Reflections on Current Photographic Practice. Part 1. Portfolios of Thematically Linked Images.

It has taken me quite a few years to understand what is meant by ‘Conceptual Photographic Art’ and even longer for me to produce a portfolio of work that might be considered to fit this classification. During my first OCA Level 3 course, ‘Your Own Portfolio’, students were specifically asked, for their major project, to produce a portfolio of 10-20 images and that there should be a stated theme linking the images. Things started off well for me, as I produced a series of images of people feeding birds (including Images 1a and 1b) for a project whose initial idea was to represent the different benefits that we get from feeding birds.

                         

Images 1a and 1b: “Feeding the Birds” from my major project for OCA Photography 3: ‘Your Own Portfolio”

If I had stopped after producing a dozen or so images of this type and submitted my major project work for assessment without further ado I would probably have done ok at assessment. However, I continued with my ‘environmental hat on’ and produced a further, much more diverse set of images in which I attempted to illustrate all the ‘bad’ things that we do to the environment, thus effectively splitting the project (and portfolio) into two sections: ‘what the birds do for us’ and ‘what we do for the birds’. In retrospect I should not have been surprised by the assessors’ terse comments when I had passed the course with a very modest 48% mark. These comments included remarks that I should have stuck to and developed the portfolio of people feeding birds and that I appeared to be more interested in the birds than I was in the  photography (a bit harsh, but there is more than a grain of truth in this).

So where had I gone wrong? Firstly, I had not stuck to the remit of linking the images via a stated theme. Secondly I had been swayed by my own emotions into producing a photographic project that tried (not very successfully) to make a statement regarding something that I feel strongly about. In doing this I spent a lot of time and effort working on a project that was essentially wasted – at least as far as my journey towards an arts degree was concerned.

Bearing this in mind, how do photographic artists at the cutting edge of current practice avoid the pitfalls that I fell into and produce work that is considered outstanding by their peers? Furthermore, what can I learn from their work that will help me to produce portfolios that reflect current photographic practice (as my tutor has recommended and as the assessors will expect) and is there any way in which I can do this whilst making a powerful statement about an issue that I feel strongly about? This latter question is very important to me, because I don’t believe that I can produce ‘art for art’s sake’ – I need strong motivation to drive me.

For this post I’ll look at a handful of selected recent image portfolios by photographers or ‘photograph collectors’ whose work fits the criterion of having an obvious stated theme linking the images. All their work has been critically acclaimed and has appeared in books and/or exhibitions. The portfolios would no doubt have received excellent marks from assessors if they had been submitted as a major ‘OCA Photography 3: Your Own Portfolio’ project! What can I learn from these works? Do I like them and, if not, why not?

Chloe Dewe Mathews: “Shot at Dawn”

In her critically acclaimed work “Shot at Dawn”, which has been published as a photobook, Chloe Dewe Mathews has visited the exact sites where British and Allied troops were executed (mainly for desertion) during the First World War. Following research by Mathews and others she photographed the sites as they appeared 100 years later, at the time of day when the individuals were executed. The result is a series of landscapes, both urban and rural. Typical examples are shown in Images 2a and 2b.

              

Images 2a and 2b from “Shot at Dawn” by Chloe Dewe Mathews

A number of films, television series and television documentaries have dealt in a moving way with this emotive subject. My problem with this work is that what for me is just a series of bland and rather boring landscapes fails to convey any of the emotion relating to these horrific events that I can absorb from the other media. Perhaps video, of the camera moving towards the place of execution, followed by the noise of gunfire, might have worked. Despite the variability of subject matter (although they are all landscapes) there is a clear, linking theme between the images. This series highlights a problem relating to my own work, which I have mentioned before: it is sometimes very difficult to convey emotion or even atmosphere in a photograph. My own opinion is that this (commissioned) work has given Mathews a thankless task. However, other very different (and informed) opinions are available!

Sam Ivin: “Lingering Ghosts”

Sam Ivin’s ‘defaced’ images of UK asylum seekers (e.g. Images 3a and 3b) were featured in the ‘migration’ issue of the British Journal of Photography (BJP) in September 2016. One of the images made the front cover.

                                                

Images 3a and 3b: Sam Ivin, “Lingering Ghosts”

The idea of defacing or hiding faces of people in photographic portraits is not new (BJP recently devoted a whole issue to this theme) but here Ivin scratches out the eyes of his subjects to remove the obvious emotional points of contact and leaves images that “reflect the pain, disorientation and anger of those looking for sanctuary” in the UK.

Ivin’s work (which has been published as a photobook), whilst perhaps being not entirely original, does clearly make a political statement and there is a very obvious link between the images. I admire his stance. However, I do wonder (and this is not to denigrate his work in any way) what difference his work will make to the asylum seekers, or the system that they face in the UK. Who will buy the book? How many artists and photographers have the power to change the world through their images whilst still working within the field of conceptual photographic art? Very few, I suspect.

Katy Grannan: “Anonymous”

Katy Grannan’s portraits of ‘anonymous’ passers-by in San Francisco and Los Angeles featured in the “Out of Focus: Photography” exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery in London in 2012. All the subjects gave their permission for Grannan to photograph them after she approached them in the street. The photographs (e.g. Images 4a and 4b) hint at lives well-lived, but perhaps without much reward.

                                            

Images 4a and 4b: Katy Grannan, “Anonymous”

I estimate that about 50% of all the portfolios featured in BJP during the two years that I subscribed to the magazine were portraits of people: the percentage is even higher when considering exhibitions of photography students’ final year portfolios. ‘People taking pictures of each other’ is still a dominant topic and it must be hard to find an original concept within this field. Sam Ivin (see above) succeeds and Katy Grannan’s portfolio works well because her subjects are neither young nor fashion models but ordinary citizens, many of them elderly, ‘snapped’ in a variety of natural but characterful poses. Is this work still valid as current photographic practice? Is it now necessary to add another layer of complexity to a portfolio of human portraits? I’m not a portrait photographer, so I don’t pretend to know the answer to these questions. What I do know is that portrait portfolios are pretty much guaranteed to have a theme linking them.

John Stezaker: “Marriage”

John Stezaker has made a very successful career as an artist by appropriating old photographs from flea markets and second hand bookshops, cutting them up and then combining them to form collages. Why he does this is not clear to me, so let’s call it ‘playful’ and ‘art for art’s sake’. His work, which is generally accepted as photographic art, has won him international acclaim. He has certainly carved out a very distinctive niche for himself. His work is original, based on clear concepts and within each series there is a clear theme linking the images. As an example I include two images from his “marriage” series (Images 5a and 5b), in which publicity stills, one of a man and one of a woman, are cut and then joined together to produce weird, androgynous, hybrid faces.

                                  

Images 5a and 5b: John Stezaker, “Marriage”

Stezaker’s work fulfils all the criteria for acceptance as conceptual photographic art, even if he is not the photographer. However, as with some of the other examples featured here, I have to question its purpose. For photographic art to make an impact on me or to stir my emotions it must be both aesthetically pleasing and have a purpose, other than to be recognised and lauded for its concept and originality. Stezaker’s work fails on both counts, although I’m sure that he won’t lose any sleep over this.

Eric Kessels: “In Almost Every Picture #14”

Eric Kessels and John Stezaker have at least two things in common: they were both finalists in the Deutsche Borse Photography Prize competition and they both work predominantly with appropriated photographs. Kessels has gone even further than Stezaker for his portfolio “In Almost Every Picture #14” by using the cast-offs from portraits of bathers photographed by somebody who made a living by shooting polaroid beach portraits of holidaymakers and then punching out his sitters’ heads to put them on to badges. Images 6a and 6b are representative of the cast-offs, which have been published in a book and also featured in an article for the December 2015 edition of BJP.

                      

Images 6a and 6b: Eric Kessels, “In Almost Every Picture #14”

At first glance one might imagine that Kessels is having a laugh at our expense, but closer examination reveals that there is a clear concept here and the images are linked by a very clear theme (the hole in the middle of the photograph, the beach and the sea for starters). Also, this work features in his 14^th book along the same lines and he makes a living out of appropriating and producing this work. Using true ‘Art Speak Bullshit’ Kessels has produced a rationale for why these images are important. It will not surprise the reader to know that I am far from impressed by Kessels’ project, which also presumably took minimal effort to put together, but I cannot deny that it is photographic art.

Annalisa Murri: “Then the Sky Crashed Down on Us”

I’m going to finish this review by looking at a project that impressed me and has influenced my current work. Annalisa Murri came 3^rd in the ‘Contemporary Issues’ section of the 2015 Sony World Photography Awards with a project in which she interviewed and photographed survivors of the Rana Plaza tragedy in Bangladesh, where an 8 storey building collapsed, killing over 1000 people. This was essentially a piece of photojournalism, re-telling the story of the tragedy through the eyes of some female survivors. What made her feature stand out was the clever use of monochrome double exposures, featuring portraits of the survivors blended into urban locations, presumably at or near the site of the tragedy (Images 7a and 7b).

                       

Images 7a and 7b: Annalisa Murri, « Then the Sky Crashed Down on Us”

For me, this portfolio fulfils all the criteria for acceptance as conceptual photographic art, in which the images are linked by a clear theme and form part of a harmonious set. Furthermore, I find the images to be aesthetically appealing and relevant to my own work, particularly as they have atmosphere and provoke an emotional response. Indeed, they influenced my decision to work with double and multiple exposures for the ongoing project – I have written a more detailed article on Murri's work  in the ‘Influences’ section of my blog.

However, I do have one concern about Murri’s project. Is it exploitative? Does it help the survivors of this tragedy in any way or is it used as a vehicle by the photographer to make a living and build her reputation? Photojournalism of this kind always raises these moral and ethical issues. Even Don McCullin, whose photographs of the human suffering caused by war and famine in the ‘third world’ did so much to raise both awareness and relief aid in the west, suffered from moral dilemmas of this nature.

Final Thoughts

The six very different projects that I have discussed in this post are, I believe, good examples of current practice in conceptual photographic art. The images in each portfolio are thematically linked and form harmonious sets. My reaction to each set has been very variable, however, and this says more about me than it does about photographic art. I tend to dismiss ‘art for art’s sake’, where the message is either superficial or relates to the artist’s own philosophy, which is usually shrouded by what non-artists might call “art speak bullshit”. I am more interested by projects that raise moral, ethical and/or political issues, even when the images are not particularly interesting. I am even more interested in projects that raise these issues with images that are aesthetically appealing and/or produce an emotional response. These are the projects that I want to talk about and share with others. I am still searching for the ‘holy grail’, the project that does all these things and also changes the world for the better. If I could produce such a project I would die happy!

Does my philosophy mean that I am not an artist? I need to look at my past to resolve this issue. Throughout my working life as a medicinal chemist within the pharmaceutical industry I had the goal of trying to discover a cure for a disease or, at least, something that would improve the health of people I had never met. I never achieved this goal (very few scientists do) but at least I tried. Now and in the future I have similar ideals: to bring my art to the attention of the world and to make a difference. Of course this is probably a pipe dream but as long as I’m trying to make art I will need motivation and that motivation will not come from potentially making money or gaining acceptance within a community that I hardly know or understand. Perhaps this makes me a perennial outsider. Perhaps my aims are not achievable. However, I will never compromise these aims.

Research and Book Review: “The Photobook: A History volume III” by Martin Parr and Gerry Badger, Phaidon, 2014.

The primary output from my current project will, all being well, be a photobook. My tutor has encouraged me to study and learn from other photobooks in order to help me to choose a suitable style and format for my own book, which should conform to current practice. “The Photobook: A History volume III” is the final (?) volume in the definitive reference series dealing with the worldwide evolution and development of the photobook in all its forms. It deals with photobooks published from the late 1940s until shortly before its publication in 2014. As such, it is an important source of information both for me and for others who design, study and/or simply enjoy purchasing and reading photobooks. At first I was rather put off by the price of the book and spent some time at my local Waterstones (as close to a local photographic library as I can get) glancing through its pages. Eventually, however, I ‘bit the bullet’ and purchased my own copy.

Image 1: Front Cover of “The Photobook: A History volume III”

The book is divided into chapters dealing, often loosely, with photobooks in relation to propaganda, protest, desire, modern life, place, conflict, identity, memory and finally with books that “represent and re-present the medium”. I have looked in detail at the section ('memory') which is of most relevance to my project work and dipped into the other sections – this is, after all, a reference work that I will come back to many times in the future. The editors incorporate works by well-known and respected artists and art photographers such as Roger Ballen, Sophie Calle, Pieter Hugo, Joel Meyerowitz and Stephen Shore. At the opposite end of the scale relative unknowns have had their books singled out for attention. Photographers whose reputations have been cemented by the publication of one book (Cristina de Middel’s “The Afronauts” is a good example) are also represented here. Each chapter begins with an overview of the subject matter discussed within, together with a discussion to its relationship with the chosen books. Selected images of single pages or (more commonly) double page spreads for each of the chosen books are then accompanied by brief overviews of these books in relation to their subject matter, design and historical and artistic context. A typical double page spread is shown below (Image 2).

Image 2: Double Page Spread from “The Photobook: A History Volume III”

This reference work clearly provides an invaluable reference point in charting the development of the photobook, current trends, important and influential single books by (often) internationally recognised photographers and developing current trends in the production of photobooks. However, I was particularly interested in the design and layout of the selected works. The following generalisations are of relevance to my own work:

·         Most of the photographs are presented in portrait or square format, one to a page.

·         Where a single photograph is shown on a double page spread this is almost invariably on the right hand side. In these books the left hand page is often left blank or perhaps has just a caption for the image.

·         There is usually little or no text visible on the selected double page spreads. Explanatory text (where present) presumably comes as an introduction or preface to the book. In discussing individual works Parr and Badger sometimes indicate that the viewer is left to come up with their own interpretation of the set of images contained therein, perhaps with no more than the book title for guidance.

·         In some books the images are bled to the corners of each page and in other books the images are bled to the horizontal or vertical edges only. However, in many books the images sit in the middle of the pages, with edging of varying thickness around them. Occasionally images are spread across two pages and sometimes two or more of these production methods are used within the same book. In other words there is no favoured method for presenting the images on the page and I could not detect any obvious changes when comparing current practice with 20^th century practice.

·         A few photobooks (presumably very limited editions) come complete with very ornate packaging and even, in one or two cases, with additional objects that are of relevance to the photobook story.

Whilst the selection of the photobooks for inclusion in this reference work was subjective I am sure that this book is very representative of the styles and developing trends in photobook subject matter and design over the last seventy years, with the emphasis in the book being rightly placed on 21^st century photobooks. It is clear that my proposed book will contain far more text than these works, which is a concern, although I cannot see an obvious way round this. “The Photobook: A History Volume III” has also given me some design options. It seems that “anything goes” as far as image design and placement is concerned. My tutor, for example, favours bleeding my images to the corners of the pages whilst I am not so sure about this. However, the “A4 Landscape” image format is rather uncommon in the photobooks discussed here. As a consequence I am now planning to produce square images, which could be fitted into the book in a number of ways, whilst I am more limited in what I can do with my current mixed set of A4 landscape and portrait images.

“The Photobook: A History Volume III” provides me with much food for thought, not just in terms of designing my own photobook(s), but also in terms of how the choice of subject matter for a book can make a big impact. This book will no doubt repay further study in the coming weeks and months.

Progress Update 16 November 2016

Having absorbed the lessons following the Skype conversation with my tutor, his tutor report and some follow up contact with him after my submission for Assignment 4 I am now moving on with my project work.

I have been left with ten photo-montage images which, once they have been harmonised to reflect consistent aesthetics, colour, composition and blending effects, will be included in the final project submission. I need to produce another 10-15 images to incorporate into a final photo book. Before I start producing new images and modifying the ones that remain I need to decide on a format that will be suitable for incorporating these into a photo book. Having recently purchased (at great expense!) and studied ‘The Photobook: A History Volume III’ (Parr and Badger) I am minded to use a square format for the images, even though this will involve a fair amount of additional work on the ten images that await ‘harmonisation’. The images would then be ‘bled’ to the edges of the page in the photo book. Most of the retained images have been produced in ‘A4 landscape’ mode and I haven’t ruled out using landscape format (perhaps 10x8) yet, but must make a decision soon.

Although the vast majority of photo books contain little or no text, the written word is crucial in my story and I still plan to format the book to contain text on each left hand page and one image, which relates to the text, on each right hand page. This is the format used by Adrian Clarke in “Gary’s Friends”, a book that has become a significant influence as I have been developing the project. However, I have now abandoned the idea of splitting the book into chapters and have returned to documenting the story of my relationship with my mother over her final eleven years in roughly chronological order. The text has been significantly modified and re-ordered. Many images reflecting particular events in our relationship have been abandoned and the text has been modified accordingly. However, some events (such as mum’s falling out with her sister in law and also the celebrations of her 80^th birthday) are critical to the story. Here the text has been retained and I will need to take a new approach to finding images that represent these events but can be harmonised with the remaining images. I still intend to incorporate at least two passages of text relating to the illness of clinical depression (with accompanying representative images) into the photo book, although I haven’t written the text or decided where to put it.

One issue yet to be resolved regards a graphical representation of typical ‘ups and downs’ that mum and I might have experienced during one of my visits to her home. This was regarded by my tutor as a “keystone image” but it cannot be harmonised to fit in with any of the other images in the book. I regularly change my mind regarding what to do with this graph: my current thinking is to re-work it in (2:1) landscape format and spread it out over the centrefold of the photo book, assuming that the book is produced in square format.

Following a significant period of soul searching and planning, I now need to move the project forward. The most difficult challenge, to produce new images that are consistent with the ones remaining following my tutor’s Assignment 4 edit, will take up most of my time although I also need to spend time harmonising those images that I already have and ensuring that the new ones can be produced in the same format. Following the completion of some more blog articles, the tidying up of the text and making a decision about the shape and formatting of the images, all my study time will be devoted to these areas for the weeks leading up to and shortly after Christmas 2016.

Plan for a Future Project

During a visit to a recent exhibition with my partner I came across some work by the artist Imran Qureshi. Qureshi regularly uses coloured handprints and footprints in his work (see Image 1) and has developed his output to produce some quite complex and (to my eyes) aesthetically pleasing work.

Image 1 (Imran Qureshi)

At the time I wondered whether I could develop the idea of using handprints and footprints in my own work, with the plan of blending the prints with one image (‘image 1’) and blending the space around them with a second image (‘image 2’), so that images 1 and 2 were juxtaposed and each related in some way to the hand. I was quite enthusiastic about incorporating one or more images of this type into my current project, but felt both that any message produced by this type of image might be a little too strong and also that it would be difficult to harmonise the image(s) with those that I had already produced.

Dominant issues in my life, which are reflected in my day to day photography, are wildlife and the environment. I have now developed a plan for a future project in which the handprint or footprint represents man’s impact on the environment. As an example, a (preferably red) handprint could be blended with a photograph of a rhinoceros (I’ve got plenty of those photos!), whilst the ‘negative space’ around the print could be replaced by human activity and/or a man-made environment which relates to the illegal poaching and killing of rhinos in order to obtain and process their horn. Elephants, tigers or the many animals closer to home that are threatened by human activity and climate change, illegal or otherwise, could be the subjects of other images.

On paper at least this proposal comes closest to satisfying my need to produce work that is relevant to my major interests, has a (campaigning) purpose and yet can be considered to fall within the remit of conceptual art. I need to check that I will not be plagiarising somebody else’s idea first and it is very unlikely that I will start this work before I finish my OCA course work, but if I do go ahead before assessment I will write another blog post and perhaps include an example.

I hope that this blog post demonstrates that I am thinking beyond my OCA course work and trying to integrate the knowledge that I have gained whilst working towards my degree with major personal interests in order to potentially produce creative artistic output that carries a message – something that will be critical for me to gain satisfaction from producing any art in the future.

Major Project Influences (13): Rosy Martin

During my research I stumbled across a small section of Rosy Martin’s project: “Acts of Reparation” at the ‘Uncertain States Open Call’ exhibition in 2015. My tutor recommended that I should look at her work because, as for my ongoing project, her photography often deals with memory and loss, in particular relating to the deaths of her parents. I therefore decided to look again at “Acts of Reparation” and to see how it related to my own work.

For over 30 years Rosy Martin has, either individually or through collaborations with other artists (including Jo Spence), developed an original photographic practice, termed Phototherapy, in which re-enactment is combined with photography to examine role-playing as a means of exploring and understanding memories. This ‘therapy’ is designed to explore individuals’ identities and understand and/or control emotions concerned with, amongst other things, bereavement, grief, loss and reparation.

Although her projects are not just restricted to phototherapy, most of Martin’s work (and, in particular, “Acts of Reparation”) strongly reflects this practice. In this project she dresses in her parents’ clothes and tries to assume their identities, both physically and emotionally, before photographing herself, sometimes reflected in a mirror, as she would wish to remember them. In her mother’s case (see, for example, Image 1) this work is particularly poignant as Martin was her mother’s carer towards the end of her life when her mother was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease, an illness that can be both demanding and distressing for relatives and friends of those affected.

Image 1; Rosy Martin, Photograph from "Acts of Reparation"

These images are designed not only as personal acts of reparation but also to reach out to the viewer to address reflective nostalgia and loss. They act as a personal memoir of the ‘good’ parents, perhaps as they would have wished to be remembered, perhaps deflecting some of the heartbreak associated with illness and bereavement.

At the risk of sounding sexist, role playing that goes to the extremes of dressing up and portraying somebody else appears to be restricted to women in the world of photographic art, with Cindy Sherman and Gillian Wearing springing to mind. This does not devalue the act in my eyes, but perhaps points to differences in the way that individuals seek reparation. I would certainly not demean the importance of Phototherapy as a potential device for many people in successfully dealing with grief and exploring memory. Also, attempting to use photography as a means of effecting reparation certainly strikes a chord with me as, after all, is my project not about reparation?

What value can I gain from studying Rosy Martin’s work? Firstly, I find her use of mirrors in some of the photographs, such as Image 1, interesting. Although I have dabbled in the ‘artificial’ use of mirrors in my project this work has not, so far, been successful. Perhaps a more intimate photograph, connecting me with an image of my mother, could be a device for exploring some of the events and periods in our lives that I still need to represent pictorially, provided that the presentation can provoke a response in the viewer. Secondly, Martin’s use of visual clues to explore memory and the passage of time is also very important in my work – even if I’m trying to do this in a very different way.

One final point: taking on the role of carer enabled Rosy Martin’s mother to stay in her own home, amongst cherished possessions and memories, until she died. One of my many regrets, which is expressed in the text for my project, is that because I did not take on the role of my mother’s carer after I retired (it would have been extremely difficult but possible for me to do so) my mother had to leave her home and she died in residential care. My attitude to reparation may differ somewhat from Rosy Martin’s, but for me some things can never be repaired.

Major Project Influences (12): Aviv Yaron

My project involves trying to produce images that provoke an emotional response in the viewer. This is not easy, as I have been discovering over the last year or so. One focus of my research has been in trying to find images by other photographers that provoke an emotional response when I look at them. To be honest, I haven’t found too many! However, at the latest (2016) ‘Uncertain States – Open’ exhibition at the Mile End Pavilion, London, I did find some images by Israeli-born photographer Aviv Yaron which caused me to look again and again. Not only were these photographic prints aesthetically pleasing to my eye but, when hung together, the ‘fractured’ landscapes (entitled “In Another Place”) created an uncanny and very strong atmosphere – and if a photograph has atmosphere it is well on the way to generating an emotional response in me. Image 1 shows a typical example.

Image 1; Aviv Yaron, from “In Another Place”

I was lucky enough to meet the artist at the exhibition and chat about his work. “In Another Place” consists of a series of photographs taken of the rubble that is all that remains of the Palestinian village of Simsim. Following the creation of the state of Israel, the Palestinians were expelled from the village in 1948 and moved to the Gaza strip. In the place where the village used to stand an Israeli kibbutz was founded: the kibbutz is still there today. There is no sign to indicate what had once been here before or that this had once been Palestinian land. Yaron grew up accepting that this was the ‘promised land’ and that he was one of ‘God’s chosen people’. Only recently has he started to come to terms with the fact that another culture held rights to the land and that this culture was forcibly removed, indirectly giving rise to some of the most tragic events in modern times.

Yaron chose to photograph the landscapes on film and then to chemically mark his negatives before producing prints. The results, whilst unpredictable, clearly add another layer of complexity to the photographs. Yaron remarks that the production of the additional visual surface in this way is “as if presenting a physical testimony to the passage of time, and providing an appearance to the unseen”. He also comments that “The surface blemishes and traces appear to be etched into what could be experienced as the topology of one’s memory”. It is clear that for him this series of images represents a journey and a passage of self-reflection, examining the significance of past events through a multi-layered approach.

Having understood the significance of this work provides me, the viewer, with the necessary emotional response. Of course the landscapes on their own could have told the same story, but somehow the marks add another layer of significance, both literally and metaphorically. They also seem to reflect the struggle that the artist has had to come to terms with his past and with the history of what happened in his mother country before he was born.

What can I learn from this work? I can take encouragement from the fact that marking the negative has produced an image with both aesthetic appeal (admittedly a subjective response) and a kind of surreal complexity (see, for example, Image 2) that draws me in to find out more. Having understood the background to the project, looking at the photographs again held my attention and produced an emotional response. Perhaps my own multi-layered images can produce a similar response in the viewer, particularly if I can harness the power of the landscapes of the Yorkshire Dales, where my story unfolds, as part of the story.

Image 2; Aviv Yaron, from “In Another Place”

Research, Book Review and Major Project Influences (11): "Ukadia" by John Goto (Djangoly Art Gallery, 2003)

John Goto is a photographer who uses his images to satirise and poke fun at society and the establishment, whilst raising important socio-political issues (in particular the gulf between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’) that are current in today’s society. His works often use photo-montage in order to explore these themes and, mainly because of the relevance of this technique to my own work, he was recommended for further study by my tutor.

‘Ukadia’ is essentially the book of an exhibition organised by the Djangoly Art Gallery, which featured three of Goto’s best known works, ‘Capital Arcade’, ‘High Summer’ and ‘Gilt City’, these works being produced between 1997 and 2003. The works seem to represent well both Goto’s style and his philosophy, based on other research and my study of the galleries on his web site. I’ll look at each series in turn and give an overview of his work and its relevance to my project afterwards.

‘Capital Arcade’ (1997-99) features ten satirical photo-tableaux, relating to “the collapse of socialism” in ‘New Labour’ Britain. The tableaux feature managerial and consumerist society, set in an imaginary ‘out of town’ new shopping arcade. Each of the composite images relates to a specific work of art by artists ranging from El Greco to Joshua Reynolds. Goto clearly has a deep and sophisticated understanding of art history, which allows him to relate the messages in the original art works to his own ironical messages about modern day society. To be honest I found the messages hard to follow and had to rely on the essay in the book by Robert Clark to appreciate their significance. ‘Unit 3, Capital Arcade’ (Image 1) gives a flavour of Goto’s style.

Image 1: John Goto, "Unit 3, Capital Arcade"

Based on El Greco’s ‘Christ Driving the Traders from the Temple’, the temple porch is represented by McDonalds’ foyer and the Christ figure by an oriental person, who is surrounded by trendy people in brand name gear, representing the traders and apostles. Notice also the man with the 1990s mobile phone!

Whilst Goto’s coded messages are sophisticated and political and his images undoubtedly must have taken a lot of time and effort to put together, he makes no attempt to hide the fact that they are montages. I imagine that he must have drawn from a library of hundreds, perhaps thousands of images of people photographed in the streets. The images are impressive in that they were put together digitally at a time when image manipulation using digital technology was in its infancy.

‘High Summer’ (2000-2001) takes Goto’s Britain away from shopping malls and out into the idealised arcadian landscapes of Poussin and Lorrain, 17^th century French landscape painters who are much admired by the photographer. He has combined the classical landscapes of Stowe, Rousham and Stourhead with (often) fake Palladian temples and classical ruins and re-positioned these, in montage with contemporary landscapes (beaches, valleys, hills, lakes and streams) to produce visually ravishing, if entirely artificial landscapes. These scenes are then deliberately spoilt, or at least changed, by the addition of people engaged in various contemporary activities. The myth of the perfect landscape becomes the reality of a landscape used and often abused by joggers, cyclists, hunters, joyriders, the army and the air force. Indeed, Goto’s vision is often doom-laden with visions of impending flooding (image 2 – an early reference to global warming?)

Image 2: John Goto, "Deluge"

In ‘High Summer’ Goto’s satire is directed both at the perceived eccentricities of human behaviour and at our dual capacity for creation and self-destruction. By setting his scenes in beautifully composed, atmospheric imaginary landscapes his work becomes far more aesthetically appealing and perhaps carries a stronger message than does ‘Capital Arcade’.

‘Gilt City’ (2002-2003) sees Goto return to the urban landscape. The 20 images in this series mainly depict urban ‘outsiders’, such as beggars, flower sellers and touts, against a backdrop of corporate city buildings. In many images reflections of suited ‘city types’ in the windows of the buildings emphasise the differences between the ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’ (a recurring theme in Goto’s work). A typical example is ‘Beggar’ (below), in which a man begs using a McDonalds drinking cup, holding it as if in prayer. The dome of St Pauls, an icon of London’s financial centre, is conveniently reflected in glass behind him. Is there a connection between McDonalds and begging or is the cup simply used to connect the beggar with the capitalist society?

John Goto, "Beggar"

In contrast to the earlier works, here Goto dressed and photographed friends and associates in the studio, then digitally placed their images into his many images of the ‘square mile’. These images are technically simpler and (presumably) more straightforward to produce than his previous series, but their meaning is often harder to place – in many cases, as noted in the essay by Mark Durden that accompanies the series, his work carries mixed messages. In particular, his images of the ‘Bear Tamer’ and ‘Bullfighter’ (a reference to the ‘bulls’ and ‘bears’ of the Stock Market) reverse their relationship with the ‘bull’ being represented by a cute calf and the bear appearing as a reflection in the window behind the ‘Bear Tamer’, apparently ready to pounce. The subtlety of some of the other images would have been lost on me if there had not been a discussion and explanation in Durden’s text. The bottom line of this work appears to be that “Capitalism has become a pervasive, monolithic force, which assimilates any signs of subversion or defiance”.

Whilst the images of this final series have lost some aesthetic appeal when compared with ‘High Summer’ they do seem more focussed and more contemporary. They are also more closely aligned to the type of image that I am attempting to produce for my own project work.

Final Comments and Learning Points

In these three visually very different series of works John Goto uses photo-montage in order to present a satirical, socialist, at times almost apocalyptic view of the state of modern society, with its inequalities and injustices. As digital imaging technology has developed, the sophistication of his montages has increased to the point where in the final series it is quite possible to believe that the images were single snapshots. Whilst the ‘High Summer’ images have the greatest aesthetic appeal their message is tempered by the fact that they are clearly montages. The ‘Capital Arcade’ series, with its fairly rudimentary collaging of multiple images, appears over-complicated in its message, except for art buffs and those prepared to put in a considerable amount of time in order to understand their message. The ‘Gilt City’ images are simpler and have a more realistic appearance: their messages are hard to glean, but their relative structural simplicity allows the viewer to have a go at deciphering this meaning, even if ultimately even the expert may fall short.

How does Goto’s output affect my own work? As with the first two series discussed here I am making no attempt to conceal the fact that the images for my project are photo-montages. Furthermore, I have produced one or two images that, whilst much less aesthetically pleasing, place human figures in a landscape environment. These have not been successful and, at the time of writing (November 2016), are likely to be dropped. However, I think that I can develop some ideas along the lines of the third series, juxtaposing two or more images to make a point or tell a story, perhaps encouraging the viewer to find the key to their significance from within the picture. Coincidentally, one early image that I produced, which my tutor likes (and is therefore likely to be incorporated into the final portfolio!), is Image 4 (below), a composite reflecting on my mother’s move into residential care. This image has some relation to ‘Gilt City’ in the manner in which it juxtaposes (in this case) two images to make a point.

Image 4

However, Goto’s composites fail to move me. Together, they carry a message and that is not an emotional one. I will have to look elsewhere for inspiration in that regard.

Major Project Influences (10): Susan Burnstine

Susan Burnstine is an American photographer, now living in Los Angeles. Her distinctive style has been developed by using home-made cameras and lenses produced from a variety of materials, which invariably contain flaws resulting in peculiar effects, predominantly varying degrees of blurring but also magnification of certain areas of her images. Always shooting in monochrome, the effects of these lenses are to produce dream-like, often nightmarish, almost abstract images in which the subject matter can be ascertained, but is only partially resolved.

I first came across Burnstine’s work as the cover photo and sleeve images for The Guillemots’ CD album ‘Walk the River’, in which the title and feel of the album’s title track are (in my eyes, at least) superbly reflected in her photographs (Images 1 and 2).

Image 1: Susan Burnstine, "Walk the River", Album Cover

Image 2: Susan Burnstine, "Walk the River", Sleeve Image

These images have the appeal of creating a brooding atmosphere and at the time (2012) encouraged me to investigate the deliberate introduction of blurring effects into my own images, although I used ‘Photoshop’ rather than home-made lenses to achieve this. The project never got off the ground, but now I’m considering again the deliberate introduction of blurring and other ‘effects’ in order to try to generate more emotion in some of the images for my current project. Blurring also refers to the concept of memory, where memories become faded with time. I’ve already introduced blurring into one of the images that I’m working with (which I may or may not use) and I am also looking at deliberately blurring one or more of the constituents of some other image montages. Will it work for me? If it doesn’t I may not pursue the work any further, because then it will be unlikely to work for the viewers of my images.

Susan Burnstine has produced two photo books. The first, ‘Within Shadows’ (cover photo shown in Image 3), is very expensive and difficult to get hold of, being out of print. Burnstine states that this work was prompted by powerful, nightmarish dreams that afflicted her during childhood and later during adulthood, particularly after she had been traumatised by the premature death of her mother. 

Image 3: Susan Burnstine, Cover Photograph for "Within Shadows"

More recently I have obtained the second book, ‘Absence of Being’, which was prompted when the dreams returned, following the death of her father. She writes down the dreams when she wakes, then tries to represent them on film as a type of therapy. There are some particularly striking images in "Absence of Being", which consist mainly of urban landscapes. My favourite photograph, "Beyond the East River", is shown below (Image 4).

Image 4: Susan Burnstine, "Beyond the East River", from "Absence of Being"

Susan Burnstine's work deals with memory and loss in a unique manner. Her atmospheric images provoke an emotional response in the viewer and provide an example of how blurring can be used in a positive manner. Making images that produce an emotional response from the viewer is one of the key aims (and arguably the most important remaining aim) of my project and this work illustrates one way in which I could achieve this.

Progress Update 6 October 2016 and Reflections, with reference to the BBC 2 Documentary 'A World Without Downs Syndrome' (Sally Phillips), Aired on 5 October (9.00pm)

Well, I’ve just started the second and final year of the Photography 3: Advanced course and events have taken a turn for the worse. I had felt reasonably happy with my submission for the 4^th course assignment, having produced a very early draft ‘mock up’ of a photo book incorporating 33 images to accompany text on a ‘one image per double page spread’ basis. Roughly a quarter of these images were new, whilst the remainder had been modified, to a greater lesser extent, or replaced following comments from my tutor after Assignments 2 and 3. I had divided the book up into four chapters and accompanied each chapter heading with a new, very different looking square image (giving me a set of four). I was happy with these new images, each of which related to the content of the appropriate chapter. Full commentary on the submission, my reasons for making changes and the degree of flexibility that was retained was sent as part of the submission.

A few days later I spoke to my tutor on ‘Skype’ (and these discussions are invaluable for me – thanks to him for setting them up) and it was clear that there were problems. He discussed the images mostly in general terms, also picking out one or two specific examples, and listed ‘nine and a half’ as being presentable. Only one of the new images that I had produced was included in the list, so it appeared that my work during the summer months had been of little value. We didn’t discuss why images had been excluded by him nor, in most cases, whether there was anything salvageable from them. That will come later. In the mean time I am left to ponder what I can do with 9.5 images and a load of text that will turn this into a portfolio worthy of submission for assessment.

So why am I struggling with this project and what can I do about it? The first question is difficult to answer, but after some thought I have come up with two main reasons. The answer to the second question is, as Dylan put it, “blowing in the wind”.

Reasons for Struggling Part 1

I am attempting to present my photographic work in a radically different way, blending archival photographs from the time when my mother was alive with either other archival images or (in the vast majority of cases) with images taken by me specifically for the project. The goal was to produce a photo book dealing with my mother’s battle against depression in her later years and how it affected me. My tutor has been very helpful in giving me references to (photographic) artists who blend two or more current images together and also artists who have produced portfolios of work relating to their mothers, fathers and/or other family members or acquaintances who may have been suffering from disabilities. I have been active in finding many other references in these areas. However, I am unaware of any photographer who has combined a restricted number of not very good archival family photographs with current images to try to tell a moving family story. I can’t ask my mother to pose now (in January 2017 it will be ten years since she died), I can’t photograph inside her house (long since sold) or in the garden. I do have a handful of photographs of the bare rooms of the house following clearance (and I have used these in a couple of images). In other words I have very limited resources to put together my montages and this has led to some repetition, particularly in the portraits of my mother that I have used.

Reasons for Struggling Part 2

In the montages I have tried in some cases to depict images that reference events that are described in the accompanying text. Some of the results are, by my own admission, crude and/or naïve. Worse still – and here we have the crux of the problem – they may not add anything at all to the text. The text may promote empathy in the reader, whilst the images leave them cold. If this is the case I might end up having to remove a lot of the images from the book, leaving a lot of text with a handful of images – hardly assessment material for a project in photographic art.

Which of the various art forms moves me the most? Which stirs up the greatest emotions? I have to put music (certain types) at the top of the list, followed perhaps by the spoken word, films (which often have a music sound track) and the written word. Photography comes at the bottom of the list! Not only that, but I am discovering that it is easier for me to arouse empathy and emotion through the written word than through my photography (I’m not a musician, although I do occasionally write poetry). It is no wonder, then, that a lot of my montage images are failing to elicit a positive response.

This issue was brought home to me when I watched the documentary ‘A World without Downs Syndrome’, presented by Sally Phillips, a scriptwriter with an 11 year old child with Downs Syndrome. Phillips argued passionately for all mothers to have the right to choose whether to bring children with Downs Syndrome into the world, having been fully informed about the issues involved at the eight week stage now that recently developed non-invasive technology can be used with a high degree of certainty to detect Downs’ babies at that point. Furthermore, she stressed how sad and isolated people with Downs Syndrome would feel if all ‘Downs pregnancies’ were in future terminated. As part of the documentary she visited Iceland, where currently 100% of Downs pregnancies are (with parental approval) being terminated. She spoke with an Icelandic photographer who had produced a project portfolio of over 30 images of the very few Icelandic people having Downs Syndrome. I thought back to so many exhibitions that I have visited where people from minorities, migrants and people with disabilities have had their portraits taken, the portraits then being displayed in order to make political and/or socio-economic statements. Am I moved by these portraits? Very rarely. Does the accompanying text move me? More often. It is true that the images may ignite peoples’ interest in who these people are and common bond they have. However, the hard-hitting message is in the text or, in the case of Sally Phillips’ case, the spoken word and moving image. Even though I did not feel the desire to take sides in the debate I was moved by this programme in a way that would not have been possible if I had walked into a studio and seen 30+ photographs of Icelandic Downs’ Syndrome people.

What Way Forward?

So, I have identified what I feel are the key reasons for why my project may go ‘off the rails’. Basically, I have chosen a unique but extremely challenging photographic method of describing my mother’s battle with depression and its effect on me and the resultant images have not, in many cases, worked. In addition the prose that accompanies the images is likely to raise significantly more empathy in the viewer than many of images themselves – thus downgrading the images to more of a supporting role. In a photographic project the images should be at the forefront!

I will obviously need to discuss the way forward with my tutor. One possibility might be to remove some images entirely and replace others with montages that do not directly relate to events described in the accompanying text, perhaps focussing on more general issues relating to depression. This would require a lot more work and would mean throwing out much hard work and effort, but might be possible within the time constraints of the project. However, my tutor’s initial reaction to the new square ‘chapter heading’ images, which start to look at this area, was not encouraging.

I promised myself that I would produce a photo book as a personal memorial to my mother and that promise still stands, whether or not it is done within or outside the confines of this course. I am also determined to finish this course within the two years that I have to complete it, submit for assessment and earn a degree.  After that it will definitely be time to move on!

Major Project Influences (9) - Sophie Calle and Book Review: 'Double Game' (Violette Editions, 2007)

Sophie Calle is a French conceptual artist, producing works and installations of a personal and/or autobiographical nature and using photographs to document her art. Her works often take the form of rituals and frequently involve interactions with others on streets in cities, detective work, journeys and performance incorporating arbitrary rules, recorded in intimate detail and in a self-deprecatory manner. However her style is, as far as I am aware, unique and impossible to categorise. I first came across her art at the ‘Walk On’ exhibition in Birmingham a few years ago, where the text and photographs of ‘Suite Venitienne’ (see below) were pasted along approximately forty feet of wall space. Fascinated by her pseudo-detective story, I spent half an hour reading through it from start to finish. The book ‘Double Game’ contains ‘Suite Venitienne’, together with several others of her best known works. The book references American author Paul Auster’s 1992 novel ‘Leviathan’, in which a number of her earlier works are used by Auster in creating a fictional character called Maria. These works are all included in ‘Double Game’. Auster created some additional rules for Maria to follow and Calle used these rules to produce further conceptual works. Finally Calle went to New York and invited Auster to invent some new rules for her to follow, in performance, in the city. The resultant work of art, ‘Gotham City’, concludes the book.

Calle has borrowed one or two of the ideas from Auster’s book and introduced them into her own art, but the bulk of this book consists of the photographs and text from some of her best known art works, including ‘The Striptease’, ‘Suite Venitienne’, ‘The Detective’, ‘The Address Book’ and ‘The Birthday Ceremony’, which are all referenced in Auster’s work.

In ‘The Striptease’ Calle mentions how, at the age of six, she used to undress in an elevator on the way to the sixth floor of the block of flats where she lived with her grandparents and run naked along the corridor to their flat entrance. In 1979, twenty years later, she was performing striptease on the stage of a strip club, not far from her grandparents’ home. The performance was recorded for her on camera (early stage: Image 1).

Image 1 (Sophie Calle)

Why she chose to do this, even as a way of producing performance art, is not covered in the book (although Auster presents some possible causes in his own book, a section of which [relating to Maria] is incorporated into Calle’s book). However, Calle’s audacity at taking on this role, presumably mainly for the sake of art, characterises much of her work.

In ‘Suite Venitienne’ (1981) Calle acts out one of her favourite roles, playing the detective as she visits Venice to find and then follow a man whom she had met at an opening shortly beforehand. Having discovered where he is staying she follows and photographs him as he moves around the city (Image 2). What I find particularly interesting about this work is how the seemingly bland and uninspiring documentary photographs cleverly combine with the text to immerse the viewer in an atmospheric and intense adventure.

Image 2 (Sophie Calle)

In ‘The Birthday Ceremony’ (1980-1993) Calle decided that, every year on her birthday, she would invite the number of people corresponding to her age, including one complete stranger chosen by one of her guests, to dinner. She kept her presents from these occasions, showcasing and photographing them every year (Image 3). However, it appears that the ritual was frequently interrupted, due to her need to attend events elsewhere around the time of her birthday as her fame (notoriety?) grew. She eventually abandoned the ritual on her 40^th birthday.

Image 3: Birthday Presents 1985 (Sophie Calle)

The final section of the book deals with a project, entitled ‘Gotham Handbook’, in which Auster asked Calle to carry out “personal instructions for S C on how to improve life in New York City”. These included smiling at and talking to strangers, performing small acts of kindness towards beggars and homeless people and cultivating and beautifying a small spot on the streets of the city, imbuing it with her own identity. Calle’s interpretations of these instructions, which included taking over and decorating the right half of a double phone booth (Image 4), are described in some detail. The end of the project came shortly after the telephone company returned the booth to its original state.

Image 4 (Sophie Calle)

I really enjoyed reading this book. Sophie Calle stretches conceptual art to its limits (if, indeed, there are limits) in these works and yet makes her art very accessible. She is undoubtedly a ‘one off’, perhaps very difficult to understand or to relate to but also incredibly creative. I admire the bare-faced cheek and bravado of some of her works, which sometimes lead her into deep trouble. She writes well and her photographs, superficially bland, run together with the text describing her projects to create atmosphere and emotion, apparently without effort.

What can I take from this book to inform and enhance my own work? Perhaps the most important learning point is that the intelligent combination of text and a portfolio of photographs can be used to not only document an event but also to provoke interest and emotion in the viewer.