Assignment Three - A Complete Video

So, here is a complete version of the Paris Photo video.  The second half uses a soundtrack, plus a few images, from Leeds City Markets, juxtaposed with the images from the Grand Palais.  The point of doing so is, probably, self-evident but I hope it makes the viewer reflect on the relationship between photography as a contemporary creative artisitic activity and the market for photographic art. How relevant is each to the other?  How do they relate?  I'm not sure I can really answer the question, but it was one firmly embedded in my thoughts as I visited Le Grand Palais in November and as I reflected afterwards.

Re-reading my last post on here, I also reflect on the similarity of this video approach to, say, a collage.  I've already commented that I returned from Paris Photo less than satisfied with the images that I collected; and I even considered abandoning this approach to Assignment Three.  Now I'm not sure it would be fair to say that a video enables me to make the best of a bad job, but maybe the point is that it is the collective affect of these images, the juxtaposition, the ordering, the extension through sounds and comparative images, that works.  In a situation like this, maybe it is better not to have some 'stand-out', exceptional individual photographs, but to allow the 'collage', the collective effect do the job.

Anyway, I'm going to put this video up here for a few days to see what, if anything, people think of it.  Meanwhile, I'll also need to think about just what I am going to submit to my tutor for this assignment.

Revised Intro

Having looked at helpful comments from a number of fellow students, I've slowed the early part down, just a little, by introducing a brief, still version of two of the images.  The voice is updated with a better French speaker!  And there is now just one 'cash' image at the end.  It feels like an improvement, to me.

I have also recorded some sounds in Leeds market and am ready to start working on the second half of the video.

The comments made me reflect a little on why I'm taking this approach and what I hope to achieve.  As intimated elsewhere, perhaps the most important reason is that I want to try something different and test myself out.  I also sense that the contemporary version of the 'Photo Essay' concept described in the course notes is, maybe, a short video on You Tube.  An online magazine, for example, could be more likely to include something along these lines, or a slideshow, rather than a carefully laid out picture essay.  The challenges are different.  A viewer of a magazine photo sequence can review the whole set in seconds, flicking backwards and forwards between pages.  Then they can follow the sequence, read the narrative that the creator has put together, and ultimately spend time reviewing any or all of the images in detail.  In the video, such as this one, everything happens much more quickly - like so many aspects of contemporary communications.  The viewers' attention needs to be won in the first few seconds.  They need something to be happening that keeps them gripped, since they can stop the video and forget all about it in an instance.  They're unlikely, certainly in the case of a video on the internet, to watch for longer than a few minutes, so getting the message cross quickly is important.  As I've been working on this and thinking about it, I sense that it has more in common with an advertisement or a music video than, say, a slideshow or physical presentation of still images.  One is trying to create a 'sensation' through a combination of visual and audio stimuli.  It still requires careful thought about sequencing, timing, juxtaposition, pace etc, which has similarities with the photo essay, but everything is happening so much more quickly.

Assignment Three - A test run of the concept

As I said in the previous post, I'm going to 'test the water' with the video concept that I've come up with for Assignment Three.  This assignment, as written up in the course notes, calls for the photographer to take photographs to 'support an editorial feature', and the notes suggest a detailed and focussed brief from the tutor.  I havn't had that; my brief being, essentially, to present my take on Paris Photo 2012 and to challenge myself technically.  I have worked on the magazine article layout approach, and will present that as part of my submission, I'm sure, but I've also been exploring the idea of an audio visual presentation.  As a result, I've produced the following, approximately 50 second long, video.  It has some rough edges, certainly, and it is only a structure for the first 1/3 to 1/2 of the finished piece.  But I feel the need for some feedback.  So, I'm going to publicise it on here and to my fellow students.  If anyone has a bit of time to look at it and comment, that would be hugely helpful.  I'm quite nervous about doing this, because I know it is definitely not as slick as it might be and is, as I said, unfinished ... but let's see what happens.

Assignment Three – Progress Update

Looking to fulfil the suggestion that I stretch myself technically with this assignment, I’ve been doing further work on the idea of a video that represents my interpretation of Paris Photo 2012.  As I had already concluded, it needs to have a soundtrack, otherwise it will just be a slideshow, which neither tests my technical capability nor captures the attention of the viewer.  Frankly, I don’t think my images from the show are good enough for that – not in any volume anyway.  I had explored the possibility of using a piece of music, maybe something totally original – but that is not going to happen.  However, the way I’m now thinking might turn out to be even better, and certainly offer more scope for some creativity.

The principle theme is to present Paris Photo as a market for the rich.  So I came up with the idea to blend images and sound from a market in the UK (Leeds Market being an ideal choice – traditional building and environment, with the sounds of stallholders “Sirloin Steak, three for a tenner!” etc) with my images of Paris Photo, and also with some short music clips e.g. ‘Money, money, money’ from the film Cabaret.  I was also thinking about some spoken background e.g. a news article about Paris Photo.  Blending all of these into an interesting audio visual presentation would, potentially, be an effective way to communicate what I want to say, but also provide the technical challenge.  And it doesn’t have to be a long piece.  I did consider the idea of ‘Paris Photo in 60 seconds’, but that might be a bit too short. However, I don’t anticipate anything much longer that, say, 2 minutes.  That gives enough scope for some change of pace and mood whilst retaining the viewers’ attention.  I recall the very clear message from our Duckrabbit presenter at the Leeds Workshop, that you need to get the viewers’ attention very quickly and that most Internet viewers have a short attention span.  (He didn’t quite say that!)

Of course, this soundtrack would need to be of a good enough quality; and I would need to have some means of editing and mixing to a reasonable enough standard for it not to appear too naff and amateurish.  Exploring these issues further, I have acquired a small digital voice recorder; downloaded a free sound editing/mixing ‘suite’; and ensured that I can record, edit and mix.  I do have previous experience of editing video – both moving digital images and stills – using Microsoft Movie-Maker.  So I’ve also trialled combining the sound files from the digital recorder with images from Paris Photo; and have taken that one stage further and uploaded to You Tube.  These were very rough examples, but I now know what format from Movie Maker works on You Tube, and have also learned how to ‘normalise’ the sound into a reasonable consistent level and quality.

In fact, I’ve then taken things a stage further and had a go at what the opening part of my video might be like.  I don’t have any Leeds Market recording or images to work with yet, but I’ve combined music (two different sources), spoken word, some of the Paris Photo images, and a couple of specially shot images, to produce a 50 second piece that tests out the concept, which I’ve then uploaded to YouTube.  It isn’t perfect by a long way but my feeling is that it does certainly work in principle.  The pace changes and builds through the fifty seconds to something of a climax (and I would aim to then slow it again, with the Leeds Market sounds, but I have an idea as to how I want to finish it with a punch).  Now, apart from the need to go out and get my additional images and sound, I’m also wondering whether to test the concept with my fellow students.  I’m thinking that I will do another blog post on here, shortly, with the video embedded (another ‘first’ to be tried), and that I might publicise it on Flickr as well ...

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.



Manchester Art Gallery – The First Cut

I visited several galleries and exhibitions during the week in Paris and I’m not sure when I’m going to get them all written up in here.  It will happen, eventually.  But I’m going to leapfrog the French experience (!) and go straight to a mention of an exhibition that I saw at Manchester Art Gallery on Sunday.  It’s called The First Cut

and features the work of around 30 artists on an overall theme of paper.  It was beautiful, fascinating, inspiring and just downright good.  I strongly recommend a visit.

It’s hard to pick out ‘favourites’; the work was all so creative and inspiring.  Log-Bin Chen uses woodworking tools to carve busts and figures from stacks of old books e.g. obsolete New York telephone directories. This article gives you an idea - here. Peter Callesen, conversely, creates remarkable art from single sheets of A4 paper, for example, look at these. Manabu Hangai had created a wonderful forest and Rob Ryan's work is well-known and instantly recognisable.  I find what Georgia Russell does with books absolutely breathtaking – try this for starters - The Story of Art – but there are dozens more. And I strongly recommend anyone reading this blog to look at a film called ‘Going West’, on this site http://www.andersenm.com/. I could go on!

It has really made me think about future photographic projects.  The ways in which these artists have taken simple materials and transformed them into something ‘else’, something with another life, another meaning; often a new existence that has some sort of relationship to their previous form, but almost transported to another dimension.  After completing Assignment Two, I had referred to a possible exploration of conceptual still life images.  Now I’m thinking about materials, everyday objects, combined, transposed ...!

OK – I did say it was an inspiring exhibition!  It will be back to my Paris Photo images shortly – but I don’t think the impact of this visit is going to go away.

Assignment Three – Paris Photo – Progress Report 2

I shot just under 30 images on my first day at Paris Photo and around 100 over a 3-4 hour period the following day, after I had my ‘direction’ planned as explained in the previous post.  Those numbers include a few repeats and re-tries here and there, but I have about 100-120 basic images from which to work.  Day two was more focused, of course, and besides responding to particular opportunities that arose, I was looking for:

·         Some images taken outside the event that would set the (‘grand’) scene; that might indicate the elitist angle; that might position the event as ‘divorced’ from the ‘real world’ – or make a comparison at least.

·         To follow up the ‘elitist’ theme inside the event – the VIP Lounge & its grand staircase; the ‘types’.

·         Possibly some indications that business was being done/discussed – the market;

·         Book signings with opportunities for some ‘celebrity shots’ (!);

·         And, of course, busy photos of activity and movement.

I implemented most of these to some degree, with varying success; and also added detail shots, including some ‘price labels’ to indicate the monetary values being asked; some images to stress the importance given to photobooks in the event; and naturally a few responses to opportunities for juxtapositions etc.

In connection with the latter angle, I spent some frustrating minutes trying to implement what seemed like a good idea at the time – capturing someone’s head against the white central area of an abstract, colourful image that was positioned close to the entrance.  There were always too many people around (including an attendant who was discouraging ‘punters’ from brushing against this particular piece and became suspicious of me ‘lurking’) or I just missed timing it correctly or it wasn’t a very interesting head ...  However, I’ve included some of the results below – partly because it illustrates how easy it is to waste one’s time pursuing what would not have been that great a shot anyway, but also because I think there is a certain something about the shots when they appear together in this way.  Perhaps, chiefly, there is a testament to the folly of trying to be clever!

However, over the last week, I’ve had the chance to review my 100+ images and have narrowed them down, so far, to a long list of 44.  I’m not 100% happy with my handling of the new camera, in truth.  I did admit it was a risk.  It performs well in the lowish light of an exhibition-type environment and was, in many ways, ideal for the job.  But I was less used to handling it and sometimes didn’t quite get my settings right.  More importantly, I think I made a few basic technical and handling errors – even hand movement at times, which is irritating and has been the reason for discounting some of the images.  However, I do feel that there will be enough workable results from this 44 to deliver a satisfactory result on the assignment.  I’ve included that set as a set of contact sheets.  My tutor suggested this approach after Assignment One, so here goes.

 





Next step is to work out how I’m going to handle the submission; how many to submit; and, of course, which to select from this full set.  They’ve only had some basic processing at this stage, so there will be more work to do on the selected images anyway.

Assignment Three – Paris Photo – Progress Report 1

I’ve been back hone from Paris Photo for about a week and have had chance to do an initial process/assessment of my images.  I’ve also written a short piece for the WeAreOCA Blog - 'Un grand marche au Grand Palais'.  The latter was illustrated with a few images, but wasn’t an attempt to rehearse the assignment.

It is worth recording here what happened on the visit to Paris and specifically how I ended up approaching the making of my photos for the assignment.  I took a risk in relying on an entirely new camera with which I had only done some rudimentary familiarisation.  Attendance at two gallery exhibitions before the main event gave me chance for a bit of a dry run.

Above is a selection from a visit to 'Le Bal'Gallery in Montmartre, where images from two pieces of work by Paul Graham were on show.  I also went to 'Jeu de Paume', where there was a Manuel Alvares Bravo retrospective, but photography was prohibited, and to the ‘Maison Européenne de la Photographie’, which had an exhibition entitled ‘Photography in France 1950-2000’.  It was a slight misnomer, since there were images by French photographers taken outside France and images by non-French photographers taken in France, but that aside, it was a big and very interesting survey of most strands of photography in the second half of the 20^th century.  I was also able to give the camera a real ‘low light’ run since we visited in the evening.

Of course, I only had the opportunity to review these images in the camera at the time, and no chance to actually process them.  So there was still an element of risk.

My intention all along was to visit the main Paris Photo event on two separate days – the first to actually ‘take in’ the event and to assess my opportunities and options for the photo essay; and the second to ‘work’ the event, photographically, on my own, for a few hours, creating the main body of images for the assignment.  I did, naturally, take some photographs on the first day, but broadly speaking, I followed this original plan.  (I did also consider the possibility that the assignment would cover a range of the events going on across Paris, but came to the conclusion that I would be best to focus on the main event itself.)

What did emerge, when I reflected on my impressions from the first day, was a definite direction that I wanted to go with the assignment.  I would photograph Paris Photo for what it is – a market.  On the evening of that first day, I jotted down a series of bullet points that defined how I saw the event after the visit.  I wrote that Paris Photo is:

·         A top-end art market;

·         A ‘grand’ event at the Grand Palais;

·         Somewhat divorced from reality;

·         ‘tiered’ in its own right;

·         More about money than art;

·         About the ‘great and the good’;

·         A coming together;

·         A public display by dealers;

·         About ‘old’ pictures;

·         About the ‘established’;

·         A reluctant performance by some of the artists;

·         A positive statement of photography’s presence;

·         Something of a high-class car boot sale;

·         Comforting and reassuring for those already ‘there’.

Some of those might have been a little overstated after a long day and a few glasses of wine, but they provided a kind of script for my work the next day.  I had also by then decided to forget about the notion of producing a slideshow as well as the main photo essay.

So as not to make this too long a post, I’m going to continue the Progress Report in a separate blog entry, to follow.

Assignment Three – Paris Photo – A Plan (sort of)

Assignment Three is entitled ‘A Photographic Commission’, and the ‘brief’ is, in essence, to come up with an area of interest, in response to which your tutor will brief you for a ‘commissioned’ piece of work.  This follows a series of projects, written pieces, research etc around photojournalism, the photo-story, page layouts, and so on.  Knowing that I was about to visit Paris Photo, I suggested this as a topic; but my ‘brief’ is more or less non-existent – my ‘take’ on it, a ‘self-directed’ assignment.  That’s fine; I’m not complaining; but I do have to give it some thought and do some planning.  Otherwise I’m in danger of falling into the same situation as Assignment One.  My tutor did point me in a couple of directions – Martin Parr’s work at art fairs and an arms fair (including images in his ‘Luxury’ series) and Nick Cunard’s images of Crufts, which are here.  This latter work doesn’t do a lot for me, actually, and I’m not sure how closely images of a dog show relate to Paris Photo – but it does make me reflect on the possibility of a slideshow outcome; of which more later.

The Parr work is a bit more interesting, albeit difficult to ‘pin down’.  I haven’t looked at the ‘Luxury’ book and am unlikely to be able to get a sight of it before going to Paris next week, but I have dug out a few examples, via the Internet, with images from art fairs. This is a good example – typical Parr use of vibrant colour; a ‘clashing’ image; wit and observation; and there are others in similar vein.  Then there is his visit to an arms fair in Abu Dhabi - here.  There’s a longer collection of images on the Magnum site, but these show keen observation of ‘decisive moments’ and visually interesting juxtapositions.  He did, as the Magnun set shows, take plenty of ‘simple’ photographs of people and things, but his own edit for the blog selects those that work most effectively.  So, what I take from Parr’s work is that I must look for visually interesting images – juxtaposition; colour; visual puns; and so on.

Of course, one aspect of this is to consider what will be the eventual outcome.  Is this photo story for a magazine, a newspaper, me, a photographic journal, an art publication, my friends and family, my tutor, OCA, fellow student, Uncle Tom Cobley?  It seems unlikely – not impossible but unlikely – that a weekend colour supplement would be running a photo story on Paris Photo, unless I can find an angle that would be of interest to that type of publication.  It isn’t the sort of story that one would find in a travel magazine such as National Geographic.  Another factor to consider is that I have not yet had time to complete the exercises & projects – but since several of them are about layouts, they can be done afterwards, providing a create sufficient variety and flexibility of images.  My inclination is to have two different, but no mutually exclusive, ideas in the back of my mind as I visit the show and make my pictures – a photo story/essay for a magazine publication aimed at art-based professional photographers and students who might be interested in what the Paris Photo 2012 was like and might be wondering whether they should go to a future event; and a slide show presentation that is Stan’s take, Stan’s response, Stan’s expression of his experience.  It shouldn’t confuse my thinking too much to have both possibilities in mind, and at the same time, it leaves enough scope to create meaningful and personal images of the show.

I have had one or two other practical issues in the back of my mind as well.  What happens if there is ‘no photography’ at the show?  So, a search on images from Paris Photo 2011 reveals some You-Tube footage, which not only helps me prepare by getting an impression of the atmosphere but also shows individuals taking photographs.  As far as I can tell, therefore, that isn’t going to be a problem.  My second practical issue has been ‘which camera?’. The DSLR would be OK, if perhaps a little obvious when looking to take discrete photographs, but the D80 isn’t great in low-light, indoor circumstances.  It’s acceptable, but one has to use relatively slow shutter speeds or put up with significant noise.  My Ricoh compact is certainly very discrete, very handy to carry around, and I’m used to using it in all sorts of circumstances – but it suffers even more from the low light, high ISO noise problem.  Problem solved – I’ve invested in a Fuji x100.  Haven’t left myself an awful lot of time to familiarise myself with it before next week, but I’m sure I’ll cope.  A new toy!

So, off to Paris on Monday and we’ll see how we get on!

Exercise: Revisit Assignment One

I’ve spent a little bit of time on this process over the last 2 or 3 weeks – looking at the original brief, the images I submitted (and those I didn’t), the notes I prepared and the feedback from my tutor.  I’m confident that my submission for assignment was, at least, a personal portfolio of images.  I took photographs that I wanted to take, with subjects, framing, etc that were of interest to me.  In the notes submitted I refer to quite a range of concepts/themes – stone, dilapidation, history, ruggedness, absurdity, survival, adaptation – and all of those are present in the submitted images.  What I didn’t do, looking back now, was narrow that down to a common theme/concept and explore that through the images I prepared and chose.

The feedback was broadly good – a strong collection of images, a critical investigation of the area, good observation and commitment, conveys the atmosphere, good editing – and so on.  But there was a comment that my tutor ‘would have liked to see more focus on one of the strands’, followed up in a subsequent exchange by ‘articulate the motivations behind your images a bit more ...’.  So, once again, it seems to be a case of trying to get more focus and direction.

Thinking about it, there could have been two ways of doing that – 1) essentially have taken the same images but then edit with a strong focus/intent; 2) do more research and thinking up front, choose a theme, then go out and take photos that reflect it.  Seems to me that either could be acceptable.  The first is along the lines of Anish Kapoor – letting the ‘spiritual’ speak through the artist in the creative process & then the ‘reader’ reconnects.  In fact, these are not mutually exclusive.  My ‘personal portfolio’ for Assignment One was, probably, more akin to the first, but reflecting on the assignment now presents an opportunity to use that process as the ‘research’.  What concepts and themes do I see now, when I review the longer set of images from which I made my choice?  What appeals to me and seems to speak about the local area in a voice to which I best relate?  What, in fact, do I want to say about the area?  And what sort of edit does that produce? What new images does it make me want to capture that further the theme.

I’ve spent some time doing just such a review.  There were 35 images in my long list, from which I selected 15 (probably too many) for the submission.  I already had some prints of the submitted ones, but I’ve printed off the others and been shuffling them around, re-selecting and, I guess, re-reading.  It seems to me that what I want to say about life in this corner of the Holme Valley (and I always intended to focus the assignment into a very narrow geography – bit like painter George Shaw in my earlier posts & his images from within a couple of hundred metres of where he grew up) was/is:

·         Life is tough;

·         Life is absurd;

·         Life is rarely pretty;

·         But we can make something of it.

And, of course, those are ideas that apply to life in general, not just the Holme Valley; universal concepts that are as much about man and his struggle to survive as they are about me creating images that evoke the neighbourhood where I live.  And the ‘making something of it’ is as much about my images being the ‘making’ as it is about documenting what others have ‘made’.  Bringing the techniques of the sublime landscape image to a shot of a pig farm is, in itself, a metaphor for man making the best of his lot.

So, where does that leave me in reviewing my images for Assignment One?  It informs my edit of the images that I’ve already taken and it provides direction for me to continue to create images that will add to the portfolio.  It provides me with a focus, when I’m out with the camera, locally; and I can continue to add/develop, so that by the time I submit for assessment I have a more focused, more clearly directed set of images for this assignment.  It’s something I can continue to work on over the months to that stage – and beyond, of course.

Assignment Two – Feedback

I got the feedback on Assignment Two just over a week ago, but hadn’t had an opportunity, until now, to record reflections in here.  Some of the opening words caused initial apprehension; ‘... you may be disappointed ...’ and ‘... to be quite honest ...’ plus ‘...I’m really struggling ...’ didn’t augur well for what might follow.  But when the latter phrase led into ‘... to think of suggestions to improve upon this ...’ and the words ‘... fantastic piece of work ...’ came shortly after, I realised I was being led slightly down the garden path!! Thanks, Jesse!  I’ve broken with the normal code of modesty and quoted because, let’s be honest, that sort of feedback doesn’t come too often so ‘what the hell’ let’s get out the trumpet and blow it!

There are, of course and despite the intro, a few good suggestions e.g. some other lines of research, some interesting angles on the design, and a comparison that I like – with Edgar Martins’ night landscapes on beaches http://www.edgarmartins.com/ (‘The Accidental Theorist’ project).  I’ve seen and enjoyed Martins’ work before, including some of the beach images, but I hadn’t made this connection.  And I hadn’t really studied him - I need to look more closely.

One other useful thought has come to my mind as a result of this positive feedback.  Looking back over my studies with OCA, I have consistently got this sort of response (maybe not quite so glowing!!) when I’ve been working in this sort of ‘controlled’, ‘studio-like’ manner – strong but controlled lighting.  Way back in ‘Art of Photography’ – photographing a queen scallop shell for the ‘lighting’ assignment and the ingredients of ‘flapjack’ as a kind of still life image, for example.  The Martins’ images have a kind of ‘still life’, constructed look about them.  I do enjoy shutting myself away and playing around with compositions, lighting, framing, and I wonder whether – further down the line at Level Three, for example – it might be interesting to explore ‘conceptual still life’, which I guess is what this book cover amounts to.

Really encouraging to get good feedback; I’m definitely not disappointed; now on to Assignment Three, which is a ‘Photo Story’ or ‘Photo Essay’.  I’m going to Paris Photo week after next, which might well turn out to be the subject matter; but I don’t have the time to work through exercises first.  So it might be a case of capturing the images first – my take on the experience - and then structuring the story some weeks later.

Anish Kapoor at the YSP

I had the opportunity, last week, to spend a short time at the Anish Kapoor ‘Flashback’ exhibition at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park Link Here.  It’s a travelling exhibition that has also been in Manchester and Nottingham, with around a dozen or so varied pieces of work from different stages of his career. Coincidentally, I’d just read an interview with him in one of the newspapers over the previous weekend in which he’d talked about the way he always works (or directs others to work, since he clearly has a large team of assistants doing most of the day-to-day stuff) on a wide range of projects at any one time, in very different forms, materials and scales.  As the images in the link demonstrate, this small show included examples of his use of vivid colours, with varying materials and surfaces.  It was, as I say, a short visit, but I was particularly interested in his ‘voids’, for example Adam, in which he is ‘creating a state of emptiness’, as it says in the accompanying brochure, leaving the viewer with the sense of looking at nothing.  (Reminds me of walking into a room full of black paintings at the Rothko exhibition a few years ago.)  The brochure goes on to quote Kapoor as saying that he seeks to empty out content and make an empty form but that, of course, “... content is there in a way that’s more surprising than if I’d tried to make a content ... subject matter is somehow not the same as content”.

I’ve got myself into this area of subject matter and content or meaning before, in this earlier post.  It made me go off and do a bit more digging for what Kapoor had to say about it, which led me to this transcript of an interview.  Some key points emerging are:

·         He looks to put subject matter out of the way and, by that means, something else occurs; his objects primary purpose is not interpretative;

·         He believes that you cannot set out to create something spiritual; that comes from other resonances;

·         The spiritual world is latent and the artist finds this latent content;

·         He makes art for himself and then the viewer completes the circle (Barthes – the death of the author); though he acknowledges that the artist can use titling and context to manipulate and seek to invest meaning; but he is interested in the viewer’s immediate translation, and the ‘theoretical stuff comes later’.

So, he seems to see the artist as a kind of ‘medium’, through which the creativity flows from some unknown spiritual source, into the world, where the viewer reads, possibly with some guidance, a spiritual meaning and content in the work.  This almost certainly reflects his Indian roots, one feels – this mystical, spiritual explanation of his creative process.  It isn’t something with which I can comfortably relate – steeped in 60+ years of solid Western capitalist materialistic influence.  Mind you, the previous interview I’d read (Sunday Times, I think) mentioned Kapoor’s £80m+ wealth, but I will resist the temptation to be cynical.  The ‘voids’ did touch me, and I can see how his work does indeed interact powerfully with the viewer.

I did also pick up another relationship between some aspects of his work and the field of photography – surfaces, and the absorbing/reflecting of light.  It’s interesting to compare the deep matte blue surfaces of his voids that absorb light and absorb the viewer’s gaze, with the reflective, shiny surfaces, which return the gaze.  In the exhibition brochure, he refers to the matte surface as the ‘traditional sublime ... deep and absorbing’ but says that the mirrored surfaces ‘... might be a modern sublime ... absolutely present ...’.  I just wonder about this comparison in the context of photographic surfaces – the surface of the print. Personally, I have tended to work mainly with matte papers, but I know that this approach is sometimes criticised because of the absorptive nature of the surface – absorptive of the light by which the viewer is viewing, that is.  Interesting that Kapoor sees that as relating to the ‘traditional sublime’.  If what he says is right, printing on a matte surface should have the effect of drawing in the viewer’s gaze, which is surely what we want to do with a photographic print!

Assignment Two – Evolution of the Final Concept!

Something of a grand title for this post – but not entirely inappropriate, since I’m going to relate the story of the last ten days or so, & how I’ve arrived at my submission for Assignment Two.

I do have a pencil drawing of the very earliest version of this one, but it falls into the ‘not to be shared in public’ category, and so will remain private.  I’m not entirely sure of the actual source of the idea.  It might be some reflection on ‘The Outsider’ and the presence of a coffin in the story, especially since there is also reference to the screwing down (or not) of the lid and whether or not Meursault wants to view his mother’s body.  There again, it might be the couple of days recently spent tidying out our store in which, amongst myriad other rubbish, reside tools, spare screws and nails, and odd bits of wood saved for their perceived future usefulness!  It might also be that I was forming the conclusion that I might struggle to implement the two earlier versions of a cover design for the book; and that perhaps I would be better advised to find an option that was more easily under my own control.

Whatever the origins, here, in the absence of a drawing, is a description of what was in my mind.  I envisaged what we might refer to as a ‘still life’ construction, which used nails, wood and a screw, to evoke the concept of ‘difference’, in particular, the ‘difference’ of Meursault, the ‘outsider’ or the ‘stranger’.  There would be a row of nails, probably on their heads, with points upwards, interrupted at one point by a screw (probably a brass one, to further emphasise ‘difference’) that was partially fixed, at an angle, into the wood on which the whole ‘scene’ is placed.  Once I’d got the idea, I could also see the possible oblique reference to the coffin and screws in the text.  Also, having the nails pointing upwards, with the screw fixed amongst them, hinted at the difference between being firmly focused on the physical world – Meursault – and the (absurd) high-minded spiritual aspirations of his fellow humans.

Over the last ten days or so, I’ve been able to turn that into reality (not least because, having tidied it, there was room in the store to set up the scene and leave it there for a few days!).  I’ve retained a number of the various images made over that period and put some of them together below.  Without relating the whole story here, it begins, top left, with a few random nails on a plank of wood, and moves left to right, firstly with the appearance of brass screws and a more substantial base; then to the purchase of some 2 inch nails to match the 2 inch brass screws and the beginnings of some experimentation with lighting and layout.  The murder victim makes a brief appearance in two of the early versions, but was felt to be a step too far.  One early decision was what lens to use to give the feeling of being close to the action.  The right hand middle image is significant in that context.  I don’t possess a macro lens and was wondering whether to explore that.  My Ricoh compact does have macro & this image is taken with it, at about a 35mm equivalent focal length.  I liked the way this one worked, and made the decision to use a 35mm prime on my DSLR, which does focus reasonably close.  That enabled me to concentrate on working out the best overall layout (bottom left) so that I could fix the screw into the wood and test out different angles for the nails, different forms & position of lighting (using an off camera flash), eventual arriving at the version (bottom right) that I have used for my submission.

By this point I had also begun to try out the image with some text.  I already know the overall size and had some text prepared from the previous concept with which I’d been experimenting.  It got me thinking about the idea of combining this new image with a background of blue sky to simulate the idea of sun and heat – especially since the colour of the wooden surface resembled that of sand.  So I played around a little more with the lighting – moving it higher, diffusing it etc, to produce other, interesting versions of the scene.  Here is my simulated high, Mediterranean sunlight.



And here are two in which the light is heavily diffused, creating a more even and ‘democratic’ light – perhaps more reminiscent of a room in which a coffin might be kept (although, in the book, the description is of a glaring electric light in the room).

Beginning with the right hand version above, three have been converted into possible book covers.

 

 



Then there is the Mediterranean version, with a sky replacing the black background.

 



There is a fundamental problem with this version.  I have struggled to make a selection in Photoshop that effectively matches the nails to the new background.  I’ve played around with different original version – ones with more even lighting, for example – but I can’t make it work.  Perhaps with more ‘studio’ lighting available, better Photoshop skills, and more time, there could be a way to make this one work.  I even had the idea that the ‘horizon’ could have a hint of the sea to really bring home the idea of a beach.  However, firstly, I think that might all be a step too far, but secondly and importantly, I’m not convinced it is effective a cover as the one I’ve chosen.  ‘Clever’ as it might be, it begins to look like a light-hearted holiday read, which ‘The Outsider’ is definitely not.

Which brings me to the version that I’ve chosen to submit.  It uses the last image from the ‘Evolution of a Concept’ set earlier in this post and was actually produced before the two above.  They have simply been attempts to try out some other ideas, neither of which came out to be as effective as the first.  Going right back to where this started, I do feel it evokes the idea of ‘difference’.  On its own, it is an interesting image, but combined with the book’s title, I feel that the concept works.  For a potential buyer (and they are most likely to be people who already know something about the novel) it could be intriguing enough to encourage them to pick it up and explore.  It is, of itself, absurd, even a touch surreal, which isn’t too far away from the mood of the novel.  It also has the merit of simplicity – whilst also, for those who do know the story, just having a few direct links with the narrative itself.

So, there we have it – just remains to write up some notes for my tutor and submit it for his feedback!