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 14th 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 3rd 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.
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