If we accept the proposition that the meaning is created in the reading of the text/image (a key premise of semiotics and phenomenology) then it is not tenable to think of a photograph as lying. As Richard Rorty, like Peirce grounded in American pragmatism, but with a dusting of late Wittgenstein and continental philosophy, states:
‘Truth cannot be out there—cannot exist independently of the human mind—because sentences cannot so exist, or be out there. The world is out there, but descriptions of the world are not. Only descriptions of the world can be true or false. The world on its own—unaided by the describing activities of humans—cannot.’ (1989: 5)
Of course, photographers can construct images with the intention of deceiving, and others can use images for purposes for which they were not intended. This aspect of human agency relates not to epistemology (what counts as truth) but to ethics.
The disqualification of Jose Luis Rodriguez from the 2009 Wildlife Photographer of the Year award is grounded not in the artifice of the image but in the (knowing or unknowing) breaking of the (tacit or explicit) rules of the game: it is not that the photograph lies, but that the photographer transgresses in depicting a trained rather than wild animal.
If the making of meaning lies ultimately with the reader, then the maker will seek more effective modes of transmission (if they have a message to convey, or an intention to realise). And photography will constantly thwart the desire for a neutral relay (as all modes of communication must, but the disappointment in photography’s failure is amplified by the anticipation of indexicality). Construction can act as a means to enhance the possibility of the achievement of intention. Jeff Wall’s reconstruction of a fleeting observation in ‘Mimic’ amplifies a passing racist gesture.
Jeff Wall, Mimic, 1982.
Peter Kennard, through the use of montage (the most overt form of construction, maybe), sees himself as ‘researching reality’ which ‘involves ripping photographs out of their context to bring the perpetrators of war and poverty slap bang into the same space as their victims’ (Kennard in Read and Simmons, p.vii), thus challenging the viewer in their meaning making.
Peter Kennard, Prevent Street Crime, 1983.
These, and the constructions featured in the presentation, create scenarios designed to enhance the engagement of the viewer through a variety of means (for instance, incongruity within the image, resonance and dissonance, the evocation of the uncanny, the exploration of the imaginary). They are fictions in that any two dimensional rendering of the world at a moment of time in a particular material or digital form is a fiction, with variation in the strength, quality and integrity of intention, awaiting reanimation through the engagement of the viewer.
In my own image making I tend to seek incongruity, in the ironic juxtaposition of the natural and the human, for instance.
Or rendering settings in unfamiliar or incongruous modes (the coal port as romantic seascape).
Or through the juxtaposition of images in grids, triptychs or other configurations. All constructions and fictions of sorts; small steps on the way to enhancing the potential of the images to focus and amplify meaning through the engagement of the reader, with a long way to go.
References
Rorty, R. 1989. Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Read, M. & Simmons, S. 2016. Photographers and Research: The role of research in contemporary photographic practice. London: Routledge.
How I address the questions posed for independent reflection depends of which aspect of my photographic practice I take as a principal focus (given that my project proposal has three distinct forms of image making). Over the past week I have had the opportunity to gain insight into the lifeworlds of others through their own images (at the Shed Life meeting). Interpretation of these is predicated upon the co-creation of a shared context and language. It also requires a creation of mode of communication of the outcomes that is mutually comprehensible, and accessible to an audience. These kinds of images do not speak for themselves, but rather give us insight into a lifeworld, to be mediated by not just images but also different levels of accounts, from different perspectives. In this context, the image acts as something to talk about. The image being held by one of the group members below shows (according to him) his wife, who died in 2014, and himself at home at Christmas. Irrespective of what it might be taken to represent or authenticate, or how if might be read semiotically by another viewer, in this context it acts as an artifact, with strong emotional charge, to talk about and stimulate dialogue.
The images produced for the second level of the project (co-created images for campaigning) are read in very different contexts (public rather than intimate, for instance) and provoke a very different type of interaction. Likewise, my own personal image making is read in very different contexts (including the pedagogic context of a higher degree programme), with very different forms of dialogue about and interpretation of the images.
One major development this week is advancement of my thinking about photographic images as artifacts, provoked by visiting the UCL museums, collections and galleries with students, and thinking about ways of writing about images (including fictional accounts and imaginings of the ‘life-course’ or trajectories of the objects: I’m reminded of Tim Hunkin’s ‘Secret Life of …’ series, and Cornelia Parker’s work focusing on Freud’s chair, and Peter Stallybrass’s (1998) piece ‘Marx’s Coat’).
Cornelia Parker, Marks made by Freud, Subconsciously (macrophotograph of the seat of Freud’s chair), 2000
The lecture by Helen Chatterjee on the ‘Psycho-social significance of objects’, and the accompanying paper (Solway et al, 2017) which surveys research into the different ways objects have been used in interventions relating to, for instance, physical well-being, mental health and homelessness, has given me a range of ways of thinking about the use of images as artifacts (as well as images of artifacts). I’ll explore this over coming weeks. It also relates to my deeper engagement with the work of Cornelia Parker. As she notes in her interview at the Bethlem Museum of the Mind, her own work pays particular attention to the qualities of the materials and objects with which she works, noting that Marcel Duchamp ‘annexed objects in order to convey meaning’.
The focus of the relationship between people and objects, and the use of images as objects, enables me to relate my photographic practice both to other areas of artistic practice and to discourse and practice in other disciplines, in the humanities, natural sciences and social sciences, and in particular areas that, in recent years, have taken a ‘material turn’.
References
Parker, C. 2018. Objects of Obsession. Interview at Bethel Museum of the Mind, London. Video available at https://museumofthemind.org.uk/objects-of-obsession [accessed 08.02.19].
Solway, R. et al. 2017. ‘Material objects and psychological theory : A conceptual literature review’, Arts & Health, 8(1):82–101.
Stallybrass, P. 1998. ‘Marx’s Coat’. In P. Spyer (ed.) Border fetishisms: material objects in unstable spaces. New York: Routledge, 187–207.
Andrew Brown (2019): Chicken / Taxidermy, Grant Museum of Zoology / 28.01.2017-15.02.2018
‘The poverty of photographic criticism is
well known. It stands out against the richness of photographic
production and invention, the widespread use and enjoyment of
photographs, and even the popularity of photography as a hobby. To end
this poverty we do not need more philosophizing about photographs and
reality, or yet another (this time definitive) definition of
“photographic seeing,” or yet another distillation of photography’s
essence or nature. The tools for making sense of photographs lie at
hand, and we can invent more if and when we really need them’. (Snyder
and Allen, 1975: 169).
I’m certainly in sympathy with the conclusions drawn by Snyder and Allen. In scrutinising what might be considered distinctive about the analysis of photographic images, they argue that there are questions that can be asked of any photographic image that are specifically photographic (relating, for instance, to the technicalities of the production of the image) and generic (questions that can be asked of any artifact, for instance relating to its use within a specific context, or its aesthetic qualities). In the concluding paragraph, above, they shift the responsibility, or at least the locus, for analysis away from the other disciplines and practices which happen take photography as an object, and place it within the field of photography itself.
Coming to photography, as an academic field, from another field
(sociology), I’ve been surprised that intellectual canon is dominated by
texts produced by people with little enthusiasm for or affiliation to
photography. The highly personal nature of Barthes’ (1981) Camera Lucida,
and the consequently idiosyncratic and backward looking choice of
photographic work, obscures the greater contribution that, for instance,
his semiotic concept of myth (Barthes, 2009; first published in French
in 1957) might make to analysis. Sontag (1977; 2003), similarly, takes
photography as an (arbitrary) instance of cultural practice, and
produces an analytic account which, it could be argued, sits outside,
and is sceptical of, photographic practice (which is wide-ranging,
complex and evolving). Derrida, who has also written specifically about
photographs and photography (eg. Derrida, 2010) exemplifies the issue.
‘It is true that only words interest me.
It is true, for reasons that have to do in part with my own history and
archaeology, that my investment in language is stronger, older, and
gives me more enjoyment than my investment in the plastic, visual, or
spatial arts’. (1990 interview with Peter Brunette and David Wills,
quoted by Gerhard Richter in Derrida, 2010: xvi).
Like Barthes, and Sontag, and others who have come to constitute the, somewhat masochistic, canon of photographic cultural theory and analysis, Derrida’s principal interests, and affiliations, lie elsewhere. And hence, their analytic engagement with photography is opportunistic and partial, and lacks commitment to the development of a strong, conceptually sophisticated, field of photographic theory and analysis. This lies at the heart of the ‘poverty of photographic criticism’ identified by Snyder and Allen, and their claim that we should invest less time in agonising over questions of ‘photographs and reality’, and desist from taking up the concerns of, for instance, philosophers for whom photography is an apposite example deployed in pursuit of a broader set of questions and interests. Rather, we should celebrate the complexity of photographic practice and collaboratively draw on the wealth of cross-disciplinary theory and empirical research, not just that which names photography as an object, to push forward our understanding of photography and enrich and advance our practice (as Mick has done by drawing on the organisational learning theory of Chris Argyris and Donald Schön (for instance, Argyris, 1993; Argyris and Schön, 1996), in his CRJ post on for this activity). This enables us to take greater control of photographic discourse, form inter-disciplinary partnerships, respond to challenges and opportunities presented from within and outside the field and develop more constructive and dynamic relationship between theory and practice (praxis).
My own theoretical roots lie in the post-structuralism of Foucault, De Certeau and Derrida, the sociology of Bernstein and Bourdieu, and the socio-cognitive theory of Vygotsky and Luria. In addressing the development of my own photographic practice in this programme, my thinking has taken a more materialist turn, mirrored in an interest in the use of photography by multi-disciplinary artists, such as Cornelia Parker and Danny Treacy.
Parker explores the qualities of materials in the making of images,
and reflects the breadth of interests, vision and experimental
orientation (embracing theory, empirical investigation and serendipity)
of the pioneers of photography, such as Fox Talbot.
Cornelia Parker, Premeditated Act of Violence (2015). Polymer photogravure etching.
Cornelia Parker, Jug Full of Ice (2015). Polymer photogravure etching.
Treacy describes himself as an ‘artist working with photography, incorporating elements of sculpture, performance and exploration’. His image making encompasses urban anthropology and the making of artifacts with found objects and materials. He emphasises the process of creation of art works, which convey a strong sense of entanglement in the world (rather than any attempt to represent). He explores marginal urban places, similar to the settings I explored in the first module.
Danny Treacy, from Those series.
Danny Treacy, from Clearings series.
Both explore the ‘peculiar’ nature, or affordances, of photographic
image making. I’m hoping, over the course of the module, to extend my
own practice in this direction.
References
Argyris, C. 1993. On Organizational Learning. Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell.
Argyris, C. and Schön, D.A. 1996. Organizational Learning II: Theory, Method and Practice. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley.
Barthes, R. 1981. Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography. Translated by R. Howard. London: Vintage.
Barthes, R. 2009. Mythologies. Translated by A. Lavers. Revised edition. London: Vintage.
Derrida, J. 2010. Copy, Archive, Signature: A Conversation on Photography. Edited with an Introduction by Gerhard Richter. Translated by Jeff Fort. Stanford Calif.: Stanford University Press.
Sontag, S. 1977. On Photography. London: Penguin Books.
Sontag, S. 2003. Regarding the Pain of Others. New York: Picador.
Snyder, J. and Allen, N. W. 1975. ‘Photography, Vision, and Representation’, Critical Inquiry. 2(1): 143–169.
‘In the Photograph, the power of authentication exceeds the power of representation’ (Barthes, 1981: 89)
Barthes
appears to be acknowledging here that, whilst meaning is produced in
the reading of the text/image, different modes (the photographic image
in this case) have different meaning potentials. Ascribing ‘power’ to
the image (an inert object that is brought to life, or not, by human
agents in its use and reading in a particular context) seems to be
misplaced (it might be a mis-translation, I suppose, or just a careless,
or personal rather than general, use of the term). If meaning is
created in reading, then any potential (to be read as authenticating or
representing) must have social or cultural roots – the potential cannot
be materially inherent in the image (in the same way that the meaning
potential of a word cannot be inherent in its sound, a fundamental
principle of the structural linguistics on which Barthes’ work is
founded). Barthes’ account is of its time and highly personal.
Mythologies (Barthes, 2009) gives a clearer sense of the value of Bathes
semiotic analysis, by presenting a number of virtuoso analyses followed
by an exposition of his method; Camera Lucida (Barthes, 1981), in
contrast, principally gives us insight into Barthes as a reader of
photographic images, at a particular point in both his own biography and
at a particular moment in the social and technological history of image
making and cultural analysis.
As other’s have pointed out, claims that photographs authenticate
(this image presents evidence of, or a trace of, the existence of the
object) or represent (this image stands for the object) are equally
compromised. Barthes, and others, effectively address representation.
The prevalence, and cultural acceptance, of CGI and digitally altered
images (in western cultures – we should keep in mind differences in the
status of photographic images in other cultures, for instance the taboo
on photographic images of the dead in Australian aboriginal cultures)
raises questions about the potential of photography to authenticate.
As image makers, we are also readers of our own (and others’) images, but with the agency to shape the form and content of our images, and some of the contexts in which they will appear. So we produce and position our images in full knowledge of the fragility of realisation of our intentions in the ultimate readings of the image, alongside an understanding of the shifting technological, cultural, social, economic, psychological, political, environmental, and so on, contexts of their reading and circulation. And this makes us more sophisticated image makers, and provokes us to engage with dynamics of the contexts in which our images are produced, distributed, read and re-configured.
I’ve written earlier about Barthes and related issues elsewhere in my CRJ (with more to come) and project proposal, so have kept this contribution deliberately short(ish).
References
Barthes, R. 2009. Mythologies. Translated by A. Lavers. Revised edition. London: Vintage. Barthes, R. 1981. Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography. Translated by R.Howard. London: Vintage.
Over the past week I have continued to develop relationships and links relating to my proposed FMP. The Thames Ward Community Partnership summit on Thursday provided the opportunity to make images to feed into the work of the group and to make contacts with community groups for project related work (eg. JustMap, Creekmouth Preservation Society, Shed Life and the New View Arts Project). My images were used in the visual presentation that ran during the evening. I also attended further Object Lesson sessions, including some work on writing about objects at the Grant Museum.
The webinar with Michelle helped me to think through how, over the course of this module, I might link these two strands of my work. In the exploration of the relationship between individuals and groups and changes that are taking place in their communities through regeneration, objects clearly have a part to play (both in exploring experiences and aspirations with participants, and in making images, and making artefacts from/for the images).
Karen Knorr, The Order of Things (Academies Series 1994-2005).
Karen Knorr’s Academies series (1994-2005) covers very similar settings to the university galleries and museums. She explores the dominance of the western aesthetic, whereas my interest is more in the roots of the collections in eugenics and colonialism, and the attempts to moderate (or even atone for) this through public engagement (for instance, in the use of the collections in social prescribing and other well-being related initiatives). One possibility would be to attempt to bring these different interests into the same visual space.
Karen Knorr, Love at First Sight, Palazinna Cinese, 2017.
Knorr does this through digital manipulation in her most recent work (for instance, in the image above from the Metamorphosis series), though has in the past, as in the Academies series, used taxidermy (noting the effect that photographs appear to bring these animals to life, as Sugimoto observes in his waxwork and diorama series). The lighting of these settings is clearly key, and I want to look at the lighting used in 19th Century painting, from the period in which the museums were founded (Tom Hunter has explored painterly lighting schema, referencing Friedrich’s window motif through the use of the window as the principal source for lighting an interior, in his Persons Unknown series in Hackney).
Tom Hunter, A Glass of Wine, 1997 (Persons Unknown series).
This would form a link with the Riverside work through the issue of regeneration, place, identity and well-being. I want also to ‘reverse’ or mirror the settings, and make related images on the estate, reinforcing the link through objects, materiality and touch. This clearly relates to the material turn in photography discussed in relation to Squiers’ exhibition this week, and to my intention to work more with prints, not just digital images.
I’ve also been exploring Cornelia Parker’s use of photography, making a further link to materiality, but also to precariousness and experiment. I’ll post more about this and other artists, such as Danny Treacy, who work with both photographic images and artefacts, over the coming weeks.
Where did the week go? The task asks for a brief commentary, which is good news given the increasing length of my CRJ posts (and everyone’s, by the look of things). I’m very comfortable with the idea of multiple ‘photographies’ shaped by contexts, agents and interests (in the same way that writing can be a device for everyday supplementation of memory through to great literature, and is, like photography, being transformed, displaced or supplemented, by digital technology and automation/AI) – see earlier post here. The Szarkowski and Shore case studies are interesting in understanding the development of the field of photographic practice, and in positioning our own and other work within the field. The Squiers case study is of greater contemporary relevance, and for me most helpful in thinking about the development of my own work. Of the three, it is the only one, I think, that grapples with how to move beyond the aspiration for a unified language whilst maintaining the possibility of fruitful dialogue between photographic forms (and other forms of art practice).
I’m working on three levels for my project: (i) using photographs by others to understand their lifeworlds, (ii) collaborating with groups to create images for advocacy, (iii) producing my own multi-modal response to situations. I’ve been thinking about what it is that I am actually producing in doing this work. For (i) I am producing a methodology (a way of working with participants and their images). For (ii) I am producing images and a strategy for their deployment. For (iii), my focus for this module, I think I am producing artefacts, and seeking to bring together different media. This resonates with the stress placed in this case study of the materiality of photographs. Digital images are just a step on the way in the work I am doing. Thinking about questions of change (in places and environments) and multiplicity of experiences of and relationships to this, the kind of layering that Welling is doing in his Multichannel Works series is interesting.
James Welling, 9485, 2014.
Placing stress on materiality supplements, rather than erases, other forms of photographic practice (earlier forms, and contemporary and emerging digital forms). King (quoted in the presentation) is right that the exhibition is partial in addressing the question of ‘what is a photograph?’, but wrong, in my view, to expect an answer to the question. The exhibition leaves the question open (in its partiality) and invites responses that can maintain the dialogue and enhance the dynamism of the field of photographic practice. My own expectation is that an exhibition should not promise or offer closure, but should offer us more, not less, to think about, engage with and to be excited by.
Anything new to add? Maybe recognition of the utility of a more sociological perspective on photographic practice (see CRJ post here – contains a few sentences which, I think, address Johnson’s and King’s issue about what they perceive as a backward looking tendency in Squiers’ exhibition) and non-western perspectives on photographic image making (see CRJ post here ). And always to keep in mind ‘what is theory for?’ alongside asking ‘what is photography for?’.
Reading Bourdieu is tough at the best of times, not just because of the (deliberate) obscurity of the language and conceptual density, but also the severity and sharpness of the sociological focus. In looking specifically at photography, Bourdieu and colleagues treat it as a set of arbitrary practices which contribute in some way, as do all other social and cultural practices, to the production and reproduction of social relations (through the creation and reinforcement of distinctions along lines of social class, gender, occupation, ethnicity, status and so on). Anyone with a commitment (professional, recreational, artistic, emotional) to photography is going to find this kind of sociological dissection pretty uncomfortable, which might, at least in part, explain why Bourdieu’s (1990: first published in French in 1965) book ‘Photography: A Middle-brow Art’ is so rarely cited in analytical writing on photography (the title hardly helps, of course). Barthes, without naming the work, distances his approach, and interests in photography, from that of Bourdieu in the following way:
‘Each time I would read something about Photography, I would think of some photograph I loved, and this made me furious. Myself, I saw only the referent, the desired object, the beloved body; but an importunate voice (the voice of knowledge, of scientia) then adjured me, in a severe tone: “Get back to Photography. What you are seeing here and what makes you suffer belongs to the category ‘Amateur Photographs,’ dealt with by a team of sociologists; nothing but the trace of a social protocol of integration, intended to reassert the Family, etc.” Yet I persisted; another, louder voice urged me to dismiss such sociological commentary; looking at certain photographs, I wanted to be a primitive, without culture. So I went on, not daring to reduce the world’s countless photographs, any more than to extend several of mine to Photography: in short, I found myself at an impasse and, so to speak, “scientifically” alone and disarmed’. (Barthes, 1981: 7)
Bourdieu’s extensive empirical investigation of the use of photography (including surveys and interviews relating to everyday, amateur, artistic and professional uses of photography), carried out in the 1960s, might seem dated (with the growth of digital technology, and particularly the pervasive the use of phones to make photographs and disseminate images through social media). Much is made of camera ownership, which now seems to have a very different social and cultural significance. This is not the place, or time, to delve deep into this work, but there are a couple of points raised by Bourdieu and colleagues (who include Luc Boltanski, brother of photographic artist, Christian Boltanski) that warrant some attention in relation to my own project and trajectory.
Fundamental to the work is the assertion that photographic practice is ‘an index and an instrument of integration’ (p.19). Bourdieu documents and dissects the use of photography within the family, including ceremonial uses and as part of the circuit of gifts in the form of images, for instance in weddings, in reinforcing a sense of collective life and an integrated family group. This places the ‘enthusiast’, the person with an intrinsic interest in photography, outside ‘normal’ practice. For Bourdieu, in their interest in photography per se (as an aesthetic and/or technical practice), these ‘devotees’ and ‘fanatics’ (p.44) break with the norms of family photography, and are thus more weakly integrated, or even alienated, from the family. It is both an expression and a reinforcement of weak integration; it is also, from the analysis of Bourdieu’s empirical data, clearly gendered (there is a much higher proportion of male enthusiasts). This is clearly worth revisiting, in the light of both changing technology and associated social practices, and a renewed interest in family photography as a form of artistic practice (see, for instance, Howarth and McLaren, 2016). My interest here, though, will be confined to the personal and biographic, stemming from reflection on an event from my childhood prompted by reading this work. As I have indicated previously (for instance, in my oral presentations) my emotional attachment to, and active engagement with, photography stems from my early work as a child model, and the time spent in and around photographic studios. My godfather, Ray Harwood, was one of two assistants who worked with Cecil Beaton, including the Coronation photographs in 1953.
Ray Harwood (right) and John Drysdale, reminisce about assisting Beaton. Times photographer, David Bebber
Whilst there is a clear class division between artist and technician, this work enabled Ray to go on to work for Conde Nast as a photographer and to set up his own studio. In domestically difficult circumstances, photography for me came to signify the possibility of another life, beyond the family (as did sport, cycling, music and academic achievement). With easy access to film, and using the family Kodak camera (and a kit which included a Diana plastic camera, which I bought with the proceeds from my paper-rounds), I started to take photographs at the age of 10 and learnt to process and print my own work. At the age of 11, a couple of years before my father, thankfully, left home, I part-exchanged the Kodak, without his knowledge, for a camera which allowed greater control of aperture, shutter speed and focus. I still have the camera (a Halina 35X, made in Hong Kong, a copy of the Japanese Ranger 35), though I have never deliberately held on to it or taken care of it, and have never thought (until now) about taking photographs with it. It sits of a shelf by my desk with a number of random books and objects.
Empire Made: my Halina 35X
I cannot remember how he responded (it would have been physical), nor even if he ever found out (I figure that by that time, he didn’t really care). I have never thought to look at when family photographs ceased. There are certainly none from the point at which he left home (my mother, though she had worked for two professional photographers, had no active interest in taking photographs, though has always enjoyed, until she effectively lost her sight through macular degeneration, and valued images), but I figure that photography (certainly as an integrative family activity) stopped a long time before this. I don’t have any of my own photographs from this period. Certainly, my interest in photography at this time is indicative of my own alienation from the family, and desire to spend as much of my time as possible outside the home. The point here is that, whatever the wider value of Bourdieu’s analysis (in its own right and as part of a greater corpus of sociological theory and research), it has raised a number of questions, and ways of thinking about events and experiences, relating to my own biography and trajectory. Selling the family camera, something that I had not thought about until reading Bourdieu’s work this week, probably had far greater significance than I had ever imagined. Working on the significance of objects and object analysis with the UCL BASc students gives me the opportunity to think further about this, perhaps taking the camera as my object (our lecture next week is on the psycho-social significance of objects, which is apposite).
UCL BASc Object Lessons group at the Grant Museum of Zoology, 01.02.19
There are three other thoughts for exploration, two of which are made in footnotes to a chapter on photographic art by Chamboredon (pp. 129-149). Firstly, in comparing the process of production of painting and photography (with the former images requiring time and concerted effort, whether trained or not, whilst the latter can be created instantaneously), he notes that there has not been (and perhaps, could never be, given these differences in production processes) a ‘naive’ photographic artist, in the sense that Rousseau (Le Douanier) was a naive (that is untrained and unsocialised) painter (note 19, p. 201). This, though, is precisely what Anne Geene and Arjan de Nooy have produced in the (imaginary) Universal Photographer, in that they have taken historical segments of everyday (naive) image making, and inserted them into photographic art discourse. There is, of course, through instagram and other social media, now a parallel world of naive art photographers, with instagram ‘image-making stars’ created through the operation of a set of alternative (popular) criteria (or, rather, multiple sets of criteria, which act to produce a differentiated field of ‘stars’). I’ve written a couple of thousand words exploring this further, but will keep that for another day.
The second (note 5, p.201) is the question of the extent to which it is the disappearance of traditional crafts (as common modes of production, in the face of automation and mechanisation) that has facilitated the transformation of craft techniques into artistic media (for instance, pottery, weaving, ironwork). This casts an interesting light on the analogue and material turn in photographic art, and on the possibilities of the development of photographic art in the face of evermore sophisticated everyday image making (and distributing) technology, and AI applications. In other words, the increasing marginalisation of the knowledge, skills and processes of photographic practice creates an increased potential for the development of photographic art. Photography, as a specialised practice, is not superseded, but displaced, and the historical development through successive technological advances is temporally compressed into a repository of resources for contemporary practice (evident in, for instance, the revisiting of Fox Talbot’s techniques by Hiroshi Sugimoto, Naoya Hatakeyama and Cornelia Parker, amongst many others).
The third is an observation, pertinent to my own family history, made by Boltanski and Chamboredon in a chapter on professional photography (pp. 150-173; this presents a pretty bleak picture of photography as a profession, including reflection on the ‘uselessness’ of professional qualifications, pp. 152-3). Here they explore the professional aspirations and trajectories of photographers in relation to social class, and identify the means by which photography offers the potential of ‘upclassing’, particularly for working-class entrants (p.161). Interesting to apply this form of analysis to particular cases, for instance, in fashion photography in the 1960s (in relation to both social class and gender).
References
Barthes, R. 1981. Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography. Translated by R. Howard. London: Vintage.
Bourdieu, P. 1990. Photography: A Middle-brow Art. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Howarth, S. and McLaren, S. 2016. Family Photography Now. London: Thames and Hudson.
I made these images in an attempt to disrupt my habitual image making, by introducing a number of technological and human ‘glitches’. All the images were made around the house whilst sorting through and disposing of stuff brought out of storage from my old office at work. The images are incidental and make no attempt to record the process – they are made at the edges. I used a first generation micro four-thirds camera with a CCTV lens. The camera has no viewfinder and no focus assistance, and my failing near-sight made focusing erratic. The lens introduced significant curvature and vignetting. No cropping and no processing. These images are a step on the way to a final artifact, which will be in print form. Not quite degraded ‘poor images‘ in Hito Steyerl’s (2009) terms (maybe explore this later) but a step on the way. Having worked to develop the quality of my images over the past year or so, I felt anxious working in this way, introducing limitations right at the beginning of the process and then working with them. I’m thinking about other ways of disrupting practice, maybe along the lines of Brian Eno’s oblique strategies, in which chance application of operations transforms the process of production of images and the outcomes.
Steyerl, H. 2009. ‘In Defense of the Poor Image’. e-flux journal #10, November. Available at https://www.e-flux.com/journal/10/61362/in-defense-of-the-poor-image/ [accessed 31.01.19]
This month I’ve been working alongside UCL Bachelor of Arts and Science students on their ‘Object Lessons’ module. For this, each student ‘adopts’ an object from one of the university museums, collections or galleries. The programme is a mixture of lectures (on material culture, the psycho-social significant of objects and workshops on handling, recording and writing about objects) and workshops involving working with objects alongside curators. Just some initial ‘descriptive’ photos of some of the objects from the Grant Museum and some ‘handling’ in the Petrie Museum.
Thinking about how to develop a project from this, and perhaps how to relate the focus on objects to my work on communities and regeneration (useful discussion with Michelle about this, with lots of references to follow up).
And some from neighbouring Creekside. More to be done here, I think, around the theme of erasure and overwriting. There was a community here until the 1950s, providing housing for people employed in the industrial works in the area. This was demolished to make space for further industrial development, and people relocated to other estates in Barking. Former residents meet regularly, and there is a simple heritage trail around the area, though very low profile. Might offer the opportunity to combine exploration of the area and former residents’ emotional ties with object focused and archival work.
