Andy Warhol and William S. Burroughs

More delights at the Photographer's Gallery...

Andy Warhol: Photographs 1976 - 1987
How great to see some of Warhol's black and white photographs in front of you.

While photographic imagery permeated his work as  a painter, filmmaker and colourist, it seems that it was only later in his life that he began to focus on photography in its own right. This coincided with a developing acquaintance with the compact cameras of the 1970s. Apparently he carried a camera with him most of the time and often took more than 36 black and white frames a day. His subjects ranged from the  everyday detail of the street, interiors , signage and cityscapes to people and celebrity parties.

I was delighted to seem some examples of his interest in serial  and repeated imagery..a series of 'stitched' photographs. These  show identical images arranged in grid form and stitched together with a sewing machine.

Turning to the photography of William S. Burroughs ...


Here I have to confess my ignorance of this, I now understand, very influential twentieth century author American novelist, essayist, 'spoken word performer' and painter. The exhibition notes indicate that Burroughs' work as a photographer is rarely acknowledged but this doesn't make me feel any better.

'Taking shots: the Photography of William S. Burroughs is the first exhibition worldwide to focus on his 'vast photographic oeuvre and offer important insights into his creative processes'.

The images above are very small black and white photos reminiscent of those in my parent's family album taken in the late fifties. These and other similar ones strike me as aide memoires for work in progress or at the pre or current planning process...

One series did have significance for me ..

 



The above is part of the Series : What Was , What Isn't - 'these photographs record the before and after of a sexual encounter.The bed becomes a scene in which action, unseen, leaves traces which are then concealed.

Burroughs was concerned with the relation between experience, absence, and presence, and how the camera could evoke something that no longer exists - but also how photographs work to influence and construct memories and desires'. This resonated with me as it is at the very heart of what I am exploring through my personal project

David Lynch : the Factory Photographs

I can never give up a trip to the Photographer's Gallery when in London and this time I struck lucky with three exhibitions.
David lynch's exhibition featured black and white interiors and exteriors of industrial structures taken at various locations including London, Germany, Poland, New York and New Jersey.

I am always attracted by black and white photography and these had the lure of Lynch's cinematic style as well.

His images are dark and brooding depicting the decay of man-made structures, hinting at a bygone industrial age.

My partner asked me what made these images special i.e. warranting such an exhibition - were they here through real merit or because of the person who took the images or a combination of both. It was a good question. I liked his work -there were some images I personally found eyecatching; they drew my eye through the composition,use of light to reflect mood and enhance design. Whether they were 'special' is I guess in the eye of the beholder...but I think  deserving of a wider audience which of course an exhibition can bring even to a well known name...  

Sharpening for print

I took the print below as the starting point for this exercise and then made three more versions with increasing degrees of sharpening i.e. 30, 50 and the most aggressive at 130.
The idea here was to compare the different versions with each other and the on screen versions to see how they differed.



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Even using a magnifying glass on the prints and 100% online magnification, the differences were not that clear to me. Maybe the choice of print was not an ideal one to use for this exercise or maybe the whole thing was complicated by my varifocal glasses and lack of a decent magnifying glass.That said, what did I discover?

Well, looking at the area of the eyes in the prints, I could see a thickening or distortion of detail as the degree of sharpening increased until at 130 it looked very 'rough and ready'.
The material of the fleece on the shoulder also became more textured too. I could not easily compare print with screen images but looking just at the online versions confirmed the same changes. On balance, I think the 30 level of sharpening would probably be best for this particular image but I can see how this would always differ according to image and the desired outcome... 

Using family snapshots - The Memory Box

I came across 'The Memory Box' posting on a website called enlighteningthoughts.word.com  when doing a search for articles on memory and photography. The posting in its entirety can be found at http://goo.gl/IL08HD and is well worth a visit.

The author looks at the reconstruction of memory through photographic image  represented by the image of their deceased father. This struck a chord with me in the sense that my personal project is all about creating memory using the means of photography. Where I will be creating new images to 'conjure' up traces of my dead father, here the idea is to recompose an image from a series of existing ones. The second video sets out to 'decompose' the images, highlighting the impact of family photos on the memory. 

The Memory Box sets out to transfigure 'the abstract theme of memory through a physical installation'. To quote the blog ' The memory is never entirely lost and family snapshots are a means of recalling buried past traces.' 

While I am not sure that I agree that memory is never entirely lost as we know for individuals it does disintegrate with age and illness, I am using family snapshots  to as a starting point for my project. The very fact that I could not find very many snapshots, any visual traces of my father to reinforce my memories of him has led me to create new photographic images ..to  present a 'trace' of him that I can share..

The author believes that human memory narrates family snapshots, clarifying the idea that family snapshots always need a reader who remembers and narrates'. I am aiming to create memories of my father that do not need someone who remembers to turn narrator for others.. 

Personal Project Proposal

Leading the way ...in the footsteps of Dad

PERSONAL PROJECT PROPOSAL

AIM: To explore the concept of memory via photography and my interest in family history.

WHY?

My mother in law was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s recently and this brought back memories of my own personal experience of coping with my mother’s senile dementia. I remember her looking at a collection of photographs that I had brought together to help trigger her memories of family times past. Studying a picture of my father taken before he died twenty years earlier, she commented that she hardly remembered him and what he looked like. But she did recognise him.

I also remembered at the time, colleagues who used to conduct reminiscence sessions for elderly people in care homes telling me how the sense of smell triggered memories much longer than visual impressions. Had we had more time together I would have brought together an ‘album’ of scents and smells to trigger our conversations of things past.

Leading the way ...in the footsteps of Dad

When my father died nearly thirty years ago very suddenly, we were left with our own personal memories and the shared photographic memory captured in family photo albums. More recently  have been researching my family history, I realised that there was very little trace of my father other than a few black and white images from the early days of his marriage and fading colour ‘snaps’ taken over the years to record family events rather than my father.

Is it possible to ‘conjure’ up memories of my Dad through photographic images that trigger more than a visual memory? How to conjure up the memory of someone not there? There are a number of issues, for example:

-          Finding traces left behind that could be used for this project i.e. physical evidence of having made an impact

-          Using places / people/ objects that trigger personal memories that have no meaning to an outsider

-          Achieving images that give a ‘sense’ of a person to those who never knew them

OUTCOME

A collection of images displayed as a book which give a sense of who my Dad was - images on a personal theme drawn from my interest in family history.

Ideally these photographs will also create a visual ‘memory’ that can be experienced by ‘outsiders’ and maybe trigger other   family memories of their own.

HOW?

Certain themes instantly come to mind when I think of my father. These are my starting point. I intend to explore the possibility of a central theme/focus running through each image and how reproducing past memory as a past image or reworked in today’s world and lifestyle might work in the context of the outcome that I am trying to achieve.

PROJECT PLAN

1) Shooting script

Themes to be explored

1.      Memory - here and now or referenced by old photographs

·         Shadow on the wall?

2.      Family – father  ( died in 1922 –no extant photograph but sibling- step sister still alive )

·         Portraits?

3.      Workplace – greengrocer/ nursery man/ gardener

·         Revisit a black and white photo of my Dad taken in a greengrocer’s shop by taking the same kind of image today using a willing greengrocer in same pose?

·         Smell of hot sun in greenhouses full or ripening tomatoes?

·         Autumn colour of chrysanthemums (Dad grew these commercially as well as tomatoes)?

4.      Wartime  - RAF / Army ( Burma ) –memorabilia

5.      Character – artistic / creative/ introspective

·         The artist /sketching trips?

6.      My childhood memories – cigar smoke, Satsumas, Christmas?

7.      Sense of place - where does he fit in?

·         Referencing his father – war memorials/ commemoration

The images will be colour or monochrome as appropriate to the intended outcome and likely to be a mix of representational/ still life/ interpretative / photo journalistic approaches  again dependent on the best way to achieve a particular interpretation.

2) Work plan (March –April 2014)

Research  

·         Reading re concept of memory / trace / photographs

·         Family image research

·         Locations for photo shoot

             Shooting schedule   March 2014

Week 1   (10-16)

·         Outdoor shoot:

o   Workplace   Portsmouth

o   Character     Bosham

·         Indoor shoot:

o    Childhood memories

 

Week 2   (17-23) 

·         Outdoor shoot:

o   Workplace   Portsmouth  

o   Character     Bosham

o   Family & Sense of place Worthing

·         Indoor shoot: 

o   Childhood memories/Memory /Wartime

 

Week 3   (24- 31)

·         Outdoor shoot:

o   Workplace   Portsmouth  

o   Character    Bosham

o   Sense of place 

o   Character

·         Indoor shoot:

o   Wartime / Memory

 

Editing / processing images  Weeks 1-4

10 March – 6 April

Photo book preparation   Weeks 5-7

6 – 27 April

Project submission Week 8   (April 28-30)

 

 

 

 

 

Tutor's feedback on Assignment 4

Feedback on assignment

I like the thinking behind your book cover design and although I think it would possibly work in a commercial situation, I think that you would have done better had you done even more work on it to create that surreal image that you were aiming for.  In the end I think that you were wise to choose the CD cover as your preferred submission for this assignment.  You could do worse than give some more thought as to why this book cover is less than 100% successful. 

 

Combining a colour and a monochrome image takes a lot of thinking about to make it work.  Often a little de-saturation of the colours (not too much) is needed and perhaps in this case a slight over-sizing of the modern elements would help.  I am not sure about the blue colour and it is certainly better in the duller version seen on the word document than the rather brighter version in the jpeg but blue, pink and yellow is perhaps not the most sympathetic combination.  I don’t think I would have erased the creases but perhaps placed the image behind the Windolene and Marigolds as though it were in a frame (I wouldn’t have tried to simulate one in any way) on the table wioth them...or something like that.

 

 

For me the CD cover is much more successful.  I don’t think that there is any sort of ethical problem with manipulation in this which is a totally fictional and creative use of the imagery.  However there might be a different view if one were saying that the image was the actual truth...though I am not sure just how far I personally take this.  I do not assume that a photograph tell the actual and un-mediated fact, far less the truth.  Truth is almost always relative and mediated so as long as the image makes the point that the maker intends it to I have no problem with manipulations up to the point where the maker tells us one thing in the caption and shows us another in the image.  Given that an image is at best a copy and not the actuality it can never be real and in any case Post-modernist thinking questioned the nature of reality very effectively for me.  It is a tricky area but I do believe that many people, particularly those with a vested interest in Social Documentary photography, have unreal expectations of photography, its power to change things and its ability to capture actuality in a disinterested way.

I think that all you have done with this works well and the final result captures the atmosphere that you were aiming at.

I assume that the slight halo around the foreground figure is an artefact caused by the Magic Extractor, and I think that leaving it in has worked in your advantage.  If on the other hand you have added it (the halo that is) then I think it was very much the right thing to do as it adds another layer of unreality to an otherwise realistic image.  I think this is well done.

The reading I have suggested is all rather theoretical but I think the issues raised by this assignment and by your intentions for the next suggest that a good dose of theory will not be out of place!  Don’t worry if some of it (much of it?) seems rather obscure at first reading, just take from it what you can, things often don’t become clear till much later on, as you are making work at a later date and you may not always agree with the sentiments expressed on the readings either, the point is to expose you to ideas not to suggest that they are written in stone.

 

Learning Logs/Critical essays

I enjoy looking at your log and I am pleased to see that your trip to the antipodes has been a success.

I think that the navigation is better and the assessors will not have too much trouble finding what they are looking for.

 

 

 

 

Peter Jarvis - Australian photographer

I wanted to come back to Pete Jarver as I was very much drawn to his work which I came across by accident in Kuranda, NT, Australia when trying to get away from the tropical downpour outside. Disappointingly for the Gallery Manager his work was financially out of my league but she didn't hold this against me being quite happy to get out the last of a limited edition for me to look at more closely.

Many of his images had the technical detail displayed alongside which I find particularly interesting - more so this time given I had seen some of the dramatic landscapes that he favoured and had tried to take photographs myself. Think I was somewhat reassured when told that he often took over two months to get the image he was looking for..I can understand that given the way light can impact dramatically on the architecture and sculpture of the Outback landscapes.  I found it very frustrating to see what I wanted to capture at Uluru but knowing that the light was not yet right to bring out the dramatic lines of the eroded rock and that the coach was waiting to take us away. Definitely a question of going off to take photos on your own...

Peter Jarver ( 1953-2003) was completely self-taught award winning photographer who travelled Australia for 20 years capturing the landscape. His work can be found at http://www.peterjarver.com . Some might say it is very commercial in its appearance and maybe some of the images have that look or maybe are 'packaged' that way but I liked many of his interior landscape shots which look deceptively simple but are obviously not.

Australian photographic interlude - January/ February 2014

Just back from travelling across Australia for three weeks with my camera and 47 other 'tourists' and trying to reflect on what I saw and experienced. I took my usual DLSR  with me as I wanted to capture the 'feel' of the country as best I could, though I soon realised that travelling on a scheduled tour with a large group often worked against being able to digest and photograph what I was seeing effectively. That said, it was good fun and enjoyable to have a go so to speak.  



P 632 : Uluru at sunset

It's not hard to be attracted by the colour, texture and 'architectural structure of the landscape around Alice Springs 

  

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 Or the rain forest...

 

 

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Interestingly, in Kuranda,the rainforest area near Cairns I came across the work of Peter Jarver, a self taught Australian photographer ( of whom more later) , which was beautiful and all the more fascinating as I had had a go at trying to capture some of the landscape that he so expertly and creatively captured. Talking to the 'curator' of the gallery it was not surprising to learn that some of the final images had taken two or three months to achieve, shot in large format with a view camera and tripod. 


But my eye was also drawn by city landscapes in Melbourne and Sydney and by the amazing street art in the narrow Melbourne lanes close to our hotel. A real visual feast!

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My partner and I also took time out to explore Yoko Ono's exhibition 'War is over! If you want it ' at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Sydney:




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I'll come back to this exhibition in a later blog and to the Australian modern art that also interested me.