Category: Critical Research Journal

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Personal learning in plain view

I struggled initially with the idea of producing a personal reflective journal that is both a public document and a component in the assessment for an award bearing course. This struggle was both intellectual (I had difficulty in getting my head around it) and emotional (I was not sure about how I felt about it). Whilst I haven’t totally resolved these struggles, I have, I think, reached a practical and personal resolution (how I am going to deal with it). And, of course, that resolution might only be momentary, and subject to revision as I progress through. Most importantly, though, I have, I think, reached a point where I can turn initial trepidation into a positive commitment. Learning in plain view, through this kind of public private writing, is a good thing.

In reaching a resolution I wanted to avoid the obvious performative solution. Treat successful completion of the degree as the primary function, and manicure the postings to project the image of a successful student. This is a tried and tested approach to any form of reflective journal (I am relatively sure that Erica McWilliam has written something about this in relation to the journals produced by beginning teachers, which I need to check). It is high risk, though, as, to be successful, it requires the writer to have a clear sense of the principles of assessment of the programme (what are the assessors looking for). So, to a degree, you have to be an adept to be able to produce a text that passes as that of a successful student. And there are complexities as the tacit criteria might require failure (and recovery) as part of the process. That is that, the writer may have to walk the tightrope of manufacturing a sufficient vulnerability on the path to ultimate success. There may also be a requirement for a degree of perceived authenticity, or revelation of a sufficient sense of self to authenticate the postings (bearing a watermark). A thought about blockchain technology has just come to mind, where who you are is encoded and preserved for future authentication (though that is an excessively static conception of self). I’m not going to pursue that here.

This is an excessively cynical approach to my mind, and there is the strong odour of bad faith. However, it does not have to be a total strategy, and in making any statement in this kind of environment there will always be a degree of self-checking (what are the consequences of publishing this?). So performativity as a total strategy stinks, but a degree of performativity (a manicured projection of self) is inevitable. The act of writing (and the reflection that that involves) means that we can never just ‘get it all out there’. Writing requires selection and expression and slows things down, though tweeting clearly allows people to just ‘blurt it out’ (to millions of others in some cases). This is not the place to wrestle with Derrida (there’s a post coming on that in due course).

To bring this post to a hasty conclusion, I think my approach is to treat this as a genuinely educational opportunity. To formulate and convey emerging thoughts and practices in a new (for me) domain of endeavour produces something to think about that moves practice forward in, potentially, dialogue and engagement with fellow travellers. Of course, to learn is the primary objective for me in doing this course, and the personal stakes are relatively low in that there are few professional consequences to success or failure (and relatively limited personal consequences, mostly related to self-esteem). To a degree, posting to the blog enables me to formalise my thinking, to put down markers and to remember (and there will be a post on memory ‘prosthetics’; aids to ageing cognitive functioning). It is a place to build something in public view. What’s the advantage over doing this in private? That, maybe, is to do with the pressure that the public exposure brings to take some care in expressing thoughts (but not to the extent necessary for a published paper or book). And it provides a framework for organisation of thoughts and experiences around a particular project (growing as a photographer, and understanding the field). And memory is important, too (‘but you said …’). How do I feel about the seeping out of what is written here to other domains of practice? That’s uncertain. This is for a pedagogic purpose, and it is about exploration not exposition. It’s a supplement to, not replacement of, identity and practice in other areas of life.

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Narrative and ‘The Tyranny of Story’

The Tyranny of Story, Parts 1-3, BBC Radio 4, August 2018.

I listened to this three part documentary presented by John Harris on BBC Radio 4 as preparation for a workshop run by co-producers Nina Garthwaite and Alan Hall. The workshop was cancelled, but the programmes raised a number of issues of relevance to the development of my project. In an earlier post, I raised questions about the extent to which photographers can be considered to be storytellers. Following up the programmes, I think I now have a clearer position on this, which can help inform my work. A distinction is drawn between whether (i) our lives fundamentally have a narrative structure, or whether, (ii) whilst episodic in form, our lives should, for our own well-being, be rendered as a narrative, or whether (iii) for mutual comprehensibility and engagement our lives can be presented in narrative form, or whether (iv) presenting lives as narratives is, at best, a distraction or, at worst, a damaging mis-representation, that creates unattainable expectations and encourages self-deception. Galen Strawson’s work, which sees life as episodic, and narrative as a misleading construction (see, as a brief introduction, Strawson, 2015), is interesting in respect of the last of these positions.

It is clear that there is a popular demand for stories/narratives, and that, in order to convey a message, narrative form is a powerful resource. Personally, I like telling and listening to stories. They provide a powerful means of communication, interaction and dialogue. Taken into the political and commercial domain, of course, this desire for and attraction to compelling stories can be used to distract and mislead. Reflecting on the decline in MMR vaccination, for instance, the case is made by neuroscientist Tali Sharot (a colleague from UCL) that stories (whatever their foundation) of catastrophic damage to a loved one hold greater emotional appeal than the narrative of the collective (and individual) benefit of eradicating forms of childhood illness founded on scientific research. The puzzle here is understanding the motivation for construction, propagation and subsequent narrative dissemination of these ‘alternative facts’. One argument might be that this is a popular reaction to professional discourse which dis-empowers ‘ordinary people’.

Whilst some photographers might feel that they are revealing narratives, others may see themselves as constructing narratives. I sit more on the construction side of this, but showing respect to, and in dialogue, and possibly collaboration, with the people being photographed. In this, I lean towards a desire to disrupt narrative form to allow different accounts to be explored and to enable new dialogues. Narrative can be powerful in drawing and holding attention, but is not an end in itself, and ultimately if the production of a greater understanding of others, more open dialogues, new forms of knowledge and new ways of knowing are the desired outcome, subversion of established, and expected, narratives is inevitable.

I’ve talked myself out of being a storyteller here, recognising that story can be a valuable resource, hook or medium, but understanding that this has to be undermined in order to create the space for new dialogues. Maybe I’m a teller of provisional and unstable stories (or a provisional and unstable storyteller). In order not to continuously tell each other stories we already know (and that reinforce our prejudices), and to make space for other ways of being and knowing, we need a wider range of resources, strategies and tactics. A way, maybe, of inquisitively making and unmaking, synthesising and deconstructing narratives to produce something new.

By chance, a few days later I stumbled into another Nina Garthwaite project, the Soundhouse at the Barbican. Here, she and collaborators are attempting to bring creative podcasts into public space, in a gallery-like listening environment. I’ll explore that elsewhere, as part of consideration of ways of presenting work, and the potential of the gallery as a space for public reflection and engagement.

References

Strawson, G. (2015), ‘I am not a story’. Accessed on 29.09.18 at https://aeon.co/essays/let-s-ditch-the-dangerous-idea-that-life-is-a-story

 

 

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Week 2: Whose image is it, anyway?

In the legal case between appropriation artist Richard Prince and photographer Phillipe Cariou, both artists appear to have gained in some way from the exposure achieved. This kind of controversy is at the heart of Prince’s practice, and he courts (no pun intended) this kind of attention. Cariou’s work is almost certainly better known than it was previously. Legal actions like this can only come into play when there is some kind of loss (actual or potential) to be compensated. In this case Cariou’s work is not diminished in any sense by Prince’s appropriation. We might be irritated that Prince has ‘made something’ from someone else’s work (both artistically and financially), but the potential for this is not inherent in Cariou’s work. Cariou couldn’t, for instance, have made Prince’s work himself – the ‘value’ (commercially and artistically) of Prince’s work lies in the appropriation and manipulation of the work of others, and in the fact that it is Prince that is doing it (Duchamp’s point with the urinal). These kinds of appropriations and manipulations are everywhere, and we all do it to some extent in our work (I didn’t design or build the C19th colonial building I have just made an image of, and the role in colonial oppression that I might want to convey is, I am sure, no part of the architect’s plan). Aesthetically, I don’t personally like Prince’s work, nor do I find it conceptually significant in any lasting sense. But there are artists, such as Peter Kennard , whose work I do admire (for its directness and clarity of purpose), who work predominantly with other peoples’ images (the bomber used in his piece ‘Conversion’ appears elsewhere in this discussion thread – I don’t think he’ll be suing).

‘Researching reality for me involves ripping photographs out of their context to bring the perpetrators of war and poverty slap bang into the same space as their victims. I want to act as an early warning system, be the canary down the mine. Imagining through images the end result of the direction in which we are heading and picturing people struggling to find another way’ (Peter Kennard in Read and Simmons, 2016: vii).

We are always building on and with something, and I personally wouldn’t want this to be overly restricted by the law (particularly having worked in oppressive jurisdictions where freedom of expression is limited by law).

If it is moral outrage that we feel in seeing Prince’s (and other) appropriations, I don’t think we should turn to the law to do the required ethical work (we’d be constantly in and out of court and consistently not getting the outcome we desire). Whilst recognising that we can’t control how our images (and other creations) are used, we can, through the use, for instance, of the creative commons, signal how we would like our images to be used, and what restrictions or caveats we wish to place (for instance, on whether an image can be freely used for non-commercial purposes, whether we want to be asked and/or acknowledged, whether it can be edited and used in part etc). This doesn’t police and enforce the use of images, but it helps users know when and how they are able to legitimately and without recourse use an image (we do want our images to be seen, right?) and draw a clear(er) ethical line in the sand, so that when those who use and appropriate images cross the line, they do so knowingly. And, of course, if you feel there is any actual or potential direct or indirect loss (financial or reputational, for instance), the courts are ready and waiting, with well trained legal eagles to fight your case (for a price, of course).

Read, M., & Simmons, S. (2016), Photographers and Research: The role of research in contemporary photographic practice, London: Routledge.

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Week 1: Reflection

Meeting with a young working photo-journalist as part of the preparation for the module made me feel like a dilettante. It was certainly difficult for him to understand why I might want to develop my photographic practice, independently of any commercial imperative (though he clearly understood the value of political commitment in the production and distribution of impactful work). It was very productive, though, to get some insight into how photographers making very different kinds of images approach their work. It was a pity not to be able to discuss this with others at the webinar (which didn’t run at the time stated, so I had to miss it, and now five hours behind UK, looks like I’ll have to miss the next couple, too).

I’m not a professional photographer, and don’t intend to become one, so I knew that this module would be challenging. I think, though, that I have figured out how to get the most from it, and how, I hope, I can make a constructive contribution. I found the introductory activities a useful way to become acquainted with the work, and lives, of others on the programme, and it was good to catch up again with the people who did Positions and Practices last session. Working in a larger group of people in different stages of the programme is certainly going to be a different experience.

I was able to relate the Max Ferguson’s insight into magazine publication to the dissemination of my own work (and thinking carefully about the three forms/domains of image making that my final project will involve, and how these will be presented and circulated, and find an audience). The advice on the use of social media (to communicate the distinctiveness of your work) and personal website (to concentrate on personal projects) was really helpful.

In terms of developing my own work, this has focused mostly on making contacts and relationships, and arranging settings for image making later in the year. Creating a portfolio for this module is going to be challenging as the image making will be end loaded. At this point, making images will mostly be about refining technique and developing a distinctive style. I am also having to come to terms with travelling and being away from the places in London where I will be doing photographic work, and the impact this has on advancing my project and producing work for assessment in this module.

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Week 1: Seven days in seven images

I don’t usually make many incidental photographs, and my photography doesn’t in any direct sense document my life. These seven images show me at a time of transition, and as always, in transit. From the activity I suppose I have (re)learnt the value (and challenge) of making images of the the people around me (that matter) and events (that shape us), which I probably haven’t done for decades. Doing it in monochrome helps make the bridge.

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Saturday morning post delivers my letter from the university president and provost thanking me for 31(!) years service and conferring my honorary title (no gold watch, but the title is for life), followed by a day packing and moving books into storage. Sunday down to Canterbury to look after my 92 year old mum (impossible, for me, to photograph) for a couple of days. Home on Monday night and my son Michael, who has recently moved back to London, calls round to collect a guitar (and eat). Tuesday at the university to meet with publisher, collect Russian visa for forthcoming trip and call in at library. This is where I sit in the photography section. Early Wednesday at Stratford International, back to see mum. Thursday squash match, point of stability. Early hours of Friday, Diane checking details online for our trip back to Guyana (this afternoon) for a family event.

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Week 1: Looking back

My project took a major change in direction towards the end of the previous module. I started to take photographs around Hackney Wick, focusing on the relationship between so called re-generation of the area and the lives and prospects of local people.

Other photographic work in the area has represented the lives of local people, but hasn’t actively engaged in attempts to ensure that residents have influence on and get the full benefit from the changes taking place. My project involves three inter-related forms of image-making: (i) images made by local residents which act as the basis of understanding peoples lives and aspirations and the impact of the changes taking place; (ii) collaborative image making with community and activist groups that can be used in advocacy by local people; (iii) my own artistic response to the changes taking place in east London, as a photographer, educator and resident (of over 40 years).

Most of the time between the modules has been spent making contact with resident and activist groups developing relationships and opportunities for image making (and other forms of exploration and expression, for instance sound recording and short film-making). These include joining the London Prosperity Board (active around the Olympic Park area) and developing photographic work with members (for instance, citizen scientists working from the community owned Bromley-by-Bow Medical Centre), working with JustSpace (a network of resident and activist groups concerned with urban planning and social justice) and members (for instance the Carpenters Road Estate Residents Group) and supporting student photographers documenting the work of volunteers with community groups and charities. As well as advancing my own work, I’ll be running workshops (on a masters in urban planning, for instance, as well as for community groups) and working collaboratively with others. I’ve also been asked to do similar work on projects in Australia, and to write about visual and arts based methods in social research.

As well as managing a complex project, the major photographic challenge for me is to become confident in making images of people. I did get to spend some time with other, much more experienced, photographers, doing very different work from my own (photo-journalist Hugh Kinsella-Cunningham and social documentary photographer David Wright) and I spent a week at the OpenCity Documentary Film Festival (directed by film-maker and anthropologist, Michael Stewart). I’ve written about this in my CRJ.

In terms of images, I have made one final set of images at the Roding Valley Park. Visited a lot of exhibitions, particularly those that are multi-modal and experiential. Become concerned about the privatisation of land in east London (a present day Fay Godwin in the making). And said farewell to my principal workplace for the past 30 years and packed up my office on the 7th floor (yesterday).

I’m excited, but more than a little daunted, about working on the project over the coming 18 months, and have tried to tie in the development of this work with the focus of each of the modules.

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Exploring contexts

In addition to meeting with photographers and film-makers over the past two weeks, I’ve been making links with people and organisations to identify contexts for the development of my work, and ultimately to determine the form and focus of my final project. This is just a quick summary in advance of more detailed posts as each strand develops.

Through chairing a discussion at the UCL Engineering Exchange symposium on Community Research Partnerships, I made contact with Just Space, a network of community activist groups concerned with planning and social justice. I met with the organiser and we took a trip around the Barking Riverside development and the Gascoigne Estate in Barking and Dagenham. I hope to build on this to contribute to the urban planning and development masters module running this term, and to work in the field on image making with students carrying out projects with community groups on planning issues (this work might also involve interviewing and sound recording, and possible exhibition of work in the community). I also agreed to help with the training of student photographers for UCL Students’ Union volunteering section, and to go out with them on their initial visits to document the work on student volunteers in the community. At the London Prosperity Board meeting I made contact with the research and community engagement organiser at the Bromley-by-Bow Medical Centre with a view to working with their citizen scientists on collection of data and photography, and maybe to document the work they are doing in the community. I also made contact with the coordinator of community groups in Newham and with the Business in the Community initiative. A serendipitous meeting with a friend and former colleague, now Professor of Future Heritage at UCL, generated another set of possibilities, particularly around the integration of arts-based research approaches with science and social science approaches, and the development of more speculative approaches to research (a post on this later, too). And it generated a challenge: to photograph that which doesn’t yet (but might come to) exist. An interesting side project.

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Apprentice 2.0

I was fortunate to be able to arrange to meet and talk to two photographers whose work is very different from my own, giving me the opportunity to learn from their experience and think through how I might extend and enhance my practice. In particular, my work to date has mostly focused on places and structures, in which human activity is evident, but without any people in the photographs. My proposed final major project is going to require portraits and other images featuring people, so I want to learn as much as I can from other photographers. The conversations with Hugh and David have also been helpful in understanding the ‘business’ (or, rather, ‘businesses’) of photography, and to give me insight in both the production, distribution and use of photographic images.

Hugh Kinsella Cunningham is a photo-journalist, whose recent work is predominantly in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). His photographs of female boxers in the DRC were recently featured in the Guardian.

Hugh Kinsella Cunningham, 2017, Safi Nadege Lukambo, 21, Fight Like a Girl

His current work explores political resistance and the catholic church in DRC. These are colour photographs taken in natural light (early morning, never in the middle of the day, avoiding the complications of lighting rigs). As a photo-journalist, there is an emphasis on presentation of a strong narrative through his images. These stories have to be sold to editors, and the viewer has to be drawn into the images. They also have to be true to Hugh’s strong commitment to the people he is photographing and concern for the conditions in which they live. Whilst the settings he is exploring are familiar to me (having worked on education projects in east and southern Africa), the commercial context of photo-journalism is new to me. His advice on producing and presenting images in this highly competitive world was very valuable and challenging. Images have to be sufficiently strong, with a compelling story, to command the attention of viewers, most of whom don’t care particularly about the issues being addressed. Taking time to understand the context and build trust and familiarity is important. Turning up, being around, being seen and engaging. Taking control of the situation is vital, asking people to try different poses, looking at the camera, looking away from the camera, at different angles, in different settings – working the scene. Take 100 shots per session, don’t be embarrassed to shoot, or to organise the setting. In presenting the work he emphasised the need for quality and consistency in look and feel (do a course in photo retouching, if using film use a lab for processing, scanning and printing). Don’t undersell the work (present in a competitive gallery setting). He gave a number of people to follow up, including work by Nicola Muirhead on Trellick Tower in Notting Hill.

Nicola Muirhead, 2017, In Brutal Presence, Trellick Tower, Sue 33 years resident, 18th Floor.

Hugh’s advice: “Just be respectful and confident and it will fall into place”. I’m certainly up for giving it a go, and think I now have some interesting contexts to explore (see following post about this). To learn to make engaging portraits like these is going to be a real stretch. We’ll stay in contact, and Hugh has offered to look at an edit when I have something worthwhile to show, which will be really valuable. I’m not ever going to be a photo-journalist, but engaging with the hard edge to this work will certainly sharpen and help define my own work.

David Wright is a social documentary photographer who trained at the London College of Printing in the 1970s, but whose career took him away from the visual arts and into education. He continued to make photographs and has recently revisited some of his earlier work (for instance, studies of coal mining in South Wales, and photographs taken around Brick Lane in London). His photographs of life in rural west coast Ireland span 30 years.

He is now working almost full-time on his photography, and has initiated a wide-ranging project on ‘Modern Tribes of Britain‘. He works entirely on film and in monochrome, processing and printing all his own work. David describes his approach as anthropological, seeking to get to know and become part of the communities he is photographing. He often meets people and attends events without taking photographs, and builds trust amongst the community members. There is a loose inferred narrative structure in the sequencing of prints, requiring work on the part of the viewer.

David and I intend to meet each month to share and discuss our work. Whilst our images are very different in style, there is much in common in terms of method (for instance, in engaging participants and aspiring to more collaborative image making) and in the contexts that we are exploring. I have a lot to learn from his work, particularly in relation to the development of a distinctive visual style and the craft of image and print making. We have also been able to share contacts and give each other leads in the development of our respective projects, and might develop some collaborative work. One possible area is to work with student photographers who are documenting the work of student volunteers with community groups across London. His work on urban agriculturalists (one of his modern tribes) also cross-over with my work on the impact of urban regeneration on communities.

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Hara Kazuo Masterclass

Hara Kazuo Masterclass, Open City Documentary Festival, 6th September 2018

Hara describes his work as ‘action documentary’, bringing together the aspirations of the documentary to illuminate with the shock potential of the action film. He also attempts to throw light on wider Japanese society by focusing on people and activities on the margins. In ‘The Emperor’s Invisible Army Marches On’ (1987) the shock comes from the eruption of violence, and the quandary of the film-maker in having to respond to the unexpected, as well as the emergence of the details of the behaviour of Japanese troops in South East Asia at the end of the Second World War.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Im3L_3W2SPc

The films raise, in different ways, ethical questions about the relationship between with film-maker and the subjects of the films, which generalise to other forms of artistic practice. For me as a photographer, it is important to work through ethical issues that might emerge from my work, in much the same way that I would in the design and conduct of social research. In Hara’s work, the risk is integral to the project. There is an ethical tension at the heart of each film from the outset (for instance, his relationship with his ex-wife, the subject of the film Extreme Private Eros: Love Song 1974), but how this might be manifest in events, and how participants in the film, including the film-maker, might react, is uncertain. The conversation with Hara provided insight into the process of making the films, and the pragmatic manner in which the direction taken by the films emerges. The films are consequently episodic in form, rather than having a strong central narrative.

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Ethno-Fictions

The Ethno-Fictions of Laura Huertas Millán + Q&A, Open City Documentary Festival, London, 7th September 2018.

Following the showing of three of her short films, Colombian artist and film-maker Laura Huertas Millán took part in an interview and answered questions from the audience. There is much to be said about this work, but here I’ll concentrate on aspects that led me to reflect on the direction of my own work. The films combine fiction and documentary, exploring settings, relations and lived experience. The fictional aspects include scripted and improvised dialogue (for instance, conversation between the film-maker and her mother). To a degree, this bears a resemblance to Jeff Wall’s re-staging of witnessed events.

Jeff Wall, 1982, Mimic

For my own work, this suggests the possibility of co-creation of images with participants, and maybe the re-making of photographs taken by, or events re-counted by, residents, using image making as a means of exploring their experiences and aspirations, and communicating these to different audiences.

Close focus on the body, and the stitching together of fragments is used to give a sense of a particular life-world. The creation of a narrative is secondary (and very much in the hands of the viewer). The films avoid the exoticism and colonial tropes that can inflect explorations with an ethnographic intent. Serendipity was also discussed with respect to the opening of one of the films, shot on 16mm film, in which the film had accidentally been run twice through the camera, superimposing two contrasting settings. This brought to mind Harry Callaghan’s double exposure photographs, and the potential of the accidental in image making as a spur to creativity. This would seem to hold some potential in collaborative image making, particularly where some participants have specialist knowledge and experience, which can be subverted through collective consideration of accidental artifacts.