Category: Positions and Practices

This is the joint statement about the project produced by the group.

The group took initial inspiration from images by Susan Derges. Our approach was collaborative from the start, attempting to bring together each member’s interests and locations with themes and working practices drawn from Derges’s work.  We have attempted to address a number of questions that have engaged Derges, in particular the relationship between self and nature and between the imagined and the ‘real’, and the effect of the observer on the observed. These themes have informed both our process and the final images. We have also adopted aspects of Derges’s method, for instance in the use of experiments (in our case in making images and in exploring water droplets and effects of evaporation). We have chosen to present our final images in the circle format of some of Derges’s recent work. As there is little sense of scale in our composites, we felt that this format conveyed a sense of the ambiguity of both looking in to an inner world and out to an imagined (in our case composite) landscape.

There are, though, a number of ways in which we have departed from Derges’s method, for instance in the use of digital cameras (her work is largely camera-less) and in the creation of composites using photoshop (rather than use of experimental image making methods to produce a single image). Our approach has enabled us to produce a small body of original images in a short period of time through a genuinely collaborative process. We have acknowledged the inspiration of Susan Derges’s images and approach, and our desire, through collaborative image-making, to gain a greater understanding of this work, in the title of the project: ‘Looking for Derges’.

Our method

Our starting point was to take inspiration from images produced by Susan Derges, with particular attention to the relationship between self and nature, and to see if we could take photographs that could be layered to produce images that in some sense resonated with those of Derges. We initially thought we might take images from our respective locations and construct from these, another ‘imaginary’ place. As the group formed, and as we explored Derges’s work (see sources list below) and considered what might be possible in the time available, other points of personal and collective interest came into play. New themes emerged (for instance, loneliness and making images from nature rather than of nature) and approaches to image making inspired by Derges’s work were explored (for instance, experimenting with the evaporation of water droplets and seeing, through macro photography, change take place as water stains formed and pollen fell on the surface). The group members shared images from their experiments and photographic explorations of their local areas and discussed (through the discussion group and face to face video conference) how these could be combined using layering to form composites. Those adept with Photoshop produced composites to consider. We settled on a circle format for the images, as this both acknowledges an aspect of Derges’s recent practice, and is particularly suited to the emerging focus of the project. The images produced are more complex than initially envisaged, which is testament to the value of collaborative work. Our use of digital technology and editing in Photoshop, whilst allowing us to produce some aesthetically pleasing images, may, however, have drawn us away from the camera-less simplicity of many of Derges’s images (for instance, in her Moon and Ash series). There is clearly great scope for further experimentation with this type of work. The final composite images produced are here.

As well as being of great personal and collective value, the process, and the outcomes, are true, in a very modest way, to Derges’s emphasis on process and her aspiration to produce images that are more than ‘illustrating an idea … I’m not telling someone how it is, I’m triggering them to open up to their own experience to either remember or grasp and explore a set of imaginative or reflective processes … It is very much about an exchange or communication’ (Derges quoted in Read & Simmons, 2016, p.124).

 Sources

Galleries:

Derges, S. (n.d.). Purdy Hicks Gallery website. http://www.purdyhicks.com/display.php?aID=116#14. Accessed 28 June 2018.

Derges, S. (n.d.). Artist’s website. http://susanderges.co.uk/. Accessed 28 June 2018.

Videos:

Derges, S. (2010). Shadow Catchers: Camera-less Photography. Video, V&A, 2010. https://vimeo.com/13149808. Accessed 28 June 2018.

Derges, S. (2012). ICP Photographers Lecture Series. Video, International Center of Photography, 14 March 2012. https://www.icp.org/browse/archive/media/icp-photographers-lecture-series-susan-derges. Accessed 28 June 2018.

Interviews:

Derges, S. (2016). ‘Case study’ in M. Read & S. Simmons (2016), Photographers and Research: The role of research in contemporary photographic practice. London: Routledge. 114-125.

Derges, S. (2015). ‘Water, Life and Photography’. Interview with Colin Pantall, 28 September 2015. http://colinpantall.blogspot.com/2015/09/susan-derges-water-life-and-photography.html. Accessed 28 June 2018.

Richard and Daniel Susskind (2015) explore the impact of new technology, and in particular artificial intelligence and machine learning, on a range of professional groups, the institutions in which they work and the organisations that regulate their practice. They argue that we are entering a period of fundamental change in what we expect of the professions and how they operate, and call on practitioners to ‘think more widely and strategically, and to be tolerant of the possibility of change in their own disciplines’ (p.4). The areas of practice that they address include health, education, law, journalism, management consulting, tax and audit, and architecture. Whilst photography, as a profession, is not explicitly discussed, photography as a practice is clearly implicated in the changes that are taking place in the professions. Those who make a living as photographers will need to consider both how new technologies and the resulting changes in their own practice, and in the wider professional contexts within which they operate, will impact on what it means to be a photographer. The discussion topic this week has focused very much on journalism as a professional context, though the guest lectures have also raised important issues in relation to new technology, and in particular the critical role of visual artists.

Hayley Morris-Cafiero, through the circulation of images via social media, and subsequently a critical engagement with others through social media, highlights the critical role that photography can play in revealing and confronting social injustice and discrimination. Edmund Clark explores contexts in which the actions and expertise of multiple professional groups intersect and interact, and through his complex multi-modal works (in which the visual, and more specifically, photographic, is a major component) raises questions and illuminates practices, as a visual artist, that construct and contest social order, and the impact on institutions and individuals (as both subjects and objects of institutional activity). In both cases digital technology enhances and facilitates the work (more emphatically, these technologies are a pre-condition for the work).

So whilst innovation in photographic production and networked distribution of images transforms the wider field of photography, the potential for critical art is enhanced, both by the technology and the increased opportunity for inter-disciplinary collaboration. A place for visual arts is held open, not solely through appreciation of human craft (albeit in new areas of craft activity in a digital and post-digital age), and the enhanced ‘generic’ and employment related skills developed through a visual arts education (such as new forms of communication and community building, modes of working and collaborating, ways of engaging with data, creative problem posing and solving) but in the production of work that provokes, challenges and potentially transforms our understandings.

I wouldn’t, at this point in time, consider myself to be a photographer, but rather as on a journey into photography, or perhaps, more broadly, visual arts using photography. That sets a sense of direction, rather than marking out an identity. This is not just a point in time issue. More generally, a degree of fluidity in identity seems more fitting to the 21st Century, identities which, empirically, are always multiple and in flux, as much through changes in context as through a changing personal sense of self and community. Viewed in this way, personal trajectory becomes of greater interest, and cogency, than assertion or achievement of an identity. It’s a journey with a particular destination in mind, but recognising that both the place itself and the traveller are in a state of change and development. Arrival, if that ever happens, will inevitably be other than envisioned at the outset. And the effect for the traveller is to supplement, not replace, who they are and how they are seen by others. Calvino (1974, 1981) explores this better than I ever could.

In addressing the discussion question, I am learning to be (and be seen as) a photographer, in a time in which the idea of photography as profession is fragmented and radically challenged. In this context, the practices and communities associated with, and enveloping, photography and where we sit in relation to these, become more important than the idea of a profession. And finding this place involves critical engagement with all technologies, old and new, associated with photographic image making in the development of a distinctive voice, and the potential to supplement and enhance the practices of others, in other disciplines as well as in photography and the visual arts.

Calvino, I. (1974). Invisible Cities. Translated by W. Weaver. London: Vintage.

Calvino, I. (1981). If on a winter’s night a traveller. Translated by W. Weaver. London: Vintage.

Susskind, R. & Susskind, D. (2015). The Future of the Professions: How technology will transform the work of human experts. Oxford: Oxford University Press.