Read “Chapter 1: Images, Power, and Politics” in Marita Sturken and Lisa Cartwright, Practices of Looking: An introduction to visual culture (3rd ed.) (2018) Oxford University Press, available on the unit Reading List.In your learning log, write a response to the chapter (300-400 words). How do you understand “truth” in your photographic practice? What relationship do your images have to truth? How does the learning from this project and Sturken and Cartwright’s chapter prompt you to think about your own practice or about work produced by others?
Response
In my work, “truth” is a concept that I have only recently begun to explore. Until the end of the unit Context and Narrative, I shot photographs to rigidly document what I saw before me, primarily as a way of remembering a moment. When I started to work more in constructed tableaux, that changed. I consciously started to reverse-engineer cultural references related to my life experience using Barthes/Saussure’s ideas of semiotics in visual language. Incorporating denotive elements that offered a variety of connotations allowed me to change formal reality to something more interpretive. This culminated in Modern Monsters in the previous unit.
In considering the reading chapter, I would say that my work points to relationships between people and circumstance, in a largely fabricated way. I relate to the work by O’Sullivan and Van der Born as they create something familiar and believable, but less so the power relationships of Alfridi et al and Orr, who present injustice directly to the viewer through iconic references. This chapter made me think about the act of observing and then connecting the elements of the composition with other meanings, as in the case of Frank’s Trolley and Lange’s Migrant Mother. I am interested to know to what extent the moment contributed to these photographs and how much was reflective after the fact. We know that both were taken during long documentary trips that yielded many similar situations, so how did the context of the rest of the shooting (that day, that week, that month) influence the production of a particular image to represent power (or lack thereof)? I concluded that this is probably what holds me back in photographing events unfolding before me, and drives me towards the more fabricated image.
In considering how the ideas of power, ideology, iconography and cultural representation will affect my own work, I believe the focus will be more about planning how to represent the subject before taking a single picture. As well as the central ethical questions about ‘should I?’, I’m going to explore what I want to say in more detail.
Spend some time comparing others’ lists with your own. What would you add to your own list that you see on someone else’s? Engage in a discussion with others about the choices you made when compiling your list using the forum thread.
Afterwards, reflect in your learning log about anything you may have learned from your peers. Revise your list of ethical principles if necessary, and explain any changes you make as a result of the group discussion.
My Ethical Principles
Respect for the subject. Not to be confuse with deference of having to like the subject. The person or persons, their story and the context in which I’m photographing needs to be done respectfully in terms o what I am trying to represent, without any actions by either side to bend the ‘truth’
No Harm. To do enough work to understand the potential impacts of my work in the future, whether I am comfortable that my intention remains the same and how, if at all, I can control it.
Honesty. Being open and upfront in my communications with the subjects and also the ‘users’ of the work.
Understanding the wider context. Simply the act of doing the due diligence to identify and potentially correct any ethical concerns I might uncover before creating the work.
Collaboration. Not being the expert on a subject. Where there are unfamiliar aspects to a person’s story, work with them to balance my own perspectives.
Note that these are my ethical values based on previous experiences, and that they will undoubtedly change as the course progresses.
Reflection on the Forum Posts
It’s clear from reading the other student’s lists of ethical values, that there is much natural common ground. We all see respect and doing no harm as being core to our photographic practice, with additional ideas such as justice, health and beneficence being highlighted. In reflecting on the areas where we differ, I conclude that I have similar ideas, but articulate them differently. For example, informed consent in my value is a combination of collaboration and honesty in communication. I currently struggle to make a case for consent where it assumed, rather than specifically gained, as demonstrated on my Morocco trip in 2015. During that visit, I took a picture of a homeless lady, who gave me her consent to do so because I had just given her the spare change in my pocket. Having learned the cultural sensitivities by then, I would not have assumed consent because she was sitting in a public place (the difference In Moroccan law notwithstanding). Was the consent informed though? I don’t believe so, because we didn’t discuss why I wanted to shoot her, nor did we consider together what the image would subsequently be used for. There were good reasons for this though, the principal one being that we didn’t speak each other’s languages. My view on that photograph (below) now, is that I am uncomfortable about the transactional nature of it, my perspective as a tourist in making an image of a homeless person despite my best intentions not to exploit her situation, and the lack of understanding between photographer and subject. Portraits of this kind are, or course, very intimate which means that my ethical values as I now seem them, need to be considered more carefully.
Homeless woman of Marrakech, shot in 2015
There is discussion in the forum about ethics being somehow ‘bent’ in the face of a split-second moment as in the Napalm Girl image. My personal view on this is that rather than bending ones own ethics, there is comfort in operating within those of another. In the case or Nick Ut’s image, the situation was within the constructs of photojournalism, as he was in Vietnam to document the conflict. His pictures would be governed by his own vision and perspectives on the way, so I agree that his own personal ethics would be the guiding force. However, the incident that led to Napalm Girl was a split-second decision, after which Ut behaved in a very human way, saving Phuc’s life and forming a lifelong bond with her. His actions in shooting the picture first are not, in my view, momentarily compromising his values but working within those set by his employers. This is where I see issues with having ethics. As the learning to date makes it clear that ethics are personal to the photographer, we will all differ from each other. This difference is magnified when an editorial is involved. Ut selected Napalm girl as the most powerful image, but he effectively lost all control over how it would then be used by the press, the public and the politicians. Whatever his original intentions, they would have been diluted through the editing and publishing stages. It reminds me of Eddie Adams equally famous image of the execution of Nguyễn Văn Lém in 1968, which was one of many documentary images that he took of the arrest of the Viet Cong soldiers.
Eddie Adams’ famous execution image, 1968 (Nguyễn Ngọc Loan, 2023)
Like Napalm Girl, this image won the Pulitzer Prize for the photographer and went on to fuel anti-war sentiment in the United States. It differed in that when published, the revulsion at the act depicted was focused on the man who pulled the trigger. The idea of doing no harm, that may well have been a personal value of Adams, was lost through the editorial. The press ethics really centre around the faithful representation (as much as it can be) of an event, without exploitation, interference or undue influence. To that extent, the picture met the press standards, but not necessarily that of Adams.
This picture really messed up his life. He never blamed me. He told me if I hadn’t taken the picture, someone else would have, but I’ve felt bad for him and his family for a long time. I had kept in contact with him; the last time we spoke was about six months ago, when he was very ill. I sent flowers when I heard that he had died and wrote, “I’m sorry. There are tears in my eyes.”
(Adams, 1998)
In conclusion, our ethics as people are usually enough govern how we approach our own work. In that regard, my fellow students and I clearly believe the same ethical values, with language being the main separator. Our ethics can be challenged by others when we no longer have control over our image. In these cases, our best intentions are the best we can aim for.
What ethical principles guide your work as a photographer?
Do some independent research and self-reflection to generate a list of ethical principles that are important to you in your work as a photographer.
Define each principle in relation to how it relates to your practice. You might want to include some examples to illustrate the principle. Complete this exercise in your learning log, we recommend you define 4-6 principles that feel authentic to your work. Reference where you drew any of the guidelines from.
Response
Research led me to consider the concepts laid out by the National Association of Press Photographers and the Photography Ethics Center, when applied to a number of practitioners, some whose work I admire and others that I do not. The research for this exercise can be seen here:
In considering my own ethics, I conclude that these are my ethical principles:
Respect as much of the facts as possible
This first principle is a tricky one to define, because the concept of fact and truth are themselves complex. What I mean here is that whatever the situation or story, I see to understand as much of it objectively before deciding on how to represent it. An example would be my experience in Marrakech [1], where I knew so little about the culture, I could only offer my perspective as a tourist.
Avoiding causing direct harm or distress
In looking at Bruce Gilden and his attitude towards his subjects, I realise that I’m not a street photographer. He and Cohen (the other photographer in the Padlet) place themselves directly in confrontation with their subjects. While it’s legal to photograph people in public places in the US and UK, the way that some photographers obstruct their subjects makes me uncomfortable. In Cohen’s case, there is occasional collaboration between subject and photographer, but Gilden appears much more aggressive. All of the street work I’ve done in the past has been from a distance, using a mid-zoom lens. I think it’s that discomfort that makes me work in this way.
Be interested in the wider context
Listening to Sally Mann talk about her projects that involve her family, it’s clear that any doubts she has are eased by considering the wider implications of her work. In particular, photographing her husband, who is very ill, she relies on his bravery in telling his story to counteract the pain of photographing her loved one.
Be open and honest
I think my biggest learning to date in this regard, came from Identity and Place, where we had to photograph people we hadn’t met before [2]. When I started the assignment, I was looking for some kind of segue way into a conversation to convince them to let me shoot them. What actually happened is that I simply talked to them about the course, my objective, where the pictures would be shared and what I would be using them for. This was a much better strategy in terms of building trust between photographer and subject and resulted in pictures I was happy with. I still see most of my subjects from time to time and we still chat, even though the pictures were taken nearly 2 years ago. Honesty helps people understand what their image or representation is going to be used for and offers them a way of challenging or rejecting anything that conflicts with their own values.
Collaborate
The idea of collaborating for me covers many things, including an amalgamation of ideas, representation that is respectful or challenging in a given context, and consent. The Photography Ethics Center uses the example of photographing children as a case for collaboration. A child isn’t developed enough to be able to understand how they are being represented. By collaborating with their parent or guardian organisation who knows them, we can reach an agreement that will avoid issues of safety, long-term harm and influence that might effect their development. This is not a straight-forward transaction, as demonstrated by the case of Spencer Elden who was photographed for the famous Nirvana album cover when he was a baby. Collaboration took place between the artist and his parents, but many years later Elden had a problem with the image. There are wider issues raised than a matter of ethics, with Elden being accused of indulging in the fame of the picture until that fame had diminished. Ultimately, his civil case regarding harm done to him was dismissed by the court. Where children are concerned, Collaboration in the form of open and honest discussion and consent to take a picture are key to avoiding any harm being done.
Conclusion
When I reflect on these principles, I see that they are closely interlinked and that they align with how I try to behave in other aspects of my life. The key learning point is that the camera doesn’t give us, as photographers, an excuse to alter our behaviour towards other people because it somehow anonymises what we are trying to represent. In the case of Napalm Girl, the photographer was employed to document the war visually, so when the attack on the villagers happened, his first thought was to shoot, what he saw. His instinct as a human being was to help the children, in particular Kim Phuc, who was in the most danger. He is credited with saving her life, which in my view balanced the decision to shoot first, help second. What Ut could not have been fully aware of, nor could he control, was the way the image was used for the next 50 years. He probably wasn’t aware what damage he would cause Phuc psychologically during her formative years, through the embarrassment of her nudity and vulnerability. In their case, a strong relationship formed after the fact, which would have provided both with insight into the impact of the decision to shoot and the impact it would have for both of them. When we look at the NAPP ethical values as an organisation, we can see that Ut did behave in an ethical manner. That may not have been how the world saw it when the image was published, but I don’t see how a conflict photojournalist could predict that in the decisive moment that presents itself. I was interested in the evolution of the Ethics Center and the concepts that were at odds with the historical video of Bruce Gilden. Gilden proclaimed that he had not ethics and that photojournalism was all ego, something he later retracted as being sarcasm. I personally think his comments at the time were the accepted norm and that history has rewritten the norms. If we consider how his approach to work would be received today, in an era where everyone has a cameraphone and everyone is being photographed largely without their consent, it stands to reason that modern ethics has had to remind photographers what their responsibilities are to their subjects and stories. For me, the experience of street photography is governed by my own ethics to the extent where I avoid it as a genre. This isn’t a positive situation either, as an artist shouldn’t be self-governing to the extent that they don’t produce work. I’ve self-edited to my detriment in this course previously [2], and having conducted some preliminary research into ethical practice, I would approach the shoot differently. My particular issue centred around not wanting to publish images that might cause my subjects issues (causing harm), but could have been offset by clearer communication (open and honest), which might have steered the work differently, but prevented my wanting to keep it from being viewed.
In summary, I am interested to see how my ethics change, if at all, as I progress through this module. What I’ve learned so far has made me think about my approach to work in a different way, so it will be interesting to see how that affects my future work.
How do you currently understand photography ethics? Reflecting on Chrystal’s quote about ‘digging into your discomfort’, can you identify any areas in your experience as a photographer where you felt unsure or unclear about what you were doing in your photographic role? How might you revisit that time now, what might you do differently? Post your thoughts to your learning log. You might also like to share your reflection on the Ethics and Representation Forum.
My Understanding of Photography Ethics
Cambridge Dictionary definition of Ethics:
“the study of what is morally right and what is not:”
(ethics, 2023)[1]
Simply put, ethics is a determination of whether something is appropriate to a level of moral standard, or contravenes that standard in some way. As human beings, our standards of morality vary between people, are shaped by culture and experience, and define an internal barometer for our behaviour. When applied to photography and photographers, the ethical considerations apply to the decision to make work that represents people or events that impact their lives. How a subject is represented is a hugely complex space, which covers everything from ethnicity and sexuality, to behaviour and personal circumstance. In the interview with Chrystal Ding[2], I recognised the discomfort that she talks about in some of my own work where I’ve photographed people in a certain context. The first example was a trip that I went on in 2015 to Morocco. I’d already been told how its people didn’t like to be photographed, because in the Muslim religion, the creation of a person’s image is said to be taking part of their soul. At the time, my view was that it was an organised photographic trip, so that in some way entitled me to take photographs while on excursion. Like any tourist, I was 100% observer, having no experience, connection or relationship with my potential subjects. What happened was that we, as a group, encountered a great deal of hostility because we were photographing when consent was clearly not given. I recall the first evening’s call to prayer in Marrakesh, when an elderly man got his mat out in the street, knelt on it, then looked up at me with extreme anger in his eyes. I had my camera around my neck, but was not holding it in a way that suggested I was about to photograph him. He gave me the middle finger and shouted to me to “fuck off”, which was possibly the only English words he knew. Clearly, his assumption was that I would not respect his sacred moment of prayer, perhaps driven by the behaviour of other tourists in the city, and that his gesture would somehow put me off taking a picture of him. The irony is that the middle finger would have produced an image that reflected the mood perfectly. If I had shot and disseminated such a photograph, I would have further conveyed the stereotype that the people of Morocco don’t like tourists, particularly photographers. In actual fact, there were a few instances where a brief conversation with the subject, and a monetary transaction, secured an image. What I take from this now, with the benefit of Ding’s interview, was my lack of preparation or research into how to represent my trip in a culturally respectful manner. Even though I’d acted appropriately at the time, it was likely driven by fear for my safety than the moral judgement that it wasn’t appropriate to photograph him. I would not repeat this experience as I didn’t really connect with the country or the city. However if presented with photographing the people of another country, I would certainly carry out more research into its people, how they want to be viewed (if at all) and which part of their culture or daily lives I would want to represent. Only then could I make the decisions need in preparation for shooting the work.
The second example plays more to Ding’s comments about observer vs. participant, which is also highlighted in the interview with Savannah Dodd [3]. Last year, I was engaged to photograph the Malvern Pride event by a friend of mine who was on the committee. I was happy to volunteer to do this as I had wanted to engage with more local civic activities after living in Malvern for over 20 years. The brief was simple: to document the day in its entirety. Although apparently simple, there were many aspects I needed to consider before shooting. Firstly the idea of approaching people to ask for a picture (consent) and to capture the ‘unaware’ documentary images of the event itself. Most of the people I talked to on the day were happy to be photographed but some were not. Our conversations were generally around whether or not they were having a good time, whether they enjoyed the acts etc. However, on a couple of occasions, I was confronted with “oh, I’m not gay…why would you want to photograph me?” At the time, I diffused their discomfort by point out that I wasn’t gay either, but on reflection I believe their discomfort was related to somehow being fraudulently represented in an event that they were simply attending because it was in a public park. My pithy reaction was a way of assuaging my own discomfort at being a straight man photographing an LGBT event. Aside from this, the other ethical concern that I now have when reflecting on the event was “am I representing the event appropriately?” I had been told by the organisers that this was a party, a celebration of the LGBT community that was new for our little Victorian town. However, the local council had rejected the committee’s request for a march through the town, which is actually the core purpose of pride. The marches show the world that the community is proud of who they are and is, by definition, a protest against prejudice and discrimination aimed at their community. Without the marching, the mood of the event was indeed a party, but my responsibility as a photographer should have been to represent the whole purpose of the event, rather than the convenient part, which positively demonstrated the LGBT community as being inclusive in the context of the Malvern residents. There was one image from the event that I feel represented the protest context of Pride, shown below:
From Malvern Pride 2022, but Richard Fletcher
In this image, a speaker is reading out her protest poetry about the treatment of young trans people by the elements of society that don’t recognise their gender. This image is the only one in the series of 90 images where the subject isn’t smiling or enjoying themselves. I took the picture because I suddenly became aware of the need to photograph the counter-aesthetic, but on reflection I should have made that part of my practice on the day.
Conclusion
In conclusion, what photographic ethics means to me is the application of a continually evolving set of questions about the subject and my relationship with it. Do I have the right in some related context, to photograph this situation, and if I do then how does that affect my judgement in representing it? The strength of that relationship defines how uncomfortable I am in taking photographs. Rather than finding a connection that justifies the work, I have a need to establish it before that discomfort abates. I agree with Chrystal Ding’s comments about digging into what makes us uncomfortable as this is the sub-conscious ethical standards we all have that are speaking to us. I’m not sure that I would go to the lengths of prior research that she does before photographing, though. This may be because I recognise an impatience in myself that would prevent me from focusing on a single objective for that long without some form of visual experimentation taking place. However, she and Savannah both make the point that considering ethics is a dynamic activity that evolves with our continued development as photographers. The point that we will always have gaps in our knowledge or research, that we will still make decisions we may eventually regret, and should embrace them, really resonated with me.
Nick Ut (Huỳnh Công Út) The Terror of War, children in flight from a napalm bombing during the Vietnam War, 1973: in Batchen et al (2012) Nick Ut, Accidental Napalm Attack (1972) Pg 146
Before we dive into this course, take a few minutes to write a short 200-word response to the ethics of this photograph in your learning log. Would you have taken this photograph? Would you have published it? Why or why not?
Response
This image has always made me uncomfortable from a non-photographic perspective, because of the clear horror of the situation. The press photographer had the responsibility to capture the moment, and we know that immediately after this shot was taken, he helped quickly get Phuc, who was naked because her clothes had burned off her body, to a hospital [1]. Like Capa before him, the line between observer and participant was a fine one. Personally, I would have struggled with shooting this emergency over wanting to help. The result though is a powerful reminder of the impact of war, so its publication was important in educating the world. However, I question the impact on Phuc herself. She is known to dislike the image, not because of the event, but her nakedness, which she saw as shameful [2]. The photograph is a permanent reminder of her suffering to this day, which seems at face value to be less important than the messaging about the war. For me, the ethical issues relate to the photographer’s decision to shoot at that moment, capturing a terrified naked child over another the others fleeing the scene, but also the editorial decision to publish. The narrative that the Associated Press were after took no account of the representation of the child and the infamy that would haunt her for another 50 years.
This exercise is in preparation for the formal critical review in Assignment 5 at the end of the project. As given, the critical review brief is as follows:
Compare the theoretical features, characteristics and histories of one or more photographic genres
Use your research skills competently to deconstruct a given genres’ conventions
Demonstrate an awareness of the multiple readings of the histories that have informed genre in a global context
The critical review takes the learning from parts 3 and 4 and picks up from the comparative analysis completed in Project 2, which can be found here:
For this exercise, I will briefly review the above analysis and update with what I’ve learned since. I will then decide on my area of interest for the review within this project.
Summary of Project 2: Exercise 2: Comparative Analysis
For the exercise, I chose two landscape images; Ansel Adams’ Moonrise over Hernandez, New Mexico (1941) and Richard Misrach’s Bonne Carre Slipway, Norco, Louisiana (1988). Both images are classical landscape in terms of their visual codes. My comparison related to the contextual emphasis of each image, rather than their aesthetic merits. With regard to the latter, I drew attention to the similarities and differences, one being black and white, both featuring manmade structures, one being more traditional in the use of thirds and the other, not so. However, with the context the two photographers differed considerably, despite them both being interested in conservation of the natural world. Adams’ image reveals the majesty of the landscape and man’s insignificance both in scale and when considered within the construct of religion. By contrast, Misrach’s image shows us how man is impacting the landscape, his subject being an oil refinery.
Having completed parts 3 and 4, I am now familiar with the works that formed the New Topographics exhibition in 1975, where the artists moved away from the aesthetic beauty of the landscape to show how construction and human behaviour fit within it. This made sense of where Misrach’s inspiration came from. The series that his picture comes from walks the viewer through the routine of petrochemical processing in Louisiana, an area that for most part is rural country. His images follow the landscape traditions in terms of composition, but having now covered the difference between the interpretations (beautiful, picturesque, sublime), I now appreciate the narratives that can be derived from them more. The series is actually terrifying, as the destruction of the natural world is almost desensitised owing to the world’s reliance of the fossil fuel being processed. Images of dead trees, hazardous waste dumps and abandoned dwellings reveal what has taken place and continues to do so at such a slow pace that nobody notices. Unlike Adams, Misrach is showing what we can’t or won’t see about how we live, in a similar way to the likes of Lewis Hines and Martha Rosler with their documentary advocacy.
Thoughts on a Critical Review
I considered revisiting my analysis as the context of the additional learning explained the motivation behind the images, Misrach’s in particular. However, I have been interested in a question from Part 4, which is related to landscape but could be applied to the other genres as well.
In Colin Pantall’s lecture and supporting presentation notes, titled The Way We See, Where We Look and What we Show, he said
“Landscapes can show the infrastructure of power, can show the dividing lines of power. Sometimes we don’t think of these as landscape, but they are, because that is the defining part of them”
(Colin Pantall Presentation, s.d., video timestamp 11m,50s)
At the point that he says this, the presentation is showing this photograph by Mohammed Borrouisa from his series Périphérique.
From the series Périphérique, by Mohamed Bourouisa [1]
I was confused by the comment as Landscape was not my initial reading of this photograph. Instead, I believed it to be more documentary or one of the sub-genres, street photography. This was the basis for my critical analysis – what is it that makes this a landscape and how does the reading of the internal and external context affect our classification of a photograph?
The research for the essay can be found in the Padlet:
“Which is it? – How contexts can alter our interpretation of the genre of a photograph?”
Additional Note
At this point, I received feedback that my literal interpretation of the brief for Assignment 5 may result in lots of repetition. With this in mind, I focused my attention on gathering research and writing my submission. I am offering the draft as my completed essay, electing to update ahead of assessment if required. For this reason, there is no write-up for Exercises 2 and 3.
Make a small series or piece of work that responds to your theme, supported by the activities, reading and research you are doing into different genres.
You should experiment with producing different sets of images to explore your idea(s). You will need to add evidence of your work to your blog.
You should show your process, investigations, and your thinking through a combination of contact sheets, reflections, exploring the presentation of different combinations of images and reflecting on these different outcomes.
You should evidence your reflections on reading and research as well evidencing your engagement with the suggested course materials which will support your study.
You might explore ways of combining your genres – to find overlaps and ways of merging the genres together into something different and new. You might also develop work that challenges a particular genre convention and produce work that plays with the audience’s expectations.
You may decide to produce a set of images for each genre and then put a selection of the images together to explore the narrative that may be created across genres in combination.
Introduction
During the previous projects I identified a broad theme that has many potential projects that could be developed from it. My interest in communication, how it has changed and how people respond to it, resulted in my shooting a number of experimental photographs. These images were not centred on a single narrative, instead covering a number of areas. Nor were they rooted in a single genre. In parts 3 and 4, I deliberately selected source texts that covered the genres that are particular to my general theme, but have concluded that the active use of multiple genres within a body of work can be both powerful in shaping the narrative, but also more provocative in how the viewer interprets them. For example, the use of portraiture to can be used to challenge a cultural stereotype, even thought the series may be about a landscape, whether literal or geo-political. Landscape or still life images create the sense of place, but the portraiture invites the viewer to understand that place as seen through the eyes of its people. They are stitched together using the photographer’s observations either as part of the subject, or as an observer and it is this that can drive the way the genres are used to tell the story.
Approach
In my experiments, my perceptions of the changes in communication were driven by a middle-aged perspective, but one that worked in engineering and technology for many years. I have mixed feelings of embracing technology. It has to relevant to me and I need to understand. I tend to reject areas that are aimed more squarely at people younger than me. I also have elderly family members, for which communication technology is like a completely foreign language, which gives me an empathy with those who cannot work with it. The other area of my personality that was revealed by thinking about this theme, was my sense of compliance and order. I was brought up to follow the rules and to an extent that makes me compliant. It’s when I know that something doesn’t makes sense, that I rebel against what I consider to be ‘petty authority’. I acknowledge that this is why I’m drawn to artists like Martin Parr, Nan Goldin, Garry Winogrand and Robert Mapplethorpe, all of whom pushed back about strict ideas about expectation, fun, love, relationships and towing the line.
For this assignment, my approach was to take the narrower themes of ‘rebellion’ and ‘subliminal communication’ and curate two brief series from my experiments.
The starting point, an unedited collection of experimental images can be found in this Padlet:
In these series, the images work across the documentary, landscape and still life genres. We can say that because the obvious visual conventions come through in the images. The documentary images say something about the people and place, through observation of behaviour or previously established norms. For example, the small boy defying the traditional autumnal weather conditions at the seaside in My Way, speaks to the British attitude to their climate – if it isn’t thunderstorm or freezing cold, why not run around in your swimming costumes? The visual elements of that image firmly establish where it was taken, how bad the weather was and the contrasting attitudes of young and old. When it comes to the landscape images, such as the mown pathway in Why Not?, we have traditional ideas of foreground, mid-ground and background. There is land and sky, as well as a path leading through them. With the still life images, the elements suggest meaning through their placement, such as the discarded flyer shot in My Way. These conventions are apparent in my work here, but they do not define the way the images work as a series. Indeed, I didn’t set out to shoot within a particular genre, but instead wanted to explore a theme that speaks to our adoption of technology within the culture that I am part or, how we take cues from what we see and, sometimes, disregard what we are being told. When looking at this single-sentence description, it’s not easy to see a single genre that covers how it should be represented. We are left with considering how impactful a genre might be in creating a narrative. For this, it’s easier to see how I curated the both series from my experiments.
For example, Image 4 in Why Not? is a landscape with a sign pointing towards two paths. There are indications of the presence of people having been in the place (the garden, the damage to one of the signs etc), but there are no people in the frame. The image is highlighting the assumption that the viewer understands that there isn’t actually some ‘naval warfare’ going on, that the sign didn’t have enough space for the word museum or memorial. As a stand alone image, it suggests something that we can’t really place in the context of the town and its people, because there are few identifiers or ways to connect with it. However, when we add it to Image 3, which adds a documentary element to what is also essentially a landscape, we have much more information to help create the narrative. Now we see the disabled buggy, the old-style public toilets, the flag etc. We get the sense of a classical British town as a concept, as well as the ‘that’ll do’ element of its people (the use of the buggy as an advertising billboard). Perhaps the buggy goes around the town as a mobile advertising board. On its own, landscape part has impact, but when combined with the conventions of documentary, it’s increased. I had inadvertently crossed two genres with these two images. The series also include still life in some of their compositions.
When considering artists and works that fit within a single genre, I see a more tightly focused idea being explored than mere observation of a response to communication. For example, Trish Morrissey’s recreation of her family archive in her series Seven Years [1] transports the artist to a time in her family history. She plays the part of her parents and others in the fashions of the period, alongside her elder sister. The series not only crosses history, but also revisits the situational tensions of the original images through their adoption of body language and the micro-expressions contained within any family portrait. Morrissey doesn’t venture outside traditional portraiture because the source material for her exploration doesn’t. The genre unifies the concept behind the family portrait – it’s a picture of a person or people, everything else is the underlying narrative about the situation. We learn about the characters through her acting, in a similar way to Rosy Martin’s performance as her mother in Getting Changed [2]. While both artists’ work sit largely within the portraiture genre, they directly challenge some the traditional concepts that the genre is associated with, namely the faithful representation of a real person. As with other artists such as Cindy Sherman and Francesca Woodman who used themselves as performance ‘canvasses’, both Morrissey and Martin use their pictures to comment on generational differences, personal experiences in their growing up and the memories invoked by life events. All of these are a far cry from the use of portraiture to identify (passport) or classify (August Sander).
The works of Martin Parr, Anna Fox and Chris Coekin heavily influenced the curation of my own series above. These artists use different genres to highlight or ‘zoom into and out from’ a cultural idea or setting in a way that punctuates the wider series. Parr’s From The Pope to a Flat White (1979 to 2019) [3] mixes staged portraiture with street photography (a sub-genre of documentary) and the occasional still life under the banner of documentary to show how much the country has changed over many years. Similarly, Fox’s Work Stations (1986 to 88) [4] mixes the conventions of portraiture, street photography and urban landscape to create a mock news article about corporate finance. The series invokes the memories of 1980s Britain and the post-memory associated with the cultural and political landscape of the time and, more importantly, how it ultimately led to failure. Coekin’s series Knock Three Times takes a similar approach to working class culture in the face of political turbulence (studied in Exercise 1 [5]. All three spent time within the environment as observers and represented their experiences both past and present, using whichever visual style suited at the time. In my experiments, I was looking for example of my theme in action but it was in the curation that I selected which images had the biggest impact. Like these artists, I used crossing genres to make a point if the visual impact of the series was enhanced in some way.
Conclusion
This assignment is the culmination of the research from Parts 3 and 4 of the course, which started with identifying a broad theme, developing some more focused ideas from it and mapping them onto the concepts of genre and the artists who have worked with similar ideas. When it came to Part 4, the research was focused on how landscape has evolved from the traditional picturesque to the ideas of power, ownership and the symbiotic relationship between man and the natural world. Artists working in this area were creating landscape as we know it, but using the visual codes of the other genres to make their point about the subject. At this point, I struggled to recognise landscape as a pure genre. If Sibusiso Behka’s night-time images of his district of Joburg were landscapes, how come they contained people living their lives as principle subjects in the compositions? When it came to the other source text that I examined, Backwards and Forwards in Time, the works were blended by including images that were recognisable as having the visual codes of all the genres. The meaning of the works themselves came across, but not in a way that favoured any one of them. After reviewing and curating my own experiments into two mini series, I realised that genre wasn’t what I was particularly cognisant of when shooting; like some kind of automatic pilot. What was important was to create the context and narratives for the theme with whatever got the point across with most impact. I observed the artists that I had been researching as having drawn attention to a detail of their story or setting a scene/establishing a location for the work, by crossing into still life and landscape, but all the time maintaining the conventions of documentary for the whole series. I conclude from this that genres, while a way of classifying an image or series, actually don’t define them in terms of meaning or relevance to wider context. We don’t look at the works of Ansel Adams as excellent examples of a genre, more that they capture and represent the beauty of the natural world. We could equally represent that same beauty through an image of a flower or some wildlife, but the common thread through both works would be our intention, rather than the genre that we used. I recently read Stephen King’s latest novel Fairy Tale (2022) [6] whose plot explores the tropes of traditional ‘fairy tale’ folklore. We recognise the genre as being fantastical stories told to children in schools and before bed, but we associate King with the genre of horror fiction. Of course, we know that the origins of many fairy tales are in classical stories by the likes of the Grimm brothers and H. P. Lovecraft, whose writings were more akin to horror than children’s fiction. What King recognised in his latest work was the connection between the two and, more importantly, the common themes that can be represented by both, such as the repercussions of trusting the wrong person or making a bad decision, the dangers of avarice and ill-treatment of others etc. With photography, we can represent ideas like ‘delusion of grandeur’ by creating a mise-en-scéne composition, shoot a self-portrait as someone else (Sherman’s Centrefold) or capture a still life that invokes some form of post-memory (Martin’s Too Close to Home). For me, how we use genres beyond being comfortable with the the ability to identify visual codes, is pretty irrelevant to creating art.
My conclusion isn’t firm, however. I still have questions about how we decide what makes us comfortable. In Colin Pantall’s presentation The Way We See, How We Look and What We Show [7], he refers to the image below as a landscape.
Périphérique. (Mohamed Bourouissa, s.d.)[8]
While there is a landscape element to it and, while we know from the rest of the series that this is a place which is contested in terms of cultural ownership and racial dominance, I didn’t seen that when looking at this image in isolation. I saw it more as documentary (despite it being a staged photograph), so what is it what leads some to see one genre when others see another? I will be using this as the question to answer in Part 5.
LO1: Compare the theoretical features, characteristics and histories of different photographic genres.
Completed research into landscape and documentary within Exercise 1.
LO2: Deconstruct a given genres’ conventions and create visual material informed by that knowledge.
Reviewed and updated experimental images from Part 3.
LO3: Produce new visual work informed by your research.
Created two stand-alone series derived from my broad theme of Communication; one about how people rebel against communication that is forced upon them and the other about subliminal messaging that we acknowledge but don’t think about or recognise as having an impact on us.
LO4: Analyse the wider global contexts surrounding contemporary image making.
Examined how genres are crossed by contemporary artists who use the visual codes from each to create blended narratives. Discuss my thoughts on whether genre is useful for anything other than labelling what we recognise.
In this post, and the accompanying Padlets, I revisit two of the sources texts in more detail. My broad theme of Communication was explored in the context of the genres of Documentary and Portraiture in Part 3, because at first glance the ideas of the history of culture, technology and identity was felt to fit naturally within them. In this project though, the ideas of how landscape is both defined and affected by mankind, as well as the inverse impact on our behaviour are presented. This offers a whole area to research, starting with Source Text 1- Colin Pantall’s lecture on The Way We See. As I have been considering how my theme could become a focused project, I’ve thought about cultural perspective and the potential audience for the series. When reading the source texts, the other work that stood out to me related to ideas of representation, being inside the culture or observing it. This picks up on the ideas of Insider/Outside that Martha Rosler discussed in her work in the Bowery district of New York. Chris Coekin’s work Backwards and Forwards in Time is the second Source Text discussed here.
Colin Pantall – The Way We See
During the course of the lecture, Pantall poses a series of questions. I’ve condensed them into a single question for each section of the lecture in order to address them here.
How are maps used now and how, if all, do they affect how we experience a place?
When considering a beautiful, picturesque or sublime landscape, are there any problems with tending to the beautiful?
Does the wilderness still exist and can a landscape be tamed by the photographer?
How can photography be used to record the changing landscape and is it capable of driving real change?
How does a landscape make us feel and what tangible elements are there that contribute to this comfort?
This source text covered a lot of ground, but the first and perhaps most obvious lesson was that the landscape is something actively defined by the viewer, rather than being something that generally surrounds us. Landscape as a photographic construct says much more about the environment and culture of a region `than just what is contained the aesthetic. When considering place, we use technology to inform us both how to travel and what to expect when we get there. The former is the rise is popularity of digital maps such as Google Maps and Google Earth. The latter is provided by the shared experiences of others through review sites and social media. Where traditional maps told us about what was important to our national identity and culture, we have the rest of the internet to use for the same research. Our ideas of what a landscape looks like come from the picturesque imagery that is produced as a byproduct of tourism and aesthetic visualisation by some photographers. It makes us want to seek out the views that we are presented with so that we might have that same experience. In the case of Jacqui Kenny who suffers from agoraphobia, the artist uses the millions of available snapshots available as part of Google’s Street View to explore places that are not physically accessible to her. The photographic process is more akin to curation as Kenny suggests [1], but in a way the process she uses to review the images is akin to being present in the scene. She is a cold observer, able to draw her own conclusions about the environment and its people by incorporating the appropriate visual elements to convey some form of meaning from her work. Her work tends away from the traditional notions of aesthetic beauty in favour of some statement about human life in the landscape, which is more in keeping with the New Topographics ideas of the 1970s than with the early landscape photographers. This movement invoked as sense of irony for me about Ansel Adams. In his quest to capture the beauty of the wilderness and protect nature, Adams actually contributed a cultural idea of what wilderness was. The creation of the national parks in the US had the effect of preserving an aesthetic idea of wilderness, while inviting people to go visit. This explains the complexity of the definition within The Wilderness Act (1964), which sought to appease both sides of the argument over it being purely natural or influenced but culture. The proof that Adams’ was applying his own ideas to landscape comes from his production of thousands of different prints from a single negative. In the example of his famous Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico(1941), the emphasis of the elements in the composition changed from early to late prints. The acknowledgement that man changes the landscape led to the rephotography projects that set out to highlight the negative side of our existence. Photography is used in this case to document the damage, but also on occasion, the progress – Sebastio Salgado is the notable example with his ‘rephotography’ of his rainforest reintroduction project. In other cases, such as Nick J Stone, rephotography documents how things can be redeveloped. His Ghosting History images show us how things changed after the Second World War, but in a way that is familiar to us. Familiarity is one aspect of our comfort with the landscape that is inextricably linked with our identity. In Britain, the recognition of a street that hasn’t changed that much since the war, but has overcome the damage in the overlaid photograph gives us a sense of comfort. Comfort is associated with well-being and while the idea of the natural landscape being peaceful and somehow nourishing is well established, a city landscape or a space that creates strong memory and postmemory is equally comforting.
The interesting learning from this source text is how landscape connects with ideas of identity and the human experience. The former is something we would traditionally associate with portraiture, while the latter is more closely linked with documentary. In both cases, the exploration of how the landscape is theoretically and physically formed by our need or desire from some ‘value’ has led to explorations of our own behaviour. Whether the documentary of potential resources as with Timothy O’Sullivan or the way an urban district takes on a sublime feeling in Sibusiso Bheka, the relationship between man and landscape remains at the heart of photographic practice.
Chris Coekin – Backwards and Forwards in Time
This source text took the form of a Padlet that describes Coekin’s background, influences and three of his works, Knock Three Times, The Hitcher and The Altogether. I’ll be exploring his works and the connections to his influences, both historical and contemporary.
As the title of his Padlet suggests, Coekin’s work explores the traditional ideas of class culture through a number of documentary series. He achieves this by exploiting the main visual codes in each of the major genres to produce work that spans them all without drawing the viewer’s attention to any particular classification of the images. What is most interesting to me is the use of candid and staged portraiture, the former being akin to the snapshot that has been perhaps the most popular use of photography since its invention. We all recognise the style of the snapshot; the lack of direct engagement between photographer and subject, the use of flash that appears to be difficult to control with it’s washed out highlights and dark shadows, and the subject appearing to be ‘doing something natural’. In his use of snapshots in Knock Three Times and The Hitcher, Coekin introduces a sense of being an observer. In the former, his images capture the members of the club chatting, drinking and even leaving their gathering. Coekin is watching, rather than taking part. On image of a man urinating provokes the viewer in thinking about this voyerism; such an image would not be something most people would consider shooting as it’s an intrusion on a private moment. It contrasts with a similar image in Nan Goldin’s Ballad of Sexual Dependence (Goldin, 2012, p.74) which, apart from being far more explicit, reveals a definite connection with between artist and subject. The other style of portraiture in Coekin’s series’ are posed or staged. In The Hitcher, the artist asks for a staged portrait of the people who picked him up while hitchhiking. These pictures provoke a variety of emotions within them, ranging from the appreciation of being noticed for the act to the discomfort at the highlighting of the deed. In some cases, the artist’s direction can clearly be seen as with the image analysed in the Padlet. However, this is most evident in The Altogether, which is stylistically similar to the work of August Sander. Where Sander was looking to document people and their professions, Coekin’s work is more contradictory to the stereotypes of the working class factory worker. They appear in combative stances, comradely group shots and with iconic ideas of struggle factored into the pose. For me, the combination of the two styles of portraiture add to each other, much as in Larry Sultan’s Pictures from Home. However, I get more of a sense of exploring the artist’s feelings about their own experiences from Coekin’s series’, particularly in The Hitcher, where he places himself in the centre of the story and explores modern society’s view of the age-old tradition of hitchhiking. In all of the works here, Coekin uses his own experiences to influence how he represents the subject, but achieves this by being both participant and casual observer through his use of portraiture. The series’ also include still life, which Coekin uses to punctuate the narrative. In Knock Three Times, we see the elements that characterise the idea of a working men’s club (drinks and empty glasses, snooker tables, beer mats etc), but we also see traces of the people who were using them. In The Hitcher, the still life images of discarded items at the side of the road, speak to the current state of our environment and infrastructure. In one picture, a dead rabbit is shown between the kerbside and painted line of a road. The animal is arranged as if viewed running, while the line has an imprint of a vehicle tyre in its surface, likely made when the paint was still wet. The image’s potential narratives about the threat to wildlife caused by the roads, the way it should have been ‘safe’ where it was and the correlation with the dangers of hitchhiking are palpable. In one picture we see the fact that countryside is a dangerous place and that the romantic idea of wandering the roads doesn’t necessarily translate into modern times.
Conclusion
In conclusion, there are a number of key points to consider from these source texts in terms of my own work. They are:
How we see the landscape is very much driven by both our place within and our perspective on what is happening to it. We might recognise cultural or historical significance to an aspect of landscape, how it has changed over time and concern for its future. These are strong drivers for how artists and photographers represent landscape.
A landscape can be defined by its people in a way that doesn’t, at first glance centre on the landscape. For example, an image in Mohammed Bouroissa’s Périphérique that is described in Pantall’s lecture, is referred to as landscape despite the main subjects being the people in the frame. The region in Paris where the images were set, has gone through significant cultural, racial and economic change which Bouroissa represents in a series of mise-en-scéne photographs. This question about how an image is identified within genre is something I want to explore in Part 5 for the critical essay.
In a similar way to 2), the work of Sibusiso Bheka highlights another aspect of landscape in its treatment of an urban environment at night. The behaviour of the people and the way the images are lit by the artificial light coming from houses etc, all serve to create a sense of the sublime. Where sublime landscapes tended to centre around the alluring threat of the natural world, Bheka’s pictures drop the viewer into a potentially dangerous, yet fascinating night scape.
Within the portraiture genre, the methods for making pictures vary along with their interpretation. Snapshots and staged portraits combine well in Coekin’s and present the viewer with a perspective driven by the artist’s connection with the subject, as well as an detached observer.
Including still life in a series can add a form of punctuation to the narrative. In the case of Coekin’s work, the still life adds the situational information, whether supporting or challenging a known stereotype such as the working classes.
This has been an interesting exercise in terms of seeing how the visual codes from a genre aren’t always read a certain way, how our own identity affects how we might represent a subject and how the technical approaches within a genre can be used to achieve different, but interconnected meanings.
The main focus of Project 4 is developing your own work. In support of that activity, use the Source Text and Case Study examples to further your practice and research as you develop your understanding and awareness of complex boundaries of artistic practice and research themes and genres.
Start by browsing the four sources below before returning to two of these in more depth.
The Source Texts – Notes
Part four introduces us to source texts that deal with the changing perspectives on landscape and how it has historically been represented, as well as exploration of our identity within the world. These are inextricably linked in the work of the artists and critics in this section and the first thing to note is the absence of boundaries between the genres exploited to tell these stories. In Colin Pantall’s Ways of Seeing, there are recognisable landscape photographs that obey the conventions of the beautiful, the picturesque and the sublime, mixed with a documentary and even ‘still life’ style such as the work of Ester Wonplon. Her series explores the threat to the glaciers caused by climate change in a mixed media presentation.
(ESTER VONPLON_Nuit de l’Année 2015, 2015)
Her theme is one of documentary in the traditions of the advocates of the early 20th Century. She highlights the impact of human behaviour but set against the specific backdrop of the landscape. Pantall discusses the move away from straight representation of the landscape with the New Topographics exhibition in 1975, which focused on more man’s place and influence on it. The aesthetics were significantly different, but the ideas were important because they now started to associate our identity in terms of the world around us. When we consider these additional elements, such as buildings, telegraph poles etc, we can connect with the idea of an object’s impact on the landscape. Artists are able to blur the lines between the landscape genre and still-life in order to say something that is inherently documentary. With Wonplon’s series, the sheets of fabric used to reflect the sun’s rays and keep the ice cool, are themselves treated in some frames as still life. The images become more about the futility of the idea, with the frayed fabric suffering from the environment that it is being used to protect. It speaks to the desperation and arrogance of man; that the impact of human behaviour could be restricted once the damage has been done.
In Sibusiso Bheka’s At Night They Walk With Me, the artist explores the evolving landscape of his home town of Johannesburg, viewed at night. He brings perceptions of the streets and neighbourhoods from his childhood into the work, revealing how areas take on a different feeling to the daytime, how the people behave towards each other etc. The idea of a landscape shaping and being shaped by people draws on the conventions of portraiture and documentary in the context of observation. The work invites the viewer to appreciate the sense of community after hours, while making it clear that the progressiveness of Joburg, and it’s continuing battles with poverty and crime, still has a long way to go. Some of these themes are also present in the other source texts, but I’ll be returning to this specifically in Part 2 of the exercise. In Stacey Tyrell’s Self-Portrait and the Colonial Gaze Padlet, the artist explores the preconceptions of her origins as seen through the eyes of a black girl growing up in a predominantly white region. She looks at how her ancestry and DNA comprises a significant mix of European and African ethnicities, but she was never comfortable or culturally expected to celebrate her non-black origin. Her self-portraits take their cues from traditional painted images of white icons, with her playing the white part using make-up. The questions it raised with me were around appropriation, hers in playing the part of another ethnicity (much like Nikki S Lee, who Tyrrel cites as an inspiration), but also by society. We associate world regions with races in a way that is rooted in history, or more importantly the documentation of history. Black people are associated with Africa and the Caribbean, and white people, Europe etc. Even though the modern world has a greater understanding of our mixed origins through DNA technology, these associations are almost as rigid as those for the portraiture genre itself.
In Chris Coekin’s Forwards and Backwards in Time, we see an exploration of identity from within a community, where there is an ideological bubble around its people, as well as an observer of where a community sits within the grander idea of British society. Coekin’s inspirations are artists who have taken an idea of how an area of society lives or is expected to behave, and both celebrates and challenges those stereotypes. I was particularly drawn to Case Histories by Boris Mikhailov, which explores the effects of the break up the USSR on the people of Ukraine. His images contrast the progression of capitalism and the idea of prosperity away from the Soviet regime, with the destitution, poverty and abuse of the disaffected. The photographer invites the viewer to see the people through their obviously desperate circumstances, even paying them to strip nude to make the point. His pictures don’t create a sense of poverty tourism however, but instead document the fact that they exist in a society that generally dismisses them. This work is even more poignant with the present day conflict in Ukraine, leaving the viewer wondering what might become of these people in the long term. In Coekin’s own work, he explores a variety of societal constructs, including the working class and the idea of free roaming in the UK. I’ll be looking at his work more closely in part two of this exercise.
In the final source text, Andy Hughes explores the human impact on the ocean environment with his series ‘Dominant Wave Theory’ about plastic pollution. The images are still-life, taking their cues from momento mori, defined as:
…a Latin phrase meaning ‘remember you must die’. A basic memento mori painting would be a portrait with a skull but other symbols commonly found are hour glasses or clocks, extinguished or guttering candles, fruit, and flowers.
(Tate, s.d.)
Closely linked to Vanitas, which was the sub-genre of still life painting that looked at in Assignment 2[2], the idea of remembering our mortality comes through in Hughes’ images, where the scale and position of the objects within the frame give the viewer nowhere else to look. With each image, the object is made to represent something different from what it actually is. An example can be seen below:
Sandwich, by Andy Hughes (2003), (dominantwavetheory, s.d.)
In this picture, a discarded sandwich wrapper rises from the floor like a mountain. Its appearance resembles the classical representation of mountains, in particular the iconic view of Mount Fuji in Japan. The use of shallow depth of field gives the sense that the object is being viewed from far away, which further enhances the illusion of the wrapper being transformed. The image utilises other visual codes that suggest that no good comes from this plastic object, namely the black backround from which it is revealed. The suggestion here is that at some point, there will be nothing else other than plastic in the natural world. The wet surface suggests it being impervious to the elements, which predicts the fact the object will not degrade quickly. All of these things serve to shock the viewer back into realising that it’s just a sandwich wrapper, but that it could mean so much more if the human disregard for waste continues. Like the Vanitas paintings of the 17th Century, the use of simple objects as powerful symbols convey much more than they do at first.
Conclusion
In conclusion, each of the source texts use a particular genre to describe something about mankind, either on a macro level (our impact on the environment and attitudes towards it) or on a micro level (specific cultural behaviours and histories). For me, they are all equally effective but I found the use of landscape and still-life most interesting. There is a clear overlap between landscape and documentary within Pantall’s Ways of Seeing, which I intend to explore further. I was also drawn towards Coekin’s combination of portraiture and documentary, which is an area I touched on in Assignment 3, but need to investigate in light of my feedback from that work.
Create a visual working map or diagram of the theme you are exploring. This is to help you visualise the shifting boundaries, the connections, the overlaps and historical territories. You will map how contemporary practitioners are expanding or shifting the boundaries and consider sub categories within genre classifications.
Introduction
Continuing with my broad theme of communication, the work carried out for this assignment is contained in the following Padlet:-
The work is supported first by Exercise 1- Select a Broad Theme [1], where I attempted to break down communication into sub-categories and identify the genres and practitioners whose work connects with my understanding. It’s further supported by Exercise 2 – Review your Broad Themes [2], where I selected Documentary and Portraiture as the two genres I believed the idea to spanned in terms of territory. Finally, I created a Padlet for my ‘experiments’, which are photographs I shot throughout Part 3 that helped me explore Communication as a theme which I plan to take into my Self-Directed Project later in the course. This Padlet can be found here:-
This assignment was a challenge for a number of reasons. The first was that my broad theme was precisely that. Communication and the ways in which it affects us, is a vast subject that is inextricably linked with our identities (real or created), our age group and familiarity with technology, as well as our willingness to engage with the world around us. I had feedback on my very first assignment in Expressing Your Vision that warned of the dangers of a theme for a series being too broad, which is something I’ve taken forward throughout my studies. The work in this assignment has helped my understanding of how my theme is/could be represented by one or more genres and how it relates to the work of practitioners who have worked across them. In addition, it has helped me identify the areas of the theme that interest me with regard to the later Self-Directed Project.
The biggest learning point here was that the boundaries between formal photographic genres are not rigid. With the exception of Documentary, the key genres have evolved from classical art which neatly categorised the visual and technical approaches so that we recognise them. This would be ok if the meaning of the image was solely driven by the genre of the work. For example, Alec Soth’s Sleeping By The Mississippi, all of the traditional genres are utilised to describe the region, its ecology and its people. Portraiture sits alongside Landscape and Still Life that lend context to identity. Some images use the codes of mise-en-scène, the constructed image, while others appear more natural. What Soth is trying to say with the series is something about the culture of the region and how it’s largely incongruous with the public image of the Unites States. The hardships and economic decline of the region forces the people to adapt, which in turn influences their identity. For me, Soth’s main aim is to narrate his observations as observer, with the genres as mere tools to achieve this.
“I believe that photography is essentially non-narrative. That, while it aches to tell stories, it doesn’t really tell stories that have a beginning, middle and end. This has constantly frustrated me about the medium, and I’ve been constantly battling it. What I’ve come up with, is that when I’m looking at a photographer’s work, I’m looking as much at that person’s experience as a photographer in the world, almost as if they are a first-person narrator, as I’m looking at the subjects of the photographs.”
(Alec Soth, Sleeping By The Mississippi, s.d.)
Thinking about how to recognise genre codes and manipulate them, led me experiment with shooting images related to my theme. I then analysed them to see how effectively they supported a narrative and also how they use multiple codes. I also incorporated an image from my family archive in one of the comparative analyses to identify how it crossed genre boundaries. I concluded that I had become more aware of the photographic codes available to me and how to blend them to represent the ideas I have about a topic.
The map that I created is the start of a further analysis of my theme, but still only scratches the surface. I used the Documentary and Portraiture source material as the basis of the work in this part and the resulting overlay of the theme does show the crossing of the boundaries of these genres. That isn’t to say that Still Life and Landscape don’t have a part in the map, more that they don’t appear to be as relevant at this stage. This may well change as the unit progresses.
With regard to taking my theme further, I have identified the following ideas that interest me:
What happens when we reject the real world information in favour of the cyber world? Is our obsession with technology creating a virtual reality where our aspirations are social media followers and our voices are from behind a keyboard? I could explore this either from a position of ‘Devil’s Advocate’ or from my own perspective of having computer technology until my teens.
How are people consciously rejecting the connected world? The narrative could be driven by fear, lack of understanding or simply protest.
Protesting the idea of the ‘Nanny State’. There has been a lot of recent discussion in politics about the ‘regulation’ of the country, which plays into my initial thoughts about the number of directional or mandating signage we encounter day-to-day. As with 1, it could be straight reportage (drawing people’s attention to it) or from my own perspective and experience.
At this stage, I am keen to pursue one of these smaller ideas as my Self-Directed Project.
Against the Learning Objectives
LO1: Compare the theoretical features, characteristics and histories of different photographic genres.
The exercises in Part 3 explore documentary, portraiture and how my theme spans them. I have included historical terms and definitions from that work into my glossary.
LO2: Deconstruct a given genres’ conventions and create visual material informed by that knowledge.
Retrospectively analysed an image from my family archive using Barrett’s CRIT process. Determined that there are mixed codes from the documentary and portraiture genres.
LO3: Produce new visual work informed by your research.
Created experimental work along the ideas of my broad theme and analysed them to verify that they contain the visual codes of the genres and compare their potential narratives with contrasting images shot the same way.
LO4: Analyse the wider global contexts surrounding contemporary image making.
Looked at Alec Soth’s Sleeping by the Mississippi as an example of a cross-genre contemporary series.
Richard Fletcher OCA Photography Blog 