Assignment One - First Shoot

In planning for assignment one, I looked at the various aspects of my own local community that I could document in photographs. My town, although not generally well-known, is famous for its long history of lock-making. I decided to use this as the theme for my assignment, and began brainstorming some general ideas of the kind of images I could capture. I identified various elements in the town that provide evidence of its history in this industry, such as:

1. A Morrisons supermarket, built on the site of the former Yale lock factory.
2. A housing development, built on the site of another lock factory.
3. A lock-makers memorial.
4. Key-shaped signage in the town.
5. Businesses still producing locks and keys.

With regards to point (5) above, I considered approaching a company that produces locks in the town, with a view to getting their insight into the industry, and taking photographs of their working environment. I liked this idea, but found it very daunting; cold-calling a stranger to ask them to show me their premises and allow me to photograph it is certainly against my normal instincts. However, convinced it would be of great value to the assignment, I emailed a local family company. I chose this particular company as they had been in the lock business in the town for 100 years, and had several generations working at the business.

The company, A. Lewis and Sons (Willenhall), were very quick to reply, and told me that it would be no problem for me to visit. A few days later I called and spoke to Terry Lewis, who had over 50 years experience in the business, and whose son now runs it. We arranged a day and time for me to go along, and I did so the following week. Terry was extremely helpful and knowledgeable, generously giving me around 2 hours of his time and recollections.

The assignment requires that a single focal-length is used for all images. My 50mm prime lens is ideal, as it means I don't have to tape the barrel, and having a fast lens was useful in the lock factory, as it was a very dimly-lit environment. This ultimately provided a different problem though; shooting at f1.8 in order to enable a lower ISO meant that depth of field was severely limited. Once back in Lightroom, I found this was detrimental to several of the images. In hindsight, if I had thought of it at the time I could have easily taken several images of each subject, and focus-stacked them in Photoshop.

Before the visit, I had contacted my tutor to obtain his thoughts on my idea. He said it was certainly something I could run with, and gave me the idea of using the locker-maker to bind the various elements that I wanted to photograph together, perhaps using hand-written notes to accompany the images. My current thoughts are to assemble the 10 images for assignment, then to post the prints to Terry, asking if he wouldn't mind writing a personally-relevant sentence or two about each one, on a post-it note. I could then present my images in a book format, with each image on the left, with the scanned post-it note from Terry on the facing page. For now though, I need to begin planning the rest of the images.

The Ontology of the Photographic Image - André Bazin

In the course notes for the exercise 'The Myth of Objectivity', a link is given to the full documents from which the quotes by Bazin and Sekula were taken. This is my notes on Bazin's document.


Bazin begins by talking of how people historically attempted to 'preserve life', utilising mummification and statuettes as in ancient Egypt. He then goes on to say how painting took over this role, with people being content with having their likeness preserved in a hand-made picture, rather than embalmement. This process has evolved over time, and in the fifteenth century, Western painters became to become more concerned with as complete an imitation of the outside world as possible. Today's cinema has been described as the furthermost evolution to date of plastic realism.

Photography has freed the plastic arts from their obsession with likeness. Photography and the cinema are discoveries that satisfy, once and for all and in its very essence, our obsession with realism.

Bazin states that regardless of the skill of the painter, there is always an inescapable subjectivity in their work, as a human hand intervened; this casts a shadow of doubt over the image. He also says that photography is '...a mechanical reproduction in the making of which man plays no part'. Which we of course now understand to not be accurate.

 It seems that in this writing, Bazin's main points are that paintings are inevitably subjective, regardless of their realism, while photographs are inescapably objective, and that they have 'irrational power to bear away our faith'. Also, that photography has taken over the job of accurately reproducing a scene, giving painting freedom and allowed it to recover its aesthetic autonomy.


Direct quotes from the document that I found interesting and useful:

'the preservation of life by the representation of life'.

The evolution of art and civilisation has relieved the plastic arts of their magic role. (of preservation). Initially people were embalmed to preserve a representation. Later, painting took on this role.

No one now believes that these representations actually preserve life, but they help us to remember the subject.

Andre Malraux has described the cinema as the furthermost evolution to date of plastic realism, the beginnings of which were first manifest at the Renaissance and which found a limited expression in baroque painting.

In the fifteenth century Western painters began to become more concerned with as complete an imitation of the outside world as possible.

Thenceforth painting was torn between two ambitions: one, primarily aesthetic, namely the
expression of spiritual reality wherein the symbol transcended its model; the other, purely
psychological, namely to duplicate the world outside.

In achieving the aims of baroque art, photography has freed the plastic arts from their
obsession with likeness. Painting was forced, as it turned out, to offer us illusion and this illusion
was reckoned sufficient unto art. Photography and the cinema on the other hand are discoveries
that satisfy, once and for all and in its very essence, our obsession with realism.

No matter how skillful the painter, his work was always in fee to an inescapable subjectivity.
The fact that a human hand intervened cast a shadow of doubt over the image.

...a mechanical reproduction in the making of which man plays no part.

A very faithful drawing may actually tell us more about the model but despite the promptings
of our critical intelligence it will never have the irrational power of the photograph to bear
away our faith.

it has freed Western painting, once and for all, from its obsession with realism and
allowed it to recover its aesthetic autonomy.

Discontinuities

For this exercise we are asked to select five images from our personal collection, that could not belong to someone else. We are then to ask other students to write a short explanation or caption for each image; the idea being that they are viewing the images in isolation, with no supporting context or information.

My five selected images are as follows:

 

With no supporting information, the viewer of the images has to use any visual clues they have in the image in combination with their imagination to provide a narrative and context for the image. Firstly, here are the responses from my fellow students:

Jane494769

1) Nothing beats a warm summer's evening for a spot of camping
2) A Bambi-rometer
3) I'm still smiling.. just. Hurry up its moving and about to run up my sleeve!!
4) I want to play too!  If I just roll around here a bit and wag my tail it should really liven things up a  bit
5) On the road - alone again

Maurice512591

1. Camping holiday in France. This was our spot.
2. Barometer says this has to change. Wash up and clean!
3. Testing her fear of spiders in a zoo. Look: she is not afraid.
4. The cat disturbs a game. And is forgiven.
5. The end of a holiday - alone

Miriam506964

1. A great campsite, with lots of space and shade.
2. Abandoned in the shed, a barometer decorated with a deer head.
3.  She looks so calm!
4. A cat insists on being the centre of attention
5.  the morning after a lonely night away from home.

Anne507559

1. A perfect spot for camping
2. Time I was clearing out the shed
3. I am NOT afraid of spiders
4. If you think your going to have a game without me you have another think coming
5. Back on the road after your holiday

Judith Bach

1. Camping holiday / road trip
2. An abandoned shed on your travels full of rather interesting objects.
3. A brave lady ! She seems quite composed but perhaps is less keen on the (huge) spider than the photo suggests .
4. Cat interupts game , making sure he/she is not ignored .
5. End of road trip

Now, I will give the actual circumstances for each photograph:

1) This was indeed a camping holiday, for me and my then girlfriend (now wife). It was taken on a camping and caravan site on North Hill in Somerset.

2) Lots of people thought this was taken in a shed; in fact it was taken during a spell of 'urban exploring' of an abandoned farmhouse. The image taken was just above the kitchen sink, and that is the kitchen window. I found the barometer with a deer's head to be quite a novelty!

3) Again in Somerset, at a place called Tropiquaria, where you can handle a tarantula. This was my then girlfriend (now wife). She's very scared of spiders, so was being particularly brave here!

4) About 10 years ago, we were playing a card game on the floor at my parents house, when the cat decided he wanted some attention, so spread himself all over our meticulously organised cards!

5) A family holiday in Cyprus. My and my girlfriend (again, now wife!) were probably sharing the single bed, leaving the other untouched. I quite like the open narrative to this image, it asks more questions than it answers in terms of the one bed made, and the other unmade, who the suitcase belongs to etc.

Reading In, Around and Afterthoughts by Martha Rosler

I found this a difficult piece of writing to read, probably due to my inexperience with reading this kind of literature. I spent a lot of time using an online dictionary and thesaurus, translating the dense wording into something I could better understand. I was successful with this for the most part, and the essay raises some very interesting points, which I’ll briefly outline here. It is worth bearing in mind that this essay is around 30 years old, so certain points made may no longer be applicable; references to The Bowery for example as being ‘an archetypal skidrow’.

From what I can gather, Rosler’s over-arching point in the essay is how the use of documentary photography had changed for the worse. She said:

‘The meliorism (the belief that the world can be made better by human effort) of Riis, Lewis Hine and others is in contrast to pure sensationalism of much of the journalistic attention to working-class, immigrant, and slum life’.

 In other words, Riis, Hine, and others were trying to use their photographs to bring attention to a particular problem, and encourage a gradual (rather than revolutionary) change. With their images they were trying to show facts, facts which were made more clear and concrete by being photographed. Jacob Riis alluded to this when he said; 'I wrote, but it made no impression'. These photographers used visual imagery in combination with other forms of discourse as propaganda to argue for the rectification of wrongs. They would also attempt to prompt action by appealing to polite society’s self-interest, arguing that the symptoms of poverty would affect their own health and security. Their work was in contrast to the sensationalistic journalistic attention to working-class, immigrant, and slum life.

This quote from the essay encapsulates Rosler’s thoughts on the progression of documentary photography over time:

            ‘The exposé, the compassion and outrage, of documentary fueled by the dedication to reform has shaded over into combinations of exoticism, tourism, voyeurism, psychologism and metaphysics, trophy hunting—and careerism’.

Rosler also talks about the emphasis on the photographer, rather than the people they are photographing. Florence Thompson, the subject of Dorothea Lange’s famous image The Migrant Mother, is one such example. She gave her consent for the images, as she believed they would help to improve her situation. In fact, she personally benefited very little; her identity was not discovered until the late 1970s, where she was found living in a trailer home. Florence was quoted as saying:

 "I wish she [Lange] hadn't taken my picture. I can't get a penny out of it. She didn't ask my name. She said she wouldn't sell the pictures. She said she'd send me a copy. She never did."

Lange’s image was public domain (as the project was government funded), so she didn’t directly receive royalties from the image, although it did make her a celebrity and furthered her career. It seems to me that once the image was taken, it became a distinctly different entity to the person herself; the image thrust into the limelight for decades to come, and the person herself all but forgotten. As Rosler put it in her essay; ‘Florence Thompson is of interest solely because she is a postscript to an acknowledged work of art’.

To get some further insight into the essay, I searched YouTube in the hope of finding a video of someone talking about Rosler’s work. I didn’t get exactly that, but I did find an interesting video titled Aperture Foundation at The New School: Documentary Photography which can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F6nTXZKoggQ. The video is a look at the work of three contemporary documentary photographers, although the speaker does begin with a few words on Rosler’s essay. She talks about how ‘pictures of the poor are framed with a liberal rhetoric’ and how ‘Power relations characterise documentary photography; it's part of the genre’. Both points made by Rosler. The video was made recently, and so is a more up-to-date viewpoint than Rosler’s essay. The speaker in the video made a particular statement that I think is very pertinent to what we are looking at in this part of the course:

‘21st century documentary photography has a much more pervasive uncertainty about facts. It reveals the transparency of the medium, and the subjectivity of the photographer. It's not about giving truthful information; it's questioning what all that might mean’.

What Makes a Document?

I believe all photographs qualify as documents, in that they are, in John Berger's words - 'a trace naturally left by something that has passed'. It is time and context that gives value to a photographic document. A photograph of a person standing in front of a plain wall might have little value to the world at large, but to that person's mother would be very precious. The meaning and importance of an image can change over time, when further events happen or come to light, as happened with Jose's balloon image.

I believe hindsight can also affect the meaning of an image.A group photograph of Jimmy saville with a group of schoolchildren might have made a mildly interesting tabloid picture at the time, but now, with hindsight, such images have a dark, sinister overtone. People's perception of an image has changed with new knowledge of the situation that was ongoing at the time, even though the image itself hasn't changed. What was happening at the time has not changed either, it's just that we now know about it, which shows such images in a different light.

How much we know of the circumstances of an image dictates to a large extent how useful it is as a document. A photograph can be attractive to look at, even when we don't know what it is we are looking at, however its usefulness as a document is impeded when supporting information (in the form of text, or additional images) is limited. Having no prior knowledge of Jose's photograph in Spain, I simply see two figures standing in front of a wall. The one on the left is evidently military, but I wouldn't neccessarily have guessed the one on the right is a religious figure, as the style of dress is unfamiliar to me. It is difficult to see with such a small image, but it appears that the military figure is smiling, and the religious figure is not. Is this significant? I enjoyed John Berger's example in his esssay 'Appearances' of the image of the smiling man and the horse. He recognises that with no contextual information, the viewer is forced to conjure their own interpretation of the scene. Would I look at Jose's image and see two friends? or would I see the man on the right fearful of his immediate future, and the man on the left relishing the thought of executing his prisoner?

Authenticity is another interesting facet to this debate. In Robert Fenton's famous photograph 'The Shadow of the Valley of Death', he had moved the cannonballs onto the road from elsewhere, presumably to dramatise the image. It is a staged photograph, however I believe that this doesn't make it less of a document, but that its documentary focus has shifted. The image still records a scene where fighting took place (but not as it turns out where the charge of the light brigade happened), and it still records the actual cannonballs used in the battle. Bearing these facts in mind, the photograph is a document. It is however documenting a slice of time not from the original battle, but from from the moment the image was being made. In effect I would treat it similar to an image taken of a battle re-enactment. On the sliding scale of value however, Fenton's would register more valuable due to its proximity time-wise to the actual event.

To sum up my thoughts of 'what makes a document?' - A photograph becomes a document the moment the shutter is pressed, but its documentary value is based on a flexible, fluid, sliding scale, which is influenced by context and time.

Kendall L. Walton - Transparent Pictures (Essay)

André Bazin, a film critic, said that ‘the photographic image is the object itself’. I don’t think that Bazin was actually saying that a person looking at a photograph lying on a table or mounted in a frame would think for one moment that they were looking at that actual object, but that you are seeing the object itself through the photograph, not a representation or depiction of the object.  Kendall L. Walton supports this viewpoint, and talks about photographic ‘transparency’, as if the photographic image is a window into the past.

In my opinion, which follows the lines of Walton, is that when you look at a photograph, what you are seeing captured on film or screen is the same reflection of light as your eye would have been exposed to had you personally been present at the scene. This is markedly different to even a hyper-realistic oil painting or drawing, which is still a product of the artist’s hand, not light. Even so, it is hard to disagree with Edward Steichen’s comment ‘Every photograph is a fake from start to finish’. Photographic images are usually bigger or smaller than their real life subject, they are sometimes monochrome, or with more saturated colour, elements in the frame may be out of focus, at odds with their real-life counterpart. The photographer has made a personal and artistic choice on what to include in the frame, and what to exclude.

In essence, photographs don’t fall neatly into either camp, however unlike hand-made pictures, their origin is in the basis of reality – real light did strike the subject, then reflect back into the camera’s lens and was recorded on the film or sensor, even though it is certainly manipulated on the way there, and also after the fact.

Work: Missions Héliographiques

Missions Héliographiques' was a 19th-century project initiated by Inspector General of Historical Monuments Prosper Mérimée in 1851 to photograph landmarks and monuments around France so that they could be restored. The intent was to supplement Monument Historique, a program Mérimée started in 1837 to classify, protect and restore French landmarks. The French rail network was still in its infancy and many of the commissioners had never visited the monuments in their care; photography promised a record of such sites that would be produced more quickly and accurately than the architectural drawings on which they had previously relied. Mérimée hired Edouard Baldus, Hippolyte Bayard, Gustave Le Gray, Henri Le Secq and Auguste Mestral to carry out the photography, with the aim that architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc could eventually restore them. The five photographers were all members of the fledgling Société Héliographique, the first photographic society. Each was assigned a travel itinerary and detailed list of monuments.

Baldus was sent south and east to photograph the Palace of Fontainebleau, the medieval churches of Lyon and other towns in the Rhône Valley, and the Roman monuments of Provence, including the Pont du Gard, the triumphal arch at Orange, the Maison Carrée in Nîmes, and the amphitheater at Arles.

Gustave Le Gray, already recognized as a leading figure on both the technical and artistic fronts of French photography, was sent southwest, to the famed châteaux of the Loire Valley—Blois, Chambord, Amboise, and Chenonceaux, among others—to the small towns and Romanesque churches along the pilgrimage routes to Santiago de Compostela, and through the Dordogne. Le Gray traveled with Mestral and photographed sites on his old friend and protégé’s list, including the fortified town of Carcassonne (not yet “restored” by Viollet-le-Duc), Albi, Perpignan, Le Puy, Clermont-Ferrand, and other sites in south-central and central France. On occasion, the two worked hand-in-hand, for a few photographs are signed by both photographers.  

Henri Le Secq was sent north and east to the great Gothic cathedrals of Reims, Laon, Troyes, and Strasbourg, among others.

Hippolyte Bayard, the only one of the five to have worked with glass—rather than paper—negatives (and thus, the only one whose negatives no longer survive), was sent west to towns in Brittany and Normandy, including Caen, Bayeux, and Rouen.

An announcement of the project was made in La Lumière, the official organ of the Société Héliographique in its June 29th issue with the itineraries published soon afterwards. After the five photographers had completed their tasks in the summer and autumn of 1851, they returned to Paris with portfolios of prints and negatives. There was much fanfare upon their return, but the photos were immediately retrieved and locked in a drawer. Bayard’s glass negatives are yet to be found.

The Mission Heliographique was the first state-sponsored, photographic survey of architecture. Yet the visionary parent society, the Societe Heliographique, only survived for less than three years, from 1851-1853. The expedition’s failure as an artistic polemic to save architecture was perhaps – ironically – due to its success. According to Naomi Rosenblum, in “Documentation: Landscape and Architecture,” The photographers’ skill and artistry helped doom the project. The beautifully composed images of decaying buildings made them appear in a positive light, which did little to encourage the restoration work for which the Mission Heliographique had originally embarked. Many of the buildings whose images were taken by the five photographers no longer exist due to the urban renewal efforts of Napoleon III under the architectural supervision of Baron Georges-Eugène Haussmann.

References

Daniel, M. (2016). Mission Héliographique, 1851 | Essay | Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History | The Metropolitan Museum of Art. [online] The Met’s Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. Available at: http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/heli/hd_heli.htm [Accessed 7 Jul. 2016].

H, J. (2009). Mission Heliographique - The Patrimony of Paris in Photos. [online] Bearings. Available at: http://www.terrastories.com/bearings/mission-heliographique-the-patrimony-of-paris-in-photos [Accessed 7 Jul. 2016].

Wikipedia. (2016). Missions Héliographiques. [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missions_H%C3%A9liographiques [Accessed 7 Jul. 2016].