Category: Reflections

Final reflections on the MA Photography experience

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As I come to the end of my MA course of study, I thought it might be useful to reflect on the overall experience and the Final Major Project.  It seemed when I began the course that two years would be a long haul, but now looking back I am amazed at how quickly it went by.  At the outset, I was a competent photographer but with no sense of what to do with my work and no real understanding of who I was as a photographer. I took photographs but had no real understanding of the discipline of photography and its history. I was in fact exceptionally naïve about what I was getting myself into at the outset of the course.

Thankfully, I was fortunate to be in a cohort with some extraordinary people who throughout the course have worked closely together challenging and mutually supporting each other. I can with complete confidence say that absent them this course would have been far less rewarding and I less successful.  The Cromarty cohort was instrumental in not only filling the curricular gaps, but in adding to the discourse and pushing beyond the demands of the course.  We were there for each other throughout to clarify, console, instruct, support and encourage.  The overall experience was far richer because of them.

I leave the course with a strong sense of who I am as a photographer and a clear artistic voice and identifiable style to my work.  I hadn’t anticipated how much my photographic skills would improve, but they have.  More importantly, I have learned to tell stories visually, and am able to conceptualise and realise work with clear intentions.  Sound and video recording and editing, sophisticated post-processing, book publication, exhibition design and curation, website design, blogging, and photographic printing are all now significant competencies.  I have gone from being the totally naïve student to one who has become a mentor for others in the cohort and elsewhere.  It is quite a remarkable evolution over the two years.

Each module of the course presented its own challenges.  Positions and Practice required a lot of catching up on Information Technology skills as I had never blogged, built a website or used many of the software applications that would be essential to the course of study.  And I struggled to find the point of critical theory and overly obfuscatory academic writing during that module.

In Surfaces and Strategies, I began to be more comfortable with the underlying infrastructural requirements (IT), and with the opportunities to tell stories and create publications began to hit my stride.  The reading and critical theory explorations became more intelligible and relatable, and I began to truly enjoy the research. I was challenged to think in new ways about photography in general and my work specifically. I continued to expand my skill set by tackling programs like Adobe Premiere to do video editing and Bookwright for publications.  I published my first book during this module.

Sustainable Prospects was something of a disappointment academically and fell far short of what it might have been, but it afforded me the time to expand my reading and research independently.  It resulted in my being particularly well prepared for Informing Contexts.

In Informing Contexts not only had I come into my own academically, but it is in this module that I believe I found my artistic voice and developed a style that was uniquely mine.  I came to understand who I was as photographer and how to fully conceptualise and realise a body of work.  I was no longer confused about what I wanted to photograph and how I wanted to photograph.  Every shoot was done with clear intent and the quantity of photos decreased by an order of magnitude and the quality increased by even more. The work straight out of camera was far superior to my earlier work and the rejection rate in post processing dropped to single digits.

Final Major Project proved a worthy culmination firmly based on the foundations that had been built in the earlier modules even as I continued to expand my skills by adding sound recording, mixing and editing and significantly improving my video editing skills.  I had been working on the same fundamental project throughout the MA although it evolved in response to real world impacts and my maturation as a photographer. I was able to synthesise and integrate work to tell a chapter of a story who’s ending is yet unwritten and will only be revealed as part of a much longer project.  The public outcomes for FMP employed a full range of skills acquired in earlier careers combined with those developed in the MA and resulted in an exhibition that fully realised the vision I created and of which I was extremely pleased and proud.

Was the course worth the effort required?  I believe it was.  Despite being in my mid-60’s and with no need to make a living at photography, I am very glad I undertook the challenge and believe I got a great deal from the course.  I have the luxury of pursuing my photographic work entirely on my terms and I am well prepared for whichever path I choose to take.  I have enjoyed the challenges, the comradery of my cohort, and discovery of my style and voice.  I expect those to continue evolve as well over time, but I am in a very good starting place at the end of this course.

Explorations on the Concepts of Place and Non-Place

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Place and the concept of place has become an important part of my photographic work. I had a commonly held simplistic view of place for most of my life. Certainly, there were places to which I had a strong connection, and which felt quite different than places for which a connection was less significant or absent, but I didn’t really think beyond the physicality of the space.  A perfect example would be the difference in how I feel about the two places I own homes.  Dornoch in northeast Scotland is where my heart truly lives.  Of the 26 places I have lived in my life it is more home to me than any of the others.  I feel healthier mentally, spiritually and physically there.  In contrast, my South Carolina home is lovely, but I feel no connection to the place or anyone there.  I feel as alien there as if I had set foot on Mars and I am uncomfortable there. But the concept of place has expanded for me by reading the works of Marc Augé (2008) and Jim Brogden (2019) and I have found it has been key to informing my work in Coul Links.

We commonly consider place in terms of the physical; a space occupied by something or someone. Historically, before people were able to travel physically across the globe in hours and virtually across the globe in milliseconds, place was very much about physical proximity, about connectedness to one’s surroundings.  Marc Augé (2008, VIII-IX) notes that while “there are no ‘non-places’ in the absolute sense of the term” there are non-places in anthropological and sociological contexts and that ‘globalisation’ contributes to “unprecedented extension of spaces of circulation, consumption and communication.”

While Augé principally analyses place in terms of globalisation and urbanisation in a phenomenon he terms ‘supermodernity’, Brogden’s view is narrower and focuses on what he terms the ‘cultural erasure of the city’. Both accept that place has elements beyond the physical which are encompassed in the sociological and anthropological significance of spaces.  Both illustrate how more and more ‘places’ have become ‘non-places’ while also accepting that that status is both fluid and bi-directionally reversible, and to a degree subject to individual perception.

“If a place can be defined as relational, historical and concerned with identity, then a space which cannot be defined as relational, or historical, or concerned with identity will be a non-place. The hypothesis advanced here is that supermodernity produces non-places…” (Augé, 2008: 63)

“We should add that the same things apply to the non-place as to the place.  It never exists in pure form: places reconstitute themselves in it; relations are restored and resumed in it; … Place and non-place are rather like opposed polarities: the first is never completely erased, the second never totally completed; they are like palimpsests on which the scrambled game of identity and relations are ceaselessly rewritten. (Augé, 2008: 64)

Jim Brogden’s photographic practice focuses currently on the urban landscape and in particular those places which are essentially holes in the urban landscape; places where people once had a presence, and which have been abandoned.  He writes, “By discussing the significance of photographic representations in revealing the meanings attached to the visual evidence of human agency in non-place, I hope to show what people leave behind provides us with important information about why they left it and what it meant to them.” (Brogden, 2019: 111) Brogden’s notion of non-place differs from Augé’s, but both are rooted in the anthropological and sociological significance associated with spaces.

Both use the term palimpsest in their respective discussions of place and non-place.  Coul Links is a landscape that could well be described as a palimpsest.  It has had many uses inscribed upon it over the centuries. It has been a battlefield twice, in the 13th century and again in the 18th just before Culloden, a bombing range during WWII and a burial ground for surplus military equipment, grazing land, farming land, shooting ground, a tip, a tree plantation that has been harvested, home to a railroad through it, golf holes near the Embo school, a Site of Special Scientific Interest, a Special Protection Area and a RAMSAR Wetlands of International Importance treaty site, and likely other uses I have not yet discovered.  It was at one time key to the survival of many residents in the village of Embo, but in the past 50 years has lost much of its former significance to the local population.  It has fallen to neglect and the links land itself sees little human use. Those few who do still use the land do so almost exclusively at the perimeters and then only just.

I believe it is fair to argue that Coul Links while once a place of great significance to the villagers of Embo who survived from the land and the sea, the death of the herring fishing industry and the decline of the need to live from the land caused by taking jobs further afield has decreased the significance of Coul Links and it has become by either Augé’s or Brogden’s definitions a non-place.  It has been largely abandoned and left to rewild and to those that do visit it is often a transient interaction at the fringes.  But as described above, place and non-place are never fully formed and there remain some few people who have a deep and enduring relationship with Coul Links and for who it remains very much, a place.

I came to Coul Links in response to the new significance being attributed to it when a proposal was put forth to add to the palimpsest and build a world class golf course on the site. I came as a stranger, with no sense of its history and with some degree of concern for its future, but over the course of the two years I have spent roaming and photographing Coul Links, I have developed a deep connection to and affection for the uniqueness and complexity of the land itself and its multi-faceted history.  I am endlessly fascinated by the chameleon like response to the force of nature the landscape exhibits.  I am disturbed by the hyperbole and misinformation promulgated by the groups who have opposed the development and their failure to recognise the complex history the site has had.  And I am aware too of the environmental issues extant at this point in human history, both globally and at this place specifically, and the need to proceed carefully and sensitively with any future development.

The proposal to develop Coul Links has to a degree re-established its significance anthropologically and sociologically and begun the process of its re-emergence as a place.  It is something of a reversal of the phenomena described by both Augé and Brogden who note more places becoming non-places in modern society and this I think is an interesting point to note.  It has altered my thinking about Coul Links and when I discussed this point during my talk during my recent exhibition, I found it was the point that resonated most with the people in attendance.  Virtually all local people, they recognised how Coul Links had lost its significance over the years and the how the prospect of another layer on the palimpsest had altered the way in which the site was perceived.

 

References

Auge, M. (2008) Non-Places: An Introduction to Supermodernity. London, New York: Verso.

Brogden, J. (2019) Photography and the Non-Place: The Cultural Erasure of the City. First. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan.

 

FMP Week 5 – Reflections and Progress

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As I await the feedback on my proposal, I am continuing to explore narrative approaches to the project.  Recent political events have, in my mind, cast further doubt on the likelihood that development will be approved and that alters the calculus on a major element of the originally envisioned project.  On the other hand, underlying the subtle and not so subtle aspects of the controversy, most of which are not visible, lies the place, Coul Links, which goes on oblivious to the attempts to alter or preserve it.

So, I find myself asking; is the controversy about the potential development even important at this point or is it just noise hovering around the periphery of a more enduring story?  Or conversely; is the place only significant and on my radar because of the controversy of the potential development?  Would anyone notice or care truly about Coul Links had someone not proposed building a golf course there?  After all it has been a designated site for a quarter century, and no one really seemed to care that that the site was not being maintained as it was meant to be.  It is perhaps only because of the proposed development that anyone aside from local residents are even aware of the environmental designations assigned to the site.

And here is the crux of the issue with regard to FMP; which perspective to adopt and which chapter of the story to tell. I have begun the process of looking through all of my contact sheets and archives of the work done on the course and I have also started researching the print and on-line sources that addressed the Coul Links development. I can see potential narratives from several perspectives and yet I haven’t enough clarity or conviction to settle on one just yet.

I think perhaps the process of choosing photographs may help a narrative emerge.  Additionally, the archival research from the news coverage over the past 3 years will also support the narrative.  Time to get on with it.

Week 12 – Final Thoughts on Informing Contexts

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I found this module intellectually challenging, stimulating and frankly fun.  I struggled in the first module with the whole idea of critical theory, but having come to IC as the fourth module, the 15 months of added experience put me in a much better place to both enjoy and learn.  The more I read, the more practitioner’s work I reviewed, the more things began to make sense and I felt my confidence increasing with each passing week.  I believe I have come away from IC much more informed about photography in general and with a much better understanding of my practice and what I intended to accomplish.  It also gives me a clearer understanding of the paths ahead and where I might go in the next phase of my journey.

Technically and creatively I also gained confidence and my work reaped the benefits of both. I began to approach my work with ever increasing mindfulness and purpose.  It resulted in fewer, but much better photographs that required far less post processing.  I slowed down considerably, and even though shooting with a DSLR, I approached my work much more like I was shooting with film.  I became not only more adept at managing the exposure triangle, but more importantly managing the creative triangle; the relationship between me, the photographer, my subjects and potential viewers.  For this modules WIPP, I had my viewers in mind when I went out to take photographs.  I was shooting in a way that would result in photographs that challenged my viewers imaginations, stimulated their memories, and sparked their emotions. I was looking to create ambiguity, moderate abstraction and to take a time and place that was know to me and make it into a space my viewer could inhabit and populate with their own narratives.

I know the considerable effort I have put into these first 15 months of this course, but I must acknowledge the support of my peers within the Cromarty cohort.  The extraordinary give and take have been an invaluable contributor to the quality of learning for all of us.  I also particularly valued the interchange with the tutors and module leader in Informing Contexts.  I found the discussion and support constructive and stimulating.

Finally, I believe I am in a very good place to move into FMP and am looking forward to the challenges the next six months have to offer.

Week 12 – Reflections on Finalising my Critical Review and Work in Progress Portfolio

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I began work on my Portfolio and Critical Review several weeks ahead of the deadlines for submissions and as a consequence completed the work well ahead of schedule. These are some of my thoughts now that I have completed and submitted that work.

Portfolio

While I made a lot of work during this module, I had decided early on what type of work I wanted to make and was therefore able to create photographs with a mindfulness and clarity of intention that I had not before achieved.  I took many more photos than ultimately ended up in the final edit and I frankly left some very good work out of the final submission.  However, one of the things I have learned through the first four modules of this MA is the need to create a visually consistent, coherent body of work for the WIPP submission.  I think I did not fully appreciate that fact in prior modules and as a consequence, the work submitted had a bit of a ‘this and that’ character that detracted slightly from the way the work was viewed.  I can attribute this failing in part to a lack of clarity in my intentions in the prior modules and the fact the project I was attempting to take on was massive and diverse.  It was too big to distil and attempting to ‘cover the waterfront’ I diluted the visual impact of my imagery; good as they were technically.

So for this module, I intentionally reduced the scope of what I was trying to include in the portfolio and was very disciplined in the editing process as I worked to get to a set of photos and videos that were consistent with my intentions and had a sufficiently consistent and harmonious thematic and visual character.  It was difficult initially to eliminate good photos and I went through several iterations before arriving at a final decision.  I did also choose to incorporate three video clips taken from the same vantage points as stills either before or after the videos in the sequence.  I had not done that before, but felt it important to realising my intentions and conveying some key contextual concepts about the dynamic and transient aspects of nature.

Another important decision in the editing process came when I realised the normal landscape format was not conveying the feeling I was trying to achieve with this body of work.  I have been resisting cropping in post-production for some time now and on the rare occasions that I did, I always retained the aspect ratio that I shot originally.  However, the landscape format was not constraining the image enough to evoke the response from a viewer I wanting to elicit.  As I experimented with cropping to square, the photos suddenly had much more impact.  Making them smaller, more constrained actually made them spatially bigger; more universal and more timeless.  It amplified the integrity of what was visible in the frame and in some cases created more ambiguity, but also added more mystery and intrigue as to what was just beyond the frame.  It was these things that I believe will result in the viewer becoming more engaged with the photographs.

Critical Review

I wrote the initial two drafts before I had really narrowed my portfolio selections sufficiently.  While not a waste of time by any means, the first drafts were not as focused as they needed to be.  It was only after bringing my WIPP to the near final edit state, that it became a much more straightforward process to write my Critical Review.  With the clarity of what I had chosen I was able to zero in on the clearest way to convey my intentions and determine which of my contextual references were indeed most relevant to the work I had completed.  I wanted the CR to be clear, concise, cogent, and coherent and most importantly to convey without any question that I had made this work with, and from, a critically informed position.  As I was finalising the CR I was able in parallel to make the final cuts for the WIPP so the two submissions were completely in sync and mutually supportive.

Final Thoughts

I read a great deal during this module and I had to be as discerning about contextual references as I was about photo selection.  I took much better notes as I was reading this term and, that proved helpful when recalling references, particularly on things I read early on in the module.  I intentionally did not read CRJs or CR submissions from students further on in the programme.  I felt quite confident that I could properly interpret the requirements of the assignments and the LOCs to create a document that met or exceeded the standards.  I wanted to do it on my own and not be tempted to follow someone else’s path, particularly not knowing whether their work was really good or just okay.

I also completed work early enough to seek input from trusted peers and tutors and I am appreciative of both groups.  While I didn’t get any huge redirects out of any of the reviews, the combination of little things and my own desire to write a very tight and focused CR that supported the choices I made in the WIPP drove me to a series of revisions that I am very satisfied result in a solid submission.

Week 9 – Reflections

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The guest lectures were especially good this week.  I found it really interesting and informative to here Liz and Addie from Elliot Halls talk about how they decide what to display, who to represent and how to strategically approach building a relationship with a gallery.  I was not surprised to hear how competitive the marketplace is, but I was a bit surprised at how patient one might need to be to attract the attention of the gallery world and how many years Elliot Halls had taken before deciding to bring someone in.  Not sure I have enough years left to hope to find my way in to a gallery.

I was also very intrigued by the work of Lewis Bush.  I was familiar with some of his work, but it was really good to hear him talk about it and the incredible depth of research he went to on each project.  It was also fascinating to see how far afield from photography he went to do research and stimulate inspiration.  While the subject matter he deals with is quite different than mine, what I found of interest was the similarity in the idea of revealing things “hidden in plain sight”.  This was true to a degree in Metropole, but even more so in Shadows of the State.  Many people go through life not seeing, really seeing, things that surround them every day.  My work on this course has focused on showing places to people in ways they had not been shown or in ways people had not seen for themselves.

Current Work

I managed to despite still running a fever to get out for a couple hours of shooting on Friday.  It completely exhausted me, but I came back with a range of good and not so good work.  My approach to work has definitely changed since the beginning of the course.  I now work virtually exclusively in Manual settings and there is a much more deliberate attempt to get the framing and exposure completely right in the camera.  I also go out with specific intentions of what I want to shoot.  I had been wanting to get better images of some of the dune slacks as well as some additional video in the glades and slacks to show the movement.  I was successful yesterday with the video as it was very windy, and the results were very dynamic in contrast to the stills.  I was not satisfied with the still images in the slacks between the wind disrupting the stillness of the water and the time of day, I felt the photos were soulless and uninteresting visually and they did not evoke any emotion.   A few of the detail shots did work out as did the glade work.

no post-0800
Dune Slack (unsuccessful as it fails to spark emotion or interest)

 

no post-0814
Dune Slack (successful intriguing above above, on and below the surface)

Coursework Reflections

On this week’s coursework and whether photography is art.  As I have written in a prior post, I think it is a something of a ridiculous question when it is phrased that way.  Is all photography art? Of course it is not. As Merry Foresta noted in the foreword to Photography Changes Everything, “most of the billions of pictures that are taken with cameras every year are made for purposes that have nothing to do with art.  They are made for quite specific reasons, some exalted and some mundane, and their value is dependent on how well they serve a purpose that, more often than not, has nothing to do with photography itself.” (Heiferman, 2012: 7)

Can photography be art? Again of course it can, though that judgement lies in the hands of the consumers and promoters, rather than with the photographer.  I cite as a relevant current example the documentary work of Don McCullin who never considered himself an artist, nor was his work made with the thought of it being viewed as art, and yet it sits today on the walls of the Tate Modern.  The art world and art buyers are fickle.  Sometimes its trendy, sometimes its rare, and sometimes there is just no accounting for taste.

References

HEIFERMAN, Marvin. 2012. Photography Changes Everything. First. New York: Aperture.

 

Week 5 Reflections – Labels and Gazes

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I have been enjoying the journey of this MA course and how it has helped me to discover a new language for thinking about and talking about the world around me.  I have spent many hours reading the luminaries of photographic critical theory and trying to find relevance to my world and my work.  I have found myself far better able to examine others’ images and articulate something more than whether I liked it or not.

I have enjoyed the deconstruction of my own practice as I search for what things are essential to me and my work, though I have found this aspect perhaps the most difficult part of the course. And I think it is more difficult in part because it is a moving target and hopefully always will be to a degree.  Humans are transient beings in an ever-changing world.  I am an unfinished project that I hope is only completed when I take my last breath.  I seek to know myself and my place in the world well enough to recognise, appreciate and enjoy the subtle evolution and variations in myself and the world around me and greet them with joy.

I have been struck how these new tools in my kit bag have found their way in and out of other aspects of my life.  For example, I have written before and speak frequently about my aversion to labels.  The following scene from Season 2 Episode 2 of the Netflix production Sense8 seemed a perfect example.  I have edited it slightly for clarity.

“I just want to understand.” 

“No, you’re not trying to understand anything because labels are the opposite of understanding.

What does courage have to do with the colour of a man’s skin” 

“Who are you?“

“Who am I? – Do you mean – where I’m from? What I one day might become? What I do? What I’ve done? What I dream? Do you mean what you see? What I’ve seen? What I fear What I one day might become? Do you mean who I love? What I’ve lost? – Do you mean what I’ve lost? “ 

“Who am I?  I guess who I am is, exactly the same as who you are; not better than, not less than. Because there is no one who has been or will ever be exactly the same as either you or me.”

Sontag wrote:

“Photography implies that we know about the world if we accept it as the camera records it.  But this is the opposite of understanding, which starts from not accepting the world as it looks. (ed. Or as someone else has labelled it) All possibility of understanding is rooted in the ability to say no.  Strictly speaking, one never understands anything from a photograph.” (Sontag, 1977: 23)

When we choose to, or allow someone else to label a person, a photograph or a photographer using a broad brush we abdicate our responsibility to consider the worth of the person as an individual or the work on the specific merits of each piece.  There are not hard and fast lines and we cannot come to any real understanding if we continue to draw them or accept someone else’s drawing of them.

In another Sense8 scene from Season 2 Episode 1 illustrates the point that the reading of an image is not only largely in the hands (mind) of the viewer but serves as a window into the psyche of the viewer as his or her reading is greatly influenced by the filters, biases and cultural setting that viewer brings to the reading.

“Art is material. 

It is wed intractably to the real world, – bound by matter and matters.

– [phones beeping] – Art is political.

– [phone vibrates] Never more so than when insisting it is not.

Art is dialectic. 

It is enriched when shared and impoverished by ownership and commodification.

It is a language of seeing and being seen.[low chuckles, murmurs]

Uh, would someone care to fill me in on the joke here?

Yes.Totally.[laughter] Is this art, Mr. Fuentes? [low chuckles]

Is it art, Mr. Valles? What do you think? Why don’t you tell us what you see?

Looks like shit-packer porn.[low murmurs, chuckles]

“Shit-packer porn.” That is; That is very interesting. Yeah, because this is where the relationship between subject and object reverses. The proverbial shoe shifting to the other foot. And what was seen now reveals the seer. Because the eyes of the beholder find not just beauty where they want, but also shallowness, ugliness, confusion, prejudice. Which is to say the beholder will always see what they want to see, suggesting that what you, Mr. Valles, want to see is in fact shit-packer porn. [class chuckling] Whereas someone else, someone with a set of eyes capable of seeing beyond societal conventions, beyond their defining biases, such a beholder might see an image of two men caught in an act of pleasure. Erotic to be sure, but also vulnerable. Neither aware of the camera. Both of them connected to the moment, to each other. To love. And as I have suggested before in this class art is love made public.” 

While I have been unable to find the one definitive reference that I feel reasonably sure I have seen or heard somewhere, it is safe to say that before this course this scene would have passed me by with not a second thought.  There are elements of Foucault, Berger, Brazin, Lacan, Silverman’s Screen Theory and others that are alluded to in the prior scene.

I do subscribe to the concept of the triangle of between the Subject – Photographer – Viewer, but I also believe the balance of power dynamic between them shifts during the life cycle of a photograph and is greatly influenced by contextual clues found in accompanying text, or in where the work is seen.  I also believe the power shifts predominantly to the viewer once the photograph leaves the direct control of the photographer and that regardless of the context most viewers will see only what their cultural and personal conditioning will allow them to see.

References

SONTAG, Susan. 1977. On Photography. Hammondsworth, UK: Penguin Books Ltd.

Sense8, Season 2, Episodes 1 and 2. 2015. Netflix

 

Week 4 – Into the Image World: Reflections

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I quite understand the use of advertising images to illustrate the points in this week’s material.  However, despite the fact that we are surrounded by these images daily, I found this rather difficult because for many years I have ignored them completely.  They have become noise to me.  I rarely watch them on the TV as I don’t watch much broadcast programming and it is only when I am in the market for something particular will I look for info on the product, and even then, I bypass the advert to look at the product itself in more detail.  I cannot say I am never swayed to look at something when I happen to see a clever ad, but it is quite rare.

Ads rarely capture my attention, but photos in an editorial context often do.  An example from the 21 February 2019 edition of the Wall Street Journal is below.  Self-admitted gearhead and former racing driver that I am and despite not generally being all that fond of Ferrari, this one stopped me in my tracks.

Ferrari Pista -WSJ 21Feb19

GIMME A BRAKE The flashy Pista can go from 0-62 mph in 2.85 seconds and return to a dead stop in 93.5 feet. Photo: Ferrari

And I find it an interesting photograph to try to analyse as part of this week’s exercise.  The denoted (signified) image is quite simple to discern.  The bright red image of a $450,000 super car with extraordinarily beautiful lines is rather impossible to miss on the tarmac.  Judging by the tire marks on the tarmac the car was repositioned at least a couple of times to get the angle of the light reflecting off the bodywork just right; the car was carefully posed. There is nothing to distract from this signifier and its placement along the diagonal further clarifies its dominance.

The connoted image is surprising more complex for such a visually simple and uncluttered image.  In concert with the caption it is clear this is very high-performance automobile borrowing aerodynamics and other design elements from F1 and GTP racing platforms.  There is surface beauty to be sure, but it is more than skin deep as this car is loaded with performance technology.  I suspect that the principal, though not exclusive, demographic Ferrari appeal to are men 30-55 with plenty of discretionary spending power.  This is a wealthy person’s toy, perhaps a symbol of status, and something that screams ‘look at me’ for the owner that wants to be noticed everywhere they go.

An oppositional view might be something along the lines of who needs a $450,000 car that can do 211 mph that hasn’t room in the boot for hardly an overnight bag.  It might be the red colour or the racing stripe that seem pretentious, or that Ferrari are notoriously difficult and expensive to maintain. Or it might be that a car such as this must use a tremendous amount of fuel and is therefore environmentally irresponsible.  It is absolutely not the car for someone who does not wish to advertise their wealth or someone in need of practical transportation.

I am a bit fuzzier on the negotiated view.  Perhaps it is along the lines of; it is a well-executed photograph of a beautiful, but altogether impractical and for most unattainable car.  In other words, wow that is nice, but…

 

Week 4 – Contextualising Work

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Since the beginning of the MA course, the Cromarty Cohort has had a very active and useful WhatsApp group that has been a great source of support and discussion.  I have learned perhaps as much from the interactions with my cohort as I have from the formal coursework.  It has been a place of inspiration, mutual support, friendship and quite often sanity preserving humour.  I truly treasure these relationships.

Quite often, we have had extraordinary debates on wide ranging topics and just as often we lean on each other for advice, critique and the knowledge that comes with experience.  I have not been particularly good yet at critiquing my own work and I attribute that in part to not yet being entirely certain of what I want to do.  But the course, my independent reading, and the interactions with my peers has given me a new base of knowledge, a new vocabulary, and a basis for applying the critical thinking skills honed over 40 + years of working to begin better contextualising photographic work.

What follows is a discussion with Mick Yates about his work currently underway in Cambodia.  We had talked a length before the trip about his goals and concerns.  After his second day of shooting he posted a couple of photos from the day’s work on our WhatsApp forum.  With Mick’s permission I am posting the main bits of our ‘conversation’ which proved useful for us both I think.  I find it easier to have this discussion about someone else’s work than my own, but I know when it is time to talk about mine, I know my cohort will be there for me.  In the meantime, it was enlightening to talk about Mick’s challenges all the while realising I needed to be thinking, not the same things, but in the same way.

At the very outset there were a few comments by others in the cohort, and there were a few asides that were not directly relevant to the thread that have been edited to enhance clarity.  What follows though is the main conversation between Mick and me in its entirety.   The photographs are all Mick’s work taken with an infrared camera today in Cambodia.

[01:49, 2/16/2019] Yates, Mick: May they rest peacefully

Yates 2019 IR_01
Mick Yates Feb 2019

[01:49, 2/16/2019] Yates, Mick: Cheoung Ek, the Killing Fields

Yates 2019 IR_02
Mick Yates Feb 2019

[06:42, 2/16/2019] Yates, Mick: Too pretty?

[08:42, 2/16/2019] Ashley Rose: It depends on whether your story is about the genocide or really about the people who survived it and what Cambodia is today.  Are the Killing Fields sources of hope that horror can be overcome, or are they an ever present pall of death that no one in Cambodia can ever escape? These may not be the right questions, and they are certainly not the only questions, but I believe they may be the kind of questions you need to be asking before you exhaust yourself physically and emotionally taking photos that you that either do not meet your needs or actually work against them.

[08:43, 2/16/2019] Yates, Mick: Very fair

[08:44, 2/16/2019] Yates, Mick: I think it does depend on the audience. In Cambodia, it must be about hope. But in the West, whilst it is hope, it’s also fundamental education, with all the horror that entails

[08:54, 2/16/2019] Ashley Rose: It is hard to see horror in any of the landscapes you have taken.  Nature has taken it back, covered it up and erased it from the possibility of discovery by anyone who hasn’t been through what happened there.  There is horror inn the museums.  You would perhaps have to go Jo Hedwig Teeuwisseor or Sergey Larenkov to convey what happened there to Western audiences

[08:54, 2/16/2019] Yates, Mick: I don’t know them – will look. Thanks

[08:55, 2/16/2019] Yates, Mick: I really don’t like the Museum stuff

Yates 2019 IR_03
Mick Yates Feb 2019

[08:56, 2/16/2019] Yates, Mick: Boring ..

[08:56, 2/16/2019] Yates, Mick: Nature never gave it up so reclaiming is easy. Humans are just a temporary thing

[08:57, 2/16/2019] Ashley Rose: Agree and it has all been seen before.  Larenkov and Teeuwisseor both did Ghosts of WWII series superimposing old images on modern scenes to show what happened there

[08:57, 2/16/2019] Yates, Mick: Though interesting how IR takes out shades and details

[09:00, 2/16/2019] Yates, Mick: I think there may be more horror in the negatives

[09:00, 2/16/2019] Yates, Mick: The problem of aftermath

[09:07, 2/16/2019] Yates, Mick: Even Sophie Ristelhueber, who I love and who ‘invented’ aftermath is almost forensic. No emotion

[09:11, 2/16/2019] Ashley Rose: Yes, and that begs the question, where is Cambodia now, and where does what happened factor into today.  Every day people who were there are dying.  More and more of the population knows of it only second hand.  Is the point to get past it or is the point to hang on to it or is the point that there are forces that want to shackle the younger generations to their inescapable past? Is there something in the Cambodian psyche that suggests this could happen again at any moment or is this something that people think can never happen again?  Is there a shift in mindset between Sarath’s generation and his grandchildren’s? Is this an aftermath story that is far enough removed from the event that the horror can be treated lightly, almost in passing as you focus on Cambodia today, or are there dark forces still at work to whom the past is closely tied that are getting in the way of the current generations progress and escape from the past?  So many questions, but all key to framing the story and guiding your shooting.

[09:11, 2/16/2019] Yates, Mick: All good Qs, Ash. Very good

[09:14, 2/16/2019] Yates, Mick: I guess a similar logic might apply to the Holocaust. Maybe we should all just forget it?

[09:27, 2/16/2019] Ashley Rose: I did not mean to suggest the past should be forgotten, but in fact many have.  It begs the question of where is the balance between remembering the past and how it affected where we are today and dwelling in it? Does that balance shift over time?   I am not naïve enough to think genocide can’t happen again, but I would like also to think that it couldn’t go on for the length of time the Nazis did without the world knowing and reacting.

[09:28, 2/16/2019] Yates, Mick: Ironically, as I have discovered in reading, the world actually did know, but the UK and US governments chose not to believe the Soviet/Polish propaganda. Another story

[09:29, 2/16/2019] Yates, Mick: Your point stands, though

[09:30, 2/16/2019] Yates, Mick: One of the Cambodian challenges is that there was no ‘other’ so it was like the Chinese Cultural Revolution

[09:31, 2/16/2019] Yates, Mick: Self-Genocide in fact

[09:35, 2/16/2019] Ashley Rose: And I can’t imagine that isn’t a bit frightening at least to the older folk who experienced it.  The thought that your neighbour was involved in slaughtering thousands for no good reason.  Zealots and ideologues are scary people.  And that undercurrent is resurfacing in many places in the world.  Does this suggest a cautionary tale?  Does the current flavour of KR harbour any allusions of the past?

[09:37, 2/16/2019] Yates, Mick: Agree. The vast majority just want to move on. But as I have discovered time and again, a simple conversation leads to all kinds of memories and questions. Every day I am here

[09:38, 2/16/2019] Yates, Mick: Maybe I am the one that needs to let this go

[09:43, 2/16/2019] Ashley Rose: Is there an element of outsider gaze tied to your history that affects your current perceptions and has the fact that you had a wee break from the heavy involvement meant that you missed a subtle shift in where Cambodia is today compared to say 15 years ago?  Not meant to be in any way disrespectful, just a question.

[09:48, 2/16/2019] Yates, Mick: It’s a great question. I think that when we started this, 20 years ago, there was def an outsider gaze. I mean, we paid for schools that the country couldn’t afford. Imperial, what? But we never saw it that way ofc. We did try to learn and be part of the whole, though it was hard.

Now, I find myself deeper. When the people I am working with no longer know all the answers – and in fact find new things because of this activity, it’s become even more personal.

Is there a shift here? Sadly, no. This is all buried and has been for a long time. The closest parallel is China I think

[09:52, 2/16/2019] Ashley Rose: Is that parallel to China in some way an angle from which to approach the story?  And if so, why does that similarity exist? Is it political, deeper cultural similarities, etc?  Sorry if I am droning on too long.  I am sure you must be exhausted, and my day is only beginning.  Lots to do before I get on a plane Monday morning.

[09:55, 2/16/2019] Yates, Mick: The parallel is the Cultural Revolution – The KR executed it on steroids. The disconnect is that Deng Xiaoping saw that prosperity for all was key – and consigned the Gang of Four to the trash can of history. Neither have really happened here, so no release

[09:56, 2/16/2019] Yates, Mick: No closure and a very uncertain future in other words

[09:59, 2/16/2019] Ashley Rose: And that perhaps is the heart of the story and how today is affected by the past. That comparison to China may be useful as a foil to show how Cambodia has become mired.

[10:03, 2/16/2019] Yates, Mick: Well, yes, though this is an MA not a PhD

[10:03, 2/16/2019] Yates, Mick: Not making light of your comment – it’s totally right

[10:37, 2/16/2019] Ashley Rose: And it is a practical degree not a dissertation project.

[10:37, 2/16/2019] Yates, Mick: Also true

 

Thank you to Mick for the conversation, and for permission to post it and his work to my CRJ.  This is merely one example in a year’s worth of great conversations, debates, and discussion between us that has made my experience on the MA all the richer.

Week 3 Reflections – Images as Constructions

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I honestly do not know why I feel the need to argue this point.  Perhaps it is because I do not view myself as an “Art Photographer” and that I work very hard to capture the world around me as accurately and faithfully as I can minimising behind the camera manipulations.  Do I take the image (Sontag) or do I make the image?  It is possible to do both with photography and I think there is a difference.  A painter clearly makes their image and Cindy Sherman, Cecil Beaton elaborately create and stage the scene they are to photograph and so in that regard are much closer to a painter than a strict documentary photographer.  Martha Rosler begins with indexical photographs and then behind the camera heavily manipulates the original image to “construct” the political statement she wishes to convey.  She too is more like a painter.  These photographers create tableaus.

Every photographer makes choices, selections of what, where, how and when to photograph, but those selections are first and foremost from real things that are in front of the photographer’s camera.  One cannot photograph what is not there, or as Barthes put it “the necessarily real thing which has been placed before the lens, without which there would be no photograph.” (Barthes, 1981: 76) Certainly this is equally true for all photographers whether they come to the scene accepting it as it is, or if they choose to rearrange “what was there” before taking the photograph.  And this is where I feel the need to challenge the assertion that every photograph is a construction, or at least challenge the way the term is used.

Every photograph involves choice and selection, but I argue that is different than construction.  Just because I cast my gaze and that of my camera in a particular direction, I did not “construct” what is in front of me.  Only when I purposefully rearrange the scene by moving objects or posing people have I constructed the scene that will become my image.

To argue that the “camera” coverts the light from the four-dimensional scene into a two-dimensional representation of that scene and therefore the image is made, and while true, it is not something over which the photographer has direct control and is in my view a lazy argument.  By painting all photographs with that unnecessarily broad brush it fails to recognise the spectrum or continuum of photographic practice and creates a false equivalency between a Jeff Wall or Cindy Sherman and Edward Burtynsky or Lynsey Addario. While this spectrum has no distinct boundaries at any given point on the continuum, I think it useful to acknowledge that there are differences in practice without having to necessarily assign a label or pigeonhole any photographer.

I do believe it is valuable to consider the spectrum of photographies in more nuanced way.  Obviously, the grey areas in between are what create the difficulty and there are no hard and fast rules of distinction with regard to how much constitutes a truly constructed image versus one that is intended to be indexical.  It is usually the case that the most highly constructed images and studio portraits for example make no pretentions of being anything other than constructed and it is fairly obvious to even the most casual of observers.  With the advent of digital imaging, it is less obvious on the documentary end of the spectrum and there are plenty of documented cases of photographers and publications surreptitiously altering or intentionally choosing an out of context moment or vantage point to support a particular political or editorial point of view.

With the majority of my work out of doors and either landscape, wildlife, or action shots, I can with absolute certainty tell you the scenes in front of my camera that comprise my images are not constructed.  I acknowledge the argument that because the light that enters the cameras lens is transformed and ultimately results in something made there are those that would consider that a construction.  As well, any post processing is fundamentally an action that in some way alters that which the film or sensor captured and could be argued as constructive in nature. But I continue to hold that, as long as I am trying to remain faithful to that which was in front of my camera and not alter it in any substantive or significant way I am not constructing.  I am taking, with the tools at my disposal and all their inherent capabilities and limitations, a representation of what I saw, not making something that did not exist before I arrived or a representation of something that was not there. This to me is the essential distinction in what constitutes a truly “constructed” photograph.

The following image for instance involved me carrying 20kg kit several miles and sitting in the same place for about 5 hours observing the tens of thousands of nesting seabirds as well as predators like the ravens.  I took over 500 photos with 600mm and 840mm focal lengths.  I didn’t direct the pair of ravens to the Razorbill nest they raided, but my knowledge of bird behaviour and observational acuity allowed me to see the situation developing and record it in its entirety.  This is only one shot in a sequence.  Now I suppose one could argue the final product, since it was cropped slightly and minor adjustments to the tonal quality were made in Lightroom, was constructed, but again I don’t find that distinction nuanced enough, and it creates a false equivalency with staged or posed images.

Raven-5626

Raven Burglar – Ashley Rose

Another example would be the following photograph of a 9-day old colt out for its first run around the arena with its mother.  This photo required knowledge of how horses move and what positions are most telling about a horse’s innate ability and potential as a world class dressage horse.  This is an extraordinary example of an “uphill canter” and shows how well this young colt gets his rear legs under him and how light he is in the front.  Once again other than some minor cropping and tonal adjustment, nothing about this photo was constructed in my view.  Like the previous photo, planning, patience and a bit of luck were involved.

Falcon-6153

Falcon Caledonia at 9 days old – Ashley Rose

I know this notion of constructed versus not constructed is one that will continue to spark debate, probably for as long as photography exists.  It is complicated further by the ease in which digital photography can be manipulated and frankly weaponised.  And perhaps in the end the discussion is moot because photography has gone from the paragon of “objectivity”, to the perhaps the most suspect and mistrusted of the visual media.  Divisive politics, tabloid journalism and an erosion of civility and humanity caused and furthered by the highly selective use of photographic weapons taints the broader world of Photography.  It is an unfortunate reality of our time.