-fearing people and their detection and destruction was a serious activity across the UK.  Detection often included dropping the accused into a river to test for them being a witch; a floating woman was guilty and subsequently executed, while a drowned woman was innocent (and dead).  This juxtaposition of an ordinary household item and the threat of something almost medieval is very powerful in this series and is one of many subtle but strong story elements.

What I found interesting about this series is that the links between the photographs are more explicit than in the other two described previously.  The way that Matthews took her photographs at the approximate time and date of the executions links her series together and has the added visual anchor of the light being very similar in each shot.  In Sank’s work, the links are more subtle in the time of day and environment.  She had the same challenge that I did with Assignment 1, where the government sanctioned exercise of the time limited the radius of the area that could be covered on foot.  In my case, I found myself walking in the afternoon after work and because of the weather at the time, the sunlight was pretty much the same in every picture.   In Fox’s series, however the link is really obvious in the shooting of the cupboards.  It feels as though the pictures were snapshots of her mother’s cupboards for a simple record; all shot with flash and all tight compositions so that nothing else is visible other than the contents.  This snapshot style really drives home the simple order of her mother’s life without using any clever technical techniques to get the point across.  What makes the series really powerful is that the banality of the subject is raised up by the conflicting aggression of her father’s words.

The second Fox series Work Stations was shot in the 1980s and is focused on the financial trading industry that was central to the ‘yuppie’ culture of the time.  Here we have a series of photographs shot in a similar style as her other series; brightly lit and using flash.  It’s not really a surprise as Fox studied under Martin Parr, who is well known for his candid shots of people living their lives while being watched almost voyeuristically by the photographer.  In Work Stations, Fox combines the imagery with quotations from people in the business, which have a sense of the motivational quotes that were also popular at the time.  My personal favourite is shown below:

What I love about this photograph is the simplicity of the subject.  The space has no people in it and the only real visual reference is the sign on the door that indicates it is a women’s toilet.  The caption beneath reads.

“Typical working situation, female workers rabbitting away”, Company Manager

For me, the brilliance of this is the layers of narrative that the combination introduces when the two elements are brought together.  The first thing that struck me was that there were probably women in the toilet gossiping in some way.  Otherwise, they are likely to be behind the slightly open door.  However, the big impact on me (being a child of the 1970s) is the attitude to women in the workplace during the 1980s.  The image is both satirical and a statement of how ridiculous a notion it is that female workers are somehow more chatty and by implication, less focused than their male colleagues.  This image takes on new meaning with the passing of time.  Fox shot it during the 1980s, so it is most likely a subliminal protest, which has moved more to parody in the 2000s.  The rest of the series portrays the financial traders as being hard working, ruthless and hard partying men with their own sense of self importance.  Again, the whole series has shifted in meaning with the passing of time.  Since the 2008 financial crash, the finance industry has been regarded with more suspicion, derision and more closely monitored than in the heyday of the yuppies.  As well as parody, the series provokes a sense of disgust when I look at it.  I was reminded of the mixed feelings of fun and disgust I experienced when I first saw Scorsese’s Wolf of Wall Street a few years ago.  The combination of pompous quotes and indulged trading staff is certainly a powerful one.

Conclusion

What I’ve learned from this research is that a series of photographs that tell a story, needn’t be obvious in the way it goes about it.  Bringing all of the elements of Part 2 together is one thing, but the key message of leaving enough room to create the narrative is the most important learning.  All three of these artists have chosen something strong to base the series on and then backed away from the obvious.  My natural tendency has been to think of a message and then find an element that can easily be interpreted as that message.  Fox’s combination of a high chair and the words that went with it, was the best example I’ve seen of just letting the viewer run with it.  In my case, my interest in history led me to witchcraft trials and the medieval treatment of women by men who had some sort of problem with them.  Fox’s other example of the women’s toilet door further emphasised to me that simple compositions of open spaces with the smallest symbolic component can also be really powerful when combined with the right words.

In terms of Assignment 2, my ideas are revolving around things I am really interested in that are completely unseen.  Where I felt that Exercise 3 was still too signposted despite my best efforts, I am determined to be completely open-minded in my selection of subjects for the assignment.

References

[1] Fletcher, R, 2020, “Part 2 – Project 3 – Photographing the Unseen”, Context and Narrative, <insert link>

[2] O’Hagen, S, 2014, “Shot by their own side”, The Guardian, https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/video/2014/jun/29/chloe-dewe-mathews-shot-at-dawn-first-world-war-video

[3] Matthews, C, 2014, “Shot at Dawn”, image resource, http://shotatdawn.photography/work/

[4] Sank, M, 2020, “Portraits from a Distance”, Wellcome Collection, https://wellcomecollection.org/articles/Xsd98hAAACIAhct_

[5] Unknown, 2020, “Anna Fox – Anna Fox. My Mother’s Cupboards and My Father’s Words. The Hyman Collection website, http://www.britishphotography.org/artists/15795/ei/1916/anna-fox-anna-fox-my-mothers-cupboards-and-my-fathers-words-1999

[6] Fox, A, 1988, “Work Stations”, The Hyman Collection website, http://www.britishphotography.org/artists/15795/ei/1170/anna-fox-anna-fox-work-stations-1987-88

 

The Brief

The aim of this exercise (and Assignment 2) is to encourage you to develop metaphorical and visceral interpretations rather than obvious and literal ones, to give a sense of something rather than a record of it.

Choose a poem that resonates with you and then interpret it through photographs. Don’t attempt to describe the poem but instead give a sense of the feeling of the poem and the essence that it exudes. Start by reading the poem a few times (perhaps aloud) and making a note of the feelings and ideas it promotes, how you respond to it, what it means to you and the mental images it raises in your mind.

Next, think about how you’re going to interpret this visually and not down your ideas in your learning log.

You may choose to develop this idea into creating a short series of images reflecting your personal response to the poem (or another poem). Write some reflective notes about how you would move the above exercise on. The number of pictures you choose to produce for the exercises and assignments in the course, including this one, is up to you.Initial thoughts

The Exercise

Poetry isn’t an artistic medium that I’ve been interested in or appreciative of in the past. At school it felt like a chore rather than something to emotionally react to or enjoy in some way.  Throughout my life, though there has been one poem that has resonated with me whenever I’ve heard it read aloud or seen it written down. That poem is ‘ Do Not go Gentle into that Good Night’ by Dylan Thomas. It has always provoked strong emotions and visuals in my interpretation, even if I’ve never really studied it. My first thought was to use this poem for the exercise.

The Poem

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

The poem is written as a plea to Thomas’ dying father to not give  up on his life and quietly accept death. The  stanzas build by describing how men from all walks of life do not simply give up, irrespective of their achievements or character traits. Thomas’s final comment to his father is that he prays that he too will fight for every last moment of life before the inevitable happens.

When first reading the poem, the language used points to obvious emotions if interpreted literally. “Rage, rage against the dying of the light’ evokes the sense of anger at oncoming darkness. The pain of “Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray” comes through clearly also, with the final plea suggesting that the end is near for his father. However, when I read the lines a few times, I got sense of Thomas comforting his father and found myself wondering which one of the men described in the stanzas he best identified with. Perhaps Thomas was trying to ease his father’s anxiety about dying by pointing out that it wasn’t his fault, but that he should hang on to every last moment of life and savour it. So, for me, the themes I believe I should pick out for my interpretation are as follows:

Anger – even disregarding the use of ‘rage’, there is a sense of frustration about the way the poem flows. When Dylan read the poem for a recording by the BBC [1] not long before his own death, his use of volume and pitch further emphasise the frustration that he shouldn’t really have to tell his father these things. Perhaps the anger element is something we all recognise as we get older and our parents become less the role models they once were.

Love – almost hand in hand with the anger is the clear love he had for his father. Thomas’ father had a great appreciation for his son’s poetry and regretted not having pursued the same sort of path in his own life[2]

Fight – the determination to not go quietly. The idea that we can stretch time to get the most from it through our own will. This is one of the reasons the poem resonates with me and is likely to be the subject of my Assignment 2. For many years I have suffered with my mental health and the determination to get better coupled with the support from my loved ones, gradually brought me out of the depression. The determination was to enjoy life rather than be afraid of it.

Time – the poem dwells on the end of a story, in this case the life of Thomas’ father. The sense of the passing of time is very evident in the build up of the stanzas with Thomas describing the lives of the different men, all with the end in common.

Potential Subjects and Ideas

For emotions, there are plenty of different subject types that I can include. During EYV there were a number of times where I looked to capture emotion but they were more literal than interpreted. For this exercise, I am considering the emotional trace left after an event in a similar way to the documentary work of Meyerowitz in Part 1. Subjects need not include people to convey emotion, so I will be looking at inanimate objects that evoke emotion as well as subjects that we project our emotional reactions onto, e.g. pets or family heirlooms.

Determination and fight are slightly different from Anger and Love as there is unseen intent to interpret with the photographs. Determination in a literal sense could be a visual involving a challenge such as sport or some form of competition. However, I want determination to be much more subtly implied in the pictures, so the struggle could be more cryptic in its representation, such as the struggle to overcome loss or economic problems.

For Time, I’m considering the how we react to how time passes, whether recognising it for what it is or trying to mitigate for the effects of it. 

I’ve always thought that human beings express their emotions using certain body language.  In Expressing Your Vision, I focused one of the assignments on the way that we read the expressions of eyes.  I learned a lot about observation during that assignment as the photographs were shot as I talked to my subjects.   In this series, I wanted to incorporate body language into the image in someway to help create the sense of emotion that the poem invokes.  As we interact with world with our hands more than most other parts of the body, I chose to shoot use hands as a linking element in the set.   The primary consideration was not to be too literal in my interpretation of the text. 

The Images

Analysis

With this set, I’ve been very conscious of not wanting to ‘read out the poem’ through the images themselves.  This presented me with a really big challenge in the first instance because, while I’ve appreciate the metaphorical works of Seawright [3], Campbell [4] and Boothroyd [5], my natural instinct is to be literal.  I think this explains my stopping at 7 photographs – it was more about struggling with inspiration than 

My aims for this series were to portray the emotions that I encounter when reading Thomas’ poem through the use of hands.  I wanted to avoid the series being sequential and ‘signposting’ the viewer to the story I was trying to tell.  The following is an analysis of the themes I intended to get across for the poem and an appraisal of how successful I was through the questions posed in the course notes.

One

This image was intended to evoke the sense of fight, with the tattooed knuckles being traditionally associated with the punk era of the 1970s. In this case, the text is different, with ‘life’ being the fight instead of ‘love’ or ‘hate’ and the combination of the gesture of the hand, signals a focus of fighting an unseen assailant.  The final element is the red shirt, which is intended to be one of rage or passion.

Two

This photograph was intended to be more representative of the feeling of a dying light in a more literal way.  The dying embers of the fire are deliberately bokeh, while the hand is only lit by the dying light.  The way the hand is stretching toward the light signifies the desire to have the light as it dies.  Now, instead of the theme of raging against the light in the poem, the feeling is one of wanting to hang on. 

Three

This image plays on the stanza that talks about wise men.  The poem discusses the quiet nature of the contribution of wise men contrasted with the fact that they do not simply acquiesce to the end of their lives.  What I tried to create here was the sense of the learned man, or writer.  The pen gives the sense of success in life, but the word being written suggests ‘hold’.  I used this word because of the many possibilities of what would follow it.  Hold on, hold tight, hold together – any of these suggest the urge to simply stop something, perhaps worrying about life or perhaps an instruction to death to stay back.  The use of the hashtag is intended to signify the wider reaches of whatever is being stopped, deliberately used because of its modern connotations. 

Four

This shot was intended to pick up on the theme of living, or burning and blazing as a repeated theme throughout the poem.  I wanted to light the flower but not the hands to suggest that there is something burning what we should hold onto.  The underexposure is deliberately forcing the viewer to look at the brightness of the flower.  Set against a neutral grey background, the flower is the the focal point, but the shape of the hands in clasping prayer also signal the desire to hang on to the brightness.

Five

With this image, I was trying to emphasise the passing of time but also the feeling of not being finished.  Thomas’ poem is written for his father at the end of his life, so I wanted to portray a sense of ageing while not being ready for the end.  This image of my wife’s hand signifies the incomplete through the unfinished fingernails and the indecision in choosing a lipstick colour.  The sense of not finished comes through against the feeling of applying makeup as being a cover-up, perhaps of ageing. 

Six

With this photograph, I wanted to play with the idea of wild behaviour as in the third stanza of the poem.  The unfinished wine and position of the hand from the bottom part of the frame suggest some form of celebration or self destruction is taking place.  The use of the television and its message suggests the party is over, but the determination of the hand reaching up with the remote control could suggest either acceptance of fate or the raging against the end of the programme. I only noticed after the shot that the additional choice on the screen of moving on or going back might suggest regret as well as acceptance of what comes next.

Seven

The final image in the series is supposed to convey love and the pain of loss.  Where Thomas was speaking to his dying father, I am cradling a portrait of my late mother that was taken when she was a teenager.  The pose and position of the portrait in the image is supposed to signify the love and longing I still have for my mother, despite it being a quarter of a century since I lost her.  The juxtaposition with the text on the t-shirt is a little signposted, but further emphasises the power of loss.  In the poem, Thomas pleads with his father not to go gently to his death, while my interpretation is more of past memory.  They both have the strong emotion of love as the centre of their narrative.

Conclusion

My overall conclusion from this exercise is that telling the ‘story’ of something like a poem without actually re-telling the text is a real challenge to me.  I don’t naturally think or speak in metaphor and it’s not really a language tool that I have used much in my career.  Engineers tend to use simile much more in their explanation of a technical problem to a student or third party.  In the case of the poem I chose, the photographs in the series do conjure the emotions and sentiments I was looking for.  

In answer to the questions posed in the notes:-

1. Are the images repeating themselves? Are there three versions of the same picture for example?  Can you take two out?
2. Does each image give a different point of view or emphasise a point you want to make?
3. Do the images sit well together visually?
4. Have you given the viewer enough information?  Would another picture help?

The series doesn’t have any images that repeat themselves, probably because I had seen this question as part of the brief.  I consciously avoid taking too many shots, which has been raised as part of the feedback to my recent Assignment 1.  Perhaps if I had shot more from different perspectives, I would have had repeats.  However, I had planned this exercise carefully around the themes mentioned previously, so that risk was reduced. I am happy that the images all convey differing points of view, although I am aware that the messages in the images are a little too obvious in places.  Again, I recently received the feedback on Assignment 1 that my use of text was a little too prescriptive (anchor) than supportive (relay) and that the viewer is signposted to what the series is about.  Although I haven’t included the poem text specifically with the images, I realise that the themes are probably a little too obvious as to be interesting.

Visually, I was trying something different.  The images were simple in composition and clearly staged.  However, I wanted them to have a certain feel of dimming light to them, which is why the exposures use soft natural light in addition to the LED key lighting that I’ve favoured over flash recently.   I do believe that each image contains enough information in more layers than I am used to shooting, to get the messages across.  However, I struggled for ideas by naturally limiting myself subconsciously to the more literal interpretation over the metaphorical.  This resulted in my running out of ideas for the series sooner than I would have expected.  Feedback on my first assignment pointed out that I hadn’t really experimented with the subject and composition, which has happened here also. 

Key Learning Points

From this exercise, I’ve learned that I need to think more laterally than with the traditional subject portraying the message.  The photographers I have studied thus far have been working metaphorically with text used to add context rather than lend weight to what is in front of the viewer.  My mind works logically and sequentially, so this is a significant challenge for me ahead of Assignment 2.  

In addition, I’ve subconsciously built in rules before I started the series (using hands, being too literal etc), which stifles the freedom to go with how the text makes me feel.  My approach to the exercise was perhaps too robotic, which I think comes through in the images.

In conclusion, I think the timing of this exercise and the feedback I’ve received from my tutor means that I have something very different in mind for Assignment 2. 

References

[1] 2011, “Dylan Thomas reads “Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night”, blogaboutpoetry, Youtube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mRec3VbH3w

[2] Robinson, A, 2019, “Full Expert Analysis: “Do not go gentle into that good night” by Dylan Thomas”, PrepScholar blog, https://blog.prepscholar.com/do-not-go-gentle-into-that-good-night-meaning-dylan-thomas

[3] 2014, “Catalyst:Paul Seawright”, https://vimeo.com/76940827

[4] Campbell, B, 2011, “The Dad Project, Artist Website, http://www.brionycampbell.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/The_Dad_Project_Briony_Campbell.pdf

[5] Boothroyd, S, 2012, “Disrupted Vision”, Artist’s Website, http://sharonboothroyd.com/index.php?/disrupted-vision/