The Brief

Look at some more images from this series on the artist’s website

• How do Pickering’s images make you feel?
• Is Public Order an effective use of documentary or misleading?

Sarah Pickering’s series Public Order does something different again to Seawright’s.  This time we are presented with images of a deserted town that could be anywhere.  When I look at them, I am reminded of the run-down areas of industrial West Yorkshire, where my wife is from.  Boarded up businesses and seedy looking night clubs like the one in the notes are commonplace.  While areas of the town are recovering from the socio-economic problems related to the decline of the steel and textile industries, there are areas where those problems are still obvious. The collection moves through the desolate town-scape leaving me with a sense of sadness more than fear because of my relationship with those areas.  I was actually disappointed at the feeling of being deceived as the collection becomes more obviously ‘not real’.  The compositions themselves use leading lines, shapes and textures beautifully, but I couldn’t initially see what the artist was trying to say.    While Flicks Night Club caused me to create a narrative about deserted streets, something very relevant to the current Coronavirus pandemic, the complementary image Behind Flicks Night Club says nothing to me apart from a pleasing matching of shape and colour.   I started to think more about what Pickering was looking for when she shot the series and in a video interview with Aperture [1], she describes the relationship she has with rules and authority.  She talks of her father being very much a fan of rules, so perhaps she was saying that beneath the surface there is a fabrication or fantasy.  The pictures that contain evidence of the ‘riot’ damage caused by the police training that takes place in the town, suggest that it’s ok to rebel authority, real or otherwise.

For me, as an art collection Public Order works well as each image connects with the other sand they are aesthetically pleasing.  However, unlike Seawright’s Sectarian Murder the context is all within the image i.e. without the key information that this is a police training ground, so the narrative is vague for me.  I confess that I don’t personally like the work as much as Seawright’s as the impact is less powerful on me.  Do I think it’s a misleading use of documentary?  I would say that it’s not more misleading that any of the work I’ve looked at so far.  The police do deal with riots and towns like this do exist, even if the details are embellished.

References

[1] Aperture Foundation, 2018, “Sarah Pickering on Public Order & Explosion series Excerpt, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQRAW_cPvfY&list=PLvAytXgNgEllIfZ7aw0pinYQjYVqqPDXq&index=34&t=0s

Research Task – Paul Seawright’s “Sectarian Murders”

Introduction

When first looking at the series Sectarion Murders, I naturally read the accompanying narratives taken from the press and then looked at the photographs.  Seawright’s use of text taken from news reports of sectarian murders is powerful in its own right.  He removed any reference to which side of the Northern Ireland conflict was being held responsible for the killings, instead leaving just the flat, sadness of the facts.  With each image, the backdrop of the text is then used by the viewer to allow them to create their own narrative.

The first shot in the series has the text:

‘The sixteen year old youth was standing at the corner of Dandy Street talking, when a motorcycle with two youths on it drove by.  The pillion passenger was carrying a Sterling sub-machine gun and opened fire on the group.  The boy fell dying in a hail of bullets’

 The text starts by factually reporting the incident as if it were a police record; the use of the word ‘youth’ and the detailed identification of the weapon used.  Towards the end, the piece introduces the tragedy element with ‘the boy fell dying in a hail of bullets’.  This single sentence introduces the more human element, connecting the age at the start of the piece with the fact that this was a 16 year old child.  The extremely violent nature of his death is further emphasised by the ‘hail of bullets’.  I found the building horror of the text to be interesting even before viewing Seawright’s accompanying picture.

The image itself depicts a street corner, assumed to be the place where the shooting took place.  The bleak environment has a couple of streat signs and a small caravan parked on the corner.  The image is shot with a flash that picks out the stop sign and a reflective stripe on the motorcyclist passing in the background.  When I viewed the image, I was first struck by the emptiness of the frame which created a bleak view.  The large areas of ground and sky have little interest in them beyond being either sunrise or sunset.  The approaching bike is small in the frame and while the context is all about the murder being a drive-by shooting, it creates a sense of unseen and unexpected.  I look at the small caravan and think ‘few witnesses, if any’.  The final element of the bright ‘Stop’ sign is to me a narrative of the horror of the killing of a child, suggesting that this kind of act cannot continue.   All of these narrative elements in my interpretation come from having read the contextual text first. Without it, the scene is an early morning or late evening bike ride at first glance. The context is critical to the narrative.

The Video Interview

In the video [1], Seawright comments on the extremes of having too loose a context and being too prescriptive, citing the former to be having little obvious meaning and the latter being journalistic.  Looking at his series, I understand what he means here.  The images themselves are interesting from a composition and lighting perspective but they only had an impact on me with the accompanying context.  Seawright moves us away from the vague, but does not add so much context to make the image too easy to navigate.  He talks about the viewer creating the narrative rather than him and that in order to do that, they need the space and time to do so.  I was reminded of a previous piece of research that I did for EYV where Nan Goldin was talking to an audience about how she feels about the Instagram generation [2].  She talked about being in a conversation with a social media manager about some paintings that she had done.  When that person looked at them on her phone, she swiped through the collection very quickly.  Goldin challenged her that she hadn’t looked at them, only to be told “I saw them”.  Goldin’s realisation that this is how the world looks at images led her to dislike the platform.   The same is true here.  As Seawright states that a journalistic image needs only the briefest of glances to understand what is going on, art needs space and time for the viewer to appreciate the image as they create the narrative internally.  I agree with this sentiment as I’ve had feedback from people viewing my own photographs where I’ve not tried to be too vague or obvious about the meaning.  In terms of whether we can re-classify documentary as a piece of art with or without changing the meaning, I believe that to be dependent on the image’s internal context.  Looking at Seawright’s collection, there are no internal contexts that point to sectarian murder.  In several of the images in the collection, Seawright draws us into the frame with traditional techniques and  elements that are often playful and seemingly innocuous.  He challenges the seemingly idyllic with the horror of the external context, leaving the viewer re-considering how they originally felt about the picture.  For me, that challenge is very much key to art.

Sarah Pickering – Public Order (from Exercise 3)

Sarah Pickering’s series Public Order does something different again to Seawright’s.  This time we are presented with images of a deserted town that could be anywhere.  When I look at them, I am reminded of the run-down areas of industrial West Yorkshire, where my wife is from.  Boarded up businesses and seedy looking night clubs like the one in the notes are commonplace.  While areas of the town are recovering from the socio-economic problems related to the decline of the steel and textile industries, there are areas where those problems are still obvious. The collection moves through the desolate town-scape leaving me with a sense of sadness more than fear because of my relationship with those areas.  I was actually disappointed at the feeling of being deceived as the collection becomes more obviously ‘not real’.  The compositions themselves use leading lines, shapes and textures beautifully, but I couldn’t initially see what the artist was trying to say.    While Flicks Night Club caused me to create a narrative about deserted streets, something very relevant to the current Coronavirus pandemic, the complementary image Behind Flicks Night Club says nothing to me apart from a pleasing matching of shape and colour.   I started to think more about what Pickering was looking for when she shot the series and in a video interview with Aperture [3], she describes the relationship she has with rules and authority.  She talks of her father being very much a fan of rules, so perhaps she was saying that beneath the surface there is a fabrication or fantasy.  The pictures that contain evidence of the ‘riot’ damage caused by the police training that takes place in the town, suggest that it’s ok to rebel authority, real or otherwise.

For me, as an art collection Public Order works well as each image connects with the other sand they are aesthetically pleasing.  However, unlike Seawright’s Sectarian Murder the context is all within the image i.e. without the key information that this is a police training ground, so the narrative is vague for me.  I confess that I don’t personally like the work as much as Seawright’s as the impact is less powerful on me.  Do I think it’s a misleading use of documentary?  I would say that it’s not more misleading that any of the work I’ve looked at so far.  The police do deal with riots and towns like this do exist, even if the details are embellished.

Assesandra Sanguinetti. The Adventures of Guille and Belinda and The Enigmatic Meaning of Their Dreams

Here we have a series about two young cousins growing up in rural Buenos Aires.  Sanguinetti observed the clear differences in appearance between the two girls, one larger and more mature looking than the other.  When set against the backdrop of their lives, the series could have simply documented their growing up within a particular way of life.  Instead, Sanguinetti adds another layer to her work, by documenting the way the girls play. Their imaginations and depictions of events from dreams moves straight documentary with context, to something more impossible or fantastical.  Consider the example below:

Ophelias, by Alessandra Sanguinetti, 2001[4]

For me, this sums up the variability of documentary photography and its intent.  It can be both truth-teller and storyteller.  It can describe factual events without actually showing them as well as associating patterns and textures with the mood of the photographer.  Too prescriptive and it can be a brief news item and too vague leaves any interpretation possible.  When I look at this series, I see a story built from many fantastical layers, with the only real ‘fact’ that is documented being two little girls who like dressing up.  It’s a fascinating and compelling art collection.

References

[1] 2014, “Catalyst:Paul Seawright”, https://vimeo.com/76940827

[2] Tattersall, L, 2018, “Nan Goldin in Conversation with Lanka Tattersall”, MOCA, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2XrWPdJIBg

[3] Aperture Foundation, 2018, “Sarah Pickering on Public Order & Explosion series Excerpt, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQRAW_cPvfY&list=PLvAytXgNgEllIfZ7aw0pinYQjYVqqPDXq&index=34&t=0s

[4] Sanguinetti, A, 1999 -2001, “The Adventures of Guille and Belinda and the Enigmatic Meaning of their Dreams”. Magnum Photos Portfolio, https://pro.magnumphotos.com/C.aspx?VP3=SearchResult&ALID=2K7O3RHJ7TOL

The Brief

1) Find a street that particularly interests you – it may be local or further afield.  Shoot 30 colour images and 30 black and white images in a street photography style.

2) In your learning log, comment on the differences between the two formats.

3) What difference does colour make?  Which set do you prefer and why?

Introduction

For this exercise, I chose Tewkesbury High Street which is reasonably local to me.  It interests me because of its history and the fact that my family’s origins can be traced back around 250 years or so.  For the shoot, I decided to use film as the colour and black and white images would be correctly represented, as opposed to performing a conversion in Lightroom.  I shot one roll of Kodak Portra 400 colour and one of Kodak TMax 400 black and white in my Nikon F6 and had them both developed professionally.  After selection, the total images for each type were not quite 30, but I was able to review enough shots to answer the questions set by the brief.

The Colour Images

Throughout my photographic learning, colour has always been the ‘normal’ in pictures.  What I mean by this is that even its most basic in terms of light, composition and interest, colour images represent what we remember how the scene looked when we shot it.  As a child, I randomly shot whatever interested me without any consideration of how the colours balanced or impacted a scene. As I’ve got older, the learning has been around ensuring that colour doesn’t distract from the subject of the photograph.  Finally, with my interest in shooting film in the past few years, I’ve learned that colour can be used to draw attention to a subject, set it within a colour environment that makes it appealing and as a visual frame.  Including elements of colour that complement the subject can help support the story being told just as contrasting colour can distract from it.

For my street photographs in Tewkesbury, I was shooting on a sunny day with intermittent clouds which meant that I also had the colour of the light to work with.

A few examples of my colour images can be seen below:

In the first shot, I spotted the No Parking sign that had seen better days with two silver cars parked seemingly in violation of the instruction.  My first thought when I took this photograph was that the cars were the same colour (if silver can be considered a colour).  What I didn’t realise until the film was developed was the sense of balance in the frame.  The red brick and the white window frames introduce a symmetry against which the key components contrast.  The signs are both clearly visible but the contrast between their messages is more obvious because of the colour.  A happy accident, but this image works in colour because of the way the frame is filled with a subtle, muted palette.

The second image was something I noticed as I walked past an old barber’s shop.  The first thing that I saw was their use of tabloid newspapers to screen the windows of the now-empty shop door.  As I looked at the door, I then noticed its bold colour which frames the window.  I think that this image works because of the additional interest introduced by the paper and the door frame.  They create a playful feel to the image, which belies the fact that the door leads into a shop that is now empty.

The third image selected here is of a bargain basket of Valentine’s Day gifts that I spotted outside a shop.  The Valentine’s theme of pink runs through the whole picture and reinforces the message of the celebration being about love.  The reason I took this photograph was to highlight the sadness of such celebrations, that have become highly commercialised, coming to an end.  I am trying to show the wasteful throw-away culture of our lives with this shot, which I think is enhanced by the impactful colour.

The Black and White Images

The first of the black and white images was of a woman walking away from me in some highly colourful trousers.  I was struck by the boldness of this lady’s style and how she confidently down the street.  In order to capture that confidence, I could have shot the picture in colour to highlight the drama of her clothes.  However, I had the black and white film in the camera at this point.  When I look at this photograph, I still see the confidence but I also note the visual clutter of the building works capture in the frame.  The brightly coloured warning foam on the scaffolding and the roadworks sigh would, on reflection, been a clash with the subject.   I think black and white works here because the drama is captured without distraction.

The second image is of a scooter rider in the high street.  The weather was turning at the point that I shot this image, with the sun emerging from the clouds. What I think works with this being black and white is the contrast of the tones on the scooter.  Black and white can be very punchy when the light works with the reflectance of the subject and this is a good example of this.  The lower contrast background doesn’t distract or dampen the mood of the image.

The third image is of a book shop window.  Tewkesbury has a strong Campaign for Real Ale presence in the town and part of it is a celebration of the history of pubs and brewing. It’s common to see these signs declaring a now-closed pub.  What struck me about this one was sadness at the statement ‘for unknown reasons’.  I shot this in black and white because I wanted to show this feeling of sadness, even though it closed long before I was born and the building still serves the public as a bookshop.  The building itself, typical of Tewkesbury, is from the 1600s and I think the timber frame that is visible in the image is best represented in black and white because it connects with the early photography of this buildings which were all that way.

Conclusion – What are the differences?

If documentary photography is used to tell a story and be used by the photographer to emphasise an element of it, then the differences between colour and black and white can be significant.  In reviewing them, I conclude:

• Colour can be a distraction. When a scene has many elements, but the story is about one of them, clashing colours can take away from the story.  In my first black and white shot, the subject would have been lost with the addition of colour.
• Colour can add to the story when it reveals something about subject. My example of the Valentine’s sale has more impact because of the pink theme running through it.
• In both formats, balance is essential. Too much contrast or colour can distract from the story.  In the examples of No Parking and Scooter, they work because there are no extremes.  The colours are muted and link together in the former and the contrast separates the scooter from the background in the latter.

My personal preference has always been black and white.  When reflecting on why that is, I considered the fact that the images look recognisable but somehow different to how we see the world.  In the days when there was only black and white, we accepted that we couldn’t see the subject as we would if we were looking at it because there was no alternative.  With the advent of colour, the images became more like our observation.  Early pioneers of street photography, such as Meyerowitz and Winogrand saw the progression from black and white to colour as perfectly natural because of that distinction, but they experienced a snobbery from the art world who believed black and white to be higher quality.  For me, I love the way that light can be represented in black and white tones and the punch that can be achieved with it.  However, I also believe that in the hands of a skilled street artist colour can be the differentiator between a good image and one that has impact.  Perhaps it is my own limited experience with the genre that steers me away from it.

Contact Sheets

What is Reportage?

In attempting to answer this question, I took the approach that most start with, a Google search.  The answers were particularly puzzling.  Most, including the dictionary definition refer to reporting an event in some form of broadcast media:

reportage

noun [ U ]   formal

UK  /ˌrep.ɔːˈtɑːʒ/ US  /rɪˈpɔːr.t̬ɪdʒ/

the activity of, or style of, reporting events in newspapers or broadcasting them on television or radio

from the Cambridge English Dictionary [1]

The ambiguity in defining the level of objectivity or subjectivity in photography was not really a surprise, given the work so far in Part 1.  The photographer has the power to tell a story that looks like the truth, but from their point of view.  The concept of inside/outside can grant the photographer a form of credibility which they can use to draw attention to the key elements of the story.  This level of manipulation of the viewer, while very clever and often subtle, still needs the elements in the image to make it work.   In the case of the post-event ‘late’ photography the element of time is removed but the juxtaposition of the subject and background, along with the supporting external narrative tells the story.   Intriguingly, the first image in Project 3 is one where an event isn’t occurring at all.   Edgar Martins’ image [2] is of a large empty room, lit from the opposite end to the viewer by French windows.  The only details in the room itself are the elegant architecture, the wooden floor with leaves strewn across it.

A room at 14 Baldwin Farms South, Greenwich Conn., 2009 by Edgar Martins [2]

“It is crucial that both the commissioning entity and the photographer can articulate their goals and parameters clearly. In this specific case there was a clear misunderstanding concerning the values and rights associated with the creative process that led a renowned publication like the New York Times Magazine to commission an artist, such as myself, to depict a very specific view of reality without taking all the necessary measures to ensure that I was fully aware of its journalistic parameters and limits.”

What he was saying was that he didn’t appreciate the newspaper’s intention to limit his creativeness to tell a truthful story.  For me, this lack of expectation management reveals how photography itself can be manipulated to suit a single purpose.

When considering the decisive moment, where the events are unfolding in real time, I see a similarity to modern citizen journalism.  Cartier-Bresson was sensitive to all of the elements in the frame as opposed to the subject matter alone, which allowed him to tell the story through a single moment in time.  Optimal placement of the elements, no matter how subtle can tell a much broader story as with the image in the notes.

Bresson’s Dessau shows a Gestapo spy being shown to the crowd she was trying to hide in.  The elements that make up the frame are compelling as they contain multiple expressions of anger and disgust on the faces of the crowd and the woman who is detaining her.  The prisoner has an expression of shame as the person she is brought before reviews her papers.  It’s little wonder that this image told the tale of the turning tide of the war in a single frame.  The Gestapo were a feared Nazi secret police force who were known for turning citizens into spies and informants within the ranks of ordinary people and resistance fighters alike.  The image of one being captured is about as good a piece of propaganda for the allies as there is, but as with all decisive moment imagery, we interpret what happened immediately before and after the shot by the elements in this single snapshot of time.  Objectivity is not really anywhere to be seen.

References

[1] 2020, Unknown author, ‘Dictionary Definition of Reportage’. Cambridge English Dictionary, https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/reportage

[2] Martins, E, 2008, “This is not a House”, Artist website, http://www.edgarmartins.com/work/this-is-not-a-house/?show=photographs

[3] Various, 2009, “Truthy lies: photographers speak out on Edgar Martins”, Critical Terrain Blog Post, https://criticalterrain.wordpress.com/2009/07/23/truthy-lies-photographers-speak-out-on-edgar-martins/

[4] Beesley, R, 2012, “This is not a House”, Aesthetica Magazine, https://aestheticamagazine.com/this-is-not-a-house/

In regard to Campany’s essay ‘Safety in Numbness’

Introduction

Campany’s essay was in response to the post-911 photography project by Joel Meyerowitz, the only photographer given access to the ruins of the World Trade Center towers during the recovery operation.  His assertion is that images shot after an event that capture only traces of what has happened are an aid to memory of it, rather than a document of it.  The stillness created by an image of aftermath is more about the photographer’s skill in creating an aesthetic rather than the impact of the event itself.

My consideration of the essay

When I read this essay, I was already looking at it defensively.  Meyerowitz is arguably my favourite photographer and I initially felt that this was a patronising look at what was a well-intended project to record the tragedy of 911 for the American people.  However as with most challenging material, when we look beyond initial perceptions or even predjudice we can identify with some of the key messages.

I found Campany’s comments about the role of photography with the development of moving picture technology interesting.  In the days before mass print journalism, photography provided the single moment of an event to inform the public of something relating to it.  The lack of real-time information didn’t really matter because there was not alternative at the time.  With the advances in print media, photography became the way of emphasising the impact of an event or series of events, e.g. the great depression of the 1930s.   It was later criticised for being narrow in its perspective when bringing the general hell of war to the people.  However, Campany adds that photography ceased to be used as the primary documentary tool for war zones after Vietnam.  I was a teenager when the first Gulf War took place and hadn’t really appreciated until reading Campany that video and moving imagery were the primary ways for us to understand the conflict.  I remember the first still images (that weren’t freeze frames from video) being after the allies had gone into Kuwait after the Iraqi surrender.  The still nature of those images are, as Campany describes, horrific but numbing.

In terms of he comment on Meyerowitz, I can see the point being made that despite the photographer asserting that the subject ‘told him how to shoot it’, his skill means that the images take on a certain beauty that is almost counter to the idea of documentation. I have the photographs in Meyerowitz’s collected works book ‘Taking my Time’ and they no longer remind me of how tragic 911 was.  Instead, they serve as a collection in the canon of one of my favourite artists.

Considering the three viewpoints, Charity, Compassion Fatigue and Inside/Out

Martha Rosler

Rosler’s assertion that the use of photography by social-conscience photographers increased the gap between social classes is an interesting one.  Her essay ‘The Bowery in two inadequate descriptive systems’ looks at the photographers who documented the Bowery slums during the Depression era.  Her view was that the use of photography to highlight the plight of the poor and the homeless was considered an attempt to bring their world into that of the higher classes to affect change.  While on the surface it looks like a noble effort, Rosler stated that the effect of pointing out that ‘you have much better lives than them’ merely galvanised the class structure.  For me, the criticism of the sentiment is harsh.  As with the work of the FSA, the intention was to effect change by ensuring that the wealthy did not forget the problems of the poorer classes.  In the case of the photographers working for the Farm Security Administration, the scale of the geography involved could only really be reported through photographs as many of the upper classes were not centred in rural America.  Was it pushing a socalist agenda?  Undoubtedly so, but when considering the imagery in a non-photographic review, I admire what they were trying to do.  Where I agree with Rosler is the exploitative nature of the work in the Bowery slums.  Here the photographers were capturing images of people who had little in terms of voice or in some cases, even consciousness.  Alcohol and drug abuse was rife at the time, so many of the subjects would not have even been aware of the context the photographers were looking for.  Some may have not registered that they were being photographed at all.   I immediately saw the connection with Mendel’s Dzhangal, where the people themselves didn’t want to be photographed.  By using their possessions without them being part of the project, Mendel essentially avoids any counter discussion about the lives of the people at the camp.  The other connection I drew was when people photograph wild cats.  Most access to wild cats is via a zoo or rescue centre, where an animal has limited ability to be as it would in the wild.  Like many photographers who have shot these sort of pictures, I have waited for long periods to capture what I think is the behaviour of the cats and what I want the people who view my photographs to see.  In fact, if I really wanted to document a lion or tiger as it should be seen, I’d have to go on a safari.  Here, the constraints of environment are removed which allows the subject to act entirely naturally.  Friends who have shot in these conditions say that there are many more opportunities to observe the animals when not trying to control them. When I read Rosler’s paper, I concluded that the Bowery and the social circumstances were the constraints and the people were effectively being watched for certain patterns of behaviour.  I concluded then that this use of documentary photography is exploitative, even if that wasn’t the original intention.

In terms of its ability to effect change, I believe that photography is a powerful addition to wider perspective, either written or spoken.  The irony of the socially conscious image that seeks to change, is that the only way it becomes well known is for it to be distributed.  Distribution usually involves some form of financial benefit, whether through purchase or enhanced exposure.  With the advances in social media and camera technology, that benefit is more widely acquired, but for me the expectation of some form of altruism in return is a naïve one.  With Lange’s famous image ‘Migrant Mother’, the subject complained that she never benefited from the success of the photograph despite the photographer having done so.  I suppose the thought was that the impact of the work of the FSA would outweigh any royalties, but nevertheless Rosler’s theory that the divide between rich and poor increases, is validated by the apparent lack of support.

Over the decades, we have seen examples of imagery provoking action in people, from Live Aid to Climate Change.  In some cases, the appeal is for help while others seek to shock.  The sheer volume of photographs that are taken of a single subject is, in my view, having a greater impact because of the perception that they statistically support the argument.  For example, the bombardment of the suffering of animals due to habitat loss through climate change, provokes a sensibility in many (particular in the UK, where people are considered animal lovers) that sparks people into action.  This plays somewhat into Sontag’s argument about compassion fatigue, but it’s demonstrably successful with animal charities being among the most supported in the UK.

Susan Sontag

Compassion Fatigue is a feeling that I regularly get when viewing photographs.  Last year, I visited Tate Britain to see Don McCullin’s major exhibition.  The collection contained some 270 photographs spanning McCullin’s time as a war photographer.  The imagery was naturally harrowing but because there was so much of it, I found myself beginning to look at the way the photographs were shot rather than at the subject itself.  I had become disinterested in the horrors of the images and even applied the same disengaged fatigue to his lighter landscape work towards the end of the exhibition. I think the shock value of war photography starts by making the viewer feel like it’s something real to them, but as the number of images increases, the sensation moves to one of normalisation.  With that normalisation comes a sense of ‘it’s not real to me’.  In my experience during the McCullin exhibition, I found that my sense of empathy toward the subjects dulled with the increasing number of photographs, but also my ability to reset my perspective when it came to less harrowing imagery.  McCullin’s landscape photographs of the flood water on the Somerset Levels in late 1990s were bleak in the way they were photographed.   As the majority of the other work was war or conflict, my natural tendency was to see the destruction of the flood water, rather than the dramatic power of nature.  Similar to Mendel’s images of people in flood water, there is both resignation in the expressions of the subjects as well as a sense of comfort in a few of them.  How can we tell the difference in the photographer’s intention?

Abigail Solomon-Godeau

The answer to my last question comes from the essay by Abigail Solomon-Godeau.  The concept of being an insider vs a spectator perhaps offers the explanation of the flood images.  In Mendel’s images, the flood victims have let him into their lives to capture what are very clearly posed photographs. In the case of the photograph of the woman in her hallway that I described at the start of this course, the sense of being inside is even stronger because the photographer lives in the UK and is very much part of the society devastated by the weather of that time.  In the case of his photographs from India, that connection is missing which for me turns him (and us) into the tourists described by Sontag.  For me, then, the difference is around how we relate the image to our own lives or supporting context, in this case what we know about the artist’s body of work.  During Expressing Your Vision, I looked at Nan Goldin’s work “The Ballad of Sexual Dependency” that is referenced by Solomon-Godeau in her essay.  My research took in a number of interviews with Goldin[1] where she talked about her years living in what others called the fringe society in New York.  Her subjects often lived with her and as a consequence, Goldin’s photographs in that piece often show her friends in everyday relationship situations, some good and some bad.  Goldin shows her subjects from a viewpoint of a clear closeness that can only really be achieved by being an insider.  When I visited the Diane Arbus exhibition in London in spring 2019, I was struck by her early work photographing circus performers.  As Sontag postulated, Arbus’ photographs were more of an impassioned look at her subjects and we really get that sense of ‘look at how different this person is?’ when we look a them.  An example from each photographer can be seen below.

Female impersonator holding long gloves, Hempstead, L.I. by Diane Arbus, 1959 [2]

Jimmy Paulette on David’s Bike, NYC,  by Nan Goldin, 1991 [3]

In terms of what makes a successful documentary project, I am left with the thought that it very much depends on what the photographer believes to be their viewing audience to be and the nature of the subject itself. I’m currently working on a personal project to document the decline of the high street in my town.  I’m visiting and revisiting the town centre as part of my daily walk and trying, without bias to capture the changes.  When I started the work, I hadn’t begun this course and in terms of reflection I realise that I am both inside and outside.  I am passionate about my home town after living here for 20 years and the fact that I have friends who own businesses here makes me an insider.  However, I’m not a business owner by profession and so don’t fully appreciate or connect with their struggle, which in turn makes me an outsider.  I’m also conscious of the glimmers of optimism that are around the town which I am photographing in equal measure, trying to maintain a balance.  All of my photographs to date have been devoid of people, but trying to capture the essence of the business that was there before. I guess I have been subconsciously trying to work more like Rosler.  The long term nature of the project means that this may evolve as things change around me. In conclusion, I believe that balance of subject, empathy and perspective of the photographer is the compromise to achieving as objective document within a single photograph or series.  I’ll revisit these thoughts are the project progresses.

References

[1] Reeves, E, 2017, “On the Ballad of Sexual Dependency”, MOCA, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDSvD0yhjWQ

[2] O’Regan, K, 2019, “Diane Arbus’ unflinching portraits of outcasts are more impactful now than ever”, Sleek Magazine, https://www.sleek-mag.com/article/diane-arbus-hayward/

[3] Finn, B, 2019, “A new book documenting Nan Goldin’s journey through drag”, HERO magazine,  http://hero-magazine.com/article/159524/a-new-book-documenting-nan-goldins-journey-through-drag/

Overview

Gideon Mendel’s exhibition called Dzhangal presented a mixture of photographic and object art as a portrait of the lives of the refugees who lived in the now-closed camp at Calais.  He recovered personal and environmental items from the camp and sought to create a document of the chaos of life as a refugee, by trying to apply some form of order to what he saw.

My analysis

Mendel was interviewed during the installation of his exhibition at the Autograph Gallery in London and described the way his original concept for his work had not been successful.  He had originally put the emphasis on photographing the refugees themselves, placing himself in their world.  He wanted to tell the world about their plight but ran into the seemingly obvious issue of them not wanting to be photographed for reasons of possible identification and the potential consequences thereof.  By shifting his emphasis to the trace elements of their existence, he created an equally powerful picture of life for the people of the camp.  I was particularly drawn to the mix of items in the exhibition.  For a photographer, Mendel’s exhibition contained a relatively small number of photographs compared to the physical items.  My initial conclusion was that Mendel didn’t want to use photography as a pseudo-objective way of telling the story, presumably because of the potential for criticism of bias. With the shifting political mood around the acceptance of immigrants into the UK at the time, the collection could be seen as an anti-policy statement being made by a non-UK artist.  As ridiculous as that might seem, the use of items collected from the camp as part of the exhibition does suggest objectivity.  As well as the curiosity of the items, such as the collection of toothbrushes that had Mendel wondering about the traces of DNA from their owners, the police tear gas canisters were also included.  The latter factually states that there were conflicts between the refugees and the authorities, whether we chose to acknowledge it or not.  It was when I watched the documentary [1] that I realised that even the objects themselves were chosen to emphasise that narrative.  The inclusion of the twisted bicycle pointed to a deliberate destructive act, but it could just have easily been damaged in the clearance of the camp.  Mendel’s own family were refugees that fled the holocaust, so it’s not really a surprise that he wanted to push the hardships suffered by the people of the camp.  When considering that context, the photographs in the collection actually focus more on the everyday life of the people rather than their experiences.  It isn’t lost on me that my perception of the exhibition changed with research, as external context can frequently shift the way we think about what we see, even by a tiny amount.

References

[1] 2017, “Calais Jungle Artist Gideon Mendel: ‘Nigel Farage would despise this exhibition’, Evening Standard Interview, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVrn0XqfnBs