A good People and Place photo

One takes many photographs which might help to fulfil a brief but may not be anything exceptional. Sometimes, one does make a photograph that stands out.

Dorothy unwell after lunch

When I showed this photograph to others, they immediately picked it out from a group even though there were other impressive images such as an Osprey with a duck in it's claw and a panoramic view of the Bristol docks. The assumption was that this image must have been set up when in fact it was not; Dorothy, a member of a group with whom I was lunching, had fallen ill after lunch and an ambulance had to be called which is why one sees a man leaning near her with a phone in one hand; this act further adds to the emergency of the scene.

The composition works since the figures are placed in such a way as to add to the dynamism of the scene and yet the distortion, although partially removed by a lens profile and some tweaking, rather lets down the reality of the scene unless one is prepared to accept this effect as adding to the atmosphere.

Martin Parr in Bristol - second visit

I had gone to see Martin Parr's exhibition of photographs made in the Bristol area for a second time partly to meet up with other OCA students, an unofficial study day, yet also to listen to a social historian talk about the photographs on display. However, the talk was by Phil Walker who had worked closely with Martin Parr over the exhibition since the social historian was unable to attend.

Martin Parr is liked by some and disliked by others; I am a liker but want to understand the other view. Perhaps it is just a matter of taste but there are those who do seem to raise a serious objection to Parr. He is an internationally renowned photographer, a documentarist who is head of Magnum UK and whose work is also considered art. One can look at his work in different ways such as the social historic which is really the basis of this exhibition. Parr came to Bristol in the late 1980's, producing The Cost of Living (1987), when there was the divided society of the late Thatcher era.

For Parr, the role of photography is to exaggerate and some of his images contain not so much a punctum, what Barthes describes as an area of significant detail, but are themselves a punctum, a punctured view of the world. Photography tends to be used to make things look better than they actually are and Parr challenges this. 

Does Parr reveal any truths about Bristol or is Bristol just a backdrop for his view of the world. Henri Cartier-Bresson, one of the founding members of Magnum, suggested that Parr might be from another planet. His work is seen by some as dispassionate and detached.

One image of two people standing outside their prefab house does have historical significance. There are not many of such buildings left and there is talk of the remaining ones being listed. Parr met with the occupiers who are photographed standing outside.

A photograph of a Yoga class taking place in the city is indicative of the kind of alternative culture that exists in Bristol. The photograph of Airbus workers at work is also a reminded of the kind of industry found in Bristol.

One photograph of four women in Cribbs Causeway standing facing the photographer in what amounts to a portrait photograph. This attracted a lot of criticism as not being representative of the shopping centre as a whole yet as usual, Parr had interacted with his subjects and what makes this photograph special is that the four women are all from the same family, ranging from Great Grandmother to Great Grandchild. The photograph hence gives us an insight into Cribbs Causeway through contact with it's people rather than merely representing part of the building.

Parr takes thousands of pictures every year yet is usually only happy with about 10 of them!! For him, photography is a calling as well as a profession. Editing is not easy owing to there being so many images to consider.For this exhibition, Parr managed to edit down his images to 600 from which the 60 on display were chosen.

There are recognisable themes to Parr's work such as consumerism, shopping, issues around class etc Parr claims he is trying to be objective in his search for truth. Photography is a "soap opera"! There is subtle stage management as he knows what he is looking for.

Another striking image is of a rather dubious looking yacht salesman, a sign of the times when greed was considered good.

The Commonwealth Society Function where a young black man faces a couple of older Britons has an obvious narrative of racial tension.

There is a garden open day which features what appear to be a couple with a child; there is no proof of this particularly since they do not seem to be communicating with each other although they do both wear Rohan trousers of similar material. Perhaps their apparent dysfunctionality is a result of the presence of the photographer. As with much of Parr's work, there is a constructed narrative at work along with a dry humour and an unflattering  approach.

Mshed are going to purchase 10 works from this exhibition that are about the city and representative of Parr's work; visitors have the chance to vote for the one they like.

Anti-consumerism images include an attractive jar of lemon curd from a church fete with the winner's name written on a label. 

A photograph called The Clifton Club (2008) shows a rack of towels in cubby holes; they look almost like pieces of ivory and are reminiscent of one of Fox Talbot's earliest photographs of china pieces in a chest.

One aspect of these photographs is that one is not aware of the photographer making the pictures, they speak for themselves.

There is a view of Parr's work that it is perhaps cruel and lacking in empathy; it is not a people's art. 

Parr's images contain mini-dramas.

One OCA student reckons he could have done photographs as good as those Parr has made; what makes Parr's work as art!?

Editing can be painful ... how to select from so many images. Some images are meaningless, not striking in any way.

Parr's people are not posed and possibly not representative of Bristol.

POST-MODERNISM - OCA notes

Having received some references prior to viewing the Post-Modern exhibition at the V+A, I decided to note down a few of my thoughts about the material suggested.

The first is a review in The Guardian which starts by referring to post-modernism as "all swagger and stance" which although humorous does sound a trifle dismissive; it also refers to post-modernism as belonging to the past which is interesting to note. As someone new to the subject, I was unaware of that.

The journalist, Hari Kunzru, says that post-modernism was all "Fun, bright, clever, but disposable and disturbing." Again, one is left wondering what he means since post-modernism tends to evade definition.

Kunzru's first mentions architecture. Modernism has resulted in a great deal of joyless architecture with the result that there was a revolt and it happened in the modernist skyline of New York with an atrium in the AT&T building. Nicknamed The Chippendale building, it was seen as a bit of a joke yet was to mark the beginning of a new artistic approach.

These days, driving through a city one is surrounded by a plethora of coloured signs, semiotic seductions. I can't help but think of Orwell's novel "1984"which describes a modernist world without any sign of the art that was to replace it which got underway in the 1970's.

Kunzru goes on to define post-modernism, this time in less racy terms, "This is the essence of postmodernism: the idea that there is no essence, that we're moving through a world of signs and wonders, where everything has been done before and is just lying around as cultural wreckage, waiting to be reused, combined in new and unusual ways. Nothing is direct, nothing is new. Everything is already mediated. The real, whatever that might be, is unavailable."

The V+A have decided to cut out the art and literature side of post-modernism, they are essentially a museum of design, and also present post-modernism as a movement that lasted 20 years although they do go outside this time frame. There are numerous examples, the subject of this exhibition.


Postmodernism is said to have ended with 9/11, the toppling of the Twin Towers in New York which ushered in a new era. Obviously, one can not be too dogmatic about this but a parallel can be drawn between the rise of the internet and the end of postmodernism.


Irony has been distinguished as one of the main characteristics and the end of postmodernism has been referred to as the end of the age of irony. Postmodernity follows postmodernism!

Lee Friedlander exhibition in London

LEE FRIEDLANDER

at the Timothy Taylor Gallery, Carlos Place, London

September 2011

outside the gallery in Carlos Place

There was no charge to see the Lee Friedlander exhibition; after all, the prints were on sale at prices ranging from about 600 to almost 1,000 USD. The gallery itself is situated just south of Grosvenor Square which meant a walk through the West End in late afternoon sunshine. There are not so many people and cars here as in Oxford Street to the north and Piccadily to the south.

The exhibition space was composed of white walls on which were hung a couple of exhibitions by Lee Friedlander at about eye level; these ran around the room. There were very few people which allowed one a good view of the prints which were excellently crafted and, in some cases, such as the auto-portrait Lee Friedlander presents at the very end of the exhibition, one wonders how he managed to get such a wide range of tones in the image and capture such a wide dynamic range since there is darkness of the car’s interior as well as sunlight falling on skin. Presumably, he has good knowledge of the Zone system.

Inside the Timothy Taylor Gallery

Lee Friedlander appears to belong to the school of black and white photography in which form plays an important part. Woven around these forms, often partially framed by the car itself, are wonderfully and highly complex details. Although not a post-modernist, Lee Friedlander seems to anticipate the era that was to follow.

The first series of photographs are about cars from 1964. Lee Friedlander was given a brief by Harpers Bazaar magazine to photograph the new cars just coming on the market. He did this but instead of putting the cars at the centre of his images, he says “I just put the cars out in the world, instead of on a pedestal.” Nowadays, such an approach might be considered almost de rigeur but at that time cars were supreme status symbols, a Very Big Deal, and his approach was deemed “subversive” and too avant-garde. Contextualising the subject albeit artistically was not an acceptable approach.

The second series of Lee Friedlander’s photographs are taken from a car, hence “America by Car”; we move from photographs of car exteriors to photographs made from car interiors of the outside world which perhaps indicates a shift in Lee Friedlander’s way of looking at the world. Here he uses a super-wide camera but crops the images to a square. He makes use of “side and rear view mirrors, windscreens and side mirrors as framing devices”. The compositions are visually intriguing as well as being technically superbly crafted; they give an impression of America that is varied although there are few people and often little sign of life. It is a steely eyed and yet somewhat sterilized view of the United States.

None of the photographs in either section carry captions although these can be found elsewhere; one is left to enjoy the visual treat Lee Friedlander presents without the need for reference.

Pond in Carlos Place

Eyewitness : Hungarian Photography at the Royal Academy of Arts

Eyewitness : Hungarian Photography at the Royal Academy of Arts
(London – June to October 2011)

Exhibition entrance

  

As I entered the Royal Academy, I sensed a certain presence; this historic building in Central London is at the heart of the British art establishment and yet this is the first time I have seen a photographic exhibition here although at the Academy’s annual summer exhibition, photographs are routinely shown. One wondered as to what might be so special or important about the Hungarian contribution to photography to necessitate an exhibition of it’s own and by the end of the exhibition, I still found myself considering this question; certainly, the Hungarian influence on the development of photography is considerable and needs to be noted but I was not entirely convinced by the argument put forward although it is surprising to consider the number of Hungarians active in photography resulting in the exhibition reading rather like a history of photography.

The exhibition offered the chance to hire an audio-guide that really helped to enjoy the event; instead of having to read captions, one was able to listen to informed people describing the significance of the images on show. I was struck by the quality of the prints, done on silver gelatin, revealing a good range of tones. In fact, photography in Hungary was considered something of a fine art with Rudolf Balogh being an accomplished exponent at the beginning of the twentieth century. In spite of concern for detail and aesthetics, photography was regarded as primarily a tool of communication rather than an art tool.

Inside the exhibition

For example, the female photographer K. Sugar, who focuses on the peasant population at a time when most people did not recognize them as a social grouping because there were so many of them, made fine photographs of them revealing them with fascinating detail.

Andre Kertesz, one of the great Hungarian photographers, was self taught (his initial images are somewhat amateurish) yet portrays his subjects in an endearing way; for instance, there are three images of musicians side by side in the exhibition. He was active from after the First World War onwards. At the age of only 16, he made a remarkably composed photograph of a sleeping boy; lines apparent in the design of the photograph cross each other over the boy’s face. Interestingly, it was later in life that Kertesz revisited the photograph and altered the framing to make an even more striking image.

Another photographer who was also to leave Hungary was Munkacsi who was an established professional specializing in sports photography. His image of a racing car might not look very much by today’s standards of auto-focus, high ISO and fast motorwinds but in 1929, it was almost impossible to catch such action; the image is also beautifully composed.

One series of images that catches the eye, is those made during the war by unknown soldiers although their names are recorded. They were encouraged to make images of front line warfare and send them to a newspaper for possible inclusion and even prizes. One haunting image in this style is of a dead body lying in the snow with three Ravens in attendance nearby. These are the beginnings of photojournalism showing the horrors of war (trenches with damaged equipment and dead horses) yet not without humour (a dog on a mountain top has a pair of binoculars placed before his eyes).

Jozsef Pecsi was a Hungarian photographer who specialized in advertising and wrote a book on the subject that was published in 1930. Kati Homa experimented with photo-montage which is evident in her double-exposed image of a female face in the wall beside a staircase. It was perhaps the need to work with basic materials that encouraged such innovation.

Hungary itself fared badly in the various trials and tribulations of the twentieth century. After the first World War, Hungary had lost 72% of it’s territory and 64% of it’s people.

One noticeable feature of Hungarian photography from this era is the habit of looking down, usually at an angle of about 45 degrees, on the world below; there is one such image of a group of nuns walking along the side of a road in which the photographer turns the image into almost an abstract form owing the head gear worn by the nuns while another “looking down” image is of Winchester College by Cornell Capa, the brother of the famous Robert Capa. Cornell Capa is often overlooked as he did much to keep his brother’s memory alive but it was he who set up an institution that was later to become the International Centre for Photography in New York. There was the idea that photography could become a tool for good in the world and help to make it a better place.

Another great Hungarian photographer who went on to be a significant part of the Bauhaus movement, was Laszlo Moholy-Nagy. He experimented with photo-processes such as photograms and his publication “Painting, Photography, Film” emphasises the need for photography to meet the requirements of realistic representation in which representation could itself be an act of creation; painting was considered to be more concerned with colour and composition.

Brassai, another great Hungarian photographer who was eventually honoured by the French, worked a great deal in Paris. Recording the seedy nightlife was part of his work and one image stands out, that of a bejeweled woman alone in the corner of a restaurant, her claw-like hands encrusted with jewels. One may question this person’s sexuality, her femininity is questionable, but the image is not about that rather it is concerned with her overall appearance and presence.

Brassai was to photograph Picasso with whom he developed a life long friendship; there is a wonderful image in the exhibition of Picasso seated by the most extraordinary stove with a curving metal chimney yet in spite of the fine metalwork, it is Picasso who stands out. He managed to discover the surreal in the everyday and unwittingly became known as a surrealist.

When Munkacsi went to America, he expected to become a sports photographer as he had been before in Europe. However, he made an image of a model running rather than standing still while working on an assignment for a fashion magazine and this image not only made him famous but started something of a revolution in photography. He turned what was often a joyless, static, studio-bound approach into something much more lively.

Another famous Hungarian photographer was Robert Capa who might have become better known if his life had not been cut short by a landmine. Some of his best known photographs are those from Dunkirk made during the Second World War. They were largely ruined by an inexperienced lab technician yet the surviving images add to the eeriness of the occasion. After the War, Capa became one of the founders of the Magnum photo-agency.

Kertesz had a great eye for a photograph. Some of his images are very imaginative and personal such as his lonely cloud, a single cloud juxtaposed with a high-rise building. Another is of a “pigeon landing” where the form of the pigeon is seen amidst the back drop of a building. Towards the end of his life, after the death of his wife and having been inactive in photography for awhile, Kertesz was given a Polaroid camera by someone and he began making subtle colour images which seem to be more about his life and his mental state.

Following the Second World War, photography in Hungary became concerned with socialist realism and this lead to repression within the art of photography. The work of Peter Korniss is noticeable during the 1970’s and 1980’s; he managed to fulfill the brief of getting close to his subjects. One witty image from this time is by Lasglo Fejes of a Christ figure in a church beside which stands a camera; the image is entitled “Suffering Christ” a comment perhaps on the suffering that photography has the capacity to record and expose. By the end of the 1980’s, the year 1987 is cited, Hungarian photography ceased to reveal uniquely Hungarian qualities as it came under the influence of globalization and so the exhibition ends at this point. There is a final noticeable image of a fallen communist relic made by a Hungarian from New York.

outside the Royal Academy of Arts, London

One of the most contentious images in the exhibition is of Robert Capa’s fallen soldier about which much has been written. Was it staged? Recent research has shown that it may well not have been owing to records made at that time yet the argument continues. The exhibition however does not dwell on this image merely mention it’s significance for above all, it presents a wide array of excellently executed black and white photographs that cover many significant aspects of nineteenth century Europe as well as the development of the photographic medium of this time. It also reminds us of the part Hungarian photographers played in all this, something that should not be underemphasized or overemphasized for that matter. As it happens, one of the world's leading nature photographers is Bence Matte, a young Hungarian with an individual approach.

Raghu Rai looks at a few of my photographs

At first I showed Raghu Rai a couple of prints that I had done by a printer he had recommended to me. He found them too bright .. he prefers prints with more density. I saw his point and mentioned I was trying to reveal the luminosity of my subject.

He looked through my Taj Mahal photographs and pointed out that close-up photos of for instance someone's sari hanging over their shoes said little about the Taj Mahal itself. Similarly, photographs of the fountains looked much better if the Taj was reflected in the water around them; otherwise, the images tend to become slightly meaningless abstracts.

Later photos do include the Taj Mahal in the background and manage to say more as a result.

He suggests sitting on the platform of the Taj Mahal and photographing people with the Taj as a background! A practical piece of advice!

I was a little hesitant at showing him the deliberately photoshopped Taj Mahal photos. He liked the one of birds but felt the more general views of birds on the lawn at the Taj needed to  be seen first as a kind of introduction to the close ups.

Was glad to see that he was amused by some of my photoshopped Taj Mahal photos of towers morphed into birds ... !!

a chat with Raghu Rai

I met Raghu Rai on the terrace above his office; it was a cool, sunny, late afternoon in early march and we drank tea and munched a biscuit or two.

I had asked Raghu about Martin Parr, the first "real" photographer I had met, at a time when I knew nothing of photography. For Raghu, Parr is photographing the superficial and while his work was exciting for a time, it has now been overdone. Parr needs to move on! He risks repeating himself.

Another German photographer, Raghu is at a loss to recall his name, had done some panoramic photographs which Raghu admired but when this photographer came to India in the mid-1980's, he only stayed about 10 days, shooting with flash into people's faces; from this a book was made. It said little of the real India and was in many ways was insulting to Indian people.

People have a natural dignity and it needs to be respected. When Raghu photographs in India he is one of it's people and he emphasises with his subjects; to impose upon them might create dramatic photography but does not create truly insightful photography.

The West has adopted an arrogant approach.

Martin Parr- visiting the exhibition in Bristol - september 24'th

I met Eileen Rafferty of the OCA at Bristol Station and we took a taxi over to MShed in Bristol's dockland where the exhibition was being held. It is a collection of Martin Parr photographs all made in Bristol or roundabout and the 60 images on show more or less cover the range of Parr's career except for the earlier pre-1987 years before he moved to the area.

I was immediately struck by the quality of the photographs - large, well focused, sharp with a sophisticated sense of colour - Parr may be a post modernist photographer but this does not mean to say he can not deliver a technically proficient print even if it is the subject matter that draws one's interest.

The talk was given by the curator whose views I did not entirely agree with since there were times she seemed to reading into the images rather than from them. Hence, assumptions were made about the relationships between people in the photographs unless she actually had some definite knowledge that this was so. However, her guided tour of a small number of images did help to intensify one's view of what Parr's photography is about. Awkwardness of composition is one important characteristic of Parr's work which also plays on the need for vulnerability in photographs.

The first photo we were shown shows a young black man in conversation with two purse lipped white people in an image entitled Royal Commonwealth Society Evening; Britain in a post-colonial era. A carefully choreographed image and yet Parr can not have been telling his subjects where to stand rather he got himself into the right position. For the curator, this image is "almost unbearable" and yet I can not help feeling that this is an encouraging image since here are black and white as well as different generations facing each other albeit uncomfortably.

Parr's images are often carefully choreographed. His images display a comedy of manners. As a child, his parents took him birdwatching and it is perhaps from this time that he developed his power's of observation.

The second image we are shown is of a show house in Bath; we see the inside of a meticulously if not over designed bedroom. A car on the window sill is mirrored by a car standing outside the house. He is working as a documentary photographer but he is turning his lens inwards rather than outwards at the world as other more established documentary photographers had done. Someone suggests that Parr might have set up the cars to create the punctum of this image; this strikes me as unlikely although Parr does plan his photographs to some extent such as by asking subjects to attend a dinner.

This kind of domestic documentary was also being created by photographers of the time such as Brian Griffin and Meadows.

Another photograph is of a couple at a Garden Open Day. The curator says they are a married couple not communicating very well; this again strikes me as an assumption since they may not be related and her downward directed gaze may be nothing more than nervousness when faced by a photographer.

There is a lot of humour in Parr's photography but not all his images are amusing. He does seem to be a satirist though (and parallels have been drawn with the artist Hogarth.)

Another photograph is made on the beach at Weston-super-Mare where again the curator talks about the relationship of the two people in it as if she knew they were married. However, the significant point about this image is that it is a vertical crop where one might have expected a horizontal one.

Egglestone the U.S. photographer who pioneered the use of serious colour has been an influence on Parr. The photograph of a jar of prizewinning homemade lemon curd entitled Harvest Home - 1992 can be read as an example of this influence. This is the photo that Eileen chooses as her favourite since the gallery are asking people to each choose one image and the most popular image will be retained in an archive.

A photograph of cricketeers looking for a lost ball has a neo-romantic quality evident in the greens of the vegetation. One can see the underpants of one cricketeer, a sense of vulnerability.

Is Parr looking for the strange with his artificial colours and "hysterical" sense of composition?

The Badminton Horse Trails is an image that reveals a confusion of gazes and plays upon our sense of voyeurism. The subjects are mostly attractive young women but one looks accusingly at the viewer.

Another photograph is entitled St.Paul's Carnival - 2009 and shows a group of people both black and white, most of whom although close to each other are not communicating between themselves. It is an example again of Parr's interest in people looking, of voyeurism.

The "decisive moment" where the photographer captures a particular instance is evident in Parr's work although in many ways it could not be further from the work of Cartier-Bresson who coined that particular phrase.

One of the photographers who was against Martin Parr's entry to Magnum other than one of the agency's founders, Cartier-Bresson, was said to be Phillip Jones Griffiths who argued that since Parr was admired by Margaret Thatcher he could not be a worthy photographer. If Thatcher was actually aware of Parr's work then probably she would not like it; this was the curator's view which I find myself questioning since Mrs.T was obviously an intelligent woman who would be capable of understanding the work of someone like Parr rather than reacting to it.

M.Parr was influenced by American photography yet introduced his own way of making images in which he is expert - fill flash with a medium format camera has been part of his technique.

What though is the reason for Parr's success? A question worth answering and one that I can not immediately respond to.

He has built a massive and diverse collection of photographs covering the contemporary world. He is also a compulsive collector, a habit that is evident in some of his work.

Eileen and I discuss what is perhaps my favoutite image, Neighbours from Goldney Avenue, since I see subtle traces of flash of which she is not sure. Her favourite image is of a lemon curd jar that has won a local award.

Another image we both enjoy is entitled Airbus Factory 2008; as in other photographs by Parr, the horizontals are not aligned and while this may be disconcerting to some, it here adds to the visual effect. Another image like this is of the swimmers descending into the Bristol Channel, an image that reveals the sea horizon at an angle. I enjoy this kind of almost amateurish approach to photography in Parr's work; it might be considered post-modern as might other aspects of Parr's work such as his choice of subject matter and blurring of boundaries between art and documentary. I have however, never heard of him being described as a post-modernist photographer!

Another noteworthy image is Cribbs Causeway Shopping Centre 2002 which shows four women staring somewhat awkwardly at the camera. The women in the image are, we are told, four generations of the same family, great grandmother to great grandchild, which adds another dimension to this otherwise rather bleak image of a modern shopping centre on the outskirts of Bristol.

In his approach to street photography, Parr does not want people to smile at the camera but to look natural although many of his subjects do not look natural at all but exhibit discomfort perhaps because of the photographer yet also possibly because they suffer from a contemporary angst which colours their lives. An example of this is The Gymkhana photograph which reveals a small group of young rather well-to-do women, none of whom appear to be responding to each other while one looks somewhat ferociously at the camera.

There are also a couple of films that Parr made for the BBC showing in one corner of the gallery. One entitled "Think of England" is characteristic of Parr's approach to the country of his birth yet the other film, Vivian's Hotel, is a remarkably sensitive documentary of a woman dying told not through interviews with her and her family.

Critics such as Val Williams, curator of Parr's retrospective exhibition at the Barbican in London, describe Parr's work as discomforting. I think this is because he is telling the truth and for most people, that is too much to take on board. Perhaps he is being cruel but he is also being honest. What makes him so acceptable is perhaps the great Hogarthian sense of humour that pervades his work.

After seeing the exhibition, Eileen and I made two visits with lunch in-between, we went to the shop to buy the newspaper format catalogue of the exhibition; not expensive yet since it is a limited edition, it is set to become a collector's item. As we were making our purchases, I enquired about the Martin Parr talk that was due to be held in a couple of weeks time; unfortunately, it proved to be booked out. It was at this point that a voice behind me asked if he would like me to sign the catalogue for him; this was none other than Martin Parr himself. A wonderful coincidence!

I had done a workshop with Martin Parr over 20 years ago before he became so well known. At the time I knew nothing of photography as a medium yet after that workshop I had a much better understanding of the potentiality of photography which although requiring some degree of technical ability is really concerned with seeing the world and responding to that rather than merely recording it.

After this encounter, Eileen and I wandered off to make our way to the station by foot. Not far away, we came across some Morris dancers performing outside a pub. We stopped to make some images relecting that this was just the kind of subject that Martin Parr would like to cover; he would however make images that reflected something more than the apparent inconguity of the situation and give some insight into the psychological forces at work. The Morris Dancers of today are not eccentric yokels but rather contemporary citizens who like to dress up and have fun.





A link to a blog about Martin Parr's exhibition in Paris ...

http://www.noblahblah.org/?tag=martin-parr

POSTMODERN exhibition at the V+A

review on Front Row 22.9.2011

Post-Modernism

Known as "pomo" also "nono"

Some visitors will arrive feeling hostile towards subject

Exhibition a difficult remit

Chairs you can not sit in

Building without doors

2,000 year old Ming vase with Coca Cola on it

post-modernism the death of modernism … !?

not about cynicism

could be seen as expansive and radically optimistic

good fun, not a great deal to say for itself

opposite of killing a butterfly with a hammer

lot left out of exhibition …

covers of music albums

what was the fatal blow to pomo … its’ not dead!!

More diffused now

Paper architecture; "Marginally functional" paper chairs!

Have been invited to an opening at Magnum in London of the following exhibition ... it is interesting to reflect on the way photographs made sometime ago may now be read in a different way! The following from the Magnum website seems worth reading.

The Black Chronicles

Autograph ABP’s and Magnum’s objective is not to establish a prescribed way in which to read the presence of black people in photographic archives. Rather, it is to open critical enquiries into the archive to extract content not just by offering a reading of the aesthetic qualities contained within a photograph, but to examine ideological conditions in which photographs were produced and the purpose they serve as agents of communication.

This exhibition brings together the work of four different photographers, who have brought the black subject into focus through their work as longstanding Magnum members. It is therefore an invitation to unpick the authority the archive generates. This exhibition marks a modest beginning of an open enquiry that operates across many photographic archival stories in which the black subject is classified and fixed.

Wayne Miller was one of the first Western photographers to document the destruction of Hiroshima. He had just returned from World War II working as a Navy photographer when he received two Guggenheim fellowships to fund an in-depth documentation of African-American life on Chicago’s Southside. The project, started in 1946 and spanning three years, captures both the cultural renaissance and the grim economic realities faced by the city’s largest black community in the immediate post-war era. Miller’s evocative black and white images provide a visual history of Chicago at the height of its industrial peak when the stockyards, steel mills and factories were booming. More significantly they capture intimate moments in the daily lives of ordinary people; factory workers, churchgoers, families and courting couples.

One of Magnum’s founding fathers, British photographer George Rodger produced a series of portraits charting the arrival of Afro-Caribbean migrant families at London’s Waterloo station in 1964, photographed as part of a wider project entitled Impressions of Britain. Photographs of smartly dressed families are displayed alongside Rodger’s original, hand marked contact sheet.

Following his powerful portrayal of South Africa under apartheid, Ian Berry spent a significant period during the 60s and 70s photographing England as part of the first Arts Council Photography Bursary. His photographs of multicultural and black communities include several photographs that reveal an increasingly diverse British society, for example, two black male nurses tending to an elderly white gentleman and a dancing interracial couple, seemingly caught off guard by Berry’s lens.

Chris Steele-Perkins’ portfolio includes intimate portraits in 1970s Brixton; families dressed in their church finery, schoolboys toying with the latest stereo technology, and a documentary series on Wolverhampton’s dancehall and disco club scene in 1978.

‘Curators in most instances simply replicate and maintain the power structures inherent in the archive. This process signifies an enquiry into what is clearly unfinished representational business, as we look further into the world’s image banks. The challenge is to avoid the trap of definitive story telling and to present photographs that enable reinterpretive moments, meanings and references to surface from within the archive. References that generate either real orn imagined experiences that enter the diverse fields of perception that viewing these historical photographs may trigger’. Mark Sealy, Director, Autograph ABP

‘Clearly archives are not neutral: they embody the power inherent in accumulation, collection, and hoarding as well as that power inherent in the command of lexicon and rules of language. Within bourgeois culture, the photographic project itself has been identified from the very beginning not only with the dream of a universal language but also with the establishment of global archives and repositories according to models offered by libraries, encyclopedia, zoological and botanical gardens, museums, police files and banks.’ - Allan Sekula

POSTMODERNISM

With a view to the OCA outing to the V+A later next month, I thought I would find out a bit more about this subject. Other than knowing that it followed modernism, I realised I knew nothing about what it actually is.

Started by downloading a sample of A Very Short Introduction to Post Modernism by Christopher Butler onto my Kindle; soon after, sitting in a cafe in Delhi, I was able to buy the whole book since the introductory pages were quite informative and not too hard to read. Postmodernism is found in the writings of French intellectuals such as Derrida and Barthes also Foucault as well as Edward Said. It is not really a philosophy and has no doctrine, postmodernism being deconstructivist in nature; it is allied with Poststructuralism.

Modernism characterised by the Bauhaus School of Art that grew up in Germany between the wars, was concerned with making the new industrial world a place that could be beautifully created rather than merely utilitarian. A "Brave New World" in fact. Postmodernism however does not have such lofty aims and might be considered as being cynical or at least leading to a general nihilistic view of life.

One can not however deny its intelligence as it challenges so many formerly accepted modes of thought. For instance, history comes under the spotlight and is here generally understood to be closer to fiction than fact. History is written by people who never have all the facts and probably approach it from their own viewpoint often conditioned by the political viewpoint of the country they live in. The same can be said of literary criticism where someone may be writing about a novel from a Freudian perspective. Text is seen as something that can be read or understood in many different ways which lead Barthes to announce "The death of the author". One might ask, "had he/she ever been alive?"

There is something very healthy in the way postmodernism challenges our assumptions but does it have anything to offer to compensate for that, to help one see the world anew rather than dismiss it. Largely the postmodernism view has been propounded by intellectuals and yet it has not been fully aware of former theories such as those of Wittgenstein which in many ways anticipated postmodernism. One of Wittgenstein's maxims was "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent."


Postmodernism challenges the nature of language as one might expect. A word is not the same as the thing it represents even in the case of alliteration. There is much written on this subject and it is not really possible to go into it here except to say that not all postmodern arguments are generally accepted; this is also the case with the postmodern view of science where it is considered that some postmodernists are attacking science without understanding the way it proceeds although one can not ignore the fact that scientists do tend to make make general assumptions. For example, there is the view that it is the male sperm that competes for the female egg without considering the role the egg might be playing in this by actually attracting the sperm. 


Some of the main post-modernists are Derrida, Barthes and Foucault also Said. Salman Rushdie's novel Midnights Children is considered to be the ultimate post-modern novel; it lacks the structure of an ordinary novel. Cindy Sherman is considered to be a postmodern photographer; I would like to add Martin Parr to that since his images do not reveal the strictness of much photographic composition as in his horizons sometimes being at an angle.


Postmodernism has questioned authority particularly in the way power tends to have its' own discourse.


Yet sometimes postmodernism does seem to assume ignorance on the behalf of it's audience. There are a lot of things that people don't really need to be told.

Struth

The OCA are seeing the Struth exhibition at Whitechapel Gallery tomorrow; I had planned to be there but am delayed in Delhi, waiting for my book to go to press. In fact, I did feel a sense of awe over the prospect of visiting this exhibition, one in which the photographer is being represented very much as the artist rather than merely a photographer.

One can find out about Struth on the net of course. He actually studied art initially at the Dusseldorf School being taught by the now well known Gerhard Richter, who sometimes uses photography in his work. It was however the Bechers who taught him photography. Their approach is a strictly documentary one in which the detail of scenes is accurately communicated; there is something refreshing I find in this honest approach although it might be considered a bit lacklustre. The Bechers for instance mostly photographed industrial buildings.

My first impressions of the exhibition come from other OCA students as well as Gareth Dent who gives a brief account of the visit, saying ... "There can be few photographers for whom the difference between viewing images on web and seeing them printed in a gallery is so dramatic as Thomas Struth"


One student called Jim makes an interesting few points about his experience ...


• That images such as these can provoke some serious thought, way beyond the initial response of ‘I like or don’t like that’.
• You don’t always need a focal point and something to lead the eye through the picture.
• Artistic pictures can be technically excellent as well!

Martin Parr - exhibition in Bristol - 1

The photographer Martin Parr is having an exhibition in Bristol. He is the first photographer of note that I studied with though at that time he had only just joined Magnum as an associate; now he is a full member and head of Magnum UK.

There is an exhibition talk and I have been asking other OCA students to join me there via the OCA Flickr group ...

"An exhibition of Martin Parr's work is going to be on show in Bristol this autumn.

Parr is a leading UK photographer, head of Magnum UK, whose work attracts a lot of controversy; he is of interest not just to photographers but also students of visual culture.

Actually, anyone with an interest in contemporary Britain especially Bristol might like it ...

Any other OCA students interested in meeting up there?

Amano"


REVIEW
www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2011/jun/12/martin-parr-b...

DETAILS
events.magnumphotos.com/exhibition/bristol-and-west-photo...

BOOKLET download
www.intellectbooks.co.uk/File:download,id=424/2.martin%20... 




Henri Cartier-Bresson, the great French photographer, was said to be "highly suspicious" of Martin Parr's work. The suggestion is that he is laughing at his subjects rather than documenting them.

Parr's photographs make me laugh and yet I wonder why.

Perhaps it is that by holding up very ordinary scenes for display, he is relieving us of the misery they tend to inflict upon us!? Perhaps he weighs on our capacity for guilt which is why some find him disturbing. Personally, I find his images full of insight and humour.


It seems easy to go over the top about Parr and so a little information might help to make any OCA conversation less backchat and more constructive.


Brian aka Noble Savage wrote ...


Where do you see opposition to Martin (Parr) Amano? He's always been controversial, particularly within Magnum, but I haven't heard anyone say he should go off and do something else.
I cringe rather than laugh at his photos, but both are valid emotional responses.
I enjoyed hearing him speak a few months back when he was very sharp with people who tried to praise him in intellectual terms, eg "how does your work achieve such a marvellous three-dimensionality?" - "what do you mean, it's a photo, it's only two dimensional". Inspirational.. 


I replied ...


Well, I have heard opposition to Martin Parr voiced on OCA days.

Was it not you Noble Savage who did a post about Parr's portrait day when he was photographing people for a tidy yet not unreasonable sum? You were quite surprised I think by some of the reactions to that post.

Parr is controversial for sure. I find myself trying to understand my reaction to his work ... 


Brian continued ...


It was me who started that post, and I said I admired his marketing genius. At the end of that thread I also said "All my posts express my respect for Parr in some area. I also said I'd swap places with him anytime."

I was only surprised that people hadn't read my posts fully before metaphorically putting words in my mouth.

In a different post I also expressed admiration. I'm a big fan, perhaps just not unconditionally so.


I continued ...


Have just purchased a copy of Martin Parr by Val Williams (about £20) which contains images as well as a good critique of his work. I would like to develop a more informed view of this controversial leading UK photographer who seems to have a foot in both the documentary and the art world.

OCA tutor, Peter Haveland comments that some students particularly more mature ones tend to overlook contemporary work for more traditional or proven material. I know that when I went to Bradford this year for the OCA view of From Back Home, I had to see the Fay Godwin exhibition; the difference between the two exhibitions was striking.


A interview with Parr and a brief review of the exhibition that opened yesterday ... !

www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/art/art-features/8723045/The-... 




I read Val Williams' book about Martin Parr (published by Phaidon). She starts by saying that Parr's photos "can make us feel very uncomfortable" which seems to be a fairly typical approach and one that I do not share. Apparently, Parr is good friends with Bruce Gilden which does not surprise me much yet reminds me of that other side to Parr, the side that is as tough and as solid as the metal and glass in his camera. I know I do not want to intrude into people's lives the way Gilden does on the streets of NYC and yet I don't see Parr as such a merciless snooper.


One of Parr's books that he sees as one of the most important is Common Sense; the cover shows a rusty model of the globe which is being used as a money box, a reflection of his "growing preoccupation with globalism and the corporate culture". Val Williams also describes this book as "violent", a violence that is increased by showing objects of possible veneration such as a cup of tea in a willow-patterned tea cup with more grotesque object of consumerism.


By 2001, Parr was quoted as saying that his best photography was behind him rather than in front of him. It is not easy to draw conclusions about him because his work is so diverse and complex in meaning. One might call him a post-modern photographer perhaps since he pays little attention to the so-called rules of photography in which composition is much more formal and colours not so gaudy.

Post-modernism (exhibition at the V+A)

Here is a link to the photographic display ...
http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/s/signs-of-a-struggle-photography-in-the-wake-of-postmodernism/

OCA informal meeting of students in the South West

M5 Somerset : photo made without my looking through the viewfinder

Thanks to Teresa Milk from Torquay who arranged a meeting of students at the Royal West Academy in Bristol. This is how at 10.30 a.m before the gallery began to fill up, 7 of us (3 men, 4 women) found themselves around a table sipping away at their bevvies and chatting.

The RWA in Bristol with Charity, a statue installation by Damien Hirst, standing outside

I was not sure I would be able to come until more or less the last minute. I had also had reservations about meeting in an art gallery. I am not one of those photographers who wants their work to be taken seriously as art rather I would like it to be accepted as photography; "photography for photography's sake!"

no sign for photography magazines !

Before I arrived at the gallery, I dropped into Smiths, the newsagents, and was struck to see there was no actual mention of photography in their extensive shelves of magazines; the current term is "imaging". This further stirred my concerns about photography as a medium.

a piece of art work in the academy that did interest me!

What would the day be like without a tutor to give some input? It was slightly haphazard as we lost each other on more than one occasion but the RWA is not a big place and there was a natural gravitation towards Papdilo, the cafe there!

Tutors in fact were one topic of conversation. Are they really worth the course fee? Do they earn their keep? It seems tutors do vary quite a bit in the way they respond to their students. There was a feeling that tutors do not go in for personal communication with their students over the practicalities of doing a course and personal issues the students might be facing over caring for a senile parent for instance. Tutors can also be rather brief when commenting on the work of students. Personally, I have got on fine with the tutors I have had although one did send me an introductory letter for a course different to the one I was doing!! I find it has taken me time to get into the mode of studying again.

A part of the course is keeping either a log book or an online blog. At first, I found the software difficult to handle and still find Blogger a bit tricky. Wordpress can be a good alternative; this software is available for download and so one does not have to be online all the time.

Tutors had another criticism thrown at them concerning their criticism of contemporary artists! Martin Parr is a leading UK photographer yet gets criticism as does the doyenne of landscape photographer, Charlie Waite. One can find oneself accused of being too commercially orientated rather than producing one's own work and finding style rather than borrowing it. This strikes me as a bit of a conundrum. I remember once being criticised for producing commercial images that were being used to advertise a holiday; I did not tell the photographer that I had actually made the photographs before the idea came up for the holidays and there were also in black and white, not a usually a choice for for holidays. The photographer happened to be well known and widely respected so I took the criticism on board in a kind of respective way but found myself questioning it too. I guess if you have a Marxist outlook then anything that looks like it might sell is considered inappropriate.

One topic that drew me to the day was UVC (Understanding Visual Communication) a course that I have considered doing. This sounds really interesting but I wonder about studying Mark and Freud; what about Darwin whose thinking is becoming more relevant as science continues to verify his theories? Both Mark and Freud have been discredited by those who have followed in their footsteps. UVC seems intellectual though and not really in tune with the more intuitive approach of photography which happened thanks to scientific theory not aesthetic theorising. Liz Wells writes, "Theory informs practice." yet without practice there would be no theory. Still, UVC is clearly a fascinating line of study and as a photographer I feel the need to understand theory to some extent.

Reading around one's topic can be rewarding even if one does go off at tangents thanks to the mass of available information on the internet.

The Landscape module of photography might seem attractive yet it is also demanding. One needs to photograph the same location at different times of the year and even different times of the day which can be very time consuming.

OCA student informal meet at the RWA: students from left to right -
Theresa and Dorothy then Ushma, Peter,  Sally? and David.

As the conversation continued, I got up and walked around the room to look at the large format inkjet prints on the walls of buildings at night from different places around the world; the cost of one print was £320 and there were a couple of signs to inform one of this but no sign containing the name of the photographer although a man at the entrance to the museum selling tickets to the exhibitions did mention it to me.

sign for The Ballroom Spy exhibition

There was one exhibition I did want to see since it was about dance, a subject I have covered quite extensively in Asia, and also because it also contained paintings of dance; it was interesting to see photographs and paintings hung in the same gallery as part of the same exhibition since the dialogue between these tow art forms has always interested me, largely as a way to define my own photographic practice.

The exhibition was called "The Ballroom Spy" and was about ballroom dancing and the world this particular form of dance encompasses. A lady on duty at the exhibition told me that the two were good friends and admired each others work; in fact, the artist Jack Vettriano uses the photographer's images to paint from. The photographer Jeanette Jones is a trained dancer herself and uses this knowledge to help her make images that relate to particular points in the dance moves.

HABITAT - a chain store that is closing !

the rear view of Charity by Damien Hirst - coins spilling from the collection box
could be seen around the base of the statue and on the pavement outside 

I started my blog at a cafe further up Whiteladies Road

Shaw exhibition at Laycock 1 ; Guardian review by Maev Kennedy

George Bernard Shaw, who frequently posed for his own pictures, often experimented with lighting and early colour printing. Photograph: LSE/National Trust

George Bernard Shaw will be exposed, stripped bare as never before, when the contents of cupboards and drawers, albums and boxes crammed into his last home go on display for the first time – the thousands of photographs that were the Nobel laureate's other great passion in life.

An exhibition of original prints will open at the National Trust's Fox Talbot Museum in Lacock, Wiltshire, on Thursday, while the guardian of Shaw's photographic archive, the London School of Economics, has mounted anonline exhibition as well. Both have astonishing images, including several of Shaw naked, apart from his whiskers.

From 10,000 images, mostly printed by Shaw, Roger Watson, curator of the Lacock exhibition, has chosen a startling self-portrait of the playwright lying on a sofa, lit by a single overhead lamp, naked apart from a strategically placed book. Shaw's long, skinny body could be a medieval tomb carving, apart from the hints in the shadows of a 20th-century background.

"It really is a very striking and unusual image," Watson said. "A more conventional photographer would have cropped the lamp out of the print, but to me that makes the picture. "

Karyn Stuckey, the curator at the LSE who has been cataloguing the vast collection and created the online exhibition, was taken aback when she discovered the image of a naked Shaw bending over to set his camera, reflected in a mirror. "I was ploughing through hundreds of slightly dull prints, and expecting something entirely different to come up next, and I suddenly went 'Whoa, what's that?'"

Shaw, who took up photography in 1898, frequently photographed himself nude, and also posed on a beach as Rodin's Thinker for the actor Harley Granville Barker, but admitted "I merely looked constipated".

Both exhibitions are full of biographical hints for the curious. There are relatively few photographs of men, but many of beautiful and sensuously photographed – if fully clothed – women friends. They include the actor Lillah McCarthy and the even more ravishing Beatrice Webb, co-founder of the LSE with the Shaws and her husband and fellow Fabian, Sidney Webb. His most famous leading lady, Mrs Patrick Campbell, was captured lying in bed. He wrote to her: "I want the lighter of my seven lamps of beauty, honour, laughter, music, love, life and immortality", but the relationship smouldered almost entirely on paper.

There are many photographs of his wife, Charlotte. Long before his writing made him rich, Shaw's money problems were solved by marrying the Irish heiress in 1898. One frank portrait shows her looking trustingly straight to camera: on the back he captioned it "nee Charlotte Payne-Townshend Mrs Bernard Shaw" – then crossed that out and wrote "The green-eyed millionairess".

By the time Shaw died at Ayot St Lawrence in Hertfordshire in 1950, aged 94 – after falling out of an apple tree he was trying to prune – he had accumulated 10,000 prints and more than 10,000 negatives.

The house and contents were left to the National Trust. In 1979 the photographs, still uncatalogued and many on mouldering and potentially dangerous old film, were transferred to the archives of the London School of Economics for safe storage. In a marathon joint LSE and National Trust project all have been conserved, digitised – almost crashing the LSE website – and catalogued over the past two years.

Shaw was typically writing thundering reviews of photographic exhibitions long before he started photograpy. Stuckey and Watson agree that the best were taken with Shaw's earliest cameras, when he was experimenting with lighting and early colour printing, and creating strikingly composed shots that demanded careful planning and minutes of immobility from his subjects, rather than the snapshots he produced when he bought a Leica and began using 35mm film in the 1930s.

A handful of his photographs were reproduced or exhibited in his lifetime, but thousands had never been seen by anyone since Shaw last looked at them.

"He's not perhaps a first-rank photographer, but he's very high in the second rank, at least in his early days," Watson said. "If somebody brought these in and said they were their grandfather's and asked if we would exhibit them, the truthful answer would probably be no. I'd say they'd be lovely to have, lovely to go through the albums, but I'm not sure how many outsiders would come to see them. But as the work of Shaw, they're a different story entirely. I think people will be fascinated."

George Bernard Shaw: Man & Cameraman, will be showing at the Fox Talbot museum, Lacock Abbey, Wiltshire, from 7 July to 11 December 2011