Seduced by Art: photography past and present - The National Gallery Study visit

I attended the OCA study day at the National Gallery last week. The show was, "Seduced by Art: Photography, Past and Present." The aim of the exhibition was to show how the tradition and culture of painting has affected the development of a photographic aesthetic in photography since its invention in 1839. The day began with a lecture that really helped to put the exhibition into context and allowed for discussion on some of the work that we were to see exhibited later in the day.

Eugene Delacroix, "Death of Sardanapulas."

Historical works of art were hung side by side with photography to illustrate the flow of ideas and in one of the examples a Delacroix painting, "Death of Sardanapulas," was hung with the work of contemporary photographers, Jeff Wall and Sarah Jones. Both of them have used the Delacroix painting as their reference point. In the case of Jeff Wall, it is his, "The Destroyed Room," and for Sarah Jones, her work, "The Drawing Studio (I)." It was an eye opener to be made aware of these connections. I would never have worked it out alone. For one, I am not familiar enough with traditional Western art painting. I've not seen the Delacroix painting before and the tale of the impending destruction about to happen to the king and his harem was not an obvious one for me. Also the content of the painting and the two photographs are vastly different but I could see the connection once I spent enough time analysing the works.

How many of us have been brought up with a deep knowledge of classical history, myths and painting though? I can see how Post Modernism evolved and gained a foothold now. Our own experiences in a modern society through television, film and the media, seem much more relevant to me. I'm not dismissing the referencing of art in photography. I still enjoy it. I'm just making an acknowledgement that more work is required to understand it.

Tony Ray-Jones

Another photographer that my tutor suggested for my final assignment was Tony Ray-Jones. He was British and had worked for a number of years in the USA. When he returned to the UK he brought back with him a new dynamism in photography that had spread amongst his contemporaries there.

Tony Ray-Jones take on the British at the seaside is a quirky piece of work filled with characters and surreal compositions. The dated clothes and headgear worn by many of the people also add a comic element to some of the images. Ray-Jones's work could be considered a forerunner of later works by Martin Parr that show the British off their guard in a place where the accepted societal norms are relaxed.

The images are all in Black and White and are mostly high contrast giving them depth. He is a photographer I had not come across before and I'm glad that I did.

Mark Power - The Shipping Forecast

For my final assignment I had a look at Mark Power's, The Shipping Forecast. The black and white images taken mostly around the coastal areas of Britain seeks to photograph people and their environment in relation to the strange sounding names from the BBC Radio shipping forecast. These ethereal sounding names read out over the airwaves conjure up magical places to the ears of most listeners. Powers has attempted to put images to these words.

Quite a few of his compositions are often on the diagonal with sometimes madly tilted horizons. This gives a dynamism to his work especially when people are involved. This is a technique that I do not use enough and looking back at my own work it can look staid after viewing images such as these. When I see it in other photographers work I have to remind myself to experiment more.

The images are also mostly dark in tonal range - almost low key. I think a fair bit of processing has been done to dodge and burn highlights and lowlights - in some images the sky is almost black. The areas highlighted certainly do justice to the compositions. Again, I need to remind myself that processing an image with a particular tonal range in mind that is quite different from what has been captured can bring it to life.

There is also a gentle humour in many of the images that is in contrast to the dark tones. I found this book very interesting to look through and food for thought.

Martin Parr - The Last Resort

Martin Parr's, The Last Resort is an amazing insight into a place and people enjoying their leisure time in the coastal town of New Brighton during 1985/86. The first few images are a gentle lead-in with a smartly dressed old couple waiting for their meal in a tired but respectable looking cafe that looks as if it hasn't changed since the 40s. Then, an image of a seafront shelter with a pane of broken glass - hinting at the usual decline that can be seen in British seaside towns. But as I began to turn the pages the full on grossness of holiday makers trying to enjoy their day, surrounded by discarded chip packets and overflowing waste bins, is a bit of a shock. I found it difficult not to be repulsed - at first.

The images are full of saturated primary colours. This means that anything plastic or commercially produced, such as colourful wrappers, bathing costumes, lipstick, seems to stand out from the page. The amount of litter is extreme. The images of children or people with their feet in water that has a floating scum of garbage are revolting but fascinating. In his introduction to the book, Gerry Badger states that, "all the children in the images appear happy". I didn't see this myself. Some of them are crying and they and most of the other people in bathing costumes look like uncooked meat that is about to get a roasting from a relentless sun. I'm sure flash photography of some sort has enhanced this effect. The mass of exposed skin in many of the images to me looks designed to be unflattering. The images portray a marked amount of consumption of crisps, cans of coke, chocolate and chips. Is this intentional? Are we supposed to be appalled at the constant chewing and chomping? I guess the answer would be that the photographer is just recording what he sees. Of course, by now, we all know the falseness of this statement.

Once over the shock though, and after a read of the foreword by Gerry Badger, I can see beyond the awfulness to notice that the people are making the best of the situation that they find themselves in. It is not their fault that the rubbish bins are over flowing with refuse. They just haven't been emptied frequently enough for the amount of visitors that day. It has been stated in the introduction that the book is more a comment about the growth of mass consumerism under the Thatcher years than a criticism of a people that are forced to live in that society. It's true. The people in the images didn't make that society - they just had to live in it. A fake dream of a better life, consisting of cheap goods sold to us by advertisers working for big corporations - wanting us to consume to excess for their profit. A society that we are all now too familiar with.

Assignment 5

I had to e-mail my tutor with some ideas for this one. I'd already started a photography projects book mid-course and have filled quite a few pages with random thoughts - some are much longer term and hopefully I will be able to carry them on to use in the level 2 courses. I pulled together a couple of notes from the book and also two new ideas and sent an e-mail to my tutor. One of them, a kind of typological portrait project, he said was intriguing but would need some thought on how to deal with the technical issues. He also liked a much broader idea I had to do a project based on the regeneration of the Margate seaside resort in Kent - that is the one I'm going with.

I was asked to look at the following books and my review can be found here:

Mark Power - The Shipping Forecast

Martin Parr - The Last Resort

Tony Ray-Jones

I've made some rough sketches to pre-visualise some of the kinds of image I want to make and to help me keep on track and get the most out of my first visit. I've also left enough wriggle room in the day's shooting to allow for plenty of spontaneity too. The plan is to come back from the first shoot and process and analyse what I have. Then, I can look at my book notes and see what I am missing and go back once or twice more to complete my project. Here are a couple of pages from my rough notes. I really can't draw for toffee and haven't even tried to make them realistic. The sketches are just visual reminders:

I've now made my first visit and I am quite pleased with my initial set of images. The shooting plan served me well as a visual reminder of what I wanted to achieve and as I suspected there are gaps in the shooting sequence that I need to fill. I updated my notes with more visual ideas based on what I had seen during my first day's shoot and I will be making a second visit to Margate once the rain and wind hold off.

Okay, my assignment is now complete and posted off. I had a few bumps along the way. I'd convinced myself halfway through that I had all the images I needed for my sequence - even though I hadn't taken any of the portraits that I'd planned. Because I knew that approaching strangers on the seafront at Margate would be uncomfortable I told myself to go with what I had. That was a big mistake. When the prints came back from the online lab I'd had time to clear my head and I knew that the sequence needed lifting with the missing portraits. So, I went back out and once I'd got going the task wasn't nearly as bad as I'd imagined it to be. I also took a small digital recording device with me to record peoples memories and anecdotes about Margate. I have transcribed these and printed selected excerpts to go with some of the images.

Anyway, here are my final images in sequence:

Tutor Feedback:

My tutor felt that this assignment was a good end to the course for me and he particularly liked image 10 - noting that I had used the visual language of Alec Soth to make it. This is true. I was heavily influenced by Soth's book, Sleeping by the Mississippi, when I undertook this assignment. He also felt that my portraits were well considered and suggested studying August Sander and Emil Otto Hoppe with regards to further reading on the genre. It was also noted that the Soth methodology (to include portraits in a sequence of images to help enrich the narrative) was used effectively in my sequence. He thought the last three photographs were particularly strong and a good exit to the sequence.

Jason Evans

My tutor asked me to take a look at the work of photographer Jason Evans. My first impression of the images on his website is that they are vibrant and have a spontaneity to them that reminds me very much of Wolfgang Tillman's work. I like the freshness of the images and feel that my own work could do with a good injection of the same sense of now that comes across in Evans photography. He has a multidisciplinary approach and has done work for fashion, art magazines, album covers, and has also had a number of exhibitions. I'm still absorbing the images at the moment and like Wolfgang Tillmans the style of photography is very different from the kind of work that I'm used to. It does interest me even if I don't fully understand a lot of it. I've noticed a recurring motif of images that appear to be shot through with bullet holes. I need to think about that one.

A link to his website is here - Jason Evans

He also posts an image a day which I will make a point of taking a frequent look - The Daily Nice

Assignment 4

I took the images for this assignment while on holiday in Chicago. The "travel" brief didn't appeal to me that much to be honest. But, after the positive response from my tutor on the previous one, I now feel more confident about stretching the assignment brief. I wanted to make a selection of interior hotel room images depicting our visit mixed in with the more travel oriented ones to shake it up a bit.

My tutor recommended three photo-books to look at and they were all really interesting and I feel that I learnt something new in terms of composition, layout, themes, style from all three. I have reviewed them here:

Sleeping By the Mississippi - Alec Soth

The Red River - Jem Southam

The British Landscape - John Davies

The way I read the assignment brief was that I was to provide approximately twelve useable images to my tutor and from them choose my final six. I assume this would be so that my tutor could see how my editing and sequencing abilities were coming along. I'm still not entirely sure that is what is required but it's all written up and posted off now so no point worrying about it.

Here are my twelve images.  

Tutor Feedback:

My tutor liked the work that I did for this assignment. His feedback was on the whole positive with some improvements that could be made. The major points being that the work that I am now producing is moving me towards another level in my photography. This is good advice to hear as level two study is fast approaching!

I also need to continue with my pre-visualisation of my images in the planning stages. This is a method that works well for me as going into a situation with some idea of the kind of shots that I want to achieve can provide me with some strong images to select from.

He really liked a number of my images. Only one fell a bit short of the standard that I set myself. I had already noted this in my assignment notes and explained why the image didn't quite pull off what I had intended. I will probably remove it from the set and present a new one for assessment.

From an academic standpoint my tutor noted that, "I am also impressed with the way in which you are now referencing the texts suggested and positioning your work in relation to these practitioners." This aspect of analysing my work and placing it in context of other photographers is something that I can do in my head; but, actually putting these thoughts into words in an academic manner I find the most difficult - something I definitely need to keep working on.


Edit:

For my submission I have replaced some of the images.

Image 4 was a nice idea but as I mentioned in the essay it didn't come out the way I had intended it. The image has now been replaced with this one.

Image 5 was a linking image from 4 and now that has been removed this is to go also. I have replaced it with this one.

I'm not entirely happy with the composition of image 10 so it has been replaced with this one.