Chris Friel Photographer/ Artist

For some time I have been wondering to myself if there is a difference between photographers whose work is so profound and evocative that it is rendered Art and artists who use still cameras to create their work rather than paint or stone or objects or film or sound.  I'm sure there are many who will tell me I'm wrong because by creating those two distinct and separate groups I'm basically saying that not all photography is art.  Doesn't Susan Sontag says in her book On Photography that even the most amateurish photograph is rendered Art by its age once it becomes old, but I cannot for the life of me find the quotation which is quite annoying.  (Her book slipped down the back of my headboard a week ago or so and has been there ever since... I have not stopped reading but am reading two other photography related books and of course will retrieve Susan Sontag's book soon enough.  She is quite hard going - harder than Roland Barthes and his devotee James Elkin I think).  The conundrum I have in my head is not an easy one to address, I should think.

Chris Friel is an artist.  He was born in 1959.  He used to be a painter.  Then in 2006 he picked up a camera and, so every entry about him across the internet tells us, has not painted since.  He is a prolific photographer and says in an interview when he first started this process his success rate was 1000:1, i.e. for every 1000 he took he arrived at 1 image which went some way towards achieving what he was after.  His ratio is now much smaller.  But he recommends taking as many photographs as it takes.  This is good news for me given the amount I took for the last assignment - and even then I feel I should have kept trying as many of my images fall short for me.

Chris Friel uses long exposures, 2/3 seconds, camera movement, sometimes but not always a tilt shift lens.  He also uses an ND filter and a polarisor.

In an interview with Andrew Gibson dated November 2012 Friel says he concentrates on land and seascapes and doesn't think he is very good with people although that must have changed because I have seen a lot of people orientated images of his lately and they are incredibly evocative.  I like them in particular.

Most of his work is black and white and very dark.  However, he has also produced a series of coloured landscapes which is interesting considering he is reportedly colour blind.  Added to the warped, blurred images he takes, he also scratches and distorts the prints too.

What I like about his work, especially the ones with people, is that they seem to come from somewhere outside our material reality.  I am reminded of inner worlds, dreams, nightmares. I recognise the scenes as something intrinsically human and am reminded of a collective consciousness because he is producing something so recognisable but difficult to grab hold of. For me he creates a feeling that is universal and perhaps even prehistoric, something that is viscerally tangible and takes me back to a place I can't quite place or remember.  I love that about his work.

The list of artists and photographers who have influenced him is extraordinarily long.  And he is kind too.  I followed him on Flickr - and when I have commented on his work he has replied privately to thank me, which suggests to me a conscious rejection of modern narcissism.  He eventually followed me back and sent me a link to the artists he lists as having being influenced by on his site when I said I was studying here.  I have had time to look at a few but the list is so long it's going to take me ages!  I will of course be writing about the people whose work I particularly like in my blog.

Alexey Titarenko, who I came across a few weeks ago and was so enamoured by is one of three he lists as being key.

I do not fully understand why I am drawn to this sort of photography so much and am torn about whether I want to pursue an artistic style of photography such as Chris Friel's or a photographer's style of imagery.  I took some pictures of my children recently and am quite pleased with a couple - I would really want to keep doing that especially from a work point of view.  I have no idea what else I might do with it - documentary style photography perhaps?  Who knows?  It would be wonderful to work for a charity; heh, me and a million others, much younger and less tied down than me.  But I also love creating images that are interpretative.  I feel utterly compelled to do so especially when I see photographs like the work I've been describing in this post.

Information taken from:
Wikipedia
The Andrew S Gibson Blog
Chris Friel's website

Alexey Titarenko

I watched a documentary about Alexey Titarenko which was recommended to me by a photographer who is doing a bit of mentoring for/with me.  I am writing about Titarenko straight away as I was so blown away by his work.  I wanted to buy yet another book but they are over £200 so I will need to start saving up, I think.

He is a Russian photographer now living in New York who began taking photographs when he was 8 years old.  He studied fine art at the Department of Cinematic and Photographic Art at Leningrad's Institute of Culture and is known especially for his work with long exposures, which I am so interested in.  He is heavily influenced by the music of Shostakovitch - I know nothing about classical music but I have liked Shostakovich for a very long time and when I look at Titarenko's pictures I can just imagine hearing it, especially in the series The City of Shadows where grey figures blur into one another and seem to swarm heavily through the streets of St. Petersburg and up the steps of authoritarian looking buildings.

According to Wikipedia he is also influenced by the Dada movement which means so much to me. (when I left drama school the first job I had was a re-enactment of the Dada Cabaret which I think we did at the Contact Theatre in Manchester and I loved being in it, and was delighted to find myself looking at Dada again when I went on a study visit to see the Hannah Hoch exhibition in London earlier this year).  Another influence mentioned is Malevich which I have been to see twice at The Tate Modern and will need to return again to as I went both times with a different child, one of whom kept saying, 'He's scary, Mummy.  I want to go home!" and the other seemed to have been given a dose of very strong coffee as we entered and hurried through in about ten minutes saying, "Look at all the movement in his pictures, Mummy.  They're optical illusions!" Which is why I have not yet written about that gallery visit.

It was very interesting to see in the documentary how Titarenko manipulates his images not only in-camera by using very long exposures and also moving his camera to create a flimsy light effect, but also in the real-life darkroom - just like Lillian Bassman and Wynn Bullock whom I have written about in this blog.  He too uses bleach and solarisation, exposing his images to light as he develops them to add to the ghostly effect he is after.

I was also interested to see him 'hunting' for people and scenes to photograph.  This poor old lady although seemingly oblivious was photographed several times as she wandered through the streets, Titarenko following with his tripod and Hasselblad.  This stalking for subjects is something I have such trouble with myself but his finished photograph was really very beautiful and he seems in such another world as he does it.

He talks about how his photographs communicate all the sorrow and horror of what the Russian people have been through throughout their violent and sometimes horrifically brutal history.  Although he was based mainly in St. Petersburg and the photographs in the film are on the whole taken there he says they represent all of Russia.  He uses long exposure as he is trying to capture so much of Russian history as well as present in one photograph or image and this process of allowing time to be absorbed slowly onto the film rather than a fraction of a moment creates some very powerful art.

Titarenko also discusses how he came to realise that you could do things with photography that communicated something immensely powerful and creative, a reality that is transformed in some way, rather than just click and make an accurate representation of the scene.  This was such a good thing for me to hear at this particular moment when I am feeling full of doubts and horribly exposed!

I really want to know more about his work.  I have to say I felt emotional but also excited seeing it.  Not only are his photographs incredibly moving and evocative, it is also an immensely strong indication for me to stick with where I'm going - it's worth pursuing and persevering.  But perhaps I have quite a long way to go!

Links
Website
Wikipedia
The ASC: Streetwise blog (fantastic essay)