Looking at the art of Abelardo Morell - and making connections

The name Abelardo Morell did not, I have to admit, seem familiar to me when I opened the article about him in October's British Journal of Photography - more shame me!  The first of several 'connections' was made as I looked at the first image featured in that article:

The Empire State Building in Bedroom, 1994

(Courtesy of Abelardo Morell and Edwynn Houk Gallery)

My very first thought was of 'collage/montage/inversion' and a link to John Stezaker, about whom I had written only a few days earlier - here.  It isn't collage, of course, as I could quickly appreciate, but the connections were underway!  And, collage or not, the juxtaposition of two seemingly dissociated 'images' to arrive at a new meaning is certainly in line with Stezaker.

Reading on about Morell's Camera Obscura works and exploring his range further online, I was (and remain) puzzled as to why I don't find references to him in the considerable array of photography and art books in my collection; but the use of swathes of black plastic to convert a room into the camera obscura did ring a bell somewhere - and led me to the 'Genius of Photography' series that the BBC did in 2006/7.  Sure enough, there he is, in the first few minutes of the first programme, right behind Kertéz's 'Meudon' photograph, draping a palatial Venetian interior in black plastic, cutting that crucial small hole, and creating this:

Santa Maria della Salute in Palazzo Livingroom, Venice, Italy 2006

(Courtesy of Abelardo Morell and Edwynn Houk Gallery)

I am reassured!

 

'The Universe Next Door', a recently published monograph, largely picks up the story of Morell's photography from 1986 onwards.  He was 38 by then, a father for the first time; was teaching photography, with a Masters from Yale; and must have had some seriously formative life experiences since being born in Cuba, seeing his father arrested by the post-revolutionary government, moving to New York (with little or no English) at the age of 13, and studying under Tod Papageorge at Yale - to mention just a few.  But 1986 seems to have seen a significant change of direction.  In a sense, he came indoors, from street photography, to create different, more thoughtful, more contemplative, more experimental images.  He accredits the change to becoming a father - both from an attitudinal viewpoint (seeing the world through new eyes) and from a practical one (spending time caring for his new son).  Since then, as is illustrated in the book and on his website, his range has included images of books, artworks, museums, 'still life', photograms, paper cut-outs, as well as the camera obscura and its more recent descendant, his 'tent camera'.

 

What comes across very strongly to me, as a student of, and late-comer to, photography, is an ever-present enthusiasm and fascination for the process of photographic image-making.  All these images seem to interrogate the medium, probing and seeking out the possibilities.  So, in that respect, there is an intellectual quality to them.  But at the same time, they are interesting images in their own right - as though there is something for the casual beholder as well as the curator and the academic.  These two, quite different, examples demonstrate the point.  Light Bulb, 1991 was created to illustrate the optical principles of photography to his students (and to delight them in those principles, too, as with the camera obscura).  I like the use of a crude cardboard box on an old table top - the 'homely' physicality feels close to some of my own efforts in the last few months (here).  Yet the image appeared in a poster and brochure cover for MOMA in 1992.  That seemingly simple, homemade set up has something fundamental to say about photography's ability to transform and re-present.  Likewise - albeit in a very different way - Nadelman/Hopper, 2008.  On the face of it, another apparently simple juxtaposition (of two artworks) - but the 'magic' of the photographic transformation, the careful framing and lighting, produce an image that is both attractive in its own right but also open to multiple readings.

 

At a personal level, I am encouraged by a quote from Morell in the BJP article.  Referring to his 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' illustrations, he says, "I thought I would make pictures that are very low tech, with pages taken out of the book and stuck together with tape."  I wish I'd read that a few weeks ago when I was thinking about my most recent assignment - here!  This is a good example:

 

It Was Much Pleasanter At Home, 1998

(Courtesy of Abelardo Morell and Edwynn Houk Gallery)

 

Looking at the 'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' series, I can feel the physical delight in cutting, copying, resizing, cutting some more, juxtaposing, assembling, lighting, etc ... and then, eventually, seeing that finished outcome - turning out, perhaps, even better than he expected.  I had thought about attempting to create three-dimensional 'assemblies' for my own assignment and this encourages me to go back to that idea at some stage.  However, one can respond to the process of creating these images in a broader and more fundamental way.  These may be illustrations for a children's story, but they confirm to me the immense scope that exists for experimentation in different manners of 'photographic' response to the world around us.

 

Abelardo Morell's own experimentation has taken him on to the 'tent camera', a moveable camera obscura equipped with periscope, prisms etc, that has enables him to go out into the landscape and create images of the world projected onto the ground within the tent.

 

Tent Camera Image on Ground: View of the Yosemite Valley from Tunnel View, Yosemite National Park, California 2012

(Courtesy of Abelardo Morell and Edwynn Houk Gallery)

 

So, once again, two very different images/elements are combined to seek a new meaning.  Interesting as they are, I feel less of a personal response to these images - truthfully.  They have something painterly about them, which Morell himself identifies; and there is a possible reference to pixels in some, such as above.  (He does now use digital methods.)  But most significant of all, for me, is the ongoing desire to explore the possibilities and the different ways in which photography can look at the world - 'The Universe Next Door'.  In her introductory essay in the book of that name,  Elizabeth Siegel, Associate Curator in the Department of Photography at The Art Institute of Chicago, says that "... Morell has watched developments in contemporary photography with interest and has at times, he says, felt like a defender of photography to those who proclaim its demise."  She goes on to say that, "He maintains his belief, even in the present age of digital convenience, that the photograph must be worked for and earned; he continues to delight in conceiving pictures and laboring towards their execution." Coming as I do, from an entirely digital introduction to photography, I sometimes wonder whether I have missed out by not pursuing the detailed exploration of its original methods.  Chances are that many - perhaps including Abelardo Morell (and certainly some OCA tutors!) - would say that I have.  But I have neither the time nor feel the inclination to do so at present and, crucially, it is in those notions of 'working for' and 'earning' the image that the key lessons lie here, whether it is executed by digital methods or any other.

 

It is good, as a student (even a decidedly mature one), to study artists that are new to one and to feel some sense of connection with what they are doing and their approach to their art.  There are reassuring, inspiring and, also, challenging connections in looking at Abelardo Morells work, and I will continue to look in more detail as I press on with my own journey of exploration through the medium of photography.

 

'Postscript Connections'

 

I'm tucking this away as an anecdotal 'postscript' to avoid any idea that it is anything other than a light-hearted reference to my own work in the context of Morell.  But - I couldn't help recalling some photographs that I made almost seven years ago, a few weeks after acquiring my first digital SLR camera.  Having played with it for a while, I made myself put the camera on a tripod, turn the dial to 'Manual', point it at a few 'objects' on an old table, and begin to think more carefully about what I was doing.  Honestly, these are two of the first 'thoughtful' photographs that I made! 

 



Looking at Stezaker & Learning to 'Swim'

Untitled, 1977 Found Image - John Stezaker

(From 2011 Whitechapel Gallery Exhibition)

Since Assignment Five went off to my tutor, I've been taking some time to look properly at the work of John Stezaker.  His collages have partially informed my own work for Assignment Five;  plus I saw, and really enjoyed, a significant exhibition of his work in Arles a couple of months ago (blogged here); and on returning from Arles, I got the book that came with his Whitechapel Gallery Retrospective in 2011 - John Stezaker.  The image above isn't a collage, of course; it's an inverted image - a film still.  He tells the story of how his wife acquired it for him in the early 1970s, when he was beginning to collect such images.  It was upside down when she handed it to him and immediately made an impact on him.  He says that it sat, upside down, on the piano music stand, for five years, before he could be sure that inverting it in this way might be regarded as art.  Oh, the angst of the creative process!  I can see why the image haunted him - it has an unsettling effect on me, too.  It is an excellent illustration (albeit not a typical one) of the way that Stezaker intervenes with images and explores (as he puts it) the 'after-life of the image'. 

Thirty years or more ago, he was asking these sorts of questions of himself (all quoted from the book): 

How can you be an artist in a culture of images?

Images that are already in the world are so much more fascinating than anything I could create. Could art be just finding and taking out of circulation? 

Thirty years on, the answer seems to be a resounding 'yes' as he has built a highly successful practice on the 'found' image.  But also interesting to reflect back to the research for my Assignment Four essay and the concerns of some younger contemporary art photographers - such as Lucas Blalock saying that everything may have been photographed - and artists such as Mishka Henner (blogged here) working with images from the internet.  I also think of a quote from Laura Letinsky that I used in my essay, to the effect that her more recent work (in which she also uses existing images) involves letting go of photography's promise.  It seems that Stezaker has, for the last thirty years, been letting go of the photographic image's promise.  As Michael Bracewell puts it in an essay in the book linked above, he does so "... through a succession of interruptions and interventions that disconnect the image from its referential bearings".  In an interview with Stezaker, in the same book, Daniel F, Herrmann suggests to him that "meaning seems to germinate in between the cracks" of his images; and Stezaker replies that "It is those spaces that excite me".  There are several references to him creating a space in which the after-life of these 'rescued' images can be contemplated.  That, in turn, reminds me of another Letinsky-related quote that I used.  Duncan Wooldridge said something to the effect that she is exploring a pictorial space outside of regular temporality.  Stezaker, of course, has worked extensively with film stills, which he describes as having "temporal ambiguity" (because they are pretending to be something there are not - not in fact frames from the actual movies, but posed, staged imitations of a moment in the narrative, making them, perhaps, more like paintings than anything else ...).

So, why am I stringing together these disparate quotes and references?  It is because I feel myself to have been caught up for most of this year in this swirl of time and space questions, together with my earlier 'angst' about what I was doing with my own photographic image-making.  Stezaker's 30 year old concerns about an artist's potential to create meaningful images in an already substantial flow of existing images feels somehow reassuring.  My research for Assignment Four was also reassuring, to an extent; and, though I await feedback on my Assignment Five images, that work has taken me a little way into similar areas - and it has been enjoyable & rewarding.  I haven't  pinned down exactly what is going on in this fast-flowing deluge of 21st century imagery - in fact, just the opposite, I've begun to accept that there is no pinning-down potential whatsoever.  Perhaps I am, at least, learning to swim and stay afloat - from which position one can observe what is going on around.

Back to Assignment Three – a theoretical context

My reflections on Assignment Three included an open-ended question about the theoretical context of my video output.  In my reflections, I did, briefly, compare what I was doing in my short, two-minute piece, with the music video and with the world of advertising.  In reading the final chapter of "Visual Culture" by Richard Howells & Joaquim Negreiros, which discusses New Media and explores what visual texts within that ‘new’ context might genuinely be regarded as new visual media as opposed to new methods of delivery, I have found some useful discussion around the ‘music video’.  Howells & Negreiros do conclude that this form “... is a new addition to visual culture”.  Without going through all of their justification, it is worth exploring in outline because it does, from a number of angles, confirm a kind of theoretical context for the piece of work that I have produced.

They refer to work by Andrew Goodwin on the theory of the music video, including specific reference to his "Dancing in the Distraction Factory".  I don’t have the time or inclination to go back to that source just now, so what follows picks up their representation of Goodwin and all quotes are from their book.

• Goodwin refers to putting pictures to music as ‘synaesthesia’ and says that it is something composers and audiences do mentally.
• Music video (like television) takes its fundamental vocabulary from film.  Howells & Negreiros suggest, specifically, that music video (and also the TV advertisement), by “... making great use of editing”, is referring to the ‘montage’ techniques advocated by Sergei Eisenstein (again, no time here/now to explore that further – but accepting the secondary source).
• Goodwin argues that music video derives its structure from the song it illustrates and takes its tempo and cutting themes from the music, with which it must be in visual sympathy.
• A narrative, such as it is, is frequently fractured and “... lacking in both linear and temporal development”.  The viewer makes sense of it within “... the conventions and culture of pop”.
• Although the music provides the structure, “... new meanings can be created by the confluence and juxtaposition of images.  Montage theory, it seems, may help explain the music video and not just the music alone”.
• Howells & Negreiros use the Aerosmith music video ‘I don’t want to miss a thing’, which is also associated with the film ‘Armageddon’ (USA 1998), as a case study.  They conclude that, in this music video, “... we are perpetually aware that what we are watching is a formal construct that draws attention to its own artifice”, and note that “... the narrative ... is deeply and repeatedly fractured”.
• A pop music video, they suggest, “... is more likely to visualise the form rather than the content ...” (of the music).  They compare it with abstract painting, where an image can communicate its own meaning regardless of references to conventional narrative or the physical world.
• This takes us back to Eisenstein’s ‘montage’ theory and a meaning derived over and above individual references to narrative associated with individual shots/images – “... meaning is suggested rather than stated”.
• They refer to the term ‘video’ and note that viewers understand this as a type of text rather than simply as a means of delivery.  Hence the ‘music video’ as a new addition to visual culture. (I wonder whether, in the days of YouTube etc, it would be more appropriate to consider the wider concept of the ‘video’, as an addition to visual culture, rather than focusing on the specific – the ‘music video’?)
• They also refer to the ‘iconology’ of the music video – “... the relatively short running time suggests that every aspect of the music video must be considered in detail if the maximum meaning is to be condensed into only a few minutes”.
• In reflecting on the semiotics of the music video, they remind us that “... the music video is essentially an advertisement ...”.  “As with other forms of advertising, the perceived and actual values of the product might be far from identical”.

So, considering that background, what conclusions and additional reflections can I derive in relation to my ‘Paris Photo 2012’?

• It might best be described as a ‘montage’ of still images and sounds, fused together in a manner intended to imply meaning to the viewer over and above the individual content of the images or elements of the soundtrack.  Suggestions of narrative and references to specifics in the words, music or sequence of images are, in the main, subsidiary to the over all meaning that I hope to develop in the viewers’ responses.
• Viewer response (in the context of my intended meaning) does require reference, in reading my ‘visual text’, to other outside factors e.g. some knowledge of the art world; some cultural awareness of ‘the market’; some knowledge of French; and so on.
• When the soundtrack comprises music, that does drive the rhythm and structure of the visuals; but that may not be the case when the soundtrack is speech.  And the overall ‘form’, because it is a fusion, is my own construct.
• But it is fair to say that this form is carefully structured to achieve my intended meaning and to ensure that all opportunities to derive meaning are fully utilised within a short 2-2.5 minute timespan.
• It is probably also fair to say that, like the abstract painting, it is the ‘form’ that is this ‘montage’ through which meaning is derived.

There, I feel happier now!  I have found a cultural theoretical context for my video; and it does fit well with my earlier observation that I felt I was working in a manner most closely allied to advertising and the music video.

Have to start again somewhere!

It’s over a month since I posted to this blog – Christmas & New Year, yes OK, but the longer you leave it the harder it is to get started again!  Things have been happening & I do keep up with jottings & reflections in my notebook, but I really need to get back into the Learning Log proper, so this is by way of a starter.  A rapid overview of what I’ve been up to will suffice for now – perhaps!

PwDP – Assignment Three

I deliberately ignored my Paris Photo images for some weeks.  I had convinced myself that they probably weren’t good enough to use & that I should probably find another subject and start all over again; so I figured that some space to reflect was a good idea.  Going back to them between Christmas & New Year, I still had reservations but decided that I would press ahead.  I had consulted with my tutor whose advice was not to worry too much about what the eventual submission for the assignment might be but to make sure I challenged myself technically along the way.  So that’s what I’m going to do.  I’ve started playing around with some editing, captioning and basic layouts, as per the exercises in this section of the course.  Most of that is fairly straightforward & I’m working with the Paris Photo images so that this work is building for the assignment.  But I will attempt something a bit more challenging as well – maybe a lot more challenging.  I want to try and combine some of the images into a ‘video-based’ presentation.  At the moment, my feeling is that a simple slideshow would be boring and achieve little, but to work effectively, a video made up of still images probably needs a soundtrack.  I have an idea of what I might do and I’m working on it!  (Music – but hopefully something I can use and publicise on here without breaching copyright!)

A ‘Personal Project’

I got a ‘commission’ to do a piece of work before Christmas.  Those inverted commas in the previous sentence are really important!  There is a passageway in our house where three holiday photographs that I took years ago have hung, mocking me, for some time.  The ‘commission’ was to come up with something to replace them – and I was keen to make it something that had some ‘meaning’, not just any old landscapes!  We had decided that a series of about eight, smallish square frames would work well; so what to put in them?

I have produced what I guess would best be described as a ‘still life’ series, entitled ‘It’s a dead leaf!’.  There is some oblique reference there to the tendency we obsessive photographers have to drive friends and family mad by seeming to want to photograph obscure and mundane objects and situations.  However, there was some element of serious intent in what I produced.  I’m always keen to make the ordinary special – I’ve blogged on here before about that.  Maybe there is some deeper meaning in it somewhere.  Perhaps I want people to notice me and the metaphorical version is getting them to see beauty in the mundane through the images I produce.  Not sure – but I went out into the garden on a couple of occasions in early December, and gathered together a motley collection of dead and dying leaves, flowers & general detritus.  Then, over a further couple of days, I photographed them under artificial lighting against a pure black background.  I quite deliberately looked for a variety of arrangements and patterns within the planned square frame – using a small pewter vase for one or two images.  Two of the images had to be produced particularly quickly because I chose to capture objects with frost on them.  I found that process to be significant and symbolic in itself – the ‘decisive moment’.  I was creating still life images, but of something transient, something that could only be there for a short time, something which seemed to go against the traditional idea of a still life.  Of course, the whole series is about transience, briefly stopping the passage of time, capturing something that we mostly don’t even notice.  Taking that dead leaf, which we could just as easily have stepped on and crushed to a pulp as we walked over it, and giving it a starring role.  This is the image from the series that I think captures the idea best of all.

 

 

That’s real frost on it, and it flopped over in this way because it was quickly thawing and losing the temporary rigidity the frost had given it.  It is only a dead leaf, but I think it’s standing for a lot in this image.  It might even be partially representative of me risking a step or two towards the darker zone from which I might look back and better understand what I’m trying to do.

So – that’s certainly got the reflective learning log going again!  The images appear in a set on Flickr, here "It's a dead leaf" .

‘Art of Arrangement’ – Exhibition at the National Media Museum, Bradford

I commented, after my ‘studio’ based work for Assignment Two, that the ‘conceptual still life’ genre was something I was interested to explore further. I was given this small book as a birthday present - "Still Life in Photography" by Paul Martineau.  The short introductory essay provides a good overview with pointers to further investigation and a reading list – a nice starting point for further study.  The images then provide a similar visual overview, from Fox Talbot to Ori Gersht and Sharon Core.  Coincidentally, the National Media Museum has an exhibition on called ‘Art of Arrangement’.  Rather like the book, the exhibition sets out survey the part that still life has played since photography first emerged in the 19^th century, and to relate that it is stiull alive and kicking in contemporary photography.

I’m not sure the title ‘Art of arrangement’ does the show any favours, especially from the publicity point of view.  Accompanying notes and essays (downloadable from the NMM website, with some videos to view as well) do make reference to the ‘rich and symbolic language’ of still life and the subtle conveyance of ‘complex and spiritual ideas’.  So, to imply, however unintentionally, that it might be an exhibition about flower arranging is not the wisest thing!  Actually, although disappointing in regard to the number of more contemporary examples (partly, I suspect, because the NMM is largely limited to its own collections plus the Royal Photographic Society archive), it does, like the book, give a useful intro to the genre, its historical context, and the deeper meaning and significance of ‘serious’ still life images.  The range goes from prints used by Fox Talbot in his ‘Pencil of Nature’ publication, through extensive examples from Roger Fenton, works by the pictorialists, notably Steichen, on to Atget, Kertesz and the surrealists e.g. Man Ray, via Don McCullin (an odd choice for still life!) to Chris Killip and a projected animated work by Ori Gersht.

My impression is that there is genuine activity in the photo-art world that could most definitely be defined as ‘still life’ (in so far as such definition and classification is of any consequence – which is debateable!).  For example, Hotshoe‘s December/January edition featured Diana Scherer’s Nurture Studies work, which I’d seen at the Nofound Fotofair, in Paris, and liked very much.  So, on the one hand, I’m encouraged that the genre is alive and kicking, but a little put off that this exhibition doesn’t really add to the story – certainly in the contemporary context.  It could be argued that Ori Gerhst’s is subverting the genre, by making it move and exploding its contents.  The credibility of the exhibition wasn’t, in my view, helped by the inclusion of a filmed interview with Don McCullin (again, I say, odd choice!) in which he says that his still life work isn’t meant to be taken seriously and is a bit of an escape to ‘the shed’ for him.  Great photographer that he is, within his field of experience and expertise, I’m not sure that his view, which seems to dismiss the genre as a ‘hobby’ for him, is helpful in assessing the position of ‘still life’ in contemporary photo-based art.  Mind you, some might disagree, I guess.  I’ll keep an open mind and get back to working out how I can best progress with my Paris Photo project.



"Land Matters"

I have just finished reading Land Matters: Landscape Photography, Culture and Identity by Liz Wells.  It has taken a while.  She is rarely an easy read and it has been heavy going in places – sometimes dry and uninspiring, to be truthful. But, the first read of a book such as this is often about familiarisation – with what is there and where it is – so that one knows what to consult it about and where to go for the information.  It is good to see a contemporary theory book on Landscape.  It brings the genre right up to date (well almost – she says that the manuscript was completed in 2007) and so gives an excellent point of reference through which to link contemporary landscape practice with cultural thinking.  I have just re-read her personal comments in the Preface and it made me recognise that, through all the (often dry) surveying of modern landscape photography, the book does retain some sense of the personal interest and enthusiasm, which is good to see.

It opens with a general introduction on the landscape genre – history, context, theory, cultural links with painting.  This will certainly be a good chapter to re-read, at some stage, for its theoretical and contextual overview.  She follows with four lengthy chapters that are, essentially, surveys of landscape practice in North America, Britain and Scandinavia (and the Baltic, actually, to be accurate).   A great deal of ground is covered with many examples – some of these will be worthy of follow-up, particularly the last of these sections, covering Northern Europe.  The photographers she discusses there, from Scandinavia and the Baltic States, are, almost without exception, unknown to me before; and she links the landscape photography of the region with national identity, which was also interesting alongside the current BBC TV Series on The Vikings.  It’s probably fair to say that, despite the historical and cultural contribution that we inherit from the very North of the European mainland, we don’t always pay it the attention it deserves.

In the final chapter, she pulls it all together under the heading ‘Sense of Location’.  It’s a chapter that is “... concerned with the inter-relation of image and memory.”  I feel that the sense of the personal comes back strongly here.  Yes, the work is learned and academic; yes, she is writing in a theoretical context; but I also get the sense of landscape photography happening in a highly personal sphere that relates to the individual’s (photographer and viewer) own space, emotions, senses, memory, etc – even some sense of her own personal response.

I’m glad I’ve got this book and have read it; I will be going back into it on a regular basis, I’m sure – for both resource and inspiration.  It is an academic book, and so it does require effort to read and study, but that is no bad thing.  And there are rewards for the effort, in terms of understanding and enlightenment.

Project: Writing descriptively

“You probably think of your photography as essentially a practical or technical activity.”  So reads the first sentence introducing this project in the course notes.  Actually, I don’t!  And I don’t tend to describe my photography “... in the form of technical notes ...” or “... become absorbed in the particular technical problem ...” that is facing me.  So, from my own perspective, I have to question the premise behind the exercise!

Having read a fair amount of serious photography criticism over the last few years I think that I have moved on from that technical focus.  To be fair, though, looking at the title of the project made me reflect on some of the descriptive aspects of the critics that I have come across.  One in particular certainly opened my eyes to the effectiveness of a descriptive approach when looking at photography.  That was Michael Fried who’s Why Photography Matter as Art as Never Before (Yale University Press 2008) I read a couple of years ago.  It was a tough read at the time, and I certainly didn’t ‘get’ all the theoretical references to the likes of Heidegger, but Fried’s descriptive approach to analysing images did make an impression; and it helped me fully appreciate the work of Jeff Wall, Thomas Struth, Luc Delahaye, Andreas Gursky, Thomas Ruff, and others about whom he writes extensively in the book.

More recently, I have read Criticising Photographs: An Introduction to Understanding Images by Terry Barrett (McGraw Hill 2012).  Chapter Two is entitled ‘Describing Photographs: What Do I See?’, and in it, Barrett says, “The starting point is not crucial, but accurate description is an essential part of holding defensible critical positions.” (Page 18).  He compares various critics’ approach to descriptive writing – making particular use of three pieces of writing about Avedon’s ‘In the American West’; and discusses description of Subject Matter, Form, Medium and Style.  Although it isn’t particularly referring to description, I like the quote from John Szarkowski, in which he says, more or less, that the simplicity of photography arises from the fact that it is very easy to make a picture, but its ‘staggering complexity’ lies in the fact that a thousand other pictures of the same subject would have been just as easy (from ‘Looking at Photographs’).  I do feel the need to express some surprise that in this latest new edition of the book, published this year, his section on describing the Medium lists the kind of information that might be included without any reference at all to digital media!  I was pleased, though, that he selects one writer as a particularly ‘careful describer’ of what he sees – Michael Fried – and includes a typical piece from him, looking at one of Mitch Epstein’s ‘Power’ series.  Barrett stresses the importance of keeping descriptive writing relevant to the writer’s interpretation – not description for its own sake.  But, importantly, he stresses that “... descriptions are rarely value-free.” (Page 40) and that “Description is not a prelude to criticism; description is criticism.” (Page 41).

The project is about doing a piece of descriptive writing on one of one’s own photographs.  Based on the ‘premise’ mentioned above, the aim is, I assume, to encourage one to move away from purely technical and practical issues and to describe more openly and extensively.  I havn’t done the exercise but, instead, have gone back to some pieces of descriptive writing that I have done before, in connection with assignments on previous modules.  I read the Fried book when I was completing the Landscape module, and I think it led me to get a bit carried away with the descriptive approach at times.  I found this example:

The ‘technical’ aspect is kept to a minimum and that hefty second paragraph makes up a detailed description of what is, on the face of it, a relatively unspectacular woodland scene.  It does read as though it might have been written by Michael Fried!  Barrett observes that Fried is very concerned with Form, and my own description definitely focuses that way in the second paragraph.  I think it falls over a bit on the ‘relevancy’ criterion, though.  I was more concerned with a thorough description than with the final paragraph, where I get into the purpose and ‘meaning’ of my image.

This is a piece written more recently, about an image for a People & Place assignment:

Interestingly, I’ve gone for very little actual description.  There is very little technical information either.  The writing covers context – of both the ‘place’ that is being depicted and the assignment itself – and process – the ‘how I went about it’ and ‘why’.  Does that represent progress in my writing about my own images?  I’m not entirely sure – the first, as I said, sometimes lacks relevance, but the second maybe lacks the form-based description of Fried.  It may also reflect a differing approach to the assignments – the first being part of a conceptual series called ‘Stone’, whereas the second is for an assignment based around the notion of an article for a ‘serious’ travel magazine.  The difference if worthy of note, whatever its origins.

So, I have chosen not to do the actual exercise titled ‘Writing descriptively’ but the re-examination of my own writing from previous modules has been useful, as has the reading of Barrett and the reminder of Fried’s descriptive style.  Writing about photographs interests me, as does reading about it, so I approach the rest of this section of the module with a degree of enthusiasm.