Primary and secondary colours

18 photographs of the primary and secondary colours taken with exposures as the meter reading suggests then half a stop lighter and half a stop darker.

I wondered round a grubby working farm this afternoon and took the following.  When my friend heard I wanted to take photographs of the primary and secondary colours she was skeptical and told me it's a proper muddy farm so I might struggle.  I was pleased to hear this as rust and grime sounded quite appealing!

I took them all at f1.4, 50mm, and changed the shutter speed to achieve an average meter reading, then set the camera to bracket so it would automatically set itself to take two further shots, one darker, one brighter.  I have done very little in post production to maintain the true effect of exposure in camera - a tiny touch of the clarity slider and some sharpening in Lightroom.

The colours are richer or lighter depending on the exposure, so for instance the purple ones might be mauve, purple or lilac depending on exposure.  Red loses it's redness when there is too much light or becomes too blue if darker.

Diane Arbus - Patricia Bosworth

Patricia Bosworth's book about Diane Arbus is extremely well researched and hugely detailed.  Sometimes I did wonder how she could have known so very much.  The book is fascinating and I couldn't put it down.  In fact to begin with, and I say this reluctantly as I don't wish to diminish it in any way, but I was reminded of books I'd read as a teenager by Danielle Steel (although that soon passed as the detail deepened).  Of course, the fact that Diane Arbus' history is so evocative of the Great American Dream (a dream that so often turns it seems to nightmare), it fits how I would view the Great American Dream model, and if I remember correctly, a Danielle Steele novel almost perfectly (without any romantic happy endings, of course)

Arbus' immigrant grandparents came to New York and over the course of several decades made vast sums of money, starting as bookmakers and eventually ending up with a department store specialising in furs.  Her own father successfully expanded the business into a series of shops in various cities, before losing much of the family money towards the end of his life through hapless overextending, gambling and an ill advised investment.

Arbus did not attend college following school, where she was viewed as a talented painter, but instead against her parents' wishes married Allan Arbus, who had originally wanted to be an actor and whom she met at 14.  They both became photographers working in fashion together and had two children.  Through their photography they became relatively successful but in time Diane stopped working with Allan and began trying to create something more meaningful to her and her photography outside of the fashion world.  Allan and she eventually divorced but remained connected, as he moved towards acting and eventually to Hollywood with a new wife.  Diane found success as a 'serious' photographer but struggled to make money, unlike her friend and fellow photographer, Richard Avedon.  She also never found a way to deal with life long depressive states and likely made things worse for herself by failing to take care of herself, contacting hepatitis, and isolating herself more and more as her mental illness worsened.  There is talk of whether or not she may have been schizophrenic. 

At her funeral, 'at one point... Avedon whispered, "Oh, I wish I could be an artist like Diane!' And Frederick Eberstadt whispered back, 'Oh, no, you don't."' I have to say I agree with Frederick.  Her life sounded like hell.

This is not one of the academic books recommended by OCA however, it has invaluably placed many of the names I've been reading about in context such as Walker Evans, Richard Avedon, Lisette Model, Doreothea Lange, Brassai, Bruce Anderson, Lee Freidlander and Robert Frank.  I have also been introduced to August Sander and Marvin Isreal and given a little more information about a host of other people from that era including Alexey Brodovitch who ties in with Lillian Bassman and Paul Himmel, who's work I am so besotted with.  The 50s and 60s in American Photography in particular seems to have been a wonderfully interesting period.

One of the things that I found so compelling in the book was the Jewish immigrant history, the rags to riches and then riches to - well, not exactly rags, but financial lack of comfort.  My own father's family travelled a similar path although ended up in London.  There was little money following escape from Europe and loss of family, then a great deal of money (although not on the scale of the Russeks, Arbus' relatives, I'm sure), then none what-so-ever as it was all gambled away. 

"'Our upbringing was a cultural phenomenon,' a classmate of Diane's says.  'It would never have happened if our families hadn't made a great deal of money very quickly and hadn't known how to deal with it.  The kind of money our families had magnified their feelings of inadequacy, of personal failure.  We grew up in an emotional desert of shame - never affirmation - and those of us who were taught to be assimilated were filled with self-loathing'". 

The guilt, shame and discomfort that these characters lived with is something that resonates in a way that I don't quite understand fully as I certainly didn't grow up with oodles of money, quite the opposite in fact although we as a family had quite an extravagant lifestyle, and if I'm honest, a narcissistic sense of difference and superiority, and the final part of the quote I've used above seems to describe my late father accurately.

So, Diane Arbus' history and subsequent fatal depression was extraordinarily interesting to me as I read through the book.

What's important of course, though, for me here is her work.  The book has no photos which seems strange but Patricia Bosworth explains that the books is not authorised by the Arbus estate although she had enormous support from Diane Arbus' brother Howard Nemerov, 'an esteemed and distinguished poet in his own right'.  Reading about the work which has to be explained rather than shown has probably made the book richer and I have found that the history, both personal and more social, has informed my appreciation of the photographs when I've gone on to look at them.

The harrowing 'alienation, and disillusionment that had surfaced in the sixties and flowed into the seventies' is deeply compelling to witness in Diane Arbus' photographs.  As is widely discussed when reading about her work, the viewer is made to feel like a voyeur forced to confront what is usually hidden from us whether you're looking at one of the so called 'freaks' or more supposedly 'normal' subjects; a viewer is simultaneously repelled and compelled by their own reaction.  It is very difficult work to look at but at the same time extremely rich, detailed and full. 

I wonder if it will ever be possible for me to look at the photographs taken by Diane Arbus and see them without the family history, her depression and suicide, the religious and American heritage, and have any appreciation of them that is now not infused with all of that.  I doubt it and perhaps that's the point.  I feel somewhat reluctant to discuss her work in any great detail at this point and think I will need to study it more and with a better education behind me - other than to say it reverberates deeply and profoundly in ways that other photographer's work has not done.  I wonder if that is because she was female.  Or female and Jewish.  Or female, Jewish and emotionally and mentally unwell.  

I suspect that she, like her work is raw in the extreme, and that she somehow encapsulates and holds for the rest of us much of the deep sense of shame, wounding, horror, and repressed outrage that results from surviving what so many millions had not survived, not only during the second world war but throughout hundreds of years of pogroms, war and displacement.  I'm not only talking about Jewish people but about anyone who didn't and doesn't fit the status quo. She did not survive the rawness - it was too much for any one fragile person.  But her work survives and has much to tell us.

I look forward to learning more about Diane Arbus' and the images she made.

All quotations from Diane Arbus: A Biography By Patricia Bosworth, Open Road - Integrated Media, Published 1984, Kindle Edition 2012

Some thoughts for the colour assignment - FRAGMENTS

I have been wondering how to approach the next assignment - Colour.  As well as that I have picked up one of the recommended books in a bid to 'put right' my slight lack of commitment to reading, or rather the failure to make time to do it.  And thanks to Jayne Kemp, a fellow student on TAOP, I been looking at Alexey Brodovitch's Ballet, a figure who in turn led me to Lillian Bassman & Paul Himmel, who's work I am utterly bowled over by.

In addition I downloaded a biography about Diane Arbus and couldn't help but take a peek and became engrossed (the whys for another blog post), even though I have these other two books on the go (plus a rather difficult and upsetting book about high conflict divorce and the effect it has on children, which I think I have put to one side in favour of the photography books for now - perhaps I have enough of an idea of that for the time being and it's actually preventing me from moving on with this work).

So all these different influences are swirling round in my mind at the moment which will probably go on to inform whatever I end up doing for Colour.

And while I was coming home from a family event today I remembered the sets by Robert Wilson and Robert Lepage both of whose work I was very taken with years ago when studying acting and then working, and obviously taking an interest in theatre - the thing that sprung to mind was the bold colours (and shapes) sometimes used in their set design and overall work.

I am thinking about colour and how powerful it is in creating a sense memory or deeply visceral sensation/ response.  Red, white, blue pictures theses directors create with actors, lighting and set design.

And I think I was reminded of them after seeing the work by Jessa Fairbrother, recommended by my tutor.  When I went to see something by Robert Wilson shortly after my first son was born (can't believe I left such a young baby, one who refused a bottle, for several hours - I never did it again with him or any of the others at that age!!) there was a female character whose movement was stuccato and unpredicatable: there was a very clear lack of fluidity and it reminded me of my baby son's early movements - the brain and muscles were not yet working together and so an arm or a leg would flail about randomly and unexpectedly.  So, Jessa Fairbrother's work, The Rehearsal (dedicated to Augustine) is a series of photos presented in a sequence and almost like a stop frame film but with very big jumps between each image rather than the tiny ones you'd normally expect.  This is what bought the character's movement described above to mind I think.  Fragmented movements.

The word that has been floating round my head for days is FRAGMENTED.

Like many people I suspect, my own childhood memories are rather fragmented.  I have images in my head - a room that feels very orange with soft afternoon light and curtains and a window, or crying whilst wearing a blue long sleeved t-shirt - a memory that is cemented by a photograph of me crying in that very shirt, or the red blood on a black skinned man being beaten and pushed into a van in Cape-Town by a policeman.  These are just a few examples of memories from my very early childhood that contain colours in the imagery as well as the words representing colour in the narrative I have in my mind.

The memories are powerful but I can't tell you very much beyond the little scenes that exists in my head, such as what happened before or afterwards.

The reason I think I mentioned the book above that I have put aside for now is that it goes into much detail about how the development of children who are exposed to warring parents or any form of traumatic experience can and often does lead to fragmentation.  The adults who seemingly can't help themselves from putting their children through this experience are often fragmented individuals who have failed to individuate fully and reacting in the present to traumatic events from their own childhoods.  Events that may have caused some fragmentation which is either never fully resolved or deepens under the pressure of a marriage breakdown.

Fragments of self, fragments of memory, fragments of truth, fragmented movements, fragmented communication, fragmented others

I really want to explore some of the memories, memories that contain colour, memories that are fragments from the past that stay with me always, that I describe with words that represent colour - colours that evoke some sensation, and sometimes quite powerful ones.

I understand that colour can be very evocative either because of the sensation it might trigger or because of cultural symbolism - so for instance blue has classically been seen (due in part to the expense of Lapus Lazuli I think) as powerful, regal, godlike.  And I want to try and find ways to explore using colour to communicate something connected to powerful but fragmented childhood memories that have the potential to transport a viewer (audience?)

Am I being too ambitious now - probably??  The feedback I received was that my last assignment had been ambitious even though I didn't necessarily pull it off in every instance - which I agreed with wholeheartedly. However, I am excited by this ambition - now the desire to express something feels not only possible but desirable having just sat, not entirely inanimately as I certainly absorbed a great deal but probably in quite a blocked way, for so long.

I don't know whether to follow in the style of slow shutter speed or not but looking at Lillian Bassman's work gives me tremendous encouragement and inspiration to do so.  I don't want to simply repeat myself without moving forward but fear I may do so.  I have fragments of ideas but to be honest am not really sure at all about what the final product will be - I like that though.  I'm not sure I like the idea of pinning something down to such an extent that there is no room for surprise and invention.  I struggled to learn this concept at drama school - always starting with an effective but ultimately doomed idea in my head that was too stifled to grow and exhilarate which was a shame for me then,  because had I been able to trust myself and let go I might have enjoyed it all a bit more.
So that's where I am at the moment.

I think the thing to do is get the exercises done over the next two weeks or so if I can before I take the boys camping.  Then get all my colours together for the assignment - whatever those colours will be, cloth, make up, props or rooms - perhaps some coloured gels unless I just use Lightroom for that.  I certainly need to sit down with the colour wheel, the assignment requirements and some coloured pencils and do some experimenting, drawing perhaps, colouring in.  I remember reading that Lepage in a rehearsal will start by getting everyone to draw and write things down on a giant piece of paper - an exercise that potentially unlocks ideas and memories and invention from which the company will then draw upon to begin devising.  I might try to do something similar on a smaller scale for this using the colour wheel and pencils - we'll see.

I am aware that much of this reflective post might seem unconnected and perhaps a peculiar swirl of disparate ideas and references but I think it has been helpful to put my thoughts down, and it will hopefully lead to something more tangible with which to work.

Assignment 2 Feedback

I was a little nervous about receiving feedback from my tutor after submitting the assignment.  So much so actually, that I somehow managed to forget to tell him the assignment was ready for feedback on my blog.  Anyway, we got there in the end and he kindly came back relatively fast especially considering his own limited time, for which I was grateful.

I have tried to upload the whole document here as a PDF but that is tricky in Blogger and I can't work out how to do it.  Will keep trying (and perhaps do the same for Assignment 1) but in the meantime here are some extracts: although having completed this, I like how I can put in my thoughts so maybe this is for the best anyway:

Feedback - assignment 

"Overall, this is bold, thoughtful, ambitious, striking, expressive and fascinating work; more so when viewed in the context of it being only your second assignment of your first module with the OCA. At this point, while students are often still making the adjustment from shooting purely for themselves/ pleasure, it’s unsurprising that many people take a fairly cautious approach to their assignments, producing work that’s less about being bold and taking chances than playing it safe. That you’ve clearly thought about how you can take the assignment criteria and do something that’s ambitious, creative and rather lyrical with it is extremely encouraging. This is an enormously intriguing assignment, from the text that outlines your thoughts and ideas processes, to your final execution of the photography. It doesn’t always come together, but at this point that’s less important than taking chances and having the imagination to even attempt to produce work like this in the first place."

I was very pleased to read the above and felt that the risk I had taken was recognised.  I agreed that in some instances I didn't quite reach what I was hoping for, mainly due to my lack of perseverance and worry about time - which in retrospect was silly.  In future I will endeavour to be sure of all the images I include and not allow a couple to slip under that don't quite do it for me.  I am glad to find out that I can replace the two images I wasn't happy with before being assessed and plan to do so.

Learning Logs/Critical Essays

"The way you’re thinking and writing about your experiences is really engaging and enormously promising. The overview you give of the assignment was extremely readable, and a great accompaniment to the images- there’s a seriousness and determination that is apparent throughout, and everything is always thoughtful, eloquent and extremely readable. More please…

On a techy note, I very much appreciated how you presented the photographs in a full-screen slideshow; it really presented them in a lovely light. In the long run, an awareness of how people view your photographs is something that is incredibly important."

I love writing and have lots to say so I am very encouraged by this.  I have also been noticing how people present their work and am interested in learning new ways to do so myself.

Suggested reading/viewing

"‘I have not read enough’- very honest! It’s hugely encouraging, gratifying and exciting to see someone who’s so committed and willing to take chances and not feel the need to tread well worn paths. Harnessing this adventurous spirit by getting a more pointed sense of what’s out there is certainly something that will give an added sense of purpose to your work- but having said this, your accompanying notes very clearly give a sense of someone who is taking note of what’s out there, and absorbing all manner of things. You’re clearly keen to explore and try new things, and I get the impression that you know anyway that ‘consuming’ more photography and writing about photography will feed your own ideas processes. So keep going…

More specifically, your work in this assignment immediately called to mine a series by Jessa Fairbrother, whose series The Rehearsal (dedicated to Augustine) attracted a fair bit of attention. There’s a similar stylistic approach in terms of the way the work is set up, but also quite a few differences that go beyond one project being in colour and the other in b/w. Yours appears to be rather more concerned with, dare I say, existential matters than Jessa’s… but also keep in mind that work like this that doesn’t loudly flag up what it’s intended to be ‘about’ lends itself to a much more diverse and ‘open’ set of readings by the viewer. This is a moot point in all forms of creativity, not just photography, and scholars in the field of Cultural Studies have been interested in the way audiences have a ‘creative role’ in the production of meaning and interpreting art and culture for quite a long time. Stuart Hall and Roland Barthes are a couple of key figures if you fancy some not-so-light reading around this! Jessa’s other work is also well worth a look."

I do of course aim to read more and I am certainly looking at photographic work a lot as well as other mediums.  My problem with reading the prescribed books is that I am too easily drawn to psychology and social anthropology books which does inform the work I do, but I am aware I need to make sure I don't miss out on important photography commentary too.  I have nearly finished one of the books which was recommended so I don't feel too bad now but this is something I must keep an eye on.  Saying that the writers that have been recommended of course appeal to me (and my slight sense of grandiosity?) because they are looking at all creative arts and theatre has been an interest of mine since I was very young.  I am extremely interested in work that isn't prescriptive.

I have looked at Jessa Fairbrother and was thrilled by her work.  I am inspired and I look forward to seeing more.  I was also grateful to a fellow student who recommend Alexey Brodovitch after seeing my assignment work.  The peer review Facebook group that has been set up has been great for getting to know some of the other people studying, even if only online. 

Pointers for the next assignment 

We’ve already touched on this in email correspondence, so all I want to add is that you should just keep going: the work you’ve submitted so far, as well as what you’ve uploaded to your blog, gives an extremely clear sense of someone who is pushing, searching, and hopefully finding what it is they are looking for. There’s quite a wide array of styles, which rather than suggesting uncertainty and inconsistency, points to someone determined to find an appropriate vehicle to work with… even if this doesn’t necessarily settle into a permanent and easily identifiable visual ‘style’. The notes that you include, highlighting ‘keening, death, love, sex, innocence, isolation and aging’ were very welcome, and indicative of someone who’s very ambitious and wants to use photography to communicate some things that are not easily communicated. What’s also encouraging is that I had quite a big sense of these themes being part of the work before I read your notes, so things are definitely moving in the right direction, and I’m pretty confident that if you can maintain your enthusiasm and obvious work ethic- and put right your sense that you’ve ‘not read enough’!- you’ll continue to get closer to wherever it is you want your work and your studies to take you. Please feel free to drop me an email if you want to discuss your plans for A3.

I have been thinking about A3 quite a lot now and was a bit unsure about how to proceed.  Having looked at Jessa Fairbrother's work though I am beginning to relax a little about it.  I've been uncertain about continuing to use myself in the the work I do here.  However, I was once an actor and the idea of using photography to create my own little productions is quite appealing.  I never felt I was able to express what I wanted to when acting - in large part I'm sure because I was quite messed up and unsure about who I was at the time rather than because of any failing in the people I was working with, or the scripts I was working on, or acting not being the right medium.  But now I have an increasingly clear idea of what it is that is I am eager to express and I think having the tools to do it, i.e a camera might be liberating in the end.  So, for now I am not going to worry too much about being my own little producer-megalomaniac - although not much of a one since I'm potentially only bossing myself around.

As far as an easily identifiable style goes, I do feel slightly ambivalent about closing down and honing in just yet. (One of the things I took away with me from the Richard Hamilton show was how versatile and wide ranging his work was and I liked that a lot).  However, I do also appreciate that finding one's own language is an extremely worthwhile aim.

 

 

 

Presumed Innocence - Reflection

(Having written this blog I realise it is more a reflection about the book and how it relates to my work rather than some sort of review.  I guess I have yet to write that up now and will file this blog under reflection rather than Photographers and their Work, although should probably provide a link once I've completed the blog about the actual work in the book.)

I recently bought a book called Presumed Innocence, which accompanied an exhibition of the same name, curated by Rachel Rosenfield Lafo at the Decordoca Museum and Sculpture Park, Lincoln, Massachusetts, from February 2 to April 27, 2008. 

If I were interested in coincidences and synchronicity it would be hard to avoid attaching some importance to the fact that these dates are so familiar.  My oldest son’s birthday is the 27^th April and my middle son was born in February 2008 although on the 1^st and not the 2^nd.  Oh, yes! I am fascinated by such co-incidences: I do, however, take comfort, as it would just be too weird, and simultaneously feel slight disappointment that the birthdate of my second son misses out on a perfect match with the exhibition dates by 24 hours.

I ordered this book because my tutor suggested it to me.  It is the most I’ve ever spent on a single book but thanks to a site called Bookfinder.com I think and hope I located a decently priced copy.  Due to the combination of intense enthusiasm that I feel towards my photography, together with a long held fascination and deep sense of yearning to know and learn about childhood, I felt that the relative expense was warranted.  So when the book arrived (it took a long time) I was immensely pleased to read one of the opening passages written by Anne Higonnet, titled, ‘the history, crisis, and recovery of ideal childhood.’

The passage is an adapted version of the introduction to Higonnet’s book, Pictures of Innocence: The History and Crisis of Ideal Childhood, and I feel compelled to buy that book too now.  It would without a doubt fit well into my growing collection of books about children, childhood and its place in our society and other cultures, and about our understanding of childhood and how it has evolved and is evolving over time.  Books titled “What are Children For?”, Our Babies Ourselves, Children’s Games in Streets and Playgrounds and The Invention of Childhood along with Mothers and Others, Paranoid Parenting and simply The Anthropology of Child Development all sit proudly amongst other similar titles on my shelves so Presumed Innocence is a welcome addition.  I hope I am not merely demonstrating here that I can indeed read but am instead finding a connection that I hadn’t really made with photography, not consciously anyway, before picking up Presumed Innocence.

Very soon after I gave birth to my first son I was struck by a profound sense of purpose suddenly and for the first time in my life.  This is not unusual as many mothers and probably fathers, although by no means all, feel equally ‘justified’ when they become parents.  What is unusual about me is that my own mother moved away from us when I was 11 and for the first time when I became a mother myself, I started perhaps only semi-consciously at first to question why and how that might have happened.  Although other people often said it was unusual, for me it had been the norm but once I had my own child I began to see beyond the experience I had had up to then.

That I suppose is what has informed my reading and deep desire to understand children, maternal instincts and parenting styles or lack of in the world.  From there I have wanted to know why we treat children the way we do, very differently in some customs across cultures and but also with a universality in other ways, even across different species’.  I have also become very interested in how children develop and the travails they must travel through to reach adulthood intact or not as the case may be.

Young mammalian children are adapted to be cute and endearing in order to ensure they survive, so the theory goes, so ideally babies and young children are less likely to be abandoned by carers [1]. In addition throughout history children have been crucial to the survival of families as they worked from a young age and contributed to the economy of families and communities in which they lived [2].  According to Anne Higonnet in her introduction to Presumed Innocence and also Hugh Cunningham in The Invention of Childhood [3] something about they way we in the West perceive children changed somewhere around the 17^th century and a Romantic ideal about how children ought to be evolved[4].  At the same time children were being devalued, so that by the Victorian era were being sent down coalmines and up chimneys or thrown in poor houses whilst simultaneously a perfect notion of the ideal childhood reached its zenith, although it is probable in reality a mere handful of only the most fortunate benefitted from anything that resembled the nostalgic, sun kissed, curly haired, fair skinned, country dwelling image that persists today.  Now we are left, and crucially children are left without a clear sense of purpose [5].  Often the cuteness and attractiveness of children fails to protect them from violent and distressing treatment in a deeply anti-adaptive way.  Sometimes the theory fails and children are not cute or adorable enough or at all but instead seen as demons or simply surplus to requirements.  I wonder what emerges if you begin to look at images of children within this context.

The introductory passages in Presumed Innocence point out that the romantic ideal is beginning to change, at any rate within the world of art, and Sally Mann in particular is mentioned as one of the first to challenge and question the historical ideal with her work in Immediate Family [6] 

However, the amount of soft focused, golden photographs of young children looking innocent and precious in a field of flowers for example, perhaps with a nostalgic filter and a fake sunburst edited in during post processing being sold is pretty high and there is much demand for this sort of style of photography.  If not, then babies wrapped in fluff, coiled up in baskets or dangling in a tiny hammock and photographed in the style of high-end advertising may do.

As someone who has begun to earn a bit of money taking photographs of children and families I am acutely aware of the styles and trends that I must compete with and to be honest am always faintly surprised when people are complimentary about my own work as I don’t use filters and actions (other than skin smoothing and then only mostly with adult women who are concerned about their lines), am learning all the time so feel I make many mistakes, try hard to achieve something vaguely authentic and real and can’t possibly achieve the sun kissed, modern Mcdonalds advertising look because I don’t know how, don’t want to and don’t see children in that vein anyway.  I also wonder why we Western humans need to market our children in this way to ourselves in any case – what is happening to the adaptive behavior we evolved with to ensure the survival of our offspring?  When and why we did begin marketing our kids to ourselves and is this linked to the romantic ideal that emerged in the 17th century?

When I first started getting into the idea of commercial photography I was adamant I wouldn’t try to enter the family portrait market as it seemed saturated and I didn’t think it was my thing at all.  Nevertheless, I tried it out because I had nothing better to do and the actors I’d started with weren’t exactly banging my door down, and now it seems that families is the way my work is going and I can’t help noticing the connection between my reading interests and my unintended study of children through photography.  I guess I would be vaguely lacking in awareness if I did not begin to see how I have, with little conscious effort, found myself trying to capture images of childhood, parenting, and families other than mine in some sort of attempt to make sense of my own beginnings.

So all in all, I think this book of images of children is very important for me in one way or another.  It offers me a variety of styles to try and emulate, challenges the status quo, provides me with a history and context in which children have been photographed and is probably a book that I should and will look at again and again and again.  The dates of the exhibition, even if one were not intrigued by coincidences, are striking but not nearly as startling, engaging and compelling as the photographs (about which I have not written here at all! But will do, or have done depending on when you're reading this!).

---

[1] Mother Nature: Maternal Instincts and the Shaping of the Species, Sarah Hrdy Blaffer, 2000 Vintage, Random House (First published 1999)

[2] What are Children For? Laurie Taylor & Matthew Taylor, Short Books, 2003

[3] The Invention of Childhood, Hugh Cunningham (& Michael Morpugo), BBC Books, 2006

[4] Presumed Innocence, Photographic Perspectives of Children, page 15, Decordoca Museum and Sculpture Park, 2008

[5] What are Children For? Laurie Taylor & Matthew Taylor, Short Books, 2003

[6] Immediate Family, Sally Mann, Apeture, 1992

Chris Killip

I recently went to the Tate Britain to meet a friend and take the children to see Phillyda Barlow’s gigantic strange and interesting sculptures in the Duveen Galleries.  They enjoyed the sculpture but the most interesting gallery for me was the one where Chris Killip’s photographs are exhibited.

Sadly by the time we came across that gallery the boys had had enough so I had to whizz though the photos and I am left with vague impressions so aim to return soon.  However, I bought a book on the way out expecting it to be a record of the images in the gallery.  The book was actually about Chris Killip’s time with a group of people who were mining for sea coal in a village called Lynemouth near Newcastle-upon-Tyne and published in 2011, connected to an exhibition in the Museum fur Photographie Braunschweig and GwinZegal, Centre d’Art et de Recherche[1] in Germany during that year. 

Seacoal records a community that was closed to outsiders and immensely guarded but because Chris Killip had had a chance encounter with one the group elsewhere he was eventually (after a few years of trying and failing) invited in.  He spent several years photographing the community as their lifestyle and source of income came to an end. 

The photographs are black and white and taken on a plate camera, which he seems to have set up in the most incredible places, right on the edge of the sea at times where some photographs have captured horse and carts being driven into the sea by the miners to collect coal.  The work looks terrifying and dangerous.  His use of the plate camera at times seems fraught with potential catastrophe especially as he describes the men charging him before they've given permission to be photographed.[2]

What is so compelling is Killip’s ability to capture grittiness and genuine toughness, as well as an immense sense of warmth.  You are left with a clear appreciation about how very hard these people worked and how different their lives were to one’s own, how arduous some aspects of their lives must have been but also of how closely knit they were, their joy, self-reliance, sense of community and pride.  Killip doesn’t look at them from any position of superiority but instead with a great deal of respect and admiration.  He seems to be showing us something exceptionally important that we may have lost or even never had.

I am struck by the notion of a photographer placing himself in a community, not because he is being paid by some magazine, but through his own volition, and going to quite some trouble in order to do so, over a period of several years to record and capture people’s lives. 

The sea coalmines are no more and there is now only a caravan park for Travellers in its place.  The book is a record of a way of life that existed for many decades, even centuries and captures it just before its final end, during a time when industry in England was being transformed, eroded and in many places shut down altogether.

Chris Killip was born in 1946 on the Isle of Man.  He left for London where he worked for advertising photographer, Adrian Flowers, until he was able to stop commercial work and take the sort of photographs he wanted to. He has been exhibited frequently and all over the world.  His work is currently on display at Tate Britain, London.

His book, “In Flagrante was reproduced in February 2009 within one of Errata Editions' "Books on Books". In a review of this reproduction, Robert Ayers describes the original as "one of the greatest photography books ever published"[3]

Background information about Chris Killip obtained from:

·      Seacoal, Chris Killip, Published 2011, Steidl GwinZegal

·      http://www.chriskillip.com/

·   Wikipedia

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[1] Seacoal, Chris Killip, 2011, Steidl GwinZegal

[2] Introduction, Seacoal, Chris Killip, 2011, Steidl GwinZegal

[3] Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Killip

Control the strength of colour

Blogger insisted on adjusting the exposures when I uploaded these pictures and so each photograph looked exactly the same for some reason.  Blogger has done this before but rectified itself when I re-uploaded the images but this time it stuck to its incorrect guns.  I have therefore provided a link to my site where the colours and exposures will be preserved as they are for certain.

Take 5 photographs: Find the average meter reading and then start at one stop brighter than the original then stop down by half each time.  Apart from the fact that the five photographs vary from over-exposure to under exposure what difference is there in terms of the colour?

As well as the different exposures what I have noticed is the tone of the colour.  The overexposed photograph looks much pinker, almost peach, and the darkest one loses its luminosity.  I prefer the darker two at the beginning of the sequence as they seem much richer and the red is more robust.

Once thing that puzzled me with this exercise (and perhaps I'm going to look like a twit here) but my camera, like most, goes up incrementally in thirds rather than halves (I'm pretty sure).  I could not for the life of me find a way to change it in the camera to halves although I know you can in the light meter I own and carry around and rarely use. Also, when I looked in the course folder at the example given they were thirds with two missing from the sequence - f.5 and f7.1.  So I was a bit confused by this.  I have re-looked at f stop values online and wonder if I'm missing something. 

Please click here to see five exposures of the same coloured subject 
Please click on the small i underneath each image for settings information