Paris Exhibitions – Belated Notes

Assignment Three has gone off to my tutor; I have caught up with the reading/writing exercise on photojournalism; now my last bit of catching up is to blog some notes on the exhibitions I visited in Paris.  Embarrassingly, that was way back in mid-November!  I did write up notes by hand immediately after the events, but I just haven’t got round to transposing them and blogging in here.  Time to put that right!

Le Bal Gallery - Paul Graham – ‘Beyond Caring’ & ‘The Present’

It’s worth mentioning the gallery itself, first of all.  It is at the site of a former dance hall/ballroom – hence the name – in Montmartre.  There’s a book shop, cafe, and some good exhibition spaces – smallish rooms at ground floor level and then a big space downstairs where the ballroom was.  Dedicated to photography and worth a visit.  There were two Paul Graham sets on show.

Beyond Caring – These are Graham’s images from DHSS offices in the mid-80s.

It’s hard to escape the political angle with these – for those of us who recall that era.  But. Setting that to one side, one observes the use of colour for ‘serious’ documentary photography images – not that common even in the mid-eighties. (Though I do seem to recall these photographs making it into the colour supplements at the time.)  As one would expect, the clothes etc are indicative of the time, but the themes are timeless.  Literally so, in the sense that the images depict waiting, wasting, emptiness, boredom, pointlessness.  They were shot surreptitiously, of course.  We get that sometimes, from the angle of the shot.  It does leave a bit of a sense that we’re eavesdropping.  And, at the time, it did lead me to compare this version of the surreptitious with, say, Bruce Gilden’s ‘in your face’ street shots.  I didn’t enjoy the latter but I mind Graham’s images much less.  ‘Beyond Caring’ is about the people and the situation they (and millions of others) were in.  Gilden’s approach, I felt, was about him.  Despite the colour, these do portray the drabness and the pointlessness – confirmation that gritty documentary doesn’t have to be in black & white.  In fact, if these were mono, they would feel separate, of another time – to me anyway.

The Present – And speaking of ‘another time’, these images are bang up to date – Graham’s relatively recent work from the streets of New York.  Pairs (and occasionally trios) of images made in the same location and separated by just a few seconds.

We see time shift on, slightly, from one fleeting moment to another.  Exquisitely printed and very large, they create a sense of being there, in the scene, but also, inevitably, a feeling of serious intent on the part of the artists.  The size, formality and pairings invite you to look closely and consider thoroughly.  The exhibition notes refer to ‘The extraordinary from the ordinary’ but I’m not so sure I agree with that.  It’s the monumental size and the pairings that are ‘extraordinary’, not the subject or content.  I would prefer to say that the images express the significance of the ordinary – but that it remains ordinary.  I like the undermining (for me) of the ‘decisive moment’.  Here are two, sometimes three, decisive moments presented one after the other, each no more or less significant than the other.  The exhibition worked well in this space, which was big enough to let you choose your own perspective – step back or step in, either worked well.  Certainly it worked better than the big Thomas Struth prints that I saw at the Whitechapel Gallery eighteen months ago.  For one thing the prints were much better, but also the scale was right for the images.

Maison Européenne de la Photographie – ‘La Photographie en France, 1950-2000

Perhaps a bit of a misnomer, this, in that there were plenty of photographs from non-French photographers and plenty taken outside France, but it would be churlish to dwell on that.  Actually, it was a real ‘tour de force’ and impossible to encapsulate in a brief note.  Let’s start with the scale.  In what is an excellent building, devoted entirely to photography, this exhibition occupied 2 floors, with 2 landings on each floor, and multiples rooms/spaces on each landing – literally hundreds of images.

From 1950’s art photography and advertising images, through photography that questioned its own art credentials, to documentary, it spanned all genres.  Yes, eclectic and occasionally superficial, it was, though, well-presented, not overly curated/labelled, and a really interesting couple of hours.  There were four other, smaller exhibitions in the same building, but I didn’t have to take those in.  This is a place to visit again.

Jeu de Paume - ‘A Photographer on the Watch, 1902-2002’ – Manuel Alvarez Bravo

There were around 150 prints of Bravo’s work on show – mainly from c1926 to c 1945, but with a few examples of later work, including colour polaroids and 8mm film footage.  Having seen a Cartier Bresson retrospective at the National Media Museum a few years ago, comparison between the two is inevitable.  The similarities of formal qualities, in particular, is clear – as is the influence of Weston, the surrealists, and apparently, constructivism.  The exhibition certainly showed off an emphasis on observation (hence the title) – of form, abstract shape, tricks of the eye, conceptual opportunities and of the extraordinary possibilities in ordinary life.  As well as the beautiful tonal qualities that one associates with photographers from this period, I was definitely struck by the formal and the abstraction especially – which, of course, compares directly with Cartier Bresson.  In fact, the work seemed almost more poetic and personal in comparison to C-B’s intellectual approach, I would say.  The accompanying notes refer to his watchful process – setting up the camera and waiting for something to happen – and the work is watchful, even a touch voyeuristic at times such as the dead or the sleeping.

Jeu de Paume – ‘Between’ – Muntades

I went into this exhibition ‘blind’.  I have to admit that I had never heard of Antoni Muntades and had no idea what he does/did when I walked into this part of the gallery.  I now know that he is a Spanish artist of some repute, who specialises in installations using all manner of media - more here.  As such, presenting his work in a gallery becomes a bit of a challenge.  I would say that some of it worked in this context and some didn’t.  But I admit that it might have meant more if I’d known more myself beforehand!  I certainly enjoyed the simply subversive nature of his work, such as a series of plaques surreptitiously erected to commemorate urban planning disasters.

It’s also interesting to record my own, ‘innocent’ response to the first piece of work on display.  It’s called ‘On Translation: the warning’; and in the Jeu de Paume exhibition were a series of posters and leaflets in different languages, with photographs of where the posters were posted, so to speak.  They all read (English version) – ‘Warning: Perception require involvement’.  First thing to say – I liked that; its simplicity & then the potential it has to really make you reflect.  But because I had come to the exhibition ‘blind’, as I put it, I found myself wondering whether this installation had actually happened or whether the ‘art’ was the creation of these photographs and leaflets etc suggesting that it had!  The installations were real, I now know, but my own response demonstrates how the study of contemporary art plays with one’s perceptions of reality and truth.

Assignment Three - submission & reflections

Assignment Three went off to my tutor on Friday.  The previous posts in here chart its progress adequately, but I'm copying into here the Reflections that I included with my assignment notes, for completeness.


• As an exercise in planning & implementing coverage of an event, it has been a useful learning experience.

• It has been much more open-ended than a professional assignment – in terms of both the brief and the timescale – which has both pro’s and cons. Certainly, I suspect it’s the reason this assignment seems to have dragged on over a few months.
• Ending up exploring a whole series of potential outcomes from the work is a useful piece of learning, too. It brings home the fact that there can be all sorts of ways to make use of a set of images, but also to interpret and present a particular event.
• Editing and selection is, I suspect, one of the key learning outcomes from this assignment.  I have performed a 140/100/30/13 process, which I don’t seem to have found particularly difficult.  I’m reasonably happy with the nature of the choices I’ve made.  I am, still, a touch critical of the images I’ve produced.  The ‘30’ group would, I think, be a reasonably sound and solid set to present to a picture editor – but I wouldn’t put it any stronger than that.  They do the job; but I am a little disappointed that there aren’t more ‘stars’ in there.  That could well be the reason I’ve found the editing relatively easy.

• Overall, I am, as I say, a little disappointed by the quality (both technical and aesthetic) of the images.  I don’t think that my handling of the camera was as smart as it might have been – probably better than using either of the other options in low light, but I did make errors of judgement.  My choice of theme was OK, but with hindsight, I could have been a little more creative in its implementation.

• The video does represent my ‘take’ on the event, and is the most technically challenging of the various outcomes.  I do think that my combination of the Paris Photo images with other elements – different sounds, additional photos etc – has made for an interesting and effective presentation that succeeds in presenting my main theme.  In the context of this course and its objective of achieving professional standards of output, I am a little doubtful.  I have used free software and simple/consumer editing processes and effects; and I wonder whether the result, whilst effective, is a touch amateurish and lacking sophistication.

• I am also conscious that I have not particularly conducted this assignment within a clear ‘context’.  It has led to a few reflections on ‘manipulating’ the viewers’ response and the difference between achieving that with a set of still images compared with this highly edited and carefully structured audio-visual combination.  To what extent am I very obviously driving my viewer down a particular route, as opposed to presenting him/her with something stimulating and thought-provoking but less directive?  And does that matter?  I produced it with the clear intention of making a point – so perhaps that is the basis on which to judge it.  Does it make the point successfully?  But if the result lacks sophistication and subtlety, that might detract from its aesthetic qualities and artistic merit – perhaps.  I am probably too close to it to make a clear judgement – but I am also conscious that I’m unsure of the context in which I’m setting out to make that judgement.  Is there a ‘theoretical’ context for this piece?

So, overall, I emerge with mixed feelings; a sense that I have done a job and produced a satisfactory result, but with questions remaining about its overall merit and just what I have achieved through it.

Assignment Three - some comparisons

I mentioned, responding to the comments on my last post here, that I had produced a slideshow video version of the Paris Photo images.  Actually, I have also done two 'in the style of' magazine layouts of selected images as well; and I'm also printing a small selection.  It is interesting and worthwhile, I think, to consider all these different forms in which the images might be used.

Starting out with the slideshow video:

This has a very different 'feel' compared with the short movie in the previous post, even though many of the actual images are common to both. The pace is slow, steady and even; there is just about enough time to consider each image in its own right; but there is some degree of flow and structure as well; whilst the selection and ordering is down to me, the artist, there is probably enough 'space' for the viewer to form some of his/her own opinion about the event and the images.  It has no soundtrack, of course, and including one would have made a significant difference - another 'cool' jazz track would fit well, but what if the background had been sounds from Leeds market!

This assignment comes at the end of a section of the course entitles 'Photography in Publishing II'; and many of the exercises leading up to it seem directed towards photo-journalism and the use of images in printed publications.  (Though, to be fair, 'A story in pictures' is a concept open to many interpretations.)  I chose to use some of the images from Paris Photo as the basis for an exercise around page layouts and considered two magazine styles that might have had a feature on the subject.  The first, below (each image being a double page), is 'in the style of' a colour supplement magazine such as the Sunday Times.

Four double-page spreads is probably a bit unlikely, but I have based the style on some research of relevant publications - almost always starting with a full bleed image on the title page; almost always including centrally-positioned image across two pages, as in the second spread above; and very often ending with a half-page image after the 'sign-off'.  Clearly, the overall impact of the 'story' will depend on the words, but despite my overall disatisfaction with the photographs I brought back from Paris, a small selection, such as these, has enough variety of subject, framing and style to support an article such as this.

The other type of publication I had in mind was the professional photography journals.  Of course, many of these tend to concentrate on images as art rather than as supporting material for reportage.  But I did work around the idea of an article in the British Journal of Photography, perhaps as a report in their 'Intelligence' section.  They actually tend to go for very 'simple' layouts and so I produced this:

As I said above, I have also done prints of a small selection, but I keep tending back to the view that I haven't really produced any images that stand up strongly on their own.  Since this section and this assignment is, to an extent, aimed at producing a 'story in pictures', I could conclude that I've 'failed', but I would probably be being a bit unfair on myself.  The selection and layout in the 'colour supplement' style above, for example, could probably do enough to inform a casual reader of the magazine, even if they didn't choose to read the article.  (The images themselves would be captioned too, of course.)

I now need to decide on just what I'll submit to my tutor.  Since the various options are here in my Learning Log, I'm tending towards just submitting the video, since that is the one that satisfies the brief to present my take on the event in a manner that challenges and stretches me from the technical point of view.

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.