Just some rambling

I have been thinking a lot about 'style' recently.  Mine is still all over the place but I am beginning to have an opinion about my photographs which I don't think I had before.  For instance, I look at some and think "Uuugh!  Over processed rubbish" even if there has been a fairly positive response on Flickr and then look at others and think "OK, I'm OK with that" even if it doesn't get much response.

I have this incredibly ambivalent relationship with Flickr - deleting my stream one minute, starting it up again, hating the whole thing, finding it enjoyable and fun and feeling compelled to keep posting for some crazy 21st century reason.  But what is really useful about it is that I put photos up there and then see it through different eyes.  It's a very helpful thing to be able to do at the moment.

Anyway, I am trying hard to get the exposure spot on and keep things as simple as possible for A4. It's a departure from A3 & A2 for me -  but simplicity, integrity and absolute honesty are what I'm after in these images - I'll talk about it more in the intro when I'm done and submitting it.

I am so glad I read James Elkin's book.  At the time when I was finished with it I was so appalled by the violence in the images at the end that I basically accused the man (whom I've never met!) of being a narcissist - I must have got a bit carried away. But the book really upset me  - however, it it has stayed with me and I think a lot about all that is discussed within.  I think it has had a profound effect on me really.  I'm not 'there' with my images; by there I mean at a place that I am happy to be stylistically.  But I posted something a moment ago which I was pretty sure I didn't like - and yes, as soon as I posted it I could confirm in my mind it was not the sort of image I want to be producing.  I do however, think the work I'm aiming for with A4 is heading in that direction - well it is for the moment anyway.

James Elkin What Photography Is

I read this book because someone I follow on Flickr wrote a review about the book when it first came out in response to some comments Elkin made about images on Flickr, which are, it has to be said a little more than condemnatory.  The writer of the article felt the comments were elitist, based in ignorance and displayed a total failure to look beyond the ‘kitschy and tedious images[1]’ that Elkin bemoans.  Having not read the book I felt myself jumping on the Flickr guy’s bandwagon of rage aimed at Elkin, and without thinking joined his Flickr group – “Bollocks to James Elkins”.   After thinking about it later I realized I’d reactively joined his group before bothering to make up my own mind,  based on the accusation of elitism which I too find difficult to stomach.

So I downloaded What Photography Is.  I’ll respond to the Flickr criticism later and probably rather briefly as that is hardly the point of the book, and within the context of the whole is a little insignificant, or at any rate only a tiny part of something else that is going on.  At any rate it’s not worth getting upset about.  In all honesty, what he says is undoubtedly true, but there are so many other factors to consider that it becomes only a slither of the truth  - anyhow, more later.

The book is written as a response to Roland Barthes’ Camera Lucida.  I had no idea about this as I downloaded it and was pleased once I realised having just read that other difficult and at times impenetrable book.   I discuss that here in an earlier blog.   (Another serendipitous moment on my little TAOP amble.)  However, a phrase Andrew (tutor) used – ‘basking in the glory of Barthes’ did keep popping into my head and I so tried to remain cautious as I read.

Elkin describes his book as speaking directly to Camera Lucida, and I do hope that reading it has given me a deeper understanding of the older one.    Crucially for me, in relation to Barthes, the notion of photography being about death, being literally a picture of death into which we stare every time we look at a photograph – ‘the feeling of that-has-been, it-has-taken-place, they-were-there, he-stood-there, he-is-going-to-die are sunk at the bottom of photography’[2] is questioned and rejected by later academics and certainly not considered the be all and end of all of photographic philosophy. Readers like me who are still finding their way with this theory stuff tend to believe everything we read.  Elkin continues, “all the writing toward death can be understood, I think, as a brilliant self-deception, in a way of avoiding thinking about what photography ‘itself’ continues to show us.”[3]  Elkin very clearly shows us by the end of the book what he thinks photography is, although perhaps you could and should replace the word ‘photography’ for ‘life’.

Elkin looks at Barthes’ ‘punctum’.

‘…what might be worse than the possibility that photographs “prick” us, that they harbour an “optical unconscious,”  that they point uncomfortably at the viewers own death? 

In a word:  that they might be boring. Or apparently meaningless.”[4]  

There are several references in the book that suggest that much of photography, including fine art photography might after all be dull, disappointing and uninteresting.  He suggests that actually all we see in a photograph is that life is intrinsically dull and uninteresting and no matter how much we wish to imbue photography with something interesting about ourselves we are left with this sense that that is not the case.[5]  

What’s most important for me here is not that I can't help wondering if Elkin in rather fearful he might be boring, but that by reading What Photography Is and being made to think and question Barthes’ work I am reminded to question Elkin's work.

As I hinted earlier I’m not actually sure that this book is about photography at all, and neither is Elkin.  “So how can this book be about photography in general?  Perhaps in the end it isn’t.” [6]  Just as Camera Lucida is about so much more than photography.  And this little review too has references to parts of my life that have nothing to do with the book or photography.

Elkin starts by examining a photograph of a selenite window – a pre-glass window that is difficult to see through, then ice and then salt – ‘Through a selenite window, a sharp bright day will appear fractured and broken; in lake ice, everything beyond the surface sinks into night; in rock salt, the photography is just a reminder that something cannot be seen’[7]. 

Then he examines in quite some detail photographs of rocks as well as some re-photography (photos taken of exact places from the same position after a long period of time – 100 years for instance).  Following that he looks at microscopic photographs of amoebas that he has taken himself with his own equipment.  Then he looks at photographs of the atom bomb being tested – not the famous iconographic mushroom image, but ones taken seconds earlier as the bomb starts its explosion.  Finally, and most distressing of all by a very long way, he looks at photographs of extreme physical torture – images of a man being sliced up alive in a brutal and chilling execution surrounded by complicit spectators and of course a photographer who documents the execution with a significant number of frames.  I must stress that I could not look at these photographs and swiped through them as fast as possible.  The tiny glimpses I had were more than enough, in fact too much; but it meant not reading his words either for those pages in which he describes in minute detail what is occurring in the images.  If he says anything else I missed it.  I kept wondering why there was no facility to avoid the photos altogether especially considering the fact that I was reading on a Kindle.  However, I am aware that I could have made the choice to stop reading at any point before the photos appeared.   Saying that, I don’t think I actually believed he was going to include them when reading the preamble before the images began to appear.  But then that’s admitting I hadn’t quite got the measure of Elkin up to that point despite all the signals – you live and you learn but very, very slowly, the saying should be.  

For me this obsession with the horrors of existence is all about Elkin and his relationship with the world.  All about his particular pathology, which he freely admits.[8]  And now as I write I continue to wonder how this ties in with photography.  Except of course I have come away with an extremely clear understanding that photography can be a shockingly powerful medium and in many ways potentially more powerful than painting or drawing for instance in showing us extremely detailed aspects of what it is to be. 

You don’t begin to get any idea of the horror of the torture inflicted on people when looking at drawings, prints and paintings of people being hanged, drawn and quartered in the same way you do when seeing the images of ‘death by a thousand cuts’ at the end of What Photography Is.  If I think of Heironymus Bosch’s work, which explores the gruesome side of humanity so grotesquely I also see that those paintings are nevertheless appealing to us in some way.  Bosch’s vision which is nightmarish in the extreme is also exhilarating, mysterious and beautiful  (although perhaps not to his contemporaries, I don’t know about that).  The photographs at the end of Elkins book are so awful and horrific that it’s difficult to find any reason for them to continue to exist except that they must as a testament to how very low human beings are capable of sinking.  What is even more horrifying is that there were a group of French collectors of this material and this fascination for extreme violence amongst humans is difficult to contemplate - although tales of Internet voyeurism into sadistic horror spring to mind, not to mention the reported high number of views the recent spate of beheadings by ISIS have had, so of course it continues.

By focusing on the collection of photographs prior to the final set – all without people and scenes, Elkin strips away the ‘ecstasy, the sublime, the punctum, memory, history, race, gender, identity, death, nostalgia[9]’ as much as he can to get to the bottom of what photography is – if indeed that is what he is exploring here.  The ‘perverse’ (his word) finale leads us to his notion of the core of something – either photography or what it is to be human.  Or both.

For James Elkin, photography’s most precious use is not about families or prettiness or cleverness or ‘kitsch’ – a word or derivatives thereof he uses throughout the book in relation to a wide variety of work.  It is about its power to show us reality – although he claims we do not see that reality – ‘the photograph itself is scarcely being seen’.[10] We avoid seeing it, choosing instead to see what we want to see.  Unless, I guess the point is, the subject is so extreme as in the case of the execution that we cannot help but see it – and I literally avoided seeing those by sweeping right past them as fast as I could.  The fact that he was able to sit and study them, despite his reported feelings of revulsion is something to think about very carefully - how much does it take to make James Elkins feel alive? Photography, like the selenite window, the ancient lake ice and salt also obscures what there is to be seen, says Elkin.  We have chosen to obscure it? As prolific users of that medium who frame, expose, and realise photography in a certain way.  Perhaps.

In this book, through structure and plot; through his obsessive studies of rocks which evoke the deafening sound of eternity stretching out either side of the 100 or so years between photograph and re-photograph; to the molecular violence and lack of humanity, monstrous beings that devour one another as only a selfish gene can; to the nightmarish and detailed pictures of explosions that are devastatingly destructive and ‘godlike’; and ending with the horrific images of torture that are so upsetting and removed from the life we in West like to think we live now, Elkin describes his view of  photography, of existence, of life.  He shows us a brutal and violent nightmarish Darwinian struggle and he uses the excuse of photography to do so.

The whole time I was reading What Photography Is I had to hold in mind that I have an unhealthy habit of being drawn in by such provocative types, a type I recognised very early on despite my previous statement that I hadn’t quite got the measure of him (I’m so predictable to myself), and Elkin’s book is a gargantuan ‘intellectually superior’ provocation from start to finish.  That is why it is pointless to become riled by his dismissal of Flickr or fine art or Sally Mann or Andreas Gursky or Thomas Ruff or any of the other big names he brazenly sweeps aside, along with every ‘people’ orientated photograph ever taken, never forget.  That part of his essay is an affectation, although one that in the end does serve a purpose.  This sort of intellectually superior thought process can and often does come from a place of extreme cleverness – but you are made to work rather hard to sift through the verbal dexterity to try and get to grips with what is actually being said.  It also comes from a place of deep and searing pain.  And it’s that pain that we see discussed again and again and again throughout the book.  Life is searing and painful, life is horrific, life is about being devoured and/or destroyed or about devouring, and destroying. 

I’m glad I read the book.  I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone due to the shocking images at the end and I wouldn’t want to be responsible for imposing those or other aspects of the book on another person.  I’m not sure it is necessary to read it to get to the bottom of what photography is because I don’t believe it is possible to do so.  And there must be plenty of less painful and terrible books to read (I don’t mean the book is terrible – I mean the pain within it).  Photography is many different things to a wide variety of people and situations.  It’s a fascinating invention, developed at a fascinating time and what we humans are doing with it now, frantically, obsessively, inanely and gratuitously photographing every moment of our lives and sharing it across the Internet is extraordinary.  It’s almost as if we’ve been programmed to record all aspects of life on earth for prosperity before it all comes to an end

Ultimately I don’t think I can say Bollocks to James Elkin, although there is still a part of me that wants to.  The art world and especially the New York art world are notoriously elitist.  He is part of it and yet has pilloried much of it in his book in order to get to the bottom of something, life or photography, his own sense of what existence is, whichever you will, and that takes a certain degree of chutzpah, arrogance and dare I say it, a degree of narcissism.  Whatever  - I can’t help feeling that it is worth trying to work through or work out some of what he is saying – difficult as that may be.

All references taken from What Photography Is, James Elkin, Kindle Edition, Routledge, First published 2011

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[1] 77% Loc 2240

[2] 95% Loc 2771

[3] 96% Loc 2779

[4] 97% Loc 2829

[5] 97% Loc 2830

[6] 94% Loc 2726

[7] 21% Loc 591

[8] 94% Loc 2723

[9] 48% Loc 1369

[10] 94% Loc 2739

Two things and some other stuff (Chris Friel, Jame's Elkin and Camera Lucida)

Anyone who dismisses Flickr is bonkers. I've read of people (tutors and students) saying it's mostly derivative and no-one bothers with it anymore.  Well, I find that not to be the case and have come across some incredibly talented people there.  I have been following Chris Friel whose work I think is extraordinarily powerful.  It's like he is making images that go straight to the unconscious part of ourselves, dreams and memories from all of history, not just one's own - I remember reading that it was now known that we carry memory in our genetic makeup which made perfect sense to me.  I also think that this long historical memory is part of a collective consciousness and Chris Friel's images for me explore some or much of that.  Last night he followed me back and sent me a link to all the people he is influenced by.  I would never have had this opportunity otherwise, so thanks to Flickr for providing it.

I will write an entry of Friel's work another time when I have thought a little more about it. 

In the meantime, I am also enjoying James Elkin's book, What Photography Is far more than I thought I would.  When I have finished it I shall of course write about it here; but yet again this is something I discovered on Flickr.  Although only because he was being accused of elitism by another person on the site.  I should think he is extremely elitist but reading through the book he dismisses practically every photographer and every genre, for some purpose which I'll discuss later, but also to be provocative so I can't see the point in getting upset by him.  It's a very useful book to be reading so soon after reading Camera Lucida.

Finally, before I go - I am feeling frustrated and torn between two different and seemingly opposing routes.  I desperately want to continue heading in the direction I've been going and feel frustrated I'm not there (which is of course daft because where on earth is there? At the end of the rainbow no doubt!) but am also pulled towards something that seems virtually impossible anyway, so why am I even thinking about it when the blurry arty stuff beckons?  Maybe because it is a possible route to earning something out of this venture.  I am a little envious of photographers who are photographing issues and people to tell stories that need telling.  I have been looking at some incredible work tonight and in the last few weeks by photographers and think that would be amazing to do.  Far away though - as I have children who need me here.  Maybe that's why I look at these people and think about it - a fantasy!  Perhaps there may be a way to pursue such photography in a few years locally by which I mean the UK - there are after all plenty of issues here that need looking at.  I'm not even sure as I write that  that sort of photography is what I would want to do - perhaps I just feel I ought to.  Something to think about in the months to come.

For now I do feel like I'm sliding about all over the place on legs that don't quite work in shoes that don't quite fit as I try to figure out where it is I'm aiming for.  Or what is it.  Of why I'm even doing it!

James Elkin's "What Photography Is"

So, after reading about Jame's Elkin's reported dismissal of Flickr as "kitschy" and "tedious" I thought I at least ought to read it myself so downloaded and have read the first few sections (Elkin has structured his book in the same way as Barthes' with short numbered sections, some of which are very short indeed) .  I'm so glad I did download it, and sorry, Susan Sontag, I shall be putting you on hold while I get on with Elkin's book as it is written to fit very neatly, almost with pages from each inter-leaved into each-other, with Barthes' Camera Lucida.  The book is an updated response to Barthes' and within the first chapter he has described the original so accurately that I am compelled to keep going especially having read Camera Lucida over the summer just a few weeks ago. 
"Like it's author, who had lost his mother, Camera Lucida is unstable: on one page it lectures, and then suddenly it becomes a rhapsody or a soliloquy: at one point it is lucid, and then instantly nearly incomprehensible; in another place it is gentle and calm, then almost demented with sadness."1   
Ha! -  he could be describing me as well as Camera Lucida: at least I do hope I am at times lucid and gentle.  But more importantly this is for me a wonderful description of the book.
My first impressions are that Elkin's book is extremely well written and with a gentleness that surprised me given that he is accused by Micheal Szpakowski of a "magisterial denunciation delivered in a scornful tone not unlike Humpty Dumpty’s: 'Nothing is more amazing than Flickr for the first half hour, then nothing is more tedious' and '..each group puts its favoured technology to the most kitschy imaginable uses'."2  I've not got to this part yet and look forward to making my own mind up.  I liked Micheal's writing and a review of an art show he posted previously seemed to  me well written with bravery and a refreshing honesty that I enjoyed.  I  also hate elitism of any sort so all in all it will be interesting to read this book which I have found compelling so far.  Now, if only I could find there the kids have put my Kindle so I can stop reading it on my tiny phone.


1. What Photography Is, James Elkin, Kindle Edition Routledge 2011

2. Michael Szpakowski's review

Feeling contained

As I mentioned in my last blog the sense of being horribly exposed was beginning to really get to me and I thought quite hard about whether or not to make this blog private or not. I know we are encouraged not to do so in some advice when we first sign up.  And I was reluctant because I do enjoy sharing my work.  But there is very little sense of being contained on this OCA course, for me at any rate, and since what we are meant to be doing here is learning and exploring I think it's important to feel that one is protected in some way.  I am more than happy to share my blog with fellow students that are interested and have said so in a FB group.  And if I were able to mitigate the feeling of dangling, precariously, without any protection or something to hold on to and still be able to explore, take risks and head off in new directions then I would probably change it back to a public blog.

The work I have just submitted feels incredibly risky and dangerous to me.  Maybe it isn't though.  Maybe I'm just massively over-sensitive.  Is it a complete pile of horse manure, have I got it all totally wrong or is there something there that works or has potential - which is what I'm looking for at the moment?

I am not sure how I feel about it all.  I think some of the images may be interesting and evocative in the way that I wanted them to be.  But I would probably ditch some of them too and rearrange what is left - but without feedback I am totally lost about where I would go next.  And the longer I go without any feedback the bigger the vacuum into which hideous doubts and deep concerns flow.  I do feel a little like I bared my soul in a way, albeit perhaps in a manner that lacks experience, and to have done so and then be left wondering whether I've gone completely awry or am at least heading in the right direction feels ... not very nice.  Learning online this way has so many benefits but it also have huge drawbacks.  Feeling horribly separate is one of them and I'm not sure it's addressable.

On another note I have been wondering quite a lot about the Flickr page where I post all sorts of things regularly - perhaps nothing which feels quite as risky as the assignment images I have just submitted although I did post two of them - and not even the ones I feel are most successful, perhaps because I am so incredibly unsure.  Some of what I post are silly little things I take on my phone which I then play about with in Snapseed.  They're nothing.  I don't even think of them as photography but they are lots of fun and I enjoy doing them.  I get good positive feedback for them in some cases.  And I constantly want to say, 'what these???'  Today I realised they are a bit like the Pictorialism photographs I have looked at and read about that were all the vogue towards the end of the 19th century and right up to the 1940s in some cases, as photography struggled to accept itself in it's own right, comparing itself to and emulating painting.  From what I understand Modernism was the next thing in photography and in the end I get the sense that Pictorialism became rather a pejorative word. So it seems strange that these little Snapseed images are relatively well-received by the small but active group of regular Flickrites I am connected to.  I don't even know if I like the ones I post myself and just do it for something to do, because I feel compelled to for some strange reason.  I have of course been influenced by other such images I've seen on Flickr and elsewhere.  Today one of the people I follow, Michael Szpakowski, posted an article he wrote in response to an art critic, James Elkins, who was according to Michael, somewhat derisory in his recent book about Flickr condemning it as 'tedious' and 'kitschy' which indeed it it at times.  (I've not read the book and do feel I ought to before I in turn condemn him for outlandish elitism and snobbery!) I thought it was a very interesting article.  I remember reading on the OCA forum that much of the work on Flickr was derivative  - and I would agree some of it probably is - as is mine; how else is one meant to learn?  But Flickr is also - if you find the right groups and people - a fantastic, democratic and incredibly active, vibrant forum for people who are interested and passionate about making images with or without Photoshop, Snapseed, or whatever other tools modern technology offers.  It seems to me that Pictorialism grew out of a time when the camera was new technology and this second (is it second or merely one subsequent of many) wave of creating photographic images that look like paintings comes at time when we are all trying to find out what to do with this incredibly easy to use technology that keeps coming our way.

Before I go I have also been chatting with student on FB whilst writing this and a private blog is being discouraged - however, until I feel there is some sense of containment coming from somewhere I think I have to have this in place.

A bit more procrastination and some thoughts about children and photography

Pointless

Despite the title of this blog I actually have managed to take some of the photographs required for the early exercises of this course and am collecting them in a file on my computer.  I wonder why I've not popped them up here yet as presumably it doesn't matter if I have to return to them and add and replace as I go. 

Since my first assignment is due on the 24th of this month I'd better get on with it!

As well as procrastinating about the exercises I have also been thinking a great deal about Sally Mann and her work following last week's blog.  And bizarrely one of the people I follow on Flickr uploaded some images by an architect and amateur photographer who published a book in 1923 called The Garden of Adonis which instantly made me think of the photographs by Sally Mann.  In it were children, although probably quite importantly - not his own children, posing in quite similar positions to the ones in Immediate Family.  They were from another time - and the lighting was very different but there was without a doubt in my own mind (perhaps no-one else) a connection:  Victorian photographic methods, dancing children wearing very little, playfulness, a lack of comfort for the 21st century viewer.

I’ve been wondering what, other than relationship, sets these images apart.  Why has one photographer been named the best in America[1]and one consigned to history, forgotten in the main except by people with ‘specialist’ interests –photography or otherwise.  Both books are listed in the UK Government Justice Departments’ Public Protection Manual:  Chapter 11 Inappropriate Materials Guidance as books that are "indicative of a paedophile interest" and are not allowed into prisons.  It’s quite fascinating and I’m not sure what I feel about all of this.  I was quite uncomfortable scanning through the Inappropriate Materials Guidance document – that’s for sure, felt a little paranoid that I was instantly going to pop up on some sort of watch list, but also began to wonder about our relationship with images of children more widely.

There is a great deal of discomfort and nervousness amongst all of us where children and images are concerned. My mother’s albums aren’t exactly littered with naked snaps of me but they do exist; in particular one I remember very clearly is of my brother and I sunburnt to a crisp with white marks where our swimming costumes were, standing in the bath together and smiling broadly at the camera.  I’d post it here but feel somehow that would be wrong.  The 70s was a different era and sunburnt naked children are sort of frowned upon now, certainly for being sunburnt in the first place and then of course for being naked on the Internet.

Yet, such pictures were ubiquitous and developed in chemists all over the world in the 70s and 80s.  Something changed though and although it seems the proliferation of pornography and in particular distressing stories of wildly inappropriate images of young children is the obvious answer, I wonder if the Internet and it’s darker elements are expressions of something that was happening anyway in our collective consciousness rather than the cause of it. 

I seem to remember in the early 90s, a female newsreader being very angry that photos of her young children were not developed or retained because they were naked.  Was this before the Internet became so powerful or afterwards?  I can’t find anything about it but I’m pretty sure it was quite a while ago. 

Today in 2013 seemingly the only acceptable images of naked children are of newborn babies. These babies are often moulded, as they sleep, into peculiar positions that are rather coquettish and sometimes unnatural.  In come cases adults’ hands and arms holding the babies in precarious positions are edited out so the tiny infants appear to be sleeping alone on top of rocking horses or in hammocks for instance.  They often wear nothing but a bow round their tiny unformed skulls.  I’m intrigued by the social psychology behind these images.  And how or if they might relate in any way to the abhorrence we have of nakedness in older children.

I don’t think that unnaturally posed babies are anything new and particular to our society.  I don’t know very much about art history but I am aware that bodies of adults and children were deliberately painted with unrealistic proportions and positions throughout, as discussed briefly in an article about retouching I came across this week - http://www.fastcodesign.com/3025262/a-brief-history-of-retouching.  But I do think that there is something – I don’t understand what – about the images I’ve described that is reflective of us as a society now.  Reflective of our nervousness about children being naked at all, about children in general, and about our role as parents and adults, which is perhaps less authoritative than it’s ever been[2].

I have continued looking at Sally Mann’s photography and to be honest am more comfortable looking at the images of dead rotting corpses than the ones of her family.  Immediate Family was published in the 80s before the Internet flourished and there was a furore then. Was there also an outcry when Oliver Hill published his Garden of Adonis or what about Lewis Carol and his images of clothed young girls, which are so contentious, now looked at through 21^st century eyes[3]?

Children and photographic imagery is I think a very contentious area and brimming with neurosis – justified in part of course but perhaps also related to an increasing unease about childhood.
 
I’ve got so many books about photography to read since starting this course, galleries to visit, photographs to take.  But I think I need to re-read The Invention of Childhood by Hugh Cunningham.  It ends with the sentences, “We certainly wouldn’t want to put our seven year olds up a chimney to clean it.  But children could do these things.  So fixated are we on giving our children a long and happy childhood that we downplay their abilities and their resilience.  To think of children as potential victims in need of protection is a very modern outlook, and it probably does no-one a service”.  This sentiment seems to me to be pertinent somehow.  Of course, abuse or exploitation of any person, no matter his or her age should be addressed and condemned emphatically and wholeheartedly.  But we, our society, (I) are all extraordinarily worried about our children and photographic images and I can’t help feeling we are bordering on the hysterical, if we haven't indeed tipped over. 
 

All something to explore further.   And I still haven't answered my earlier question; what makes one of the people I began this blog about America's best photographer and the other somewhat peculiar and mostly forgotten.

For now I must do some editing and perhaps even upload an image or two, none of which are of my children, for the introductory exercises of this course.  Before I go I'll breifly say the photograph at the top of this blog is called Pointless.  It was a direct, albeit probably unnessessary, response to someone who said he didn't like my photographs because he thought they were pointless.  I was going to write a blog about the point of any photography at all especially when we are inundated daily with so images - but got carried away with the above.  Perhaps something I can think about in the future at some point.

I just wanted to add – I’ve used footnotes, which seems slightly OTT for a blog but I wanted to indicate where concepts or information I allude to originate rather than bang on even more in a blog that is probably already too long.  Perhaps this is something I should discuss at the next tutorial/Skype meeting thing?

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[1] Time Magazine – named “America’s best photographer” 2001

[2] Frank Ferudi – Paranoid Parenting 2008 and Wasted 2009

[3] I’d quite like to read Karoline Leaches book In the Shadow of the Dreamchild which questions long held views about Lewis Carol (Charles Dodgson) and his relationships with young girls.