I have created these last two collections under the classification of Signs and Places.
Signs provide information, often directing society towards action or inaction. The also provide an indication of the type of society they are located within and their physicality creates another set of landmark features to signify place.
Places is more of a general collection of specific places that caught my eye as I wandered around the area. I sense that they are more about place and society than Land:
This set is classified under the heading of Pedal Power to reflect the common feature of bicycles. They are another feature of Glasgow’s West End, with more seemingly chained to railings than actually ridden. It suggests to me an area of relatively low petty crime with a trusting that they will not be stolen. I can propose various reasons for the prevalence of bicycles in an area such as this; an economical means of transport for those unable to afford a car, a civic sense of environmental concern to use a zero polluter such as a bicycle over a car, and/or health conscious occupants who accept the health benefits of riding a bicycle.
I have again compared this collection with that of another Dutch photographer Jos Houweling who collected a similar set of bicycles he found around Amsterdam in the 1970’s. (see below from the Arles exhibition)
With my set I have chosen to show more of the environment from where they were found thus switching attention from a collection of photos of bicycles to questions about the environment they were found:
I have classified these images around the theme of rubbish creating a landmark for place.
As I wandered around Glasgow’s West End I began to ask what features, beyond buildings and architecture, that created a sense of this place. I thus began to notice and reflect on the hard landscape features installed by the local Council and utilities companies. They are features that are often ignored or taken for granted yet their regularity of occurrence creates a collective theme that can be uniquely different in other parts of the City. This seems to be at odds to the Dutch photographer Hans Van Der Meer who noticed a monotonous similarity of such features whenever he went to small towns across the Netherlands (see image below from the Arles exhibition).
New Topographics photographer Frank Gohlke classified grain silos as landmarks to signify place; once seen he then knew where he was. In the mixed society of Glasgow’s West End the key feature that I regularly came across that had a similar effect on me was, somewhat unfortunately, the large rubbish bins and other rubbish tipped on the ground. Not an attractive feature but one that suggests the way in which society lives in this area, and a ‘problem’ that has increased since the introduction environmental action of rubbish separation and thus the need for more bins.
In this next collection, I have classified them around the theme of land influencing place and place influencing land. With it I was investigating how land and place interact within an urban environment. In the Arles trip I was interested to see photographer Mitch Epstein investigates a similar theme, looking at trees in New York city. While his photos are more focussed on the portraiture of each tree within its urban environment, I wanted to retain a balance between land and place which also kept it within the style of the other straight images in the wider set.
I have been giving a lot of thought recently to the continuing direction of my Body of Work and how it links to Contextual Studies and my major written paper. The problem I have been having in my mind is that the concept behind Land Values is quite philosophical and I have been think that my Body of Work was at risk of drifting away from this concept (at least in my mind) – it had the potential of becoming more about place, memory and aspirations, rather than my relationship with Land itself. I was also struggling to find a focus for my written paper that covered this philosophical subject whilst still relating it to photography.
I posed a question about this on the Flickr forum but in the end concluded that I needed to work this out for myself. The good news is that this reflection has really helped me to focus on what I want to say.
In this reflection, I have attempted to respond to the following questions: what do I mean by Land Values? and how do I relate this to photography
From these simple points I now have a better sense and focus on how I can develop an extended written paper around humanity’s and photographers’ response to Land Values. This can then form the context from which I can bring my Body of Work together, which has always intended to be more of a personal reflection on Land’s Values.
The two points that I want to lead my Body of Work are thus:
By responding to these two points, I hope to still hope to have in the background those issues of place, memory and future aspirations.
All the above has probably been bubbling around in my head for quite a while as I have been developing the Body of Work and started the literature review for my extended written piece, but it is only since I have been able to set these thoughts out in this way that I feel happier that I now have a joint focus on what I am doing. For those reading this, the above may seem quite simple and straight forward but I can honestly say that it has taken a lot of time, effort, thinking, drafting and redrafting before being able to write something so straightforward that actually covers everything I want to achieve with the Body of Work and written piece.
The next simple step is to deliver on these issues!
In this first collection of images, captured as I wondered around the estate I now live, I have classified them under the heading of “Neighbours I have yet to meet”, reflecting on who might live behind those doors, and who might I meet over the next few years.
One of the key themes in the Arles study visit was about taxonomy and typology. Now, if I have the distinctions between these two terms correct then taxonomy is the system in place to classify whereas typology is the process of classifying things in a systematic way.
Early examples of this at the Arles exhibition were Karl Blossfeldt’s systematic collection of plant images which focussed on their design and shape, and, Bernard & Hilla Becha’s photographic survey of industrial buildings presented in an identical manner.
Each of these, and others throughout the event, got me thinking about my approach to my ‘New’ project based around the area I now live in the West End of Glasgow. As I have wandered around this estate as a flaneur taking photographs as I come across items that caught my eye, I have found myself shifting towards more of a typology type strategy where I have noticed and then sought out certain categories of objects. For example, the other day I wanted to collect examples of nature within the urban environment.
This has got me thinking about how I edit the collection of images I have created and that a typology approach would work quite well. Having looked through the set of images I have made so far, and the categories I have already focussed on, I have come up with the following classifications I want to edit my photos into:
My strategy now is to complete each of these classifications by having eight preferred photographs for each type. Once complete it should create a sense of the place I now live; something similar to that created by Dutch photographer Jos Houweling in the 1970’s who created a photo based typology of Amsterdam arranged into different, often overlooked, categories such as bicycles, prams, cars with covers over them, people looking out of windows, utilities grates found in the floor, and even dog poo found on the pavement, etc.
The one thing that I am accepting with this strategy is that as I did not set out with this strategy in mind then I did not create a taxonomy to tightly control the similarity of composition of these image, hence, their presentation may not be of an identical nature as the like of the Bechers, or even Blossfeldt, but some of my aesthetic decisions were at hand and thus should still be containedwithin an identified style.
The other thing to mention is that whilst I am aiming for a specific outcome to this strategy it will only be there to inform my Body of Work rather than become it as it was for Houweling. I am hoping, however, that this will inspire me towards the final outcome I am looking for.
I know that I said I wouldn’t be writing up any more specific details of the Arles Study Visit unless I was referring to something as part of my thoughts on other posts, however, as I felt the need to catalogue my visit as an aide memoire for my studies I thought that I would share it here on my blog. This will provide a good place to recall it but I also thought that it might help other student visitors to my blog in their wider research as well as to get a better sense of the intensity of diversity of such a study visit. And with that, here it is along with a short note of my immediate thoughts on each photographer’s work:
FRIDAY MORNING
The Walthur Collection
Themes:
Karl Blossfeldt – collection of plant images identifying their design and shape – an example of how early photography was used to reveal things not otherwise noticed.
Bernard & Hilla Becha – photographic survey of industrial things that were soon to be lost – impressive visual presentation where the identical composition and tonal range of each image binds the work together.
J.D.Ojeikere – backs of heads of African women each with uniquely platted hair – the images are less identically structured than Bechas’ but worth noting that the body of work was built up over 10 years.
August Sander – portrait collection of 1920’s German people – portraiture not really my thing but still a very impressive pre-war collection, worthy of greater study for anyone into portraiture.
Richard Avedon – collection of middle upper class people with a greater sense of personality & power than Sander’s – a good comparator with Sander’s work.
Accra Shepp – full length portraits of people at Occupying Wall Street – dates at bottom help to remind that it was not a one off day – this didn’t appeal as much as the above, mainly because it seemed to create a sense of ‘look at me and where I am’, rather than portraying a political understanding of the event.
Nobayoski Araki – 101 Works for Robert Frank – diarised sequence of erotica and the every day banal – a snap shot approach which works when you are able to browse passed each of the 101 images rather than stop to think about them individually.
W.M. Hunt Collection – more to do with the collection itself, which was about archival group photographs – didn’t get much from this.
FRIDAY AFTERNOON
Mazaccio & Drowilal – winners of BMW’s artist in residence prize, creating a collection based around our fascination for and relationship with animals – prints on everyday items. Upstairs exhibition was a series of collages, mainly of large printed sheets of kitchen roll with photograph cut outs superimposed onto the design of the kitchen roll – difficult to explain the ‘left-field’ aspect of this exhibition but it was great to see what could be done, even if it was some way from my own photographic horizons.
David Favrod – Hikari (the light) – body of work based around a conversation the photographer had with his grandparents one day about the Hiroshima bombings – everyone was impressed with this and it remaindered me of my own thoughts of blackening out parts of an image to highlight my political concerns, may need to look back on this.
Vik Muniz – uses family photos and postcards to create his own large scale montages, some of which created a 3D effect as eyes followed you as you moved around the room – interesting, but I find myself looking more at the technique rather than any message they portray.
SATURDAY MORNING
Collection of Dutch photographers
Eric Kessels – a collection looking from above at the tops of cars and what they reflect of the surroundings from the body work – its interest didn’t hold me for long.
Hans Eijkelboom – questioning identity in four different ways: (1) turning up at strangers’ homes when the husband was away and interjecting himself into the typical family portrait; (2) following a photojournalist and placing himself into the scene that was to be photography and used in the local newspaper; (3) buying a new set of clothes each week and then taking a self-portrait wearing these clothes; and (4) asking people from school that he hasn’t met for a least 10 years what they thought he might have become and then photographing himself as that character – good approach towards getting the audience to think about different aspects of the same concept i.e. identity; we did wonder whether the photographer was telling the whole truth about his approach to some of these those (and whether this was positively purposeful).
Hans De Vries – The History of the Lemon Geranium: Says it all really – he follows the development of a geranium plant, as well as those he shared with friends!!! – my passion for geranium’s hasn’t shifted.
Jos Houweling – a photo based typology of Amsterdam (taken in the 1970’s), depicting aspects of the city often ignored. He arranged these into different categories such as bicycles, prams, cars with covers over them, people looking out of windows, utilities grates found in the floor, and dog poo found on the pavement (of particular interest of Gareth). Creates a good sense of place – it reminded me a lot of my Glasgow project.
Maurice Van Es – abstracts of every day items found in the home that have a significance to the photographer’s memory, and, a series of the photographer trying to photograph his younger brother who wants to hide behind the corner of the house – not particularly inspired by this.
Milou Abel – young photographer documenting the relationship she has with a young ‘special’ woman who has a penchant for collecting clothes – not particularly memorable for me.
Hans Van Der Meer – a collection of images or medium sized Dutch towns, showing their similarity of design whilst also encompassing a catalogue of hard landscape items found within these environments – I found it interesting whilst others didn’t seem to.
A Retrospective of the environmental award; Prix Pictet “New works from the four winners of the prestigious Prix Pictet devoted to sustainable development”
Mitch Epstein – a study of urban trees and their relationship with urban life and people – this is an aspect I have been thinking about as I wandered around Glasgow’s West End (an example of place affecting land, and land affecting place ).
Nadav Kander – photographs of desolated landscapes of restricted military zones – beautifully photographed and presented large scale, creating a sense of the sublime.
Chema Madoz – juxtaposing everyday items of the banal in a unique, often surreal, way to create new perspectives and meanings – visually quite brilliant but I couldn’t take any more than that from it.
SATURDAY AFTERNOON
The Discovery Award – “The Discovery Award honours a photographer or an artist working with photography whose work has just been discovered or deserves to be. The ten nominees exhibited have been selected by five great figures in photography from the five continents”:
Ilit Azoulay – large scale ensemble of objects found on construction sites and then arranging them to compose a new photograph of them – didn’t feel overly inspired with this.
Katharina Gaenssler – a room size collage created from smaller photographers of the same grand scale collage – again not too inspired here either, collages don’t seem to be my thing.
Miguel Mitlag – “has chosen to construct the spaces he photographs, producing images of singular intensity, an improbable and shifting substance, which he describes as ‘pseudo-realist’.” Make of that what you will, as I couldn’t!
Victor Robledo – a study of light in space and shadow, he looks at the emotional quality of light and how it affects the perception of time. A very quiet, unassuming series of photographs of white walls, shadows they create, and reflections through mirrors set at angles against these walls – a slow burner this one I think.
Youngsoo Han – photographer from South Korea who died over a decade ago therefore difficult to see how he fitted into this show. His photos are based around street photography in his country and are very reminiscent of Henri Cartier Bresson – good images but outdated in this contemporary field.
Kechun Zhang – visually appealing large scale images taken along the Yellow River in China. The subdued colour palette and misty atmosphere help to create a serene environment for each photograph – are they beautiful or sublime or both?
Pieter Ten Hoopen – a 10 year documentary of a small town in America close to the Glacier National Park. It is presented in a dark, foreboding, and depressing palette; which helps to portray a true sense of the place and the struggle for a livelihood of its habitants – this was one of my favourites, mainly because I have seen this type many times before yet this was somehow more genuine & believable than others.
Will Steacy – an investigation into the changing face of a local newspaper business affected by the introduction of technology which began to replace the need for people to the extent that the business was eventually not required. It asks the viewer to think about the cost of this loss, not only of people’s livelihood but also of a tradition based around people – how will news be reported if there are no people to report it? – there was a debate about its presentation which had a lot of material whereas it could be argued that the key message was already told in a selection of four images – I liked this mainly because it made me properly think about the social implications of the loss of this industry
Kudzanai Chiurai – a fictional tableau of the notion of sacrifice in modern political conflict, as well as the impact of corruption and government policy – this nearly grabbed me but not quite.
Patrick Willocq – performative images of indigenous African culture, done in a seemingly comical manner – very colourful and eye-catching but I struggled to find its serious point.
As part of my research for Contextual Studies I have been looking into different aesthetic strategies for photographing land and considering what this suggests about the political, social and/or philosophical messages I want to project. While that research concentrates on renowned critical commentary and associated photographers in their field, I wanted to use this blog post to look at my own photographs, the aesthetic strategies I have adopted in the past, and the critical implications of those decisions. I am hoping that this will help me to contextualise the decisions I am current making on the appropriate aesthetic strategy for my images in the Body of Work.
I start this review with what I regard as a typically picturesque view. It is an early morning seascape with Bamburgh Castle in the distance – one of the most photographed castles in the UK.It is not a style that I often replicate but sometimes I can’t resist.
It suffers from the typical criticism of the picturesque, which is that as an idealised view it is a misrepresentation of the “social, ecological or political status of land” (Bate, 2008). It is also difficult, when considering the volume of similarly picturesque views that continue to be photographed, to describe it as transcendental in the manner that Ansel Adam’s landscape views might have been some 80 years ago. Its main positive aspect is that it’s commonly beautiful view remains popular with audiences with a lesser understanding of contemporary art – it is an image that many of my friends seem to value much more than I do. In terms of critical analysis, it simply proclaims that I was there at a particular moment when the light conditions were as it is shown in the image, and that it represents an idealised painterly view of the UK coastline. It could be argued that, as I have presented it in a pleasant way, it also represents a view that I value, but it’s commonality doesn’t add too much strength to this argument
In this next image I have sought to capture the orderly beauty of this subject.
Eliot Porter was one of the first photographer’s to use colour film to photograph the ‘inner-landscape’, which continues to be a popular way of representing land today. Critically, it suffers from the similar misrepresentation problem described earlier, of being an idealised composition. Yet, for me, there is a more intimate relationship between photographer and subject, and thus presents a stronger argument that it represents my passion for Land and its intrinsic value. An obvious counter argument to this is that it is only a singular image which isn’t contained within a greater body of work and thus isn’t evidence of time dedicated to this passion.
The following image is selected from my project ‘Found’ where I intended to photograph Land subjects that weren’t typically beautiful and then impose my compositional skills to enhance the aesthetics of the image. With them I wanted to express my respect for their struggle to survive in what seems to be increasingly harsh weather conditions.
This has stronger critical merits than the previous two images as it represents a scene as seen and the key message of Land’s struggle for survival isn’t distracted by an overtly beautified or idealised view. The viewer is asked to look further into the information that this photograph presents rather than stopping at its visual appeal. There are, however, compositional skills involved in this image which help to entice the viewer to study further
Shinkle (ref) talks about the “paradigm shift” in landscape photography since the New Topographic exhibition held in 1975, which introduced a new critical analysis of Land while removing the aesthetic enticement of earlier photography. In the following two images, which are examples of my two projects Lost and New respectively, I have tried to follow similar principles of avoiding aesthetically enhanced styles and simply present them as they were found. The strategy being to present them as information from which the viewer can think about their underlying meaning rather than having to make aesthetic judgements about whether they like them or not.
The problem with these is that whilst they avoided the obvious trappings of an aesthetically beautified style, they are still composed from a straight-on viewpoint and thus not necessarily as I initially found them. It could, therefore, be argued that their imposed aesthetic style is just as distracting as an aesthetically pleasing style, however, it does seem that it is a general audience’s bond with beauty that it the major distraction and thus the above successfully avoid this aspect and ask the viewer to think more about the information they portray towards their inner-messages.
The closest to a non-aesthetic style that I can think of is the snapshot style. Photographs taken in this way tend to be shot as the object is immediately seen and thus reducing any further choices of composition for the photographer. It isn’t a style that I am particularly familiar with using myself, however, when I was out with the camera with my young niece the other month it was interesting to see how she selected objects having not learnt any of the standard composition rules of photography. The following images are, therefore, a selection of such photographs taken by my niece with a small degree of processing by myself.
To conclude, my Body of Work is currently grounded by the work I have already developed for the project Lost; a collection of images as I walked around my old housing estate. This is a post-war Council estate very much designed in a Modernist style therefore the straight-on view is very much in keeping with the style of the architecture and hard landscape features. As described above, it avoids the visual trappings of the beautified viewed and thus allows the subject to breathe and become a component part of the Body of Work, rather than be a collection of individual, aesthetically appealing photographs. At the moment my Body of Work will therefore retain this aesthetic strategy which sits most closely with the photography associated with the New Topographics exhibition (something I will refer more to in my Contextual Studies).
Having just finished the OCA Arles Study Visit I can positively report that it was a thoroughly enjoyable and stimulating few days.
I was pleasantly surprised by how much of the work I saw that I could relate to my own Body of Work and thus the potential for progressing it further. With just this thought in mind I would highly recommend this, or similarly intensive exhibitions, to any and every student wishing to progress their work. A benefit of this is to be able to compare your work against the diversity and complexity of a huge range of contemporary photographers to understand where your works fits, or how far you need to progress, compared with these standards of work. Even with work I wasn’t impressed with, or just did not get, I was able to reflect on why and then think about whether this negative critique could be relevant to my own work – what would I need to do to ensure that my work would surpass such negative or disinterested critique?
I have decided to leave this overview of my Arles study visit fairly short as I am not intending to write up a catalogue of each exhibition I visited. This would take an age to do and would be of little further benefit to me. Instead, I intend to revisit my Body of Work and develop some aspects of it within the context of what the Arles study visit has inspired me to do. As I say, there is a lot that I can relate to from the exhibition which will hopefully be seen in my next few posts.
Major Project 