Category: Coursework

This image of ‘a person who does not exist’ is created by two adversarial AI systems – one creates faces and the other detects flaws (ie. it looks for faces it detects to  be artificial). Working together they refine the collective ability of the system to produce artificial faces. You can see the system in operation here.

Info on how it works is here  and there is an article about the use of these faces in social media here.

The images themselves are produced without direct human intervention. The systems are, however, produced by humans, and the images are created from other images, some of which have been created by humans (and others by capture systems such as CCTV).

Increasingly deep learning AI systems are being trained using images, such as the deep convolutional neural network platform DeepMind, which learns through ‘observation’ of massive collections of images. Humans are, of course, involved in this, not just in the creation of the systems, but also in originating (some) or the images and being the subjects of (some) of the images. As MacKensie and Munster (2019) point out, not only do images we post on platforms such as Facebook feed into these collections, but the image capture chips on the devices we use (such as smart phones) prepare the images we make for this process (of image data extraction).

‘The A11 Bionic released in 2017, iPhone 8’s chip, is optimized for image and video signal processing with a 64-bit and 6-core processor. But it is also optimized to work for machine learning using Apple’s CoreML platform. This ‘platform’ (in a localized sense) enhances image and facial recognition among its raft of AI capabilities, which also include object detection and natural language processing.’ (p.13)

These devices are perhaps more accurately viewed not as cameras, but as image sensors that produce data in a chain of operations in the formation of AI neural networks. It’s not that humans are not involved in the making of images that is changing, but rather how we are involved and what is ultimately created in the process of image/data production when we ‘take a picture’ with these kinds of digital devices.

It was interesting to do this task (seeking ‘non-human’ sources of images) alongside listening to Simon Norfolk’s reflections on the redundancy and poverty of contemporary photographic practice (and education) in his interview with Ben Smith (A Small Voice podcast, 12th June 2019). Both reinforce the need to adopt a relational view of photography, which acknowledges differences between the fields in which photographic images are made, circulated, deployed and consumed, and manner in which what we consider photography to be (and to be able to do) is transformed as we move between contexts and domains of practice. I’ll pick up the issues raised in the Norfolk interview, and relate these to my own project and practice, in a subsequent post.

References

MacKenzie, A. & Munster, A. 2019. Platform Seeing: Image Ensembles and Their Invisualities. Theory, Culture & Society. Advance online publication [https://doi.org/10.1177/0263276419847508]

Norfolk, S. 2019. Interviewed by Ben Smith. A Small Voice [podcast], 107, 12th June 2019.

As others have indicated in the Week 3 discussion, our orientation to collaboration relates not only to our photographic practice, but also to our life-experiences, our place in the contexts we are exploring and our personal dispositions. My project, and wider practice, is inherently collaborative, and I view the participants in the work as co-investigators (with all the challenging issues that this brings). Over the course of this module, I have refined the approach I am taking and produced, what I hope is, an achievable design for the FMP. I discussed this with Cemre in the webinar, and she made a helpful suggestion about the use of The Newspaper Club for zine style publication (the broadsheet format is similar to the form used by Simon Roberts in the Election Project).

I have posted numerous examples of collaborative work over the past year in the discussion groups and in my CRJ. In addition to work related to my FMP, collaborative work has included: workshops with postgraduate urban planning students and working in the field with them to explore communities undergoing change; working alongside undergraduate students exploring object based learning with art galleries and museums; collaborative portraiture with community groups in redevelopment areas leading to a pop-up exhibition; the creation of an image bank with a development activist group; engagement with community archives in creation of composite images; mentoring projects using photovoice type approaches with young adult offenders.

Coming from an education and social science background, I share many of the influences cited by Wendy Ewald (Ewald and Gottesman, 2014; Ewald and Luvera, 2013) and in the work on the collaborative turn in photography by Daniel Palmer (2013). In exploring photovoice style approaches (Wang and Burris, 1997; Fitzgibbon and Stengel, 2018) I have come to share the reservations of researchers such as Sinha & Back (2014), who are critical of the tendency of this work to position participants as subjects rather than co-investigators (and recognise the subsequent ethical issues that arise from this). Whilst the distinction made by Chalfen (2011) between projects and studies is useful, I have commented elsewhere on the need to look again at the ethical dimensions of project style work in the light of changing social, cultural and technological circumstances. I have been concerned by the ethical looseness of a number of photographic projects we have discussed (for instance, by Susan Meiselas, in which informal contracts are implied that cannot be honoured, see Garnett and Meiselas, 2007) and about the readiness of some photographers to declare themselves as the (unproblematic) mediators of other peoples ‘stories’ (with the associated dangers of mis-recognition, homogenisation and symbolic violence that this brings; working with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander researchers and artists recently has further heightened my awareness of this). It’s not that motives and commitments are being questioned here, nor that we should cease doing this kind of work, but that there are difficult ethical , epistemological and ontological issues to be addressed, which may, indeed, enrich the work that we do, for instance, in understanding and engaging with the knowledges of indigenous people (see, for instance, Pascoe, 2014), and locally and globally contextualising cultural, economic and political struggles.

Why am I tending towards collaborative photographic work whilst many others are more introspective in their approach? In part this is to do with my familiarity with and commitment to social and educational change, and my confidence in working in these settings. It is also to do with my general disposition to and interest in social interaction – I like being with, interacting with and learning about other people and their lifeworlds; in my social research this has led me to interview-based and participant observational forms of research, rather than the survey and the archive. It also has to do with my relationship with photography, which started in front of the camera as a child model, and as James has observed, these commercial settings are by necessity team efforts, with a complex division of labour and requiring participants to work together (though this is, of course, not always achieved in practice). Photography for me has always been a collaborative, collective and public activity.

In terms of the focus of this part of the course, it leads me not to deeper consideration of participatory and collaborative approaches (that is ongoing anyway in the development of my project), but rather to explore the potential of more introspective (and reflexive) forms of practice. It has also deepened my commitment to exploring, in a rigorous way, what is distinctive about photographic, and more broadly visual arts and arts more generally, approaches in advancing our understanding, and how this can enrich truly interdisciplinary exploration of the complex and pressing challenges that face us locally and globally.

References

Chalfen, R. 2011. ‘Differentiating Practices of Participatory Visual Media Production’, in Margolis, E. and Pauwels, L. (eds) The SAGE handbook of visual research methods. Los Angeles, Calif: SAGE, pp. 186–200.

Ewald, W. and Gottesman, E. 2014. We’re Talking about Life and Culture, Aperture, Issue 214, Spring 2014, 86–93.

Ewald, W. and Luvera, A. 2013. Tools for Sharing: Wendy Ewald in Conversation with Anthony Luvera, Photovoice, 20, 48–59.

Fitzgibbon, W. and Stengel, C. M. 2018. ‘Women’s voices made visible: Photovoice in visual criminology’, Punishment and Society, 20(4), pp. 411–431.

Garnett, J. and Meiselas, S. 2007. On the Rights of Molotov Man: Appropriation and the art of context. Harper’s Magazine, February 2007: 53-58.

Palmer, D. 2013. A collaborative turn in contemporary photography? Photographies, 6(1), 117–125.

Pascoe, B. 2014. Dark Emu. Broome, Western Australia: Magabala Books.

Sinha, S. and Back, L. 2014 ‘Making methods sociable: Dialogue, ethics and authorship in qualitative research’, Qualitative Research, 14(4), pp. 473–487.

Wang, C. and Burris, M. A. (1997) ‘Photovoice: Concept, Methodology, and Use for Participatory Needs Assessment’, Health Education & Behavior. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. 24(3), 369–387.

Not having reliable internet access while traveling in Northern Queensland has been frustrating this week. I have had to withdraw from the webinar and have not been able to participate in the guest presentations, so feedback on the development of my project has been limited. I have, though, been able to follow up the exchange of messages with Ricard Martinez, and think about how I could incorporate something of his approach into my project (for instance, the use of community walks around an area). I have also been able to reflect on the ethical dimensions of the ‘Joywar’ exchanges, which has helped me to think through the ethical issues that might be raised by my study, and consider how I might address these.

The exchange with Ricard made me aware of the (re)mixing dimensions of my own work, and the manner in which I can bring together archival images (which I have started to do with the erase series) and other visual forms (for instance, maps and data visualizations). I can also incorporate images produced by others (for instance, developer images, as I have through photographs of hoardings in Barking) into my work. This is certainly a form of mixing, and the variations on this by adjusting filters (and the combination of these images in the animations produced) could constitute various re-mixes. There is also a degree of remixing (as a form of transformation) going on as I move from analogue to digital (and back again). In thinking about the display, whilst Ricard did not have experience of projection, he reminded me of Shimon Attie’s projection work in Berlin.

The effect of projecting archival images on buildings is similar in some ways to the mixing of archival with contemporary images in my erase series.

I could explore the possibility of projection work at the decommissioned powerstation at Barking Riverside, or another of the locations offered by filmlbbd.

Reading around art methodology has helped me to resolve differences between my own (social science inflected) view of methodology, and the manner in which this term is used in relation to photographic practice. Both entail the achievement of a consistency of approach which is based on a set of explicit principles and informed by theory and practice within the field of work. They also require careful consideration of the appropriateness of methods used, and the opportunities and limitations placed on practice by the context and focus of the project or study. Just how explicitly this is stated in the outcomes of a project clearly varies between artistic practice and social research (artists’ statements give a sense of orientation and position in the field, whereas accounts of the outcomes of social research would require more detailed explication of the relationship between theory, methodology, design, methods and analysis). In the development of my FMP, I now have to move from a general methodological position, which has emerged alongside the development of my photographic practice over the previous modules, to reassess my project proposal and produce a project design which is achievable in the time available.

Like Len and some others in the group, photography is not a primary economic activity for me, so I am happy to see my work used, even for the commercial benefit of others, with a strong preference for some form of attribution. I would, though, be very unhappy to see my work used to deceive or misinform (this was discussed in detail in Positions and Practice, so no need to reprise that here).

In contributing to the ‘Joywar’ debate I want to pick up on a statement made by Meiselas to justify her initial (legally aggressive) action against Garnett. Meiselas (Garnett and Meiselas, 2007) states that:

‘No one can “control” art, of course, but it is important to me – in fact, it is central to my work – that I do what I can to respect the individuality of the people I photograph, all of whom exist in specific times and places’ (p.56).

She subsequently reinforces this by asserting that:

‘We owe this debt of specificity [of context] not just to one another but to our subjects, with whom we have an implicit contract’ (p.58).

I want to question the extent to which the terms of this implicit contract can ever be met, and therefore, whether it is sustainable for Meiselas, or any other journalist/artist, to make this integral to their practice. If we cannot control, as Meiselas recognises, what others do with the images we make, it would appear that we are very limited in the extent to which we can honour this contract, or, indeed, protect ‘subjects’ (perhaps, more respectfully, participants) from any potential harm that might come to them in the circulation of their image, either in its initial, repurposed or remixed form. This is increasingly problematic with the deployment of AI enhanced facial recognition systems. In gaining the confidence of participants in photographic work, it is increasingly important, then, to make them aware of the potential consequences of participation, and the measures that are being taken by the photographer to reduce the risk of harm. In the case of ‘Molotov Man’, it would appear that minimal effort has been made to manage this risk, and unlikely that this would have been raised with Pablo Arauz at the time (or subsequently). Whilst Meiselas might aspire to show respect for the participant in this way, the implicit contract seems unrealizable and disingenuous. Maybe better to (explicitly) acknowledge, and make clear to participants, that being photographed (particularly by a well-known and high profile photographer) brings risks, and amongst these is the risk that someone might appropriate and/or recontextualize the image and use it for a totally different purpose. This, of course, would make certain forms of photographic practice untenable (a debate for another day). Graham Smith, whose photographs of his own working class community in Middlesborough were the result of a close relationship and trust between him and members of the community, stopped taking photographs after some of his images were used by The Daily Telegraph to denigrate and disparage working class communities (he became an art picture framer – an archive of his photographs, however, with his own hand written notes on the back, is held by the Martin Parr Foundation in Bristol, and well worth looking at).

The photograph objectifies its subject (whatever the expressed intention of the photographer), and the resulting (decontextualized, portable and transmissible) image is commodified, circulated, traded and reconfigured. Institutions, communities and individuals take various ethical positions and make ethically informed decisions in relation to this process, which shapes what is and is not possible and thus shapes their practice. In Meiselas’s case, there is a disjunction between her positioning and her practice (in relation to what is possible: her commitment to the communities is clear and admirable).

In academic social research, expectations regarding ethical practice are distinctly different (a function of the institutionalization of research), not least in being more explicitly expressed and enforced, and somewhat more demanding than expressions of ‘respect’ and ‘implicit contracts’. To gain formal ethical approval, a research proposal would have to elucidate the ways in which risk of harm to participants is minimized. In most cases, this would involve gaining the informed consent of participants and the anonymization of participants in the recording of data and reporting of outcomes. This is clearly problematic in photographic work. Fitzgibbon and Stengel (2018), for instance, in their paper on a study of female drug users and sex workers, which uses a Photovoice style method involving discussion of photographs made by participants, uses pseudonyms and features only photographs where individuals cannot be recognized.

This almost automatic demand for anonymity of participants is questioned, for instance Sinha and Back (2014) raise the issue of truly collaborative research where, ethically, participants would be seen as co-creators of knowledge, and, arguably, should be recognized as co-authors in publication, and therefore identified (but in full knowledge of the potential risks, and gains, of identification). However, the approval of participants to be recognized and identified is not enough. They may not be aware of the potential for harm, and therefore any consents has to be informed (which entails making them fully aware of the consequences, which includes the ‘remixing’ and re-contextualization of their image).

My question here is whether, given the increasing use of images as data, AI enhanced capability to recognize people and link data, and the ubiquity of remixing of images, we should now question, or at least modify, Chalfen’s (2011) distinction between projects and studies. Whilst the rigour and explicitness in collection and analysis of data (whatever form that takes) demanded by the academic study may not hold for the project, the potential risks to the participants are similar, and need to be managed, ethically and practically, which, in turn, will transform what we can and cannot do in the creation and circulation of images.

References

Chalfen, R. 2011. ‘Differentiating Practices of Participatory Visual Media Production’, in Margolis, E. and Pauwels, L. (eds) The SAGE handbook of visual research methods. Los Angeles, Calif: SAGE, pp. 186–200.

Fitzgibbon, W. and Stengel, C. M. 2018. ‘Women’s voices made visible: Photovoice in visual criminology’, Punishment and Society, 20(4), pp. 411–431.

Garnett, J. and Meiselas, S. 2007. On the Rights of Molotov Man: Appropriation and the art of context. Harper’s Magazine, February 2007: 53-58.

Sinha, S. and Back, L. 2014 ‘Making methods sociable: Dialogue, ethics and authorship in qualitative research’, Qualitative Research, 14(4), pp. 473–487.

I am taking methodology to mean, in this context, the general approach taken to my work. This is influenced by how I, conceptually, think about the contexts I am exploring (theory) and how I conceive of and position my practice (field). In turn, methodology influences the design of particular projects (in the light of the contexts and purposes of the project) and the selection of particular methods. In this sense, methodology sits between (and thus shapes and is shaped by) theory and practice. In my current work, I am exploring the relationship between time, place and communities as they experience the process of urban regeneration. This involves the exploration of different notions of time/space and the entanglement of human activity and identity with the natural and the built environment. Whilst other work exploring similar contexts has focused on either the lived experiences of residents or the nature of the changes taking place in the built environment, I am focusing on the dynamic relationship between these. I am not attempting to ‘tell the stories’ of others (either the residents or the developers), but rather to counterpose constructed histories with codified presents and imagined futures. I attempt to create an array of alternative narratives, and offer the viewer the opportunity to explore relationships between these.

In order to do this, my approach is to collect and organise archival images, planning documents, maps and data to be juxtaposed with my own images of and from within communities and the places they inhabit. These juxtapositions produce fictions that are intended to engage viewers and provoke questions about our humanistic aspirations (including aspirations for equity, prosperity and social justice) and our place in the natural world (as it has been and how it might be), for instance, through the ways that we inscribe and are inscribed by the objects and environment around us. Methodologically, my work is constructive (it is making not finding meaning), relational (it emphasises the contextual and interactional character of meaning) and heuristic (it is a tool for making meaning, not a form of representation). 

This week I presented a selection of images from my WIP portfolio in a webinar and also exchanged ideas with Ricard Martinez, who presented his work as a guest speaker. The feedback confirmed to me that there is potential in the channel mixing work, but that the aim of this work, in exploring the interactions between organic material, everyday activity and emerging futures, needs to be clear. There are clear resonances between my own work and Ricard’s, though our approaches, and resulting images, are very different. I am taken by the way in which he leads tours through the areas he is exploring and works with participants in making their own images. I would like to try something similar around Barking Riverside, Thamesview, Creekmouth and other areas undergoing change, focussing on the built environment, the social and cultural environment and the natural environment (and the interaction between these). The Bow Centre or Gascogne Estate might also be good for trying out this approach. Responses at the webinar were also positive, but the desire to ‘tell stories’ was raised, and I need to resist being drawn into production of work which retreads what has already been done in other contexts, and away from the relational nature of the work, which is fundamental to me (and for the theory that informs my practice). Cemre noted that the images conveyed to her a sense of decay. This may be related to the selection of the images. I do not want to present an apocalyptic vision, so I do need to think clearly about how these particular images sit alongside other images and artefacts. I should also revisit the use of colour. The complexity of the images invokes a sense of chaos, and that they are in black and white perhaps reinforces the sense of decay and foreboding. The return to the natural (post-human) that is being explored might involve the decay (or at least, the transformation) of the built environment, but this is not, in any absolute sense, a more general process of decay (though some engagement with the concept of entropy might be necessary here).

The next steps in advancing the project are (i) continue to explore the production of composites, to get a clearer idea of what kinds of images produce what effects; (ii) continue to explore modes of presentation, including projection, light boxes and printing on a range of different materials; (iii) collect documents and archival material for the contexts being explored, including maps, planning documents, developer literature and brochures and photographs (upcoming research workshop with Lewis Bush should help with this); (iv) experiment with the juxtaposition of images, artefacts, sound and text, with the WIP portfolio for this module and the output of the FMP in mind; (v) identify a context for, and plan, possible ‘tour’ type activities (for instance, with the Bow Centre citizen science group).

I had the pleasure of spending an afternoon looking at nine of Ed Ruscha’s books with Deborah Jones (prints and drawings room coordinator) at the Art Gallery of New South Wales Study Room. Whilst the holding is well-presented online (with key information on each item and reproductions of all the images), it really makes a difference to see the books themselves.

The books vary dramatically in terms of format and quality of production (for instance, paper, type of binding, image reproduction), which reinforces the observation by Di Piero (2012: 49) that ‘for Ruscha, a book can be an icon, an archive, a technology, an action zone, an artistic support, a motif.’ The contrast between, for instance, the 1963 Twentysix Gasoline Stations and the 1967 Thirtyfour Parking Lots is marked. The latter is a larger format with glossy paper and higher quality images (produced for Ruscha rather than by Ruscha). Whilst the former presents a kind of narrative (a three day journey with a distinct ‘end’), the impact of the latter is in the patterns in the aerial photographs of the deserted parking lots, and the juxtaposition of these. Royal Road Test (1967) presents other contrasts, both in form (spiral bound, text, full-bleed images, jointly authored) and content (a quasi-forensic report).

Looking at the books also reinforces Dziewior’s (2012) observation that there is a distinct rhythm to Ruscha’s books, particularly in the use of blank pages. Nine Swimming Pools is peppered with blank pages (varying from two to six pages), and Colored People and A Few Palm Trees, smaller format than the other books with glossy covers, have nothing but blank pages for the second half of each book. Thirtyfour Parking Lots has photographs of different proportions, including panoramic shots (taken to its extreme in the 7.5 metre, accordion folded Every Building on the Sunset Strip). And at the end of Thirtyfour Parking Lots there is one of Ruscha’s jokes, with a panoramic shot going beyond the constraints of the page and onto a tab. Deborah remarked that Ruscha is ‘cheeky’, which seems about right.

The splicing of images in Every Building on the Sunset Strip is crude, with a number of partial frames and disjunctions. Initially, I thought that, as with other Ruscha works (except Royal Road Test) there were no human figures (which I take to be a comment on Los Angeles life and the dominance of the car), but there are a couple of people sitting on a bench in one frame, and a couple of figures entering a shopping mall. It was great to unfold the whole thing (which is composed of a number of sections glued together), though we didn’t have a 7.5 metre stretch to lay it out flat.

I have revised two of my books for this activity to add in blank pages in line with the associated Ruscha books. If I had time to make further books, I think I would do something entitled ‘Small World’ or ‘Big Country’ which, inspired by Megan’s instagram comment, documented the ‘big’ objects (like the ‘Big Pineapple’ and the ‘Big Prawn’ which have sprung up along the Pacific Highway, using images from Google maps.

Final note: the copy of ‘Colored People’ had the price paid in a secondhand bookshop in London . £1.

References

Di Piero, W.S. 2012. ‘The sand is in the vaseline’. In Reading Ed Ruscha, edited by Y. Dziewior and K. Bregenz. Köln: Kunsthaus Bregenz. 46-53.

Dziewior, Y. 2012. ‘Reading Ed Ruscha’. In Reading Ed Ruscha, edited by Y. Dziewior and K. Bregenz. Köln: Kunsthaus Bregenz. 18-25.

Ruscha Books in Art Gallery of New South Wales holding

Twentysix Gasoline Stations, 1963
Various Small Fires, 1964
Every Building on the Sunset Strip, 1966
Thirtyfour Parking Lots, 1967
Royal Road Test, 1967
Nine Swimming Pools and a Broken Glass, 1968
Real Estate Opportunities, 1970
A Few Palm Trees, 1971
Colored People, 1972

In contrast to the now near ubiquitous ‘photobook’ in contemporary photographic practice, as Di Piero (2012: 49) observes, ‘for Ruscha, a book can be an icon, an archive, a technology, an action zone, an artistic support, a motif.’ This suggests that, in engaging with Ruscha’s work in book form, we should take care to consider how each work is situated in relation to these possibilities. This is particularly important in considering the selection, cropping and placement of images, the form taken by the book (for instance, how it is bound and the use of blank pages), the form and use of text (including fonts used and the layout of the cover, title and other pages) and titles (including the variations in precision in relation to quantity, from ‘twentysix’ to ‘various’, for instance) and the pacing and rhythm of the images. Given Ruscha’s particular interest in words as a component, or, indeed, the primary focus, of his visual work, the book provides an apposite medium for his art, making it far more than a ‘portable exhibition’ (Lippard, 1977). As Dziewior (2012) observes, there is a subjective rhythm to Ruscha’s books, in, for instance, the shape and arrangement of images, which contrasts with the formality of the covers. The shape, pattern and arrangement of words is purposeful, as it is in Ruscha’s work more generally, and paper is carefully chosen. Narrative structure is asserted in some works (Twentysix Gasoline Stations gives a sense of a three day journey in its arrangement of images, with the Fina image marking an end point) and subverted in others (for instance, in the lack of discernible structure in, say, the arrangement of images in Real Estate Opportunities). And there are jokes (‘Camera facing west on all photos’ in A Few Palm Trees), fitting of the creator of OOF.

As an artist, Ruscha is very much embedded in place, specifically Los Angeles, and more precisely Hollywood, (see Schwartz, 2010). Given the focus of my work on urban regeneration, it is this place related aspect of Ruscha’s work that most interests me. Reynolds (2015) explores Ruscha’s relationship with the redevelopment of Hollywood through the analysis of Then & Now: Hollywood Boulevard, 1973-2004, which consists of two continuous panoramas of the north and south sides of Hollywood Boulevard at two different points in time, thus mapping the transformation of the neighbourhood resulting from the Hollywood Redevelopment Project (HRP). The format of the book revisits the structure of his earlier Every Building on the Sunset Strip. Reynolds’ reading challenges the view that Ruscha’s art is primarily nostalgic, and draws out the potential of the juxtaposition of images in this way for a more radical reading, which subverts the idea of the reclaiming of a golden age, framed in this case by the fantasies of the Hollywood film industry. Space is left in the work for a more dynamic relationship between the past and the present and for imagining possible, non-utopian, futures.

Then & Now: Hollywood Boulevard, 1973-2004 is the only work by Ruscha using this form of juxtaposition, accentuating change over time. His other Los Angeles works focus of a given point in time, and present images of the vernacular architecture of the city. The drabness of the images makes it difficult to view this work as nostalgic. In engaging with this work for this task, I want to get a firmer sense of the how the books that focus specifically on Los Angeles might constitute a form of critique of development, and how the process of construction of similar texts might provide a means of exploration of both personal relation to place and the dynamics of change in the built environment.

Ideally, I would have focused on exploration of East London in the creation of some Ruscha style books. However, the task was set just a few days before setting off to work in Australia, so I have focused on issues relating to that move, and to my Australian context. I have produced three books: Illegal Immigrants, Twelve Barber Shops, and High Pedestrian Traffic. There are separate posts about each of these below. If I can make the time, I might put together a book focusing on east London, using street level images from Google Maps.

The camera may not quite have ‘always been facing west’, but I have been a little frivolous with this activity, partly as a result of the demands of my current work in Australia. Given more time, I’d explore the relationship between the images more carefully – the Hunter Street works have an explicit material basis for sequencing (they both follow the numerical order of the buildings) which pragmatically (given time constraints) denies the opportunity to construct a visual pattern or rhythm. I would also like to explore the relationship between text and image further, and examine the relationship between the organisation of text in Ruscha’s books to his other text based art (he discusses his attraction to the treatment of text as blocks in this interview), and, in my own work, pursue the case for thinking more about the function of text in cityscapes (Text in the City?). In relation to the production of books, exploring Ruscha’s work has increased my interest in non-narrative oriented books (where sequences do not ‘tell a story’, and might even subvert narrative form).

I have an appointment to visit the Study Room at the Art Gallery of New South Wales on Friday to look at their holding of Ed Ruscha photobooks, so will write more when I’ve had the opportunity to actually see and handle some of the work.

References

Di Piero, W.S. 2012. ‘The sand is in the vaseline’. In Reading Ed Ruscha, edited by Y. Dziewior and K. Bregenz. Köln: Kunsthaus Bregenz. 46-53.

Dziewior, Y. 2012. ‘Reading Ed Ruscha’. In Reading Ed Ruscha, edited by Y. Dziewior and K. Bregenz. Köln: Kunsthaus Bregenz. 18-25.

Lippard, L. 1977. ‘The artist’s book goes public’. Art in America, Jan-Feb 1977; reproduced in Lippard, L. 1984. Get the Message? A Decade of Art for Social Change. New York: E.P. Dutton. 48-52.

Reynolds, M. 2015. ‘Landscape in Motion: Nostalgia and Urban Redevelopment in Ed Ruscha’s Then & Now: Hollywood Boulevard, 1973-2004’. Journal of Urban History, 41(6): 1052–1072.

Ruscha, E. 2013. The Tension of Words and Images. TateShots. Video interview available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HoNePbo9DD0 [accessed 20.05.19]

Schwartz, A. 2010. Ed Ruscha’s Los Angeles. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.

The starting point for this is Real Estate Opportunities. In the regeneration of Hunter Street, there remain a large number of empty properties. The book presents these in order. Following Ruscha, the ‘For Lease’ signs are sometimes hard to discern (as in Paul Graham’s Troubled Land series, in which you have to hunt around the mundane Northern Ireland landscape for the signifiers of identity, distinction and difference).

In making and organising the work I have thought more about the distinguishing features of the architecture and form of urban development of Newcastle, the intertwining of the built and natural environment and the constraints of my own ‘new topographics’ inflected image-making in exploring this. By ordering the the images according to street number, I have evaded consideration of the rhythm and patterning of images noted in Ruscha’s work by Dziewior (2012). The title comes from the text of one of the ‘For Lease’ signs, paradoxical in the light of the absence (as in Ruscha’s work) of human figures (reflecting the lack of pedestrians in Hunter Street, though there are, as in the LA photographs, cars).

References

Dziewior, Y. 2012. ‘Reading Ed Ruscha’. In Reading Ed Ruscha, edited by Y. Dziewior and K. Bregenz. Köln: Kunsthaus Bregenz. 18-25.

Newcastle is a former steel town reinventing itself as a knowledge and creative industries hub. Whilst it remains the world’s busiest coal port, there is extensive development to reinvigorate the centre of the city, which hollowed out much in the same way as the centres of industrial US cities such as Detroit. Hunter Street, once the retail, administrative and commercial core of the city, is now at the centre of regeneration. I had read that in the decline of the UK high street, there had been a paradoxical flourishing of barber shops. So here are all the Barber shops in Hunter Street. Plus a vestige of a, not quite, bygone age, one of the ‘Gentleman’s Clubs’ and massage parlours that pepper the seedier end of the street. I followed the form of Nine Swimming Pools for this one, with colour images and a final tangential image, which provides a twist at the end of the book. The colour of the text for the title page is taken from the dominant brown colouring of the images (in the same way that the colour of the text in Ruscha’s book is taken from that of the pools).