Further thoughts about using my own family for A5

When I edited this I was surprised to see an additional refection of myself taking a photograph of me in the background, seemingly across the street from where I am.  For me this is a wonderful illustration of what I describe below.  

I have started the book, Family Frames by Marianne Hirsh.  Admittedly I did not get very far; as soon as I start reading anything my eyes start to close, no matter how interesting.  Something to do with having 3 kids running riot round me most of the time, no doubt.  However, the little bit I did read started me thinking.  The book starts with a quote from Camera Lucida and describes the well known photograph Barthes looks at of his mother in the Winter garden and how he searches for the essence of her.

Not all photographs manage to get even close to capturing the essence of someone and Barthes himself struggles to find what he's searching for.  Something about the Winter Garden image simply epitomises his mother for him.  When you look at the plethora of selfies today, I think it would be difficult to suggest that many of those communicate anything essential and precious about their takers - or maybe I'm being horribly judgemental.  I don't think there is anything wrong with selfies per se at all - but the 'pout lip look' is tricky not to find ridiculous.

I'm not sure about capturing the essence of someone.  People's essences are in a constant state of flux. But I do know for sure that photography does seem to capture the essence of a moment, and fix it in whatever state it's eventually rendered, print, jpg, Facebook selfie.

In Gerry Badger's book, The Genius of Photography, photography in its early days was described as a memory trace and I liked that description.  What it records may be something frivolous and unimportant, or it may be more substantial, deeper and meaningful.

I have been thinking for a while about my own relationship with photography; and it is something I mentioned briefly to someone on Flickr the other day.  I seem to use photography at the moment as a means not only of expressing myself, but as a means of communicating with some inner me -the unconscious me that is difficult to hear much of the time.  The cacophony of day to day living means I barely know what day it is - for which I was accused of being indefatigably stupid the other day (I won't say by whom but you can probably hazard a good guess).  And so, it's not always easy to remain mindful and in tune with myself.  Because I take photographs all day every day those 'memory traces' seem to inform me of things that my little soul wants me to be consciously aware of.  Our brains our so powerful but we rarely take notice of everything that is going on around us.  Modern living makes it all but impossible - but when I look at the photographs I have been taking I can see what I was noticing that day, or in any particular moment.  And we notice the things that are on our minds.

So or instance - when I first bought a Seat car, I have to say, I don't think I've ever heard of Seat before really.  But suddenly I noticed there were Seats everywhere.  There is nothing magical in this - it's just the brains way of working.  In the same way, if something is on my mind then I find my photographs are full of imprints of those thoughts, conscious and unconscious;  which is very handy actually.

I do wonder if I'd had access to photography as I use it now, if I would have struggled with anxiety for so many years.  I do believe that anxiety, in my case anyway, was a result of ignoring my inner voice and not listening to what my little soul was trying to tell me during those years.  So photography does me an awful lot of good, it has to be said.

In light of that, I think it will be really interesting to use photography to record my 'memory traces' during my upcoming trip to Italy, and perhaps use the results for A5.

The house in Italy is my mothers.  She and her late husband bought it when they took early retirement and moved out there about 15 years ago.  Sadly, he died suddenly of a heart attack after 5 years. Although my mother would like to sell the house, it is worth not much more than they paid for it due to the sate of the Italian economy, and so we are lucky enough to have somewhere to visit abroad. However, it is not an easy place for me to be.  As I have discussed very briefly in an earlier post, like many mother/daughter relationships, ours has not not always been easy one.  I find the house awkward to be in and histories and relationship structures, not to mention internal landscapes seem to be imprinted on the place in way that is very uncomfortable for me.  Literally.

However, I am a very different person to the one I was last year, certainly the year before and so on. As the work I have done while on this course seems to document a process of grieving, coming to terms with and beginning to get over a divorce, I think it will be fascinating for me to see what my inner voice has to tell me about where we are all now - at that house in Italy which has been quite a significant place for me over the years for one reason or another.

Finally, I am mindful of the fact that Larry Sultan staged many of the images in his work about his parents and I will probably do some of that too; and see what what comes of it.

Lee Freidlander, (self portraits and predatory street photography)

I have been thinking about Lee Freidlander recently and read a little review of a book of his which came out a couple of years ago compiling all his self portraits.  I guess I am interested in this because my A4 is once again turned inwards rather than outwards (I actually do hope that by the time I get to A5 I find a way to look externally!).

I was really struck by the following sentence in Sean O'Hagan's review in The Guardian:

"One of his most famous photographs is of his own shadow falling on the back of a blonde woman in a fur coat, an image that says much about the often predatory nature of street photography.  It is, I guess,  a self portrait of a kind, albeit a metaphorical one."

I also read in Gerry Badger's The Genius of Photography "the wanderer with an unseen camera, a stalker and a hunter after images, not of exalted images but everyday life in the modern metropolis" referring to early street photographers.

Both these sentences suggest that street photography is somehow an aggressive act.  I know in Susan Sontag in On Photography discusses how it is better to be using a camera rather than a gun which is what people (men) would have done in the past.  That somehow street photography is fulfilling an innate human need to hunt, to stalk, to capture but that it does it less destructively but the predatory nature of street photography is nevertheless troubling.  Lying in wait to take an image of someone unbeknown to them or in defiance of their wishes, or at best with some level of complicity but not requested, simply taken.  It's difficult.

Yesterday I took a photograph in the doctor's waiting room because the light was doing what I like at the moment, creating very deep shadows which contrast greatly with bright sunshine and the woman in the frame got quite upset with me -  I explained that she couldn't even be seen, that I was actually taking a photo of the light and not of her - but I don't blame her for being cross.  There is something unpleasant about candid photography that has been totally uninvited whatsoever by the subjects being photographed.

Lee Freidlander was a prolific, street photographer who recorded "the American social landscape" which, despite my reservations about street photography expressed above, seems an important and worthwhile things for him to have spent his life doing.  His work is filled with reflections, odd angles and images of himself taking the photograph within the photograph.  His style and content are informed by ideas and concepts making the work not only a rich document of US culture but also an astute lifetime of comments and questions.

Friedlander's work, as with the shadow on the fur coat or with his face in the wing mirror, includes his self portrait fairly frequently, hence the book released a few years back which is all about his self portraiture.  In the book Why Does It NOT Have To Be In Focus, Jackie Higgins' discusses Friedlander's self portrait where he places a light bulb between his face and the camera 'debunking the age-old myth of the artist as a hero'.  There is an awareness in Friedlander's images which makes them highly intelligent.  His style 'defies traditional composition' making them 'metaphors for chaos that is modern life' as described by Lewis Baltz, a photographer quoted in the aforementioned book.

When I look at Friedlander's later self portraits there is a boldness and total absence of apology to them which I don't expect to see in similar women's work although off the top of my head Tracy Emin and Freida Kahlo break with with expectation.  This is interesting for me - I have been busy snapping myself again for A4 and feel a certain level of discomfort, although clearly not enough to change tac for now.  Since that is where I am heading I ought to dispense with the girly self depreciation and just get on with it!  At least I am involved, entirely aware and give permission - no one is stalking me, I'm not stalking anyone else and the whole predatory nature of candid photography is bypassed altogether.

I find Friedlander's work very interesting and am eager to look at it a but more.


Wikipedia
On Photography, Susan Sontag, Penguin Published 1977, Reissued 2008
Why Does it NOT Have To Be In Focus, Modern Photography Explained, Jackie Higgins, Thames & Hudson, September 2103
The Genius of Photography, Gerry Badger, Quadrille, Edition published 2014, Text copyright 2007