Glasgow’s West End project

I feel that I have now come to an appropriate resting point in my wanderings around the West End of Glasgow and thus want to reflect on what this project is beginning to say.

To start with, I have to say that it is a possibility that I may not actually use many of the photographs taken so far in this project as part of my main body of work, but this does not diminish the value of doing it as it has enabled me to better understand the place I now live and the opportunities it presents to further develop my identity based on these new surroundings.

Aesthetically, I have taken a ‘straight’ approach to the style of photographs, which are representative of a topographical assessment of the place whereby the portrayal of information is of greater importance than the enticement of beauty. If I was being critical of them, they do not provide clear separation of a main object or feature in a way that I have noticed in other photographer’s styles using a similarly straight approach.  My response to this is that such space is a scare commodity in this urban environment thus my photographs do represent this condensed way of living.

A small note on my decision to crop to 4×3 landscape orientation is that I have done this because this is personal preference and I have also had it in the back of my mind that I might want to pair two images together therefore a cropped 4×3 is better for this than 6×4.

I also think that I need to address the reason for no (or very few) people in this set. The ultimate reason for this is that my Body of Work is about Land and not immediately about place, even though the message behind this set is more about a lack of Land and a lack of opportunity to engage with it.  I recently went to the Chris Killip exhibition at Tate Britain which was based around a collection of photographs of people engaging with place in the North East of England.  This was clearly about the relationship between society and place, which helped me to be clear in my own mind that I wanted this project  to be about the relationship between place, Land and the personal identity this creates for me.  Society is something that I am only slowly getting to know here!

The following set are thus formed from a wider collection of photographs of the West End of Glasgow, whereby I have tried to tell the story of this place I now live and how it might continue to present opportunities for me to engage with it. None of these images are particularly significant to me, other than one perhaps, unlike the photographs in Lost where each one has a particular story to tell.  I wonder whether this is indicative of the different ways in which we engage with Land and place between childhood and adulthood, or are there other factors in play influencing this relationship?  The photographs are merely what caught my eye as I wandered around this place.  They represent opportunities rather than stories – opportunities to influence my future, and, specifically relevant to this investigation,  opportunities to engage or disengage with Land.

One further thought is that even though I tagged this project with a quick title of New I now think that as I have written this and selected the following photographs I am beginning to realise that a better title would be Opportunities.

  

   

  

  

  

  

Signs and Places

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:

Pedal Power

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:

Rubbish as a landmark for place

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.

Land influencing place and place influencing Land

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.

 

Neighbours I have yet to meet

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.

Typology of a Flaneur

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:

• Neighbours I have yet to meet.
• Land affecting place, and place affecting land.
• Places yet to discover (to complete).
• Shops to explore (to complete).
• Rubbish and junk as landmarks.
• Signs of place(to complete)
• Bicycles (to complete)
• Public utilities as landmarks (to complete).

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.

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A simple post of another developing idea.

Psychogeography & Art or Just Play?

Or, My Nine Year Old Could Do Better Than This!

This last week I had my nine year old niece visiting and, as only photography students might understand, I decided to take advantage of a game that we played and turned it into part of my studies – a game of psychogeography!

The rules of the game were based on a treasure trail downloaded from the internet taking us around the West End of Glasgow – the area I have recently moved to and now live.  The pschogeography code that I set upon was to follow the treasure trail instructions to find each clue and then to take a photograph of anything that caught my eye, and anything that caught my niece’s eye.  My niece was to take the first photo in each location so that she wasn’t influenced by me.

The results are quite interesting.  One photographer was trying to take straight, informative photos that purposely avoided some of the more appealing aesthetic strategies, whilst the other photographer had limited understanding of what these aesthetic strategies might be.  In the comparisons below can you detect which is which?  Another question to ponder is whether the results of this are art of play?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

New Project 3: New

This is my first post for a change of direction for this third project.  Initially it was going to be about how society creates barriers towards our engagement with Land, but I have now decided that the way this was going was distancing it from the other projects and that I might actually be able to merge its focus into the Project Lost.  I have written about this decision in other posts and so this post is about an introduction to my new direction.

The new Project 3 has a another simple title for now which is ‘New’.  To start with its focus is also quite simple, which is to use photography to investigate my new neighbourhood.  I am inspired by photographer Stephen Gill who wanders around the area he lives and creates collections of photos based on common connections.  By then putting them together into a collection he then creates further interpretation and understanding about that area.

I have just moved into a new suburb of Glasgow and want to create 3 collections which together investigate the neighbourhood and place I now live in.  The three collections will cover similar issues I am looking into as part of the Project Lost and thus there is potential for them to come together at a later stage but, for now, I don’t want to contextualize it any further and thus give it space to develop and me the freedom just to create these collections.  The three collections will be:

1. Neighbours I have yet to meet – a series of photos of front doors to homes of people who I have yet to meet, and may never meet in today’s modern society.  It reminds me of how as a child I probably knew of just about everybody who lived behind similarly closed doors.
2. Signs and signifiers – a series of photos of signs and signifiers found around my neighbourhood which, when put together, help to create a sense of place to the new neighbourhood I now live in.
3. Places and Land I have yet to discover – a series of photos of open spaces which I have yet to properly engage with.

Together, I expect these collections to create a sense of place and commentary on the place I now live and opportunity for future engagement.

At the moment, the collection on ‘Neighbours I have yet to meet’ includes the following photos:

 

 

 

 

The collection of ‘Signs and Signifiers’ currently includes the following images:

 

 

 

I have still to begins a collection on ‘Places and Land’.