Final re-edit Assignment 5 and printing

I have had an expensive lesson about printing a Blurb book.  I received the book I ordered back this week and hated what I'd done to the images.  I'd lifted the blacks too far so they had lost their atmosphere.  And in addition the font was too big so it looked more suited to a children's book and I didn't like the some of the captions or the introduction.  So I've redone it and hope it will be better when I receive it back.  I do not want to submit something I am not happy with for assessment and would prefer to simply have prints done rather than do a book I think is rubbish.

I am also perturbed about my decision to do colour now but I am sticking with it.  I think the set is more suited to colour and I like some of the rich colours which, as I said in my original accompanying notes, give more life to the images than black and white do.  However, it is much harder to manage colour than it is black & white and I think some of the white balance is not quite as it should be despite my efforts.  I hope the printed book comes back better now the images have been reedited.

Assignment 5 Context & Narrative

Link to images

Please note that the link above is a second submission following feedback from Andrew Conroy. The first submission can be seen here.  You will note that some of the things I mention below describe how I felt about the first set of images I submitted.

(These sets of images are password protected.)

I wanted to do something for A5 that continued the story I think I have been trying to tell since starting this course.  The previous assignments ended up being very much about coming to terms with a new paradigm, as well as some introspection; trying to figure out how I tick, why and what led me to this point in my life.  I knew I wanted to turn outwards at this juncture, having done quite a lot of self portraiture. Not only because it felt somewhat narcissistic but also because I felt it was the right time to stop looking inwards quite so much.

One of my ideas was to extend something I was doing already, photographing my local area. Although I did not do this for the course the result is a set of images that I printed and exhibited in a local cafe, and have sold several prints. You can view these here and there is some research here. They are images mostly of walls but not all.

The other thing I was really interested in was prisons.  But I learnt that since I was not in any way established with a body of work behind me, I wouldn't have a cat's chance in hell getting in to any prisons.  I have very recently come across Amy Elkins' work where she got round the problem of not being able to enter a prison by writing to prisoners on death row and working collaboratively with them that way.  The results of several years' work can be seen here.

I am also in retrospect interested in the symbolism of 'prison' walls and what it was about that made me consider this as a possibility.

After chatting with Andrew Conroy and dismissing some ideas, I eventually settled on documenting a family, which is an idea I've had for a while, and since I already sometimes take family portraits it felt like a good focus. However, this didn't seem to lead on neatly from the work I'd done already for TAOP, so in the end I decided to use my own family which felt like a natural and sensible progression.

I chose a regular holiday in Italy at my mother's house.  Apart from the practical reasons I thought that photographing from a place that is very much about my mother would be a useful exercise.

In A4 I looked at object identification from the point of view of a developing infant.  The first object being the mother (actually her breasts and then her).  It takes some time for the infant to recognise the self as a different object to the mother and how this process unfolds informs further object recognition.

So, by looking at my mother's space and at the people in my mother's space I think I was perhaps going back to that place - a place where mother and baby are not quite separate -  in order to try and reframe the process of separation, somehow taking control it it myself.  Marriane Hirsh certainly discusses how photographers use their work to rewrite their internal narratives in Family Frames.

But such work can also be used to explore and discover and I think I have tried to do that here.  I look at these photographs and see a fragile mother who washes and cleans and looks after my children for me.  She is involved in the family and she is sad when we leave, although exhausted as I do so little whilst I am there, leaving all the the 'mothering' to her.

I have made sure all the images are inside the house.  I have deliberately kept inside my mother's house as these images are about me looking and seeing from some part within her.  Is it about trying to identify with her, to try and understand some of our history.  I very consciously chose to do this - keeping inside always and editing to ensure everything was seen from within her thick Italian stone walls, built to withstand earthquakes.

At this point I think about my initial ideas - scenes from my local area which ended up as a series of images that are mostly of walls and one in particular of a window with the word Mum placed across it, and then the other idea - prison.  And it's difficult for me not to make connections and links.  The images I use are inside my mother's house - not outside.   I wonder if I have been exploring my way of seeing, which is somehow 'imprisoned' inside the metaphorical walls built with the history I have with my mother, impacting on my life in a profound way.  Somehow I am trapped inside these 'internal and maternal prison walls' and there is a desire in me to understand, record and explore that, and certainly to break out of that. (Perhaps this contradicts an earlier post about the other work - I don't see why both interpretations aren't valid however.)

Regardless of what I thought the images might be suggestive of, my mother felt that I must hate her when she saw one of the images. There are two in particular at the end which are not flattering photographs and in many ways very unkind.  The photographs I refer to are definitely not vanity shots and I did warn her that she would not like them. I think about how I would feel to have such photographs of me 'out there' and I don't suppose I would very much.  In fact I'd be quite upset.  I have talked about it elsewhere so don't want to go into it too much in this document.

Her reaction was utterly understandable and had made me think about how photographers, especially those exploring difficult human depths and emotions, such as mental illness, age, and frailty, approach sensitive subjects.

I think about my approach and compare it to Jim Mortram's - he gets to know the people in his work and checks in on them continually, finding a way to record their worlds without intruding on them.   They share something of themselves with him.  Many of his images are of people in a vulnerable state.  He works collaboratively.  I, however, took the image of my mother and used it to communicate something about me.  It is not a collaborative exercise for me.

I wanted to use these images but in the end I am not entirely at ease about making my mother feel uncomfortable.  I wondered if I should use the series but cover the ones with her in them with a black mask therefore mimicking the SA newspapers during the state of emergency as mentioned in my post about The Bang Bang Club.  I don't think this would have been the right thing to do though - she is not after all an authoritarian state. It would however have expressed a certain sense of authentic rage, I'm sure.

I also thought about submitting an entirely different edit which was colourful rather than black and white, but suggested a sense of alienation and separateness, which would have been authentic too but abstract.  Since I have already submitted some quite abstract work I think it would serve me better to submit something more tangible.  Although, I must say, the more I look at the two edits, I do prefer this coloured one.  I think it lacks anything of a 'Freudian Family Romance' and is far truer and more reflective of my reality within those walls.

In the end I am going to the use the black and white images, despite my mother's distress, because the narrative is clear, albeit a romanticised one.  However I will submit them privately, using a password. Other students whom I have met are welcome to have the password.  (Following feedback from AC I changed from back and white to colour and have explained why in the feedback post I wrote)

I do feel that by doing so (opting for B&W as I originally did) I am making a compromise which I'm not entirely happy with, I have to say. But I also realise that this is an exercise at the end of course for a university and not my 'big work' if ever such a thing were to materialise.  It has been a stepping stone and I have learnt from it, but I must end this module and make a decision about which one to do next.  So that is how I am going to end it otherwise I could think about what to do forever.  It is quite hard to let go of for some reason.

I have not used any words with the images (following feedback I have now used words although am still not entirely happy with them at all).  I would like them (the images) to speak for themselves.  I have not put them into a book here (although I have prepared one if that is recommended - which it was and so am now supplying that along with the blog for submission).  I think that might detract from the images and make the exercise about something other than the story I hope they tell.

I chose black and white because there is a type of crystalisation in the images, a freezing of time, which feels more frozen without colour.  The colour edit I nearly used seems far more vibrant.  I can almost hear the cicadas and the silent buzzing or humming of the empty spaces as I went about photographing them.  But I don't get that in black and white.  By removing the colour I feel like I have removed the life and left only shadows and impressions.  I know of course this is all in my own perception and interpretation but that is how it felt.  I might actually prefer the colour edit personally, but the one I'm submitting expands on the type of work I'm submitting for assessment.

The blog post about Family Frames is the main supporting material although all the other links and reviews on the A5 entry page have salient points in too.  However, I have linked back to posts on this page which I hope expand on ideas I've introduced in these paragraphs.  I have deliberately tried to keep this entry as clear and clean as possible, speaking with my own voice and using my own words.

Images can be found here and will need a password which will be supplied to Andrew Conroy and the assessors.  I am happy as I say to share this link with the small number of fellow students whom I have met on study visits, privately or at the Thames Valley meet.  Please email me if you are interested.



Demonstration of technical skills
I am more adept in Lightroom than I am with a camera but that is changing the more I work and get to grips with equipment.  I panic less when things don't go right and find ways to fix them or use alternative methods.  I like to experiment with composition and enjoy looking at other photographers to find inventive ways of composing that challenge the run of the mill.  Sometimes I'm successful with this and other times less so.  At this point the willingness to experiment is a good thing I think.

Quality of outcome
I think some of the photographs demonstrate a good degree of lighting, light use, composition, and story telling.  There is a mood in the series that is translated effectively.  I am torn within myself about using other ways of presenting the images and am still thinking about how I might do this more creatively. I know other students put things in films and on YouTube for instance.  It's very effective and I know works well.  But I'm wary of it - content rather than form is more important to me at this stage.  But I also think about how music and filmic editing can manipulate emotion and I think I'd hesitate to go down that route - a possible mawkishness is not what I'm after with these images.  I also think about Brecht and how he wanted his audience to think rather than be overwhelmed with emotion.  I do not know whether or not to present the Blurb book (which I have prepared) for assessment or to simply submit the online images. I need to think about how I present all the sets from TAOP in a cohesive package.

Demonstration of creativity
I feel like the the last series, on the surface at any rate, looks the least 'creative' in comparison to A3 &A4, but only because it is a quieter, less showy set of images.  I do feel my 'voice' has developed and continues to do so.  I look forward to finding more creative and imaginative ways of working, perhaps playing with some of the ideas I've discovered by looking at other photographers over the course.

Context
I am certain my context and reflection is of a high standard and enjoy this part of the course very much.  I look forward to developing these skills as I take on another module and my youngest son starts school, freeing up more time.  I suspect my research needs to develop some sort of academic rigour but that will come the higher up the levels I go.  I could have written about more influences such as Ray's a Laugh for instance but at the time of writing this I have not.  Perhaps by the time I submit for assessment I will have done but I needed to draw a line under this and think about moving on at some point.

First public display of some of my work

Last Friday a whole bunch of people, mostly friends, came to a local cafe and looked at some of my photographs which have been put up there and I even sold quite a few.  It was nerve wracking and exciting and I was very pleased to have been asked by the owners to provide the images in the first place.

Here is a link to the images: Wandsworth Colour

Someone local printed them for me and did a very good job.  My lack of printing knowledge frustrated me as I know from talking to Sharon Boothroyd that she did her own printing.  This is something I imagine will be good to learn about.

When I was first asked to do something we agreed that it should be local but that was my only direction.  I had been taking photographs of walls already, I guess copying other styles I had seen on Flickr at the time.  But then I started to wonder why "walls' as I became a little wall-centric for a while.  An obvious but rather pedestrian and unimaginative interpretation might be something to do with a lack of people in my life but that doesn't resonate with me  - especially as I am lucky enough to have lots of people in my life really.

I think rather if one had to try to interpret my focus on walls, it pertains to structure.  I suppose as the structure in my life was utterly devastated three years ago, my photographs are a reinforcement of the structure that I need, want and indeed am rebuilding as time passes.  I am surrounded by a strong sense of community which is extremely important to me and the landscape in which I exist, my home, provides a secure structure for me and my family.  As I photograph those real structures I somehow reinforce the internal ones which are so crucial to living.

The other thing that walls represent to me are a kind of metaphysical set of boundaries.  Less disparate societies than ours seemed to have had a much clearer societal infrastructure than ours.  We have so many cultures converging, giving us many more choices; but it also makes it harder to be certain of those internal structures that we really, really need.

My own internal structures have always been shaky, perhaps in part due to having grown up abroad but always told I was not of that country, born to a father whose family were wiped out in the second world war, and then like so many children, had to contend with the divorce of my parents.  I will talk more about this when I write up Family Frames.  My pictures of walls seem to me to be very much about trying to establish and envisage some firm internal boundaries when they have been lacking for so long.

Anyway, in the end I was very pleased to have shown my work to people.  Really pleased that so many bought prints.  And I look forward to doing it again!  Here's a link to my other blog about it.

Over the Hill - Tim Andrews Photography Project

I wasn't going to write about this project initially although it is one that I have been following for a few months.  It's an interesting project. Tim Andrews in not a photographer; I think he used to be a lawyer or something corporate in fact.  But over the last three years he has been photographed by over 300 photographers who he invites to take part in his project.  He started it by answering an advert when a photographer was looking for a model.  The project is interesting in itself because rather than a photographer recording his personal story through a series of self portraits the subject has taken it upon himself to manage that process, turning the usual photographer gaze upside down and inside out.  What makes it even more interesting is the fact that Tim Andrews is also managing an illness and through his project explores the fragility of his ageing body and self.  I have been prompted to write about this project after all because there is a sense of taking control, of agency which is extremely interesting for me and also because of the question of vanity - or lack of it.  Is this a vain project or is it a generous and extremely brave project, where Tim Andrews reveals what he can, through collaborative work, of his frailty and indeed failings, along with the more palatable aspects of who is he is.

My A5 project is currently in some sort of no-mans land while I think about what to do with it.  My aim was to explore a story that was about me and my family.  I have been heavily influenced by my reading of Family Frames by Marriane Hirsh where she discusses the role of family albums/photographs.  I have been particularly struck by the notion of photographs gazing back at us and informing us about who we are meant to be in this modern culture of ours, about who we are within our families.  Mostly people choose to have very flattering and rather unrealistic portrayals of themselves, their families - or am I just being incredibly cynical.  The reality of families, which are usually fraught with internal seen and unseen tensions, admitted and denied fractures, is not what is usually portrayed in the images.  In my A5 work I have tried to capture not only the happy, sweet and enjoyable moments but also some of the more painful moments and aspects of our family.  I am happy to look at these, to try and make sense of them, to use my project to deepen my understanding and empathy for all that is real - the good enough and not so good enough.  Despite having involved my mother in the taking of the photographs, letting her know what I was planning to use them for, she is not happy about the photographs and feel they are intrusive and unflattering, and that I have shown her little respect.  This leaves me in a difficult position.  And I am having to think about how to address this, how to solve it.

Which has led me to think about Tim Andrew's work.  A work where an individual has over the course of several years offered his body and self to artists so that they can explore aspects of him and of course themselves, their perception of age, of illness of maleness, an ageing and unwell body.  It's an extremely generous act - but one that he has been in charge of to some extent.  My mother on the other hand is not in charge of anything to do with my work, and perhaps I was expecting too much of her.  Perhaps not working collaboratively enough although to be fair to myself, I have tried to.  And in any case the work's underlying importance has only over time started to reveal itself to me.

I won't say more about Tim Andrew's project for now.  Take a look at it yourself.  There is a range of photography, some that appeals to me and some that doesn't.  But it's fascinating, especially when you consider how the subject is in control of it.  It's perhaps Tim Andrew's way of taking control of something when he is dealing with an illness that he has little control over.  It's really worth thinking quite about seriously in relation to the book I mention above which I will finish soon and eventually be able to write about.  How I resolve my issue with the images, I am less sure about just now, but am sure I will find a way.

Tim Andrews

Exercise: Rain

Imagine a magazine cover on one subject: rain.  You have the entire cover space to work with and you should produce a single, attractive, strong photograph that leaves no one in doubt about the subject.

Rain (c)SarahJaneField 2015

This was taken on my iPhone 5c using Camera+ and then edited in Snapseed.  I darkened it and increased the contrast plus sharpened and increased the structure, then turned it upside down so the reflection of the building appeared the right way up.  I hope it leaves no one in any doubt about the subject.

Family Frames - Unconscious Optics, Seeing, Screens

I am still making my way through the book, Family Frames.  Its a very difficult book and I should no doubt have read a couple of other key texts before trying to tackle this one.  Although what it has done for me is made me very eager to go back and finish Sontag's On Photography which has sat languishing on my chest of draws for months abandoned a third of the way through.  I must also tackle Ways of Seeing,  I know.  Nevertheless, I am enjoying what I can in Family Frames and am intrigued and excited by unconscious optics.

Hirsh explains that we look at flat pictures which have the illusion of depth, that we see them through multi-layers of screens such as religion, culture, personal history, romantic illusions - but that photographs are a slice of an unconscious moment.  And being so offer up details we would otherwise not see.  I remember discussing how I am beginning to enjoy photography as it lets me know what is going on with me at an unconscious or semi-conscious level.  In the same way the minute physical details which can be seen in Muybridge's horses.  Photographs also show us the minute psychological details of our lives; thoughts, interests, moods.  Things that are wholly or partially hidden by consciousness.

Jung talks about becoming enlightened by making the unconscious conscious, and that includes becoming aware of the darkest aspects of ourselves.  Photography seems to offer a way of enabling that need.

I am also thrilled to read about screens.  When I started looking at different cultural childrearing practises I remember thinking it doesn't matter how many books are written about this methodology or that one - people will gravitate towards the ideologies that fit with their own personal outlook on life, be those outlooks conscious or otherwise.  Many of mine were not conscious when I first had a child.  I had a totally unrealistic view of who I am and was utterly uninformed and unaware about myself.  Having children unravelled and unearthed parts of me that I had no idea about, and I am happy to say I was pleasantly surprised by some of what came to the surface but also horrified later by other less easy to live with aspects of myself.  Photography is doing the same thing.  And I am reading how photography is also looked at by individuals and societies through ideologies that are conscious and unconscious; screens.

"Looking occurs in the interface between the imaginary and the symbolic.  It is mediated by complex cultural, historical, and social screens."

However, she goes on to say;

"Photographs may capture some of this process, but, as the opaque and masked images of Luthi, Meatyard, and Sherman illustrate, they alone do not allow us to read its many dimensions."

This second sentence is important for me to remember in all of this.  My family narrative photographs may on the one hand be revealing for me (perhaps others too...) but they may also be frustratingly opaque.  I think I have set out to explore something about my relationship with my mother in those photographs and am certain what I have discovered is something I knew intellectually but couldn't see as have been looking through daughter's eyes.  The photographs on the one hand do indeed show me what I knew but couldn't see - and that's what makes me cry when I look at them.  But I suspect there is also much I cannot read, stuff that is hidden regardless of the camera's helpful trick of suspending moments in a frame.

I continue to read...

Other books that have been recommended are The Imaginary Signifier by Christian Metz and Questions of Visual Pleasure by Laura Malvey, both of which look at Lacan's Mirror image and seeing ideas.  I am not sure whether to tackle these before I get that Sontag one digested!  However, I am keen to read her now which I wasn't before because it is dense, verbose and challenging in the extreme.

Quotes from Family Frames as before page 118.

Some thoughts on A5, Family Frames & Breasts

I am currently busy working my way through Family Frames, Photography Narrative and Postmemory by Marianne Hirsh.  It has set off all sorts of thoughts in relation to the narrative photographs I have taken for A5, and I am constantly on the look out for relevant work that might be worth thinking about.  Recently I stumbled across a magazine article about women’s pay.  Included was an old photographic essay relating to a wife/mother who worked at a bridal company during the 50s.  The essay offers an alterative narrative to the usual 50s story we are more familiar with where women stayed at home warming slippers for their husbands whilst keeping their homes in perfect order.

The images show a husband and wife sharing the domestic chores, financial decisions and child rearing while a housekeeper looks after the children as both parents work.  The woman is seen out with her friends at lunch for example, experiencing a life that is fulfilling and nourishing, and also at home caring for her children rather perfectly.  It seems like a thoroughly modern and progressive existence.

The problem for me is how very idealistic this narrative is and it is simply the other side of the supposedly idealistic ‘stay-at-home’ housewife coin.  Both images are suggestive of an impossible and unrealistic life for women to construct their lives around.

As Hirsh states in her book: ‘Freud’s ‘family romance’ is a shared individual fantasy of mythic origin: the child’s dream of parental omnipotence and infallibility which, when shattered, becomes the fantasy of replacing the father with a different, richer and more noble one, in Freud’s terms, a king or an emperor.  This is more than an Oedipal desire: it is also a fantasy of class aspiration, an economic fantasy of enrichment.”[1]

It seems to me that each side of the 50s feminine ideal as illustrated in the essay I have mentioned and in the more usual images one expects to see from that era is a ‘family romance’ about the role of the mother.  One that persists today, although it is probably quite surprising to think of the ‘working mother’ myth having existed so solidly during the 50s too.  Women now are perpetually suspended between these two supposedly opposing positions.  On the one hand today we have stay-at-home-mothers who are made to exist at the very least along the edges of our economy, if not right outside it, along with their inconvenient offspring.  Or, working mothers who often feel they have little choice but to leave their young children in the care of others if they are to keep any career break to a minimum.  (Taking time out is proven to be detrimental to a woman’s future economic prospects; pension gaps, the fact they often need to start again from scratch work-wise, part-time work for those who can get it. Not to mention that long breaks potentially destroy any confidence about being able to contribute effectively in the work place.)  

I am only part way through Hirsh’s Family Frames but one of the overriding themes I am getting to grips with so far is that the images we surround ourselves with reinforce ‘myths’ about family, support structures that our culture for a variety of reasons has constructed about who we all ought to be, where we should fit, and what is expected of us.

These images are immensely powerful and reflect who we are back to as well as inform us about who we ought to be – a complex feedback loop that potentially imprisons us.  My interest in particular is about how women relate to these images.

One of the most striking and perhaps obvious examples for me is about how women see their breasts in our culture.

I would like to state very clearly before I say anything further (as I know how contentious and difficult this issue can be for women everywhere) that I am in no way condemning any woman’s decision to breastfeed or bottle feed – how a person chooses to bring up their children is entirely their own choice.

However, it seems extraordinary to me that Page 3 has only just stopped being published. Even so, the idea of breasts being sexualized is reinforced by imagery in advertising, in films, in magazines and on TV pretty much constantly from the moment we are born.  Even our toys reinforce this idea – Barbie, springs to mind.  It is so pervasive and firmly entrenched in our culture that for many women the fact that their breasts might be for child rearing is simply anathema. 

Katherine Dettwyller is an anthropologist who has studied breast-feeding cross culturally and across species for her entire career.  She has written countless articles during her career and the thoroughly researched book, Breastfeeding; Biocultural Perspectives, amongst others.  Detwyller promotes the notion that formula may one day be seen in the same way we see smoking now – utterly detrimental to health and emotional well-being.

In her book about breastfeeding she compares breastfeeding in the West to foot binding in China, which “persisted well into the 20^th century”[2]. “Most Americans view Chinese foot-binding as the barbaric practice of backward people.  Yet breast augmentation, or female mammary mutilation, as it more properly called, is essentially the same thing…. A perfectly, healthy, functioning organ, the breast, is mutilated through surgery into something useful for only male sexual pleasure.  Rarely is the lactational function of the breast preserved, or even considered, in breast augmentation surgery.”[3]

I have chosen to concentrate on the subject of breasts and breastfeeding here because it’s such an extreme example of a cultural more.  In many non-western societies breasts are seen as organs for feeding children primarily.  In Western societies, and societies heavily influenced by the West, breasts are seen as almost exclusively sexual, to the point where their biological function is almost obsolete, or seen as strange, unusual, and even taboo.  

I am interested in the power of imagery; powerful imagery that supports the idea of breasts being exclusively sexual, as well as the less obvious, harder to discern manipulations of culture, of how we see ourselves.  Let's look beyond the breasts one might say...

One of the most interesting things I have come across in the Family Frames book so far is Lacan’s idea of looking and being seen:

“Looking and being looked at are identical processes for Lacan – when you look you are also seen: when you are the object of the look you return it, even if only to reflect light back to its source; ‘things look at me and yet I see them” (Four Fundamental Concepts, 109).   I need to know and understand more of this before I can discuss it in further depth but the reflective nature of seeing is fascinating to me.   

When describing Meatyard’s Family Album of LucyBell Crater (which incidentally I love and can’t wait to do something heavily influenced by Meatyard’s work!) Hirsh talks of subjects being “constructed relationally through an elaborate and multiply inflected process of looking[4]”, which as I understand it ties in with Lacan’s looking and seeing thesis.

I feel like I have only got fragments of different ideas and haven’t quite tied them together yet but I am intrigued by how this seeing and looking process informs our state of being given that we are constantly bombarded with images that inform us about who we are, that construct our being.  Which means that the whole breast thing might be impossible for women to reconcile, given the imagery we are surrounded by every moment of our lives, and breasts are just one tiny and very obvious example - look further. 

If I were to think about how women and indeed men are generally represented in photographs as well as other mediums, and also about how that looking and being looked at process works, it seems we are indefatigably caught up in an interplay that is a little like a snake eating its own tale.  The gaze that we choose to exist in front of, coming from the images that we create perpetuate the fantasies we construct about ourselves in those very images.

How does any of that tie in with my assignment?  Well, I’m not sure yet.  Family Frames discusses how family photographs ‘produce family relations and form family memory’[5]. I have taken a series of photographs of my family, which in the main centre round my mother, with whom I have had a difficult and fragmented relationship, although much has changed recently. 

At the beginning of this very long post (in which I try hard to bring together several strands of thought and perhaps a bunch of disparate ideas, all of which I hope feed into my assignment) I discussed the idealistic photographic essay about a mother in the 50s.  On the surface the essay seems like a positive alternative narrative which opposes the more usual 50s story we are used to seeing, where women wait cheerily for their husbands to return home while they happily get on with domestic chores before welcoming their hardworking men home.  And it certainly seems more positive than the overly sexualised images we are all bombarded with, which as I discuss negate any biological realities about who we are. 

However, I found the idealism in that essay just as awkward and difficult as its counterpart.  

Family photography is typically idealistic; and in fact I make a few pennies taking photographs for families that serve to reinforce those idealistic fantasies.  They are seemingly so important to families within our culture – and I wonder how helpful that is.  Hirsh says “the family as social construct depends on the invisibility of its structuring elements.  Inasmuch as visuality functions as such a structuring element determined by the familial gaze, its workings to some degree must remain unconscious if the familial ideology is to be perpetuated and imposed”[6]

For A5 I have taken a series of photographs, which I hope will reveal some of the realities of our family what ever those are, rather than the ideal – although I’m not sure at this point how possible that even is.  At the moment, however, every time I look at them I find myself crying… so who knows that they are doing or saying.

I end by repeating the quote from Hirsh’s book, “Looking and being looked at are identical processes for Lacan – when you look you are also seen: when you are the object of the look you return it, even if only to reflect light back to its source; ‘things look at me and yet I see them” (Four Fundamental Concepts, 109).  This sentence seems incredibly important somehow.

---

Family Frames Photogaphy and Narrative Postmemory by Marianne Hirsh 1997, Harvard Publishing, reissued 2012 (FF)

Breastfeeding Biocultural Perspectives Ed. by Patricia Stuart-Macadam & Katherine A. Dettwyler, Aldine de Gruyer 1995 (BF)

[1] Page tbc FF

[2] Page 177 BF

[3] Page 177 BF

[4] Page 107 FF

[5] Page 116 FF

[6] Page 117 FF

Quick catch up about where I am Narrative 5

I have come home from Italy with plenty of images and I do think I will be able to complete the narrative assignment with these photos.  I need to live with them for a bit before deciding on which route to go.  At first I thought I thought it would be a narrative about my time in Italy with my boys but the photographs do seem to focus primarily on my mother - so the narrative is about my relationship with her I suspect.

I am torn between colour or black & white but tending towards B&W for now.  I'm quite sad to be converting some of the images as they work so well in colour but the overall tone works better in B&W to be honest - well, that's how I feel for now.  I do not have a preference in the main for either and think it's best to see how each project progresses, but it's lovely to see colour images when they work well. (I have just learned about Saul Leiter who was big on colour and I am awaiting arrival of his book so I can write about him, having watched a marvellous documentary - what a lovely, lovely man he seems to have been, quite apart from anything else.)

Here is one image in colour that works very well and consequently I am not sure I will use it at all if I do decide to go the B&W route.  It's a shame to have to let go of images that I like so much - but I have to think about the whole rather than each individual image.

Evelyn in Italy
(c)sarahjanefield 2015

That reminds me, I am reading Family Frames which is wonderful although very difficult - there is a lot that goes over my head because I do not have sufficient understanding or knowledge.  I am learning all about Lacan and Gestalt theory at the moment - well, I say all about... what I mean is touching on it and getting a tiny inkling.  There is so much to learn!!  Needless to say what I am reading will inform the way I edit and present the work. I am eager to get the project in but I am learning that images can tell me an awful lot if I wait for some time to pass before beginning to try and understand them a little.

So, I have a rain picture to take, some reviews to write up about photographers, projects as well as the Family Frames book, and of course the editing to do for A5.  It feels a bit overwhelming (especially as I also have some paid work to catch up on, although thankfully not too much).  I can only do one thing at a time though so will use the time I have and not rush things I think.

Narrative A5 thoughts

I've been thinking quite a lot about this (obviously) and the idea of photographing my own family keeps coming back to me.  It seems an obvious progression from where I've come with all the self-reflective work.  I also started the course reading and learning about Sally Mann - she was the first person I wrote about and then Larry Sultan.  In addition I used a lot of photographs from my time in Italy last Easter holidays for A2 exercises, and I used my family in A1 too and so it will complete the circle and that appeals to me. It's simple, relevant and makes sense to me.  I know I need to ensure I show the progression from A1 which was a bit ropey - the idea was there, the execution not so much.

We are heading over to my mother's place in Italy soon and I think I will use this opportunity to play with this idea.  I've got time to ditch it if I'm not happy with the results.

I have also ordered Family Frames: Photography, Narrative and Postmemory to read (bit of gentle holiday reading!)

At the moment I do most of my work on my Fuji x100s.  I like the restriction of the fixed lens and although it's not full frame the IQ is more than good enough (when I get it right!), so I will stick to just using that.  I think it's probably a good thing to do, and this was echoed by Jessie Alexander at the TV meet the other day.

I'm not sure how this fits in yet but here is a blog post from my other blog site about my own family which may or may not be relevant here. I feel like this is a project that has been bubbling away inside of me and A5 may the containment I need to do it.  I also quite like my family - they're pretty bloody great (and annoying and all the rest of it) and I think exploring that side of things will be good to do.

At this moment, today, this morning, this feels like the right thing.  Let's see what AC has to say about it.

Exercise: Juxtaposition

I have been procrastinating about this one for a while and then realised I had one which I took recently which would be perfect.

A still life or larger scale shot.  I have gone for the latter, in which I was asked to photograph someone with a possession of the result of their hobby or work.

Now, for someone who moaned an awful lot about how they didn't like the fact they were photographing themselves and who felt horribly narcissistic for doing so,  I am doing very well as including photographs of myself in here.  However, it continues the theme, the narrative of all my course work and it's a photograph I like. Plus it has lots of juxtaposition in it.

Technically I think that I have probably got too much black in this - It's something I have noticed recently, that I do, well I noticed it before but then just carried on regardless.  I might re-edit this and compare to see. I quite like blacks and dark shadows it's true, but I think I've gone overboard sometimes and this might benefit from having a little less; not sure though until I do it.  In fact, every time I look at it, I think - oooh, it's a bit garish!  Maybe that's just my mood today.

However, on the content side, I like this because it literally and metaphorically has lots of levels to it.
I am in it as I have been in so many of my photographs for this course.  But I'm not fully in.  I am doing what I love doing - my work and hobby, photography, and finding ways to express myself.  I am in a mirror - which is an obvious metaphor for self reflection, which is what all this work has been about, but I am obscured and I'm not sure if it is immediately obvious I am taking a photograph to anyone who is isn't a photography nut.  I'm in a car park with a bunch of discarded stuff and in a way all those boards could be suggestive of all the layers in me, or the layers through which I must get through before I get seen.  If I were to think of a title for this it might be "in the picture'.  Which ties in with what we were discussing at the TV meeting the other day, where it was suggested I try to inveigle my way into the family photographs I might take for A5 all the time - always trying to be seen.  Finally, the sign at the top could be about me or about the car park, could be about life - who knows?  Is that a bit pedestrian?  Not sure.  Anyway, I liked this photograph and thought it was heading in the direction of something distinctively 'me'.

A very long post: Jamie Diamond & the Reborners and my response to it.

"What good in a desert is a drop of water?  It's not my body that thirsts, it's my heart."

Yerma in the play of that name by Frederico Garcia Lorca

The quote I have used above is from a play that is all about yearning.  For the central character it is about yearning for a child which never comes.  "Barren... barren, I know I am!" she shouts.  I have used this quote here because I came across some work which immediately struck me as profound, intriguing and incredibly interesting - and spoke to me about yearning at a very deep level. Although this post looks at that work it really explores some of the things within in it that struck a chord with me and why, and how that might inform my own future work.  

Jamie Diamond has produced two series' of photographs titled "I Promise To Be A Good Mother" and "Mother Love".  In these she uses a hyper-realistic doll as as a prop, reenacting scenes and memories from her own childhood, dressed in her own mother's clothes and playing the role of her mother in the images, as well as the future mother she may become.  This sort of doll is used usually for a variety of reasons and costs anything from $250 to $10 000.  Originally they were designed for comforting alzheimer's patients, people suffering with empty nest syndrome, or miscarriage and the loss of a child. However, there are also a community of artists called Reborners who have these dolls in their lives permanently, living with them as one would with real babies, as far as possible.  Jamie Diamond has embedded herself within this community and even set up an online shop making and selling them, and says she has learnt a great deal from these women. The doll she uses in her images is called Annabel.

Jamie Diamond is a truly interesting artist and I will write more fully about her in another post.  But for the meantime;  

I find this particular work absolutely fascinating for a variety of reasons:

I am really beginning to get to grips with the fact that photography-as-an art is about so very much more than  pretty or cleverly manipulated pictures.  The type of photograph that draws 'oohs and aahs' is one thing but certain photographic art has the potential, although sometimes subtler and quieter, to be deeply moving, powerful, and thought provoking in the same way a book, play or a film might be, with a narrative. In fact, I think that photography has an advantage over spoken art forms.  Theatre in particular can be quite frustrating - music, mis-en-scene, atmosphere can all be set up and then broken suddenly by an actor's failure to be convincing or truthful.  A series of photographs whether looked at in a gallery or on the screen at home, or in a book gives the viewer a moment to really reflect upon things within his or herself very privately, either at the time or later in a way that is ongoing.  I felt this when I looked at Larry Sultan's work at the beginning of this course and was surprised to be so very moved by his Pictures from Home.  Seeing Sharon Boothroyd's work the other night also reminded me of this, and then looking at the work by Jamie Diamond did too.

The photographs are indeed beautiful (as were Sharon's) but as I say, in a quiet and unassuming way. There is none of the flashy trickery and showing off that I am used to seeing on Flickr for instance, some of which is very impressive, it's true.  Jamie Diamond's photographs in these two series' are skilfully and expertly taken, beautifully lit with delightful clarity, not even remotely over processed, and with gorgeous depth of field that suits the dreamy quality of them.  I aspire to be able to do this. The beauty of the images also contrasts quite dramatically with the subject and content which is searingly painful, I think.  Not all her images employ the same aesthetics - some are harshly lit and very vibrant such as the one with models dressed and made up as her mother.

The subject matter is just so up my street it's not true!  Aaaah - so exciting!!  And for so many reasons: 

Years ago shortly before I had my first child I was pregnant with another and miscarried at 16 weeks. Miscarriage is fairly common; 1 in 4 pregnancies are said to end in miscarriage but even so it was devastating for me. I can absolutely see why  someone might feel the need for a hyper-realistic doll, although I have to say I have not yet got to grips with what the artistic community of Reborners are doing.   However, following my miscarriage, all I wanted was to hold my baby and seeing other people's babies intensified my sense of feeling bereft and heartbroken.  I wonder if it might have helped to have some sort of transitional baby to hold at the time, or if that would have caused more problems when the time came to let go of the pretend baby.  I can't say, of course as I did not have a pretend baby although I was overjoyed when I got pregnant again.  

Transitional toys are I think quite particular to our own society; or perhaps more fairly said, to societies where a child's emotional needs are not always met as fully as they might be as I do believe it is in childhood that the blueprint for our coping mechanisms are formed.  And we as a society certainly continue to utilise transitional objects throughout our lives, sometimes allowing those objects to become permanent. Tranquilisers, alcohol, things that we buy to try and feed some unmet need we don't always understand.  

Thumb sucking, perhaps an example of the earliest form of transitional satisfaction, is thought to be an emotional form of self-soothing that is desirable by many in our society but not by all. 

"When signals are missed, babies stop signaling; they withdraw; they suck their thumbs; they turn away; they try to right the system themselves by not sending out any more signals" (1) 

If you think about thumb sucking, and any further self-soothing transitional behaviour as a pattern that stems from unmet needs then you have to question what it is that is missing in our society and perhaps in the community of people who live with these fantasy babies (although, I must reiterate, I have not thought enough about what is going on in this artistic endeavour).

I think it is fascinating that we exist in a society where hyper-realistic dolls are manufactured in the first place; that they might be given to people who are grieving for the loss of a child; and even more extraordinary that there is a community who exist with these dolls in fantasy relationships.

But what really strikes me as profound is that a baby/mother relationship is a reciprocal symbiotic relationship; or at any rate the biological blueprint suggests that it ought to be.  The baby feeds and oxytocin flows in both parties.  If it weren't that way mothers might find it all too much to bear and babies would die, which of course does happen because our in our society there is much to thwart the whole process.  Even in cases that are not extreme, babies across the social spectrum grow up without satisfactory parenting and the cycle continues as they have their own babies and inflict the same lack of 'feeding' on future babies.

"In a more evolutionary infant-caretaker scheme, the infant is a social partner, part of a dyad*.  Both mother and infant are interested in being in equilibrium, that is in a stable and contented state.  This goal is achieved by a mutual regulation, by reciprocity, and by keeping tabs on each-other." (2)

It is therefore quite challenging to consider what the Reborners might be receiving from their hyper-realistic infants? 

However, is it really any weirder than the trend in our society to have faux-communities online rather than genuine communities in the real world for instance because that is what this makes me think about.  We in our world do all we can to negate real experience and have instead pale and less fulfilling ones.  

We also fill our days with work; pre-industrial communities tend to have a better work/life balance (3).  And with material objects rather than living relationships.  We over-value things and material matters, as well as the prizes we strive for such as cars, houses and holidays instead of the things that truly matter such as family connections for instance.  And we do it all without thinking about it, without questioning it in the main.

The Reborner community for me epitomises some part of our society; and I say this with little value judgement.  I'm as addicted to my 'pacifiers' as anyone else is, believe me.  In fact I think perhaps their project is about mirroring back to us something about our capacity for avoiding real experience.

The quote above refers to a deep and urgent need in Yerma for a child, she is desperate for a burst of fertility, for growth, to give birth.  I have included it as I think the play is a wonderful metaphor for the yearnings many of us have.  I certainly do, for a sense of fulfilment. For me the manifestation is a desire to make art, the photography and perhaps writing, the ability to create and express.  My fourth child that I yearn for is not an actual child (heaven forbid!!) but the ability to express whatever it is in me that I long to shout about.  

I am intrigued by the Reborners.  I am reminded of Pinocchio which I have just read with Alfred, my middle child, and wonder if there is something in there worth thinking about.  Pinocchio so wants to be a genuine child, to be flesh and blood.   To be real.

The other significant part of Jamie Diamond's work is the relationship with her own mother which she re-enacts as well as the very poignant future mother/child relationship she hopes to have.  The series titled 'I promise I will be a good mother' would evoke something emotional in most women I should imagine and of course for me that is no different.  I suspect most women have difficult and awkward aspects to their relationships with their mothers; but I have to say it is an extremely important part of the work that I did for A4, and in the work I do outside of that - the ongoing work of being a mother myself, understanding who I am, and the lifelong work of exploring my relationship with my own mother and how that has affected me.

Not long after I gave birth for the first time I started reading.  I read so much about the nature of motherhood; books that were difficult to understand because I had not studied anthropology or sociology but were nevertheless compelling because that bond between a mother and a baby is so strong, so primordial, and deeply ingrained that it is really, really difficult to understand how it can go wrong.  But it does; women suffer from devastating post natal-depression which in the most extreme cases can lead to infanticide; women don't bond fully with their babies; women sometimes leave their children as my own mother did because there are such barriers within them preventing them from fulfilling the role of mother  - and in all these cases, we are terrified by the reality of it and sometimes find it impossible to understand.  I know if ever I talk about my own mother leaving to friends they are shocked and find it bewildering and at times upsetting. For me the thought of leaving my children is unthinkable - so trying to understand how that could have occurred is something I have spent a lot of time with, one way or another, and it seems I continue to do so through the photographic work I do.  In fact, I am certain that the idea of photographing a family is very much to do with that.  The family I have chosen to work with is one that has a very different history to mine and exploring some aspects of that mother/daughter relationship is going to be interesting for me.  

But back to Jamie Diamond's work:

"Working with the Reborn community has allowed me to explore the grey area between reality and artifice where relationships are constructed with inanimate objects, between human and doll, artist and artwork, uncanny and real," Diamond says in her statement. "I have been engaged with this community now for four years and while working and learning from these women, I’ve become fascinated by the fiction and performance at the core of their practice and the art making that supports their fantasy."  ( 4. quote taken from the Huffington Post article below)

The community of Reborners keep their fantasy going indefinitely and it's difficult not to wonder why.  It's something that interests me deeply.  And reminds me of something I read yesterday where a photographer talked about her whole life being 'the art' - at which point the camera almost becomes an irrelevance.  (This post is so long already I shall have to go into that in more detail another time if at all - the sense of nihilism there is just a bit strong for my tastes.)

The pictures themselves are strange - they are are disturbing and almost harrowing for me at times. The one that I find most difficult is one where the 'mother' is in bed with her pretend child.  For me this space, the most intimate of spaces, is so tricky so see like this.  It takes the photographs I took of me in my bed alone for A4 a very large step further.  To think of someone lying there next to a body that is not alive, can never be alive, is only ever pretend and in effect dead is harrowing - and evocative of relationship structures in my childhood, and I imagine in Jamie Diamond's.

I was profoundly moved by these pictures for many reasons.  I think the image quality and simplicity is something to aspire towards, as is the deep involvement the photographer has with the community of Reborners.  I am fascinated by their practise - it seems surreal and peculiar but they are not really doing anything stranger than what so many others, myself included, do online - whole lives are lived on the internet rather than in reality and this is another big interest of mine.  The only difference is that online living is deemed normal because its something that has swept through our culture and been absorbed thoroughly with great speed.

And nor is it any stranger than trying to feed an unmet need with tobacco leaves on fire which is really odd when you stop to think about it, or any of the other things we do to satisfy the deep sense of yearning that people are capable of experiencing, and that Yerma feels when she longs for a child to make her life complete as explored in the quote at the top of this post.  I do hope I haven't gone on too long here about these things but I think that all I have discussed will inform the next assignment and future assignments and work because it covers so much that I am interested in.

Yerma quote from Act 2, Scene 2, Yerma by Frederico Garcia Lorca, translated by Peter Luke and first performed at The National Theatre, 19th March, 1986, Methuen.

*Dyad - a dyad as I understand it is the space in which the infant and mother exist.  When allowed the mother creates a space in which her infant can be, attached to her in its earliest months but always able to return as the infant grows into a toddler, and when in need of contact and grounding.  It is a physical and metaphysical space.

Quotes 1, 2 & 3 are from Our Babies, Ourselves; How Biology and Culture Shape the Way We Parent by Meredith F. Small, Anchor Books, 1999.

Huffington Post article

Jamie Diamond's website