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

Assignment 4: Light - My Mother's Name is Eve

Images available here on a website dedicated to all TAOP assignments  - please use a desktop computer to view in fullscreen mode.

"We are not supposed to talk about being lonely.  Loneliness is shameful condition that should be cured, that we sort out by ourselves.... The act of photographing myself allowed me to become comfortable in the present"  Jennifer McClure, fine art photographer, quote from her Laws of Silence set of images.  Read the full quote here.

I have been a bit perplexed about this assignment especially since becoming aware of the fact that it is really a technical exercise which asks us to create eight images of one object showing “shape, form, texture and colour”.    I have chosen me again as in previous assignments: I am the object, but photographed in relation to other objects in my most personal space, my bedroom. This is a development from earlier assignments where I was not relating to other objects.

Perhaps I have once again taken liberties with language – I know the literal point was to photograph one object (I like to think that when I first read the assignment criteria I understood I would photograph me and that I alone would be the object; and that it grew from there).  

The work has been important as far as I am concerned regardless of any possible grading (if I decide to submit for assessment) as it is a definite development in terms of photography from A2 and A3.  It also represents personal development too which is expressed in the images.

All my assignments are really an expression relating to the discovery of a new sense of identity as well as recovery following a painful and difficult divorce.  A4 continues with that but here I also explore my relationship with objects that are reflective of the internalised 'objects' within me. Objects under this term relate to internalised 'interpersonal relations especially between the mother and child'(1). The objects, my relationship with them and how they relate to other objects in the room in my images could be said to be symbolic of infantile relationship structures, which inform the way we relate to people later as adults(2). 

Previously my work was very blurry – I loved that and will no doubt return to motion and more abstract images again.  Playing with movement and camera speeds felt absolutely the right thing to be doing at that moment.  I began to see photography as a kind of paintbrush with which I can create more than mere pictures, rather images or sets of images that aim to be very expressive. 

For this assignment I gradually reached the decision that I wanted these images to be in-focus, honest and with as little artifice as possible - perhaps in an attempt to 'face my own soul'.  I looked at lots of photographers but Jennifer McLure and OCA tutor, Sharon Boothroyd’s work struck me as powerful, honest, complex and extremely direct; and I wanted to aim for something along those lines.

The word 'light', with all its various meanings, has been fairly critical for me over the last two years.  I am constantly bearing in mind a well-known Jung quote ‘There is no coming to consciousness without pain.  People will do almost anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own soul.  One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.”(3)

As well as playing with light in the literal sense, I certainly explore loss and loneliness, therefore 'making the darkness conscious', and I very much hope I have achieved that in as non-self-pitying a way as possible; the reality of divorce is somehow not valued quite as it ought to be by our society, where marriages and long-term relationships end frequently, when in fact working through them might in many cases be a more positive option, although of course abusive situations can be difficult to address.(4).  I would like to think the images provoke thoughts about that aspect of our culture.

I also look at being unable to see clearly, unable to hold things and to feel things due to their intangibility. Objects are partly hidden, tantalising and hardly there, empty, lifeless or absent altogether.

I hope the ideas behind the images go further than looking solely at my own identity, but also feminine identity in wider terms as well as the realities of divorce/separation.  The use of the name Eve in the title refers to my own mother as well as Eve of Garden of Eden fame who according to The Book of Genesis in The Old Testament bit into the forbidden fruit shortly after God created light, thereby 'ruining' the whole paradise thing for all mankind ever after.   

Finally the clothes and the colours and the objects are all carefully considered and symbolic and I am heavily influenced by the plays of Frederico Garcia Lorca in that regard. 

From a technical point of view I have used available light in all the images.  I work most of the time whilst my youngest is at nursery, so many but not all of the images are taken between midday and 3pm.  It would have been nice to do a project showing images progressing through the day but that would take me a lot longer to plan and execute.  I have deliberately left all the dents and knocks in the walls rather than remove them in PS.  I used a cropped sensor and kind of wish I'd used a full frame camera although the cropped sensor is inside a Fuji X100s which provides good image quality.  

I have actually included 9 images as I cannot quite make up my mind about removing one of them;  I think they all play a part in the story and it would be incomplete without.

A collection of rejected images including some that are here can be found on my Flickr page in an album titled Light.  

Please find brief lighting notes following each of the assignment images below - but remember, you can view them via the link at the top of this page in a slideshow.

This was one of the first images I took with this assignment in mind, although I didn't take it thinking I would include it.  The sun streams through the windows into my room and the blind pulled down half way makes this shape which travels round the wall of my room through the afternoon. I can change the shape of the light a little by moving the blind up or down. Taken at 2pm on 8th January ISO 200 f11 1/200

The overcast sky makes the best natural diffuser and I always pray for overcast weather when doing head shots outdoors.
The gentle light works well for modelling and creating form.  The sky is over-exposed really but this was an acceptable compromise for me as I wanted the body to be as well as lit as I could get it but still retaining shadows; I have used a reflector just directly below me and at an angle to bounce some light back.  I didn't quite achieve what I wanted here - I hoped to have some light lighting up my face in a bit of glow, just a touch, as I had that in another image but the mood in this one was right so I went with it here. Taken at 1.30pm on 22nd January ISO 320 f5.6 1/50

The weather was partly cloudy in this one; so quite strong light but still diffused.  It comes again from the windows in the roof.  I think I did use a reflector here to soften the shadows a little, but not too much because I wanted them to be fairly deep.  I nearly included an image with an apple in it with reference to the title of this work but I felt it was too crass in the end.  Taken at 1.20 on 27th January ISO 320 f4 1/200

Again window light through the roof with the shape made by the blind.  It was very strong light and nothing diffused about it at all.  I had to be careful not to blow the highlights especially on the shiny cotton applique.  I just about got away with it  towards the left of the image.  When I printed this to take to the South West study group I should have been aware that the darks needed lightening ever so slightly for paper as they were too dark but they are just as I want them here lit up by the computer screen.
Taken at 2pm on 8th January ISO 200 f11 1/200

Strong sun, no diffuser.  Shapes made by the shadow of the chest of draws and the light coming though the window in the roof.  I like the matching pattern made by relationships between various objects - drawers, window, wall.
Taken at 1.45pm 14th January ISO 640 f2 1/1000 (I should have reduced the ISO for this and used a slower shutter and can't quite remember why I didn't - not thinking properly)

The light coming though here was very strong and quite orange and I had to play around with WB quite a lot to remove the orange as I didn't really want it.  I liked the strong contrast - it highlights the texture of my hair and the folds in my clothes.  I did not use a reflector. The shirt in places could be dangerously close to being over-exposed but isn't.  The light is again shaped by the window. Taken at 2.40pm on 22nd January ISO 250 f5.6 1/250

The blind is fully open here so no shape.  I think this is where there was a thin film of frost on the window too adding yet more diffusion to the light which was already coming from quite an overcast but bright sky. Taken at 9.50 on 28th January ISO 320 f2.8 1/30

This is taken at dusk with the WB set to incandescent.  There is some banding.  I have changed the file to 32 bit in PS but it's still not entirely gone.  The shapes are made by a lamp on the floor.

Taken at 4.40pm on 12th February ISO 200 f2.8 1/100

This is a small crop because I was just setting up and working things out so sadly the reflector takes up rather too much of the original image but the light changed very suddenly as a storm passed over and created this lovely mood which was perfect for what I was trying to achieve.  If I had to print it might be quite degraded which is a shame.  In fact there is some weird blotchiness in the wall which I have tried to fix by changing the image to 32 bit in PS - not sure it's helped that much.  Perhaps I should have deleted this from the assignment submission altogether because the quality is not good enough or tried to reshoot it.  The red is well exposed as I had earlier attempts where the highlights were ever so slightly over-exposed - the cloth and the colour were tricky to get right and I had quite a few attempts from another day where the images seemed underexposed too. Taken at 12.10 on 28th January ISO 400 f2.8 1/40

Assessment Criteria Reflection

Demonstration of technical and visual skills: I think I have shown that I have a reasonable grasp of how to compose a photograph and use my camera - where I have made odd choices with exposure settings such as with the light reflected on the wall photograph I am at least aware it was not the ideal choice. I have included one image that is quite a small crop because the content of the image works within the context of the set but I am aware it would have been better not to have to crop so tightly. I don't think I've done anything terribly fantastic in some of the exercises leading up to the assignment - and perhaps could have put more effort in to a few of those.
Quality of Outcome: I think this is a reasonably good assignment although I have completely gone off in my own direction so perhaps in terms of what was required it isn't.  In terms of where I'm at with photography I see it as a progression.  I am not sure about the new website I have where I have collated all the assignment work - perhaps I just have not found the right template but I do think it works well to have all the work there together.
Demonstration of Creativity: I suspect this is a creative way of demonstrating working with light - and although I have not stuck to the brief I have given an indication I know how to make use of natural light at least fairly adequately. I am aware I have not demonstrated much knowledge of working with lights here.  I chose to use natural light because I was alluding to time passing in my space.
Context: I have looked at quite a lot of other work and in fact have not got round to writing all of it up yet, although I have written quite a bit.  I have certainly been influenced by other work and I think it shows.  I have not read enough about lighting theory.  Instead I have been reading about photographers and also looking at literature which I know will may influence future work.  Finding time to fit it all in is not easy and I have tended to go to the places I feel will be most useful for me at the moment.  I have written quite a lot in my log - perhaps too much blather - but there is more critical stuff to write really and I need to get back on track with that.
Finally, I do not know if baring my soul in this way makes for good art, good photography or is indeed any good for my mental and emotional state.  Jennifer McClure talks about photographing her fears so she can feel comfortable with them and I suppose I have photographed my emotions as they are now and I can't really say I do feel all that comfortable with it.  Perhaps in time to come.

(1) Object relations theory - quote taken from Somoma University Psychology site
(2) Wiki site on Object relations theory
(3) Site about Carl Jung
(4) Cut Loose, Rutger University Press 2006, Kindle Edition

Keith Carter

"I never felt childhood was an idyllic play in pristine green parks.  Any parent knows that children don't spend all their time laughing, smiling and playing.  Left to their own devices they are often pensive, absorbed, alarmingly attuned to the changing mood of their parents, aware when something is amiss with mom and dad, and occasionally solitary"

Keith Carter in the Introduction to Fireflies 

I think when I get round to redesigning my own website I will use this quote somewhere.  It is a much more eloquent version of something I say already about photographing children and families.  I was enthralled by Keith Carter's introduction when I first read it. His idea of childhood, of how to capture it and how to relate to children resonates loudly with with me.  And I am totally besotted with his photographs too!

Keith Carter became a commercial portrait photographer in Beaumont, Texas after growing up and watching his mother work as one too.  She bravely as it was not usual used natural light and outdoor settings as well as her studio, having set up after her husband left her and she had to make a living and bring up her children.

Carter did not want to have a shop front studio in a mall or on the high street but instead found a property with outhouses so he could live and work in the same environment, although he keeps his home and studio very separate and rarely hangs his own work in his home.  He has worked commercially as well as developing his artistic practise,  and during his lifetime has become a well known artist whose images are exhibited worldwide.

I love reading about his approach to working with children.  "When making these images Carter often asked the children, '"Do you have something you would like to be photographed with?"'  This creative collaboration between photographer and subject has produced images that conjure up stories, dreams and imaginary worlds."  

I  know that often the most successful photographs I have taken of children are the ones where they have contributed in some way to the process, although it is good to read that sometimes the results are "...mediocre.  Other times the centre holds and the results are (as) graceful...".  I know from past experience that working collaboratively in any field is a good way to achieve creative and interesting results but it requires a degree of trust in oneself and more than a modicum of generosity of spirit plus patience. Children in our own culture are wildly underestimated, bought up to believe they are not capable and so grow up thinking that is the truth, which renders it the truth until their minds are changed.  It can in some cases be quite challenging to get them to open up, to believe their ideas are valid and worthy of consideration.  I wonder if the more controlling the parents are the less concentrated the children can be, the more difficult it is for me to connect with them and I do struggle under these circumstances.  If I continue working with kids then I would like to work towards being able to click in with them under any circumstances and to find a way to circumvent my own shut-down responses when I find myself in tricky dynamics.  Of course, the more I do this and the less I have to worry about the technology the better too.

Carter says, "I soon learned that kids, particularly young ones, have a short attention span.  I learned to work quickly and never to schedule an appointment near nap time.  I let them look me over when I first arrived at their homes.  I often talked to parents while bouncing a red ball and carrying a toy bag. Routinely I would sit down on the ground to let the children pick out toys from my bag and talk to me at their own eye level.  I picked backgrounds rapidly and and paid close attention to the whims of colour and tonality".    I could do worse than to write this down and keep it stapled to my sleeve so I always remember it when working with children. (And oh, by the way, it was Carter who mentioned Irving Penn and looking at his work to see a great example of grouping - written about here.)

He also talks about the difference between his colour commercial work which is happy, smiling and idyllic because that is what is clients are after and this is something I must remember if I'm to be have any success as a commercial family portrait photographer, which incidentally is not something I set out to do but it does seem to be heading that way for now.  My tendency to hone in on the less happy, less idyllic more honest moods isn't going to be what clients want all the time.  I'm always vaguely embarrassed by what I call the 'toothpaste advert' images - I've got to get over that.

He talks about his photographs sometimes touching on the darker side of childhood dreams although they in no way go anywhere neat the savagery of Roger Ballen's work where children are also sometimes present.  "My pictures occasionally tend towards the dark or solitary side.  In a world of truths and half-truths, the inhabitants might be amiss or fallen from grace, but my children inhabit a peaceable kingdom where everything that falls deserves a chance to be restored.  My children are beautiful, intelligent, sometimes sad, pensive, devastatingly perceptive, complex, occasionally humorous, always creative, and often inscrutable."  I am reminded of the desolation in James Elkin's book, What Photography Is and am struck by how very different these states of mind appear to be.

Carter's images in Fireflies are all taken on plate cameras using old technology, obviously all black and white.  Many have a very narrow depth of field and they are all square format.

I am quickly becoming really infatuated with old formats, very narrow depth of fields, oblique angles between camera and subject and the dream-like images, be they nightmares or more lyrical poetic dreams such as Carters.  I do adore his photographs and look forward to seeing some sense of influence emerge in my own work - let's hope so!

Taken directly from Fireflies: Keith Carter holds The Endowed Walles Chair of Visual and Performing Arts at Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas, and is the recipient of a 2009 Texas Medal of Arts Award and the Lange-Taylor Prize from the Centre for Documentary Studies at Duke University.  He is the author of ten previous books...()...Carter's work is included the collections of the National Gallery of Art; the Art Institute Chicago; the Smithosian American Art Museum; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the George Eastman House; and the Wittliff Collections' Southwestern & Mexican Photography Collection.

All quotations are take from Fireflies By Keith Carter, University of Texas Press, 2009.
Keith Carter's website

Angela Bacon-Kidwell

I feel so fortunate to have people all around me pointing me in the direction of work that I find interesting and compelling.  Yesterday Angela Bacon-Kidwell was suggested; she is an American photographer/artist who is interested in the unconscious and dreams and connecting to those aspects of ourselves.  This focus of hers is related to the themes and subjects in the work I discussed by Chris Friel which I love so much, but Kidwell-Bacon is finding different ways to express those themes, perhaps they are more tangible than Friel's work, by which please don't think I don't mean better or worse.  But perhaps less visceral and prehistoric, slightly easier to place.  Maybe.

"My photography comes from a lifelong obsession of exploring how my subconscious generates my dreams. As I move through my day, I am keenly aware of my encounters with people, places and things. I mentally record the details of these situations, and the physical or emotional responses that they evoke. These fleeting associations replay themselves in my dreams. The random moments combine to form sleep stories that are rich narratives, ripe with symbolism. With that as my model, I construct sets, use props and invite myself and models to perform in a natural, intuitive way. In essence, I attempt to create a waking dream." (1)

Some of her work has many layers and I found myself wondering how she did it.  On her website in relation to a particular set of images she describes her process:

"Numerous layers of hand painted photographs, drawings and resin make up a single image. The final results are a complex layering process and not complete digital manipulations. The image is printed and re-photographed under various conditions in one final effort to heal the tender wounds that bind my own existence."

I think there are a number of images on her website that are worth thinking about in relation to assignment 4.

Quotes taken directly from her website and I have linked to the Travelling Dreams portfolio where the images I am most interested in for this assignment are.

Bruce Davidson

As I read certain names become more and more familiar.  Bruce Davidson is one of them.  After seeing the photograph referred to as "London. Girl holding Kitten" a number of times over the last few days in various places I thought I ought to look him up and find out more.  I had seen some of his work before and especially in a Magnum book I own (currently and very frustratingly in storage) but I wanted to find out who this man is.  Since doing so I have to say I feel like I have fallen in love with his work.  I find the photograph of the couple in an image referred to as "New York. The Garden Cafeteria" more powerful than any of Diane Arbus' images I've looked at (sorry if that is heresy!) because it seems far less manipulative to me and contains a great deal more empathy for the couple as individuals rather than projections of some inner nightmare of the photographer's, and I think his subject matter, from the poverty in Spanish Harlem, New York to the Civil riots in Alabama, to the post war streets of London and the lives of New Yorkers in Central Park all so incredibly vital and important.

Bruce Davidson was born in 1933 and has lived and worked through the photography heyday of the 50s and 60s where so much important work seems to have taken place.  He never stopped and continues to work (he has a Facebook page) and be exhibited all over the world.  He has won plaudits and titles galore and is one of the prestigious Magnum photographers.  He started taking photographs when he was 10 years old and eventually went on to meet Henry Cartier-Bresson when stationed in Paris in the army.

Works of note include 100th Street, Spanish Harlem: New York, The Dwarf, Brooklyn Gang, Freedom Rides, documentation of the Civil Right's movement and more.

I absolutely love The Widow of Montmartre for it's terrible sadness, depth, contrasts and extraordinary intense feeling that none of those words can begin to convey. I very much like the shallow depth of field too and the deep vignetting.

Links:
Magnum Photographers
Life Magazine
Wikipedia