Project 5 has taken the idea of socially responsible documentary on from photographing people that might be unfamiliar, but from a similar culture, through to those historically termed ‘the others’. We have seen how cultures have been both actively and passively appropriated over time, and how contemporary artists are seeking to address these historical issues in their work. Most of the artists included in Project 5 were connected directly with the communities or cultures they were representing in their work, e.g. Ryan Christopher Jones with both his Mexican and American heritage, but what happens when the photographer is a total stranger to the ‘others’ they are trying to represent?
This assignment calls for a review of Assignment 2, in which we engaged with and photographed a community we were not part of, and I had chosen the Malvern Hills Trust volunteers. Reflecting on that work, I question whether the group could be considered as ‘the others’, given my connections to the town. Consider the questions posed by the brief:
What assumptions did you have about that community before you started the project?
Malvern is a largely white community, with only small number of Eastern European and Middle Eastern making up the general populous. It is also largely known as a retirement town, with many retirement homes and complexes in the area. These two pieces of knowledge led me to assume that the volunteers would be older white people who had retired and had the time to carry out this type of work. When I attended the shoot, my assumptions were largely correct, with the exception of the group leader (employed by the MHT) and Giles, a man in his early 30s.
The leader Ben with Giles in the background, both much younger than the other volunteers
Looking back at your project now, how did your assumptions shape the photographs you took? What stereotypes or visual tropes did you replicate?
My assumptions guided my thinking on composition in the opposite way to the stereotypes of older people being somehow slower or frailer than younger people. The work they were doing was manual, gruelling, and required the use of tools, which is what I wanted to represent in the series. In the picture above, I show the leader of the group, Ben, operating a chainsaw with Giles just behind him. Although only Ben was trained and insured to use the chainsaw, the image visually conforms to the older people stereotype; the youngster uses the heavy equipment. I put this down to my own unconscious bias that is created by my being middle-age. In the rest of the series, only the images of the tea break conformed to a visual stereotype of British people in that tea breaks are very much part of our working culture.
Everything stops for tea
The fact that everyone was white was considered almost a given because I had no control over the group that I was engaged with. The other assumptions that I made were about the scenic nature of the work. Malvern is known to be a beautiful landscape, and my images visually represent this with the shots all being of the work and where it was situated. The dominant colours are derived from the greenery and the sky, and the light being typical of British summer.
Did making that work challenge your assumptions? How else have you learned to challenge your assumptions?
The only assumption challenged in the work is that the older generation cannot do physically demanding work. I was consciously seeking to reveal this about them after we first met. Aside from that, I don’t believe that I did enough to represent their passion for their own environment, focusing on the work more than the people. At this point in the course, we had been introduced to the ideas of getting to know the subjects, and I did spend time with each of them to do so. However, we had yet to encounter artists like Anthony Luvera and Margaret Mitchell, who had made their projects over many years, inviting more collaboration from them. This is something I am currently addressing in my SDP, having spent hours interviewing my subjects and exploring how they represent themselves before considering the context and balance of future series about the LGBTQ+ community. Ryan Jones’ work made me think about how an intended story can change as the work progresses and assumptions are disproved, with the idea of documenting housing issues in New York becoming a commentary on the inversion of the ideas of US prosperity and Mexican destitution.
If you were to re-do this project, how would you approach the project differently?
Approaching this project again, I would consider starting from a different place, as with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s TED talk. Perhaps the series should have started with the need for the maintenance work and the efforts of MHT and its role in the community. Exploring the way MHT raises the profile of the environmental needs of the Malvern Hills could anchor the series in the socio-political landscape where climate change is a continuing worry. The call to arms nature of what the Trust’s volunteers could set the starting position for a documentary series about the work that introduces the people without any predisposed bias. It’s clear, as with Jones’s project, that the story could evolve to be more about the people involved the work and their motivations for being involved. I think this approach would reduce the risk of dwelling on stereotypes related to age.
With regard to my Self-directed Project
While there are a few stereotypes relating to Assignment 2, this reflection is probably more appropriate to my planned SDP. We learned that colonisation doesn’t only relate to race or culture, but also gender and sexuality. In Authority Collective (2020). The Photographers Guide to Inclusive Photography”, two authors gave advice on socially responsible photography of gender and, more specifically, the LGBTQAI community. As my project is about that community, its struggles and the continuing need for Pride, the latter of the articles resonated with me. In particular, I was drawn to the dangers of seeing the community as a curiosity and photographing the people as if they were some kind of show. The article makes the point that sexuality makes up only a small part of our identity, which is something I’ve observed in my interviews with my SDP subjects. We don’t walk around with a label that states our sexuality or gender identity, but for some reason people who are LGBTQAI are given labels and judged on the basis of them. One of the themes I want to explore is why straight people feel the need to label and categorise people who have one aspect of their identity that is different. With catagorisation comes stereotyping; all gay men are flamboyant and camp, all lesbian women are either classically glamorous or somehow masculine, etc. My subjects have universally raised the idea of referring to them as a community, as if they were some kind of social group, where the opposite is in fact the truth. From my perspective as a straight man who is an ally to LGBTQAI, I have to find away of staying clear of these stereotypes and the dangers of telling only one story about people that I have built relationships with, that have so far revealed interesting and complex lives behind identity.
This exercise is in preparation for the formal critical review in Assignment 5 at the end of the project. As given, the critical review brief is as follows:
Compare the theoretical features, characteristics and histories of one or more photographic genres
Use your research skills competently to deconstruct a given genres’ conventions
Demonstrate an awareness of the multiple readings of the histories that have informed genre in a global context
The critical review takes the learning from parts 3 and 4 and picks up from the comparative analysis completed in Project 2, which can be found here:
For this exercise, I will briefly review the above analysis and update with what I’ve learned since. I will then decide on my area of interest for the review within this project.
Summary of Project 2: Exercise 2: Comparative Analysis
For the exercise, I chose two landscape images; Ansel Adams’ Moonrise over Hernandez, New Mexico (1941) and Richard Misrach’s Bonne Carre Slipway, Norco, Louisiana (1988). Both images are classical landscape in terms of their visual codes. My comparison related to the contextual emphasis of each image, rather than their aesthetic merits. With regard to the latter, I drew attention to the similarities and differences, one being black and white, both featuring manmade structures, one being more traditional in the use of thirds and the other, not so. However, with the context the two photographers differed considerably, despite them both being interested in conservation of the natural world. Adams’ image reveals the majesty of the landscape and man’s insignificance both in scale and when considered within the construct of religion. By contrast, Misrach’s image shows us how man is impacting the landscape, his subject being an oil refinery.
Having completed parts 3 and 4, I am now familiar with the works that formed the New Topographics exhibition in 1975, where the artists moved away from the aesthetic beauty of the landscape to show how construction and human behaviour fit within it. This made sense of where Misrach’s inspiration came from. The series that his picture comes from walks the viewer through the routine of petrochemical processing in Louisiana, an area that for most part is rural country. His images follow the landscape traditions in terms of composition, but having now covered the difference between the interpretations (beautiful, picturesque, sublime), I now appreciate the narratives that can be derived from them more. The series is actually terrifying, as the destruction of the natural world is almost desensitised owing to the world’s reliance of the fossil fuel being processed. Images of dead trees, hazardous waste dumps and abandoned dwellings reveal what has taken place and continues to do so at such a slow pace that nobody notices. Unlike Adams, Misrach is showing what we can’t or won’t see about how we live, in a similar way to the likes of Lewis Hines and Martha Rosler with their documentary advocacy.
Thoughts on a Critical Review
I considered revisiting my analysis as the context of the additional learning explained the motivation behind the images, Misrach’s in particular. However, I have been interested in a question from Part 4, which is related to landscape but could be applied to the other genres as well.
In Colin Pantall’s lecture and supporting presentation notes, titled The Way We See, Where We Look and What we Show, he said
“Landscapes can show the infrastructure of power, can show the dividing lines of power. Sometimes we don’t think of these as landscape, but they are, because that is the defining part of them”
(Colin Pantall Presentation, s.d., video timestamp 11m,50s)
At the point that he says this, the presentation is showing this photograph by Mohammed Borrouisa from his series Périphérique.
From the series Périphérique, by Mohamed Bourouisa [1]
I was confused by the comment as Landscape was not my initial reading of this photograph. Instead, I believed it to be more documentary or one of the sub-genres, street photography. This was the basis for my critical analysis – what is it that makes this a landscape and how does the reading of the internal and external context affect our classification of a photograph?
The research for the essay can be found in the Padlet:
“Which is it? – How contexts can alter our interpretation of the genre of a photograph?”
Additional Note
At this point, I received feedback that my literal interpretation of the brief for Assignment 5 may result in lots of repetition. With this in mind, I focused my attention on gathering research and writing my submission. I am offering the draft as my completed essay, electing to update ahead of assessment if required. For this reason, there is no write-up for Exercises 2 and 3.
I have now received feedback from my tutor on my submission for Assignment Five: Your Inspiration. On the whole, the feedback was positive, with the view that my idea of re-telling the ghost story in the context of the modern digital life came through in the series. A number of suggestions were made as to how to improve the series impact and visual, which are described below. This post addresses the points made and any actions taken prior to submitting for assessment.
The triptych of photographs (Three, Four and Five), that tell of the first meeting between the characters, was thought to be one image too many. The impact of the sequence and Eve’s sudden appearance was thought to be represented adequately by Three and Five.
Eleven was thought to confuse the continuity of the sequence in that it doesn’t contain any indication of from whose viewpoint the door is being ‘seen’. This was in contrast to Nine which shows the man saying goodnight to the Eve at her front door.
The man alternates from one hand to the other when holding his phone. Although this was felt to be a very subtle disruption in the continuity, it was noticed by my tutor.
The final image reveals Eve to be something supernatural with the lingering doubt around whether she was a figment of the man’s imagination. In the picture she was felt to be too solid to maintain this mystery.
The comic strip aesthetic could have been more impactful with a page layout rather than the traditional newspaper look that I had chosen. It was suggested that I look at the layouts of graphic novels as an inspiration for how to present my work here.
Some of the captions were thought not to add to the image on the way that I intended. The example given was the use of *sigh* in Four. The man’s expression made the word redundant in terms of supporting the picture, in contrast to the use of *beep* in Two which signals the notification from the dating app.
Response
The feedback was interesting and matched some that I had received from members of my I&P cohort. My response to the feedback and rationale for making/not making changes is shown below:
Point 1
I understand the sentiment about Four and the idea that Eve’s appearance without any leading into the frame does suggest that she has materialised. I originally had the idea of a diptych for this part of the series during shooting and actually decided to include the third image to add another question to the sequence. The story has a continuous thread of modern technology, and our dependence on it, running throughout. One of the ideas being portrayed is the way that the mobile phone keeps our attention when lots of other things are happening around us. The original inclusion of this frame was intended to show the man not noticing Eve when she appears, either because he hasn’t noticed her materialisation or that he is transfixed by his phone. During our call, my tutor and I discussed 5) Exercise 2: Georges Perec, where we had to look at a scene in front of us and note what we had observed. One of things I noted during the exercise was the number of people sitting alone with their phones, almost existing within their own bubble. The other activity in the cafe scene had some interesting aspects, the grandfather carrying a baby in a papoose for example, which the phone users completely missed. When I reflect on this, I am guilty of the same thing whenever I’m by myself in a public place. In terms of this assignment, I am not inclined to remove the image because I believe that without it, this ambiguous situation and the question it raises about his awareness of her presence is missing.
Point 2
This was very valuable feedback as it is a subtlety of visual storytelling, particularly the mise-en-scène approach to cinematography. I hadn’t considered the jump between the man realising that there was something wrong (observed by the viewer) and the visual of the derelict front door. I decided to re-shoot this image as I still had access to the model and the props (the front door being my own). The new frame can be seen below:
Point 3
This was something I hadn’t noticed during shooting and post-production, but it was another good observation in the same context as Point 2. As it was accidental, there was no way of using any of the other photographs from the contact sheets to correct it. The result was that I had to leave the error in the series. As a side note, I discussed it with the model who stated that he naturally swaps hands with his phone, depending on the light and the function that he is using. It doesn’t distract from the point that I hadn’t spotted the disruption in continuity; something to watch for in future.
Point 4
This point was more of a comment on the creative decision that I’d made to have Eve standing over the man with an ethereal glow. My tutor felt that I could have placed her as a reflection in the painting on the back wall in a translucent visual, or with a different composition where she appears as his desktop image. My initial response to this point was to consider how I could make Eve less solid in Photoshop, but I quickly realised that my decision to light her with a different colour temperature to the man made it difficult to see a way achieving this. Even if I could make her less solid, the fact that she emits light in the form of a glow on the background, means that the result would not work technically. The other issue was that the lighting setup used in the shoot meant that I didn’t shoot other images with her missing from the frame that could be combined to achieve the effect. As I no longer had access to the both models and costumes, I elected not to re-shoot the picture. The idea of having her as a desktop or screensaver was something I had originally considered when preparing for the shoot, but I didn’t want to include more than one composite image using Photoshop (I already had created the fake dating app profile and layered it onto the phone screen in Two). On reflection, I didn’t agree with my tutor on this point as in following the original ghost story idea, Eve needed to be as real and believable as possible throughout, rather than follow the stereotypical notion of being transparent.
Point 5
This was perhaps the most difficult feedback because my intent for the series was not to present it as if it were a classic graphic novel. I wanted to include the textual elements as a nod to Barthes and the idea that they could support the main narrative, while leaving the images to reveal the other layers. The genre of graphic novels wasn’t the point, but by presenting this way I have received this feedback from more than one person. In response, I looked at modern examples of comic and graphic novel layouts with a view to arranging this series in a a more tabular form. As the feedback suggested, by laying out the panels together, the viewer is presented with the story in one instant. The viewer gets a sense of the action without linearly progressing through the panels. I could see the benefit in laying out my series in the same way. Unfortunately when it came to arranging my images, I realised that the comic panels generally followed a format where one of the dimension of each box was consistent with the others. The tessellation of the panels depends on the variation on the other dimension of the panels which, in terms of my series, presented a problem. I had shot each picture with the frame filled to the extent where I could then crop to my preferred 4×5 format. This meant that selecting another crop that would suit a comic book layout would potentially remove details that I had included in order to support the narrative. I concluded that in order to have made a traditional comic, I would have needed to have shot the pictures with that in mind.
Point 6
The final point made was related to the inclusion of some of the captions. My intent was to use text as a relay to the images, describing the main ghost story but not sighposting the more subtle elements of images themselves. The point was made that some of the images didn’t need their caption to increase their impact. Following this feedback, I removed the example that was given and re-reviewed the captions for the whole series.
Changes made to the series
In addressing the feedback, I made the following changes to the series:
The most significant change was to the arrangement of the comic strip. I had struggled with the arrangement of the panels to fit a page, without making major changes to cropping of some of the photographs. As each image was a mini tableaux, I didn’t want to lose important symbolic messages within the frames by cropping just to make them fit. After careful consideration, images Seven, Eight and Twelve were changed from landscape to portrait without any loss of elements, which meant that I could make a 4 page comic. As most of the comics and graphic novels that I had looked at were in portrait format, the arrangement followed this style. To make each page more visually interesting, I made three images, where there is ‘close-up’ action taking place, stand out by rotating them slightly in their position on the page. This is frequently done in comics and graphic novels and has the effect of breaking up the static format of the panels.
The final image where Eve is revealed is now a single page on its own. This decision suited both the layout of book and also the drama in that picture. In my previous layout, the image was somewhat lost because it was a portrait composition which reduced its size on the page. The picture now serves as the climax of the story and is large enough for all of the details to be seen clearly.
I made some further changes to captions and sizes, removing those that didn’t contribute to the narrative and adjustments to make the size consistent when the panel sizes varied. The most notable removal of caption is the selfie picture where the activity is both obvious and also brought to the reader’s attention by the use of rotation mentioned previously. Some captions were adjusted to make the new sizes fit within the frame of the images, mostly on the first page where the landscape panels are smaller than pages 2 and 3.
Conclusion
In general, I was happy that the series achieved what I intended for it. The feedback from my tutor, family and friends, as well as my fellow cohort members, was constructive. I found that my initial reaction was to focus on what I agreed with them on and be less interested in anything that I thought was a misunderstanding of what I had intended for the series. However, I realised that the opposing views were still intended to help improve the series, so gave them more thought. The changes I made to series involved significant edits to the photographs, captions and the layout, all of which result in what I believe is a stronger series. The final presentation of this assignment can be seen in the original post Assignment Five: Your Inspiration linked here:
We are introduced to the ideas of Place and Space, which when I think about it, have always naturally meant the same thing to me. That’s not to say that they have the same meaning, as described in the notes. I think my interpretation of both has been influenced by my experience of mental illness, during which the idea of the two was significantly blurred. People talk about ‘head space’ and ‘happy place’, referring to a situation that is contained within our minds rather than being something tangible. To maintain your head space is to keep a clear mind and similarly, to go to one’s happy place is to mentally escape an experience by consciously thinking about something or somewhere that makes us happy. When I was unwell, I felt that my head space and the physical space around me were essentially the same thing. If something bad was happening around me, my mind focused on that to the detriment of any other, more positive thoughts. Being someone who found it difficult to hide what they were feeling, it was as if I had become transparent. I didn’t really take in my surroundings either for fear of becoming fixated on the negative.
Since my recovery, I’ve been successful at keeping reality and my imagination separate while allowing the former to inspire the latter. Enrolling on this degree course was one of those inspirations. I am now content in being able to imagine a ‘place’ that is inspired by something I see around me or online, as well as being able to appreciate a physical ‘space’ and the things that influence it. I had always been able to appreciate a beautiful view (as long as there wasn’t something negative to interpret from it), so now when I pause to take one in, I’m more likely to linger on thinking about the seasons, the history and how people have shaped the landscape. If I’m looking at a building, I try to imagine what it was like when it was built – did it have a special history etc? When I first bought my house, which was build in 1897, my brother-in-law asked me if it was haunted. We had a laugh about it, but when we think about old houses and the history they have ‘seen’, the concept of something supernatural existing within its walls isn’t that crazy an idea. In it’s 124 year history, the house has stood through 2 World Wars, the smallpox epidemic, financial crashes etc and has been shaped by the people who have lived there. My contribution to its history is tiny by comparison.
When it comes to ‘looking’ at space, this course has taught me to take my time and to not seek somebody else’s intent for it. What I mean by this is that I try to reach my own conclusion about what I’m looking at without wanting an explanation. My problem is that when I create a photograph or series, I look to explain it to the viewer. This is perhaps because of the way I perceive people looking at space. I’ve mentioned previously about Nan Goldin’s distaste for social media because of the way it’s shortened our attention span when looking at pictures. Indeed if we look at her masterpiece The Ballad of Sexual Dependence with this way of viewing, we’d miss the messages it contains (I regularly look at the book when I feel uninspired). People have become accustomed to seeing the objects within a picture without wanting to imagine why they occupy a particular space or interact with something else present. In Project 1, we looked at human behaviour in photographs that contained no people. If we just looked at the dishes in Shafran’s Washing Up for example, we’d probably not understand the meaning of the work. Such is our dependence on the visuals provided by our phones that we feel completely naked without them. A friend of mine was recently telling me of a traditional London pub that has a ban on mobile phones being used – whenever someone takes one out of their pocket, they are first warned and then thrown out. The idea is to appreciate the simpler interactions between people and the environment (and beer) that the pub has worked hard to provide. I mused at how long my wife and I would last.
Research Task: Your Environment
In considering the above and my own environment, I realise how much my ‘visual awareness’ has changed since finishing work. I walk a 3 mile route around my town every day, which varies only slightly depending on whether I need to shop for food or do some work. I started this routine nearly 12 months ago in an effort to get fitter, but I soon started to notice how the space is affected by the change of seasons. Traditionally, we know that when winter moves to spring, there is new plant life, changes in the colours of trees etc, but the first thing I noted was the way that the buildings changed. People stopped spreading salt on the pavement outside their business and houses to prevent ice, the number of chimneys expelling smoke and vapour from their heating systems gradually declined as the weather warmed. The wildfowl at the lake in our park started to breed and nest in the newly shaded trees. My walk was staying the same, but I was seeing a different town to the one from the version I saw during winter. What remains consistent with the seasons, however is the sense of familiarity and comfort. I’ve lived here for over 20 years and although the town continually evolves, the daily walk makes me feel at home when I see the familiar environment. My wife and I were out recently with some friends who pointed out that there had been a surge in new and interesting places to eat in the town. We recognised this change in the demographic, but it was lost in our sense of belonging here. When I looked at Robert Harding Pittman’s Anonymization, I could see the artist’s connection with the natural world being challenged by the behaviour of man. His images of the beginnings of ground works for buildings struck a chord with me as they symbolised change. The seemingly relentless progression of building ‘desirable’ living spaces is revealed in Pittman’s work as disrespectful to the natural world; the proliferation of the pattern making the landscape essentially anonymous. When we think of the lack of harmony between man’s needs and the natural world, there are many examples that immediately spring to mind. The urbanisation of California is a good example, where a landscape that sits on a major tectonic plate is cultivated because of its warm, dry climate. Millions of people live in the shadow of potential natural disaster and the rapidly advancing signs of global warming (the state suffers catastrophic fires every year nowadays). In spite of this, the people continue to build towns of houses with lush gardens and swimming pools because of what they see as the beauty of the environment. One image in Pittman’s series that stood out for me was the one below:
Lake Las Vegas Resort, Las Vegas, NV (2015) by Robert Harding Pittman[1]
Here we have a beautifully shot scene of the landscape of Nevada under a deep blue sky. The subject is a hotel-style development called the Lake Las Vegas Resort. What immediately struck me about this photograph was what was missing from the image. There is no lake to speak of, which when considering that Las Vegas in in the Nevada desert, isn’t a surprise. This awkward naming of the hotel seems incongruous in the landscape and is further emphasised by the lush green golf course in the foreground. The resort is billing itself as being Las Vegas which translates to ‘The Meadows’ because of the surprisingly well irrigated regions in the desert, but the golf course has the appearance of being entirely fabricated. The image screams insensitivity to me, highlighting the irresponsible development of the natural world for what is an entertainment venue. Other images in the series suggest a scale of this attitude, depending on social or economic status and some developments paying lip service to their surroundings. Whatever the social or political perspectives of the viewer, the series is interesting because it deals with people and culture by exploring their actions and their environments.
Stephen Shore (1947 -)
We are introduced to Stephen Shore in the context of the photographic journey. Like Walker Evans and Robert Frank before him, Shore photographed what at first glance appear to be uninteresting locations. The title of is book Uncommon Places mixes these images with slightly abstract portraiture and still life work, much like that of Eggleston. The title, as the notes suggest, is at odds with the banality that the subject matter appears to exhibit – this invites us to look closer at the series. Like Frank, Shore’s journeys that became the setting for his series was one of personal discovery. He was 23 years old before he realised that he’d not set foot outside of his native New York and that resolve to learn about the rest of the United States drove the observations in his book. The ‘Uncommon’ in the title could instead refer to that exploration or that the locations and experiences of the trip might be familiar but new to anyone looking at the images. Whatever Shore’s intention, the images have a sense of what it is like to be in America to natives and strangers alike. The notes refer to the comment by Szarkowski about Eggleston’s Memphis being a faithful representation to the uninitiated and the same being said of Shore’s work. For me, the work echoes the Italianicity that Barthes talked about[2]. Modern American culture surrounds most of the western world and unlike Frank’s look behind the curtain of it, Shore takes it head on. His work has drawn critical review that catagorises it as ‘formal, clinical, objective, impersonal and dispassionate’, which almost suggests little part of the photographer’s eye in the creation.
“She looked at them and said: ‘So, Stephen, you want to photograph every main street.’ I replied, ‘No, Hilla, that’s what you want to do. I want to photograph the quintessential main street.’”
Stephen Shore in conversation with Hilla Becher, quoted in an interview with The Guardian[3]
In the above quotation, Shore was telling Becher, one of the typology pioneers studied in Part 1[4] that he was interested in capturing the idea of an American street as seen by most people. Uncommon Places achieves that for me with its many cultural elements.
Personal Reflection
The notes ask us to consider where we would do a project of the scale of Shore’s or Frank’s and I think mine would probably be about a culture within a culture. The UK is a truly multicultural society, which has its successes and its problems in terms of acceptance. We are very familiar with the clashes of different races and the fight by many ethnic minorities against racism and everyday prejudice, but I am more interested in the cultures that interact with the wider population but quietly avoid becoming part of it. The one area that I would explore is the traditional Romani gypsies, who unlike the generic term ‘traveller’, live their lives within traditional family structures and customs. Our interactions with true Romanis are few and far between, limited to door-to-door sales and travelling fairgrounds. My series would explore life for the Romani in the UK, beginning with the densely populated regions such as Greater London and ending with in the more rural areas. It would seek to reveal there world by capturing their act of travelling around, so becoming journey within a journey.
Paul Gaffney and Alec Soth
Paul Gaffney series We Make the Path by Walking(2013) is a book that captures the beauty of the natural world shot during many long walks. When I looked through the book, there were a few things that stood out for me. The notes refer to the mindfulness evoked by the images, but for me the key theme is the sense of familiar and unfamiliar. I regularly walk around the area that I live in and inevitably take photographs of the things that are obvious to its location and some that are not. Gaffney’s series contains familiar images of grasses and tree-lined pathways that could just as well be where I live. As well as the beautiful aesthetic, it is this familiarity that invokes a sense of peace in me. Gaffney further enhances this by not giving any clues as to where they were shot. Conversely, the viewer is invited to appreciate the nature surrounding the artist while he walks in a place that is unfamiliar to them.
“I always wanted the images to evoke rather than describe, and for people to engage with the work and to bring their own experience to it, rather than it just being about my own experiences. I sometimes recorded ambient sounds which I have considered using in an installation, and I was also thinking about recording conversations with people along the way, but it was always going to make things overly complicated and as it becomes complicated, it tends to bring you further away from the experience.”
Paul Gaffney in conversation with Walter Lewis for Photomonitor[5]
Gaffney’s ‘simple’ approach to his work leaves the viewer free to draw their own conclusions about the environment, the act of walking through it and connecting with nature. Some of the images contain humerous elements such as the blocked off mountain bike ramp, while some show the struggle between man-made objects and nature like the one below:
We Make the Path by Walking – 2012 by Paul Gaffney [6]
I particularly like this image because it is both beautifully shot and asks questions about nature coexisting with the manufactured. Depending on our reading of the image, nature could be seen to be fighting back or the enduring ‘permanency’ of concrete could make the battle a futile one. Man is not shown, but is observed by man moving through the space, which makes pictures like this really powerful within the series.
Alec Soth has been heralded as the modern day Robert Frank; his story-telling being of a similar style in its exploration of that which is behind the facade of culture. In his collaborative book with Patrica Hampl, Soth explores the Mississippi region alongside the great river of the same name. The photographs span a wide range of cultural elements, some specifically about people that are shot in portraiture and some that capture the traces of personalities and behaviours. They all serve to tell as story of a region that is not mainstream America, in the same way that Frank’s The Americans did many years before. The image from Soth’s series that struck me was Cape Giirardeau, MO, 2002[7] which shows the wall of a room with some kind of laminate panelling and an a painted section that used to have pictures hung on it. The pictures are gone, but the hooks and outlines remain in the discolouring of the paintwork. The only things left attached to the wall are a fragment of newspaper with the word ‘Folklore’ on it and part of Ansel Adams’ famous picture The Grand Tetons and the Snake River. This picture invites so many questions about the human condition through a very simple composition. The derelict state of the wall looks like it’s been abandoned with the pictures removed and presumably taken away. The newspaper fragment suggests that the owner was collecting some new stories, but we can only imagine their subject. The inclusion of Adams’ picture suggests that a desire to get away to another place, yet we have only part of the image. Could this instead mean that the vista wasn’t important beyond the visual aesthetic? Why did they leave it behind? For me, this was one of the most powerful images in the series, because of what is not contained within the frame. Soth’s images create a sense of the region and it’s people being a kind of subculture, in a similar way to Goldin’s work. It has the aesthetic quality of Crewdson’s tableau and the use of bright, contrasting colours pioneered by Eggleston and Meyerowitz.
David Spero and Martina Lindqvist
David Spero’s work Settlements takes a very personal view of subculture. Unlike Soth’s representation, Spero blends photographs of off-grid living arrangements from sheds to bothies with traditional portraits of the people who live in them. The latter are, in some cases, staged like family photos which gives them a warmth that we would not necessarily have if limited to the photographs of their homes. Some of the portraits depict more of the way of life of the people to add the overall sense that we are invited to look at their settlement rather than being an observer. This plays well into the outsider/insider idea suggested by Abigail Solomon-Godeau (studied in C&N)[7] with Spero becoming part of the culture he is representing. The interior shots of the homes take on an aesthetic that is similar to the tableaux work we have looked at, yet there is a documentary feel to them. The artist is representing another way of life rather than making a personal statement about what he sees – this is in contrast to how I read Soth.
With Martina Lindqvist’s Neighbours, we see architecture in a different light again. Where Spero had created a sense of the community and variety of the homes that his subjects lived in, Lindqvist uses very simple composition to tell a story about private space and isolation. An example can be seen below:
Untitled 08(Neighbours) (2013) by Martina Lindqvist[7]
In this picture we see a simple composition of equal land vs. sky with a solitary house in the middle of the frame(the whole series is shot like this). The bleakness of the environment around the house and the snow on the ground contrasts with the greenery of the trees. The mood created by the composition could be bleak but the juxtaposition of the tree and house suggests a pride in their home. The small trees that poke out of the snow invite the viewer to imagine what the land around the house might look like beneath it. In every picture the thought is that the neighbour is in their house, which may not be true. We are left wondering what they are like, purely on the basis of their home.
Conclusion
This has been an interesting project because each of the artists represents the concept of place in a different way. Pittman’s apparent despair at the way that we impact the natural world is more political than say, Gaffney’s while both artists make a statement about the struggle between nature and man. The idea of a culture as seen through representation in Shore’s work is very different from that of Soth, even though both artists are exploring something new (Shore having not experienced travel until he was in his 20s). The concept of home is explored by Spero and Lindqvist with a not to the diversity of how people choose to live, however the former is very much from within the culture while the latter takes a remote perspective. What is clear from this and the other work in Part 5 is that people move through the world leaving a trace of themselves, their behaviour or decisions and their culture behind. The artists we have covered in both projects are tuned into these traces without worrying too much about including the people themselves. What results can be powerful from a social and political perspective, act as educator or myth-dispeller, with the one thing in common; they all ask questions of the viewer and rely on them bringing their own life experiences to the reading of the work.
● Create a set of still-life pictures showing traces of life without using people.
You could do this with your camera phone to reflect the vernacular and transient nature of these moments or you could choose to use high-quality imagery to give these moments gravitas, like Nigel Shafran.
● Your technical decisions should back up your ideas, so write a short reflective commentary detailing these decisions and the reasons for them.
Introduction
For my series, I chose the theme of the aftermath of activities related to Christmas, but not in the context of the joy of the season. I love Christmas, but am increasingly bothered by how much work goes into preparing for a single day. I get to a point with certain jobs where I am either distracted by something more enjoyable or just walk away in frustration. This series is intended to use still life to evoke a sense of how I feel at those points.
The Series – Christmas Passed
OneTwoThreeFourFive
Review
I deliberately shot each of these still life photographs in a different style, mainly because each situation has a different mood to invoke from the others. In One, the elements point to a need to relax and do something enjoyable. The person watching the film has a fancy drink to enjoy and a candle to provide muted lighting. The film frame is from a James Bond Skyfall, showing the character dressed in a dinner suit, which furthers the sense of luxury or indulgence. The lighting also highlights a packet of tablets on the table. Perhaps this person has overindulged as many do at Christmas, which means the image could take on one of exhaustion which is something I tend to feel once the day’s festivities are done.
Two is a take on the tradition of leaving a drink and mince pie out for Father Christmas, but instead there is evidence of a cocktail with the thin slice of orange peel used. I love the Old Fashioned cocktail but am always disappointed at how wasteful the use of the orange peel is. The other elements in the frame are the well-stocked drinks cabinet, which suggests the the person isn’t a stranger to drinking, the bourbon bottle and the drink itself. The inclusion of the ‘cigar’ is a nod to how times have changed in celebrations at Christmas through my life. I remember every adult in my family smoking when we got together, so this inclusion (which is actually a cinnamon stick) is about how it’s no longer acceptable. Most people don’t have ashtrays anymore, so I made one of the mince pie trays into a makeshift ashtray for the consumer of this Christmas treat.
Three is something that I think everyone experiences at this time; the wrapping of Christmas presents. In this frame, the tape has run out and the person has presumably got to find some more. I always end up with odd scraps of badly cut paper as well as running the gauntlet with how much I can get done with the remaining tape. This image is intended to express the sense of the unwanted pause in proceedings and was inspired, along with Two, by the classical still life paintings of half-eaten food[2]. These ask the viewer to imagine what might be going on for the consumer before and up to the point the image was captured.
Four is a intended to be a humorous representation of the aftermath of the Christmas feast, where most of the food has gone save the leftovers. In our house, leftover meat ends up in a curry, so this picture shows the slim pickings left for that meal. There is always some beer and wine left over, so this was included to jokingly suggest that there is some sort of complete meal to be had.
Five came about because of a real experience I had last year with some Christmas lights that got tangled to the extent that it would take hours to untangle them. I am too tight to throw them out and get some new ones, so I promised myself this year that I would put the time in to sort them out. I didn’t, of course which leaves the fallback position of cutting them with the scissors.
Conclusion
I really enjoyed this exercise because it was both creatively and technically challenging. The removal of the person from the image leaves the potential for creating broad narratives that tell the story of them in absentia. I used my own experiences to guide the creation of the series and each idea came with a technical challenge to represent the different moods. Lighting Is key to this, with a mix of flash, hot lights and sources that naturally occur in the environment. For example, using the light from the projector in One as the key light, left me with filling in the edges of the glass and bottle with an LED panel. Conversely, the fill light in Five was provided by the illuminated Christmas lights (the frustrating thing being that they still work, despite being tangled) and I used a further key light for the scissors. What I’ve learned builds on the tableaux work from last year, with particular attention to putting just enough context in the frame to create the mood. Using props like the cigar and the fridge evokes memories of the smell of cigar smoke and the cold storage of food, which is stimulating senses other than our sight. During this shoot, I was reminded of David Favrod’s use of phonics in some of his images in the series Hikari[2]. Still Life is something I intend to continue exploring.
Your journey may not involve travelling the world or an excursion across Russia, but you might see your journey to the post office every Monday as particularly relevant – or the journey from your bed to the kitchen in the morning.
● Note the journeys you go on regularly and reflect upon them.
● Now photograph them.Remember to aim for consistency in your pictures. If you choose to photograph all the charity shops you’ve visited in a week, try to photograph them all using the same camera, lens, standing position, lighting, etc. This will help keep your project honed to the subject matter rather than you, the photographer
My Journey
Every weekday since leaving my job, I make the same journey into town to my favourite café, where I work on my laptop amongst other people. Since COVID kept us all in our homes and my subsequent redundancy reduced my daily contact with friends and colleagues dramatically, I have felt the need to make this small pilgrimage to give me a sense of belonging in a crowd. I rarely engage with anyone else barring my friend who sometimes does something similar, and the staff in the café who now recognise me as a regular. The walk takes the same route every day and I spend most of the journey listening to music or an audiobook and walking on ‘auto-pilot’. For this series of photographs, I wanted to represent the journey as a physical route from my home (about a mile away) to the café. I decided to take a single camera/lens combination and use the same settings throughout (f/4 in Aperture Priority Mode, ISO 800). I did the walk out of context, i.e. not going specifically for a coffee and making use of a different time of day to my usual morning stroll. From a composition perspective I wanted to keep it simple. Each image would have a road or path leading to a vanishing point in the image, would contain some form or sign to place the location either in the context of geography or the town demographic and contain a representation of people going about their business. The latter was decided because I have photographed parts of the route many times before as empty space – something I didn’t want to repeat. I wanted the series to be about the town as observed through a camera while walking.
The Images
OneTwoThreeFourFiveSixSevenEightNineTen
Review
With these images, I wanted to set my journey in the context of the environment without any strong perspectives on it from me. This is naturally very difficult as I’ve lived here for over 20 years and seen many changes to the fabric of the town. That said, its Victorian Spa roots are very much part of its history which attracts visitors all year round. To that end, a lot of the aesthetic quality doesn’t change that much. With this particular walk, I found myself being much more observant of things that gave a sense of the town. Many people retire here and the telltale traces of that are seen in some of the photographs, principally Two and Three. The history of the town can be seen in references to the Museum and the black and white imagery of the sign in Nine. The town’s identity as being on the hills that bear the same name can be seen in Two, but its ideas of how it sees itself are evident in Five and Eight; there are no “Superstores” in the context of a big town and the evolution of the children’s playground is seen somehow as progress. The playground that featured in Assignment 4 is the one being replaced here, which makes me a little sad. I guess that my feelings on the topic of Malvern still come through in the series, despite the effort to not make it all about me.
Conclusion
I found this exercise interesting as it called for observation of a slightly different nature to previous work. I wanted the series to ‘describe’ my journey from the perspective of a walker who is perhaps discovering the environment for the first time. The key elements that are seemingly dull or uninteresting at first glance, but when combined allow the viewer to draw some conclusion about this lovely little town. While I was shooting the pictures, I considered the idea at the start of the unit that was explained by John Szarkowski with respect to William Eggleston’s tricycle[1]. Those who have not walked the same path will gain a sense of Malvern from the series, but unless they actually have experience of it, that sense could be way off. Like all of the series in this unit, I’ve tried to leave plenty of room for multiple interpretations and physical anchors for the pictures, e.g. the Worcester City logo on the side of the bus in Five. It’s not until Six that we get the actual location confirmed by the signpost to the Malvern Museum – I consciously limited the recognisable landmarks to a single shot of the hills. This series was derived from a group of 44 shots taken on the walk, which meant that I had to carefully edit so to avoid the pictures being too prescriptive, which is a similar process to before. It’s the change of emphasis in observation that is the main learning point for me as some of the pictures are structured around subjects that I hadn’t seen before, event with my familiarity with the area. As Richard Wentworth said in the documentary about his work in London [1], it is the responsibility of the artist to observe. This exercise challenged me to do just that.
References
[1] OCA, 2021, “Identity and Place Part Five – Removing the Figure”, OCA Course Notes, Page 111.
Read Chapter 4, ‘Something and Nothing’ in Cotton, C. (2014) The Photograph as Contemporary Art (3rd edition) London: Thames & Hudson. You will find this on the student website.
To what extent do you think the strategy of using objects or environments as metaphor is a useful tool in photography?
When might it fall down?
Write some reflective notes on these points in your learning log.
Introduction
The chapter ‘Something and Nothing’ deals with the variety of approaches taken by artists to photographing the everyday things that we are not necessarily looking for. The Nothing is described as the missed item and the act of photographing it shifts its meaning to Something, even thought quite what that may be is defined but the artistic intent. When I read this chapter, I was a little overwhelmed by the sheer number of artists it contains. Some of them I am already familiar with through my studies thus far, but others are completely new to me. Each has demonstrated a different way of ‘seeing’ the apparently banal and representing it visually using photography. Some, like Jason Fulford [1] incorporate texture of manmade and natural objects with the accidental humour that might otherwise go unnoticed. His shot Atlanta, GA, 2017 shows a window in a brick wall surrounded by bushes and grasses. The window contains a translucent sign advertising photocopying, which is something fairly ordinary in itself. However, the bright sunlight casts an image of the sign on the sun blinds behind it. The word ‘Copies’ is effectively ‘copied’ which conjurs the idea of mans insignificance in the face of the natural world. The ordered arrangement of the brick wall and graphic design is upstaged by nature, both in terms of the foliage in the foreground and the sunlight. Other artists like Wolfgang Tillmans [2] document what remains from human activity. In his image Suit, we see a seemingly discarded. We are left wondering about its ‘placement’, who wore it and why it might have been left this way.
To what extent do you think the strategy of using objects or environments as metaphor is a useful tool in photography?
Both examples above demonstrate the use of metaphor, described as:
“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 Dictionary Definition [3]
Metaphors are for me a clever way of using what is a literal tool or process in a more creative way. We have learned throughout Level 1 that there is a tendency to believe the literal interpretation of what is contained within a photograph; that the medium is objectively truthful. What metaphorical images achieve is a suspension of reading what the photograph contains in terms of objects and try to understand why they are represented in the context of the rest of the frame. Metaphors encourage a more detailed review of the picture to uncover some sense of what its about, which we learned way back in EYV. The idea of an image having sufficient technical ‘visual tension’ to make us stop and really look, coupled with the layers of meaning we uncovered when linguistically analysing a photograph enriches the viewer’s experience. In each example covered in chapter, empty scenes, strangely juxtaposed objects and the results of human behaviour are presented to the viewer as observed by the photographer. Once the viewer has got past the literal, the possible meanings begin to emerge, influenced by the not only the artist but also the culture, experience and opinions of the viewer. I was reminded of this recently when I showed my Assignment 4 to some members of my family. Our connection to each other is naturally very personal and strong, so when presented with the images of my town during COVID, they tended towards the literal interpretations. They saw blank, but recognisable spaces and picked up on the mood introduced by the use of black and white film. In the case of my mother-in-law, she instantly recognised her daughter in one of the shots which while factually correct was not the intent for her inclusion in the image. Once they had all had time to dwell on the text and the image, the metaphors presented themselves. In particular with the image below:
“His mother and siblings are showing symptoms of the virus, and they were unable to say their final goodbyes at his funeral. In their despair, the loving, dignified tributes from Ismail’s parents are truly haunting.”
Michael Gove, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, April 2020
This image was intended to use the hedgehog rocker as a metaphor for children when paired with the quotation about one of the first child casualties of COVID-19. The endangered status of real hedgehogs was intended to ask the question “are our children next with this disease?”. The image and text really resonated with the people that saw this series as it sums up the fears of the time, while actually being of an empty playground (as a side note, the whole playground has been demolished to make way for a new one – something I will consider for extending that series).
When might it fall down?
For me, overuse of metaphor runs the risk of confusing the viewer. In order to grasp some meaning to the image, the viewer brings their life experiences and perspectives to their interpretation. If the metaphor is very specific to a culture or section within society, those from outside it will see something very different. For example, I recently started a small series on the careless traces of people while on holiday in Yorkshire. When people intentionally discard something without thinking about its impact on others, it really irritates me, because of the way I was brought up. My series is intended to highlight how my sensibilities are challenged by the sometimes sinister acts of others and the acceptance that I must exhibit in most social contexts. It’s also a commentary on how I believe I can handle confrontation but generally avoid it, choosing to ‘quietly seethe’. The image below was one of the first images I shot for the series.
Untitled (2021) by Richard Fletcher.
This photograph intended to use the discarded food as a metaphor for the disrespect of a way of life, in this case that of Yorkshire. The people of Yorkshire are, in my experience extremely generous with their hospitality, so the idea of someone having most of their food in a cafe irritated me. The visual context in this shot is pretty clear, the cafe being typical of the small community ones that cater for tourists as well as the locals. The small Yorkshire Tea bag sets the location further, however my idea of the discarded food as a metaphor for an insult is pretty thin. I was present when the people (who were tourists). got up and left without finishing their food, but there is nothing in the image that suggests that is what I have just witnessed. The viewer can ask questions about the people but the connection with my intent is not particularly strong. I think like many styles in art, something that is used inappropriately can leave the viewer cold. As artists, we need to be able to explore ideas that need more explanation with more literal references, leaving the use of metaphor to layers that complement the main story.
References
[1] Cotton C, 2004, “The Photograph as Comtemporary Art”, Page 127
[2] Cotton C, 2004, “The Photograph as Contemporary Art”, Page 137
Look back at the themes we’ve examined relating to place and our presence within it. What areas inspired you most? The culmination of this course is a self-directed assignment where you have free rein to choose a subject that relates to any of the material discussed in the course. You may have gathered skills and insights through the projects that you want to revisit or you may have been inspired by other ideas.
The only stipulation is that the final outcome must represent a notion of identity and place that you are personally inspired by. Make sure that your work is visually consistent, relevant to the subject matter you choose and holds together well as a set, both visually and conceptually. Think carefully about your editing decisions.
Which images need to be there?
Which ones repeat other images?
Are you holding on to a favourite that is no longer required?
Do you need to re-shoot anything?
Aim for a coherent set of no more than 15 pictures, accompanied by a reflective commentary of no more than 500 words.
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 that it meets all the criteria. Make your evaluation available to your tutor.
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
Reflecting on Identity & Place, I consider the key learning to be about how I relate to personal stories and the context within which they are placed. At the beginning of the unit, we looked at portraiture as a way of representing a person or something about their personality. We looked at how artists incorporate elements like props and backgrounds, include text to describe and to steer a narrative and remove items, sometimes including the subject themselves. My reading of the course ‘intent’ was it being about placing a character, whether real or fictional, within an environment or context (the place) where a story could be told. The representation of a real person could be driven by either the artist or the subject (or in some cases both), while a fictional character could be entirely constructed by the artist from post memory or cultural influences with almost limitless creativity. Throughout the course, I have strived to say something about real people, from the complete strangers of Assignment 1 to the collective experiences of my town in Assignment 4. I decided towards the end of Research Task: Personal Reflection[1] that this assignment would instead be fictional, drawing on real-life references and questions about ourselves and technology. The story would take the urban legend of The Vanishing Hitchhiker as its inspiration.
The Vanishing Hitchhiker & Other Urban Ghost Stories
The telling of an urban legend is one that I think everyone in the western world experiences at some point in their lives. Someone confidently telling a story that happened to a ‘friend of a friend’ or distant family member, that they ‘swear is true’. In some cases the desire to believe is overwhelming, while in others the ‘truth’ is debunked easily enough. I first heard this story when I was around 10 years old. A man, driving alone at night picks up a beautiful female hitchhiker who shivers with cold on their journey to her home. The man gives her his coat and she inadvertently gets out of the car while still wearing it. Later realising his coat is missing, the man goes back to the house that he dropped her off at the following morning, only to find a distraught family member who tells him the girl has been dead for years. Uncertain of what to believe, he goes to her grave in the local cemetery only to discover his coat neatly folded on her gravestone. The story of the vanishing hitchhiker takes many forms and has varying degrees of believability folded into it. While researching for this assignment, I found out about a ghost called The Metheringham Lass[2], who is reputed to haunt the road where she had been involved in a motorcycle accident with her fiancé while stationed at a nearby airbase during the Second World War. ‘The Lass’ as she is known, flags down motorists for help her fiancé, gets in the car and promptly vanishes before the driver’s eyes. Sounds plausible, until we discover that the alleged facts about the girl cannot be verified in any electoral roll or airforce records. Still, there are many people who claim to have seen her on the stretch of road. We don’t know why urban legends, and ghost stories in particular, hold such fascination, but my theory is pretty simple. We want to believe there is something beyond death; the traditional notion of the afterlife but where people can still interact with the living. In addition, we want to imagine what the experience was like for the unfortunate driver (in the case of the Metheringham Lass), whether we ourselves would be utterly terrified by it or somehow sad that the person turned out not to be real. Some accounts of The Lass are truly harrowing (empty sockets for eyes, stench of rotting flesh etc) while some are desperately sad in their telling. Whatever the reason for the story’s continued existence in folklore, the vanishing hitchhiker struck me as a story that could somehow be retold in the context of modern society, social anxiety and mental stress.
My Inspiration
Aside from the initial interest in the ghost story, my inspiration for this assignment came from a couple of recent conversations with friends. We were talking about the longevity of relationships and how we’d met our wives of many years (in my case 20). We talked about the huge business of dating agencies that operate through phone apps, e.g. Tinder, where the customer base could be looking for anything from casual hookup to long-term relationship. As neither of us had any experience of this sort of thing, we questioned how accurately people portray themselves as well as the chances of these apps/sites leading to a long and happy marriage. This made me think about how we are surrounded by digital imagery of what is considered perfect or beautiful and how that affects our mental health. There have been many studies about the impact of body shaming, for example, and its effect on teenage girls with many documented cases of depression and in the worst case, suicide. I started to think about how the classical urban legend could be updated to tell a story about modern life in the digital age.
I was greatly inspired by the series Rubber Flapper by former OCA student Michael Colvin[3]as well as the tableaux works of artists like diCorcia[4] and Wall[5], studied previously. Colvin’s work intrigued me as his use of carefully created props were so convincing that I found myself wanting to ‘Google’ his fictional character to learn more about her. With my series, I wanted to maintain the thread of the ghost story so wouldn’t follow Colvin’s that closely. However, I would create my own props and sets in which to shoot. Another inspiration came from the 1999 film The Sixth Sense[6], where the lead character is counsellor to a child who can see and interact with ghosts, only to be revealed as one himself at the end of the film. The child character takes on the role of counseller from the lead, which for me was one of the biggest plot twists that I had seen in film. I wanted to create a sense of the ordinary and then extraordinary with my series, taking cues from that film to help shape the narrative without being too literal.
My final inspiration came from reading Barthes’ The Rhetoric of the Image[7] which discussed, amongst other things, the way that comic strips use text as a relay to the action in a way that can create a sense of the story on its own. When paired with the images, the story becomes whole but still leaves plenty of room for interpretation by the reader. I decided early on that I wanted to present my series as a comic or graphic novel.
The Series “Send a Message or Keep Playing?”
The individual comic strip panels can be seen in sequence below. The complete arrangement of panels can be seen also. For assessment, I intend to present as an ebook in a configuration similar to a comic strip.
Comic Strip Layout
Reflection (500 words)
This series has its origins in the classic urban legend ghost stories that have been told and retold for many years by people who ‘swear that this is true’. These stories are able to suspend our disbelief because in every telling, there is something that we recognise as part of the human condition. With this series, I wanted to bring the particular story of The Vanishing Hitchhiker up to date, choosing instead to have phantom girl appear in the cyberspace world of online dating. In doing so, I wanted to comment on how our modern-day dependence on technology for everything from shopping to finding love has resulted in a great deal of ‘taking things at face value’. I think the series successfully tells the story of a lonely man who is matched via a dating app, meets her and experiences the pleasure and then disappointment of things not turning out to be as they first appeared. We have indications of a rational, logical man who has no reason to disbelieve his good fortune at meeting the girl, who herself has contextual elements that suggest she is somehow ‘out of her time’. The ‘reveal’ in the last panels is intended to lead the viewer, but still leaves sufficient ambiguity as to the fate of both characters.
I drew significantly on the Rubber Flapper series by Michael Colvin as it encouraged me to explore the fictional that is linked to reality, but not established as such. In this series, the core story is pretty clear, but the more subtle symbolic messages leave us with questions about our sanity, how hard modern life is and how even with technology, it’s not easy to really meet people in the real world when we are awkward about such things. I was fascinated by Barthes’ discussion of comic strips and their use of relay text, which led me to work this series in that style. The text establishes a timeline and some of the man’s thoughts, but it’s not sufficient to distract from the need to study the pictures, something I’ve been careful about throughout this unit.
For me, the strongest images are the first and last, in which the man’s character is established and Eve is ‘revealed’. I took inspiration from the Rembrandt portraits of scholars by warm candlelight, electing to light Eve with a different colour temperature. Putting her slightly out of focus further emphasises her apparently ‘unrealness’. I cannot easily identify ‘weak’ images as previously, because even simple shots like man’s reaction to his phone are deliberately included to anchor the series. Overall, I believe the text in the series links the story together without being too prescriptive, which was the main goal.
The people that have seen the series in development have commented on how they feel drawn to the less obvious elements in the images, while understanding what the central storyline is. This feedback supports my intention for the series.
My thanks to my wonderful models, Vikki and Ron, whose contribution towards the shaping of this series cannot be understated.
Post Assignment Five Feedback Updates (edited January 2022)
Following the feedback session with my tutor, I made a number of changes to this assignment as detailed in the reflection document Post Assignment Five Feedback which can be found here:
Reflecting on the feedback and the changes made in the above document, I now believe the series to be much stronger. The new crops to Seven, Eight and Twelve from landscape to portrait makes the tessellation of the photographs as comic panels more effective. The rotations applied to Seven, Twelve and Thirteen not only makes the images fit the pages but take their cues from graphic novel design. With the story presented by page, I now understand my tutor’s point about being presented with the story all at once. We still read the panels sequentially as we would a book, but we can see the action unfold further ahead, which builds anticipation in the reader. I hadn’t appreciated this as a strength of graphic novels and this learning has sparked a new interest in how they are created.
The key learnings from updating my series are as follows:
When more than one person gives the same piece of feedback, it’s worth putting aside the original artistic intent to consider how it might improve the work. I went from the phase of trying to push back against this feedback, highlighting that I didn’t think they understood what I was trying to achieve, to seeing a way of making the impact of my work more powerful.
In addition to the above, the work should be worth taking the time to reconsider. What I mean by this is that the series it was a lot of work to create the initial series, which meant that I had the overwhelming feeling of wanting it to be as good as it could be. That is why I made these significant changes to series and how it’s presented. If the work is personally important, why wouldn’t an artist consider all feedback as an opportunity to make it more meaningful?
I had the idea of using a comic or graphic novel as the presentation for my series, but didn’t start out by shooting this way. The result was a challenge to achieve that wouldn’t have been a problem had I included it in my planning. I’ve learned that the final presentation should feature in the original development of an idea rather than being a consideration at the end.
My final presentation of this assignment can be found here:
Overall, I am happy with the final outcome and grateful to my tutor, my family and fellow I&P cohort members for their help and support throughout the updates.
Against the Assessment Criteria
Demonstration of Technical Skills
This assignment combined both studio setups and outdoor compositions, which introduced some challenging lighting requirements. For the outside shots, fill light was provided by a remote speedlight flash and for the indoors a combination of studio strobes and hot lights were used. The second image required the use of Photoshop to place the dating app onto the actor’s mobile phone in a shot that was taken during the studio shoot. The shot of the demolition notice was taken with a macro lens to carefully highlight the text ‘subject’ while not being distracted by the rest of the frame. The split-lighting of the last frame was achieved using hot lights to light the man and strobe & snoot to light Eve. Overall, I think the application of technical skills was vital to the impact of the images, both invidually and as a series.
Quality of Outcome
All of the images in the series work together to tell the story. There are 14 in total but the selection was made from a much larger collections shots that included different poses and facial expressions for each character. I believe the images to all have their own strengths, with those that tie the story together being of the same level of quality to those that clearly tell the story of the characters.
Demonstration of Creativity
This work marks a departure from factual storytelling in that I’ve taken a fictional idea and included a thread of reality throughout. The man is someone who’s awkwardness we can identify with, particularly when meeting someone new. We have no clue as to how the girl connected with online dating beyond the fact that the man believed her to be real. We don’t know if his mental state, dependency on technology of just his will to believe what he sees prompts him to go on the date. The disappointment of things not being as they seem can be related to the convincing nature of the false information that surrounds us but masquerades as truth. The series combines my fascination with ghost stories and our eagerness to believe them, while complementing the everyday hardships of modern life; something I’d not really considered for an assignment previously.
Context
The series works in establishing a relatable character’s identity and an insight into his world, while his place in this context is more virtual than real. The two lives are connected by Eve but cannot exist together, which leaves questions about what ‘contemporary’ people are really about.
The French writer Georges Perec wrote a book called An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris ( 1975) in which he wrote down everything he could see from a certain viewpoint. You may like to read it.
A further work by Perec is entitled ‘Species of Spaces and Other Pieces’, the first chapter of which attempts an interesting classification of spaces, ranging from the page itself to world and space outside. Again, this might help in relation to the following exercise.
Choose a viewpoint, perhaps looking out of your window or from a café in the central square, and write down everything you can see. No matter how boring it seems or how detailed, just write it down. Spend at least an hour on this exercise.
Here are some areas to consider:
Can you transform this into a photography version?
Would you stay in the same place or get in close to the things you listed?
Would you choose to use your camera phone in order to be discreet or would you
get your tripod out?
Would it be better in black and white or colour?
Would you include your list with the final images?
You may choose to turn this into a photography project if it interests you.
The Setting
Sitting at the back of a large café, furthest from the door. From my vantage point, I can see all fo the other customers, the counter and the staff. There is nothing behind me, so I don’t need to change my position or turn my head to see.
What’s going on.
Wood panelling needing attention
Canvas photographs of people presumably from Italian culture on the walls.
Large litter bin with LITTER written on it. Almost overflowing
Couple sit down with coffee and cake. She is dressed in a glamorous coat, he in his scruffs
Man reading the Daily Mail with his reading glasses on. Ignoring his phone.
Woman scrolling through social media by herself.
Man finishing his coffee and putting on his coat
He gets up and leaves.
Family with small children sit down. Proud grandparents, new parents, all of the items associated with having a new baby.
Granddad chases his granddaughter around the café to try to keep her under control.
Friend of mine enters, still recognisable despite wearing a mask. Orders a coffee and uses the loyalty app. Finds a seat, not near me. He hasn’t seen me.
More children enter. Parents struggling to keep them under control.
Pensioners sit down and loudly chatting. Perhaps they are deaf.
Windows have misted up because of the stormy weather outside. Door being held open for someone to enter slowly. Temperature is dropping because of the wind outside.
Smell of toast burning at the counter.
Lady joins one who is waiting, they get up and leave quickly. Didn’t have coffee.
Staff buzzing around clearing tables.
Lady walks past me to go to the loo. Uses the disabled toilet instead of the main one for women.
Proud granddad helping young father with baby. Grandad wearing a papoose.
Friend gets up and walks the counter to talk to the staff. He is given a small pot of milk
Man with the paper now doing the crossword
Bright red umbrella seen passing by the steamed up windows
Woman next to me checking the weather forecast app.
The floor is wet from the recent visitors.
Staff member hading over a takeaway bag to a customer. He is wearing a ‘staff in training’ T-shirt which is different from the other staff members.
Scruffy man and glamourous lady arguing about something. Getting animated.
Man enters with a very serious-looking medical mask.
Little girl drags grandma to the front door because she wants to look outside at the rain. Grandad sits down looking exhausted. Still wearing his papoose.
Woman checks her loyalty card to see if she has a free coffee.
Laughter from the pensioners table at the other end of the cafe.
Woman takes off her coat 10 mins after arriving. Must have dried out. Wearing an elegant dress under it.
Woman tries the disabled toilet door but the previous lady still in there.
Man finishes the crossword and is heading out. He is wearing a colour coordinated mask and coat with bizarre camouflage pattern.
Grandma persuades the little girl to return to her seat while she heads for the occupied toilet.
Woman chuckles loudly at something on her phone.
Couple’s argument appears to be over. All quiet.
Queue forming at the loo.
Sound of coffee grinder over the rest of the noise.
Couple enter, shaking their umbrella and searching for their masks
Staff member ambling aimlessly around the café
Little girl crawling on the floor. Trying to lift the one-way arrow up.
Review
This view of cafe life could be turned into a photography project with a number of themes. The first is about family and friends, with the three generations of one family being the most consistently active in the scene. This theme could challenge the traditional roles of family, where the grandfather was carrying the baby in a papoose, something that is traditionally worn by a parent. The second would be about the way the café is used for many different purposes; I was there working while there were people doing the crossword etc. The final one would be something about the contrast of social/antisocial where some people are in groups and some sit alone looking at their mobile phones.
It would be easy to use a hidden camera technique similar to Walker Evans [1] to document the movements and interactions between people. Moving around the cafe with this technique would introduce an element of risk to composition, as I discovered in the Covert exercise[2]. While not an issue, the random nature of this style of shooting removes some of the planning that I think such a series would benefit from. Instead, I would consider discussing the use of the space for the series with the café owner and create a more metaphorical series using tableaux. I’ve found two elements in story-telling very useful during this past year or so, the first being summoning the courage to ask for help with an image or series. e.g. the lorry picture in Assignment 4 of EYV[3] where I asked the removals people if I could shoot with them (admittedly blurred out) in the frame and in this unit with the strangers in Assignment 1 [4]. The second has been the use of carefully constructed images to create a multi-layered narrative as opposed to being literal. This has been my preferred way of helping the viewer see many different potential meanings to a work and it’s been useful in most of my assignments and exercises in this unit. For this case, I would split the action and inaction into individual images, principally because there are not perceivable interactions between the groups of people beyond that of staff/customer. By breaking the scene into individual tableaux, I think the multiplicity nature of the café in our culture could be emphasised by individual stories that have no apparent connection; almost challenging the idea of a café being a social place.
In answer to the questions of representation (black and white or colour, text or no text), I look back at Perec’s document of Paris. He describes the sights and sounds, movements and behaviours as they are presented to his eyes. Part of this vision is colour, which he documents when he notices something about it. For me, this visual distinction is important to a photographic project, so I cannot see the benefit of using black and white. In terms of using text, Perec uses it to make a physical note of what he sees. In a photographic project, I would use the tableaux to steer the narrative rather than include text. Perhaps the title of the image or series could be used to set the basis for it as with Boothroyd’s If you get remarried, will you still love me?
Conclusion
I found this exercise interesting as Perec’s assertion that we only really notice the sensational resonated with me. We are surrounded by 24hr news, most of which is dramatic and frightening in nature. We are almost desensitised to the information and take no part understanding what is being asked or told.
“The daily papers talk of everything but the daily. The papers annoy me, they teach me nothing. What they recount doesn’t concern me, doesn’t ask me questions and doesn’t answer the questions I ask, or would like to ask”
Georges Perec, from Approaches to What? (1973)[5]
The result of this bombardment is the notion that our individual lives, society and culture are defined by the big things that happen around us (and often to other people). Perec noticed that our lives are actually defined by habit and routine, some of which describe what we like and some which show us coping with the unseen aspects of daily life. His contemplative work Attempting at Exhausting a Place in Paris (1975) produced a document of precisely what he observed over 3 days in a particular place in the city. What struck me wasn’t just the observation, but the descriptions of things he didn’t really understand or could be certain of. One great example is when he believes he is being photographed from a bus by a Japanese tourist. Instead of applying his interpretation of who the tourist was or why they might be taking his picture, he simply documented what he thought was happening in a factual way. Perec almost takes Barthes’ reading of visual images (in this case what he sees in front of him) at its face value, without conscious bias or cultural interpretation. My conclusion from this exercise centres around the need to really look at the what before getting into the why. The work by Perec could act as a catalyst for creating a story because it focuses on the everyday experience rather that the media-driven narrative about the state of the world.
As you’ve seen, there are many examples of photography that avoid the use of the human figure in order to communicate truths and stories about humanity. Do your own research into areas you’ve been inspired by in this project; delve deeper into the areas that interest you. Continue to think about how this might inform your own practice.
Introduction
Within the second half of Project 1, we are introduced to the genre of still life. During the previous units, my research has led me to look a the practice of traditional painters, most of whom worked in still life at some point in their career. Famous painters such as Cezanne, Van Es and Gaugin painted still life with one thing specifically in common, their paintings had a quality of ‘the ordinary’ paired with the trace of someone having been present to influence the scene before it was painted. In some cases, such as the one below, the image could represent a moment for pause with an activity about to proceed when the person has returned.
Untitled by Pieter Claesz c.1640[1]
In this classical scene, we see what looks like a dining table with a part-consumed meal on it. The image could be read a number of ways, the first being a document of the structures of natural and ‘made’ food; the cross-sectioned pie and grapefruit. The second reading could be that this meal has had to be halted for some reason while the person leaves the room momentarily. With the former reading, we can also see the use of light and shadow in the composition, which is subtle enough to draw our attention first to the fruit and then to the bread and pie. The second reading uses the light to create a sense of evening with its muted tones. Whatever the reading, there is both technical revelation and the pausing of human life contained within what looks like a banal scene.
Sam Taylor-Wood (1967 -)
With her short film Still Life (2001), Sam Taylor-Wood takes a classic scene of some fruit as painted by one of the master painters and films a time-lapse of it decaying from fresh to pulp. The resulting film reveals a number of ideas that we might not consider until presented with what is a long-term activity, in real-time. The first is the passing of time itself. As the film advances, the light in the scene changes subtly which literally describes the passing of time for the fruit. The second, more obvious one is the actual decaying of the fruit which gradually develops discolouration as the flesh rots. During this process, the emergence of fungus becomes obvious which feeds on the decaying fruit. The film concludes with the ‘death’ of the fungus also and the appearance of flies that feed on what remains. The film is powerful because it suggests a documentary of something happening as with Claesz’ picture but also a continuation of life in the scene. The fruit decays, leading to new life in the fungus with that too dying eventually. After a time what is left further attracts other life to consume it. The element that isn’t included but is also palpable, is the sense of neglect on the part of the owner. Someone has left this here to rot for a long time, which begs the question ‘why?’ That in turn provokes different reactions depending on how we see waste or laziness and in itself could be a metaphor for the human condition and its behaviour toward the neglect of the natural world.
When I first saw the film, I was reminded of Michael Wesley’s Still Lives (2003) which depicts vases of flowers decaying over time.
Still Lives, 2003 by Michael Wesley[2]
The images were made using very long exposures on film which result in the movement of the flowers as they decay being visible in the single frame. Again, this series has the metaphorical sense of abandonment and carelessness. The flowers have been cut from their natural habitat, used in a display for a person who then promptly lets them decay. The person isn’t present but their actions most definitely are.
Jeff Wall (1946 -) and Laura Letinsky (1962 -)
With these two artists, the idea of still life is taken a step further with the images tending to be created more for their aesthetic than any iconic or symbolic messages. Special attention is paid to elevating the banality of the objects in their photographs by careful composition of form, tone and colour so that the viewer is left with the immediate impact of a visual before trying to understand the meaning of the image. The aesthetic is, as the notes suggest, pushing the viewer to try to appreciate the visual rather than the subject specifically, i.e. to ask whether it is ‘art’ or not.
Diagonal Composition No.3 (2000), by Jeff Wall – taken from the course notes
In the photograph above, Wall uses diagonal ‘lines’ in the frame and in the subjects to create a geometric composition. Everything from the lines of the wall and cupboard, to the arrangement of the wheels on the bucket point to order, while the floor and cupboard have contrasting rough textures and dirty appearances to them. The final layer is the tone and colour, which work together in the subjects and their backgrounds. Wall is making something with atheistic ‘appeal’ that also has the foundations of still life with traces of human contact. Something has been removed from the floor which has left the bare patches. The mop looks like it has been left there temporarily rather than being put away in the cupboard. The work asks questions about behaviour but also about the coincidence that the objects appear in balance. We suspect it’s deliberate but we cannot be sure.
With Laura Letinsky’s work, we see a similar approach to making the still life ‘look’ like the works of the classic painters. Her work takes the banal subjects that we have seen with other artists and places them in a stylised environment, dominated by pastel shades and soft tones. In an interview for Aperture[3], Letinsky speaks of her initial interest as being the characterisations of the subjects (mainly fruit in her case) as being somehow unimportant; their appearance having strong lines to femininity (the way she lights her still life accentuates this idea). Finallly, there is the layer of domesticity that we’ve seen before; food preparation that is paused midway through as if life has somehow gotten in the way. Letinsky went on to discuss the duality of photographic representation, which I found interesting.
“Alongside its ability to provoke sensations, photography has a way of homogenizing experience. A piece of schmutz and a Tiffany diamond become the same thing once they’re photographed—they become photographs. I have a love/hate relationship with this power of the camera to flatten difference”
Laura Letinsky
What she is saying here is that photographs simultaneously provoke emotional reactions in the viewe while the camera doesn’t naturally emphasise the beautiful over the bland in a single image. If we consider this in the context of how we look at things around us, the concepts of beauty and ugliness (or blandness) are created by our personalities. The image then invokes a subconscious response (emotional or post-memory) while the visual is something we can decide to consider as beauty or not. As the notes point out, Letinsky’s later work includes representations of still life subjects instead of the actual object, which for me is taking a strong influence from Magritte and his assertion that a representation is not ‘the object’; this is not a pipe.
Nigel Shafran (1964 -) and Sarah Lynch
We encountered Nigel Shafran’s work Washing Up(2000) during Context and Narrative[4] and I was drawn to his use of ‘post-event’ contextual elements in his pictures. At the time, we were considering the work as absenteeism portraiture because the items in the compositions told us a story about the people who lived in the environment. The subtle and careful placement of the pots and pans, empty wine bottles etc set the images in a particular time of day as we start to imagine what the preceding meal was like. Some of the items suggest a convivial situation while others a potentially tense one, but that is up the viewer’s own recognition of the scene to conclude. Of the artists in Context and Narrative, Shafran (along with Wall and diCorcia) influenced my view of story-telling more than the others.
Sarah Lynch’s work is unlike the other artists here although the origins are clearly still life. Lynch makes a small number of objects the focus of her photographs, with little in terms of background or additional contextual elements. Her subjects are typically everyday and instantly recognisable to most people, but here they are represented in the composition in a way that makes the viewer consider them carefully. In one (Circles No.5)[5], a single circle of electrical wire sits in an empty space. The circle is perpendicular to the viewer, so that the shape is clearly seen. The wire is looped a few times and secured by a small thread that is the same colour as the plain background. The image is lit so that the bold copper colour of the wire contrasts with the otherwise pastel background, resulting in the viewer only looking at the one subject. At first glance, it’s not clear why this picture deserves any real attention. When I looked at it, I was struck by how the wire appears under tension, restrained by the thin thread that barely looks strong enough to hold it. I’m immediately struck by what would happen if the thread snapped. Would the wire spring out and lose its shape? Would that movement topple the wire so that the circle it envelopes also collapses? Is the wire a metaphor for the fragility of life?
“I would like to think that my work does show importance and beauty in everything, be it objects, space or time. I hope it is a reminder for us to appreciate life so as not waste our short time being angry or hurtful. I think being reminded of our fragile states, both in the sense of our own mortality and the transient nature of our being, helps put our small selves into perspective. We should be marvelling at the constant movement of energy that we are part of; we shouldn’t be trying to divide, package and control it all”
Sarah Lynch in conversation with Sharon Boothroyd[6]
This quotation from her interview with Sharon Boothroyd suggests that my reaction is similar to her intent for the work. Here then, we have traces of human interaction because the wire was put into a circle deliberately and restrained by the use of the thread. The human input has a transformative quality to the wire, which now takes a shape it’s not supposed to be in. Having said that, wire is normally formed on a reel, so it could be argued that the act of winding it in this way is a pseudo-natural manipulation in an almost passive-aggressive fashion. The person who did it is no longer there in terms of the picture but their impact is still felt. The wire though, could break free at any moment, either by accident or intentionally. The potential for moving from one state to another is very much a metaphor for life and death. The triviality of the wire and its surroundings is for me a metaphor for our own insignificance in the context of the universe.
Susan Lipper and Penny Klepuszewska
The final two artists in this project play heavily on stereotypes in their still life work. Lipper made a series called Bed and Breakfast (1998) which uses a mixture of still life and candid ‘holiday snap’ photographs to create a sense of the English holiday. What’s interesting is that the stereotype is being interpreted by an American. Even so, she takes the most familiar parts of the British holiday experience that people of that culture instantly recognise. The work exploits the minor, apparently unimportant details of the traditional British holiday in a way that invokes memory. As the notes suggest, the memories that the images provoke are not limited to the visual. Those of a certain age would associate the image of the curtains (below) with an old, slightly musty smell that tell of a room needing some modernisation. That sense works with the visual aspect, which is more obvious in the same way. The tone of the image and the peach-colour of the wall suggest a quaintness that is often associated with small, British hotels and B&Bs. To look further, the cheerful pattern of the curtains themselves belie the mood of the rest of the series which has a tired, clichéd feel to it.
Untitled, from the series ‘Bed & Breakfast'(1998), by Susan Lipper[7]
A similar set of emotions are invoked when we look at the work of Penny Klepuszewska. Her series Living Arrangements (2001) uses still life to represent familiar items in a nursing home. The series is shot as ‘low-key’, which adds immediately adds a sense of gentle discovery as if the scene is being illuminated from the darkness by torchlight. The artist uses the small amount of light to pick out the edges of some structures, while placing others in shadow which, when I viewed it, made me feel like I was moving through the ‘scene’, gaining mere glimpses of the items. Like Lipper, Klepuszewska does include people in her scenes but instead of the emphasis being about them, they are almost ‘models’ for the other elements in the frame. In the picture below, for example, Klepuszewska uses the old lady’s hands to model ideas about the lace tablecloth and the glasses.
Living Arrangements No.5 (2001) by Penny Klepuszewska[8]
This image struck me as we have a blending of still-live with portraiture that creates a strong sense of someone’s life without being to see much of them. We don’t know anything beyond the age of the hands and that they look feminine. The arrangement of the hands is as if in prayer which sets this image out from the rest of the series in that it suggests both comfort and loneliness in the same picture. The rest of the series appears almost documentary in nature with the selection of items that a nursing home would have within it. This image reminded me of Bryony Campbell’s Dad Project, studied in Context & Narrative[9]. Campbell included photographs of her Dad’s physical decline without showing his face or any emotions that he may have been experiencing. The final picture in that series, of Campbell holding his hand after his death, was for me the most powerful in terms of a metaphor fro the passing of time and our physical forms acting as a vessel. In the picture above, we have the old hands pausing for prayer at a table, which creates a sense of someone’s faith that they are not alone. The use of light suggests the prayer is before bed, which is a strong, recognisable idea in people who are deeply religious and traditional about their faith. The inclusion of the glasses that have been neatly folded and placed, further emphasises the sense of the day ‘being over’. The who image could be read as a metaphor for old age and impending death, or indeed the gratitude for each day despite the surroundings the person finds themselves in. There is a layer of joy in the image, which fits very neatly into the rest of the series.
Conclusion
I’ve found this project very interesting because of the different ways that absenteeism and still life can be used to tell relatable human stories. Each artist has used the genre slightly differently, from Wall’s discovered beauty in banality to Letinsky’s metaphors for the grace and fragility of the physical. Shafran’s Washing Up always appealed to me as it was the first time I really looked at an image for signs of life. The life is definitely there in the subtle inclusion of everyday objects, but the questions that it raises are so vast that the imagination of the viewer can run wild. The series by Klepuszewska struck me as sensitive and caring, perhaps because I can relate to the messages about the final phases of life. We can see a nursing home as being a terrible idea for our loved ones or we can see them as a safe haven for the elderly to continue with their customs or traditions. Whatever the viewer brings to the viewing influences how the series makes them feel.
In terms of how this work (and the rest of Project 1) will influence my work, I am planning to incorporate some form of still life tableau into my story for Assignment 5. The challenge for me will be not including too much detail that restricts the viewer in understanding the picture itself and how it fits into the rest of the series.
Richard Fletcher OCA Photography Blog 