OCA tutor Dawn Woolley wrote a regular blog on the weareoca website called ‘Looking at Adverts’. Read one of Dawn’s articles and write a blog post or make a comment on the site in response.
Introduction
The first thing to note with this exercise is that the blogs by Dawn Woolley no longer contain any images or video media. I’m not sure what the reason behind this is, but can’t help to be amused at the irony of looking at advertisements without actually being able to see them. In order to make this exercise meaningful, I decided to look at the series of blogs, try to identify an advert from the description and then find the missing image from the internet. I settled on the advert for Lurpak butter in Looking at Adverts 3
Response
I chose this advert because I vividly remember my reaction to the television campaigns by Lurpak that featured the strong textual and spoken work elements. The missing images from Dawn’s blog are shown below[1]:
Wooley begins by addressing the way that a company that produces a product that has negative connotations, being high in saturated fat, highly calorific etc, had elected to counter with a narrative of all-natural and homely. They adopted an approach that appeals to our sense of nostalgia, with the historical image of butter being central to our diets for centuries. She points to the clever use of national identity as well, shunning the potentially divisive view of modern Denmark within the Eurosceptic demographic for the historical image of the Viking. When I recall the TV campaign, I remember it using the legendary Dutch actor Rutger Hauer, whose physical appearance and voice immediately conjour the idea of big, strong men. Although a different nationality, Hauer’s spoken word conjured an image that somehow aligned with that idea. When we look at the first image we see these elements connoting the same sense of masculinity. The oversized egg surrounded by the buttered toast has particular connotations in the UK where the latter are referred to as soldiers. The suggestion with the scale of the objects in the picture implies the butter only actually plays a small part in something much bigger, emphasised by the use of empire. This ties in with the idea that mosts things, even unhealthy foods are ok in moderation. The use of big/small also comes through in the other images. The huge scale of the meal being removed from what we are told is an oven suggests that big food that feeds our families is a good thing, with the added text pointing to masculine strength again. The idea of big, strong men is clear here but tempered by the idea of providing for family, which somehow seems like a positive idea despite the blatant sexism that goes with it. In the third image, the use of scale is more simple. The composition makes the cupcakes so big as to not allow any other distractions. The text takes the idea of wholesome further by suggesting that the food is a treat made possible by the butter within it. When I look at all three pictures, I can see the themes that we covered in Context & Narrative [2]. In one of the exercises, we deconstructed an image from a magazine or newspaper for the elements that clearly signify a meaning, such as food but also connote something based on what our knowledge and experience bring to it. When I look at these images, I am immediately nostalgic about my own experiences of natural food growing up and my fascination with the Vikings as a child. It would appear that Lurpak have pitched the advertising perfectly at me because I no longer see an unhealthy food-stuff or even an overly masculine ideal, but instead a sense of comfort and fondness through postmemory.
The second part of Wooley’s critique of this photograph deals with the difference, that is ‘what this product is’ against ‘what it is definitely not’. The former is used to belittle the latter a way that Wooley refers to as rhetorical figure in the field of advertising. The first image’s idea of the powerful empire not being built on something as insignificant as a museli bar is clear, but it’s a supplemental element to the picture. Without the text, the photograph can be interpreted as being of wholesome food, with the juxtaposition of the egg and buttered toast suggesting something that makes us feel good. However, when the rhetorical figure is added, it strengthens the idea that ‘this is what you want, not that other rubbish’. In the other images, the same use of this technique can be seen more subtly. The idea of an oven being where you make food seems straightforward enough, but the statement suggests what the alternative might be (in this case a microwave meal) without actually naming it. The same attitude towards the pre-packaged is seen in the third image. Wooley’s conclusions about the campaign suggesting a complete disregard for food fads, favouring the enjoyment, comfort and fuelling that food gives us instead, are relatable. Lurpak has managed to create a campaign that both conforms to stereotypes (sexism, imperialism etc) and challenges them, suggesting that tradition isn’t always a bad thing if we don’t overthink our food. All of this in order to sell butter, which is the one element that need not actually be included as a contextual element in the photograph.
Conclusion
I realise as I write this that I am doing what Wooley herself said that she could easily continue doing, which is to further investigate the meanings within this advertising campaign. The complex narratives and clever way that the company has manipulated our postmemories and brought their emotions into the present is palpable. I was reminded during this exercise of the milk campaign of the early 1980s [2]. The advert featured two young football fans entering a kitchen for a drink, we assume after playing the game. Straight away, we are presented with the rhetorical figure of milk (which the first boy drinks) and lemonade (which the second asks for). The latter’s revulsion soon gives way when the former states that their footballing hero said that if he didn’t drink it, he would only be able to play for a small team. When the second boy hasn’t heard of them, this makes the point of the importance of drinking milk. The final written text in the advert states that “there are times when only milk will do”, an idea that it somehow makes your dreams come true. Until reading Wooley’s series on advertising, I had simply seen this advert as amusing, but now it is clear how clever the use of context in the form of written and spoken word can be. It connects a visual with an idea or desire in a way that it cannot easily achieve in its own, which could be seen as manipulation or merely capturing our imagination. Either way, these advertisements increase product sales.
Choose a community that you’re already a part of. It could be your child’s nursery or your regular gym class, but it should be something that takes up a substantial amount of your interest and time.
Create a photographic response to how this group informs who you are as a person.
● What aspects of this group or community reflect on you?
● What do you share?
● How does it function as a mirror reflection of who you are?
b. ‘Window’
Use this opportunity to find out about a community that you don’t know much about and tell their story. Get to know them and talk to them; learn by listening and understanding.Your aim here is to become an insider. You’re beginning as an outsider so it is important to choose a group that you can spend a lot of time with. Negotiation skills and respect are intrinsic to working well with your subjects and are invaluable skills for your development as a photographer.Be clear about your intentions and involve your subjects in the process in order to obtain the best results.
What window into this world can you access through your role as a photographer?
In either case you can create as many pictures as you like but, in your reflective commentary, explain how you arrived at the final edit. The set should be concise and not include repetitive or unnecessary images. Be attentive to this aspect of production. Spend some time researching how other photographers seem to edit series of works. There’s helpful advice on editing and sequencing in Maria Short, Context and Narrative (2011) Lausanne: AVA Publishing.
Some questions to consider are:
● What order should the images be shown in?
● Are there too many repetitive images?
● Do you need to let go of earlier images because the project has changed?
● Are you too close to some of your favourite pictures and they don’t fit thesequence?
● Do you need to re-shoot any for technical reasons?
● Are there any gaps that need to be filled?
Send your final series of images to your tutor together with your reflective commentary (500 words) on this assignment.
Introduction
For this assignment, I chose the concept of the mirror as I was inspired by a coincidental conversation that occurred while working on Part 3. For as long as I can remember, I’ve been passionate about music and in the past few years have joined the many people who have rediscovered vinyl records. I’m fortunate to live in a town that has its own independent record shop that is owned by a friend of mine and it was during a conversation with him that this idea came about. I was having a tough time and was digging through records as a way of relieving my stress. My friend suggested that if I ever needed to just escape, I could just sit on the shop’s sofa and listen to what was playing at the time. He offered this because “you’re part of our community”, a quote that immediately resonated with me. We went on to discuss the idea of the vinyl community over the next few visits and concluded that while music was mainstream, the people that choose to listen to it on this particular medium are somewhat on the fringes of society. Their idea of relaxation is to look through thousands of records for something they might like, rather than quickly surfing the internet for their music. They like nothing more than to talk to other like-minded people about new releases, gigs they went to in the past and even the gear that they play their vinyl on. I started to think about how this conversation affected me. Being a child of the 1970s, I grew up with vinyl and cassette tapes as being the two ways to listen to music. I would spend hours listening to pop music on my hand-me-down record players which were only given to me as an alternative to throwing them out. At the weekend, I would go to the nearest town and spend my time looking through records in the same was as I do now. While CDs and digital music essentially killed off vinyl for 30 years, its revival makes me feel as though I’ve come full circle.
My Idea
I wanted to explore the prevalence, decline and revival of vinyl and how it tied in with the passage of my own life. I would use family archive photographs of me growing up to establish a form of timeline and combine with text to suggest how both vinyl and I changed over that period. I realised that the intention here was not to suggest key moments in my life aligned directly with the vinyl story but to reveal something about me as it played out. After considering how to incorporate images with the background, I took inspiration from Hans Eijkelboom [1] and Trish Morrissey [2] and looked for a way of substituting myself into the frame. Both artists replaced a person in their pictures which asked the viewer to look closely at their likeness and potential meanings for the fabricated image. I found both of their projects fascinating as they contained an implied self rather than being overtly about the artist’s image. For my series, I decided to make my own vinyl album covers with my photographs as the artworks. Over many years, musicians used artists and photographers to create the image for their albums to draw attention to their style, the album’s themes or just to stand out from the rest. The result was a broad spectrum of ideas and designs, which meant that I could include myself in a similar chameleon-like way to Eijkelboom and Morrissey but stand out enough to invite questions. To help support the narrative, I decided to give each album cover the name of a real album by a well-known artist. Including text would add another layer of context and further enhance the narrative about the vinyl story while further physically connecting my image to it.
Approach
I started by reviewing my family archive. As a shy child, I was always reluctant to be photographed, so of the 2000 or so pictures I have of the family, there are probably only 100 with me in them. I selected 6 photographs that showed me at different ages from a baby to late teens with the only criteria being that I was the main subject in the image (most included other members of my family). I then included them with two shots of me as an adult, one taken on my wedding day and the other a self-portrait taken specifically for this assignment. I wanted to keep the chronology of my portraits but didn’t want to be limited in the same way in the use of album titles as I saw those as supporting the narrative rather than obviously leading it. This meant that I selected album titles from across the decades that suited my photographs without a timeline that linked them together. I made the album covers using actual cardboard sleeve blanks and for each shot on location, put a record inside to make it look like a real album.
I shot each photograph with a single speedlight flash and kept them as landscape format for consistency. While thinking about this work, I was reminded of another revival in photography that echoed vinyl. Film has undergone a resurgence in the past few years and a specific example is Kodak Ektachrome E100, which was discontinued in 2018 only to be reintroduced 5 years later. Like vinyl, film is an analogue and often imperfect medium so I decided to present my series as a set of Ektachrome film frames. The scans of the film strips show the imperfections such as water marks, dust and minor scratches, which I felt added to the nostalgia of the images even though they were shot digitally.
The Series
Individual Images
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Reflection
My intention for this series was to tell the story of the heyday, decline and revival of vinyl in a contemporary setting, using images from my childhood to provide my perspective. I chose to present them as individual pieces of film to further tie in the narrative of rediscovery as well as the imperfect nature of classical analogue media
When reflecting on the series, I am happy that the general themes of abundance, loss, alternative ideas and rediscovery come through in the photographs. One and Two speak to a time early in my life where vinyl was abundant and the most available medium to listen to music on. My memories of those early years were my family and friends enjoying music together, sharing our thoughts on new releases and rushing out to buy them from our local, community record shops. Three invokes the takeover of cassettes and CDs as I reached my early teenage years and how, within a short space of time the vinyl records became less popular. By the time we reach Four, even the seemingly modern CD has succumbed to downloads and computers, with vinyl about as far removed as it could be. The revival then begins around Five, where most people couldn’t believe it or understand why. In Six I’d reached a point where I needed a record player, something I’d not had for nearly 30 years, and electing to rebuild my family’s old system. Seven and Eight complete the full circle nature of this revival, with new records being released and shops like this one stocking music on more than one format.
I believe that the series flows well with 8 images and cannot really identify any gaps that would be filled by including more. I’ve deliberately tried to avoid repetitive images, which is one reason why I mixed shots of the shop and its products with the people who run it. The inclusion of people was intended to provide some context rather than be the dominant subject, which is why they are ‘cropped’ by at least one edge of the frame. I think that the album covers work well with their titles as in some cases they seem incongruous with the image. The connections between the images of me and the chronology of the story are clear, but each picture has enough context for the viewer to decide what it’s about without being led.
The strongest image for me is 3 as it shows my perception of the choking of the format, contrasted with the happy scene on the beach by including a dark album title. When I saw this photograph, I was struck by the similarity of being chased by my smaller siblings and the looming advance of cassettes and CDs on the older format. The weakest image is 6, as the album cover doesn’t tell the story of my rediscovery of hifi equipment as strongly as the other image narratives. My decision to restore the system was an emotional one as my earliest memories are of my mother playing it when I was a child. I struggled to find a way of expressing this emotion so placed the image more as a factual signpost. While it’s not as strong, I still believe it fits well enough in the series without reshooting.
Against the Assessment Criteria
Demonstration of Technical and Visual Skills
All of the images are well exposed and sharp with use of aperture to reduce any impact of distracting elements not related to the subject. I deliberately composed in landscape in order to present the photographs as film frames and incorporated people only as supporting contextual elements instead of being the dominant subject. I believe these tableaux compositions meet my original intent in incorporating many different connotations in a each frame.
Quality of Outcome
This series was intended to be a mirror with the images revealing something about me within the narrative. I believe that this series meets the brief in this regard. Each photograph features a representation of me at an age that aligns with the key theme and the often contrasting album titles both ground the fake album covers in reality and help tell the overall story. Feedback received so far indicates that this clever combination of real and imaginary strengthens the connections both within each frame but also the series as a whole. I believe it meets the brief.
Demonstration of Creativity
My approach to the brief differs from traditional self-portraiture because I’ve included archive photographs of myself in the contemporary setting of the record shop rather than posing for the photographs. The arrangement of the compositions is such that a sense of events that happened in the past have been brought into the present. The photographs present a mix of the straight chronology of my life with the events around vinyl’s decline and rediscovery with the familiar, yet out of time album titles. The contrasting imagery of the album covers and their titles asks questions about my past life and how I view it from a nostalgic perspective. It could be argued that contrasting, for example putting Amy Winehouse’s album title ‘Back to Black’ on a photograph of my wedding day, suggests a dark view of a joyous time. The true meaning of course is that we are back on vinyl which is black in colour, but I don’t make that clear with the rest of the composition. The inclusion of the model and his mask could also be interpreted as a commentary on the current pandemic crisis – I leave that to the viewer to decide. For me, the series comprises of 8 images that work together without any obvious gaps and each image has a number of layers of potential narrative to keep the viewer’s attention.
Context
Within the context of Part 3, I was heavily inspired by Eijkelboom and his substituted family photographs. By inserting himself into a stranger’s family for a picture, Eijkelboom challenges the viewer to tell the difference between what is real and what is not. His perspective on the traditional family unit and how that blueprint is so recognisable in our culture is done with a humorous angle. What I intended with my series was to ask the viewer to relate to the ‘full circle’ narrative around vinyl, but also the linearity of my life moving through the story. It is a mirror because it reflects my experiences without being too literal, but it could also be considered a window into the sub-culture of vinyl listeners. The shop has a very indie aesthetic, with everything designed around making the music accessible rather than being pretty. To the uninitiated, the series could simply act as a document of how things are now within this community.
Durden, M. & Grant, K. Double Take: Portraits from The Keith Medley Archive (2013) Liverpool: LJMU Archives. Pg 15.
This exercise gives you the opportunity to explore the image as a window with which to trigger memory.
● The objective here is to produce a series of five portraits that use some of the types of gaze defined above.
The specifics of how you achieve this are down to you; you choose which types of gaze you wish to address and who your subject might be in relation to this decision. What you’re trying to achieve through these portraits is a sense of implied narrative, which you can explain through a short supporting statement. Don’t try and be too literal here; the viewer must be able to interact with the portraits and begin to make their own connection to the work, aided by the type of gaze you’ve employed.
● Write down any thoughts or reflections you might have regarding this exercise and include this in your learning log or blog.
Approach to this Exercise
I elected to choose some images from my library that support the emotions of triathlon. I’ve supported many triathlons and even competed in some over the past few years and I’m always struck by the difference between being involved and being a spectator. In this series, I use the gaze to draw the viewer into the relationships between competitors and spectators set against the challenges of the event.
The Images
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Reflection
Of the list of gazes postulated in the notes, the ones that interested me the most were averted and internal, where the subject isn’t looking at the photographer or engaging directly with the viewer. I think this comes more from historically seeing the direct gaze, where the subject looks through the camera at the viewer, as being traditional portraiture. There’s certainly a sense of ‘watch the birdie’ about them in their simplest form, even though as I mentioned in Project 2, the connection between the viewer and subject can be very powerful. For this exercise, I wanted to explore situations where the subject or subjects are engaging with something else in the frame, visible to the viewer or ‘off camera’
With this series of images, each subject is unaware of my presence, but connected with someone else. One is a shot of my wife completing the swim leg of a race, being helped out of the water. I chose this shot because of the subtlety of the communication between the two subjects in the frame. My wife is looking towards where she has to exit the water and the assistant is looking for the next swimmer he needs to help. Although their gazes are averted from the camera and each other, their communication is clear as he helps her find her feet after the long swim. Two is of a spectator I spotted at a recent event. Her peculiar outfit garnered a lot of attention but she was completely oblivious to it. Her averted gaze towards her husband seems to seek some form of engagement but he is ignoring her. Was he embarrassed or just distracted by something else more interesting than a woman wearing an inflatable? Three was shot during the recent Leeds triathlon and shows a competitor angrily addressing another athlete. It followed an incident where the former (Alistair Brownlee) allegedly impeded the other swimmer and was subsequently disqualified. The gaze in this image has a very clear emotion attached to it, but is made stronger by the way that the other athlete ignores the abuse, electing to focus on his own race instead. Four was the complete contrast to Three, where the winner of the men’s race (Alex Yee) was being cheered on as he turned toward the finish. In this image we have the joy of spectating a major event in the gazes of the supporters, but Yee isn’t looking at them. His focus remains on the race, even though he’s clearly ecstatic about his impending win. The image combines joy in the whole scene. I chose Five because of its closeness to being a direct gaze. It shows a local athlete after he’s finished a race and while his gaze might look as though it’s locked onto my presence as the photographer, the reality is that he’s not really looking at anything. This ‘thousand yard stare’ is fairly common when someone crosses the finish line and is usually replaced quickly by wanting to find their supporters or fellow competitors to discuss how the race went. For me, this shot allows the viewer to relate to that moment of vacated thought whilst asking the obvious questions about how he feels.
Conclusion
I chose the averted and internal gazes as the basis for this exercise because of the potential for observing a drama playing out. They follow the idea of the photograph as a memory in me because I was there and took the pictures. They further trigger memories of the many hours I have spent spectating at events, the considerable time that passes when waiting for my wife to pass the spot where I am standing (Two). They also remind me of the unfettered pride of cheering her on (Four). They further invoke memories of my own competitions as a swimmer, with the what goes well (One) and what goes badly (Three). The general sense of emptiness after crossing the line is fleeting but very powerful and the memories that Five triggers, include the sense of exhaustion but happiness at achieving the goal that many other athletes and sports people feel. My main conclusion from the exercise is that the careful selection of an image with a particular gaze strengthens the narrative of a small series like this one. The images don’t cover one event, nor do they cover every aspect of triathlon. However we get a sense of the atmosphere of competitors and supporters from the way that people interact with each other in the pictures (internal gaze). In this case, the viewer and photographer are observers but the memories of self-achievement, overcoming challenges and pride come through the series without any direct experience of triathlon being required. The increased exposure of this sport only serves to help the viewer appreciate what both groups of people go through in a similar way to our restorative nostalgia around the conflict in Afghanistan or the American migrants nearly 100 years ago. This tells me that the subject’s gaze does indeed increase or decrease the way we are affected by the postmemory and that it’s a potentially useful tool when photographing people.
We are first introduced to the theories of art critic John Berger and academic Marianne Hirsch about the effect of photography creating instances where time appears to have stopped and how these moments grant us access to ‘memory’, whether direct or through our cultural experiences. In his book Ways of Seeing, Berger refers to photography as establishing the idea that a visual image is inherently connected with our concept of the passing of time, both at the point it was captured and from that moment onwards. He said:
“The camera isolated momentary appearances and in so doing destroyed the idea that images were timeless. Or, toput it another way, the camera showed that the notion of time passing was inseparable from the experience of the visual (except in paintings). What you saw depended upon where you were whn. What you saw was relative to your positon in time and space. It was no longer possible to imagine everything converging on the human eye as on the vanishing point of infinity”
John Berger, Ways of Seeing [1]
I interpreted this to mean that when a picture is taken, there are contextual and cultural references that are anchored at that particular moment which, if we were present during that period, we would recognise as contemporary. As time progresses, our interpretation of those elements within the picture change with our age, experience and environmental context that we bring to our viewing. Time continues to pass for the viewer but not the image, though the meaning of the image evolves with us. In considering this idea, I looked at this photograph from my family archive.
The image shows my late mother, my little sister and I putting up the Christmas tree in 1986. If I deliberately separate my knowledge of how it was taken, when I look this photograph I see the family collaboration, the dated clothing, my youthful (and characteristically grumpy) demeanour and my mum who has been gone for over 25 years now. Looking at this photograph through my adult eyes invokes many memories that I could attribute to this particular day, but in reality I cannot remember that actual event. In this case, then my recall is more about my memories of that time in my life rather than a detailed memory of the event itself. Hirsch takes the idea of memory further with her concept of ‘postmemory’. In an interview with Columbia University Press, she said
“As I see it, the connection to the past that I define as postmemory is mediated not by recall but by imaginative investment, projection, and creation. To grow up with overwhelming inherited memories, to be dominated by narratives that preceded one’s birth or one’s consciousness, is to risk having one’s own life stories displaced, even evacuated, by our ancestors”
Marianne Hirsch in conversation with Columbia University Press, 2012 [2]
Hirsch’s book on the subject deals with Postmemory of traumatic events, in particularly the Holocaust, where the imagery and historical context create powerful memories that are not necessarily from our own personal experience. She argues that the viewer ‘invests’ in what they are seeing in the image, creating a memory that is almost fantastical given the lack of direct connection with the moment that has was captured. In addition, she points out that the more we create these inherited memories through imagery, the higher the risk that we remain dominated by them in the present. With something as traumatic as the Holocaust, it’s easy to see how that is possible, even with the right intentions around preserving the memory of its impact on the world.
With my image above, we have no eye contact with the photographer (my father), so little connection with the subject beyond his gaze on a family scene. It invokes memories in me because I am one of the subjects, but when I show it to someone who wasn’t there, e.g. my wife, she will only recognise her husband and sister-in-law as she never knew my mother. Any postmemory from the picture would be formed on her imagining what my mum was like using what I have told her over the past 20 years as context. In considering the other gazes introduced in the notes, the averted and direct gazes are perhaps the ones where I have experienced powerful reactions. For example, in Dorothea Lange’s famous Migrant Mother, the subject is looking past the photographer as if not noticing their presence. Her children are facing away so that their faces are obscured, which adds to the intensity of our reaction to her situation. We know that Lange was part of a group of photographers that were specifically hired to depict the impact of the Depression on rural people migrating to the more populated towns and cities, so the images are deliberately trying to tell that story of struggle. However, in this image I find myself asking more questions about how Lange felt when shooting this picture. I attribute this sensation to the lack of eye contact with between subject and photographer, creating a sense of ‘being observed’ or ‘attempted understanding’. When the gaze is direct, as in Steve McCurrry’s famous Afghan Girl (below), the connection between subject and viewer is direct, almost bypassing the photographer.
Afghan Girl (1984), by Steve McCurry[3]
It’s so intense that the viewer feels directly connected with the unhappiness and distrust that her expression appears to convey. The gaze is emphasised by the girl’s intense green eyes which immediate create a sense of pride and defiance toward her situation and when considered in terms of the importance of the colour green in Islam [4], the image has many narrative layers. For me, the main difference is the seemingly absent sense of the photographer’s gaze in the image when compared with Migrant Mother. The observed element of the picture is missing because the direct gaze between subject and viewer is so vivid.
Keith Roberts – There Then, Here Now (n,d)
In his paper about a project he undertook with Edward Chambré Hardman’s archive of portraits that we have already discussed, Keith Roberts discusses the Hirsch’s concept of Postmemory alongside Svetlana Boym’s ‘The Future of Nostalgia”, first published in 2001. Boym takes the idea of nostalgia and breaks it into two forms, restorative and reflective. The former is related to a memory either real or passed down via a direct connection. For example I have a reflective memory of my late mother in the context of events such as decorating the Christmas tree in the photograph above, even though I cannot remember that precise occasion. A restorative memory would be more about the lives of my family during that period and the time that has passed since, with details contextualised in everything from the Western notion of ‘family’ to the Christian celebration of Christmas and all the traditions that go with it. For Robert’s project, he was using the groups of portraits of WW2 servicemen and women in Hardmans’ archive to explore the creation of Postmemory and the two forms of nostalgia within an exhibition of carefully selected images. The paper introduces the project but doesn’t discuss the outcomes beyond an interesting case study that emphasises the use of ‘gaze’. In his study of 5 images of a naval serviceman called Billy Walker, Roberts was able to first identify the image that Hardman had selected that best represented Billy (shown below with the red border). Secondly, he considered that image within the complete set.
From the paper There Then, Here Now, by Keith Roberts [5]
Here we see Billy Walker shot in a number of different poses in his uniform. One of the shots has him wearing his naval hat, but the rest do not. He is smiling in each shot but only in the one that Hardman selected is he looking at the camera. When I look at this shot I consider my own family history with that period and in particular my awareness that so many servicemen were very young as Billy appears to be (he was 27 when he was killed a year after these portraits were taken). His happy looking demeanour contrasts with my own restorative nostalgia in postmemory regarding that period and his direct gaze makes my ‘investment’ in creating that memory more powerful than with the images where his gaze is diverted. Perhaps this was why Hardman, who was obviously experiencing the horror of the war at that time, thought this image was the best likeness of Billy and selected it for him and his family to own. Roberts contacted a direct descendent of Billy’s to explore whether his reflective memory, handed down through the family matched the restorative memory of selected photograph and to understand how it might differ. The copy of the paper the I have doesn’t reveal the answer, but the question is definitely interesting in the context of this project.
Conclusion
What has been interesting about this project is the idea that our memories can be an assimilation of stories and personal anecdotes passed on and developed over time, as well as formed through cultural context and classical documentary. The viewer connects with the subject in the portrait in some way and subconsciously uses this assimilation to ‘invest’ in the narrative. I think ‘invest’ is the perfect word for this process as it ties in with Barthes’ position on the effort the reader has to put into the narrative creation of what is essentially an assembly of cultural texts; see ‘Death of the Author’. The idea of reflective and restorative nostalgia for me emphasises the theories on post-structuralism where postmemory can be attained by a seemingly random set of ‘other people’s memories’ or cultural assertions. The intensities of these memories is heavily influenced by the gaze or gazes within a portrait as demonstrated by the comparison of Migrant Mother and Afghan Girl. Both are powerful, but in my case the direct connection with the eyes in the latter almost suspends my acceptance of it being a photograph. When I consider my response to it, I think there is both reflective and restorative nostalgia at play owing to the fact that conflicts in Afghanistan have been happening throughout my lifetime and still continue today. The connection to the gaze reminds me how young and vulnerable this girl looks at first glance, despite her probably not wanting to be represented that way. For me, this ‘memory’ invokes a reflective nostalgia both from news coverage and from my own childhood. In the photographs that have been studied here, gaze could almost be considered the volume control for the level of engagement with the subject and the subsequent postmemory that results from it.
References
[1]. Berger J et al, 1972, “Ways of Seeing”, quoted p18, para 1, Penguin Modern Classics
[5] Roberts K, Date Unknown, “There Then, Here Now – Photographic Archival Intervention within the Edward Chambre Hardman Portraiture Collection (1923-63), Academic Paper courtesy of Academia.edu, Subscription Download
Write a reflection in your learning log about some of the ways in which marginalised or under-represented people or groups could be badly or unhelpfully portrayed
.● How might being an insider help combat this?
A friend and I were recently discussing my recent departure from my job through redundancy and whether or not I missed the field in which I had worked for nearly 32 years. My answer wasn’t a straight-forward one as there were elements of the work that I really enjoyed, but not so much the increase in the mediocre administration that the company expected of people at my level. My friend was struck by one part of my answer though, which was about feeling out of date with the increasing number of younger engineers and budding managers coming through the business. I explained that although I was only 48 years old, I had been working since I was 16 and had seen a great deal of change during that time. I had always felt that I had an affiliation with the younger crowd because I remembered what it was like to be like them at a time that felt like it was not all that long ago. During my last couple of years, I had felt like I understood this less than before.
We explored the reasons why that might be the case and I realised that it was driven by the advent of communication of ideas. Mobile phone technology coupled with the emergence of social media meant that people of the millennial and Generation Z age-groups had different ways of anchoring their ideas to my generation (X) and perspectives through technology and the culture that it establishes. Every subject has a new set of references upon which it is established, which means that the younger generations often don’t often feel the need to learn directly from people in my age group. This sense of disconnection coupled with the enhanced sense of social equality and questions around how to solve the climate crisis, make me feel like my input is somehow not as valuable as the popular views circulated online. For me, this has been brought into focus during the pandemic, where some age groups took COVID-19 to be more or less serious than others. False data and disinformation put some of the socially vulnerable groups at enhanced risk as a result.
I thought about how my generation is represented and how it could be improved. The middle age generation has experienced national strikes in the 1980s so are often either very suspicious of union representation or whole-heartedly embrace it. We experienced the financial boom and bust period of the 1980s which cost people who had been brought up to want to be homeowners to lose huge sums of money as a result. We also saw the introduction of personal computers and their rise to being in virtually every home, as well as the Internet, mobile phones and online shopping becoming the norm. I once asked a group that I was training at work whether they had ever booked a holiday from a travel brochure and they all looked at me as if I were mad. My perception of how my generation is represented is similar to how I viewed my parents as a teenager. They couldn’t understand because their life experiences didn’t directly mirror mine. I think the same is true for the generation below me.
In terms of how groups are represented, we have looked at the works of artists who assumed a role in either their cultures or lives in a variety of different ways. When considering Nicky S Lee’s Projects series’ [1] where the artist took on the physical characteristics of a culture or age group and photographed herself in character, there are two arguments that can be made. The first is that imitation could be read as complimentary and ridiculing in equal measure. Certainly when Lee masqueraded as an elderly women and kept the truth from her ‘friends’, it could be said that there was a strong sense of mockery involved. The second is that as a South Korean woman, Lee was saying something about what it’s like to be different, but in the case of probably her most controversial series where she posed as a rap fan, she is potentially mocking the stereotype that they are all black and live in deprived inner city areas. In a way, the act of reinforcing stereotypes, which I think Lee did with that series, makes it harder to see that community as anything but intimidating and offensive. The truth is, of course that rap music is loved my millions of people across the whole spectrum of society. In this case, a true insider would need to contrast with that perception of the culture and represent it from a wider point of view. I believe that key to representation is the respectful way that a subject is treated. In the case of representing the middle aged, I would pay more attention to how they still drive the direction of technology and political fairness with positive examples as opposed to the traditional narrative that they are out of touch. More focus on the way that they embrace the modern world and its conservation as opposed to being somehow grumpy, irresponsible and uninterested would help support the new narrative also. In considering this exercise, I thought about Brotherus’ Suites Françaises and how it chronicles a blending of European cultures in a sympathetic way. Brotherus’ use of French words to describe individual items in her apartment not only reveals her challenges in grasping its complexity but also reveals the beauty of the language. Her later revisiting of the work includes long, triumphant texts that show that anything is possible with hard work. This representation is both respectful and insightful, without being obvious.
Make a list of some aspects of your personality that make you unique.
Start taking a few pictures that could begin to express this.
How could you develop this into a body of work?
My Characterstics
Loving – I care a great deal about my family, friends and the natural world.
Emotional – not someone who hides how they feel.
Dry – I make my friends laugh with this kind of humour
Disorganised – despite my working life, I’m not great at prioritising. I don’t make lists.
Anxious – I worry about pretty much everything
The Pictures
Humour
Loving
Anxious
Emotional
Sad
Humour
Disorganised
Anxious
Reflection
For these shots, I wanted to express my personality using metaphor rather than something physical that identified me. I wanted to represent my identity solely by shooting places. I didn’t have a plan for these as a series, instead looking for subjects that I felt represented some of my traits. Although not exhaustive, there were a few themes that presented themselves in these images. Humour and Anxiety feature more than the other traits. However, my sense of being outwardly emotional as well as loving/caring were conscious thoughts when I was looking for subjects. I think that most things fell into the categories of making me laugh (as with the picture of the Queen and the discarded mask amongst the prohibition signs) or making me think about how I feel most days, which is anxious or somehow affected by something emotionally. With Disorganised, I observed the woman struggling to balance her drinks and hang on to her shopping bag as humour before realising that it represented disorganisation. With Sad, I noticed for the first time that the building had been boarded up, which made me feel like there wasn’t a plan for it. The broken ‘For Sale’ sign further added to that feeling. The link to mirrors in all of the photographs is subtle and because I’m not in the shots, it’s very much my influence of the photographs that give meaning to them rather than being straight portraiture.
In terms of developing them as a series, I would consider choosing traits that I’m perhaps not so aware of. I’d ask my friends and family to help define them and try to limit the series to those rather than using my self-image. I’d choose this approach because I have a tendency to focus more on the things that I experience the most rather than being balanced in my thinking. I could make a series that represents my sense of humour through irony (instructions, human behaviours etc) – Ive always had a resentment for petty authority attitudes, e.g. over-zealous security guards. There could be an interesting series exploring my relationship with authority and how it changes when it becomes more serious. Despite my issues with petty authority, I have a great deal of respect for the law and the police. The series could ask the question about where I feel one ends and the other begins. For the series, I would definitely want to include other people as actors rather than the in absentia style as with Nigel Shafran’s work [1]. For me, the mirror still needs to be connected to the photographer in a way that can be read by the viewer. For example, although Mary Kelly’s work is not photographic in nature, she created work from her own personal notes and artefacts which not only reveals the subject of the series, but also the woman who created it. In Eijkelboom’s early work, he both appeared in person or as a facsimile through his clothing or even a print of his portrait. I feel that this direct connection however subtle, strengthens the subject with what the photographer is trying to say about themselves or their perspective.
This project deals with the idea of an artist’s work being a mirror for their experience or their influence over the narratives within the image or series.
Mary Kelly: Post-Partum Document (1973 to 79)
We are first introduced to American artist Mary Kelly, who created a documentary of the first 5 years of her son’s life in the early seventies. Kelly’s work is not photographic, instead using a variety of everyday items and transcripts of specific events to tell the story of early motherhood. Kelly’s intent for the work was to challenge the established idea of the ‘division of labour’ between the genders and she did this by representing a new mother dealing with the daily domestic activities with a young child. As Kelly was ‘post-partum’ herself, her work is told as a mirror of her own experiences. In an interview [1], Kelly said that she wanted the viewer to concentrate on the subject rather than focusing on the fact that a woman was telling it, so to me it was as much about getting the story told than it being about the artist. However, Kelly’s approach to the documentary is her own perspective on the day to day aspects of raising a child. Her work is almost scientific in approach, with meticulous notes and items included; the most infamous artefacts being her collection of nappy stains.
Nappy Stain and diary entry from Mary Kelly’s Post-partum Document (1973 to 79)[2]
Kelly used them alongside a diary entry for the food that her baby had consumed that particular day. Her view was that the best way to see the baby’s development was to measure the output for a given input. This reminds me not only of a scientific approach to a problem, but also the work of Gideon Mendel. His documentary series Dzhangal[3] arranges the possessions left behind by migrants when they left the holding camp at Calais. I looked at this work as part of Context and Narrative, but it is now that I understand Mendel’s work as a mirror. His parents were Jewish refugees who escaped the Holocaust, which Mendel used to tell the stories of the disposed from his own personal perspective. The items themselves were randomly discarded, but the artist’s arrangement of them in the work juxstaposes the mundane with the signs of the oppressive treatment the migrants suffered as they were held at the camp. Both Mendel and Kelly avoid the obvious in their representations but their experiences come through clearly in the work.
In a similar way to both Kelly and Brotherus, Esther Teichmann mixes a number of media to create her work. Her work first interested me because it is almost collage in nature, with the underlying photographic element being only one part of the creative process. If I reflect on my work on this course thus far, it’s easy to see how the act of photographing in the portrait genre limits my creativity. While I do think about what I’m trying to represent in the subject, the context, composition and lighting are prioritised to make an image. Teichmann, like the other artists, is exploring the relationships between subjects from her perspective and using whatever media helps her express herself.
Photography is always at the centre of my practice and was definitely my starting point. I think it’s such an elastic and physical medium, but fundamentally the thing that draws me in is the relationship between the real and the staged, the duality between the real and the constructed, the world that exists and the otherworldly. It’s this dynamic that keeps me wedded to the medium and continually excited by it.
Esther Teichmann in conversation with Emily Spicer of Studio International Magazine, 2020 [4]
The quote above makes the point that there is no reason for photography to remain in the real or documentary world. but instead can create a sense of the unbelievable. This makes perfect sense, of course but the learning for me is going to be how to embrace this as an idea in my own work.
Tecihmann’s work is clearly very personal and often evokes raw memories of her earlier life, of mourning and loss both as something that is experienced or anticipated. She makes an interesting point in the interview[4] about loss being both past and future where as a child we develop an understanding that we will inevitably lose something or someone and as we grow, we experience it. These experiences are inextricably linked but are also very different and are naturally unique to the sufferer. For me, this acknowledgement reveals why Teichmann’s work is so relatable despite her experiences being very different from mine. Her work is more impactful to me than Kelly’s because I have no relatable experiences in the case of the latter. Brotherus’ work creates a sense of empathy and recognisable heartache, but again I have little in terms of reference. Teichmann’s work, particularly Mythologies (2012 to 2014) evokes a sense of the sadness of isolation in what on the surface appears to be a bright, colourful and unnatural world.
Untitled, from the series Mythologies (2012 to 2014), by Esther Teichmann [5]
When we look closer, the beauty of the surroundings takes on a sinister feel with it’s unreal colouring and enclosed nature. Teichmann’s hand-colouring of the images is fairly obvious, but for me that introduces the mirror of her experiences into the image.
The course notes make a point about how we might approach a mirror work based on our own lives
“Using mirrors of the self does not have to result in highly personal, therapeutic work, although it might. Think carefully about the issues you want to avoid and what you’re willing to make public should you decide to take this route. There are sophisticated ways of portraying situations that don’t entail divulging everything”
Identity and Place course notes Part 3, page 6
This is an interesting point in terms of choosing what part of ourselves to put into our photographs. It could simply range from an opinion on a topic based on experience, as with diCorcia’s series Hustlers, to something much more personal. Although not a direct reference, diCorcia was inspired to shoot the series of portraits of male prostitutes following the death of his brother from AIDS. His pictures have many possible interpretations, but diCorcia’s experience of loss comes through in the sympathetic way he represents the subjects. In this case, the artist isn’t really revealing himself in the images, rather including his sadness and bewilderment at the struggles of gay men in sex industry during the AIDS epidemic. In representing them this way, he is remains safely detached from the subject. In my case, the recent feedback on Assignment 2 about my self-censorship leads me to consider my subject for Assignment 3 carefully. My ideas centre around my own struggles with recovering from depression which have included a spell in hospital, excessive drinking, inability to work etc. While I am not ashamed or embarrassed by it, I wonder if my internal censorship prevents me from being completely honest about it in my work. This is something I will have to decide upon as I start working on the assignment.
Hans Eijkelboom – With my Family (1973)
When I first saw this work, I was immediately reminded of Trish Morrissey’s Front (2005 – 2007) as the idea is similar. Eijkelboom pre-dates her work by 42 years but the similarities go further than the aesthetic. Eijkelboom waited for the men of the house to leave for work and knocked on the door [6], which seems like something we just wouldn’t do these days. Like Morrissey, he persuaded the mothers and their children to pose with him in what appears to be a completely natural scene. When viewed individually, there is nothing to reveal the deception but when the series is shown together, the viewer immediately asks how one man could have so many families. As well as the humorous aspects, the series is a commentary on the traditional ‘nuclear family’ with Eijkelboom at the centre of it.
From the series With My Family (1973) by ns Eijkelboom [7]
From the series With My Family (1973) by ns Eijkelboom [7]
Eijkelboom shows us a blurring of artist and subject in the way the others in the frame interact with him to the extent that we are drawn to the dynamics of the fabricated families in an entirely relatable way. When Morrissey approached her subjects on the beach for Front, she went one step further. She asked to swap clothes with one of the women in the group as a way of replacing them in the scene. What we see when we look at that work is something clever but also subversive; Morrissey does nothing to blend in with her surroundings as Eijkelboom did. In addition, some of her compositions deliberately contrast her with her surroundings as in the example below.
From the series ‘Front’ (2005) by Trish Morrissey [8]
When we look at this image, the obvious thought is around whether Morrissey could be the mother of the child. Depending on how much or how little the viewer understands about racial genetics will determine how this photograph is interpreted. For me, the overwhelming message in the picture is the challenge to a ‘rush of judgement’ which is effectively provoked by the artist holding up a mirror to our view of the traditional concept of family. Like Eijkelboom, she succeeds in putting herself in the narrative I get a different sense of the mirror between the two artists; the former being a chameleon and the latter a cuckoo.
Hans Eijkelboom – Identities (1970 to 2017)
With Identities (1970 to 2017), the first thing that is apparent is that Eijkelboom has been exploring the ideas of what constitutes identity for many years. Not limiting himself to the basic constructs of age, race and gender, instead we have a series that looks at the more subtle elements such as interests, fashion, physical stature etc. Some of the photographs are of the artist himself, dressed in the same clothing from frame to frame but reacting to something that is happening around him. In the example below, a young Eijkelboom is seen standing in what we assume to be a rainstorm. Arranged linearly, the sequence shows him reacting to getting wetter as the rain intensifies. The clothing and the poses are largely the same with the exception of the final frame where he succumbs to the storm.
A Shower of Rain (1971), by Hans Eijkelboom [7]
My interpretation of this image is of a man who is defined, at least in the first instance, by his clothes and general appearance. As the environment around him changes, these identifying features subtly change with them, yet they remain familiar throughout. Our perspective is drawn to the repetition but also the way his personality responds to standing in the rain. There is a sense of humour with this image that we see elsewhere in this vast collection.
Another element that features heavily in his work is typology, which we covered in Part 1. Eijkelboom collects street typologies through shooting people who are unaware of his presence. In an interview with Phaidon about a later project ‘People of the Twenty First Century’, Eijkelboom describes his working with a camera around his neck, operating by a hidden trigger in a similar way to Evans [9] which resulted in a series of completely natural photographs of people in the street. In the example below, we see the relationship to the Bechers in his use of typology.
From the collection Identites (1970 to 2017), by Hans Eijkelboom [10]
Here we have a grid of photographs presented as a single document that forms part of the wider series. The typology is men rollerblading in the sunshine, which in a similar way to the Bechers’ water towers is a representation many subjects in almost identical situations. The key differences are what identifies each subject. They are all dressed differently, have different physiques, are facing and looking in different directions etc, which is what we are drawn to above the ‘normalised’ composition. Here Eijkelboom is showing us the commonality between people and their lives (in this case a leisure activity), while maintaining their own identity while doing it. Similar work in this series ‘collects’ people wearing the same clothing brand, style or colour which contrasts with the other photographs where Eijkelboom is the main subject.
Cindy Sherman and Nan Goldin
We are reintroduced to Sherman and Goldin as examples fo artists using the mirror as a way of presenting their perspective on a subject. Sherman’s Centrefolds (1981) challenges the impact of the sexualisation and often related victimisation of women through the aesthetic of print media. Her self-portraits photographs show the sinister side of what at first glance could pass as glossy glamour, the poses and haunting expressions being Sherman’s way of pointing out that this is not ok. Sherman wasn’t necessarily saying something about herself with this series, but expressing her opinion as a woman clearly horrified by the apparent acceptability of female exploitation. Goldin by contrast was an ‘insider’ in a part of New York society that was considered fringe by the majority of the population. The notes talk about Goldin challenging social acceptance of her and her friends, but as Goldin herself said
‘My work has always come from empathy and love’
Nan Goldin (2014) [11]
I would question whether Goldin was challenging the idea of acceptance, rather she was acutely aware of the difficulties in the lives of her friends and wanted to represent how important they were to her. Whatever her motives, Goldin uses the ‘mirror’ as an insider to the experience in way that makes us feel like we know her life through her work.
Conclusion
My main conclusion from this project has been the understanding that the mirror can be very personal to the photographer through their own experiences, but also can be a commentary on their perspective on a situation. We learned in a previous course that portraiture can be anything from a straight representation of the subject to not being about them at all. We can use other people to act out our life experiences as portraiture as well as not having a human subject in the frame at all. However in this unit, the concept is more of identity than portraiture. How do we say something about a subject whether physical or spiritual through photography? In the case of Kelly, she narrates the experience of women in the role of mother and carer through the use of very factual documentary using her own artefacts and experiences. She achieves a strong identity without having any portraiture as part of the series. In the case of Eijkelboom, he places himself in the roles of others to reveal something about their lives as well as collecting the many attributes of someone’s identity as seen by a casual observer, such as clothing, interests etc. The common theme through his work is his sense of humour, which I think is what makes the series a mirror of his personality. With Sherman there is strong storytelling with the artist playing a variety of parts. She is mirroring her views on the exploitation of women but not necessarily from a clear, personal experience. With Goldin, the work creates narratives from an insider perspective which gives it a greater authenticity than perhaps Sherman’s Centrefolds does. The Goldin work emphasises the personal nature of working in ‘mirror’ as there is little of her life that remains private.
This video highlighted a couple of points for me around how Brotherus, an artist we first encountered in Context and Narrative, approaches her portraiture work. We know from the course notes that her series Suites Française was a documentary about her arriving in France without being able to speak the language and that her chosen process was to use Post-It notes as a learning aid. What I hadn’t realised was the use of film photography introduce the element of ‘random success’ when it came to Brotherus’s placement of herself in the image. For example, she highlights in the video that the placement of the post-it with Le Reflet (mirror) written on it was more luck than judgement. The way that the note covers her face is perhaps the strongest element in the image, even though the composition was intentionally representing the sense of isolation from the artist’s environment and language. Brotherus uses herself as the alien figure in the photograph and blends that emotion with the stark reality of the bathroom. The reason this was significant was that Brotherus made the point that she believed it to be better to work than overthink the idea. She suggested that the curation of a piece of work can be better achieved in review when the photographs are being selected and edited. Indeed, the Suites Française work was revisited many years later and culminated in the series 12 Ans Apres. As the title suggests, the series was revisited 12 years later when Brotherus returned to the location of her artist residency in France. The updated series now reflects on how different Brotherus’ life is in the same context as before. The labels have either been replaced by lengthy narratives in French or completely removed as in the case below.
Le Reflet, 1999 [1]
La Chambre 10 (le reflet), 2012 [1]
In the later version of Le Reflet, we see the same bathroom from a different perspective that shows a small area of the bedroom beyond the doorway. The sink is almost identical with the exception of the plumbing and taps and Brotherus is leaning against the same wall but this time looking at her reflection in the mirror. While there are many interpretations of these two images, Brotherus mentioned that she saw this work as a reflection of where she is now as a person against how she was when the original series. She went on to read one of the new Post-It notes that now contained what she calls a ‘position statement’. The statement reflected on how her life has turned out, both in terms of expectations that she met and things that didn’t go as expected. From what we know about Brotherus’ intervening work about her problems trying to have a family and her health issues that followed, this was a poignant statement that she made. Including it in the series as text further emphasises the mirror of her experiences. Later in the Q&A, she talked about using herself in landscape and the way that she wanted to invite the viewer to join her in appreciating the space. That shared experience is another example of the use of ‘mirror’ rather than a simple representation of what is present in the scene.
Conclusion
I enjoyed the video as it revealed these points that I had not really appreciated until recently. The act of shooting around an idea and being concerned with the way the series comes together afterwards is perhaps at odds with what we would expect. The idea of writing a position statement to establish what life is like in the present moment could be a useful tool when working on a series about myself. Assignment 3 may be a mirror so I will be looking into using it there. I’ve admired Brotherus’ work since we were introduced to her in the previous course, so listening to her talk about her creative process and using herself in the photographs is inspiring me to consider mirror as my answer to the brief for the next assignment.
Go through your photographic archive and select around ten pictures. Separate
them into two piles: one entitled ‘mirrors’ and the other entitled ‘windows’.
What did you put in each pile and why?
Did you have any difficulties in categorising them?You may like to repeat the exercise with some different images and record your responses. It would be interesting to see you place the same image in both camps and review your reasons for doing so.
The Images (unsorted)
Mirrors
M1M2M3M4
Windows
W1
W2
W3
W4
W5
W6
How I chose to categorise the photographs
M1: this was shot during the first lockdown. A local antiques shop dressed the bears to be humorous but also as a reminder of the new restrictions on social distancing. For me, this is a mirror because I was definitely feeling the anxiety of how COVID might develop. In shooting this picture, I was expressing my own fears and my sense of humour that was trying to combat them.
M2: this is a mirror because it shows it represents my own experiences as a sports supporter and photographer. The subject’s staring expression as he waits for his wife to come into frame is something that I am very familiar with.
M3: this is a more obvious selection as a mirror because it is a family portrait that I am in. When I look at this picture, I naturally see my struggle to get in the frame (I got stuck between the radiator and sofa), but also the interplay between the members of my family. The image reflects my feelings of love and humour for my family
M4: this shot was selected as a mirror because if the way I was part of the scene as a tourist. Most people were taking conventional, even boring photographs of the cathedral, but this man decided to mix things up. I chose it as a mirror because I don’t have that natural sense of inhibition so it almost reflects how I would like to be in a photography situation.
W1: I chose this shots as a window because it shows the Olympic triathlete Alistair Brownlee remonstrating with another competitor during a recent race. I had picked up on the story that Brownlee had clashed with someone in the water and the rumour was that the offence got him disqualified. This shot is a window into the immediate aftermath of that incident as both athletes left the lake and a documentary shot of the drama unfolding.
W2: I chose this shot from Malvern’s first Pride event in 2019. It’s a window because as a straight person, I cannot really relate to Pride in the same way even though I appreciate how important it is. With this sense of being an observer, I look at this picture and immediately get the sense of fun and joy of the day.
W3: this was shot at the same event. This wonderful couple were the most strikingly dressed at the event and I loved watching the way they engaged with the people around them. When they agreed to a picture, I recall being struck by their sense of joy and love for each other. Again, I related in the way that I did in W2.
W4: This photograph was from a series taken at the dress rehearsal for a play. The shoot was formal and for use in publicising the production, so the contrast between this scene and my act of photographing made me think of it as a window.
W5: this shot was an observed and shot in the ‘street style’. I was drawn to the people looking into the window of Betty’s Tearoom, Harrogate. as someone very familiar with the tearoom and the town, I was interested in how the window display lured people in. I saw this as a window because the composition includes context that shows the tearoom as a quaint piece of English history but nothing of how I see it as a Mecca for tourists.
W6: this final image was shot taking in 1990 when I was an engineering apprentice. I am in the photograph but saw the shot as a window into our daily lives, which was certainly the intent of the photograph. It was used to document a specific part of the history of the site and since my rescuing it in 2000 before the building was demolished, it has been used by various historical bodies as part of local history exhibits.
Challenges in the selection
This was an interesting exercise as there are many interpretations of mirrors and windows. Some of these shots were easy to select, for example M3 being a representation, albeit accidental, of the closeness of my family and my place within it. However, the shots that caused me difficulties were M1, W3 and W4. When I saw the bears in the window, it prompted me to reflect on my own concerns about COVID, which is why I took the picture. However, I didn’t make any effort to represent my fears in the image, instead just capturing the contextual elements that stood out. The idea of social distancing was new but the inclusion of the gas masks, which connotes the invisible threat in historical terms, makes the image a powerful one. However, somebody else viewing the image wouldn’t necessarily recognise my intent for the picture. Similarly with W3, I was struck by the love and affection between the two women which I believe is represented in the image. My intention was to represent them in the context of our first Pride event, but someone with homophobic views might interpret the picture as a mirror for prejudice i.e. ‘look at how weird these people are’. There is nothing in the photograph that directly leads the viewer to my intent. With W4, the impact of the play’s theme and the intentional suspension of reality that is associated with fictional drama lead the viewer to relate to their own experiences. I ask myself why I shot this particular moment and the answer is most likely because like most people, I’ve experienced the pain of a failed romance (the context of the scene). Perhaps in shooting the isolated girl wiping tears from her face, I am relating to my own experiences and influencing the overall look of the picture.
I found this exercise interesting because I would question the assignment of ‘mirror’ or ‘window’ as a label for another artist’s work. As the course notes indicate, there is no clear assignment of these ‘categories’ and the blurring of the two is driven by the perception of artist’s intent by the viewer. As with W3, the way the photograph is interpreted depends not only on what I saw when I asked the women for the portrait, but also on whether the image is part of a series about Pride and the viewer’s preconceptions about the event and the gay community. I was trying to represent their personalities and love for each other, but this could just as well take a darker meaning related to prejudice and fear of being different. I intend to look more closely at Szarkowski’s theory in a learning log post.
I have recently received tutor feedback on Assignment 2 which raised a number of points that I will address in this post. General feedback about the photographs was positive, but my tutor questioned how effective the joint themes were and whether I had played things too safe by not electing to publish the post (for reasons outlined in the assignment).
Feedback Points
The first point was about the themes. My blending of street photography composition with studio lighting was evident in the series and my tutor indicated that some images were stronger than others. He highlighted One and Four as the strongest, which aligned with my own views on the series. I liked the humour in both and I think they worked best from a lighting and composition perspective. My tutor took issue with the idea of challenging the viewer in terms of how the images were shot. He rightly pointed out that most people viewing them wouldn’t know or even care how they were taken. While I had fooled a few photographers with the use of artificial lighting, this technical distinction wasn’t really a strong theme. I have to agree, which is probably why I wanted to have a creative link as well as a technique one.
At this point, I raised my concerns that the brief steers us towards experimenting with techniques and approaches while the title Vice Versa suggests a specific inversion of them. We agreed that this was my interpretation and accepted that the main reason that I struggled not to merely invert the techniques from a technical perspective was that portraiture is not a genre of photography that I am at all comfortable. When I feel that way about a topic, I tend to revert to type.
The second point of feedback was my strong connection with and management of my models. It was cited as a strength the series and the creative process that I was able to engage openly with my models, who are all friends of mine. It was clear from the final images that the collaboration between photographer and subject was strong, which made for more natural results. This point raised the main critical point about the series. I had elected to not publish it out of respect for two of the models who weren’t comfortable with it being widely circulated. Although my tutor accepted my reasons for censoring the work, he made the great point that this act undoubtedly had an impact on the strength of the series in the context of challenging convention. Other ideas such as challenging gender conventions within the series, e.g. having one of the men dressed as the cheerleader in Four, were discussed. These were good suggestions that I think were perhaps lost by my slightly blinkered view of the brief.
We discussed the conversation that I had with my cohort about how the use of paid models as a way of avoiding the discomfort. The point that I made was that paid models would be easier in that regard but would potentially lack the natural feel of the work that came from my relationships with my subjects. The overall conclusion was for me to look into examples of self-censorship in art and those who genuinely broke boundaries with their work. The artists Pedro Meyer, Richard Avedon and Joel-Peter Witkin were recommended to me, which I will be looking at in parallel with Part 3.
Other feedback was received about my writing style and some of the work within the exercises that raised interesting questions. However, this post is about Assignment 2 so that is not included here.
In conclusion, I cannot disagree with any of the feedback that I received. I was happy with the photographs individually and as a series, however I was aware that the response to the brief was weakened by my use of composition and lighting rather than subject. I felt that the subject-based theme worked well, but take on board the comments about self-censorship.
Richard Fletcher OCA Photography Blog 