Part Three - Putting yourself in the picture: Project One - Autobiographical self-portraiture: Exercise - Reflection

I'm struggling now... I don't find self-portraiture that interesting, unless there is a surreal or fantastic element, as with Francesca Woodman.  I am 100% more interested in the world I inhabit, rather than the portrayal of my own being, and I think for me, I would only really be interested in self-portraiture, if I knew first-hand the author or artist and cared personally about their life...So I'm afraid to say that I don't feel very motivated to do this exercise.  Apologies now to blog readers if this seems a negative and unimaginative post.

The idea of making work about myself doesn't fill me with dread, I don't mind being on the other side of the lens for souvenir/joke shots, and my life isn't boring either.  I just don't have anything to say about myself.  I want to explore the world, not my own identity (perhaps that is my identity!).  I'm more of a "get on with it" person; now I tend not to self-indulge in deep emotional torment - I have done in the past, but today I have a much more of a "live in the moment" and "look forwards" approach to life, rather than to dwell on stuff that I can't change.  I don't even use my own photo for my Facebook profile (because I prefer to find something funny to use - I like to laugh)!  It's not about denial of existence, or lack of self-value, I just literally don't have anything to say.  At the moment.  Perhaps I'm lucky?

But... onwards and upwards with the exercise, which is to reflect on the pieces of work discussed in this project, and do some further research.  I will however be brief!

The artists in question are:

• Francesca Woodman (see previous post) -portrayal of depression using humour to cope?
• Elinus Brotherus - work relating to failed IVF treatment
• Gillian Wearing - exploration of roles in family history

Elina Brotherus

When I started to research Brotherus, as is often the case now, I realised that I had seen "Le Nez de Monsieur Cheval" (image available from the artist's website) - I think in one of my many books... but also in an exhibition.  I don't quite understand this picture though...

I struggled to find information about Brotherus' work online. I can see by the email traffic from student blogs that I follow that I have missed an OCA artist's talk in Wapping, and although I might not like the photography, I do find it an interesting and learning experience to engage with other photographers (again..note to self..).  I have found a few big Scandinavian landscapes, where she is both nude and clothed in the shot.  I broadened my search to include the word "Annunciation" and found one image in the "Photography, Motherhood and Identity" exhibition at the Photographer's Gallery (and I also remembered seeing the OCA post about this).  The image in question shows a lost "Alice in Wonderland" type portrayal of Brotherus sitting on a sofa, pressing the remote cable release (resembling umbilical cord?).  Of course, knowing the background to the image of her failed treatment, this is very sad.  But I am genuinely struggling to persist with this research, I haven't had children myself (by choice), haven't had IVF, and can't relate to the experience.  I relate more to The Dad Project by Briony Campbell - see previous post, as this is a family relationship I experience (thankfully my dad is still alive, although ancient).

Gillian Wearing

Again, this exploration of roles within a family is something I would never engage in.  I just get on with it.  I looked at some of the images (in Google Images) and found them a bit strange.  Unlike Brotherus and Woodman, Wearing seems to be putting masks on.  Is she hiding?  What is she hiding from?  I do have a copy of Family Frames: Photography, Narrative and Post-memory by Marianne Hirsch, which I have read but not written about, which also explores the topic of family roles in photography, but I have never felt relevant to my photography.  The photographs I take of my family are souvenir shots.  But I have never wanted to document or explore family relationships in this way.  What I found lots more interesting, and which I have seen before, was Wearing's work on Signs featured in The Guardian online.  I found this interesting because as a society we all have a tendency to make assumptions about people based on their appearance: quick judgements without taking account of any context.  In Signs, Wearing effectively broke down those barriers to enable people to say what they are really thinking, for example the policeman, who is supposed to brave and ready to deal with confrontation, asking for "Help".  In this project, she is actually demasking as opposed to masking, and I find this more intriguing.

The exercise asks us to think about some questions about these pieces of work (note Wearing refers to the family masks work - not the signs work):

• How do these images make you feel: Woodman - intrigued; Brotherus - sympathetic; Wearing - disinterested
• Do you think there's an element of narcissism or self-indulgence in focusing on your own identity in this way?  Woodman - no - I think this is a coping mechanism; Brotherus - initially no - again a coping mechanism, but how long did the project last - there may come a point where it would start to become self-indulgent?  Wearing - no - it's an exploration of relationships and dynamics
• What's the significance of Brotherus's nakedness?  I have no idea, not something I've ever wanted to do.  Is it to get rid of everything - to declutter the mind and body to expose the inner being?  Is it a reference to a newly born child?  Is it to do with lost innocence, awakening, the realisation that your life will never be the same - like a rebirth?
• Can such images work for an outsider without accompanying text?  For Woodman, yes, these are interesting images in their own right.  Brotherus and Wearing, no, I think you need the text to understand the images.  They have specific context, meaning, story, and research elements.
• Do you think any of these artists are also addressing wider issues beyond the purely personal?  I think Wearing is addressing the issue of role and identity being linked to appearance - she is questioning whether by changing appearance we can step into someone else's position.  Woodman, I don't know - I think she is more primarily dealing with her own pain.  Brotherus - yes I think she is - she is tackling the whole subject of grief, and how hard it is not being a mother (if that is what you want), and documenting the impact of such an invasive process.  Would people go through with IVF if they knew already what it is like?

Websites

• Elina Brotherus available from http://www.elinabrotherus.com/news/ [accessed 1 February 2015]
• Home Truths at WeAreOCA available from http://weareoca.com/photography/home-truths/ [accessed 1 February 2015]
• Photography, Motherhood and Identity at The Photographer's Gallery available from http://thephotographersgallery.org.uk/photography-motherhood-and-identity [accessed 1 February 2015]
• Private lines: Gillian Wearing's signs in pictures available from http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2012/mar/04/gillian-wearing-signs-in-pictures [accessed 1 February 2015]

Part Two - Narrative: Project One - Telling a story: Exercise - Linear storylines

The exercise asks us to compare Briony Campbell's The Dad Project with Eugene Smith's Country Doctor article published in LIFE magazine, both examples of photo essays telling a linear story from an insider's point of view. 

I found these two articles very different from several aspects.  First of all, Country Doctor seemed to me to be very matter-of-fact, yes you get a sense of struggle from the images, but it didn't move me in the same way that The Dad Project, a very personal account, did, which had me reaching for the Kleenex way before I'd got to the end. 

The structure of the stories are also different.  The course materials describe Country Doctor as a linear photo essay, but is it?  The story presented is a chronicle shot over 23 days, but each photo represents a discrete event.  The events themselves are linked by the presence of the doctor and the subject matter, but this is not a sequential story.  Each photograph could be viewed individually, and the order that the images are presented in  could be changed.  It is not a beginning, middle and end narrative.  In addition, the text that accompanies the Country Doctor essay is not essential.  It's useful and interesting, but the photographs also speak for themselves; you can figure out what is going on without needing the text.  And the essay is essentially an account of the work of one individual and his relationship with a multitude of people that come and go in his life.  The photographs represent moments in his life (and the lives of his subjects), but there is no continuation of story.

In contrast, The Dad Project, is firstly a very linear account: it has an introduction, starting point, middle and end.  It is also an essay, illustrated by photographs, which support and increase the sense of emotion.  The essay, written in the first person, describes the relationship between two people, Campbell and her father, towards the end of her father's life.  It documents his illness, her way of dealing with it and coming to terms with the loss of her dad.  And in contrast to the Country Doctor, you could read the narrative without the photographs, and still get a deep insight into Campbell's emotions, but with the images somehow she really captures the emotions she feels.  She photographs the "unphotographable": love, pain, grief, upholding values, suffering, moments of optimism and death itself.

In terms of actual photography, the two bodies of work are obviously very different.  Country Doctor is captured in black and white with clear focus on elements e.g. angle of shooting, structure of composition, an attempt to make the doctor look heroic in the photographs.  Campbell's images are gentle and considered, colour, and truthful.

Campbell writes that the story is of an "ending without an ending": I think that by this she means three things:

1. Reference to the concept of life after death
2. The fact that when you lose someone close you never stop grieving, more that you learn to live with it and to give it space in your life, but it is a never ending process.  So I think she is referring to the first ending as the ending of her father's suffering, but that it has no ending because she will always love him and miss him
3. Through her project, she has kept his memory alive and communicated it to a wide audience.  Thus the story continues.

References:

• Smith, W. E. (1948) Country Doctor. LIFE [online] available from http://life.time.com/history/life-classic-eugene-smiths-country-doctor/#1 [accessed 5 October 2014]
• Campbell, B. (2011) The Dad Project available [online] available from http://www.brionycampbell.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/The_Dad_Project_Briony_Campbell.pdf [accessed 5 October 2014]

Assignment Two - Preparation - Photographing the unseen

Sunday 5 October

The assignment asks us to reflect on what kinds of subjects might be seen as un-photographable and how we might go about portraying them using photography (around seven ideas), with the objective of developing one of those ideas into a visually consistent series of 7-10 images.  Here are my reflections:

1. The five senses: sight, hearing, taste, touch, smell.  You could photograph somebody actively performing a sense, e.g. a person sniffing something or walking with headphones on, but you could not photograph the sensation of experiencing the sense.  For instance, you would not be able to photograph what something smells like - you can only photograph the thing itself and hope that the viewer can imagine the smell.
2. Emotions: happiness, sadness.  You could photograph somebody's expression and hope that their face shows emotion, but can you really capture what they are feeling?  Can a photographer capture their own emotions?  In addition, the emotion conveyed also depends on the interpretation of the viewer.  For instance, I could capture a desolate landscape with mist and a lot of negative space, which one person might interpret as me feeling sad and isolated, but in actual fact, I would feel happy in such a scene, so it's relative.  The Dad Project by Briony Campbell is a very poignant example of a piece of work that has captured strong emotions in photography.
3. Anticipation: how would you capture anticipation?  You would have to set a scene so that it was obvious what was about to happen next?  How would you show photographically what you are anticipating?
4. Fear: you could capture fear by the expression in somebody's face, but can you really capture fear that you as a photographer are experiencing?  How would you show your own sense of dread, sickness, shakes?
5. Dreams: dreams are a unique and subconscious experience - each person's dreams are individual, personal and not seen by other people.  They could however be reconstructed in photography as a narrative, but I don't think you'd be able to just go out and photograph a dream, you'd have to stage a scene and be creative, possibly even surreal.
6. Needs: hunger, thirst.  Again, you could capture another person's hunger or thirst, but not your own.  You'd have to photograph things that conveyed the concepts of hunger and thirst.
7. Wonder: how do you capture the wonder?  Is it seeing something amazing for the very first time?  Could it also be applied to something sinister?  Sure you can photograph the thing or the scene itself, but how do you capture the reaction of wonder.  Is it excitement (or even trepidation) in response to a situation?  Is it more ambiguous than that?  Is it a state of confusion?

For Assignment Two, I am going to attempt the 7th idea, which I hope to execute in Varanasi in India.  Having never been to India before, I really don't know what to expect.  Sure I've seen other people's photographs, but how do I capture the concept of wonder, in a way that the viewer understands that from the output?

This will be an unplanned exercise, as the images will need to reflect spontaneity to convey the excitement and discovery.  I will be participating in an intensive seven-day street photography workshop with Maciej Dakowicz, so there is also the element of excitement of working with a photography hero and learning new techniques.  I have no idea how this is going to turn out as a finished piece of work!  All I know is that it will be in colour :)

Sunday 23 November

Once I'd completed all the exercises and set about finalising my assignment submission, I wondered about the inclusion of text.  The Assignment instructions did not ask for text or captions, and my feedback from Assignment One was that I did not need the captions in that particular context.  BUT a lot of the work that we did for Part Two was about text and the relationship between text and image.  Would it be an error to omit text on that basis?  Did I want to guide the viewer into a reaction or did I want the photos to speak for themselves?

I searched other students' blogs for ideas, and came across Malcolm Burton.  He did use text to accompany his images for this assignment, but I felt that for my purposes it would give too much away and not leave enough ambiguity.

That decided, I realised that the images needed to speak for themselves and that I wanted amiguity.  Wonder by its very definition is ambiguous as it is not about certainty, so I therefore needed to preserve that concept.  The whole subject of wonder is interpretative and I did not to guide the reaction to individual photographs but more to take the reader on a journey - like peeling an onion - I wanted to strip off layers.  What I did do though was to include a brief introduction to set the scene by attempting a meaning of the word itself.  Fingers crossed.....

In terms of executing the assignment, it happened as I'd predicted: completely right-brained.  I did not plan these photographs, they were selected from my overall portfolio produced in Varanasi during the workshop I took part in.  I did have the subject matter in the back of my mind while I was there but I was not consciously shooting for this assignment.  I then selected the photographs afterwards using the usual star system in my software for editing.  The pictures I selected for this assignment are the best of those I considered illustrated the theme metaphorically and I also aimed for similar colours and tones (cool, apart from the orange in the first one chosen to punctuate the start of the journey and the wonder of every new day).  I put them together in a sequence of what you can image is the start of a positive experience of wonder, through to confusion, looking in to another scene from the outside (but not really being able to see what's going on), followed by a sense of alarm, and then on to something more sinister, ending with possible fear.

See here for my submission.

References:

• Campbell, B. (2011) The Dad Project [online] available from http://www.brionycampbell.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/The_Dad_Project_Briony_Campbell.pdf [accessed 11 October 2014]

Websites:

• Maciej Dakowicz available from http://www.maciejdakowicz.com/ [accessed 5 October 2014]
• Burton, M. (2014) Context and Narrative Learning Blog: Assignment Two - time goes faster as you get older available from http://malsblog322.wordpress.com/2014/11/01/assignment-2-photographing-the-unseen/ [accessed 23 November 2014]