Family Frames by Marianne Hirsh

It took me a while to make my way through Marianne Hirsh’s book Family Frames.  The book is so dense with information that it is quite impossible to retain all of it. I think the best thing for me to do here is to concentrate on the themes that I have absorbed, things that I can apply to my own work as it continues to develop; and as my understanding of what photography might be evolves.  I have to say, the more I learn, the more the notion of what a photograph might be is unraveling.  Not sure if that’s a good thing or not.

There are perhaps four reasonably solid ideas I take away from the book:

The first being that the family album serves to sustain the notion of family, reinforcing our ideas of how that institution is shaped and how we might fit into it.  Hirsh says early in the book, “At the end of the twentieth century, the family photograph, widely available as a medium of family self-presentation in many cultures and subcultures, can reduce the strains of family life by sustaining an imaginary cohesion, even as it exacerbates them by creating images real families cannot uphold”[1].

The next big subject that really got me thinking was the idea of the “Gaze” and unconscious optics.  I had come across the gaze earlier in the course but Hirsh looks at the impact of looking, seeing and being seen.  She explores Lacan’s mirror theory and the chapter on this has made me eager to discover more.  Unconscious optics fascinated me;  the screens through which we view the world and thinking about the gaze, how we imagine those looking at us, in the flesh or within a photograph, might perceive us. 

Hirsh then looks at the role of mothers and photography; how the camera interrupts the maternal gaze, transforms it, and ultimately renders the maternal viewpoint, including her fantasies, tangible in the form of a photograph.

Lastly, although by no mean exclusively, as the book really covers a great deal more, is the notion of post-memory which has really struck a chord with me.  Those long held family myths that stem from before one’s own arrival in the world, and which inform so much about how a family operates and sees itself in relation to the world outside of it, and within it.

I will aim to cover each of those aspects in this essay, which forms the basis of my research for Assignment 5.

The Family Romance

The way in which families operate across cultures and history varies significantly and according to Meredith F Small in her book, Our Babies Ourselves, is dependent in large part on the economic needs of the society.  She refers to research that compares urban and agrarian societies, for instance: “In more urban-industrial societies, Le Vine suggests, parents don’t need much from their children because the economic system is constructed so the children are peripheral…*”[2] as opposed to agrarian societies where children are more central and very much expected to contribute to the economic activities of the society, i.e. they will work in the fields, for example.

So it is interesting for me to think about why families take photographs of themselves, which in turn gaze back, reinforcing a fixed idea about how that family should look and be.  We seem to need to believe the way we (whoever we might be) do it is the only way or perhaps the right way.

Hirsh’s second chapter is titled Reframing the Human Family Romance and covers various aspects of myth making with family photography but it is her exploration of Steichen’s Family of Man, which at the time was by far the most successful photographic exhibition to date, that resonated with me most. 

The exhibition is on the surface a celebration of the human family.  There are photographs from all over the world, by famous and not so famous photographers, of people and families; starting with lovers, then pregnancy and babies, then on to play, family, work, war, religion and government.   The way in which it is presented suggests that we humans are essentially all the same – despite our different and varying cultures. 

The power in that message is delivered with considerable force due to the nature of photography.

Hirsh says, “The illusion that photographs simply record a pre-existing external reality, the fact that photographs freeze particular moments in time, and the ambiguity that results from the still picture’s absent context all help to perpetuate a mythology of the family as stable, static and monolithic.”[3]

The Family of Man exhibition sold the idea of a “globalized, utopian, family album, a family romance imposed on every corner of the earth”.[4] 

Hirsh goes on to discuss Freud’s notion of the family romance being “a shared individual fantasy of mythic origin: the child’s dream of parental omnipotence and infallibility…” and then “The Family of Man disseminates the fantasies of Steichen and his contemporaries…”[5]

In my mind it is hardly surprising that this sort of mythology, the mythology of a paternalistic, Western, middle class ideal, Freud’s family romance, should be collectively conceived and expressed at that particular point in history.  Why wouldn’t a scarred and traumatised society who had just come out of a global conflict in which many millions of people were brutally slaughtered on all sides, and in the case of the Holocaust, whole towns and communities systematically murdered, need to see the world as a global family who fitted in with an ideal.  Of course that traumatised society, rightly or wrongly, wanted to perpetuate the fantasy of a family romance across the entire globe.  It would be, considering the recent extreme trauma, a mythology that Western society should very much want and perhaps need to buy into. 

Photography offers a powerful reflection of those fantasies which because of its capacity for perpetuating “an illusion of pre-existing reality” can be used by a society in one way or another, commercial advertising as well as cultural exhibition, to convince itself of a reality that is more palatable than the reality they have just experienced.

Hirsh explores the troubling aspects of this wholesale rejection of cultural difference, saying “One could argue that Steichen follows Parsons in promoting the patriarchal bourgeois nuclear family as the norm and standard against which other arrangements are measured.” And “the exhibit invokes nature over culture, thus diminishing, if not erasing, pronounced differences due to culture and history, and thus also naturalizing and sentimentalising the institution of family”[6].   I think this is worth considering whether you’re thinking in micro or macro terms.

Unconscious Optics

I was absolutely fascinated to read about unconscious optics.   Our perception of life, of people, of ourselves are all filtered and mediated through unconscious optics.  I don’t think this was news to me but the level of exploration and the introduction of Lacan’s mirror stage certainly triggered lots of thoughts.  I have always been fascinated by varying cultures and about how people from different parts of the world relate to the word.  I find it extraordinarily interesting for instance, that a tribe in South America (frustratingly I don’t have access to the documentary so have no way of giving any further details) make beer out of saliva.  To us in the West this seems incredible and I have to admit as I watched it I felt revulsion as I saw people drink the frothy fermented liquid.  These differences in culture are so deeply and firmly held that it makes a bit of a nonsense of the Family of Man’s promotion; where we are all ‘naturialized’ in accordance with a Western patriarchal bourgeois model.  The chapter on unconscious optics looks at how we ‘see’ through our cultural and historical screens, and how we have very little control over that since we don’t really have access to our unconscious minds where the foundations for this screens stem from. 

The term ‘unconscious optics’ comes from Walter Benjamin, and Hirsh uses it throughout the book and in particular in relation to Lacan’s notion of the gaze, or look.  I wrote about this earlier on this blog so won’t go into much here but the idea of a looking and seeing, reflecting and being seen all being intrinsically related and caught up in how we build our realities is incredibly interesting for me.  Hirsh goes on to say that the ‘family as a social construct depends on the invisibly of its structuring elements.  Inasmuch as visuality functions as a structuring element determined by the familial gaze, its workings must to some degree remain unconscious”.[7]

This fed into my thoughts about how I would approach A5 and what I hoped to get out of it.  Photography, however seems to have the capability and potential to both perpetuate the myth of the family romance and expose some of its invisible structures – perhaps even do both concurrently. 

Walter Benjamin, who Hirsh quotes, discusses Edward Mybridges series of horses running:

“Evidently a different nature opens itself up to the camera than opens to the naked eye – if only because an unconsciously penetrated space is substituted for a space consciously explored by man.  Even if one has general knowledge of the way people walk, one knows nothing of a person’s posture during the fractional second of a stride… Here the camera intervenes with the resources of its lowerings and liftings, its interruptions and isolations, its extensions and accelerations, its enlargements and reductions.”

We as a culture, when putting together family albums at any rate opt for feeding into the myths, the romance.  The details of everyday life, the quotidian mundaneness is not typically focused on.  But what I found in my own project is that emerges regardless, and even when it is, the mythology is very difficult to quash.  So, my photographic interventions may have revealed some of the structural relationships within our family or perhaps exposed some of the tensions, but my edit nevertheless feeds into the notion of a family romance, albeit a more than slightly tense one. 

Post Memory

Hirsh describes post memory as one of the most important or influential unconscious screens or optics.  By this she is referring to the history of a family, not only theirs but also of the family’s community.  I was very interested in this aspect especially since Hirsh’s Jewish family was from Romania, and like so many during WW2, relatives she never knew were deported or killed.  Whole communities wiped out.  The legacy of this history continues to inform generations since and I certainly relate to this as my own family, as I have mentioned in previous blog posts, were from Czechoslovakia.  My father’s father, as far as I am aware, was one of very few Fried’s to have escaped the Final Solution, having left for England before the war began.

I touch on post memory briefly here because it seemed like an incredibly important aspect of the book, and of how we see in general, plus how families see  - both as individuals within the family plus as a group looking inwards and out.  The sense of persecution, guilt, and pain, deeply held horror that exists within families who have a history linked to the Holocaust is immensely powerful and influential.  I am reminded of the book about Diane Arbus and a quote I used when writing about it –

“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'"[8].  

Everything that I have written about here, all that has resonated with me seems to be at least in part due to the post-memory of my own family.  Not only the Holocaust connection but also the Victorian ethic that pervaded my mother’s upbringing.

I remembered the following quote for years although could not recall where I had read it until I picked up The Magus recently to reread. 

“”I was born in 1927, the only child of middle-class parents, both English, and themselves born in the grotesquely elongated shadow, which never rose sufficiently above history to leave, of that monstrous dwarf Queen Victoria.”[9]

The post memory in our family that pertains to that ‘monstrous dwarf’ resonates today and I have long been aware of it, especially in relation to the family mythology (as opposed to family romance – by mythology I refer to the stories within a family that get told again and again over the years) which I have listened to since yearly childhood.  For instance I was told repeatedly about how my mother was punished and shamed for undressing her doll in front of boys at an early birthday party, or how she undressed herself at boarding school and stood on the window ledge for passers by to see (mostly boys I am led to understand).  These stories feed into our perception of ourselves, our families and how we see; looking inwardly and outwardly. In other words, family mythology and post memory are integral parts of those unconscious optics.

Mothers and photography

The final aspect to the book (and I have in no way covered everything), which I found useful in terms of A5 at any rate, is the chapter about mothers and mother photographers.  Lacan’s gaze is important here because of the idea that a child’s development is dependent on a loving gaze from their primary carer, which in most cases tends to be the mother. 

The role of the mother in mammalian development has long been understood to be critical for healthy, well-adjusted, functioning mammals.  John Bowlby’s attachment theory was hugely influential and for instance led to a change in the way children are hospitalized, so that care is taken to keep consistent and regular contact with parents, and in cases of very young children, constant during a child’s stay. 

Although only one aspect of the symbiotic relationship between mother a child, the gaze between these two, and other members of the family informs and influences the way in which a child develops.  In Sarah Blaffer Hrdy’s book, Mothers & Others[10], there is a diagram indicating just how much of a human’s brain is given over to communicating, seeing, looking understanding, receiving and giving information – and although the eyes are by no mean the only part of this process, seeing, looking and being seen are integral. (The question of blindness brings up many questions when thinking about Lacan’s theories and I can only say at this point that the subject is so complex I can’t quite get my heard around it for now, however, I wanted to flag it up that I am aware of it!)  (You can see the full article inlcuding the diagram I mention here - page 75) . 

Hirsh looks at how there has been criticism of mothers who photograph their children and amongst others she focuses on Sally Mann whose Immediate Family is so well known, and which generated such a strong response, both positive and negative.  She discusses how the looking that goes on between a mother and her children, looking that is essential to a developing sense of self, is said to be disrupted when eyes are replaced by a camera, changing the mother’s organic eye into a machine.  And therefore replacing the process of looking with a “gaze”.  As I have seen and understood it the word gaze is pejorative; it is power based and I have noticed often used to describe the activity of male artists creating female nudes over the centuries.  Hirsh doesn’t fully accept the negative ramifications of turning a mother’s look into a gaze and explores various positions surrounding what feels to me enormously difficult and contentious. 

“Mann’s children can see in her photographs the operation of the gaze; they can see how the maternal look can be displaced by a maternal gaze.  The images show them how culture sees children, what fears and fantasies structure childhood and therefore structures them”.  She also goes on to say that Mann’s children ”demonstrate some control over the perpetuation of their images… they can manipulate the images through their own play with costume and make-up; they can mimic and thus play with the childhood into which the maternal gaze – even if it is seen as disembodied, monstrous, phallic and devitalizing  - has fixed on them”.[11]

Mann argues that “Photographing them in those quirky, often emotionally charged moments has helped me to acknowledge and resolve some of the inherent contradictions between the image of motherhood and reality”.[12]

The difference between reality and pre-conceptions of what that reality ought to be is what interests me mostly.  It ties in with the opening paragraphs of this (rather long!) blog entry-

“At the end of the twentieth century, the family photograph, widely available as a medium of family self-presentation in many cultures and subcultures, can reduce the strains of family life by sustaining an imaginary cohesion, even as it exacerbates them by creating images real families cannot uphold”[13].

I think Mann in this instance has perhaps turned that on it’s head by taking photographs that defy the usual self-presentations, challenges the status quo and instead deals with a different reality, one that links to our very real and in some cases justified fears about childhood and sexuality, as well as fantasy, play, and the idea of children being separate from real humanity.

Conclusion 

Before I end I will briefly say that Hirsh covers a great deal about the Holocaust and I am a bit lost with some or much of it – although I find myself drawn to these chapters due to my own family links I feel I will need to revisit those chapters when I have understood and digested bit more about the role of photography and linking us to our histories.

Overall, the book has deepened my understanding of what photography might be, carrying on from my reading of Barthes and then James Elkin.  Hirsh does adumbrate some of Barthes theories, which is always useful.  It must all be very much on my mind though because last night I dreamt a photograph of mine was hanging in a restaurant.  In it there were trees, a stream and a group of children, some of whom I think were mine.  And every time I looked at the photograph I noticed the children come to life and start playing.  When I looked away they stopped.  They couldn’t leave the photograph, they were tiny but they were real - although real in another reality and one that I could not actually climb into.  And that is what I think I have learned about photography – the illusion of reality is immensely powerful even though it can never be real.  The photograph is nothing more than a flat representation of a version of reality at one particular moment in time, made up of dots on a screen or pigment on paper.  And that is all it will ever be.  But our brains expect a photograph to be real because it looks real, and so our brain does what it can to make it seem real.  Editing, in the case of a series of photographs, adds to the illusion.  This makes photography an extremely powerful tool for advertisers and makers of propaganda the world over.

---

[1] Page 9 Family Frames

[2] Our Babies Ourselves Meredith F Small page 54 Anchor Books 1998 *I would argue that within our present cultural paradigm women are expected to make a choice about whether or no they want to exist on the on the periphery with their children or else abandon the caregiving role of mothering in order to be at work.  Although this is changing with more sustainable maternity laws, and in some countries for both parents.

[3] Page 51 Family Frames

[4] Page 51 Family Frames

[5] Page 52 Family of Man

[6] Talcott Parsons – Structural Functionalism

[7] Page 117 Family Frames

[8] Diane Arbus: A Biography By Patricia Bosworth, Open Road - Integrated Media, Published 1984, Kindle Edition 2012

[9] Page 15, The Magus by John Fowles, Kindle Edition, Vintage, New Edition 2004, First published 1965.

[10] Page 40, Mothers and Others, Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, Belknap Harvard, 2009

[11] Page 159 & 160 Family Frames

[12] Page 161 Family Frames (Sally Mann quoted)

[13] Page 9 Family Frames

Reading photographic images

I meant to mention the following in my post about Keith Carter;

'Over the years I tried to establish a sense of implied narrative in my photographs, hoping the viewers might find their connections."

Keith Carter, Fireflies

This seems a profoundly important sentence to me.  It is only really since beginning this course that I have begun to think more deeply about narrative in photography. Andrew Conroy mentioned in the feedback for A2 that I should read Camera Lucida, where the notion of individuals finding what matters to them or bringing their own interpretation to the work when they look at photography is explored.

I had certainly considered that people see different things in film and theatre.  But I don't think I had thought much about narrative in a photograph or a set of photographs.  For some reason it was only after reading about the Diane Arbus image of the family on the lawn where a couple are lying down on sun-beds and a child is playing in the background that I really began to see there was much more to this photography lark than pretty pictures - that statement seems ludicrous to me now, by the way.

Of course, when we look at anything, film, theatre, any form of art we bring our own history to it. And our own way of seeing.  So for instance,  when I saw How to Train Your Dragon (most of my film references will be about those aimed at children nowadays) I was gobsmacked and appalled by what I saw as a blatant allegorical bit of propaganda indicating that the US is a kind and benevolent, rightfully powerful force that will overcome any ideology that threatens and opposes it and turn the perpetrators into a cute but benign group of pets, because they, the US,  are obviously not monsters. My friend thought I was insane. Maybe I am.  Or maybe I'm quite good at interpreting things, at making observations about what is going on beneath the surface.  Or maybe I just bring my own sense of the world to everything I see and my sense is that the US would like kids to grow up thinking of it in the way I described.  The point is I brought my own interpretation to the film which in essence was just a kids story about some dragons and a bunch of people with bizarrely oversized-eyes (although I'm still utterly convinced it was a painfully obvious bit of propaganda the same way all those films like The Blob in the 50s were so much about the cold war).  Thankfully a lot of art has plenty of scope for an individual interpretation - giving viewers the opportunity to take away what ever they need or want from it.  I like that about art.

The thing I am still unsure about is how self-aware the makers of such films or any art are.    I've always wondered this.    From the time we started analysing books in English at school, and the plays at college and university, and now the photographs I look at constantly I have wondered  - was the author of this aware of all this?  I guess it depends and varies from artist to artist and project to project.  We are taught here to read, make observations, develop analytical thought and I do enjoy that although I clearly know my take on something will be different to another persons, and sometimes very different indeed.  (I think about this and it further informs my burgeoning understanding which has developed over the last two years that people really do exist in very different realities - how opposing realities play out is something I am deeply interested in.)

I think about my own fairly inexperienced process and see that when the results are most creative and satisfyingly expressive it is usually when I allowed myself to reach something intuitively rather than intellectually.  That's quite difficult for me.  Finding the balance between planning and thinking things through beforehand and then allowing enough space once all the components are in place to find something rather than impose any fixed ideas seems to be critical, but tricky.   I suppose I do start with some idea of where/what I might like to head for.  I then hopefully surprise myself and find a great deal more - if I'm working as I ought to be.

Keith Carter says he tries to provide a sense of implied narrative so that people might find their own connections - I like that.  He does not spoon-feed and he leaves plenty of space for the viewer to find something.  That's the thing to aim for, I think.

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.

Some reflection on where my photography might be going... ???

I realise I have not written much or perhaps even anything under the heading of reflection on this learning blog during assignment 2.  This is not because I have not been reflecting:  I have been but rather than witter on as I usually do I have needed and wanted to allow my thoughts to swim around in the cluttered place that is my mind for a little while if that makes any sense whatsoever.  


I have in the past spent quite a lot of my time looking at photographs by other photographers on Flickr and sharing some of mine there too, although not as much as I used to.  Now I also read and look at books and sites about other photographers which is of course a very good thing.  Nevertheless I have found Flickr educational and enjoyable, and during a stressful time last year distracting, perhaps even therapeutic.  (For anyone who isn’t aware Flickr is a community of people at all stages of their photography education, and from any different style and genre you can think of.)

One of the ways Flickrites identify themselves and their work is by joining different groups. Recently I was invited by someone whose work I have followed, commented on and liked for about a year and half now. William Keckler, a poet and arty kinda guy, invited me to join a group he set up called I was Alive Today.  I have to admit I was pretty flattered to find myself associated with these tricky and rather ‘edgy’ on screen photographers (shallow of me perhaps??).  But what was more satisfying was that I also became aware of photographers whose work I hadn’t stumbled upon before, some of it incredibly interesting indeed.  (I might add that William Keckler has generously also pointed me in the direction of websites and photographers that I really should know about, so thank you!)

This is how I came across Bill Dane, amongst others. I didn’t know who Bill Dane is – this is not surprising and says more about me than Bill Dane! I don’t really know very much to be honest and find myself learning now in the same way I do everything - in snatched, brief, hiccups of activity in between the never ending task of loading and unloading the dishwasher, shovelling sheets that have been on our beds for too long into the washing machine, making sandwiches for school lunches and changing dirty nappies.

I was pretty thrilled then and surprised when the other day Bill Dane invited little me to join a group he started on Flickr.  Not to begin with, because remember, I didn’t know who he was but when I read some of the commentary another group member had added there I realised his background is impressive in it’s own right,  and this super accomplished artist has worked with Diane Arbus, Garry Winogrand and Lee Friedlander too amongst others. I have to admit that they are all names that have only begun to settle into my consciousness over the last two or three years.  I am sometimes overwhelmed by how very much there is to learn - in amongst the dirty laundry I must deal with daily.  But now I have another name to add to the list – as well as beginning to understand what informs his way of working and broadening my appreciation of what's out there.

Bill Dane has been taking photographs since the early 60s and has collated an enormous body of work all of which he makes available to everyone now online at his site billdane.com. Up until 2007 he chose to make postcards and sent them to a mailing list of people, which he did in an exercise of democratisation and de-sanctification of art.   By sending the postcards out he made his art available in a way that art isn’t usually; he demands no hushed reverence in a stuffy art gallery for people who might want to appreciate the way he sees and renders his world for us. He has though had plenty of shows and one of his first I think was at MoMA (Museum of Modern Art, New York).  I thought his approach was really interesting especially after reading the argument for removing Rothko from the Tate Modern for being too populist a location by Jonathan Jones in The Guardian the other day, which I re-tweeted. (Listen to me; I was one of the last few people in the world who insisted tweeting was something only birds did until roughly two weeks ago!  But ‘branding my online presence' for commercial purposes was something I read about recently, so signed up and will discuss here a little further down.)

The point about Jonathon Jones’ argument and Bill Dane’s approach to his art is that I suspect there is more than enough space in this world for both those philosophies. Hushed reverence as well democratic sharing.  What both these positions bring up for me though is a question about elitism and art.  Photography is a tricky art form (as is Rothko's work) – and I think possibly one of the most difficult to understand and appreciate hence the continuing rhetorical question, is photography art?  This potentially makes it inherently elitist because in some or many examples there needs to be at least a basic level of education to appreciate it in any meaningful way unless the viewer is one of those lucky human beings who simply responds instinctively in an unadulterated way to life.  I’m not one of those people, and have found that as my own immersion into this photography world I am discovering continues, I can begin to appreciate work I look at more and more deeply, but feel there is great distance yet to travel before I will really begin to get to grips with some of the work out I'm interested in.  There is of course some work, which is instantly impactful in a way that is accessible for most of us and some which is harder to tackle.  I think Bill Dane’s work falls into the more difficult category along with work by Lee Friedlander and Diane Arbus (who is fast becoming a hero of mine).  There is a level of sophistication to this work which makes it difficult to understand.  And so the democratic way in which Bill Dane shares his work and always has done is countered by the very nature of the work.  But I like that he refuses to patronise anyone – it appeals to something in me.

The point about me feeling flattered and excited that I was invited to join the group is that I have no idea where I’m going as a photographer and feel daunted sometimes by the endless amount still to learn about every aspect of it, but it was a bit of nice external validation even if I was only invited because I happen to like, comment and copy some other people’s pretty cool work on Flickr – work that, to quote the Bill Dane Flickr group's headline, is ‘edgy and poignant’.  I have not added anything to the group and I am a little tentative about doing so to be honest, but perhaps in time the confidence to do so will come. 

As far as my own photography is going: I had a little hiatus in April ‘work’ wise.  I say work in speech marks because work is something that makes you a living I think and I am far from that point just yet.  Hang on, I work really hard at the job of being a mum and that is unpaid altogether (although there may be someone who disagrees!) so maybe the meaning of work is rather ambiguous in relation to my photography, and is difficult to define for now.  

Nevertheless I am driven by the need to reach a point where I am making a living of some description in the future if at all possible because I have three children, and the complications of post-divorce fiscal responsibility loom large in my life.  So I take risks which may seem tiny to some but are huge to me putting myself and the ‘work’ I do out there in order to try and generate some kind of career path that I might follow.  Having taken a useful albeit worrying and not exactly planned breather in April I was beginning to wonder what the next step would be and how to continue the momentum, building contacts and ultimately getting work that pays.  I stumbled across an article which talked about how important it is to build an online presence in today’s world, and that that doesn’t entail simply popping examples of your work on the internet but requires a conversation with the world about who you are and what you’re doing.  So I started using Twitter to do this and have sort of semi-consciously decided to be upfront about my learning process and interests and see where that takes me.  I also read the actor, Stephen Mangan’s comments, who when asked what one of the most important things he has learnt was, said, ‘the realisation that everybody is just making it up as they go along’.  This made me think, oh, thank goodness, because that is what I have begun to grasp – you have to just make it up as you go along.  I have no idea what I’m doing with the whole thing and am sure I will screw up at times leaving me feeling like I have a metaphorical train of loo roll hanging from my metaphorical knickers as I stride across the internet dance floor but so be it.  It seems to be working though because I posted something online and received over 50 responses which was pretty exciting given that I often feel like I’m posting things just for the benefit of my mum – who dutifully likes pretty much everything I chuck up there!  Thanks, mum!

Right - that's enough photography for now.  I'm off to tackle the laundry basket although no doubt will be thinking about photographing people at an event and the technical requirements I need to consider in order to ensure I get it done as best I can.


Links:
William Keckler
Bill Dane
Diane Arbus
Garry Winogrand
Lee Freidlander



.

Do I know why I have started this course?

My children 

  

Blog No. 2

It has a been a week since my first blog and I have been thinking a great deal about what I hope to get out of this course, prompted I’m sure, by a growing sense of panic about HOW and a WHY?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I want to take better pictures. 

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

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

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