This prompted me to look at other photographs from the same session, and then to try to produce other pieces that could become part of a series. Taking a long walk through the park on a bright autumn day led to the discovery that this light is particular to a section of woods above the pathway of alongside the river, facing west (which has been cleared up since the initial photographs). Walking through the undergrowth, looking for objects and light made making photographs feel like a forensic activity.
With the change in direction of plans for my final project, and shorter, duller days, and inspired by the London Nights exhibition at the Museum of London, these are likely to be the last daytime photographs from RVP.
I was interested in this workshop because I have combined images with sound in some of my work and want to explore this further in my subsequent projects. The presenters worked through the process of putting together a soundtrack for a documentary film. The discussion of the process and effect of creating a soundscape, over which to lay dialogue, made me think carefully about the kinds of recording I have made (mostly binaural recordings to give a sense of the sonic landscape of particular places). Whist the recordings are relatively high quality, they fall short of conveying a full appreciation of the complexity of the soundscape. That is going to require a fair degree of enhancement and processing. It left me wondering why, given the ways in which we manipulate visual images, I had expected to present the recordings as they were. There is as much as a need for the sound recording to direct and hold attention and to present potential for meaning-making as there is for the images presented. This workshop has given me insight into how to achieve this, and guidance in the use of one particular tool (ProTools). I need to think more clearly about how the sound relates to the images and what I need to do with the sound to enhance this relationship. How sound relates to images is very different in, for instance, a gallery setting (where it can be ambient, localised, or personalised through headphones) and in an online audio-visual presentation. The combination of sound with print in a portable format (like a book) is a particular challenge. The point, gleaned from this workshop, is that how I design and ‘sculpt’ the soundscape will change according to the mode of presentation and form of relationship between sound and image desired, even if the sound is being used incidentally in setting context.
The Ethics of Seeing, Open City Documentary Festival, London, 6th September 2018
This presentation and discussion (led by director Steven Eastwood and producer Elhum Shakerifar) focused on the making of a film about dying (Island), involving studies of four people in palliative care in a hospice on the Isle of Wight (review). It highlighted the challenge of gaining access, developing relationships and building trust in addressing a very difficult (taboo) subject. It helped me to understand the ways in which a photographer can work to overcome initial suspicions, and engage participants (not subjects) in the production of images. In settings such as this, it is easy to objectify people. Here the challenge is to give voice to participants and provide insight into their lives, whilst maintaining authorship and artistic responsibility. There is an interesting comparison to be made between this film (its production and final form) and photographic projects such as Michal Iwanowski’s work with elderly people with dementia in a care home (I Can’t Seem to Find My Moon Landing Photos) and Kaylynn Deveney’s (2013) use of diary form in the exploration of a couple living in a care home (and her subsequent project, The Day-to-Day Life of Albert Hastings, with an elderly neighbour, in which he, the person photographed, writes the text). The presentation highlighted a number of constraints of film as a medium, especially when dealing with difficult subjects. There are clearly restrictions on what can be broadcast (and interesting differences, for instance in relation to dying and death, between what can be depicted in fiction and non-fiction film form). Film’s temporal linearity and spacial constraint of the viewer place restrictions on engagement with the work. Photographic work in, for instance, a gallery setting (which might also include film, and other media) allows the viewer to dwell on particular work, move freely between components and re-sequence and relate elements, and construct alternative narratives or set of relations. Interestingly, the makers of Island have also created an installation piece for galleries alongside the production of the film, and discussed the extent to which this more effectively achieve what they had set out to do in the film, encouraging people to take time to contemplate and relate to images and accounts presented.
Deveney, K. (2013). The photographic diary as a reflexive methodology for documentary practice. In R. Miller, J. Carson, & T. Wilkie (Eds.), The Refexive Photographer (pp. 203–212). Edinburgh: museumsetc. Retrieved from https://www.museumsetc.com/collections/photography/products/
I chose to contact Michael Stewart, anthropologist and documentary film maker. Michael combines film-making with research and teaching, and has recently worked collaboratively with young people in Newham on a project about the development of a university campus on the Olympic Park. My proposed final major project focuses on the area around the Olympic Park, and involves working collaboratively with the local community. I hoped to learn from Michael about both the area and the process of working collaboratively with the community. My request coincided with the OpenCity Documentary Film Festival (which Michael founded and directs), making meeting up difficult.
As an alternative, I decided to take part in the Festival (The Art of Non-Fiction) and to arrange to meet with other photographers before the new module starts. The following CRJ posts will present what I have learnt from the Festival sessions in which I have participated.
I have also arranged to meet other photographers and with researchers, local community activists and others in the areas I am planning to explore, and will add further posts about those meetings. And I plan to catch up with Michael at some point soon (we did pass on the stairs going to and from events).
In order to try to clear the backlog, I’ve put three Paris exhibitions together, with just short reflections. None are strictly photographic, but each one has relevance to at least one aspect of the development of my own work.
07.08.18 Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain, Paris
An extensive survey, covering both floors of the gallery, of the work of a radical Japanese architect. In a discussion in the previous module, it was stated that how a building will look when photographed was influencing architects in their designs. The absence of photographs in this exhibition is notable.
Instead, models, drawings and text dominate, reinforcing Ishigami’s concern with the relationship between the natural and the human, and in particular, fluidity between the interior and the exterior (for instance, in the digging out of the basement and removal of interior and exterior walls in the renovation of a museum, the construction of a chapel in a valley from two high undulating walls open to the sky, the creation of interior gardens and the utilisation of open space under canopies and walkways in a number of buildings). Ishigami also prioritises engagement of the community, to both understand how space is used and involve people in consideration of radical spacial solutions which, in some cases, can be adapted to how they are used in practice.
TeamLab, Beyond Borders
08.08.18 La Villette, Paris
I was impressed by a small piece by TeamLab (presented on an LCD panel) at the Art Gallery of South Australia in Adelaide last year. This, massively scaled up immersive experience, draws on the same technology and philosophy, but has very different aspirations. It’s an experience, not a gallery piece. In the end, though, more entertainment than art. The cycle of of nature narrative (played over the period of one hour) was unconvincing, and seemed to be more a way of organising the experience than carrying any greater meaning. An engaging experience in a playground like environment, but ultimately spectacle rather than art. Reinforced the need to leave space for something new to be created by the viewer/participant.
Data driven, with integration of the audio and visual. Very much an immersive experience. Worked beautifully with the neighbouring ‘Coding the World‘ exhibition, which explored the link between art and technology through the influence of programming and coding (from systems art through to Ikeda and others, in all disciplines).
S1 Artspace, Sheffield, 20th July – 15th September 2018
This is the first exhibition since S1 Artspace moved to its new gallery on Sheffield’s iconic Park Hill Estate, which is the subject of the exhibition.
Commissioned in 1956, the estate was seen as a radical response to the post-war housing and health crisis. Mayne’s photographs were taken in the early sixties and his grainy monochrome 35mm images, in the style of his work in other working class areas of Britain, capture the day to day life of the community in the early years of the estate. In contrast, Stephenson’s posed informal colour portraits of residents, were made in 1988 in the last days of the, now demolished, neighbouring Hyde Park estate, when both the estates were in considerable disrepair and decline. Today the Park Hill estate is going through substantial redevelopment, with the first phase of redesigned apartments being sold, and one of the other two remaining blocks empty.
The exhibition includes projection of a 60s documentary on Park Hill, and display of documents charting the development and decline of the estate.
The photographs represent two very different periods and approaches to photography. Mayne gives insight into an era in which working class communities were relocated to new housing developments, and explores how communities reform in new, radically different context of the housing development. Stephenson’s work focuses more on the individuals and has a clear sense of collaboration with the people in the photographs.
The estate is still there as a context, and a clear sense of life on the estate is conveyed by the portraits. For me, bringing these two bodies of work together seems, as an exhibition, arbitrary (though it makes sense as the initial exhibition in this space, and reprises an earlier joint exhibition). Stephenson’s work is certainly closer to the work that I aspire to create. As an exhibition experience, I’m aiming for something more engaging and challenging.
As a footnote, the Park Hill estate acted as a template for the Singapore Housing Development Board estates, with somewhat different outcomes.
Millennium Gallery, Sheffield, 9th June – 7th October 2018
Great to see all this work together in one place. The work has clear intent, has a distinctive visual aesthetic (subverting established forms, particularly those of the press and advertising), directly engages the viewer and arises from a particular way of working. The short video that accompanies the exhibition gives insight into Kennard’s motivation and methods.
Two quotes stand out for me. The first from the video and the second from the introduction to Read and Simmons (2016).
‘There is this sort of mystique still around what art is, and that you have to go to art school, which is rubbish because art is a fantastic way to explore … your own feelings. The gallery is perhaps the only space in our society where people will spend time looking at something that’s not just … fleeting. So it’s really important to put social and political arguments into that context.’
Art Against War: Peter Kennard
‘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, M. & Simmons, S. (2016). Photographers and Research: The role of research in contemporary photographic practice. London: Routledge. p.vii
It’s the close articulation of (political and personal) expression with engagement of the viewer (and consideration of the context, from poster and pamphlet to the gallery) that is important for me here, and prompts me to think carefully about how my own work, and other forms of image making and circulation, address these issues. This is very different in form and content from my own work, but lots to learn about the importance of focus and ways of engaging viewers, in the gallery and through other modes.
I’ve been meaning to post this for a while, but, having just seen the contents of Michal Iwanowski’s backpack, and reading Photographers’ Sketchbooks, looks like the time is right.
Doing the work on the Roding Valley Park has involved frequent walks through the area at different times of day, and collection of different kinds of material (like sound recording and written notes) as well as making images. That has entailed having a light and compact set of tools ready at hand, which in turn has shaped the kind of work that I have made. A kind of iterative process of mutual shaping between way of working, form of the work and the place. Upshot of this is, reinforced by looking at other photographer’s working practices in Photographers’ Sketchbooks, thinking more carefully about working practices in relation to different projects, and what remains invariant (a component of practice that contributes to making an artist’s work distinct) and what varies with circumstance. And the question, at what level is the character of the distinctiveness of a body of work (and across an artist’s bodies of work), from the conceptual to the operational, formed? These are clearly important practical, and developmental, issues, but there is also, I think, a need to deconstruct the notion of personal practice, as utilised in arts discourse, as well as reflect on the development of our own practice.
An extensive survey, covering both floors of the gallery, of the work of a radical Japanese architect. In a discussion in the previous module, it was stated that how a building will look when photographed was influencing architects in their designs. The absence of photographs in this exhibition is notable.
