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.

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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Roland Barthes Camera Lucida

There is no doubt in my mind that I will need to read this book again, if I am even to begin to get to grips with it.  It’s no secret, I’m sure, this is an incredibly difficult book to take in and I certainly found it so.  However, I read it relatively slowly and tried to absorb each of the chapters as much as I could before moving on. 

I think that although the book is challenging, Roland Barthes does give the reader a bit of a roadmap during the first quarter of the book, detailing what he is aiming to explore – what exactly is a photograph and why are some photographs important either culturally at large or to individuals. This roadmap comes in the shape of specific language, which he uses to describe himself as accurately as possible.  As you work your way through the beginning of the book his discourse is difficult to penetrate but once you've absorbed the meaning of the following terms you are helped somewhat.

Studium – studied cultural details and elements in a photograph.  That which we recognize and rationalise .

Punctum – a word that describes the impact of a photographed scene that “shoots out of it like an arrow” or a “sting, speck, cut, little hole”. [1] This second word describes how a photograph works at a deeper level than the culture we see and which we recognize.  “Punctum… is that accident which pricks me (but also bruises me, is poignant to me)”[2]

He also describes the various contributors to the making of a photograph – the Operator (camera person), Spectator (viewer of the photograph) and then the Spectrum which is the subject, be it person, object, place or mood/atmosphere. 

It is at this point that Barthes introduces the subject of death and how everything that photographed is essentially dead once it’s been captured: “this word (spectacle) retains through it’s root, a ‘relation’ to spectacle and adds to it that rather terrible thing which is there in every photograph: the return of the dead.”[3]

Being that this book is about facing death, the death of his mother and subsequently the notion of his own death, Barthes returns to this theme throughout the book. And I will too later in this blog.

I understand that in my above adumbrated version of Barthes’ work I have attempted to condense some very complex ideas, and that I probably really only have a fairly superficial understanding at this point but I hope I’m heading in the right direction.

There are several pivotal points for me in the book.  In particular when discussing the methods by which the Operator (photographers) create their work which aim to surprise the Spectator he lists various methods for doing so.  One of these methods is when photographers use “contortions of technique: superimpressions, anamorphoses[4], deliberate exploitation, of certain defects (blurring, deceptive perspectives, trick framing).”[5] 

I mention this as I am interested in blurring and motion.  The punctum which Barthes speaks of is often more readily accessible to me in some of this type of photography, however, he is fairly dismissive of it even though he concedes that there are some very accomplished photographers using these contortions. “…great photographers have played on these surprises, without convincing me, even if I understand their subversive bearing”. [6]  I have felt quite conflicted since reading this and agree with him one moment, believing I should focus on getting ‘real photography’ right rather than being distracted by my desire to blur with long shutter speeds on my camera or fiddle for hours with my iphone (using the Snapseed app for instance to distort and paint and create little scenes that remind me of something very dreamlike and sort of internally ancient and linked more to our unconscious inner worlds) and then swing the other way, wondering if I should just allow myself to really enjoy that side of photography – since I do so enjoy it.  I’m sure there is time for both if I think rationally about it but I have an inner nasty parent saying – ‘Stop that, silly stuff!’ 

(This conflict has led to me wonder if there is Photography Art as opposed to Art where photography is the medium.  I shall have to explain this in more detail elsewhere I think as this entry is really about Barthes’ book.)

Earlier I mentioned that Barthes discusses the relationship between death and photography throughout this book which is hardly surprising as he was prompted to write it when grieving for his late mother whom he had lived with all his life.  He felt her loss deeply and as one does when a loved one dies looked for some connection in photographs.  He found something of what he was looking for in a photograph of his mother as a child where he believes he saw her essence even though she was very young and not the adult he had always known. 

During the last section of the book Barthes describes powerfully how we react to photographs, and how we relate to the truth in every photograph, which is the ‘catastrophe’ of inevitable death.  “…the photograph tells me death in the future.  What pricks me is the discovery of this equivalence.  In front of the photograph of my mother as a child, I tell myself: she is going to die: I shudder, like Winnicots psychotic patient, over a catastrophe which has already occurred.  Whether or not the subject is already dead, every photograph is this catastrophe.”[7]

I clearly remember my horrific realisation when my first son was about a year old that he would, if he is lucky enough to have a full life, grow old and one day die.  And that it is very unlikely that I should be there with him, if all goes well with his life that is, so that he would be without me at that time.  It was a heartbreaking realization, and one we humans could not or should not dwell on as we go about our day to day.  I think Barthes is discussing how photographs have the potential and ability to punch this realization into our consciousness when we look at them in happy times.  And, of course, when we look at them in times of grief can bellow that reality back at us.  Death is unavoidable.

“It is because each photograph always contains this imperious sign of my future death each one, however attached it seems to be to the excited world of the living, challenges us, one by one outside of any generality.”[8]

Barthes often refers to the photograph as a performance.  In fact he likens photography to theatre; “Photography is a kind of primitive theatre, a kind of Tableaux Vivant, a figuration of the motionless and made up face beneath which we see the dead”[9], and this is a very encouraging for me.  I would like to think I can and should use photography to create my own little theatrical moments.   I am torn between photographing others and photographing myself as an ‘actor’ in a still tiny moment that is nevertheless a drama of sorts.  I must look at Cindy Sherman’s work more as she is the most obvious example I can think of in relation to this sort of work, although am also reminded of Jessa Fairbrother, whose work was recommended to me by my tutor.

Roland Barthes’ book was not an easy read but it was intensely interesting and valuable.  I am left once again with a sense of deep frustration that I haven’t read Sartre or Nietzsche, or a host of others not even mentioned in the Barthes book.  It is so annoying to be so ignorant.  I can put all these people on my very long list of books to read but who knows when I will get to them.  However, it does make me wonder if I would enjoy Understanding Visual Cultureperhaps later on if I continue with these studies, as I have been following someone’s blog who is doing that module.  It looks very interesting indeed!

All references aprt from no. 4 to Camera Lucida by Roland Barthes, Vintage Books, Translated by Richard Howard, Published by Vintage 2000, Copyright Editions du Seuil 1980, Translation Copyright Farrarm Straus and Girouux 1981

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[1] Page 26

[2] Page 27

[3] Page 9

[4] a distorted projection or drawing which appears normal when viewed from a particular point or with a suitable mirror or lens: Google dictionary

[5] Page 33

[6] Page 33

[7] Page 96

[8] Page 97

[9] Page 32

the photograph as contemporary art

It took me a long time to finish one of the books of our reading list (and I've quite a few to get through yet!)  the photograph as a contemporary art by Charlotte Cotton covers an enormous amount of work and so can only ever say very little about each photograph or artist.  Because of this it rattles through, or at least it felt like that to me, without ever offering much to grab hold of apart from facts which presumably to save time and words, are given in what also seemed to me quite a pedestrian manner.  I appreciate how much work there was to discuss and see that it's a comprehensive book that gives a beginner a lot to take in.

Although it took me a long time to read, due to my interpretation that it was a quite a dry book, I did enjoy learning about different styles and approaches.  The section I felt most compelled by was Intimate Life, probably because I had heard of many of the photographers there but also because I am fascinated by these sorts of photographs even though I don't really take them myself.  The lives depicted are often quite extreme such as Corrine Day's or Nan Goldin's and far removed from my own but nevertheless fascinating and horrifying at times.  There are also more sedate moments and lives depicted but I suppose similar themes; the difficulty of life and managing aging, loss, love for instance.  I like the tenderness, boldness, honesty and bare emotion that many of the photographers in that section explore.

Although I relate to the intimacy of the photographers I mention above I was also taken with the Something and Nothing chapter.  I find these little moments of humanity just so interesting and telling about who we are.  I particularly liked Wolfgang Tillman's Suit, a photograph of a boiler suit hanging over the door like a skin that has been shed. 

It was interesting to read about many of the photographers discussed even though if only briefly and the book is I'm sure one that I will return to. Even now as I flick though though it while I am writing this I am drawn in to read about some of the ideas behind the work I'm looking at.

I guess Cotton's book opened my eyes further about photography and art - as opposed to photography as merely a good way of recording moments.  There is something so profound in many of the photographs discussed, and deeply moving.  Having just made my way though Roland Barthes Camera Lucida (which I will write up over the next couple of days) I see the little stabs of poignancy or recognition that are so difficult to express any other way, and which he discusses throughout his book.  It's very exciting for me to be delving into this - I wish my time were less limited although without my full, busy, sometimes rather trying existence I might not feel the need to find a way to express myself or learn about how others have. (Incidentally, I am fully aware that most people's lives are pretty trying and much worse at times and it's not just me who finds it a bit of struggle!  Photography does seem to explore modern lives in a way which questions all of that quite profoundly I think.)

I'm glad to have finished the book and am sure it will be be used as a reference throughout the rest of my studies and beyond.

the photograph as a contemporary art by Charlotte Cotton, New Edition, Thames & Husdon World of Art, 2004 and then 2009.

Some thoughts and some reading

Having not read nearly enough for the first half of this year I am now trying to make up for it.  I've just finished the Diane Arbus book; I am also nearly done with one of the books from the reading list, and mostly through a book about Lillian Bassman and Paul Himmel.  For some reason I have also just started Camera Lucida by Roland Barthes as suggested by my tutor, perhaps because my life isn't quite challenging enough!

Barthes talks about the photograph being a recent 'disturbance' for civilisation to deal with, whereby the self is for the first time able to confront itself as the other.  He dismisses paintings and etchings which came before.  I'm intrigued by his understanding of portrait photography.  I wonder what he would make of the current 'selfie' trend.  Whether we take the photograph ourselves or ask, possibly pay someone else to take it for us, there is no denying the level of activity related to this modern 'disturbance' has reached fever pitch in the last decade. I recently heard on one of the many 'fascinating facts' films my eldest son watches so avidly on YouTube that we have taken more photographs in the last... now, was it two hours, weeks or years... I don't think it matters... more photos in the last tiny amount of time than have been taken in the whole history of photography.  What is this desperate splitting of the self into two entities, whereby the self gets to gaze upon itself as an other so frequently and with such alacrity about?

(Splitting is an interesting phenomena in psychotherapy and one which I read a great deal about last year, which describes an individual's inability to see the self and others as rounded, mature cohesive entities or objects.  So someone who is split sees only fabulous objects or disgusting objects in the self and in others for instance.  A split person cannot see herself or others as good and bad at the same time.  A split person is polarised as described in a book titled Splitting: (1)"..unconsciously seeing people as all good or all bad, an extreme way of coping with confusion, anxiety, and mixed feelings.  Splitting is especially prevalent under stress...")

I can't help but wonder what we're doing as a culture when we split our selves so regularly as we seem to do with the constant compulsion to see ourselves as an other - the beautiful, acceptable, desirable other we want the world to see as opposed to that which we'd rather the world didn't see.  Are we and if so why are we polarising our Selves to such an extent  - hidden, undesirable self and shiny, highly marketable other by means of images which we either take ourselves or get someone to take for us?

It has struck me as I read about and learn to market myself online (I still feel hopeless in this regard but I continue to battle one with it, even though sometimes it all feels excrutiatingly gormless and uncomfortably clumsy) that the world we live in has pretty much always demanded an an outer persona, a mask or several which we present to the world.  Very few people get to know the inner world and person but in certain key relationships the outer persona dissolves to a greater or lesser extent.  Yet today, people have an added dimension to penetrate if they are to get to know someone well - the controlled, self-concious online persona that so many of us now feel obliged to construct; a marketing tool which can be used to market the self just as much as it might market a business or service.  Often people have websites or blogs, not to mention social networking pages that are primarily about themselves - indeed I do for work purposes as well as this blog.  A portrait or several (or many, many portraits) are nearly always crucial in these presentations. Photographs of many different standards and styles, but nevertheless images of the self as other are plastered all over the internet and people, we, most of us to a greater or lesser extent, are scrambling to load more and more images that represent the online persona we wish to present to the world. 

I will keep on with Camera Lucida - I have a feeling there will be much more in it to make me think about how, why, what in relation to the very modern habit of placing photographs of ourselves all over the internet.  The book is extremely challenging to say the least but has already fed into some questions and thoughts that have been on my mind. 


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I am feeling a bit lost about where I'm at with photography at the moment.  I go out and take photographs of families as that is what is coming my way more often than not.  I am focused on finding a voice or style but I feel at the moment I'm simply taking photographs that aren't really anything.  In a way, I feel that since attempting to find a 'voice' I've got worse not better with that side of the photography I do.  I imagine this is a normal part of learning and remember feeling something similar when I first started learning to use a camera in manual.  I suspect it has also to do with some lack of patience I have with myself.

I recently watched a short clip online of photographer, (2) Gregory Heisler, whom I did not know.  His work is very powerful and distinctive, so I'm glad I came across it.  In the clip he discusses how finding a style is not an aesthetic thing - it's about how you see the world.  He advises, as he was advised, to take photographs that you cannot help but take and that that more you take these photographs that you cannot help but take the closer you will get to knowing your style.  In theory this sounds great - but I am just not sure what it is that I cannot help but take.  I want only to take close ups of children's faces sometimes.  I'm intrigued by the capacity and promise for what they might one day become that exists in their faces even when they are very young.  And then I find them intensely difficult to work with and think I'd prefer never to take another photograph of a child again.  Then there are times when I just want to be the master of my own mini productions with an image or series of images that explore some of the themes I touched on in my last assignment.  (Pictures of self as other taken by self!) I also have found the last few months that I like landscapes sometimes - something that I had no idea about a few months ago.  I think I just have to keep searching but I do wish I felt better about the family portrait stuff for now. Because as things stand I feel stuck.

1. Spitting, Bill Eddy, LCSW, JD & Randi Kreger, Raincoat Books, 2011, Kindle Edition 6%
2. Gregory Heisler video: http://vimeo.com/100946762