Blog, Identity and Place 2020-21

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Quotes - I&P milestones — Asg. 1 - Part 1

1st Jul 2020

This blog tracks the activities and progress of my BA in Photography with OCA. It started in 2018 with Expressing your vision, then Context and Narrative and now this.

Latest

Printing - Workflow - Referencing - Why photograph? - Zine - Subject / Object - Punctum - UTP - Diversity

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1st July

↓ down to July 2021

Housekeeping

This is a copy of the 1st July post in the C&N blog.

While awaiting a tutorial on C&N Asg.5, it's time to prepare for I&P. The checklist is:

• tidy up all the C&N pages - spellcheck and remove the text-ready bits at the bottom of each
• write a whole new simplified Wordpress website for C&N Final Assessment ✓ complete
  • then learn how to add that as a sub-domain to BAPhot ✓ complete
• decide what to submit for FinAss and do it - ready to go (as at 23Sep20) here
• when Asg.5 feedback arrives:
  • rework it ✓
  • finish and publish the zine ✓ done, here
• set up the pages for I&P ✓. Note that this will be easier because with a separate C&N component there's no need to holdover the switch until FinAss. Up and running.
• apply for I&P, having already started work on the course extract and planned the assignments. soon (as at 23Sep20)

Eyebrow, July 2020

30th July

Begins

Work is well under way on the transfer from C&N to I&P and I have started work on the Preamble. I will probably apply for the course in a few weeks.

I expect to print and bind the C&N zine this week and then try to identify and produce the C&N FinAss submission.

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↓ down to August 2021

5th August

Progress

I have finished the Preamble and Square Mile II and am starting Part 1.

6th August ↑ ↓

Striking photographs - Olga Karlovac

Given my wish to produce clear representations of what things look like, I wouldn't normally expect to be drawn to such images, but an article in this month's B&W Photography † featured Olga Karlovac's new(ish) book, the disarray. Her technique is described as using slow shutter speeds to generate motion blur and photographing in bad weather with rain on her lens. The camera used for the book is a Ricoh GR II (fixed focal length lens approx. 28mm equivalent, no viewfinder).

The effect is impressionistic. It reminds me, in a way, of a photographer I came across while researching self portraits for C&N, Daniel Castonguay - see LPE blog.

I cannot see me attempting to make images anything like these, but I would like to try some time. I think I would try the effect in colour at first, perhaps desaturated. I remember being astonished decades ago by a photograph by John Hedgecoe — I had several of his books and will have a hunt. There was one completely out of focus and, I think, taken in Paris without a lens. I always wanted to play with this effect. The closest I have come is a picture in the British Museum for EyV.

† Pill, S. (2020) Tales of Disarray. Black+White Photography. Issue no. 243, pp.28-35.

11th August

Evaluating photographs

I have gathered together my various jottings on the matter and the cmat instructions for Exc. 1.1 and created a workable approach to apply. We'll see.

↑ quotes ↓

Dawoud Bey

From Dawoud Bey (further details here)

I discourage my students from talking about photographing as "shooting" or "capturing" or "taking," because it's really about trying to figure out a way to describe with the camera, to make something. Dawoud Bey, on Photographing People and Communities, p.29

See LPE Asg.4.

19th August

Referencing

My reluctance to embrace Harvard Referencing for anything other than assignment submissions has been stated not infrequently (see Nov 2018 and Dec 2019) but the time has come to accept it. I think the final conversion occurred when assembling the C&N zine and the Wordpress sites for C&N and EyV — it would be easier and neater to assemble a single, central set of references and therefore standardisation is essential. I have started retrofitting Harvard to all I&P material and will stick to Harvard thereafter with one exception, references to the course material as, for example I&P p.18 will continue except in assignments. And I'll use ibid. too.

[17Sep] There's a great resource on referencing here from the Limerick Institute of Technology - backup.

21st August

Alternatives

I spent some time today considering alternative courses to I&P — firstly because I have only just realised (or been reminded) that there are alternatives; secondly because I am really interested in trying photgravure and I enjoyed making the C&N zine so much.

I&P is the pure photography course for #3 but there are others - Moving Image 1: Setting the Scene / Moving Image 1: An Introduction to Film Culture / Visual Studies 1: Understanding Visual Culture / Book Design 1: Creative Book Design / Visual Studies 1: Creative Arts Today / Writing 1: Writing Skills / Graphic Design 1: Core Concepts / Visual Skills 1: Visual Dynamics / Printmaking 1: Introduction to Printmaking.

There have been a couple of gravure articles lately that have sparked my interest. Neither are to hand at the moment (one was in B&W Phot, the other I think in the L'Oeil de la Photographie  daily briefing). Part 1 of the Printmaking course is here. Unfortunately you can't get by on photography alone, you need some practical graphical skills so that excludes me. Most importantly, it does no go anywhere near gravure. Here's an interesting post, Photopolymer printing on a budget

The Book Design course (Part 1 here) is superficially attractive but I'm not sure I would get much out of it having already done the zine. I'm happy with what I have learned and ready to tackle the next book.

I might look at some of the others.

29th August

▲ Stained Glass ▼

I blogged during C&N about my front room windows probably being the last thing I would photograph. Here they are on another fine day, 36th August.

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↑ quotes ↓

Richard Avedon

[8Sep] Surface, aspirations to photograph beneath, and the possibilities thereof are covered in the I&P Preamble. Dawoud Bey paraphrases Richard Avedon on the matter and here's a direct quote.

My photographs don't go below the surface. They don't go below anything. They're readings of what's on the surface. Avedon in Henry Carroll's Photographers on Photography (2018, p.80)

↓ down to September 2021

19th September

The photograph

In August I toyed with definitions of various aspects of photography, see here. Last night I wrote,

a photograph is a copy of what a moment in time somewhere looked like
to the extent that, through processing, it is not, to that extent it is no longer a photograph † me

† I was aiming to channel Lincoln here, 'Whatever differs from this, to the extent of the difference, is no democracy' (1858). There is scope for getting closer.

[21Sep] This echoes a quote I encountered a few days later in an essay by Michael Mitchell, Verum Factum, in Thirteen essays on photography (1990),

… I want to show the unborn what it once looked like. I want them to see what we once saw and what we thought was significant. Michael Mitchell, Verum Factum, in Thirteen essays on photography (1990),

Canadian Museum of Contemporary Photography (1990) Thirteen essays on photography. Chicago: University of Chicago Press

The full paragraph is worth noting and there are several other goodies from Mitchell I'll put on a page if time allows.
Searching for any other pieces, I note that he died in May this year at 76. Obit

This continued with the thought that the act of ph. consists of subject and treatment. Or perhaps a subject and a series of treatments (taking ‡, processing, display etc.).

And that historically, film has always had two arms reality (documentary and news) and fantasy (the movies).

Stills ph. began with realism and fantasy
realism included portrait, landscape, still life, scientific
fantasy began with tableau (e.g. Cameron) and collage (Rejlander).

‡ or making in Bey's terms

↑ quotes ↓

Robert Graham

From Here's Me! or The Subject in The Picture in Thirteen essays on photography (1990) p.4.

The transformation by photography is the metamorphosis of a subject into an object Robert Graham in Here's Me! or The Subject in The Picture, 1990

He goes on to examine how the subject might reclaim or roll back the process of objectification through various types of discourse between the photographer and the photographee.

[8Nov21] This is completely wrong, of course, what is in front of the lens is the object and the photographer may choose to turn it into a subject. More here (IP blog) and here (UTP).

[spellchecked to here]

Window 22Sep20

22nd Sep

SG Window

This morning, see 29th August. and 10th March.

25th September

I'm just about to apply for the course. Here's an update on a previous post elsewhere.

EyV
Summer 20 - 78, 72, 72, 68, 68, 66, 66, 65, 65, 63, 63, 62, 62, 62, 58, 55, 54, 53
Mar 20 - 50, 51, 52, 52, 53, 54, 58, 58, 61, 62, 64
Nov 19 - 42, 48, 53, 54, 54, 55, 67
Jul 19 - 50, 52, 52, 54, 54, 59, 60, 63, 65, 66, 67, 72
Mar 19 - 59, 62, 65, 65, 65

C&N
Summer 20 - 74, 70, 66, 60, 56, 55, 50, 0
Mar 20 - 53, 57, 58, 62, 62, 63, 65, 65
Nov 19 - 62, 63, 72, 73
Jul 19 - 0 (!), 46, 48, 51, 58, 62, 63, 63, 64, 65, 66, 70
Mar 19 - 54, 54, 55, 56, 56, 58, 61, 65, 65, 66, 68, 69, 72, 73, 85

I&P
Summer 20 - 72, 68, 64, 63, 58, 58, 5850, 47, 0
Mar 20 - 68, 62, 58, 50, 46, 43
Nov 19 - 72, 70, 68, 67, 65, 64, 63, 62, 61, 60, 60, 60, 52
Jul 19 - 64
Mar 19 - 73, 60, 58, 54, 53, 51

25-26th September

Assignments

While I'm waiting for my application to join the course, let's run through the assignments. Bearing in mind I only have part 1 of the course material at the moment, several of the assignments ask for the application of "what you've just learned", so there's guesswork in here.

1. The non-familiar
Five portraits of unknown local people
I have had no better ideas than charity shops triptych - exterior person on the till, pano of till and surrounds. The backup is similar groups of emporia - pubs, cafés etc. or the same ideas a little further afield. Save tattoo parlours for Asg.3.

2. Vice Versa
Five portraits interior and exterior. Same person or several
Either 5 of Mrs. B or August Sander derived, maybe workers - street cleaner, traffic warden etc.

3. Mirrors and Windows
Either photos of a group you are part of
or a local group you do not yet know.
I'm not in any local groups, so it's the window. I have often thought of offering my services to one or more tattoo parlours - that resembles a community.

4. Title?
7-10 pictures using course ideas, combining images and text.
That will have to wait - Part 4 is headed Image and text with sections Captions and titles / Memories and speech / Fictional texts

5. Title?
Part 5 is headed Removing the figure with sections Absence and signs of life and Places and spaces
This will have to wait but it promises the possibility of fewer people in the snaps.

Overall standards
I remain wedded to the idea of sticking with 6x7 and optional 6x14 panoramas. I still like borders.

26th September ↑ ↓

The realist∼abstract continuum

Many of the visual art forms manifest a dimension that spans a continuum from realism to abstract. There is a cusp on that continuum that is a sweet spot such as that occupied by Henry Moore in sculpture where some of his figures are evidently derived from the human, but only just so: of his contemporaries, Hepworth is usually at the far end of abstract and Epstein working a rich seam more towards the realist.

These came to mind this morning with the daily post from L'oeil de la photographie showing the work of Nasos Karabelas and Hélène Brugnes.

Karabelas, at the beginning of a long paragraph, says,

This series is the attempt to understand the functioning of sensations. To explore the space of emotions and the interaction between the forms of the image and the viewer. Nasos Karabelas

Brugnes says of her series,

The hyperrealistic image of a summer day on a Moroccan beach vanishes into a dreamlike abstraction in which only the idea of movement remains.Hélène Brugnes

The EXIF data for Brugnes' images have not been cleared. Although some of the lens data does not make sense, they were made on a Nikon D7000 and the shutter speeds were 1/10th, 1/15th, 1/15th, 1/8th.

I started writing about surrealism today too.

28th September

Why photograph?

On 16th May last, during C&N, I wrote,

To produce a visual representation of something that merits this attention in such a way as to do the subject justice. All these judgements are necessarily subjective and and the terms deliberately ambiguous. me 15th May 2020

Last night I shortened this to,

To make a visual expression of an interest. me 27th September 2020

I think I still might prefer the May version, although this has the advantage of brevity.

See also my w-i-p page on roles.

29th September

We're off

I paid for the course today.

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↓ down to October 2021

Lenswork #83

9th October

Progress

I am reprocessing Part 1 using the online version and inserting any new components. It will soon be time to venture out and take some photographs. My new tutor has emailed to arrange an online intro chat on 13th.

I came upon a fellow student yesterday who has a handsome site, a sound approach and even more books than I. I arrived there through his review of the Bill Jay, Lenswork Memorial edition — here's the link to Steve Middlehurst. Steve has reached a good compromise on referencing.

C&N zine

10th October

Also

I have send a copy of the C&N zine to my old tutor.

Having worked through the new version of I&P Part 1 and inserted the new bits into my notes that had been based on the freely available extract, I now need to complete the exercises and the assignment for Part 1. These comprise:
Exc 1.3 - Portraiture typology - I propose to photograph armed police
Exc 1.4 - Archival intervention - raid the family albums
Asg 1 - The non-familiar - photograph High Street charity shops, or alternative vendors in the case on non-cooperation.

Parliament 12Oct20

13th October

Exercise 1.3

To town yesterday for the first course-driven photo-outing since 14th May and the Lidl's checkout security camera for C&N Asg.3 (and even that was really shopping-driven).

The targets were armed police at Downing Street and outside Parliament for some Sander typology. I will try to repeat the exercise at Kings Crustation at some point, but now to Asg.1.

Asg.1

I had my inaugural chat with my new tutor today and we agreed a target date for Asg.1 of 6th December.

Demelza, 16th October

17th October

Asg.1

The assignment is going remarkably well. As I note on the development page, "I am surprised how willing, or even enthusiastic the participants are".

And I joined my first I&P online chat today, organised by Mark and with Peter and Zoe in attendance.

Lorna Blackburn
1920-2020
22nd March 2019

23rd October

Progress and the Virus image deficit

I have written Exc. 1.4 (though it remains too long) and called a halt on Exc. 1.3 which now joins the Crown Jewels as a virus image deficit case, see C&N.

Onward with Asg. 1.

25th October

Jo Spence

We encountered Spence in Part 1 with her method of analysing and evaluating portraits.

I hadn't realised what a fascinating and entertaining revolutionary character she was. I attended (digitally) a conference on Saturday, Let us now praise famous women and particularly enjoyed Patrizia Di Bello (Birkbeck) on Jo Spence as a writer, organiser & photographer. I believe a podcast will be made available and I will add a link.

I grabbed a few screens during the lecture and will start a Jo Spence page with those.

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1st November

Progress

Having found and drawn from the online recommended books page, I have revisited Typologists and I'm writing further on the subject.

I am still processing the photographs for Asg.1 and thinking what to write.

I have read Part 2 but not made notes yet.

And spending quite a lot of time creating my 2001 photo calendar.

Assessment Criteria

9th November

Progress

Here's the link, followed from the course introduction, to the current state of the Assessment Criteria — https://www.oca-student.com/resource-type/assessment-criteria/assessment-criteria-visual-arts-he5

Asg.1 is complete, leaving 3 weeks to fiddle with the wording and work out how to submit it, see draft introductory email:

Asg.1

Unusually, the first and second assignment briefs do not give a word limit for writing about the submissions. I’ll work with 500 as that is the limit for the remaining three.
I have not seen any guidance on sizes for digital submissions since EyV p.15 that specified,
1500 pixels along the longest edge
Adobe (1998) colour profile, RGB jpegs
This will be superseded by the 30 October email to students, OCA Learn Update: Assignment Submissions that stated, "Students who are part way through a unit [as at 2nd November] will be able to submit assignments through OCA Learn from the end of January 2021".  Asg.1

Exc.2-1 photographs have been taken, needs the text.

On with Part 2.

There's an I&P hangout on Friday evening. I have uploaded 3 pics, here's a link to the shared drive - https://drive.google.com/drive/u/1/folders/0AG7AVOTi1KRYUk9PVA.

13 November

Mirrors, windows and portraits

I&P Part 3 is titled Mirrors and Windows but I have not read it yet. I am working my way through Kozloff's Lone visions, crowded frames, at the moment and one of his comments, '[s]itters for portraits appear as people auditioning for parts in their own lives' triggered the thought that portraits provide a good example of Szarkowski's M&W — window portraits show what the sitter wants to enact; mirror portraits show what the snapper wants to describe; both are trumped by the baggage the viewer brings to their interpretation.
As Szarkowski noted, this is a spectrum: these labels should be assigned at the level of the individual photograph, not to the any photographer's work in general.

Rev. Ian Gow, Asg.2

24th November

Progress

It's been busy. Apart from completing the course reading on Part 2 and making a start on Part 3, I started Asg.2 yesterday and need to check with my tutor how he is expecting Asg.1 - that's now done.

A new initiative has been started to capture the contents of the many books I keep buying so that I can populate my text with snappy and pithy quotes. This began today in the Contents section. I started with one from Sz and three from Ewing. One of the Ewings from 2012 touts snappers in the Saatchi stable and Ewing wrote a witty introduction describing the land of photography, a 'world with continents, countries, extremely varied terrain, unsettled lands, over-populated areas, and boundaries that are vigorously contested'.

He defines the 'continent of Commercia', which includes the 'wealthiest Kingdom of Advertising' ruled by the Professionals. The inhabitants have little patience with
'the dour people of Documentaria' whose noblest tribe is the Photojournalists who have a 'deep faith in Truth'.
Both realms are 'united in their disdain of the Amateurs, who inhabit a continent so vast it has never been properly mapped, let alone explored. Anarchy reigns in Amateuria' inhabited by 'a savage folk' who believe that 'no rite or ceremony should go unrecorded, though the records are immediately lost or forgotten'.
In Artistica, a 'small continent on top of the world, a republic envied for its liberties', both Amateurs and Professionals are 'distinctly unwelcome'. The occupants squabble constantly over the name of the land and whether it should include the syllable 'Art'. Apart from internal rivalries, there is a constant threat from
Artcontemporanea, buying up choice tracts in Artistica and trying to run things.

And several correspondents are waiting for the results of C&N.

Fr. Brett Ward

30th November

Progress

I have completed two subjects for Asg.2 and today chased up two who didn't reply and written to six new candidates.

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Elliott Erwitt,
New York City, 1949
image from Anna Walker Skillman

3rd December

Striking photograph ↑ ↓

In an email from Anna Walker Skillman, Jackson Fine Art, Atlanta, regarding a splendid exhibition of Elliott Erwitt’s work.

5th December

Progress

Asg.1 submitted.

Rev. Steve Cook,
St Barnabas

7th December

Asg.2

A successful day out yesterday to photograph Rev. Steve Cook at St Barnabas. Score 3 of 5.

Police used baton charges against striking
workers in the Battle of George Square
image from The Times, 7 Dec 2020
and in turn from
the Hulton Archive / Getty

7th December

Glasgow, 1919

An interesting piece in The Times today that may prove to be of use in a future course. The story concerns Scottish exam papers and controversy whether 'repeating the myths' (Horne, 2020) should be rewarded with marks. That is interesting in itself, but even more fruitful is a pair of readers' comments,

What an apology for an article.
An opportunity to educate wasted. No wonder it's anonymous.
There were tanks in Glasgow on the day of the myth. In the area of the cattle market.
A coincidence or a response to the birth of the new Red Clydesiders ? The Riot Act was read in George Square on 31/01/1919.
At least 2 union men ended up in gaol. Manny Shinwell was one of them.
There's more. Kenny MacAskill has a book on the the incident in 1919. "CBR", The Times. 7 Dec

But Shinwell's account was close to fiction and the oft paraded picture of the tanks in the streets around George Square were of a fund raising event a year previous which raised £14 million. Peter Wright, The Times. 7 Dec

So 100 years after the event it is lost in the mists (and myths) of time.

Marc Horne (2020) Myths of workers’ uprising feature in teachers’ guide [online]. thetimes.co.uk. Available from https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/1571061e-3812-11eb-a4fe-454ae9b80c8b [Accessed 7 December 2020].

↑ quotes ↓

Joan Didion

From the camera i, a collection of photographers' self portraits

… however dutifully we record what we see around us, the common denominator of all we see is always, transparently, shamelessly, the implacable "I". Joan Didion

I don't agree, but it might prove useful.

[spellchecked to here]

62%

17th December

C&N result

A workmanlike 62% for C&N, up from 53% for EyV. Report here.

C&N Zine, draft

18th December

The charm of context

[19Dec] I'll develop this on a separate page.

I made a book of the course (C&N) last "year" and enjoyed it so much that I decided to do this every year. Bill Brandt pervaded my C&N and so it was straightforward to use him as a peg to hang the whole book on but I have been wondering what will be the backbone of the I&P booklet †. I might have found it this morning.

I came upon, by chance (while looking for the report on the November Assessment results), an OCA chat thread (Scottie, 2016) where a fine art student seeking feedback on his work from others wondered why photography students often began their responses by apologizing for their lack of expertise and agency in the matter.

My consequential thoughts delivered this —

Rodin Exhibition,
British Museum, 2018

The OCA course is about two things:
1. Taking photographs pertaining in some way to assignment briefs that manifest creativity and risk and writing 500, sometimes 1000 words explaining lucidly, articulately and informedly that they do those three things.
2. Learning to write perceptively about other peoples' (usually more-or-less famous ‡ other people) photographs.

The (possible) plan is to run the opening editorial along these lines and then try to weave it through or demonstrate it with the two or three essays and two or three photo-series that follow.

For the front page image, I might go with a snap from the 2018 British Museum Rodin Exhibition.

† My first thought involved the title A fair likeness and I bought a few peripheral books (a novel, a beginners' book on sculpture) to hunt for a way in.

‡ Bill Jay cautioned his students (2001) that fame, in the world of photography, is a relative matter — almost all 'famous' photographers are only famous to those with a keen interest in photography: those on the Clapham omnibus are unlikely to have heard of them.
and 'fame has absolutely nothing to do with merit, achievement, talent, contributions to society or culture, brilliance in a chosen field, lifetime dedication or haircut'.

Jay, B., (2001) 'How to be famous, sort of', in Sun in the blood of the cat. Tucson, Az.: Nazraeli Press, pp.27-32.

Scottie (2016) Do you need to be qualified to comment? [online]. oca-student.com. Available from https://www.oca-student.com/content/do-you-need-be-qualified-comment [Accessed 18 January 2020].

23rd December

Asg.1 feedback

This was received yesterday. It was reasonably positive and I am pleased with the outcome. I must learn and take care to express myself more carefully. What I intend as straightforward, unambiguous phrases turn out to be neither.

My tutor is setting assignment deadlines around two months apart which will mean Asg2-28Feb; Asg3-30Apr; Asg4-30Jun; Asg5-31Aug. That's ok, I'll just get on with the coursework and assignments, stick to that timetable, start the next course when the coursework is complete and all the outstanding assignments under way and submit I&P for assessment in, I guess, November. I will expect a lower mark than the 62% for C&N and hope for a higher mark than the 53% for EyV.

I wish there were course extracts for Level 2. The choice is 2 from • Landscape place and environment • Documentary - Fact & Fiction •Self and the Other • Digital Image and Culture.

31st December

No ego, just skills

This phrase was used in an article about Anna Meredith in the January 2021 edition of Sound on Sound, used by Jack Ross to describe the mixing engineer Marta Salogni — but that's not important right now. The point is it resonated with me regarding photographers and would probably apply to the Windows end of the MW Spectrum When my tutor described my Asg.1 submission as 'somewhat clichéd in that they give the viewer what is expected', I took that as more a compliment than a criticism. Whenever possible, I print the output (in Boots) and give a copy to the subject and I want the portrait to be acceptable to them. Giving people what they want is a life skill, see also my developing Theory of portraiture.

Stokes, Will (2021) Anna Meredith, composing and producing FIBS. Sound on Sound. Vol.36 Iss.3 (January 2021), pp.59-63.

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Hurlock and Darren, Asg.3

3rd January 2021

Progress

Asg.1 dusted - Asg.2 on hold with churches closed - Asg.3 started and going quite well, see my comments on the development page.

logo

7th January

Towards a descriptive and evaluative methodology

I've been thinking about the book of the course. This could be the title for the latest iteration of the methodology.

And about the next course. Assembling information here. 

Asg. 2

Asg.3

24th January

Assignments

Progress on two assignments.
On Asg.2, today was the first attempt at screengrabbing a known clergyperson from an online service.
And on Asg 3 progress in good on dogwalkers.

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Jack Welpott

1st February

Striking image

White Sands, New Mexico, 1974, Jack Welpott

3 February

Exercise 3.2

Exercise catchup

Before diving into the many P4 exercises, I need to finish off some from previous sections . I'll list them here then aim for one every day.

✓ Exc 1.1 Dawoud Bey's Sarah, done.
✓ Exc 1.2 Sander typology, done.
✓ Exc 1.3 Armed police, Virus image deficit, but call it done.
✓ Exc 1.4 too long, but call it done.

✓ Exc 2.1 Three portraits, done.
Exc 2.2 Covert portraits, started,VID, awaiting café reopening.
✓ Exc 2.3 Eat, Play, Poop, Sleep, done.
Exc 2.4 Overt portraits stuck ✘.

✓ Exc 3.1 M/W done.
✓ Exc 3.2 Medicals / fingerprints - done 20th Feb.
✓ Exc 3.3 marginalisation - done 15th Feb.
✓ Exc 3.4 Gaze - done, 3rd Feb.

Exc 4.1 Amnesty International - started.
Exc 4.2 Reflective Day - not started.
Exc 4.3 Storyboard - not started.
Exc 4.4 newspapers image and text - not started.
Exc 4.5 Image and Text - not started.

Exc 5.1 Still Life
Exc 5.2 Georges Perec
Exc 5.3 Your Journey

[15Feb] That all took rather longer than intended, but I covered a lot of ground in Exc 3.3.

It's now time to wrap up Asg.2 and get on with Asg.3 and Part 4. I have had my first Covid jab and so can venture to Greenwich Park for Ag.3 dogs after the coming weekend.

Constructed Realities
Michael A. Kohler (ed.)

16th February

Prejudice

It could be a passing fad triggered by my reading Baddiel’s Jews don’t count at the moment, but I have listed my relevant prejudices before getting into Exc. 4.4.

Sandy Skoglund

Michael A. Kohler's Constructed Realities has been on my wants list for some time and I have been intrigued by the front cover. L’Œil de la Photographie provided the answer today with a piece on Sandy Skoglund that states,

In the late 1970s Sandy Skoglund finally abandoned painting in favour of photography. This was fuelled by the artist’s interest in pop culture, kitsch aesthetics and her obsession with commercial photography. Skoglund was fascinated by the ‘sterile’ images that produced the image of the American Dream. She was particularly drawn to pictures of food in glossy magazines and catalogues. As Skoglund says, ‘I was amazed at how cleverly the advertisement manipulated the consumer’s mind.’ In the ‘Still Life’ series of photographs from 1978 the artist takes an ironic view of the strategies for creating advertising images. In her photographs the traditional food of the American middle-class is transformed into a decorative object or an optical illusion. Starting with the ‘Still Life’ series, food is one of the most importance themes in Skoglund’s work. According to her, this is the most universal language, understood by everyone: ‘After all, everyone eats,’ says the artist.
In 1980 Skoglund took one of her most famous photographs, ‘Radioactive Cats’, in which she depicted a post-apocalyptic scene of life after nuclear disaster. This image marked the beginning of her work with installations that she subsequently photographed. This unique combination of several art forms has made ‘Radioactive Cats’ a symbol of the tableau photography concept. At first glance it may seem that the frame was made using Photoshop, but in reality the bright green animals in the picture are sculptures that the artist personally sculpted from plaster clay. She made 25 life-size figures of cats especially for the photograph and placed them next to actors who performed pre-directed actions. ‘I feel that it is a hopeful message because the cats seem lively and able to keep on living,’ Skoglund explained in one of her interviews. ‘The role of the people in the scene is not clear. Their future is ambiguous, and this is intentional.’ L’Œil de la Photographie

And here are some of the pictures they showed.

There's another photographer this work reminds me of, but I just can't think of who, for now. That's why I must keep expanding the Photographers pages.

20th February

Asg.2

Now complete, due for submission at the end of Feb. I'll fiddle with the submission text for a while and send it in a few days early because there is a new system.

Rev. Steve Cook,
St Barnabas

26th February

Asg.2

Submitted today through the Learn system, my first use. An instructional document — and video.

Vernacular - Tar Beach

Regular readers will be aware of my liking of unpretentious archive vernacular projects. L'oeil de la photographie delivered details of a delightful new book today, Tar Beach by Susan Meiselas. First the title - Tar beach is not a phrase I had heard before but it is a known thing (there are other books with titles that include it): it's a lovely concept. derived from the urban tendency to sunbathe on flat roofs. That immediately brings to mind two things Alvarex Bravo's nude,The Good Reputation, Sleeping (La Buena Fama Durmiendo), 1938 - looking at it now, it's probably not a rooftop, but there is a wall so it might be urban.
And the Beatles farewell rooftop concert (Wikipedia) with the incomparable Billy Preston (How great thou art).

Back to the book,

There's another borderline vernacular item on order, Russian Self Portraits, David Attie. More on that later. Thanks to Graham Land Photography for that lead.

Petapixel / Instagram

Copyright - Koons and Tattoos

Two recent copyright stories, first from PetaPixel, Photographer Sues Kat Von D Over Miles Davis Tattoo, 'A photographer has filed a lawsuit against celebrity tattoo artist Kat Von D, accusing her of infringing on his copyright by using his photo of iconic jazz musician Miles Davis as a tattoo for a client.
Jeff Sedlik
b: ?
Instagram - no Wikipedia Los Angeles-based photographer Jeff Sedlik created the iconic portrait of Davis in 1989, and the photo was subsequently published in a cover story in JAZZIZ magazine in August of that year. Since then, it has been widely published in magazines around the world, and it was featured by LIFE magazine in a “Pictures of the Year” issue.'

And from TheArtNewspaper, Jeff Koons and Centre Pompidou lose appeal in Naf Naf copyright case—now other French museums could be in the firing line, 'The US artist Jeff Koons and the Centre Pompidou in Paris have lost an appeals case against the photographer Franck Davidovici, who first accused Koons in 2014 of plagiarising his well-known 1985 advertising campaign for the French fashion brand Naf Naf.
According to Emmanuel Beaud, the Paris-based lawyer who represents Koons, the decision could have far-reaching implications for other French museums who will now have a tough time deciding what appropriation art can and cannot be shown. Beaud told ArtNews: “We are disappointed because the French [court] did not apply the fair use principle,” adding: “French museums are going to be in a difficult position now.”
The Centre Pompidou included the work in question by Koons, a porcelain sculpture titled Fait d’Hiver (1989), in an exhibition in 2014. It was later removed by the Prada Foundation, which purchased the work for around $4.3m at Christie’s New York in 2007. The sculpture can no longer be shown in France.'

A warning on the linked images, they have not been censored, so do not click if you might be offended.

Koons has previous here, as the Guardian reported in 2017, Jeff Koons plagiarised French photographer for Naked sculpture,'The American artist Jeff Koons plagiarised a French photographer for one of his celebrated sculptures, Naked, a French court has ruled.
The judges decided the work, a porcelain sculpture of two naked children produced in 1988, had been copied from a 1975 postcard picture taken by photographer Jean-François Bauret called Enfants.'

Subject / Object

One of the first things I wrote on this site and on this course (as a whole) on 18th June 2018 was a list of my ambitions from it. They were modest: 1. a better technique and 2. to understand Subject and Object. A month later I added a 3rd, to establish a workflow.

I haven't really touched the page since. My technique has improved, I'm sure of that, not a great deal but to a satisfactory degree with more to come. I have established a workflow that is more effective and efficient and still improving, last formally defined during EyV Asg.5 and gradually refined since.

But the matter of subject and object remains untouched, despite the fact that I still think about it and usually check the indices of new books for any helpful suggestions, so far without success.

The reason we are here today is a last page article in the Winter 20-21 issue of the Contemporary Photography group of the RPS by Adrian Hough that is right on the money.

Photographers often speak about the subject of their photographs and the subject of other people's photographs. However, the stuff that we photograph is, according to grammar, not actually a subject at all. If I perform an action on something then I am the subject and the thing is an object. So when I photograph something, it is really the object of my photography and not the subject. That's why the lens furthest away from the eye in an optical instrument is termed the objective lens. Adrian Hough, Contemporary Photography, no. 82 p. 38

He goes on the draw the familiar distinction between photographs of and photographs about but fails to reach the clear conclusion that the 'of' category tend towards the objective end of the spectrum, with 'about' photographs at the subjective end and some way the subject/object distinction has come to be applied to the photographer who interprets the [insert new word here] in their way.

Under the various pejorative forms of gaze it is possible for the photographer to subject his [insert] to objectification so those words are of no further use.

As regards our new [insert] word or phrase, one thing we know for sure is that it will not be Weston and Szarkowski's the thing itself † because that was all about photographs of and we are now engaged in photographs about.

While this matter is being considered, we could use the word 'input' and consider the parallels to non-visual data processing where a program (or app or photographer) acquires data (chooses the input - I nearly said subject) and then processes it to produce output. It is said that computers are soulless and objective, but programs are (until recently) written by humans at the direction of other humans so there is a lot of subjectivity involved, even if this mostly comes down to limiting the capabilities of the process (a banking system will not tell you your weight or your horoscope). I'm drifting way off topic here, but my destination was to be that the old art vs. photography debate (long since decided by the venal acquisitiveness of dealers and galleries) used to rest on the passionate, subjective painter and the photographer using the mechanistic, objective camera: but photography in all its technological phases has always been about the subjective choices of the photographer and the subjective interpretations of the viewers.

To be continued.

[28Feb] I have noticed an existing blog quote from Sep '20', from Here's Me! or The Subject in The Picture in Thirteen essays on photography (1990) p.4.

The transformation by photography is the metamorphosis of a subject into an object Robert Graham in Here's Me! or The Subject in The Picture, 1990

He goes on to examine how the subject might reclaim or roll back the process of objectification through various types of discourse between the photographer and the photographee.

text

† As noted in the C&N blog, Weston wrote that,

The camera should be used for a recording of life, for rendering the very substance and quintessence of the thing itself, whether it be polished steel or palpitating flesh. Edward Weston

I do not yet have a citation for that. Szarkowski used the phrase in The photographer's eye as one of the five aspects of photographs, the others being the detail, the frame, time and vantage point. To be fair to Szarkowski, he did write that a photograph is not reality but it "evokes the tangible presence of reality … a simpler, more permanent, more clearly visible version of the plain fact" (p. 12). And, as noted in C&N Part 2, it is well worth reading Hurn & Jay's on being a photographer (2001, 3rd edn., pp. 32-3) on the matter. I could quote at length but let us just note, 'most photographers would do the world a favour by diminishing, not augmenting, the role of self and, as much as possible, emphasizing subject alone'.

[18Apr] A new revelation in Part 5:

Again I am clearly parking my tank on the photography of lawn but I had an insight this morning: while an individual photograph of a piece of litter, a grave ornament, a building or a sculpture may be (and usually is) a snap of that particular item, a series of photographs of littering events, or buildings of a specific genre becomes a project about a subject.
We have two birds with one rock here - the of/about dilemma and a piece of the subject/object conundrum — the individual images depict objects, the project concerns a subject.

Part 5

[30Apr] Barthes, writing about being photographed, comments, "I am neither subject nor object but a subject who feels he is becoming an object" (Camera Lucida s.5 p.10)

This needs a page of its own. [3Aug - here it is.]

Chris, 2nd November 2020

Chris

I photographed three folks on Eltham High Street for Exc. 2.1, including Chris the busker. We agreed that I would give him a print and I have been carrying one around in my bag for ages. Chris was in his usual spot yesterday and I had a chance to deliver at last. He was delighted and displayed it on his (modest) PA. I might give him another laminated copy if it's going to be used in that way.

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↑ quotes ↓

David Campany

From Campany's On Photographs, while describing Winogrand's Albuquerque, New Mexico, 1957

if a photograph compels, it is usually for its ambiguity David Campany On Photographs, p.42

and earlier, when discussing Stezaker's Pair I, 2001

IT IS IN THE NATURE OF IMAGES, all images, to misbehave and exceed meaning in ways that are anarchic, elusive, enigmatic and ambiguous. This is why images are so often accompanied by words that tame and stabilize them. Essentially, however, they remain wild, and therefore have always been a source of great fascination, and great suspicion. David Campany On Photographs, p.32

Window 10th March

10th March

Update and ▲ Stained Glass ▼

Little progress on Part 4 recently because I've been busy submitting Asg.2, for which there was decent feedback, and now writing essays for; photographing Asg.3 current name score 67); and I've even had some ideas for Asg.4 and Asg.5.

And, as regards the effects of the stained glass window, see also 22nd September. It begins to raise the question 'when is a window not a window?'.

img: PetaPixel

17th March

Ownership

PetaPixel reports an interesting case from the US [originally reported in the NYT],

A Massachusetts judge has dismissed a woman’s lawsuit claiming that she is the rightful owner of the images of an enslaved father and daughter and not Harvard, the New York Times reports. The judge cites common law that the content of an image cannot be used to claim ownership of that image, regardless of the subject.
In 2019, Tamara Lanier sued Harvard for possession of daguerreotypes claiming that she was descended from those depicted in the images and that the school had profited from the exploitation of the images. The photos, which were taken in 1850, depicted the two enslaved individuals named Renty and Delia stripped to their waist. The photos were part of a project commissioned by Louis Agassiz, a prominent Harvard professor and zoologist, who used them as scientific evidence in a discredited theory that Black people were inferior.
The images remained hidden in the Harvard museum until 1976 and are considered to be the earliest known photographs of American slaves. You can read more about this story here as well as a discussion of the topic further here.
Justice Camille F. Sarrouf of the Middlesex County Superior Court wrote that despite the “horrific circumstances” that the photos were taken in, because the two depicted did not own the images when they were taken, their descendent Lanier did not own them either. PetaPixel

Hartocollis, A. (2021) Judge Rules Images of Enslaved Are Property of Harvard, Not Descendant [online]. petapixel.com. Available from https://petapixel.com/2021/03/15/judge-rules-images-of-enslaved-are-property-of-harvard-not-descendant/ [Accessed 17 March 2021].

There's also a piece on photoethics that's worth a read. Andrew Molitor asserts that the interested parties / stakeholders / areas for consideration are the situation & subject — the uses — and the photograph itself. He concludes that the photographer has duties to the situation and subject which are attended to (or not) through making and the uses but not to the viewer; the viewer has duties too (he alludes to but does not state) in interpreting the image.

from Endemic Treasures, Fred Brashear

19th March

Fred Brashear

This appeared in this morning's L’Œil from a book review by Andy Romanoff of Michael Rababy's California Love – A Visual Mixtape. There's no shortage of arresting images and I have stashed them here because the L’Œil link will disappear tonight.

On his website, Brashear tells how he memorialised disappearing Joshua Trees by making paper from the felled beauties (with permission) and applying the images through 'a lift transfer process'.

That's dedication - If I was 40 years younger, I'd love to do that sort of thing but now I can only admire it.

[21Feb22] See the Eval for LPE Part 3.

from Petapixel

30th March

Another copyright decision.

Petapixel has reported,

A U.S. appeals court has ruled in favor of photographer Lynn Goldsmith in her copyright dispute over how Andy Warhol had used her portrait photo of Prince.
The New York-based 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Prince Series of artwork created by Warhol is not transformative, and therefore it violates Goldsmith’s copyright. The appeals court returned the case to a lower court for further action.
2nd Circuit Judge Gerard E. Lynch notes that “crucially, the Prince Series retains the essential elements of the Goldsmith Photograph without significantly adding to or altering those elements.” … The court used the four statutory fair-use factors set forth in 17 U.S.C. § 107 to come to its decision:
1. The Prince Series was transformative as Goldsmith’s photo shows Prince “not a comfortable person,” the Prince Series shows the singer as an “iconic, larger-than-life figure.”
2. The court accepted that the Goldsmith photo was creative and unpublished, which is in her favor. However, this was “of limited importance because the Prince Series works are transformative works.”
3. In creating the Prince Series, Warhol “removed nearly all [of] the [Goldsmith] [P]hotograph’s protectable elements.”
4. The Prince Series works “are not market substitutes that have harmed – or have the potential to harm – Goldsmith.” …
You can read the full ruling for yourself here. Phil Mistry, Petapixel, 30 March 2021

Mistry, P. (2021) Photographer Wins Copyright Battle Over Warhol’s Use of Her Photo [online]. petapixel.com. Available from https://petapixel.com/2021/03/29/photographer-wins-copyright-battle-over-warhols-use-of-her-photo/ [Accessed 30 March 2021].

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Moon, 30th March

3rd April

Progress

Part 4 just completed and Part 5 just about to begin.

A pretty daytime moon from a few days ago.

I&P p.92

4th April

Not a mug

Paul Hill has a habit (so he says) of beginning his courses by showing a picture of a beverage mug and asking his students, "what is this?"

The correct answer, rarely given, is "a photograph of a mug", most definitely not "it is a mug". This leads nicely into pretty much any discussion of photography you might care to have. It all derives, of course, from Magritte's Ceci n'est pas une pipe (1929) that is printed large on page 92 of the I&P course book (see right) and the agenda usually then moves to Duchamp's 1917 Fountain (Urinal) which challenged the hallowed concept of the fine arts and eventually (when combined with the venal acquisitiveness of galleries and dealers) led to the inclusion of photography in that pantheon.

But that is not why we are here today. The cmat quotes Magritte as saying

The famous pipe. How people reproached me for it! And yet, could you stuff my pipe? No, it's just a representation, is it not? So if I had written on my picture "This is a pipe", I'd have been lying! Magritte, quoted in I&P p.92.

A photograph is flat, two-dimensional — in Stephen Shore's terms, 'an illusion of a window on to the world' (2010 p.10) You couldn't put anything in that pipe and smoke it because it is not a pipe, any more than you could drink tea from Hill's photograph of a mug.

The logic seems incontrovertible but when Paul Hill made that point on an online course I attended last month, the thought stayed with me and I knew that it was not that simple.

Today Berggren's Embalmed Time (2020) arrived and, when directed to the bibliography noticed a citation for an essay by Sarah Parsons, Sontag's Lament (freely available online). Parsons discusses Sontag's first encounter, age 12, with photographs of concentration camps and the profound effect that it had, described in On Photography (1977, p.20). This experience seemed to configure Sontag's largely adverse (or, perhaps, wary) reaction to photographs for the rest of her life. Parsons goes on to consider an earlier passage from On Photography where Sontag describes how certain photographs "can abet desire in the most direct, utilitarian way—as when someone collects photographs of anonymous examples of the desirable as an aid to masturbation" (p.16).

And that crystallised my thoughts on Magritte's Pipe and Hill's Mug. While paintings and photographs of those utilitarian objects have no practical purpose (other than potential aesthetic or intellectual stimulation), if images of that which one finds sexually arousing can result in actual sexual arousal, and may therefore be collected for that specific purpose, then some of the ’reality’ of the original object must be vested in the photograph through some alchemy of the brain. You can’t smoke Magritte's Pipe and a smoker probably would not gain any direct satisfaction from looking at images of tobacco-based products, but a photograph of a naked [insert your preference here] can result in a physical reaction.

Crucially, in the case of pornography, it cannot simply be a matter of images triggering memories because a significant consumption of that product is by users who may never have had an encounter of the type they are viewing. This leads to a wider point of the suspension of disbelief †. In the theatre of the cinema (and, to a lesser extent with television) my attention can be entirely absorbed by the spectacle on stage or screen, with the 'spell' occasionally broken by an external extraction. Something similar can happen with a photograph , particularly when one's punctum has been engaged (or, perhaps, engorged).

There is more to a photograph than a 2D representation of a 3D original ([28Apr] Barthes wrote "the referent adheres", Camera Lucida, s.2 p.6) and that, I suspect, is because our brains are continually processing visual stimuli into aggregations and configurations of agreed concepts, heavily based on prior experience. A photograph can be accepted as a valid input datastream: if a dream or a daydream is (in some ways) 'real' then why not a photograph?

† Holland, writing in Scientific American (2014) noted that,

Although we know a fair amount about the brain activity linked with reading, no one has isolated the mechanisms tied specifically to suspension of disbelief. Yet we can extrapolate how the brain behaves on a more general level.
Poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge coined the term “suspension of disbelief” in 1817, but almost two centuries would lapse before we could infer how the brain might support this puzzling phenomenon. Coleridge asked readers of his fantastical poems, including The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, to give him “that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith.” That phrase, “poetic faith,” encapsulates what our brain is doing. It isn't that we stop disbelieving—it's that we believe two inconsistent things. We accept that we are sitting and reading or watching a movie. We also believe or, more accurately, feel that what we are reading or viewing is happening. Norman N. Holland, Scientific American, 2014

Berggren, U. (2020) Embalmed Time: Photography in the Post Photographic Era. Location: Books On Demand.

Boothroyd, S. and Roberts, K. (2019) Identity and place. Barnsley: Open College of the Arts. [I&P]

Hill, P. (2021) Thinking Photographically Part Two, 5 March, The Royal Photographic Society, unpublished.

Holland, NN (2014) What Brain Activity Can Explain Suspension of Disbelief? [online]. scientificamerican.com. Available from https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/what-brain-activity-can-explain-sus/ [Accessed 5 April 2021].

Parsons, S. (2009) Sontag's Lament: Emotion, Ethics, and Photography, Photography and Culture, 2:3, 289-302, DOI: 10.2752/175145109X12532077132356

Shore, S. (2007) The nature of photographs. 2nd ed. London: Phaidon Press.

Sontag, S. (1977) On Photography. New York: Anchor Books.

author, (year) Title. Location: Publisher.

Geological intervention,
7 April 2021

7th April

Soap

Gents' Bromley, March 2020
C&N Asg.2

10 April

Urinals

Regular readers will recall that urinals were one of the subjects I ran with for C&N Asg.2. Though I failed to find a quorum of interesting examples to populate an assignment, but this example in Wetherspoon, Bromley made it through to Forbidden Zones and it remains one of my favourite images from the course so far.

This morning's L’Œil de la Photographie includes a portfolio on the subject from Joël Chassaing-Cuvillier who will now enter the BAPhot Hall of Fame.

Stained glass / still life

15th April

▲ Stained Glass ▼ / still life

17th April

An insight

Writing a reflection piece towards the end of Part 5, Project 1, I had a thought that addresses matters of both subject/object and photographs of/about —

while an individual photograph of a piece of litter, a grave ornament, a building or a sculpture may be (and usually is) a snap of that particular item, a series of photographs of littering events, or buildings of a specific genre becomes a project about a subject. We have two birds with one rock here- the of/about dilemma and a piece of the subject/object conundrum — the individual images depict objects, the project concerns a subject. Part 5

More on this above (26th Feb).

Benson & Hedges
13th April

24th April

Asg3 Milestone

I reached the notional target of 100 images for Asg.3 today. That's 100 in which I know the names of the dogs, nearly 150 images overall and just over 50 that I regard as worth considering for submission.

Submission is due on 16th May

[spellchecked to here]

James Elkins'
What photography is,
2011.

25th April

Punctum

I have been thinking about this, prompted by James Elkins'What photography is, 2011.

I pronounce on the matter here. It is work in progress, but I wrote this today,

I perceive the punctum as a vestigial organ or gland in the cortex, conceptually similar to the appendix or a tonsil. It is occasionally twanged by an experience that might be visual, aural, physical or of some other sensory nature. It resonates in response to the current stimulus and memory of past experiences.
Barthes named it in the context of his reactions to a photograph of his late mother: Proust had a comparable reaction to certain biscuits; in Waugh's Sebastian it is embodied by teddy bear.
The punctum probably also operates in response to first experiences that will become personally resonant, such as the visceral realisation of the importance of Beethoven (or Bowie, or gamelan, or whatever music possesses you). It might be where love and faith reside.
It is, amongst other things where the sum of our important experiences live; it is what determines individual reactions to particular photographs; and it is why, as Sue Sontag wrote, "photographs do not seem strongly bound by the intention of the photographer". Punctum

28 April

Three things

I have avoided reading Camera Lucida until now, but I feel that I am ready. I write about it here.

I started photographing Asg.3 on 20th December
On 3rd January I decided that I would photograph 100 named subjects
At some point I said that I would make that 100 decent (or whatever the right word should be) images.
I reached the initial 100 milestone on 24th April
I intended at the time to carry on to my secondary goal. On 26th I went shopping as usual, camera at the ready to invite dogwalkers to participate. I asked the only one I encountered and she unexpectedly declined. Today (28th) I decided to stop.

The assignment is due on 16th May and so I have a couple of weeks to select, reprocess and write it up.

I zoomed a local RPS meeting last night because the main speaker was Graham Land ARPS MA describing his MAPhot, distance learning at Falmouth. It was interesting. £10k, 2 years. I might, if I am still around, and I can get a student loan (denied to me for BAPhot).

I-spy people in uniform, 1955
I-spy people, 1963

30th April

Asg.4

I am opening the book on Asg.4 today. My initial plan is to go with uniform typology and old I-Spy books with a backup of Eltham Palace and the Stephen Lawrence memorial.

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Ash tray #1

2nd May

Progress

I passed two good asg3 dog prospects today but managed to stop myself. I might have kicked the habit.

And I found my first ash tray for Exc 5.1.

↑ quotes ↓

A.D. Coleman

Two from the great A.D. Coleman's Critical Focus (1995). First, from an essay, Letter from New York, No. 24, a review of a Sophie Calle show,

Postmodemism's hostility to and fear of the faculty of sight is a matter of public record. "The gaze," a purportedly ancient, secret technique of dominaton hitherto practiced only by men, has been widely identified and demonized as a modern version of the "evil eye". The literature abounds with snide referenced to "scopophilia," a pejorative neologism that translates as "the love of looking; in this construct, the very act of seeing stands frequently accused of inherent, pathological voyeurism, with photography as its most pernicious instrument.
So far as I'm aware, no one professing these convictions has had the to courage follow the pertinent Biblical injunction, "If thine eye offend thee, cast it out." But small wonder that the art around which this theory circles offers so little that rewards visual attention; in a climate of such hysterical revulsion at optical experience, who would want to be caught giving or receiving pleasure via the retina? A.D. Coleman Critical Focus, 1995 p.97

Then, from Letter from New York, No. 10, which includes a review of a show at the Whitney, Image World: Art and Media Culture,

As Marcel Proust once said, "A work of art that parades its connection to some theory is like a garment whose price tag is still attached." A.D. Coleman Critical Focus, 1995 p.54

Asg.3

12th May

Progress

I have finished Asg.3. Submission is due on 16th. I'll send it on 15th.

I have noted the March 2021 assessment results here.

Next finish Part 5 and on with Asg.4.

Night

15th May

Night

Asg.3 is in. But we are here for an image made last night at around 11.30 of the view from my desk. It demonstrates how dark it doesn't get in London.
Exposure was f5.6, 1/7th sec at ISO 12,800, in modified monochrome (Ritchie Roesch's Ilford Delta Push-Process).

↑ quotes ↓

Richard Misrach

From on Landscape and Meaning (2021)

When I was first shooting with the view camera, about two pictures out of every hundred were good After twenty five years of using the 8-by-10, my percentage hasn't improved much. It turns out, making a great photograph is elusive.
With digital, the odds are even lower because one shoots a lot more; there are many more rejects or duplicates. It's still the same principle though. Since photog-raphers are forever reliant on the world to provide the right content, the right light, the right circumstances for a good picture to happen, they need to be on their game to realize a great picture. Ultimately, it is perhaps that challenge-the difficulty in making a great picture-that makes the medium so compelling.
At one point I looked through nearly three thousand of Garry Winogrand's black-and-white contact sheets at the Center for Creative Photography in Arizona for a show I was curating. I'd see key images of his come up on the contacts, but I was surprised at how many near misses and not-so-near misses, or even ju5f bad pictures, there were. So even for one of the greats in the history of photog· raphy, there is a huge percentage of misses for every hit.
Obviously, you've got to be inspired by something to click the shutter, but that doesn't make the picture. I'm aware that ultimately my percentages won't be that good, but I'm also aware that making a number of pictures to get a good one is part of the process. You've got to work the scene with hopes of getting that just-right balance when everything comes together. You have to go in with the confidence that every picture is potentially your next great shot. After all these years, I know that if I just keep working-and/ love the process-something will happen. There is a huge amount of luck involved, but you can take advantage Richard Misrach in on Landscape and Meaning, 2021, p.50

[spellchecked to here]

William Carlos Williams
Photo by Lisa Larsen/The LIFE Picture
Collection via Getty Images
from The Poetry Foundation

18th May

The charm of coincidence

I am working through Part 5, Project, 5.2 Places and spaces, including Stephen Shore's usually people-free images and the parallels with Eggleston's similarly people-free images and how that simplifies the subject and the range of viewers' interpretations. I conclude, on Shore,

In my view, by not depicting people, Shore has given a more impressionistic view of the society he was describing — if a person is in the picture, viewers will tend to concentrate on and interpret the person, in all likelihood superficially. Without that, the viewer's interpretation will be deeper and broader. Although the images may first appear to be mundane, their effect is subtly profound. Part 5-2

I am also reading Barthes, coming to terms with Lucida, and reading around the subject. James Elkins has written his response to Barthes, What Photography Is (2011), in which he gradually discards various types and genres of the craft — photographs that include people are an early casualty because they are a distraction.

And then at 5 a.m on Monday morning, as I sometimes do, I caught an episode of Radio 4 Extra's Poetry Extra in which the saintly Daljit Nagra played a programme about the work of William Carlos Williams (1883–1963), about which I had known precisely nothing. The simplicity of WCW's poems was contrasted with the impenetrability of contemporaries like Pound and I immediately thought of the contrast between the approaches of Shore and Eggleston, compared to any number of practitioners who's imagery lacks simplicity and approachability.
The clear parallel between Williams’ Red Wheelbarrow (1923) and Eggleston’s Memphis trike (c. 1969), both in a background miasma of obscurantist pretension (see Coplans) prompts a quest for other reads across, both to poetry and other media.

There will be more to say on such matters in due course.

20th May

Two things

I have finished the course material. What's left is exercises and assignments and reassembly for assessment. I'll make a list soon.

I'm having a thought. There are some August 2020 jottings too.

1. The purpose of a photograph (any photograph) is to show something by representation.
2. It follows that the purpose of photography is to provide a medium for that to take place [i].

3. The showing is done by means of a usually flat, normally rectilinear [ii] representation, previously on paper, now more often on a screen.

4. What is shown might be animate or inanimate, tangible or intangible [iii]. It might include an intentional demonstration of the skills of the image maker.

5. There are usually at least two parties involved, commonly the maker of the image and the viewer [iv].

[21May]

6. The viewers' reactions to a photograph are another matter. As laGrange (2005) paraphrased Sue Sontag (1973) †,

photographs do not seem strongly bound by the intention of the photographer Sontag, On Photography, quoted in La Grange (2005) p.37

7. Viewers' interpretations will be influenced by their own experiences, attitudes and moods and in each case will be on a spectrum from the indifferent (Barthes, 1980, p.16) to the visceral. Barthes coined the terms punctum for the visceral and studium for some mid-point on the spectrum defined by Batchen (2011, p.12) as "polite interest" [v].

Notes
i. Photography, in its wider sense, then, will comprise then image-making technology, post-processing, publication (Barthes' channel of transmission) and the various marketplaces.
ii. Since the late C19th, negatives and nowadays sensors have been rectilinear. Non-rectilinear positives (or their digital equivalent) are a rarity.
iii. That is from the August 2020 jottings.
iv. Some people make images for their own use — there are squalid examples of this and many innocent ones too. There might be a third or fourth party involved, for example a professional portrait given to other family members, an employer requiring photo-id for employees.
v. Batchen quotes Barthes, "To recognise the studium is inevitably to encounter the photographer's intentions".

References

Barthes, R. (1980) Camera Lucida. London: Random House.

Batchen, G. (2011) Photography Degree Zero. MIT Press: Cambridge MA.

Elkins, J. (2011) What photography is. NY: Routledge.

La Grange, A. (2005) Basic critical theory for photographers. Burlington, MA: Focal Press.

Sontag, S. (1973) On photography. NY: Farrar, Strauss & Giroux.

21st May

I&P ToDo List

exc 2.2 - 5 portraits without their knowledge ✓ 13th June

Asg 4 - 7-10 images exploring identity and incorporating text

exc 5.1 - still lifes, no people but signifiers of their presence - I like ash trays ✓ 13th June

exc 5.2 - (after Perec) describe a place in detail, interpret it photographically

exc 5.3 - choose a regular journey. Photograph it.

Asg 5 - 15 snaps - explore one of the course themes. E5.2 sounds interesting: can we turn this around and explore different views of the same place (different angles, different times, different weather). That statue near the National Theatre? Somewhere closer?

Then recycle for Assessment.

Update the Wordpress version.

Publish the zine.

Prepare for Landscape, Place & Environment.

25th May

Timing

I notice I already have a page for this - I'll pick it up there.

27th May

Summary of proposed changes for Academic Year 2021/22

There are 2 notable proposals in this document,
"Replace current assessment with 3 new criteria of Knowledge, Understanding and Application. Ensure existing Learning Outcomes are clearly mapped to the new assessment criteria." and
"All reference material will be relocated to OCAlearn resources and will be wholly digital".

I responded to the survey, "I am entirely in favour of trying again with these definitions because both the previous assessment criteria and the current learning outcomes are ill-defined, manifest overlaps and confuse many of the students I have contact with, and confuse me particularly … I strongly oppose [the second] suggestion. It should be online, of course, but the printed course material is a vital learning aid."

I think I'll be an early adopter of the new criteria in my reflections.

I received a considered reply -

Dear Nick
Thank you for taking the time to contact us following in response to the recent student consultation. Your comments have been forwarded to me so I can respond directly to you. My response to each of your 2 points is below in blue font.
1. "Replace current assessment with 3 new criteria of Knowledge, Understanding and Application. Ensure existing Learning Outcomes are clearly mapped to the new assessment criteria."
I am entirely in favour of trying again with these definitions because both the previous assessment criteria and the current learning outcomes are ill-defined, manifest overlaps and confuse many of the students I have contact with, and confuse me particularly. Thankyou for recognizing the issues with the current assessment criteria. The new ones are far more clearly defined and should help students understand their assessment results.
2. "All reference material will be relocated to OCAlearn resources and will be wholly digital. Unit descriptors will reference a link to the student VLE"
I strongly oppose this suggestion. It should be online, of course, but the printed course material is a vital learning aid. Apologies for the confusion this may have caused but this only refers to the specific unit descriptor document which is the validated document that gives a brief overview of each unit. This simply means that on that document we will also direct students to the student VLE where they can access the digital current resource lists for their units.
Again thank you for taking the time to contribute to the consultation.
Yours sincerely
Stephanie Gillott
Head of Quality & Academic Support
Open College of the Arts

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31st May

2nd June

Ash trays

Some progress on exc 5.1 ash trays. They are not the most exciting objects but they fit the bill and this one can run and run.

© Alexey Titarenko

03 June

Alexey Titarenko

I prefer blurred people in urban landscapes and Titarenko is a fine exponent of the craft. From today's L’Œil de la Photographie.

The supporting text states,

State Museum and Exhibition Centre ROSPHOTO present the City of Shadows. Alexey Titarenko exhibition project. The exhibition is the first retrospective of the photographer’s works in St. Petersburg, marking a symbolic return of the artist’s works to the city.
Alexey Titarenko is one of the most renowned representatives of Russian and St. Petersburg photography of the end of 20th and beginning of 21st centuries. The exhibition includes 61 photographs, executed in the unique technique of silver gelatine hand printing, inviting the audience to trace the creative journey of the artist, starting with his most popular series, made in St. Petersburg: City of Shadows (1992–1994), Black and White Magic of St. Petersburg (1995–1997), Frozen Time (1998­–2000), and also series dedicated to other cities: Venice (2001–2014), Havana (2003, 2006), New York (2004–2018).
Alexey Titarenko was born in 1962 and began practicing photography in 1970. After graduating from the Department of Photojournalism of the People’s Public Service Professions University, he participated in exhibitions of the Zerkalo photo club between 1978 and 1989. In 1983, he completed a degree with distinction in Film and Photography at the Saint Petersburg State University of Culture and Arts. Since the late 80’s, he began working on personal projects, reflecting the artist’s attitude to the fast pace of life, drawing on memories of the “emotional and spiritual atmosphere” of the dramatic time of 1980–1990s. The first such project, portraying the photographer’s impressions of the totalitarian era, became the series Nomenklatura of Signs, first exhibited in 1993 at the State Russian Museum. L’Œil de la Photographie

6th June

An article comment in the Times today quoted Aneurin Bevan, who "accused Harold MacMillan of having 'a absolute genius for tying flamboyant labels to empty luggage " when describing proposed legislation'".
That reads across to the Coplans quote mentioned on these pages during C&N,

No other art form rivals photography’s capability to be meaningless, to topple into a void. As a hedge against vacuity, ambitious photographers cloak themselves in a knowledge of art. Coplans essay, Weegee the Famous, in Provocations (1966) pp.205-212

9th June

List, Mili & Cave

Two images to note from Gemma Padley's recent Great Photography... and one from today's L’Œil de la Photographie.

In reviewing Padley's book, I wrote of the List image, "Nothing need be said about the metaphorical implications of constraint and freedom and tides implicit in List’s juxtaposition of a fish in a bowl of water and the open body of water in the background."

and of Mili, "Mili’s image works as an expression of the artist’s talent and a subversion of the instantineity that is at once a virtue and failing of the medium."

I have little to say of the Cave book. It is, perhaps, the most trivial body of work I have encountered for some time and not worth the effort of organising it into a book. The blurb on L’Œil stated,

In January 2018, near my home in Brighton, I found a red woollen child’s glove hanging over a sign that said ‘Church Place’. I took a photograph of it with a Polaroid app on my iPhone. I didn’t think much about it at the time, but later that night as I was reviewing my day’s photographs, I felt its melancholy pulse and was pleased with it. The next day I passed a tan leather glove that had been placed on a railing in my street, and once again photographed it. These images began an impulse to photograph every lost glove I came upon.
It is remarkable how many lost gloves there are once they make themselves known. They are everywhere and all around… lost gloves longing for their partners. These single gloves are mostly seasonal and are the melancholy reminders of those who are displaced or missing or disconnected, little jolts of grief on my winter walks.
I am happy when the sun starts shining and the lost gloves start to disappear, yet they always return; the first of the season declares itself on a footpath, in a puddle or on a railing, and then the rest follow, in their multitudes. I have rescued them all but here are one hundred of the best, the most lost, the most mislaid and the most forgotten, a small melancholy meditation. Nick Cave on L’Œil de la Photographie

Gosh

18th June

Dyer, Mitchell's Scarecrows, Saxgren's Uninted Sculptures, Ghirri and time

I am reading Geoff Dyer's See / Saw 2021. A fine book that made me realise my preference for compliations of opinionated essays on photographs and photographers (3 or 4 pages on each topic and move on) rather than tomes working a subject to death in order to reach the page limit agreed of 240 or whatever.
That is why I enjoy reading AD Coleman and Dyer and Bill Jay more than the standard Routledge fayre.

Dyer has brought to my attention in just the last two days:

Luigi Ghirri's work and his Lessons in Photography (2020) - there's a new edition due out with (well there's a thing) a foreword by Dyer.

Martin Parr's 2007 exhibition, Colour Before Color (the spelling is important), see bintphotobooks.

Peter Mitchell's, Scarecrows which, he observes, like Penny-for-the-Guys, con be contrasted with statues for their lack of permanence..

A full citation, at last for the Weston quote, first noted in C&N, that 'the camera is uniquely equipped "for rendering the very substance and quintessence of the thing itself"''.
Dyer p.114 and Weston, E. (1990) The Daybooks of Edward Weston: Volume 1. New York: Aperture. p.55
[15Sep21] It is time that the thing itself had a page to itself.

Henrik Saxgren's Unintended Sculptures are another expansion area for my interest in sculpture.

Again in the Mitchell essay, he distinguishes between "history - which is necessarily concerned with dates - than the pre-existant" that does not have to be "dug up and uncovered" but is "there before our eyes", unnoticed (p.116).

Asg.4 23rd June

24th June

Asg.4

A good day at the HofParl with several subjects covered and the prospect of a cricket match this weekend.

Eltham Cricket Club
27th June

28th June

Asg.4

A good day at Eltham Cricket Club yesterday. With about 4 weeks left, I have two decent prospects, medical and a (non-conversational) bagpiper. I jotted the full range of possibilities today as — Food delivery, Roadworks, Bouncers, Office smokers suits, Hospital, Scot, Street entertainers.

I am becoming quite enthusiastic about this before-and-after, then-and-now approach and have noted several other possible I-Spy vehicles for future courses.

[22:43] I'm working through Barthes' Lucida, currently chs.32-33. A thought — photography comprises poses and gazes.
Discuss.
At first sight that seems to cover all the transactions, object, photographer, channel, viewer.

A scan for both terms hasn't coughed up much, though there is a paper in OCA that pertains, The Photograph as an Intersection of Gazes: The Example of National Geographic by Catherine Lutz and Jane Collins

And on Jstor there's Fictions of the Pose: Facing the Gaze of Early Modern Portraiture by Harry Berger Jr.

Berger, H. "Fictions of the Pose: Facing the Gaze of Early Modern Portraiture." Representations, no. 46 (1994): 87-120. Accessed June 29, 2021. doi:10.2307/2928780.

Lutz, C & Collins, J (1991) The Photograph as an Intersection of Gazes: The Example of National Geographic. Visual Anthropology Review. Volume 7 No. 1 Spring 1991 , pp. 134-149.

There's now a page.

29th June

Samuel Beckett, Jean du Chas and Le Concentrisme

There's an entertaining piece in the July edition of The Critic. JS Barnes describes what he regards as the con which the "prize-winning old fraud" Samuel Beckett wrought on the world of theatre. Starting with Waiting for Godot (1953) (regarded as a masterpiece but in Barnes' view a pointless and meaningless night of boredom) and then through his acclaimed catalogue of works which built on Godot but never meant anything and never offered entertainment.

He mentions an early event, "In 1930, he gave a lecture at Trinity College, Dublin, about a poet (Jean du Chas) and an artistic movement (Le Concentrisme) which he had entirely invented, both fooling and riling up the dons. He learnt well from this, one suspects, never again to allow the mask to slip."
That could prove useful

There are some references,

Independent (Ireland) -

Beckett and [George] Pelorson co-authored Le Kid, a parody both of Le Cid, by Corneille, and The Kid by Charlie Chaplin. Jack Yeats went to see the play, which was a Modern Languages Society production put on in the Peacock Theatre. There was a clock scene, reputedly very funny, but no text has survived though the programme has. The music included Ravel's Pavane.
Beckett seems to have been quite sex-obsessed at this time, and it colours the language in some of the letters.
At about the time of his yearnings to meet Jack Yeats he invented a French poet, Jean du Chas, and gave a paper to the Modern Languages Society. Beckett has Du Chas belonging to a poetic movement called, according to the editors of the letters, 'Le Concentrisme' -- which may have been the publicly announced content of what Beckett said.
However, Owen Sheehy Skeffington, who was at Trinity at this time and became a close friend of Samuel Beckett's, told me the poetic movement was called 'Le Convergisme', made up of two argot words for sexual organs.
Put together in the way they are, they give to his invented poet membership, or leadership, of a movement dedicated to sexual congress. Beckett who wrote Du Chas's poetry, for the lecture, said that it amused him for a couple of days. Yeats used to ask Beckett to his Saturday afternoon 'At Homes' but Beckett found them 'rather dreadful' though he does not explain why. barnold@independent.ie, 2009

From cambridge.org

Tyranny appears early in Beckett’s work. In her nuanced study on the ludic in Beckett, Laura Salisbury posits that ‘Le Concentrisme’ or ‘Jean du Chas’ (1930) could be considered ‘as being part of a peculiarly Beckettian tradition that describes and worries away at the uneasy power struggles between author/editor/narrator and readers by means of a comic form in which textual sadism and masochism inhabit the same space’ (Salisbury 2012, p. 71)
Salisbury, Laura (2012), Samuel Beckett: Laughing Matters, Comic Timing. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Derval Tubridy, 2018

Arnold, B. (2009) The beginning of a beautiful friendship [online]. independent.ie. Available from https://www.independent.ie/incoming/the-beginning-of-a-beautiful-friendship-26520828.html [Accessed 29 June 2021].

Barnes, JS (2021) A prize-winning old fraud. The Critic. Issue 19, July 2021, pp.98-99.

Tubridy, D. (2018) Samuel Beckett and the Language of Subjectivity [online]. cambridge.org. Available from https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/samuel-beckett-and-the-language-of-subjectivity/no-knowing-not-said/781688BF45FE8E22A4CFE246104F4BF3/core-reader [Accessed 29 June 2021].

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10 July, Saturday

↑ back to July 2020

Asg4

I need a clear plan to wrap up Asg.4 for 25th July, 2 weeks away.

My last post on possible subjects to cover was 29th June, "Food delivery, Roadworks, Bouncers, Office smokers suits, Hospital, Scot, Street entertainers".

There are some colourful garbs that emerge from a local evangelical church every Sunday, but I have ethical issues I'll have to overcome before lying in wait for them

I snapped a beach safety-person yesterday on a day trip to Brighton, only one on duty, no conversation. I'll try the Sainsbury smoking group today if it's not raining too hard.

To town on Monday, weather permitting for some office smokers, perhaps roadworks, I might loiter on the High Street tomorrow for church-goers.

I have also been sent a hurry up email by Student Services,

Notice (SN:518937): Your Course End Date is Approaching
Dear Nick,
As you are coming towards the end of your current unit, Photography 1: Identity and Place, we wanted to check in and make sure you are on track to complete. Your unit is due to end on 01/10/2021 and this is the date you need to have submitted your last assignment by and receive your feedback.
If you do need any additional help, remember that it is there for you. If you feel that you may not complete by your end date, please let us know so that we can help you.
Routes of support
If you are working on your final assignment and require academic support to complete by your end date, please speak to your tutor who should be able to help or point you in the right direction.
If you have concerns about completing in time due to delays to your studies (e.g. health, formal caring responsibilities) please contact Learner Support for guidance (learnersupport@oca.ac.uk). You may be able to defer your studies or extend your course timings to help you manage if your studies have been affected by unforeseen circumstances.
It is really important that you make contact as soon as possible if you need help. Unfortunately, requests for support cannot be considered after the end date has passed, and any support available becomes more limited the closer to the end date we hear from you. We are committed to ensuring the best possible outcome for every student at OCA so please do get in touch, it’s what we are here for.
Decided to withdraw?
We are always sorry to lose any student, but recognise that sometimes that is the best solution for them. If you have decided to withdraw but have not completed a withdrawal form with us, please contact Student Services (enquiries@oca.ac.uk) to request a form.
We wish you all the best on your creative journey,
Student Services
Email: enquiries@oca.ac.uk
Tel: 01226 730495 Student Services, 1st July

I will have to mention this to my tutor to ensure Asg,5 feedback by 1st October.

I had always intended to submit IP for Assessment in November 2021, but have just had the thought that maybe I should delay that. The rules are here Preparing for assessment (undated !) but nothing on final Assignment / Assessment timing. I have emailed Student Services.

Student services have referred me to the ACADEMIC REGULATORY FRAMEWORK, S3.3 p.11,
https://www.oca.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/Approved-OCA-ARF-v19-Sep-2020.pdf

Students are invited to apply for formal assessment when they have completed the penultimate assignment of their current unit. All the assignments completed by students as part of their course work are formative; however, the same pieces of work (as revised) form the core of the work submitted for the summative assessment event (see Section 3.1).
Students are directed towards the next available assessment event following submission of their final assignment – but have an option to defer to the subsequent event (a further 4 months thence).
If students do need to defer to the subsequent event, students must email the OCA assessment team to request this. If a student does not submit their work for assessment for the second event after completion of course work – and has not been awarded deferred assessment (see next section) – they lose the right to obtain the credits for that unit.  ACADEMIC REGULATORY FRAMEWORK, S3.3 p.11

Two birds
June 2021

17th July

Jotting

I wrote this last night in the Asg.4 submission text. It probably won't make the final cut, so I'll preserve it here.

Photography is not dispassionate, neutral or objective: nothing of consequence can be. Asg.4 submission text, early draft

And see Gazes & Poses.

From PetaPixel — Photographer Makes DIY Lenses with Cake Molds and Epoxy.
And here's Ursula Ferrara's web site.

24th July

Vernacular

© Martin Parr
The Leaning Tower of Pisa, 1990
img: worldphoto.org

A definition sprang to mind this morning.

A subject rendered so personally as to be of little immediate interest other than to those involved, their relatives and their friends, typically, Auntie Maud at the Eiffel Tower.

The recent advent and expansion of social media rests on the myth that such interest is now more widespread.

A more generalised interest can be legitimised by the passage of time when an image may be recycled (often as one of many) for sociological or artistic purposes, or very occasionally when one of those present attains subsequent fame or notoriety.

The act of vernacular photography may be the subject of serious photography †, such as Parr's The Leaning Tower of Pisa, 1990

There is a page on the matter.

† I have an early definition of serious photography somewhere on the site: it is currently proving to be elusive. I'll create a page of personal definitions.
[25Jul] Found it - in the development blog for EyV Asg.5 while discussing photographers' niches, I wrote that "subsequent thought will be given to a definition [of a serious photographer]: for now we can run with a photographer that exhibits or seeks to exhibit (though not only on social media)". That was dated 1st August 2019 and I will still stand by it.

Now how about that definitions page.

30th July

Why photograph?

This question was first posed to we students in the C&N Preamble. I came up with a workmanlike response at the time and this was replaced in May 2020 (see the blog) with this

To produce a visual representation of something that merits this attention in such a way as to do the subject justice.
All these judgements are necessarily subjective and and the terms deliberately ambiguous. me

Eltham Park Station, c.1908
img: Sleep, 2006, p.76

On the About page I take this idea and beat it to death.

The pleasing and straightforward May 2020 version is still accurate, but not the whole story. For I&P Asg.5 I am working on a then-and-now of where I live using ... in old photographs -type books for comparators: my commitment to the project was wavering until I found this c.1908 image of Eltham Park Station, now closed, on a road that was on my route to work for 20 years and is now surrounded by housing.

Garry Winogrand is reported to have said,

I photograph to find out what something will look like photographed.
…
For me the true business of photography is to capture a bit of reality (whatever that is) on film…if, later, the reality means something to someone else, so much the better. Garry Winogrand, quoted by Leo Rubinfien, in an interview with Alexander Strecker, 2013

And this morning, thinking of the quote, I wrote

I go to see what something looks like, or just encounter an item or event, and sometimes record it to be able to remind myself and in case someone else might be interested or amused.

That is why I take photographs and in doing so I aim to produce a visual representation that does the subject justice and in describing this process I use terms that are deliberately ambiguous.

All that is true, but now it is unpleasingly inconcise, so back to the drawing board.

Sleep, D. (2004) Images of London, Eltham. Stroud: Tempus.

Strecker, A. (2013) Garry Winogrand: Behind the Legend [online]. lensculture.com. Available from https://www.lensculture.com/articles/garry-winogrand-garry-winogrand-behind-the-legend [Accessed 30 July 2021].

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↑ back to August 2020

Eltham Park Station,
1908, 1913 and 2021

1st August

Asg.5

I photographed Eltham Park Station yesterday and am still processing the images. I bemoaned the lack of pedestrians, denying me the chance to match their positions to the originals and then had a thought. Cut and paste a few of the grainy B&W characters from the originals to my images. That takes us a step closer to the sort of thing Ingrid Newton was doing which was my starting point for this project.

↑ quotes ↓

Duane Michals

From Jason Fulford's Photo No-Nos

I would never shoot a pickle. And if I did shoot a pickle, I would never make a large print of it. If I did make a large print of it, I would never show it in a museum. However, I did make a 48-by-72-inch print of a pickle once. Then I did show it in a museum, but I had hoped to be satirical, funny, insulting, and words to that effect.
I would, however, shoot a pickle if I could turn it into a pornographic joke, like the Man from Nantucket.
I dislike large, large photographs. I don't trust large, large photographs. They look as if they were designed for a museum wall: photographs pretending to be art. An 8-by-10-inch print by Robert Frank is far more profound than an 8-by-10-foot print of a parking lot in Tokyo by Jeff Wall, Crewdson, or Gursky.
My pickle is bigger than your pickle! Fulford (ed.), 2021, p.194

12th August

Assessment

I’ve been taking myself too seriously of late. Let’s bang this puppy in for November assessment and get on with things. That will mean applying for ass’t by the end of August and submitting by the end of September.

St Barnabas, Eltham, 2021

20th August

Various

Asg. 5 is going pretty well, now that the underlying notion is firmly in place.

L’Œil de la Photographie has a piece today on The Solander Collection,

A Fresh Approach to Photo History
The Solander Collection makes its public debut today, with the opening of the exhibition Breaking the Frame at the Royal Ontario museum, Toronto, and the official launch of its website, www.solander.art. Solander is a different kind of collection, founded on principles of diversity, inclusion, and the democracy of images. Concentrating on the years up to 1980, it features under-appreciated and marginalized artists, international traditions, and the contributions of women.
The collection contains many rarities and “firsts,” including two exquisite daguerreotypes by the mysterious Madame Gelot-Sandoz, one of the first women photographers. Other treasures include a unique self-portrait by Beninese portraitist Félicien Rodriguez, a monumental altarpiece by feminist icon Valie Export, poignant personal photographs taken in secret by Chilean master Mauricio Valenzuela, a gigantic camera belonging to Henry Peach Robinson, and one of the first photo microphotographs ever made. Distinguished by its quality and made up almost entirely of vintage prints produced within a few years of the negative, the collection is particularly strong in original exhibition prints, with key works by Dorothea Lange, Manuel Álvarez Bravo, Roy Decarava and radical Chinese photographer Lang Jingshan, among others.
Solander is dedicated to expanding appreciation for photographic history. Major works by acknowledged greats are given new context alongside amateur, scientific, anthropological, “documentary” and studio traditions. Rare examples by Robert Frank, Diane Arbus, Man Ray, Aleksandr Rodchenko, Ansel Adams and Edward Weston can be seen with obscure but important figures such as Helen Stuart and John Lindt, motion photographers Etienne-Jules Marey and Ottomar Anschütz, early amateurs Lady Augusta Mostyn and Major Francis Greeley, African studio photographers Sanlé Sory, Michel Kameni, Malick Sidibé and Studio Begbava, and original Indian painted studio backdrops. The range of women artists is extraordinary and includes pictures by Sarah Sears, Eveleen Myers, Olive Edis, Gertrude Käsebier, Germaine Krull, Dorothy Norman, Margaret Watkins, Helene Bieberkraut, Ringl + Pit, Tina Modotti, Lisette Model, Helen Levitt, Ilse Bing, Laure Albin-Guillot, Dora Maar, Grit Kallin-Fischer, Florence Henri, Lee Miller, Běla Kolářová and Francesca Woodman. The collection also spans photography’s first decades with linchpin works by Sir John Herschel, William Henry Fox Talbot, Reverend Calvert Richard Jones, Hippolyte Bayard, and Julia Margaret Cameron.
The collection was founded by curators Graham Howe and Phillip Prodger to serve the public. Formerly Director of the Australian Centre for Photography and curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, Howe is a graduate of the prestigious MFA program at UCLA. Since 1987, he has served as CEO of Curatorial, Inc., the exhibitions, advisory and art services “museum without walls” in Pasadena, California (www.curatorial.org). A Ph.D. graduate of Cambridge University, Prodger was Head of Photographs at the National Portrait Gallery, London and founding Curator of Photography at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts. He has also held appointments at Yale, MIT and the National Gallery of Canada.
With headquarters in Oregon and California, the Solander Collection is available to researchers by appointment. In addition to being shared through traveling exhibitions and publications, requests to borrow material are welcomed, and high-resolution public domain imagery is provided on request, free of charge. L’Œil de la Photographie, 20th August

L’Œil de la Photographie (2021) A Fresh Approach to Photo History [online]. loeildelaphotographie.com. Available from https://loeildelaphotographie.com/en/the-solander-collection-as [Accessed 20 August 2021].

Walker Evans,
Torn Movie Poster, 1930
img: MoMA

I have been seeking an inexpensive copy of Ralston Crawford's Torn Signs for several years and a copy arrived, at last, today.

Walker Evans, of course, created Torn Movie Poster, 1930 but to my mind, the leading light in this dark alley is Jonathan Miller's nowhere in particular

↑ quotes ↓

Lewis Baltz

From David Campany, Fast World, Slow Photography
Financial Times Weekend magazine photo supplement, May 16, 2015.

I didn’t want to have a style; I wanted my photography to look as mute and as distant as to appear to be as objective as possible. I tried very hard not to show a point of view. I tried to think of myself as an anthropologist from a different solar system. What I was interested in more was the phenomena of the place. Not the thing itself but the effect of it: the effect of this kind of urbanisation, the effect of this kind of living, the effect of this kind of building. What kind of people would come out of this? What kind of new world was being built here? Was it a world people could live in? Really? Lewis Baltz

Campany comments,

With their perfect geometry and endless detail one might presume these photographs were made with specialised large-format equipment. They were not. Baltz couldn’t be bothered with all that heavy gear so he used, of all things, a lightweight Leica – a camera designed for taking snapshots on the fly. It had a superb lens and Baltz reckoned that with a tripod, fine-grained film and great discipline in the darkroom he could get what he was after. The result was an immaculate set of photographs that have perplexed and intrigued viewers for decades.
Just like the buildings, his pictures are technically perfect and artless. One could not ask for a better visual description of those surfaces. Here the camera is exceptionally good at showing what that world looks like. It lays it bare and yet nothing is revealed, not in any straightforward sense. This is honest photography of a dishonest world and the strange force of Baltz’s vision comes from the dissonance. David Campany, Fast World, Slow Photography, FT, May 16, 2015

26th August

Assessment

In what was unarguably the most fruitful hour I have spent since day 1 of EyV, I have just Zoomed a presentation on Assessment submissions. Further details on the Assessment Page.

Some highlights:
• the L/Os have changed;
• the courses are changing under the New 3x3 Pathway - am I still to be Landscape and DIC?;
• in future I will consciously and rigorously pre-prepare both the assignment and submission components;

Yikes. I have until the end of August to apply for the old Level 2 courses. I have emailed Student Support for some support. This is two months before I had intended a leisurely drift into Level 2.

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6th September

Asg.5 and next course

Feedback on Asg.5 arrived today and was not particularly good. Onwards.

I applied for LP&E 10 days ago but have not received any response - I chased it up today,

13th September

Two Shows

I attended Photo London last Friday, report to follow. Today, L’Œil de la Photographie reported on, How She Sees: Several Exceptional Women Photographers 1919 – 1970 at the Robert Mann Gallery, NY, featuring Margaret Watkins, Elisabeth Hase, Ellen Auerbach and Grete Stern, Lisette Model, Diane Arbus and Anne Treer.

† "Ringl and Pit were the childhood nicknames of Grete Stern and Ellen Rosenberg Auerbach. In the 1920s, the two women studied with Walter Peterhans, director of photography at the Bauhaus. Peterhans favored a geometric, machine-inspired modernist aesthetic. In 1930 Stern acquired Peterhans’s commercial photography studio in Berlin and together with Auerbach began to specialize in portraiture, still life, advertising photography, and magazine illustration. The team signed their work Ringl + Pit; the studio acquired a reputation as one of the most innovative in Germany, producing clear, precise, and haunting imagery in the spirit of what was then called the “new photography.” In this pair of portraits the two explore various aspects of the portrait photograph: Ringl (Stern) is shown as a close-cropped bespectacled face, so that the focus is on the artist’s inner concentration on her work. Pit (Auerbach), with exaggeratedly stylish veil and feathered headgear, suggests the idea of the portrait as disguise or theater: the costume and expressionless, sidelong glance toward the viewer seem at once performative and distanced."
Jewish Museum

19th September

Web site checklist

I'm finalising the I&P submission and winding down the I&P website component, so here's the annual checklist.

• spellcheck every page ✓ 19Sep
• remove unused components on every page ✓ 19Sep
• make sure that all the snappers covered in the pages are in the list ✓ and in the I&P and full indeces ✓
• install the LP&E home page with a redirect for I&P
• setup the I&P subsidiary home page and menus on lead pages
• write the Zine
• text

Carried forward to LPE.

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20 September

Les Krims

Another good L’Œil de la Photographie today,

This was the solo show at Paci contemporary gallery for the modern art fair in Milan, Miart Milano, which took place this weekend.
Leslie Krims remains one of the most amazing photographers of the turn of the last century, one of the most provocative too!
Photography had a pope at that time: John Szarkowski, the director of the photography department at MoMA.
Leslie called him an old arthritic tap dancer.
We all screamed with laughter, totally seduced!
“My work, and that of a few others, helped establish a new direction. What we did displaced traditionalist, activist photography. These things often happen in the world of art. It is hard to account for taste or fashion”. Leslie Krims
Solo Show Leslie Krims, 17th – 19th September, Miart Milano L’Œil de la Photographie

We first encountered Krims and his Making Chicken Soup, 1972 in Barratt. I am always struck by his convergence with Arthur Tress.

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IP Assessment on G Drive

2nd October

Assessment

Well I think it's in. I've populated all the folders. No announcement or acknowledgement, though.

BAPH LEVEL ONE
Examples of Student Work

15 December

A week to go

Results are due in about a week. An OCA email today included a link to samples of course submissions - I think everyone was included - curated by Program Tutor Helen Warburton. Here's mine.

logo

nn October

Head

text

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author (year) title [online]. website. Available from url [Accessed nn January 2021].

author, init (year) Title. Location: Publisher.

quote cite

Quotes

[28Dec19] I have been collecting apposite quotes since starting the web site, but rather apathetically because I did not have a convenient means of storing and referencing them. Here's the original page. This is a new plan - stash them in the blog (which I often have) and list the sources here. I'll add navigation arrows through the entries. As currently conceived, the quotes gathered during each course will remain discrete in that blog - I might organise a way around that.

Richard Avedon - surface
Lewis Baltz - style and objectivity
Dawoud Bey - shooting
Nick Blackburn (me) - photography comprises poses and gazes.
Erwin Blumenfeld - photography is easy (or is it?).
David Campany ambiguity
A.D. Coleman - All photographs are fictions
A.D. Coleman - the gaze
A.D. Coleman - art theory
John Coplans - meaninglessness
Joan Didion - the implacable "I"
Paul Dirac - poetry vs. science
Marcel Duchamp - photography vs. painting
William Fox Talbot - chance and charm
Peter Galassi - Photography is a bastard
Paul Graham - orthodoxy
Robert Graham subject → object
Bill Jay - photography's destination
Matisse - objects and surroundings
Duane Michals - large prints
Richard Misrach - large format cameras
me - why photograph?
Steven Pippin - inverse sophistication
Sontag - intention, loosely bound
Sontag - mortality, vulnerability, mutability
Alec Soth - still photography is incompatible with the narrative sequence.
Tom Stoppard - recognising quality
Evelyn Waugh - first or a fourth
Edward Weston - the thing itself
Oscar Wilde - on masks

↑ quotes ↓

Name

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