Ideas:
Hester - Deep Blue Sea
Les Liasons Dangereuses - Merteuil
Belisa - Don Perlimplin and Belisa in the Garden (or in his garden how he tried to please her)
Virgin Mary
Woman from Time & the Room
Isabella - Measure for Measure
Paper bags....
These the ideas I started with - using characters I had played in the past either in productions or exams (Virgin Mary when I was 6 at school!) but over time I dropped this idea and wanted to be as close to me as possible, although still playing with the idea of roles we play in general. i.e. the slightly girly dress I wear in some images is something that reminds me of things I wore as a teenager.
Showing posts with label OCA. Sarah-Jane Field. Show all posts
Showing posts with label OCA. Sarah-Jane Field. Show all posts
Tuesday, 2 December 2014
Sunday, 23 November 2014
Some thoughts...
Very quickly as I should be writing a different blog right now; I wanted to mention something in relation to the post about Asylum of the Birds. In it I discussed Roger Ballen's capacity for using photography and other elements to create a piece of theatre which ultimately revealed something of his inner world, a great deal of it in fact. I think it's important for me to acknowledge that it is just as possible to express some of one's inner world without the mis-en-scene. I guess the difference with Ballen is that he is embracing some of the less celebrated aspects of ourselves; the dirty, gritty, grubby, frightening parts of who we are, the bits we try to deny.
However, a beautiful photograph of the Taj Mahal, an example Ballen uses, may just be that but the way in which it is photographed by someone who has connected their photographic practise to their inner world will undoubtedly reveal something of himself/herself. Everything we humans do is an expression of who we are and perhaps what we are going through at the time and so it is impossible not to reveal something about yourself in your photographs. Our inner world seems to imprint itself on our external world even if we're not practising some form of artistic endeavour in moments of peculiar synchronicity. (Perhaps that just depends on how you view the world.)
What makes interesting photographs however, I think, is when photographers have the ability and desire to reveal a great deal about who they are by the way they choose to photograph something, and then choose to show it to the world. Bill Dane in the days before the internet made postcards of his work and sent them to people, democratising his art. Vivian Maier hid her work away and showed no one at all.
The thing that is so great about using photography to express yourself, and Ballen, talks about this in his interview (which I discuss in the my previous post) is that you might take the photograph and only when you look at it later, several days or months, maybe years, after you took it, do you see or understand something about yourself. It's a voyage of self discovery and that's a wonderful thing to embark on.
However, a beautiful photograph of the Taj Mahal, an example Ballen uses, may just be that but the way in which it is photographed by someone who has connected their photographic practise to their inner world will undoubtedly reveal something of himself/herself. Everything we humans do is an expression of who we are and perhaps what we are going through at the time and so it is impossible not to reveal something about yourself in your photographs. Our inner world seems to imprint itself on our external world even if we're not practising some form of artistic endeavour in moments of peculiar synchronicity. (Perhaps that just depends on how you view the world.)
What makes interesting photographs however, I think, is when photographers have the ability and desire to reveal a great deal about who they are by the way they choose to photograph something, and then choose to show it to the world. Bill Dane in the days before the internet made postcards of his work and sent them to people, democratising his art. Vivian Maier hid her work away and showed no one at all.
The thing that is so great about using photography to express yourself, and Ballen, talks about this in his interview (which I discuss in the my previous post) is that you might take the photograph and only when you look at it later, several days or months, maybe years, after you took it, do you see or understand something about yourself. It's a voyage of self discovery and that's a wonderful thing to embark on.
Friday, 14 November 2014
Taking your time over editing
I just remembered something that Elina Brotherus said and which I forgot to mention in my post about her, so quickly want to write it down before I dash out. And that is to take your time. Oh - so many contradictions; here I am rushing as I write about taking your time, my time.
I know taking your time over editing is crucial. I get so frustrated by the need to get things done within a short space of time for the assignments. Brotherus talked about waiting at least 6 months before looking at her work and then she makes small prints which help her to make up her mind about what she will use and what she won't. I am already thinking about possibilities for both assignment 4 and 5 - I have slightly stalled on the exercises but will pick up again tomorrow when out with the kids - but I am very mindful of time, especially as I have so many other things to fit in too. It feels like waiting 6 months at least to edit would be an amazing luxury.
I know I basically use Flickr as a scrapbook/dumping ground/note pad type of thing - it's a way to constantly be taking photographs and showing them to someone, anyone! That's fine. It keeps me involved but there is a lot of unutterable rubbish up there (mine I mean). I just post whatever happens to have come up - like a stream of consciousness. All sorts of junk and occasionally something maybe worth keeping but mostly I ma just practising and trying things out. I'm not trying to create a series of anything, or a comprehensive style or anything with any cohesion.
I have posted a few of the assignment images there but it always feels a bit like I shouldn't be - somehow that I'm not valuing them enough by chucking them into the vast chasm of Flickr and losing them really - even though they're always on my page - but I lose something intrinsic about them. I want to keep them separate and maybe I should in the future.
Some words for A4 that have been floating about my head - shame, embarrassment, foolishness, discomfort, dreams - forgetting your words, running, falling.
I know taking your time over editing is crucial. I get so frustrated by the need to get things done within a short space of time for the assignments. Brotherus talked about waiting at least 6 months before looking at her work and then she makes small prints which help her to make up her mind about what she will use and what she won't. I am already thinking about possibilities for both assignment 4 and 5 - I have slightly stalled on the exercises but will pick up again tomorrow when out with the kids - but I am very mindful of time, especially as I have so many other things to fit in too. It feels like waiting 6 months at least to edit would be an amazing luxury.
I know I basically use Flickr as a scrapbook/dumping ground/note pad type of thing - it's a way to constantly be taking photographs and showing them to someone, anyone! That's fine. It keeps me involved but there is a lot of unutterable rubbish up there (mine I mean). I just post whatever happens to have come up - like a stream of consciousness. All sorts of junk and occasionally something maybe worth keeping but mostly I ma just practising and trying things out. I'm not trying to create a series of anything, or a comprehensive style or anything with any cohesion.
I have posted a few of the assignment images there but it always feels a bit like I shouldn't be - somehow that I'm not valuing them enough by chucking them into the vast chasm of Flickr and losing them really - even though they're always on my page - but I lose something intrinsic about them. I want to keep them separate and maybe I should in the future.
Some words for A4 that have been floating about my head - shame, embarrassment, foolishness, discomfort, dreams - forgetting your words, running, falling.
Thursday, 13 November 2014
Elina Brotherus
Yesterday I went to see Elina Brotherus speak about her work. It made me very happy to have been there. Listening to her and seeing her work answered so many questions!
Brotherus told us that she applied towards the end of her MA for a residency at a French Museum. When she arrived she had no French although spoke Finnish, German and English already - imagine being that accomplished before you've even begun. In order to learn French she followed her friend's advice and used Post It Notes everywhere with the words of the objects they were stuck to written in French on them. (Given I'd been reading about object relations in infants only the day before it's difficult not to see this as a moment of startling synchronicity - how this informs my understanding of her work and perhaps ultimately mine will take me a little longer to think about so forgive me for brushing over it for now*.)
Brotherus documented her time there by taking self portraits. One of the most fortuitous images, La Reflet from Suites Françaises 2, was of herself standing by the mirror and placed on the mirror covering her face was the Post It Note for reflection-reflet - without a digital camera there was no way she could have known the yellow sticky paper would be placed so perfectly and she was grateful for such a lucky accident.
She created a series of images of herself with these notes and one of them, Le nez de Monsieur Cheval, is on the cover of photography as contemporary art by Charlotte Cotton. The work was exhibited and Brotherus has since forged a hugely impressive and prolific career, as well as teaching art photography. She talked about using her Self as an example of life in her work, of life guiding the work. And because she is that way inclined she found that even when she left autobiographical work behind for ten years and concentrated on landscapes the self portraits 'pushed through again'. The photographs we were looking at were the ones taken at the beginning of her career as discussed and some later ones linked but taken more recently.
Brotherus was asked to return to do some work at the same institution in 2011 working with young people and she asked if could stay in the same room as she had done before. During her own time she took photographs of herself and the space again with Post It Notes only this time the language, still French, was more fluent as by now she had lived in France, bought a house with someone and then left again (although still owns the house). Brotherus read out and translated some of the sentences she had photographed. The Post It Notes were by now covered in complex, three dimensional contemplations containing positive and negative thoughts.
They were deeply personal and honest comments about where she was emotionally at the time of the work and about her state of happiness. I found it extremely moving as there was no self-pity for her sadness, just a matter of fact honesty. This was quite hard to comprehend I suppose because we are used to more drama (well I am) and perhaps even histrionics when hearing people report sadness and loss. There was emotion but it was contained.
And that is what I get from Brotherus' work. A sense of certain, profound containment; unobtrusive strength and a still, quiet powerfulness. She told us she was happy when she did the first Post It Note series although many of the photographs do not convey a sense of happiness to me. Happy because she was being taken seriously as an artist and able to do the work in the first place.
The second series which is shown in conjunction with the earlier is poignant and brimming with a sense of loss for youth and dreams and hopes. As if she wonders how she arrived at this later place.
In many of the images you can see the cable release and this is important as the viewer is then reminded that the author is also the subject; this is a subjective work about the self. What the viewer takes away in connection with that is really left to her (or even him).
As I mentioned in my last post the idea of working with the self has been on my mind a lot since I have been compelled to photograph myself for the previous two assignments and have really struggled with that.
Brotherus was asked if she could have chosen to use a model for these series'. I knew the answer to be a resolute 'no'. The work is deeply personal - it is about her relationship with her past, present and future and to ask someone else to act it out would be to undermine it. Her work is not a play or a drama. It is the truth, uncluttered and unalloyed, simple and straight forward.
I have looked a lot at quite 'other-worldly' (stylistically) photographs recently - mainly because I have been attracted to and experimenting with a certain style of my own, tricks if you will. But I was so taken with the power of Brotherus and her work. She is like a swan; composed, powerful, beautiful and so is the art. There is no trickery.
Someone asked Brotherus if she works with an assistant or anyone else helping her. Again I felt I knew the answer; this is the sort of work you must do on your own if you can. You cannot have the worry of another - an Other. It's too personal and needs to take as long as it takes, with your own thoughts and space. (I am thinking of something where I might possibly need someone to help and I can only think my best and oldest friend will do under those circumstances so I hope she is up for it if I do decide I need her.)
I was so pleased to have attended, to find out more about another artist photographer, to see what else is possible, to see the seriousness with which Elina Brotherus takes her work, to witness someone sharing herself so gracefully. I read an article about women over-sharing their pain, flagellating themselves, baring their souls in a most painful and self-hating way by Suzanne Moore in The Guardian. It was a really interesting article especially in light of me having been looking at Brotherus' work yesterday, and my own compulsion to explore what ever it is that I am working towards. I thought the article was extremely apt but I do NOT think that Brotherus is doing the sort of anti-feminist-bearing-of-the-soul-in-order-to-be-hurt-further-by-self-and-others that Suzanne Moore is describing. And I'm not yet sure how she avoids that. How she manages to be so graceful. Perhaps it's honesty. Enormous self-awareness. Generosity. I just don't know.
Elina Brotherus' website
Guardian article by Suzanne Moore
Object relations
Brotherus told us that she applied towards the end of her MA for a residency at a French Museum. When she arrived she had no French although spoke Finnish, German and English already - imagine being that accomplished before you've even begun. In order to learn French she followed her friend's advice and used Post It Notes everywhere with the words of the objects they were stuck to written in French on them. (Given I'd been reading about object relations in infants only the day before it's difficult not to see this as a moment of startling synchronicity - how this informs my understanding of her work and perhaps ultimately mine will take me a little longer to think about so forgive me for brushing over it for now*.)
Brotherus documented her time there by taking self portraits. One of the most fortuitous images, La Reflet from Suites Françaises 2, was of herself standing by the mirror and placed on the mirror covering her face was the Post It Note for reflection-reflet - without a digital camera there was no way she could have known the yellow sticky paper would be placed so perfectly and she was grateful for such a lucky accident.
She created a series of images of herself with these notes and one of them, Le nez de Monsieur Cheval, is on the cover of photography as contemporary art by Charlotte Cotton. The work was exhibited and Brotherus has since forged a hugely impressive and prolific career, as well as teaching art photography. She talked about using her Self as an example of life in her work, of life guiding the work. And because she is that way inclined she found that even when she left autobiographical work behind for ten years and concentrated on landscapes the self portraits 'pushed through again'. The photographs we were looking at were the ones taken at the beginning of her career as discussed and some later ones linked but taken more recently.
Brotherus was asked to return to do some work at the same institution in 2011 working with young people and she asked if could stay in the same room as she had done before. During her own time she took photographs of herself and the space again with Post It Notes only this time the language, still French, was more fluent as by now she had lived in France, bought a house with someone and then left again (although still owns the house). Brotherus read out and translated some of the sentences she had photographed. The Post It Notes were by now covered in complex, three dimensional contemplations containing positive and negative thoughts.
They were deeply personal and honest comments about where she was emotionally at the time of the work and about her state of happiness. I found it extremely moving as there was no self-pity for her sadness, just a matter of fact honesty. This was quite hard to comprehend I suppose because we are used to more drama (well I am) and perhaps even histrionics when hearing people report sadness and loss. There was emotion but it was contained.
And that is what I get from Brotherus' work. A sense of certain, profound containment; unobtrusive strength and a still, quiet powerfulness. She told us she was happy when she did the first Post It Note series although many of the photographs do not convey a sense of happiness to me. Happy because she was being taken seriously as an artist and able to do the work in the first place.
The second series which is shown in conjunction with the earlier is poignant and brimming with a sense of loss for youth and dreams and hopes. As if she wonders how she arrived at this later place.
In many of the images you can see the cable release and this is important as the viewer is then reminded that the author is also the subject; this is a subjective work about the self. What the viewer takes away in connection with that is really left to her (or even him).
As I mentioned in my last post the idea of working with the self has been on my mind a lot since I have been compelled to photograph myself for the previous two assignments and have really struggled with that.
Brotherus was asked if she could have chosen to use a model for these series'. I knew the answer to be a resolute 'no'. The work is deeply personal - it is about her relationship with her past, present and future and to ask someone else to act it out would be to undermine it. Her work is not a play or a drama. It is the truth, uncluttered and unalloyed, simple and straight forward.
I have looked a lot at quite 'other-worldly' (stylistically) photographs recently - mainly because I have been attracted to and experimenting with a certain style of my own, tricks if you will. But I was so taken with the power of Brotherus and her work. She is like a swan; composed, powerful, beautiful and so is the art. There is no trickery.
Someone asked Brotherus if she works with an assistant or anyone else helping her. Again I felt I knew the answer; this is the sort of work you must do on your own if you can. You cannot have the worry of another - an Other. It's too personal and needs to take as long as it takes, with your own thoughts and space. (I am thinking of something where I might possibly need someone to help and I can only think my best and oldest friend will do under those circumstances so I hope she is up for it if I do decide I need her.)
I was so pleased to have attended, to find out more about another artist photographer, to see what else is possible, to see the seriousness with which Elina Brotherus takes her work, to witness someone sharing herself so gracefully. I read an article about women over-sharing their pain, flagellating themselves, baring their souls in a most painful and self-hating way by Suzanne Moore in The Guardian. It was a really interesting article especially in light of me having been looking at Brotherus' work yesterday, and my own compulsion to explore what ever it is that I am working towards. I thought the article was extremely apt but I do NOT think that Brotherus is doing the sort of anti-feminist-bearing-of-the-soul-in-order-to-be-hurt-further-by-self-and-others that Suzanne Moore is describing. And I'm not yet sure how she avoids that. How she manages to be so graceful. Perhaps it's honesty. Enormous self-awareness. Generosity. I just don't know.
Elina Brotherus' website
Guardian article by Suzanne Moore
Object relations
Wednesday, 12 November 2014
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
Jessa Fairbrother's blog
Jessa Fairbrother's website
Monday, 10 November 2014
Irving Penn
I do wish my brain worked a bit better - I wrote down Irving Penn because somewhere or someone I read said, look at Irving Penn for group portraiture as the shapes he made were good to study. Sadly for the person who wrote this I cannot remember who or where it was. If I do I will certainly come back here and correct that as I feel a bad for not being able to include a link; I think a photographer I've been looking at. And I shall definitely try in future to be more fastidious about writing everything down. Anyway, this is a short entry as I have not looked at much yet but wanted to get something recorded on my blog especially in relation to group portraits.
Anyway, Irving Penn, born in 1917 - died in 2009 at the age of 92, is another photographer who trained under and worked for Alexey Brodovitch just like Diane Arbus, Richard Avedon, Lillian Bassman, Paul Himmel and so many others I've been looking at recently - he's such a huge influence and seems like a really important father figure to all these people. Penn started as an artist and some of his drawings were published at Harpers Bazaar. I guess this background and training in graphic design is what makes the shapes of his group photography so useful to study.
Penn worked for Vogue from the early 40s onwards and was prolific in advertising, working for a variety of fashion houses and other industries too. There is also, travel, ethnographic work, still life, and of course portraits, and especially of models and famous faces.
Penn published and exhibited his own work and I'm particularly interested in Earthy Bodies (which I've deliberately not looked at before writing this). I understand this work was not exhibited until the 80s despite being produced in the late 40s. I have found the whole concept of 'nudes' really difficult to contemplate and in fact even find the very word pretty uncomfortable.
I love the high contrast and stark style of his portraits - and was fascinated to learn that he was one of the first photographers to use very simple grey or white backgrounds. Is this true? Wikipedia is known sometimes to get things wrong.
Info taken from Wikipedia
Google search for images
Some examples:
Bikers, Children, Dancers, Hippie Bikers
Anyway, Irving Penn, born in 1917 - died in 2009 at the age of 92, is another photographer who trained under and worked for Alexey Brodovitch just like Diane Arbus, Richard Avedon, Lillian Bassman, Paul Himmel and so many others I've been looking at recently - he's such a huge influence and seems like a really important father figure to all these people. Penn started as an artist and some of his drawings were published at Harpers Bazaar. I guess this background and training in graphic design is what makes the shapes of his group photography so useful to study.
Penn worked for Vogue from the early 40s onwards and was prolific in advertising, working for a variety of fashion houses and other industries too. There is also, travel, ethnographic work, still life, and of course portraits, and especially of models and famous faces.
Penn published and exhibited his own work and I'm particularly interested in Earthy Bodies (which I've deliberately not looked at before writing this). I understand this work was not exhibited until the 80s despite being produced in the late 40s. I have found the whole concept of 'nudes' really difficult to contemplate and in fact even find the very word pretty uncomfortable.
I love the high contrast and stark style of his portraits - and was fascinated to learn that he was one of the first photographers to use very simple grey or white backgrounds. Is this true? Wikipedia is known sometimes to get things wrong.
Info taken from Wikipedia
Google search for images
Some examples:
Bikers, Children, Dancers, Hippie Bikers
Friday, 7 November 2014
Sometimes I'm a twit!
I've been bemoaning online study and how hard it is to connect with others, which I feel is so important, and I went into the Other folder on FB today and found all these messages from fellow students offering encouragement and trying to connect. Yikes! It's made me feel, a) I should stop moaning and thinking things would be better elsewhere and b) much better about things. I still have a little dream about being in a bricks and mortar college but maybe that's just an avoidance thing. Thank you to all the people who were trying to be kind (I have thanked them privately too) and apologies for my extreme rudeness!
Some images I took today following a chat about the direction my photography is going in
After having quite a positive chat today about some photographs I had taken I took my camera out when my youngest son and I went to buy some chocolate and coffee. There are also photographs here of my kids at home. The point is that you don't need to anywhere far or exotic or exciting. There are photographs to be had where-ever you are. I am really enjoying black & white at the moment and I have been looking at two photographers whose work is fairly low key, or exposed on the lower side (to be written up soonish!)
One of the other things that was discussed was editing - i.e. not putting just any junk out there but carefully choosing images. This is something that takes time, I'm sure and begins to make more sense once you've got quite a decent archive of images behind you, know where you're putting them or what you're doing with them. I'm not sure what I'm doing with these. I may use them in a family album. I may print them. I don't know. For now - it is enough for me that I am taking them in the first place. That reminds me I must write up the talk I went to on archiving and what a personal archive means to photographers.
Thursday, 6 November 2014
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
[1] 77% Loc 2240
[2] 95% Loc 2771
[3] 96% Loc 2779
[4] 97% Loc 2829
[5] 97% Loc 2830
[6] 94% Loc 2726
[7] 21% Loc 591
[8] 94% Loc 2723
[9] 48% Loc 1369
[10] 94% Loc 2739
Monday, 27 October 2014
Light Part 4 Exercise 1 Part 2
I shot the first image (laid out in the middle of each image here so the sequence of ISO numbers make sense) in AV then switched to manual and changed the ISO to get exposures around the average so that I didn't need to change the aperture or shutter speed. (I noticed afterwards that using ISO is recommended in a later exercise too). All images are shot at 50mm with a cropped sensor.
Image 1 - f5.6 1/125s
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| 600 ISO |
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| 500 ISO |
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| 400 ISO |
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| 320 ISO |
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| 250 ISO |
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| This was the very first image I took of this scene which is framed ever so slightly differently than the five above and the one I liked most. It is taken at 400 ISO so the average and would have been set to AV. |
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| ISO 1250 |
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| ISO 1000 |
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| ISO 800 |
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| ISO 640 |
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| ISO 500 |
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| ISO 2000 |
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| ISO 1600 |
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| ISO 1000 (Oops - I seem to have missed ISO 1250 when doing this exercise! So this is darker than it might have been) |
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| ISO 800 |
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| ISO 640 |
Shot into the sun so all over exposed. These didn't really work at all but serve for the purpose of the exercise. I don't really get the shooting in the sun thing. I keep trying to get it right as I know people seem to like it and there are images with flare and golden streams all over the Internet but I never like the look of what I get when I try it. Maybe if I could do it with any success I'd change my mind about it - I do tend to underexpose as a habit and need to constantly be on the look out for that and I really like very light aity images that aren't over exposed. Perhaps that's what I should aim for in the assignment, or at least part of it. We'll see.
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| ISO 200 |
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| ISO 250 |
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| ISO 320 |
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| ISO 400 |
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| ISO 500 |
Here I like the one with the highest ISO even though I am sure it's quite noisy for those obsessive pixel-peeper types. I just the like the light and there was very little by the time I got to taking these - I had to stop soon after. Again the one in the middle was taken on AV and it was that setting I used to work around. Next time if I use AV I should then use exposure compensation + and - too to find an exposure I am happy with before continuing to bracket. (I don't think you can set the camera to bracket for two extra exposures on either side, can you, so must do it manually?) I tend to shoot in manual although have been advised to use AV for family shoots. I did for two weddings and I think that was the right thing to do but I felt a loss of control. Perhaps the more I relax in those situations the better I will be at judging whether AV is right or when to go into manual in certain scenarios. Or maybe I should become more comfortable with AV and exposure compensation by using it more because as I mention I do tend to underexpose. In fact sometimes I will think I have overexposed as that is what the camera histogram is telling me but then when I get home I find it's fine although high key - wow, I wish I were less all over the place!
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| ISO 1600 |
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| ISO 1260 |
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| ISO 1000 |
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| ISO 800 |
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| ISO 640 |
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