I’ve just received tutor feedback for Assignment 1 – The non-familiar. The overall view was that my submission met the brief with a series of portraits that worked well together, were technically good and sympathetic to the subjects. There were some interesting observations and recommendations for further consideration that I will address in this post. On reflection, I am really happy with how this assignment was received by not only my tutor, but everyone else who has seen the work.
Using Text with Images
“The use of text and image is an area that can be fraught with difficulties and needs careful consideration as to how text and image will work together. There is always the danger that text will swamp the narrative within the images and will not allow the viewer an independence of interpretation when viewing the work. Everything is directed through the text rather than letting the images reveal the narrative. When reflecting upon the images you might ask how will they be interpreted without the text?”
This is a really welcome observation as when I was getting to know my subjects, I was making mental notes about their story that I then wrote up when I left the conversation. I didn’t write lengthy commentaries, but just enough to prompt the memory of our conversation when I came to write up the assignment. At this point I was thinking that I may have many ‘interviews’ with subjects, so wanted to ensure that I didn’t overlook anything important. When it came to the write-up, I selected a a few of the notes to include with the pictures. It would have been easy to have written a very clear narrative from the notes that described in great detail how the subjects used the park. Of course, the more detail the less room for manoeuvre in interpreting the theme for the images and the series. I was reminded of Paul Seawright’s comment about narrative in the previous course and how the artist should give enough context to help the viewer reach a conclusion about the work. His work Sectarian Murder was a great example of pairing text with photographs and when I revisited my research into the work[1], I could see how I was influenced in my inclusion of text with these photographs. In Seawright’s photographs, the text suggested the horrors of the Irish conflict taking place at the seemingly peaceful scenes. The inclusion of the two contexts together tells a story that each cannot when considered individually. I think that my photographs in Assignment 1 refer to the subjects back-stories through both the text and their pose/expression, but when the text is removed, the scope for interpreting the meaning of the pictures expands. I believe that I managed to stay the right side of Seawright’s comment on narrative with each short paragraph revealing just enough about the subject to ask questions about why they visit the park.
Diversity of Subjects
“A wider range of age groups would have opened up other challenges in interpretation and it would have been interesting to see the images made from such encounters. But you have commented upon the absence of diverse groups in the park and considered this an area for further investigation. Perhaps this will result in a future project?”
The second piece of feedback that resonated with me was this comment about the lack of diversity in the shots, whether in terms of age or race. This was something that I reflected on during the shoot and certainly interested me from the point of view of the questions it raised. Why was the park used predominantly by white families and the middle-aged to elderly? It was particularly interesting because it wasn’t based on the lack of diversity in the town itself. Malvern has a number of private schools, so there are many young people around. It also has a large population of people from the Middle East, which is most noted in diversity of the businesses in the town. It’s perhaps easy to see why young families would visit with the children’s playground and the ducks around the lake. The concentration of middle-aged to elderly was also obvious to me at the time as there is a ‘retirement town’ vibe to the town, mainly because of its beautiful hills and rolling fields. The lack of young people and people from other ethnic groups was a puzzle, to the extent that I had looked out for them in the weeks after completing the shoot. What was more interesting was thinking about how a more diverse group would affect the narrative for the series. Their absence already points to a social typology for a space like a park, but by including some young adults or some families from the Iranian, Indian and Turkish communities, perhaps that would replace that idea with a statement on multiculturalism. I was reminded of the German obsession with physiognomy in the late 1920s, where pseudo-scientific conclusions were reached by a person’s physical characteristics. Perhaps a series with more diversity could seek to break any pre-existing assumptions about the park and perhaps, more interestingly a series made up entirely of a different culture, age group or culture could contrast with the gentile impression of our little Victorian town. It’s something I definitely want to pursue outside of my studies as it combines both the engagement with strangers with the development of an alternative story.
Overall Conclusions
In conclusion I was very happy with the feedback given. The warning of being over-prescriptive with the addition of text was a useful insight that I will keep an eye on in future projects. The recommendation about a project on the diversity of the park visitors is something I will be looking at in the future.
Your first assignment is to make five portraits of five different people from your local area who were previously unknown to you.
You will almost certainly find it challenging to take photographs of people you don’t know; it’s often much easier to photograph somebody you’re already familiar with.This could be referred to as the ‘comfort zone’ – and for the purposes of this assignment you will be specifically required to leave it!
Leaving technical photographic considerations aside, there are a whole range of issues to deal with in making a portrait of somebody you don’t know. This additional skill set should arguably be in every photographer’s kitbag, regardless of what genre of photography they end up working in. The ability to concentrate on technical and aesthetic considerations whilst engaging with a complete stranger brings a plethora of difficulties. Added to the fact that most people aren’t that comfortable with having their photograph taken anyway, then you can see why this could become a minefield!
Just as you learn the techniques behind how your photographic equipment works, there are techniques you can learn about how to photograph people you’ve never met before. Many historical and contemporary portrait photographers have written about this and one piece of advice stands out:
Tip
If it is at all possible, spend time with your subject, getting to know them and triggering a dialogue with them, prior to even showing them your camera.
“A portrait by photography needs more collaboration between the sitter and the artist than a painted portrait. To make satisfactory portraits of persons it is necessary for me to like them, to admire them, or at least to be interested in them. It is rather curious and difficult to explain exactly, but if I dislike my subject it is sure to come out in the resulting portrait. The camera is all recording and very sensitive to the slightest graduation of expression of the personality before it. Also the impression that I make on my sitter is as important as the effect he has on me. I make friends quickly and am interested in the mental alertness of the people I meet. You can know an artist or an author, to a certain extent, from his pictures or books before you meet him in the flesh, and I always try to acquire as much of this previous information as possible before venturing in the quest of great ones.”
Alvin Langdon Coburn
Who you photograph is entirely your choice but don’t give in to the temptation to photograph people you know!
Approaching strangers can be daunting at the best of times, let alone with a camera in your hands. But it doesn’t have to be. If you are really terrified, consider asking a friend or relative to be your assistant.
You may want to explore the idea of types, thus sticking to a theme. Or the sitters could be very disparate, linked only by the fact that they come from your local area. Give consideration to this and also how and where you photograph your sitters. Bearing in mind the strategies and techniques discussed in Part One, keep your set of images consistent and choose a technique that complements your conceptual approach. For example, do you want a series of location-based portraits? Do you want the portraits to be situated inside? If so, drawing on your experience in Exercise 2, how will you select your backgrounds in order to give context?
Reflection
Before you send your work to your tutor, check it against the assessment criteria listed in the introduction to this course guide and make sure it meets all the criteria. Make your evaluation available to your tutor.
Your tutor may take a while to get back to you. Carry on with the course while you are waiting, but please don’t attempt the next assignment until you’ve received your tutor’s feedback on this one.
Reworking your assignment
Following feedback from your tutor, you may wish to rework some of your assignment, especially if you plan to submit your work for formal assessment. If you do this, make sure you reflect on what you’ve done, and why, in your learning log.
Introduction
I first read the brief for this assignment when I enrolled on the course and was looking through the material for Part 1. My initial reaction, like those of many students I would suspect, was complete terror. As the brief suggests, this idea of approaching a complete stranger for their portrait feels unnatural. In my case however, I have done this before, most notably when on holiday in Canada in 2016 [1]. On the vineyard tour, I elected to photograph the people involved rather than simply documenting the surroundings because one field of vines is very much like another. I continued this theme when I visited California in 2019, photographing the people involved in making and selling wine during each visit.
Dave and John of the Homewood Winery, California (2019)
The first issue I wanted to explore with his assignment was why did I feel that terror if I had already done something similar in the past? The first consideration was that although unknown to me, my subjects and I were introduced to each other in a transactional way. I had paid for a tour of the vineyards and they were providing a service to me. The step from engaging on the tour and asking specifically for a portrait of them was not as great as it would have been with no connection at all. Coupled with this transaction was the fact that by profession, they were used to engaging with the public and therefore most likely more comfortable with having their picture taken. I certainly remember their reactions being more ‘surprise at being asked’ than any awkwardness over the act itself. In the case of the photograph above, both men were not comfortable with being photographed initially, but by talking to them about their passion for their boutique winery they lightened up for the shot itself.
The next consideration with regard to my discomfort was related to starting conversations that turn into an opportunity to take a portrait. Since leaving my job in engineering in January, I have walked to my local park to shoot photographs of the wildlife as part of my daily morning exercise. While shooting, I am regularly approached by other visitors to the park who are curious as to what I am doing. We usually have a brief chat about the animals that I’ve seen and how they behave and then go our separate ways. If I could chat to complete strangers in this context, why was I worried about approaching on this subject? I wondered whether that kind of conversation might be the way to introduce the idea of asking for a portrait. I tested this theory with one of the people that I regularly see in the park one morning. We had been talking about the elusive kingfisher that had been spotted at the lake. After about 5 minutes, I steered the conversation around to my redundancy and photographic studies. She was really interested in what I was doing and my plans for the future, but when I brought up the subject of the assignment, her reaction was “Oh, I wouldn’t let you take my picture”. After some exploring of the reasons why, she pointed to lockdown and how it had affected her appearance. I didn’t push this conversation further, but what understood Coburn was referring to in the quotation in the brief. The camera or the idea of it being used can affect the mood of the engagement, however brief. If the effect is received positively, the relationship is built between photographer and subject and the expression should be more natural in the portrait. However if there is some tension or awkwardness between photographer and subject, the resulting image will include that to some degree. With strangers, the amount of ‘stage management’ of the portrait is significantly lower than if the subject is paid to sit or has commissioned the picture. When we looked at traditional portraiture in Part 1, this context determines how much influence both photographer and subject have over the resulting portrait, set against the other elements in the frame. For this series, there is no real choice but to build some form of relationship with the subject before thinking of how to photograph them in a meaningful way.
My Theme
The COVID-19 pandemic has made meeting people more difficult that normal. Not only have the opportunities varied through multiple lockdowns, even when allowed out people are wary of getting too close to each other. The adoption of face coverings to protect from infection have added to the difficulties in getting people talking to each other, which presented challenges with how I approached this assignment. I decided to stick with where I had encountered the most people in the past year, the park in my home town. The central theme would be the people who visit and their stories about why they visit.
Approach
I used my Nikon D4 DSLR with an 85mm f/1.4 prime lens for all of the shots. This focal length is widely regarded as ideal for portraiture owing to the depth of field and subsequent ability to isolate the subject from the background. I shot each portrait at f/8 which is the sharpness sweet spot for the lens while maintaining subject separation through relatively shallow depth of focus. At this aperture, the subjects were isolated from the background but there was sufficient ‘sharpness’ behind them to provide context.
The downside of this combination of camera and lens is the physical size, which meant that I really needed to follow the advice in the brief about not introducing it too quickly to the conversation with my subjects. I composed the photographs to allow for a 8×10 crop, which for me gives a traditional feel to the shots; this format was popular in early portraiture with the development of 4×5 and 8×10 film cameras. The only other adjustments to the images were contrast, some highlight ‘dodging’ where the lighting conditions were harsh and tweaks to the white balance.
When it came to approaching subjects, I started a conversation with them about something that we might have both observed, such as wildlife behaviour, a rapid change in the weather etc. I would then steer them around to why they come to the park and make mental notes that I wrote up after the conversation. The only other information that I asked for was their first name. I then shot a number of portraits from different angles and distances, letting the subject relax into whatever expression they wanted to give me. I was inspired to do this by the Double Take work [2] where the photographer shot two portraits on one glass plate that resulted in subtle changes to the subject’s pose or expression as they relaxed into it.
The Series – People of the Park
The Photographs
Janet
“I tend to come out on my own now as my husband can’t walk at my pace anymore”
Janet walks through the park on her morning walk. She enjoys the fresh air and exercise that she often has to get for herself as her husband suffers ill-health. She is looking forward to group exercise starting up again for the social interaction.
I met Janet when she had stopped to look at a tribute to Sarah Everard, who was murdered on her way home in London recently. I was immediately struck by the poignancy of the situation (the park was pretty much deserted) and nearly didn’t approach her for a portrait because of it. However, she was very chatty with a great sense of humour. She referring to considering herself fortunate to have worn a hat as she couldn’t yet visit the hairdresser. When she told me her story, particularly the part about her husband’s health, she did so without being melancholy but with a sense of needing to grab opportunities to take care of her own wellbeing whenever she could.
Steve
“I thought you might get around to asking me…either that or you wanted to borrow some money”
Steve has only recently started visiting the park as a change from sitting on a bench in the town centre. His routine includes buying his morning coffee and then transferring it into a rival chain’s reusable mug, which he hides in his carrier bag.
I met Steve when I sat on a nearby bench, elsewhere in the park, to drink my coffee. He was drinking out of a huge, battered reusable mug from one of the well-known café chains and delighted in telling me that he actually bought his coffee from a rival. We talked about everything from COVID vaccinations, camper vans and cricket (we are both huge fans) to music, photography and my studies. When it came to having his portrait taken, nearly an hour had passed. He chose this bench for the portrait as he felt it was a nicer background than where we were sitting.
Wendy
“I come to the park at the moment because I’m really pissed off…ooh, pardon my French”
Wendy drives to the park every day with her dog, Alf. She has a challenging job in social care and within the past few days has suffered a bereavement and one of her nephews having major heart surgery. The park gives her a chance to relax and talk to other people as she throws Alf’s ball for him to fetch.
I had said hello to Wendy and Alf a few times over the past weeks when I’d been photographing the wildlife. On this particular morning, she was very stressed about what had happened to her in the past 48 hours. What concerned her more, as she told me her story, was the need to apologise for her language which seemed the least important thing to me. We talked at length about the discomfort of asking to photograph a stranger in the current social climate. COVID and the recent fears over women and children’s safety had made people more concerned about being approached by people they don’t know in any context, but particularly when that person is carrying a camera. Wendy assured me that ‘I didn’t come across as a weirdo’, which I really appreciated.
Les
“I feel sorry for these people who only have a concrete play park with those markings for games, you know like basketball or something – we are really lucky”
Les has worked for the Malvern Hills District Council for over 20 years and he loves his job. He takes great pride in how it helps keep the park looking good throughout the year. He’s very aware of how lucky we are to have such a beautiful green space.
I met Les as he was emptying the recycling bin next to my bench. In true British tradition we started to discuss the inclement weather and how much we were looking forward to emerging from lockdown. Les had seen me in the park before and asked if I had been lucky in photographing the resident kingfisher. I said that I hadn’t, but had been enjoying the other wildlife that could be more readily seen. When I described this assignment to him, he said that he could never do that. I initially mistook this for not wanting his photograph taken, but he was actually more than happy to help as long as he could continue on his rounds while we shot the picture.
Judith
“I like all my clothes to be colour coordinated… shame about this blessed mask. Shall I remove it?”
Judith retired to Malvern 5 years ago and lives in one of the smart new retirement developments near the park. She regularly walks around the park for fresh air and exercise, taking her shooting stool with her for when she wants to pause to take in the beauty of the scenery and its wildlife.
I met Judith when I was on my way home having shot what I thought were my 5 portraits. We started chatting about her ability to stop wherever she liked with her shooting stool. She moved to after over 50 year living in Somerset and said that she loved her new home. When we got around to discussing my assignment, she cheekily suggested how people might question my motives, acknowledging the difficulty in making an approach. For her shots, she played to the camera by shaking her finger at me in a mock outrage etc. I chose this one because it reflected her wonderful sense of humour and fashion without being too obvious. As we finished, she said “Might I know your name so I that may tell everyone about this when you are famous?”
The Rejected Image
To give myself some flexibility in assembling the series, I approached 6 people for their portraits during my time in the park. The sixth image was ultimately rejected because it was a group portrait. Until that point in the work, I was considering having mixed subjects, e.g couples, families, age groups etc, to be more reflective of the variety of people who visit the park. Malvern is a culturally diverse town, but for some reason I didn’t observe many people from those different cultures out walking or sitting in the park. This is something that could have multiple reasons, which I could explore further in other portraiture series in future. When it came to approaching families, I was extremely uncomfortable. There have been some fairly high profile cases of crimes against children in the county recently and I just felt approaching them was a step too far – this of course reflects more on my insecurities than it specifically being a bad idea. When it came to couples, they were the ones who rejected the approach, perhaps as one was more uncomfortable than the other which made ‘no’ an easier response. The shot I did get though, was an encounter with a group of ladies eating cake in the sunshine.
The Merry Widows
These ladies referred to themselves as The Merry Widows and were mother, daughter and close friend. They had been visiting the park to keep each other company, walk one of their many dogs (they were dog breeders) and each cake in the sunshine. I had a great conversation with them and they were the only people that volunteered to be part of this assignment without me actually asking them. I really liked this image as it had the contextual elements that supported happy ladies enjoying their treat in the park (their smiles, the bag and coffee mug being the main ones). The added bonus of the dog that sat patiently for the shot, reminded me of a portrait of my own family that I used in Exercise 4 [4]. Although I liked this shot, it didn’t fit with the rest of the series so was rejected in favour of Steve. Not only does the latter have a single subject, it also meant that I only had one shot at this same location within the park. Over the previous course units, I had learned the benefits of being self-critical and making tough edits, so this wasn’t really an issue for me.
Reflection
This assignment has undoubtedly been difficult because of the reasons mentioned previously. The most stressful part of the experience was finding an entry into a conversation with someone, however this wasn’t as bad as I had imagined. As suggested by Coburn, the establishment of some form of relationship is crucial to setting the tone of the resulting portrait. I have learned that this is also crucial in reducing any internal tensions that photographer and subject may have that are not necessarily obvious at the outset. With Janet for example, she may have been nervous about the approaching man in a fairly deserted park first, then anxious about where our conversation started to lead. By encouraging her to tell her story, almost in a ‘chat show host’ style, we both started to relax. At one point I told her that she was much more photogenic than she might have thought, to which she replied “you really know how to say the right things, don’t you?” with a big smile on her face. In the portrait that resulted, Janet’s discomfort at posing for the camera can still be seen, but it is combined with a wistful half smile which leads the viewer to ask what she is actually thinking about. When paired with the accompanying text, we see a woman who has a lot to deal with, but takes these moments in the park to seek some peace. Janet was the first person I approached and hers is my favourite of the series because I believe I’ve represented her both physically, but also how she came across emotionally.
With the others, our conversations varied in length from the 5 minutes or so chatting to Les as he worked, to the hour with Steve. In each case, I looked for something that described them but also their experience at the time I asked them to be my subject. This part of the assignment was the most rewarding as I felt that I had met some really interesting people who shared my passion for the park, but like me also used it to escape their complex, challenging lives. When we set the series agains the context of the national lockdown, the relationships between the subjects, the park and me take on a sense of ‘thanks for noticing me’. That sense comes through strongly with Judith and Les, the former because where she was sitting was blocking a footpath which would have been potentially been merely a nuisance to other people. With the latter, though there is a feeling that Les is almost invisible to other park users as it is his place of work. On reflection, I would have liked more background context with Les’s portrait his ‘props’ work well with his expression to represent the pride he has in his job which makes up for that.
When I consider my initial thoughts on this assignment right at the beginning of Part 1, I am surprised at the outcome. I didn’t take an easy route like advertising that I needed help or using interesting-looking cameras to lure people to me. Instead, I just showed some interest in them and introduced the idea of being photographed when we were both comfortable. On reflection, this was always the best way to approach this and I am happy to have conquered my anxieties about adopting it.
Against the Assessment Criteria
Demonstration of Technical and Visual Skills
All of the images are correctly exposed, sharp and the subjects are isolated from their background through the use of the lens focal length and aperture. Visually they all have good contrast between highlight and shadow, although the shot of Wendy had very challenging lighting conditions. The adjustments in post have reduced the high contrast on her face, but I would have preferred it to have been overcast. Each portrait includes background context that suggests a park and contextual links or props that support the context that is added by the supporting text.
Quality of Outcome
The series is presented in chronological order because that suited evolution of the assignment, starting with my initially awkward encounter with Janet and concluding with my very relaxed time with Judith. I believe the engagement between photographer and subject comes through in each photograph, particularly because I asked them not to adopt a what they might consider to be a traditional pose for me. It comes through most strongly in ‘Les’ and ‘Wendy’, both of which were shot as they were doing a specific activity. I asked them to carry on as normal and only got them to look at the camera when I saw the moment I wanted to capture. With Judith and Steve, I continued our conversation and shot them when I saw a moment that best represented our encounter. In terms of balance of subject selection, I tried to include both sexes as well as varying the age group where possible. The challenge here was that during a working week, the majority of visitors to the park are retired which resulted in all of them being older than me.
Demonstration of Creativity
I believe the series works in terms of revealing the people of the park in my town. Each story is different and by including a quotation and short commentary from each subject, I believe the personal connection between them and I is stronger. Each shot has different views of the park, from the bridge over the lake (Janet) to the elegant Victorian building that serves as the council offices (Les). Although I controlled the background and composition, I left the expression to the subject but prompted reactions from them by continuing our conversations. I believe this makes each as natural as possible. Finally, as I shot the series over 3 days, I was able to shoot under a variety of light conditions, weather and temperature which meant that each portrait has a different feel to it, despite them being shot in the same environment.
Context
I was heavily influenced by series Double Take[2] and the work of Sander[3] for this series. I set out to look for subtle changes in the expressions of the subjects by reading their reaction to our conversation, much like a studio portrait photographer would do. In Double Take, I was drawn to the way that the original photographer Keith Medley, shot two images per plate which elicited changes in the sitter during the process. The way that some shots were subsequently defaced because of some technical issue makes those differences intriguing when we look beyond the damage. In my case, I didn’t make many technical mistakes but still wanted to ‘watch and shoot’ rather than simply set up something static; I believe this comes through in the photographs. With Sander’s use of props and background, I was inspired to include just enough to ask questions about the subject and then add context with the inclusion of the few lines of their story and the quote. Sander caused me to think carefully about what to include and what to leave out. For example, I wanted to include the dog lead around Wendy’s neck because it contrasted with the other context of Alf being off the lead and ‘controlled’ by her having his ball. This creates a sense that the park is a place where dogs can run freely and that Wendy didn’t really need to use the lead. With Les there was plenty of context to suggest that he emptied the bins, but that isn’t his only job. The composition contains the obvious bin references but the inclusion of his MHDC fleece jacket suggests that he is not limited to this kind of work. With Steve, I had the story of his mug and how hid it in the bag and I wanted to avoid any really obvious context, such as asking him to hold the mug, that supported that narrative. The inclusion of the carrier bag coupled with Steve’s relaxed, inclined posture creates the narrative that here is a man who’s gotten away with something.
Project 3 introduces portraiture in the context of the the photographic archive. We’ve been introduced to the archive in photographic art in the previous module. The archives studied were appropriated by artists who were not originally involved in their curation. Instead, they used the archives to describe intimate histories, whether related to collections of family portraits as in the case of Nicky Bird[1] or social history in the case of Broomberg and Chanarin [2].
Archive (noun)
“a collection of historical documents or records providing information about a place, institution, or group of people”.
Oxford Languages [3]
By definition, an archive is something that is deliberately collected by someone over a period of time. Some archives are highly ordered and managed as ‘records’ of a particular subject and some are merely a gathering of items that mean something specifically to the curator. The key learning from previous work on archives was that whether the former or latter, an archive of photographs cannot be purely objective in its representation of the subject. When a photograph is ‘taken’, the photographer’s intent, the social and cultural situation at the time and the process of producing the final image, all make the photograph subjective in meaning. In their conversation about the future of the archive, Anne Blecksmith of The Huntingdon Library, San Marino said to Tracey Schuster:
“Photography is inherently a product of its historical moment and cultural context; photographers choose, stage, and capture their images for many reasons, some of which they might not even be aware of”
Anne Blecksmith in conversation with Tracey Schuster of Getty, 2016 [4]
While we like to think about the objectivity of photographs, we know from previous work that they have individual subjectivity that is created by variety of elements. It therefore stands to reason that the creator or curator of an archive shapes what the archive is actually about.
Archive vs. Collection
A colleague of mine recently returned my copy of Finding Vivian Maier, the documentary film about the discovery and rise in importance of the work of the mysterious nanny/photographer[5]. The film tells the story of how John Maloof discovered Maier’s photographs when buying boxes of possessions from house clearance sales in 2007. Maloof ‘found’ over 100,000 photographs, negatives and even undeveloped films that were stored in a number of boxes, some with clear notes and annotations and others without. Maloof proceeded to collect as much of Maier’s work as possible and then create an archive of them. For me, this highlights the fundamental difference between a collection and an archive. Maloof was looking for historical photographs of Chicago for a research project when he bought the first box of Maier’s possessions. He became fascinated with the idea of uncovering Maier’s life through collecting more and more of her possessions, not limited to just her photographs. In trying to understand the person behind the collection of photographs, Maloof created an archive with the purpose of revealing who she was. His archive, made up of mixed media and other artefacts, tells us about Maier, but the large collection of her photographs has been archived with other purposes in mind. Maloof made the discovery (described in the film) that Maier wasn’t, as initially assumed, reluctant to show her work to other people, more that she wasn’t particularly organised when it came to editing her works into some form of collection for exhibition. Maloof has since curated an archive of her work with the specific intent to show her as a talented artist. What started as a disparate collection of photographs was now an archive who’s sole purpose was to exhibit and sell the artist’s work. Maloof has since found himself at the centre of legal challenges by Maier’s estate, which consists of the families of her friends that featured in her will and often the subjects of her photographs. Their issues with Maloof creating his own story of Maier and profiting from it have only recently been resolved, allowing for the continued promotion of her work. I believe that Maloof’s original intention was to uncover the artist, but that it quickly became more about his direction of her story than a documentary of her life.
Thinking about the Personal Archive
I started to consider my own experiences of photographic archives outside of my studies. Photography has been a significant interest in my family for many years, so naturally there have been many photographs taken over that time. Of the photographers in my family, the only professional was my Dad who ran his own business for a decade or so. A few years ago, he decided to have a clear-out of his office and offered me what he described as ‘family photographs’ he had taken throughout my growing up. What he actually gave me was all of his photographs, predominantly 35mm slides, which also included a great deal of his professional work. The interesting thing was how they were assembled as a collection. In those days, photography was all film-based and the cameras that were most commonly used were either 35mm or medium format, the latter being less popular among amateurs for economic reasons. 35mm films typically contained 24 or 36 frames per roll and when they were commercially developed, they were usually printed and packaged with the original negatives. With positive slide film the results were often mounted in plastic frames for showing with a projector onto a screen, but the same pattern was present; each package represented a window of the time taken to shoot a single roll of film. My Dad’s collection of over 2000 slides wasn’t an archive in itself, but represented two streams of time. The first was document of the family through the kinds of events where he would take his camera, e.g. holidays, birthdays, family visits etc and the second was the progression through his professional career via portraiture, model portfolios and his own art. When I thought about these two different collections, I considered the intent behind them. One of the films contained images of one of the holidays we took in France with another family we were close to and depicted us doing what one would expect, eating out, visiting local attractions, playing cards outside our tent etc. The images don’t describe the holiday as they document only a small part of the trip, much as stated by Jenkins in Project 1. However, even as a disparate collection they invoke all of the memories of that holiday for me without really telling a story. If I were to create an archive of all the photographs of our holidays, they would be part of a wider narrative, but in order to tell the story from my perspective I would be potentially editing out shots to focus on a particular aspect of the subject matter.
Mark Durdan and Ken Grant – Double Take (2013)
We are introduced to the work of Durdan and Grant, who created a series called Double Take from the archive of a commercial photographer called Keith Medley. Medley’s archive was donated to the Liverpool John Moores University by his family and contained thousands of negatives and glass plates shot in the 1950s. Double Take shows pairs of portraits that were captured on single glass plates in an effort by the photographer to save money. The fact that they are on the same plate means that they were shot very close to each other in time and when we look at them, we see the subtle differences between the poses and expressions of the sitters. Durdan and Grant saw this as being an insight into how ordinary people react to having their picture taken; the brief respite between shots being enough for either relaxation or becoming more tense. An example of a pair can be seen below:
From the series Double Take, by Durdan and Grant (2013) – image from LJMU blog [6]
Here we have a plate with two portraits of a man seated away from but looking at the camera. He is in smart dress and sports a typically 1950s hair style. In the left frame, he looks somehow nervous or uncomfortable with an almost forced expression on his face. In the time it took Medley to reposition the glass plate and shoot the second frame, the subject becomes more relaxed. Perhaps the photographer said something to him to get him to calm down or perhaps made him laugh. What we now see is a man with a smile on his face and a much more relaxed demeanour. The two frames don’t tell us much about him or about the era that he lived in, but they do show how people can shift perspective of emotion in the blink of an eye. As viewers, do we notice these subtle differences or changes in expression? How many do we miss?
Killing Negatives
The note go on to show us that Medley was a careful curator of his archive, defacing the images that he didn’t feel were good enough or had some issue that made them unusable. As Medley didn’t break up his plates, these ‘deleted’ frames still exist within the archive and Durdan and Grant use these frames as part of Double Take. The same control of the archive source material is said to have happened in the case of the Roy E Stryker, who curated the Farming Security Administration’s (FSA) images of the impact of The Great Depression. In this case, the negatives were rendered unusable by punching holes in them so that any print would include a dark circle somewhere in the frame. Emerson was manager of the project and hence controlled its narrative. Instead of defacing or ‘killing’ negatives because they were of poor quality or lacked impact, Stryker took this extreme form of editing to any image that didn’t suit the editorial. As a result, the archive that the FSA curated was very specific in what could be derived from it, but like the Medley archive the killed negatives were left as part of it. Once discovered, the printing of these ‘killed’ negatives takes on a different meaning, owing in part to the seemingly random nature of the punching of holes. A couple of examples are shown below:
Untitled, by Russell Lee (1937)[7]
Untitled, attributed to Walker Evans, reproduced as part of 3000 killed by William E Jones [8]
In the first image, we see a farmer whose face is completely obscured by the punched hole. The man’s clothing and background suggest an agricultural worker or farmer clearly enough. Like Sander, the background showing a weather-beaten wooden wall indicates that this is a man who is not wealthy or anything other than working class. We would be right to question why Stryker censored this image in this way. Although we will never know because of the act of killing the negative, I suspect that the farmer was smiling in the original picture. Stryker may well have seen this expression as not lending itself to the narrative of the apocalyptic impact of the depression on the rural community. Indeed even when presented with immense hardship, some people are capable of incredible happiness and contentment. Here then, Stryker rendered this image both unusable and consigned its true meaning to the same fate by destroying the main subject. It’s clear from this that he wasn’t acting randomly at all, the alignment of the hole with the man’s features is perfect. By completely destroying the face, there is no crop or manipulation that can get back to the original sense of the portrait.
The second image is even more interesting. Here we have a black couple photographed on what looks like a bridge in a cityscape. The couple are looking in different directions, with the man engaging directly with the photographer while the woman looks off to the side. Both have expressions that look either angry or concerned, but we do not know why. Both are elegantly dressed, which suggests that they are relatively well off, yet somehow working class. Perhaps their dress is related to them attending an event or church service or perhaps they are the work clothes of people who working in some kind of service industry. The killing of this negative occurs centrally between the two figures rather than over their faces, which suggests that the Stryker was trying to ensure that the image could not be re-composed or cropped to achieve a result with them both in it. America was still a heavily segregated society in the 1930s, so the idea of including two healthy-looking black people in the narrative about the depression would have been unheard of.
What is striking about both images is that while there are clear reasons for Stryker not wanting to including them in the FSA editorial, both are without fault and are potentially interesting in their own right. The first is almost in the tradition of the portrait as Sander had been working only a few years earlier, while the second is a classic Walker Evans image, intriguing and natural. Stryker was ensuring that they were not just unavailable for his editorial, but also for any future publication. Of course, the work of artists like William E Jones[8] and Joel Daniel Phillips has brought the damaged negatives into their own. Now instead of the story that Stryker was telling, we can create a narrative about what was wrong with the whole FSA project as well as the cultural and socioeconomic issues of the 1930s.
Edward Chambré Hardman (1898 – 1988)
Hardman was a prolific photographer who’s career spanned the most significant period and events of the 20th Century and of the craft itself. In his lifetime he amassed a collection of more than 140,000 photographs that are now curated by The National Trust. His vast archive contains portraits of sitters taken many years apart and in the curated series Intermissions, they are shown together forming what is now called chronotype. An example can be seen below:
From the series Intermissions, curated from the archive of Edward Chambré Hardman [9]
In this shot pair of portraits, we see a man in both his military uniform and also in later life dressed in smart civilian clothing. When I saw this photograph I was reminded of the portraits of General Grant from my earlier work [10]. The man is easily recognisable from his facial features even though his clothing and facial hair is different in both. However, when we look closer we see the way that the passage of time between the portraits has affected the man. He has increased in weight and his posture has changed with a more pronounce slouch in his shoulders. The muscle definition in his face as slipped as one would expect with age, and even though the portraits are shot with very different lighting setups, the man’s steely gaze seems to aged from one to the other. In the case of the Grant portraits, the famous General had led the Union army in the one and become US President in the other. His appearance changed in a similar way to the above pair of shots and, in the same way, the viewer has no real idea what has happened in the intervening years. Hardman’s portraits represent the subject at two points along his timeline but they do not represent his life in terms of history. The viewer is left to determine for themselves what has happened in his life over that period, with no additional context beyond the subject’s appearance and attire.
The strange case of E. J. Bellocq’s Storyville Portraiture
The final example archives being manipulated or damaged is that of E. J. Bellocq’s Storyville Portraiture from around 1912. Bellocq was a relatively unknown commercial photographer who made his living like many early practitioners by making documentary images. His clients were typically industrial businesses who wanted to record certain structures and landscapes for their own use. However, Bellocq was interested in portraiture and secretly worked on his Storyville series, shot in the prostitute district of the same name in New Orleans. Bellocqs portraits of the prostitutes are not seedy in any way, despite his inclusion of nudes. At the time, prostitution was legal but still seen as immoral by the general public, so Bellocq kept his work secret. When it was discovered after his death in 1949, it became clear that without these very imitate depictions of the workers of Storyville, no record of the area as it once was would exist. Interest in his series grew once the famous photographer Lee Friedlander purchased the plates and started to make prints from them.
Untitled, E J Bellocq from his series Storyville (1912) [11]
Friedlander discovered that most of the plates had been damaged in some way to obscure some of the detail and to render them ‘unusable’. It is still a mystery as to who carried out this ‘killing’ of the plates, but there are theories as to the culprit. One theory is that Bellocq did the damage himself, possibly not seeing the value in the pictures or in some way to protect the identities of the women in the pictures [12]. Another theory is that his brother, a priest, discovered the images and defaced them because of their perceived indecency. Either way the act of damaging so many of them means that without Friedlander’s intervention, they would be lost. As with the previous damaged archives, the idea that the artist or someone close to them decided to change the story is in itself tantalising. For me, I’m simply glad that Storyville still exists as a sympathetic document of a lost area and history of New Orleans.
Conclusions
This has been an interesting research project. When I consider a collection of photographs such as the one I received from my father, I see something that has themes running through it but no real initial purpose behind their assembly in one place. We take pictures to capture memories, but actually the photograph itself merely helps invoke them along with the emotions and sensations that we can recall from an event. My Dad’s collection has no formal structure to it but certainly with my experiences of our family growing up, I could lay those images on a light box and quickly establish some kind of flow to them. It has always been a plan of mine to build a proper media library of the images for the future generations of my family to keep as a document. When I work on that project, my natural instinct will be to tell the story of the family through history. As we learned at the start of this unit, photographs don’t really serve as a statement of history unless they are part of a large number that describe something about a time and place. In my case, the archive could serve as a ‘historic’ document of my childhood, punctuated by the my memories that are perhaps incorporated as text. However, what has been interesting in this project has been what happens when a collection of disparate images becomes an archive in the hands of others. Now we have little or no connection between artist and the original intention of the photographer as in the case of Maloof and Maier – he built a picture of her life that in all likelihood would have horrified her if she saw it. His curation of an archive of her pictures serves to reveal the ordinary lives of her subjects, but he doesn’t know what motivated her to shoot her subjects the way she did. In the case of Durdan and Grant’s work Double Take, the artists add the act of undoing the photographers self-censorship by inviting the viewer to look at the subject in every context, even if the representation is flawed through the image being technically imperfect. In their work we see something about how people respond to having their portrait taken, even if they are a willing participant; the act of being photographed is not natural and this discomfort or awkwardness comes through in the series. The archive in this sense is just a vehicle for an alternative artwork, something that we see with the series’ created from the FSA images that were ‘killed’ by editorial censorship. In these damaged portraits, the viewer is being subverted by the removal of context and asked to consider what Stryker’s motivation was in his destruction of the works of other artists. The narratives that can be created from the killed pictures are now more compelling in the modern time than in the contemporary series that the FSA published. We see much more in the photographs than the stories of the post-depression migrants because of our reflective views on the issues of that time (racism, materialism etc).
Of the artists that curated archives of their own works , the most compelling one to me was Bellocq. The artist is said to have self-censored perfectly good glass plates by damaging them, which almost points to regretful reflection on his work. The idea that his puritanical brother further sought to destroy his work after his death because it was in some way obscene adds to the mystery of this particular photographer. When I looked at the Storyville series, I saw a combination of inclusion (being inside the culture – Bellocq was a customer of the girls) and of documentary of the livelihoods of prostitutes. The sub-narrative of seediness, moral judgement and shame was again more of a commentary on contemporary values of the time rather than of the subjects themselves.
My final conclusion from this work is to consider how I will curate my family archive. What story will I be trying to tell? Will it be how I remember it or will I invite the viewer to make their own mind up about the Fletchers?
“Memories evoked by a photograph do not simply spring out of the image itself, but are generated in a network, an intertext, of discourses that shift between past and present, spectator and image, and between all these and cultural contexts, historical moments”
Kuhn, A. Family Secrets: Acts of Memory and Imagination (2002) London: Verso. Pg 09.
Look through your own family archive and try to discover a series of portraits (four or five) that have existed within this archive, but have never been placed together before. The portraits can contain individuals or even couples; they may span generations, or just be of the same person throughout the years (chronotype). Whichever way you wish to tackle this exercise, there must be a reason or justification for your choices. What message are you trying to get across about these portraits?
Through doing this exercise, you are physically bringing together portraits that have never been viewed as a series prior to your intervention. Therefore, you need to think really clearly about what your choices are and who you decide to select.
You can either make physical copies of the originals and work with these in your learning log, or re-photograph them digitally (or scan) and post them on your blog. Either way, your thoughts about these portraits will be the key to this exercise. Try to articulate what is happening when you bring these images together for the first time. Apart from the obvious – the subject, perhaps – is there anything else that links the imagery together? The location? Dates? Activities?
Alan Fletcher (2018), OCA Image Library
Moving back to Annette Kuhn again here, think about any inscriptions that might be made on the imagery, detailing whom these inscriptions might have been for, in terms of perhaps owning the memory evoked by the image. In relation to one of her own family portraits, Kuhn describes a caption written by her mother, stating:
“This power-play was an attempt by her mother to force other memories into line with her own. Her mother was pinning the moment the photograph was taken of her daughter to an event that had happened in her own life. Her mother thus literally ‘writes’ herself into the picture (although not being present in it literally), by trying to claim the right to define the memories evoked by it, she is thus attempting to dictate the memory to the viewer.”
Kuhn, A. Family Secrets: Acts of Memory and Imagination (2002) London: Verso. Pg 17-18.
Write 500–800 words reflecting on this exercise and include it in yourlearning log or blog.
Initial Thougths
My collection of images naturally fell into two types of portraiture; those that were posed and those that were ‘opportunist’. Within these were the sub groups of ‘photographs of one subject’ and ‘group shots’. I was interested in the latter as they revealed a great deal about the interplay between the subjects. In each group shot, there was a clear sense of love, generosity and support that I associate with my family. It goes beyond the simple idea that families are loving environments, instead more to generations providing protection as well as support.
Central Themes
From the initial idea that my family means ‘support, protection and love’ to me, the following central themes started to emerge. The first was that there was usually a subject more important than the others who acted a the focal point for the others in the image. This theme applied to the posed portraits, but also to the more natural shots, where an obvious sign of affection was being seen without interruption. The second theme was more about the common signs of affection in the family. In some cases, the support being given was physical and in others more a small gesture where the obvious size and age differences created the context that supported this particular narrative. The final theme was the familiarity between shots. In the much older photographs taken before I was born, I obviously could have no memory of the events. However, the physical similarities in facial features etc that are strong in my family invoke memories of similar events that I was around for.
The Selection
The Photographs
1
This photograph shows my family gathers in the 1960s for a celebration of my great grandparents, possibly a wedding anniversary. I chose this photograph because of its composition with the couple seated at a table, surrounded by circles of extended family members. The other connections that stand out personally for me are my grandmother (the only one dressed in light clothing), who was one of the most important people in my life growing up, and my Dad who is the tallest person in the room. When I look at pictures of my Dad when he was younger, I see myself.
2
Fast forward to the early 1990s when this family portrait was taken. Here we see my mum sitting surrounded by her family. The family resemblance between the men in the picture is obvious, but for me link is stronger with Dad and I through 1). The supportive theme is strong in this image (my mum died only a few years after this was taken) with the family and the our dog all forming a bubble around my mother.
3
This shot is was taken a couple of years before 2. It’s B&W because by this time my Dad had become a professional photographer and was shooting, developing and printing at home. When I look at this photograph, I first see a happy representation of my mum and sister. However when I look closer, I notice the gestures of both. My sister’s hug is both affectionate and strong, while my mum’s hand is reassuringly placed around back. I know that this shot was taken on a hill walk where everyone was enjoying the outdoors, but when placed out of its original context and into this series, I believe the picture supports the protection narrative.
4
This photograph is deliberately unlike the rest of the series in that it only has one subject. I wanted to include it here because when in the context of the series, it supports the narrative. The photo is of my grandfather Charles who, like my grandmother was a huge influence over me growing up. To my generation they were particularly generous with their time and what money they had, always providing a wonderful environment for us whenever we visited. This shot though was taken well before I was born and shows my grandad in the kitchen preparing what looks like Christmas dinner. He was a very funny man with a wicked sense of humour, which doesn’t come through in this picture, perhaps because he had not long been part of his new family (he was my step-grandad), or maybe as a result of his continuing troubles with what he saw during his war service.
5
The final image is again one of my sister, taken on her 40th birthday last year, holding her son Charlie. What struck me about this photograph was the similarities between the way that he is holding on to her and the shot of his mum in 3.
Reflection
As with many exercises in this degree course, taking the time to observe and make connections between images is the key learning for me. My family archive is a mess, it’s too big and has no structure. However, looking through the shots with a theme in mind and recognising the contextual elements that lend themselves to that theme is an interesting and emotional experience.
Richard Fletcher OCA Photography Blog 