Working on the theme of departure for assignment 5

I have recently come back from a visit to Ireland where I spent a day shooting for my last assignment of the course.  I am working on an image for departure - an immigrant leaving Ireland.

Here are some of the best images from the shoot.  I am trying to get a shot of the sea or coast without the sea actually being in the image.

I quite like these images but I'm not sure whether I will include any of them in the final series.  I will have to do some work on the coastline first.  

Vivian Maier

The latest book I have added to my collection is Vivian Maier: Street Photographer.  

I first came across Maier's work a couple of years ago at the London Street Photography Festival.  I attended an exhibition of her work that I hadn't planned to go to and I was glad that I did.

We all love a story about someone who achieves success.  Whether that is a rags to riches story or the story of an artist whose work is discovered after their death.  The latter is the case for Maier.  I think the fact that she didn't work as a commercial photographer or seek gratification before she died gave her a freedom to work unhampered.

Maier appears to make the most of her free time from working as a nanny to shooting the streets where she lived.  She captures the vibrancy of the city but also the harsh realities of life in her time.  This leads to a variety of exciting and interesting subjects.  You have children, businessmen, the rich and poor, beggars and busyness of city life.  If these are her subjects then young love, loneliness, drunkeness and childhood innocence are the traits of life she captures.

The book contains an interesting set of images from her work.  There is an element of humour in her work.  There is also a sadness.  The book gives a great insight into how Maier saw the world and what truly stirred her emotionally.

Building the railways

As part of my research for the final assignment of this course, I have been looking at the railways and in particular the people who built them.  Little is known about these men and their families who lived in terrible conditions and worked in dangerous situations.  We tend to read about them being hard workers, big drinkers and prone to violence.  They were feared by the townspeople where they showed up.  They were viewed with suspicion.  They lived on the edge of society.

Although we have few accounts from the navvies themselves about their life we do have the work of a young photographer SWA Newton.  Newton photographed the navvies in their workplace and their homes which were often huts or tents at the side of the road.

In his series of images which are published in Railways and Rural Lie, he provides us with an insight into these people's lives.  The images are dark and contrasty.  They have a raw and grimy feel to them.  You can feel the dirt and grit just looking at them.

Their homes are little more than shacks.  Their faces drawn.  The young men look like they have aged before their time.

What I would like to take from Newton's images is the starkness and the unsentimental feel they have.  They present the viewer with what is in front of the photographer no matter how hard those sights may be to look at.

I also like the darkness in the images.  There is a sense of foreboding; a sense of doom.You are left in little doubt about the toughness of the subjects and their strength of character.

Making use of text

For my next assignment I've started to look at how I can use text either in or alongside my images. This is something my tutor mentioned from assignment 4 where I did use text in my images albeit not deliberately. After thinking more about how text could compliment my work I've decided to look at how it can enhance my next set of images.

Photographers tend to use text a lot in their images from shop names to street names and product names to fashion labels. However there are some photographers that have made a very deliberate us of text in their work like Duane Michals for example. Michals uses text in the image itself but also as asides that fill in some of the blanks or provide additional clues for the viewer. I like some of his work. It provides the viewer with a very different viewing experience where they use two forms of communication to decipher the meaning of an image. 

I find it interesting to think of the uses text can have from the photographers perspective. You can guide the viewer with use of text or tease them with giving them additional information about the meaning of your image with words. Often the viewer is looking for an explanation for why you shot what you did or simply what is going on in your work. This can lead them into a false sense of security with text. I think we tend to perceive text as being more informative than the visual but as a photographer or artist you can decide how much you want the viewer to know and how you believe they should receive this information. 

Ever since I went to a talk by David Goldblatt last year I've been thinking about text and I like the way he used it alongside his images to tell you more about the person in the shot and their situation. This is especially true of a place that you are not familiar with like his South Africa and the political situation of the past (and present).  I felt after viewing his images more informed about what I had seen, and I felt it was more of a learning experience. 

I'm not particularly a fan of Barbara Kruger's use of text in images. I find it a bit garish and pop art which is not my thing. I do however like some of the concepts introduced in Hamish Fulton's work. Fulton uses text in a very informative but visually pleasing manner. I also like the way in which he constructs his images. 

I think looking at their work has given me some food for thought and I will have to consider more how I will use text alongside my images. I feel that with the images I have already created for this assignment they can only be enhanced by the use of words to tell more of the story. It is a big story. 

Visit to the V&A print room

Some weeks ago now I attended the OCA visit to the print room.  Due to circumstances I am only getting round to writing about this visit now.  Better late than never though as they say!

The day was very different to any other OCA photography study visit I have been on.  The group was small - approximately 10 people - which made for more interesting discussion at lunch.  I have found before that on these visits when there's too many people the group gets split up and kind of filters out along with many of the ideas and personal experiences shared.  This wasn't the case with this visit and I feel this greatly contributed to its success.

A note about visits
I know that the OCA do as much as they can to include people in these visits.  I have been on a number now over the last couple of years and I have found that it is the same people that attend these visits.  This has led to these people forming what seems to be a bit of an in-group and I have witnessed what appears to be an unwillingness to include others in their group.

This doesn't really bother me too much but it can be very off putting for people who are on a first study visit.  Maybe this is something that should be looked.

Back to the day
The print room in the V&A is a wonderful hidden gem - well it was hidden from me.  We had booked our visit in advance and they had about 10 boxes of images laid out for us when we arrived.  The boxes charted the history of photography from its very beginnings to work by modern photographers.  It set out to introduce you to some of the technical issues photography has overcome over the years to the more creative questioning images can produce.

They included:

Photographic process and technique
which looked at the daguerrreotype and the direct positive process and also included an early colour photograph by Arthur E Cope which was a portrait of his children.  I really enjoyed seeing my first daguerreotype.  From reading about these I always wondered what they would be like.  I did find the daguerreotype to be quite sharp but I think I expected it to be bigger for some reason.  When I think about it though why would it be?

This section also included a second box which focused on the different processes including photogravure, carbon prints, cyanotype and calotype.  This was particularly interesting to me as I have heard a lot during my studies about printing processes but never truly understood or could see the differences between them until seeing prints in the flesh.

History of photography
This collection included Fenton's Hardships in the Camps and John Thompson's street life in London.  It looks at examining the way in which photography has been used and its role over the years.

Contemporary photography
This box focused on the work of Nicholas Nixon which I found to be the most interesting and thought provoking.  Nixon took a portrait of the Brownlee sisters over a number of years one of which was his wife. It is very interesting how over the years the women age and how we can see that ageing process documented by the camera.  However it is more interesting to see how the roles within the group change over the years.  We can see the sisters being protective over one or another depending on what that particular sister is experiencing in her life.

Cultural identity and photography
This box included the work of David Goldblatt and Marketa Luskarova.  This collection looked at people's cultural identity capturing and documenting the role in plays in society.  This is especially true of Goldblatt's work.
A second box on the history of the photographic medium is more questioning and interrogative using the work of Lewis Hine to question society's acceptance of child labour and Man Ray's manipulation of the image.

All in all the visit was a successful one for me.  I found that it was interesting to be opening boxes and looking at images rather than seeing them on gallery walls.  It reminded me of looking at old photographs at home as a child.  It also made for a more intimate, personal experience as there wasn't the distance that you sometimes find between viewer and gallery wall.

Most of all however, it made the pictures, many of which I have been looking at over the last few months - real!

Update - back on track

Due to some personal issues I've had to take a break from the course for a number of weeks and as a result my blog has been a little neglected.  However, I am back on track now and have started work on the final assignment for People and Place.

As it stands I have a couple of choices on themes for this assignment.  I could look at one of the buildings I photographed for assignment 3 which would be interesting to revisit.  I had thought about the Tate or The British Museum or maybe even the underground.  However, I feel at the moment any of these could turn out to be a bigger project than I anticipated.

I could also explore some of the themes I looked at in Hackney like art or crime or my family.  In my last assignment I particularly enjoyed exploring my family and thinking about how different my life would be if my parents hadn't returned to Ireland and I had grown up in east London instead.  What kind of person would I be today?  At the moment I think I am being drawn to looking more at my family and my father in particular.

I would like to explore him and his place in my life a lot more and find the idea of using photography to do this interesting.  As he died when I was young I know very little about him only what I have been told.  I have often said to people that only for photographs I wouldn't even remember what he looks like.  So photography has sustained and instilled a series of memories of my father in me.  I think this is a very uniques relationship to explore using photography.

Assignment 4: A sense of place

I chose the borough of Hackney in east London for this assignment.

Inner City

Hackney Life

Quirky Architecture

It's still life

Crime and punishment

For art's sake