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

Jessa Fairbrother - Working with the self

I have been meaning to write about Jessa Faibrother for a while as I have been looking carefully at her work to inform some of mine, almost gaining permission to try things out from her, after having being directed towards her site by my tutor, Andrew Conroy. The other day I received her blog update; in it she discusses some questions that I have been asking myself too.

Fairbrother was asked what her work is about.  She struggled to answer and gave what seems to have been in her mind fairly stock answers, although I thought they were pretty valid.  She is interested in gesture, psychoanalysis, and also "performance of the mind" - these are the things that have interested me too although I suspect we are coming at them from different places.  Fairbrother explores how women are conditioned to perform certain roles and expectations and The Rehearsal (Dedicated to Augustine) looks specifically at women's gestures in connection with an asylum:

"Photographs consciously reference those made in the Salpêtrière Asylum at the end of the 19th century, where observations of women who had experienced trauma became central to constructing a visual language of hysteria."

In another series, My two blue hearts on your two blue sleeves, Fairbrother looks at gestures of grief.  So gesture is certainly key to her work, and female gesture of particular interest.  I don’t think gesture should be underestimated.  I know from my old acting/drama school days that gesture was something Brecht was interested in and his actors looked at gesture as a way of building a character; gesture of power, poverty, or violence for instance.  

Last year when I was working out what could be done with a camera (I still am but I mean when I was at the beginning of this adventure - a phrase of Fairbrother's to be honest) I took a photograph that was really all about learning how to use a speedlight to give the impression of multiple exposures within one.  While figuring it out I felt nothing like the sense of despair and rage that the image conveyed - in fact I was thrilled by my experiment and had loads of fun playing around with what was possible.  The image did say something of what I had always wanted to say.  I would talk for years about wanting to write.  If someone said 'what do you want to write about?', I would answer - I don't know - just some sort of a horrible scream really.  So when I saw the photograph I was pleased that I had at last found a way to express that.  But it wasn't like acting where I always felt like I was forced to scoop my innards out - it just happened through gesture and a trick of light.  That's not to say it wasn't real and genuine - I think, know, it was.  But I didn't feel it at the surface then. I like that about photography.  It reveals things – a bit like Freudian slips can. When I look at the image now I find it quite embarrassing and think it's pretty crass actually but I do appreciate that it may have been a start of something for me (image here) - and gesture was something that I understood then to be incredibly important.

I've digressed and stopped talking about Jessa Fairbrother and instead talked about ME (ironic, heh?) - so back to her; the rest of the blog post is an attempt to answer the question - what is her work about - more fully. Fairbrother struggles to say it is about her Self and to believe that that is valid.  I don't blame her for having this difficulty – about using the self in one’s work.  It's a tough thing to get over - I know this because I spend ages wondering why I keep working with ME in the assignments for this course; am I, after all, just this vain, narcissistic, ego-maniacal, solipsist? 

Jessa Fairbrother writes,

"Then I skirted, yes, skirted round the issue of “me” – because in my head I was thinking: “Surely it’s rude to make work about ME. Who is interested in the ‘me’ unless the ‘me’ concerned has a very unusual life with lots of dramatic twists and turns?"

and 

"I worry it’s about myself and no one else is interested and it’s indulgent and narcissistic, I said. “Do you think Tracy Emin or Marina Abromovic wake up in the morning and worry about that?”"

I have asked myself the same about Tracy Emin and nearly included some notes on this in my last assignment - but edited it as I'd waffled on for way too long.  I wonder if she does worry but I suspect not – be interesting to find out.

However, I attended a study visit today to see and listen to Elina Brotherus speak, which made me so happy. These questions about working with the self were answered for me fairly succinctly and the great thing was that I began to understand the answers the moment I looked at the work.  We were able to ask questions at the end but Brotherus merely confirmed what I had discovered while listening to her talk.

I will discuss this more in another blog about Brotherus.

In the meantime I will continue to look at what Jessa Fairbrother is doing.  It’s fascinating and she’s certainly looking at some similar themes to the things that swim around in my own head. 

Jessa Fairbrother's blog
Jessa Fairbrother's website