Saturday 25 January 2014

Meeting my tutor, Sally Mann and projections







Having published this blog, I have just noticed that the heading is somewhat misleading.  Sally Mann is not my tutor.  Andrew Conroy is.  Sally Mann is a topic in the blog.  So... I am at the end of week three following my enrolment with the OCA and finally I am beginning to gather pictures together for the early exercises, as well as learning the importance of grammar and precision in my writing.

I also met my tutor, Andrew Conroy - not Sally Mann, via Skype (which was a bit weird) but useful as now I have a deadline for my first assignment, which is in February.  Yikes!!

I mentioned to Andrew that I had been doing a few family portrait shoots and he asked me if I knew Sally Mann’s work and in particular Immediate Family.

After our call I remembered that I had seen something about her in a *documentary I own about photography a little while back, and recall liking her photographs.  I looked at her website and today watched most of a film about her work, What Remains (2005).

The documented controversy about Immediate Family is hardly surprising but not solely, I think, because the children are naked in many of the shots, although that is what was focused on at the time and in the film.  The nakedness is merely an expression of a mentality that has always been challenging to the status quo. 

The progressive lifestyle that the photographs depict is extremely evocative and not very comfortable for some, I think.  There is a feral quality to the children in the photos and the nakedness is nothing compared to the free, expressive, sophisticated looks in their eyes, evident on their faces and in the physicality of their bodies.  Children are usually expected to conform, behave, agree with the adults and generally not get in the way,  although they tend to do none of those things in my experience; the adult world does not on the whole like to think that children should be encouraged and allowed to be so unconstrained.

There is a very clear rejection, I think, of that type of mentality where these children are concerned; and the photographs sort of shove that rejection in the viewers face.  These children are free and utterly at home in their humanist existence; they are also absolutely happy to stare out at the world and say, look at us – we’re not as many of you think we ought to be. And we like it that way!  And perhaps even; what are you going to do about it?

I’m not saying the nakedness isn’t challenging for some.  But I am saying that the nakedness is just part of something more fundamental.  It is the evident ethos in the overall work that is so uncomfortable for people.  Perhaps I’m stating the obvious here!

And I hope I’m not being judgmental as I find her work fascinating; it's certainly extremely powerful.  (I am probably extremely envious of the carefree, avant-garde, unconventional choices Sally Mann and her husband were able to make about their family.But choice is a crucial element here because it is the result of rather a privileged existence.  Not necessarily financially privileged, although that comes into it.  But for poor children free, open, expressive living is not deemed suitable.  Middle class, arty people ‘get away’ with it.

If obviously poor children are seen naked and filthy jumping in and of lakes I am certain that we viewers might have had a subtly different reaction.  The indignant would still have been indignant but very possibly with a different outcome.  I know Sally Mann was told she might be arrested for exposing her children’s nakedness to the world.  Had she been a different sort of person and not the photographer she would, I believe, certainly have been arrested – perhaps that’s just my perception though.

How does Sally Mann’s work affect me?  I am taking photos of my family and for money of other people’s families.  Yes, I want my photos to be distinctive and at the moment I don’t believe they are generally, although I do try to record something authentic and genuine in amongst the traditional expected shots.  However, as things stand, the photos that are chosen by clients are generally the safest, most traditional ones.  For me the challenge is to produce work for that part of my life that is resonant and mine, but also 'sellable'.  Perhaps this may be a source of conflict in my development but I think conflicting tension is a good thing for creativity.

I had to stop watching the documentary just as Sally Mann was entering a forensic study where dead bodies were decomposing in the open.  I am intrigued and perhaps even preferred what I had seen already of related work to the family photos, so I look forward to finding out more very soon.

Some photography of my own too…

I took the above photograph at Battersea Park.  I’ve placed it upside down.  I’ve done this with a few photographs of mine and think I will continue to.  I’m certain it’s been done a million times before but I know far too little about art and artists so would be very interested to find out more.  Perhaps it’s a clichéd and hackneyed thing to do??

Nevertheless, I am fascinated by how we project – and we all do – parts of ourselves, or in severe cases, much of ourselves on to other people and the world around us. 

I am struck by how it is possible to exist within a projected reality as if were indeed actuality.  For some it then becomes the reality.  

I would like to explore this more.  

*Documentary: The Genius of Photography:  How photography has changed our lives.  BBC DVD




Saturday 18 January 2014

Do I know why I have started this course?



My children 


  
Blog No. 2
It has a been a week since my first blog and I have been thinking a great deal about what I hope to get out of this course, prompted I’m sure, by a growing sense of panic about HOW and a WHY?

Not only is the time management aspect more than a bit of a worry but I have briefly looked at other learning blogs and also begun to read the text that arrived with my OCA folder and dipped into one of the reading list books about composition.

I'm no Shirley Valentine but it's nevertheless daunting to read blogs that come across as scarily academic, and to read examples of assignments, that at this point in time are almost meaningless to me.  And as I read about Diane Arbus' "Identical Twins" and “A Family on the their Lawn one Sunday in Westchester”, in particular, I can't help but feel overwhelmed, intimidated and extremely lacking.  

As I write, however, I am becoming conscious of my life-long habit, one which I believe has held me back or at least prevented me from taking risks in the past, of allowing my Walter Mittyish fantasies to somehow dominate and stifle any growth and exploration.  In other words I can only do what I can do, and develop in my own time at my own pace – but the pressure to live up to grandiose and nonsensical internal fantasies (ludicrous expectations) makes that all but impossible.

I must remind myself I'm certainly used to reading, and have enjoyed, relatively academic texts about subjects other than photography during the last few years so even though a part of me feels woefully uneducated, and unprepared for this course, I am utterly capable if I allow myself to be who I am at and in the moment. 

As far as WHY goes I recall that I have often stood with people in galleries staring at prints, perhaps in a collection nominated for an award, or curated in world famous galleries, and wondered what on earth I was missing.  “That's fantastic”, a companion might have said in awe and I have more than occasionally thought, “really????” – what is it about that that is so fantastic, and why can’t see it?”  I’d like to have at least an informed inkling, and be able to agree or disagree based on a semblance of knowledge rather than feel simply out of my depth.  

(That's not to say that I can't and haven't appreciated work in my undereducated state.  I'm fairly bright and creative, and can and do respond instinctively to images.  And despite the exhaustion most parents of young children experience, I am certain I still possess some level of cognitive activity!)

But that’s not the main reason – being able to feel ‘clever’ in a gallery isn’t really a reason (or is it?)   Why HAVE I taken on this task, given myself an achievable but possibly punitive goal when I already have an extraordinary amount on my overburdened plate?

I want to take better pictures. 

Surely this would happen anyway with experience (as advised by the tutor of the extremely helpful but comparatively shallow – and I don’t mean that pejoratively - PI course I took last year).  Instead of spending my precious and limited time reading about photography and its history, contextual relationships, science background and theory of composition, light and the rest of it, shouldn’t I be sitting on my business Facebook Page, which I routinely ignore, and promoting myself?  Because I have this last year believed that the overriding motivation which has led me to take risks that I would never have taken in the past has been about making a living: about saying to the world and my ex-husband in particular, “I can look after myself and my three children and I can do it well!!!” 

My economic well being is certainly a consideration and having a job that might fit in with my desire to be an available mother is another.  To feel less undereducated too.  But clearly there is something other than that at work here.  Otherwise I would be on that dreaded Facebook page offering competitions and other hooks to draw potential clients in rather than sitting here writing this blog and planning to read a few more pages of Graham Clark’s, The Photograph afterwards.  Or, rewinding a few months, I would have attempted to go back to work in the City with a guaranteed salary when my life changed so dramatically and I rudely discovered I needed to reach a point where I might earn some money for the first time in 10 years.

The truth is I don’t actually know why I’m doing this course.  It seems a good thing for me to do, despite the fears.  All of the above is driving me, of course, but mostly I’m very pleased to be doing it (although truth be told I've not really done anything yet - except read).  And maybe that’s enough to know for now.  To know that I am pleased. (And a little bit scared!)

Saturday 11 January 2014

About me

My notebook

Introduction  - Beginning the Art of Photography course.

For a long time I have imagined what it might be like to have a blog but never really felt I had anything worth saying, or rather nothing coherent.  But I think I always secretly hoped there would be something worth saying one day.  Now I must have a blog for this course and I will need to say something.  Coherent or otherwise.

I have a bought a notebook to keep a record of my thoughts and paste images I find interesting for one reason or another in.  Some of those thoughts may end up here.

I have also written a profile for the student site but worry it may be too personal.  I hope not.  It says who I am at the moment and who I am informs what I take photos of and what thoughts I have in relation to everything.  So, when I begin to think about the first assignment on contrasts I have briefly read about and consider things to photograph the opposing images that leap to the forefront of my mind are related to my recent experience.  I am likely quite obsessed by these very powerful contrasts at the moment so it is hardly surprising.

What doesn't surprise me is that I currently have no idea how I will be able to structure this blog so it is easy for others to follow. I look at the blogger screen and see nothing that points me in the right direction.  I hope I will work it out soon.   Otherwise coherence might be something I lose sight of quite quickly - and we could all be left with a chaotic group of maniacal, rambling and possibly unrelated posts. 

As I mention I have begun to read the course document.  And that is where I must head off to now.  I need to write down in my notebook a list of exercises and tasks to achieve in the next few weeks.  Lists, order, headings and sub headings.  Lets all hope I can achieve something of that at least.