Mirrors and Windows
What does photography mean to you?
The analogy of mirrors and windows certainly resonated with me – especially having lived on both sides of the world for a while.
In Sydney I felt like everything I viewed was through a window in one form or another – so many different experiences and worlds opened up before me and my images are very much a reflection of this. Returning to Suffolk I’ve found myself reflecting about the coast that has always been a part of my life. In contrast to Sydney’s thriving streets my viewfinder is now a window on a landscape that will one day be lost forever.
I’m experimenting with photography more than I have in a while – film is really helping with this and while some images have a gritty, low tech feel I’m already really enjoying being free to try things and have fun which for me is everything I first loved about photography many years ago!
In the discussion forum, Paul Clements directed me to Hiroshi Sugimoto’s ‘Seascapes’ series.
Sugimoto’s work on this seascapes series: https://americansuburbx.com/2015/10/hiroshi-sugimotos-seascapes-measuring-time-in-repetition.html
Reading:
- Why Art Photography? Lucy Soutter
Guest lecture:
Fig 3. Karl Ohiri ‘Memories of you’ 2014. Fig. 4 Karl Ohiri ‘How to mend a broken heart’ 2013.
Was really touched by his honesty in talking about such personal work. Some of the images which really had an impact on me were the images where he has dressed in his mother’s clothes to recreate memories of her and photograph himself in place of his mother. Staging these memories, and standing in for her he has created a document of his mother.
I was also interested to hear him talk about the ‘How to mend a broken heart’ series where he found images of her ex-husband had been scribbled and drawn on – ‘there are two sides to a story; how we read images and how they are presented to us’.
Interesting finds:
Gustave Gain – autochromes – need to find out more!
Methods and Meaning
How meaning is constructed in consistent methods in a body of work over a period of time or during a certain timeframe to express a certain concept.
Jesse Alexander, module presentation
For the first discussion we were asked to provide a good example of ‘faux pas’ or mistake.
Trent Parke and Narelle Autio‘s ‘Seventh Wave’ series (Links to an external site.) – shooting without being able to frame anything, and most of the time not even knowing what they would capture while battling with the surf and camera. I love this series of images – in breaking many of the technical rules of photography they create another world altogether.
Also reminded me of how I started my series capturing portraits of fellow passengers while commuting in Sydney. At first I put myself in the frame, just as the ‘Predator’ series in Jean-Marie Donat’s collection of orphaned photos but soon changed this strategy to let the image of the commuters be the focus with me the observer.
Lots of ideas and thoughts came out of the presentation for this module which I really enjoyed – particularly looking at:
Gillian Wearing – ‘Signs that Say What You Want Them To Say and Not Signs that Say What Someone Else Wants You To Say’ (1992-3)
Chris Coekin – The Hitcher, 2007
Sophie Calle – The Shadow, 1981 and Double Game, 1999
Mark Power – 26 Different Endings
Psychogeography
Walking makes for content. Footage for footage.
MacFarlane, 2005
‘For decades, the common figure of the photographer was identified as a male figure roaming around the world and pointing his camera at objects, places, people, and events, as if the world was made for him.‘
This really fascinated me! Guy Debord ‘The Naked City’ but also ‘Flaneurs’ – women who wander and are inspired by environments.
Reading:
- Lauren Elkin ‘Flâneuse’
Reading Photographs
How does meaning get into the image?
Roland Barthes, 1977
Presentation covered semiotics and introduced much of Roland Barthes thinking and ideas covered in his books:
Mythologies / Image-Music-Text / Camera Lucida.
I have come across Camera Lucida before (many years ago) in my undergraduate studies – I found it har to grasp at the time, so could be timely to try again!
Asked to add an advertising image to the discussion, so I gave the example of Land Rover – mainly due to my interest in theme of ‘people and place’ and here we have an iconic brand making great use of the emotional connection between people and place using experiences or perceived experiences.
8 ways to help understand an image – Historian and Educator David Perlmutter
LESTER, Paul Martin. 2011. Visual Communication : Images with Messages . 5th. ed. Boston, MA: Wadsworth.
- PRODUCTION – how was it produced and how are the elements combined in a frame?
- CONTENT IDENTIFICATION – what are the major elements and story being told?
- FUNCTIONAL – what is the context of the image and how was it put to use?
- EXPRESSIONAL – what emotions are conveyed by the content and how are those feelings translated across cultures?
- FIGURATIVE – how are the symbols and metaphors employed and are there any culturally sensitive elements?
- RHETORICAL / MORAL – what are the philosophical justifications for making and showing the the work and are there any responsibilities the photographer has to the subject and viewers?
- SOCIETAL / PERIOD – how does the image reflect the culture of the time and what does it communicate to future generations?
- COMPARATIVE – how is it similar to previously created work and how does it fit within the body of work for photography?
In this text which is on the reading list, it also covers the 6 perspectives for analysis:
– Ariella Azoulay; Photography Consists of Collaboration: Susan Meiselas, Wendy Ewald, and Ariella Azoulay. Camera Obscura 1 May 2016; 31 (1 (91)): 187–201.
- PERSONAL
- HISTORICAL
- TECHNICAL
- ETHICAL
- CULTURAL
- CRITICAL
As well as the 13 steps to prepare for thorough analysis.
In the webinar with Jesse for this topic, he covered the following key questions to ask when reading photographs:
- How does this image make you feel? (RESPONSE)
- What can you see in the image? (REFERENT)
- What area of photography does this belong to and what does that mean for us analysing it? (GENRE)
- What is the mood of the image? What impressions are felt?
- What do you know for certain about the image? Where are you seeing it? (CONTEXT)
- What do you know about the maker? What would you like to find out?
- What is the author trying to say? (INTENDED MEANING)
- What’s the image about?
- What decisions have been made to convey this message? (RHETORIC)
- What do you like / dislike about this image or body of work?
- Do any of your experiences inform your response or analysis? (MEMORY WORK)
- How do your personal beliefs, attitudes and values affect or explain your critical and emotional response to the image? (BELIEFS AND BIASES)
Authorship and Collaboration
“..a text is made up of multiple writings, drawn from many cultures and entering into mutual relations of dialogue, parody, contestation, but there is one place where this multiplicity is focused and that is the reader, not, as was hitherto said, the author. […] A text’s unity lies in not in its origin but in its destination.”
Barthes, Roland ‘The Death of the Author’ 1977:148
This week we were tasked with forming a collaboration with our peers by means of posting something which resonated with us in the forum and finding like minded collaborators to work on a similar theme.
I posted the poem which in itself was formed as part of a collaboration with the public who felt that in some way, Britain’s coast mattered to them and why.
The result was a poem by Dr John Cooper Clarke and created in partnership with the National Trust’s coast campaign.
This is our response to that poem, and above is my image which featured in the collaborative response.
Loved this clip Georgia shared with us at the end of our seminar presenting our collaborations.
Interdisciplinary Practice
“The aesthetic discussion of photography is dominated by the concept of time. Photographs appear as devices for stopping time and preserving fragments of the past, like flies in amber. Nowhere, of course, is this trend more evident than when still photography is compared with film. The natural, familiar metaphor is that photography is like a point, film like a line. Zeno’s paradox: the illusion of movement.”
Peter Wollen ‘Fire and Ice’ [1984] in CAMPANY, 2007: 108
Nancy Buron’s image of Trump Putin: https://www.nancyburson.com/p/trump-images
I found the information on eugenics really interesting in this week’s reading. Last time I heard of eugenics was when I was doing some work on George Bernard Shaw (Irish playwright) – he has been linked to some rather dubious eugenics ideas if you delve into history.
The reading on how photo-fit images were created, or the system for using software to ‘age’ or visually show how someone’s features may age is fascinating. Among other applications, they are hauntingly used to show how missing children might look like in the present day – probably the most famous example is Madeleine McCann.
We were asked to think about what how and why our current practice relates to particular discipline(s). For me, thinking and researching about topophilia, I recall how TV and film opening credits have had an impact on me – this example from Olive Kitteridge is one of the best examples I can think of in relation to the series, its characters and how their environment impacts each of them.
Adapt ’21 Symposium
I attended as many of the talks and lectures as possible.
There were a few standouts for me:
Sharon Young (guest lecture)
Michelle Sank
Julia Fullerton-Barten
Info / research for people and place project
https://peoplevsplaces.tumblr.com/
Words and Pictures
“the text constitutes a parasitic message designed to connote the [photographic] image, to ‘quicken’ it with one or more second-order signifieds. In other words, and this is an important historical reversal, the image no longer illustrates the words; it is now the words which, structurally, are parasitic on the image.”
BARTHES, Roland ‘The Photographic Message’ 1977:25
- To what extent has text been part of your practice up to this point? When have you found it most effective?
- Can you think of instances where your use of text – titles or captions perhaps – has ‘intimated’ too much for the viewer? Has text ever undermined your photographs?
Audiences and Institutions
There’s no such thing as ‘a’ history of photography. It has a social and political history, a relationship to art history and culture and, perhaps more so than other expressive media, it has a commercial history.
Jesse Alexander, Audiences and Institutions module
- How has your own practice been shaped, manipulated perhaps, by the makers of the technology you employ and/or the spaces in which you share your work?
- What institutions do you wish to engage with to further your photography? How / Will your skillset and practice need to develop in order to be accepted within that institution?
- If you do not consider yourself to be a ‘professional’ photographer, what do you think you need to do or achieve for this? If that is not something you desire or aspire to, how would you like to be referred to, and how will you achieve that?