A colour vision – Exercise – Peter Dench

I briefly looked at Peter Dench in the previous post but will look at his work a little more in depth here.

Dench was born and grew up in Weymouth, Dorset graduating in 1995, with a degree in Photographic Studies from the University of Derby. He has worked as a photojournalist since 1998. His best known works document England and have included titles such as drinkUK, ethnicUK, rainUK, loveUK, royalUK, summerUK, fashionUK, and Carry on England.

In examining his work it it logical to link him to past photographers such as Bill Brandt, Tony Ray Jones, Tom Wood and of course Martin Parr.

On Parr:

The first colours I saw were saturated; striped deck chairs, arcade rides, Punch and Judy. The Last Resort echoed a familiar world from my youth, a saturated slap about the face, colours that burned a permanent impression directly onto the retina,” Peter told me. “Working on foreign assignments across the globe has clarified to me just how different, how fabulous, and at times, how ridiculous the English are.

Dench also cites Greg Leach and Paul Reas as his inspiration. Photographer Simon Roberts has reportedly commented that he has an’inimitable style and dry humour.’

On his own work:

It was important for my photography on the English to document what was familiar from my youth and also to document what I had no idea about; posh schools, social summer events, jollies and jamborees; to create a rounded look at the English both geographically and socially.

The colours and style of my work is largely born out of laziness and fear. I was always petrified of ‘pushing’ film, preferring to blast subjects with the flash to make sure something scarred the film. I also prefer shooting in the sunshine, not too early and not too late; unless it’s in a pub or club.

England Uncensored is a laugh out loud romp through this often badly behaved nation, it is not an idealized brochure of a green and pleasant land. In this Jubilee year of Great British pomp, where the media coverage is expected to be as polished as the crown jewels, it is important for us as a nation to remember who we really are, warts and all.

His various books are England Uncensored (2012), The Dench Diary: The Diary of a Sometimes Working Professional Photographer. (2013) A&E: Alcohol and England. (2014) The British Abroad. (2014) and Dench Does Dallas.(2015)

Surreal is anything dream like, images that stress the subconscious or non-rational significance with exploitation of chance effects, unexpected juxtapositions, etc. I think Dench’s photography definitely falls within this framework.

Exercise

To choose a topic that interests me and produce a small portfolio of five colour images in a surrealist style.

I have taken some images, I need to edit them and ask for peer feedback so watch this space….

*Update*

Having skipped this exercise and returning to it here is a selection of image taken in a surrealist from several day trips out.

Assignment Two Single Image Narrative

Assignment Two Single Image Narrative

Assignment Two Single Image Narrative

Assignment Two Single Image Narrative

Assignment Two Single Image Narrative

Assignment Two Single Image Narrative

Assignment Two Single Image Narrative

The final images I have chosen are as follows:

Man with wings

 

Reflections and paper

 

Refugees welcome

 

In my own little world

Shadows

 

I have posted them to the OCA community and am awaiting responses.

Research

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/17190001

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/mar/12/paul-reas-best-shot-dad-army-wallpaper

A colour vision – A subtle colour documentary

The 1980’s saw a shift to colour in newspapers as there was a technological stability in colour materials and a profusion of colour amateur snapshots were deemed to have a ‘naive realism’ (Bate p.63) Due to the general public acknowledging the use and veracity of colour more photographers and publishers began to use this medium.

Gradually the influence of colour photography pervaded the sphere of documentary. Photographers, publishers and NGO’s have recognised that B&W images can have a negative impact on the narrative they wish to tell. B&W ‘stories’ are seen to be ‘gritty, sombre’ and possibly to ‘spoon-feed’ the audience. In this vein, after the UN chose to review progress on the eight Millennium Development goals, Britain’s leading charities co-ordinated a photographic project to be undertaken by seven photographers from Panos Pictures. Eight Ways to Change the World tended to adopt a conceptual approach more to engage the reader rather than obviously point out the issues, the photographers involved ‘prioritised the use of colour and a subtle reportage style’ using positive quotes from the subjects as captions in places. In 2000 the goals set by leaders from the 189 countries in the UN included an end to extreme poverty and hunger, reverse the spread of HIV/Aids and malaria, and to give all children an education.

The photographers were Ami Vitale, Chris de Bode, Zed Nelson, Tim Dirven, Adam Hinton, Dieter Telemans and Pep Bonet.

Eight Ways to Change the World, held in conjunction with DFID, Concern, VSO, ActionAid, Plan International, Interact Worldwide, the Panos Institute and WaterAid, has been exhibited in London and Edinburgh. Most importantly, this style of photography, as asserted by Jeffrey Sachs, special adviser to UN secretary general Kofi Annan, ‘highlights our common humanity. We look at photos of people living in extreme poverty but see first and foremost their humanity and spirit and dedication, even in the midst of extreme deprivation. Their eyes don’t call for our pity but for our camaraderie and partnership and empathy.’

Exercise

Read the article ‘Seeing and Believing’, written by Max Houghton for Foto8.

Select two bodies of work from Eight Ways to Change the World (2005) that show different conceptual and visual styles and write a short reflective commentary in your learning log. Both bodies of work should be in colour. Discuss aspects like information, aesthetics and expression.

‘Seeing and Believing’, written by Max Houghton for Foto8.

Within this article Max Houghton alludes to the West’s attitude towards ‘exotic other’ in his description of the prevailing ‘paternalistic…perception of “them”, those overseas, and less fortunate’. He acknowledges that the fault lies not only with the media but also with the NGO’s, who either commission the newspapers stories in the first instance or facilitate those on the ground. Despite the good works undertaken it was crucial to revise how various groups of people were being represented; the countries the people and the issues should be fully understood and to do so the best people to be taking photographs should be the indigenous peoples. Paul Lowe, then a photojournalist and lecturer at LCC stated ‘it’s most significant to use indigenous photographers to represent their own country when there is no local voice at all, so all we ever get is a western point of view.’ Houghton also expresses the concern that ‘the very language of photojournalism is a white man’s language.’ Adrian Evans , the director of Panos Pictures, felt that NGO’s should teach photojournalism as part of their remit; Aina Photo set up in Afghanistan is a prime example of a success story, with one of their images used by the international press. This is important for several reasons, one it helps with the psychological rebuilding of the countries involved, teaches skills to those interested and talented enough, allows for (hopefully) an independent press with images using their own voice, and fills a gap when Western press loses interest in the concerns of the country.

The article mentions Photovoice, a London based NGO which is still operating and whose mission is:

to build skills within disadvantaged and marginalised communities. To achieve this, we utilise innovative participatory photography and digital storytelling methods. These skills enable individuals to represent themselves and create tools for advocacy and communication. Through this, and through developing partnerships, we deliver positive social change.

With the advancement of digital photography and the ability to rapidly transfer files across the globe I see no reason why local people should not be trained and encouraged to fulfil this role. With the Arab Spring and current events unfolding around the world I think it is vitally important that stories are told from the perspective of the indigenous people.

I can think of two exhibitions that I have seen in recent years where photographers have been given the opportunity to address ‘the dialogue between the local and the global’.

Firstly, Figures & Fictions: Contemporary South African Photography

In 2011, Figures & Fictions: Contemporary South African Photography highlighted the work of 17 South African photographers, all of whom live and work in the country and whose images were made between 2000 and 2010. The photographers’ projects were linked by the depiction of people and a self-conscious engagement with South Africa’s political and photographic past.

and secondly

Work from Eight Ways to Change the World 

As we are researching colour and conceptual ideas some of the photographers’ work is easier to discard than others being B&W or fairly ‘straight documentary images.’ However, we are asked to examine different conceptual approaches and visual styles so I have elected to look at Ami Vitale and Dieter Telemans.

Ami Vitale’s body of work covers the goal of improving maternal health and the reduction of child mortality and many of the photographs are fairly traditional mother and child portraits.

• The images in the PDF file are all concerned with the women; there are no adult males featured
• the lighting is varied; natural, candle light, interior, exterior
• all shots, bar one, are internal
• the images are all intimate moments of women and their children or immediate childbirth
• The text and images work together to reveal how basic the medical care is, how there is still a lot to achieve, but do reveal a positive outlook, and that women are empowering themselves to implement change for the better.
• Vitale uses different vantage points, differing depth of field, negative space and also fills other images with background detail.
• Using colour she shows the rich vibrant colours of the clothing, which would be at odds within a sombre narrative, however these colours work with the overall positive message that Panos Pictures et al were trying to promote.
• the text is mainly factual with no emotive or sensationalist language
• The text includes statistics but also provide personal information about the subjects, who are all individually named, which make the audience empathise more with the situation

‘The power of photography is that you can look at an image and instantly feel something. I’ve been on this mission to tell stories that connect and inspire people and at the core of that is empathy. Empathy is more valuable than any piece of gear or beautifully crafted image’. (Ami Vitale, 2016)

It was actually quite difficult to find images from the pdf online so I have printed and annotated images in my learning log.

The second body of work I opted to focus on was the series of images by Dieter Telemans, who explored the importance and availability of clean water.

• Unintentionally, the body of work I chose also focuses heavily on the females within the community, and the responsibility they have from a very young age to keep their homes supplied with water
• the images reveal the enormity of the task and extreme hard labour that faces all generations of women within these areas e.g. the grooves in the rocky side of the well
• the 8 images are all very different, there are close up portraits with very shallow depth of field, panoramic wide angle group shots showing celebration, and several surreal images showing flowing water, blurred movement and large areas of negative space
• Only two of the images refer directly to the subject naming a young girl, Marietou; all the others simply refer to ‘girls’, ‘women’ or ‘woman’ within the frame
• as with Ami Vitale the text is mainly factual with no emotive or sensationalist language

The modern audience is more familiar with colour imagery – internet, colour newspapers and magazines etc – so by choosing to employ this format both Vitale and Telemans are tapping into the newer way to present documentary narratives. No longer do people want to be emotionally manipulated, in fact there has been much speculation about the effect of grainy, black, depressing visual ‘charity overload.’  These images show the reality of the countries and their plight without over stressing the downsides and promote more of the positives. Colours reveal a more truthful image and the way of life and customs, as Lisa Hostetler (Department of Photographs, The Metropolitan Museum of Art) wrote,  ‘By allowing the contemporary world’s colours to speak for the character and flavour of contemporary life’.

Research

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/sep/07/millennium.internationalaidanddevelopment9

http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/newsid_4240000/newsid_4246900/4246962.stm

http://www.comminit.com/dfid/content/eight-ways-change-world

Click to access LT_folio-extract_graphics-for-exhibitions-events-and-display.pdf

http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/articles/f/figures-and-fictions-contemporary-south-african-photography/

http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ndoc/hd_ndoc.htm

 

A colour vision – Colour and Modernity

Yet again we are reminded of Eggleston’s contribution to the history of colour photography the importance of the patronage of John Szarkowski and the influence of the Museum of Modern Art.

I covered the work of Eggleston in my post  regarding a talk I attended. I am always amazed that other ‘colourists’ don’t get any recognition, those such as Joel Meyeorwitz, who began photographing in colour in 1962 during a time when there was significant resistance to the idea of colour photography as serious art. In the early 1970’s he taught the first colour course at the Cooper Union in New York City. Joel Sternfeld  began taking color photographs in 1970 and visited Eggleston in 1974, and Saul Leiter who started taking colour photographs in 1948.

Why Eggleston was plucked to represent the way forward only Szarkowski would be able to say. Why his images were chosen above all others I don’t know. As previously mentioned it could be the intensity of his colours or the banality of the subjects that drew the eye. Meyeorwitz was still very much ‘street’ and Leiter very painterly.

On reading the press release you have to accept that it was written to attract an audience and you need to read between the publicity ‘blurb.’ Was he one of the most accomplished photographer working in colour at the time?  I don’t think so. He was tremendously influential after this exhibition, is mentioned as part of a ‘new generation’ but no other names are given. Once Szarkowski had chosen to exhibit the work, once again his publicity machine went into overdrive, producing William Eggleston’s Guide and heaping plenty of praise and superlatives upon the work, to counter the poor press reviews… again the phrase ‘swooning aestheticism’ springs to mind. No publicity is bad publicity and much debate was given to this body of work thrusting it into the public eye. Eventually opposition was overcome and colour was established as a legitimate photographic medium for documentary, although there are those who will still argue that it is within art genre as it chronicled American life during this era. This body of work reveals a shift of images from the public sphere to the personal sphere which regenerated an interest in documentary photography as art – Bate – to properly reference…..

Suggested Research – Gerhard Richter

Looking at Gerhard Richter’s painted photographs, as they were suggested to me after I considered using collage/mixed media for assignment two, there has been some debate as to whether Richter should be noted as a ‘painter’ or an ‘artist’.

Once these limitations on medium specificity have been lifted and we are free to discuss each medium within the context of Art, we can begin to look at Gerhard Richter’s ‘Over-painted Photographs’ not as paintings or photographs but objects that address much larger ideas than that of themselves.

His approach to painting and his over-painted images can be said to achieve the same result, in making his audience look closely at the object, trying to discern what he is depicting and leaving it to their imaginations and personal interpretations. When asked  ‘Why do most of your paintings look like blurry photographs?’ his response was:

I’ve never found anything to be lacking in a blurry canvas. Quite the contrary: you can see many more things in it than in a sharply focused image. A landscape painted with exactness forces you to see a determined number of clearly differentiated trees, while in a blurry canvas you can perceive as many trees as you want. The painting is more open.

Interview with Irmeline Lebeer, 1973

With his “Over-painted Photographs”, Richter takes ordinary commercially printed photographs, from his family album and these he smears with the oil paint left over at the end of the day, which is then pressed or scraped or lifted to give various textural effects. These photographs are just legible behind the paint. You can just about see the scene depicted and have to peer through the thick layer of paint to work out the meaning or content of the photograph.

I’m not quite sure I agree with one review…

The great sweeps of thick, dripping paint comment…in a different, artistic voice which imposes itself on the steady photographic one we thought we could plainly hear. It’s like watching Richter acknowledge the modern domination of the photograph and yet also his own refusal to give in to it. The photographic elements give something to the paint which gives something in return. The sum of both is far larger than the contribution of either alone. Lovely things, as exciting as anything you are likely to see. No artist has more to say on the photograph and how well we know it.

But I do agree that:

never have we looked so closely at a photograph than when it is someone else’s and covered in paint.

I was thinking of using this technique although it may be tricky; I’m not really an artist so it may all end up in a huge mess and I might move on to something else. The other problem I may encounter is covering up elements within the photograph that hint at the meaning I am trying to convey.

Research

http://jmcolberg.com/weblog/2011/10/a_letter_from_london_gerhard_richter_and_his_overpainted_photographs/

https://www.gerhard-richter.com/en/art/overpainted-photographs

http://5b4.blogspot.co.uk/2009/02/gerhard-richter-overpainted-photographs.html

https://www.ft.com/content/92a63810-35dc-11de-a997-00144feabdc0

A colour vision

Most of the theory books we are pointed to reading contain essays or information steeped in the history of the B&W image however, with the advancement of modern technologies, more and more photographers and publications are embracing the colour image; ‘influential’ photography festivals within the UK such as Brighton Photo Biennial, Hereford Photography Festival and Format International Photography Festival pave the way for future developments. The coursework points particularly at the years 2010 & 2011 as these festivals showing ‘an eclectic collection of contemporary documentary photography’ which answer Rosler’s question as to the direction of Documentary photography, they revealed a ‘robust health’ within the genre and that colour bodies of work were beginning to dominate documentary practice. Sadly, the Hereford Photography Festival no longer seems to be funded or operating.

The plan for part three is to examine the British tradition of colour documentary looking closely at the work of Paul Graham, Martin Parr and Richard Billingham considered to be at the ‘forefront of contemporary practice.’ Whilst examining contemporary work I need to reflect upon the issue of authenticity, objectivity, re-enactment and reality. In this respect it was really handy to attend the Magnum: New Blood talk at the Barbican Centre and the OCA study day with Edmund Clerk  (write-ups to follow). Research suggested by Russell on Gregory Crewdson also touches upon this discussion.

A healthy debate was undertaken on the WeAreOca forum which I have had a good read of and taken note of some of the photographers mentioned within these posts:

https://weareoca.com/photography/on-an-exhibition-crawl-at-brighton-photo-biennial/

A new name for me was Dhruv Malhotra and I found an interview with Time online speaking about his body of work Sleepers which drew quite a bit of praise. Others mentioned Susanne Opton and her portraits of soldiers. Keith commented on sensitive portraits by Molly Landreth – Queer Brighton at the Lighthouse and Mexican taxi driver, Oscar Fernando Gomez’s, photographs through the window of his cab. William Christenberry is a name I know but never looked at so all there photographers are people I feel I should look into.

Several things stuck out for me on this thread, firstly the comments by Jose that documentary is hard to pigeonhole due to the variety of approaches coming under the documentary umbrella and the fact the someone thought if you put your work on show that it should not be criticized, or rather that some of the comments made were harsh. Sadly, as pointed out, work will attract a mix of both praise and vilification in equal measure.

https://weareoca.com/photography/oca-students-visit-hereford-photography-festival/

This thread I had already found due to an earlier exercise looking at the Time & Motion Studies: New Documentary Photography exhibition but some things to look into perhaps are Adrian Arbib’s image’s of Solsbury Hill the work of the PhotoVoice collective which showed work by visually-impaired photographers from the Sensory Photography collective.

https://weareoca.com/photography/right-here-right-nowsecond-thoughts/

provided another list of names to research  Maciej Dakowicz, Peter Dench, Alex Webb, Constantine Manos, Melanie Einzig , Michael Wolf,  Amani Willett, Frederic Lezmi, Lise Sarfati, Zhang Xiao and Hin Chua and Katrin Koenning’s Thirteen:Twenty Lacuna. If I research all of these in one sitting I may be gone sometime…..

Suggested Research – Louise Bourgeois

I did not recognise the name Louise Bourgeois, but when I looked at her work I instantly knew her HUGE spider sculpture, Maman. Maman is a bronze, stainless steel, and marble sculpture, which depicts a spider. It measures over 30 ft high and over 33 ft wide and was created in 1999 by Bourgeois as a part of her inaugural commission of The Unilever Series (2000), in the Turbine Hall at London’s Tate Modern. The original was created in steel, with an edition of six subsequent castings in bronze. It includes a sac containing 26 marble eggs, and its abdomen and thorax are made of ribbed bronze.

It would seem that Bourgeois had a fascination with spiders from early on; there is a small ink and charcoal drawing dated 1947.

It alludes to the strength of Bourgeois’ mother, with metaphors of spinning, weaving, nurture and protection.Her mother Josephine was a woman who repaired tapestries in her father’s textile restoration workshop in Paris.

‘The Spider is an ode to my mother. She was my best friend. Like a spider, my mother was a weaver. My family was in the business of tapestry restoration, and my mother was in charge of the workshop. Like spiders, my mother was very clever. Spiders are friendly presences that eat mosquitoes. We know that mosquitoes spread diseases and are therefore unwanted. So, spiders are helpful and protective, just like my mother.’

Her father was apparently ‘a tyrannical philanderer’ and after her mother died in 1932, she swapped her studies in maths to art. Her father thought ‘modern artists were wastrels’ and refused to support her, however she continued to study by joining classes where translators were needed for English-speaking students, these translators were not charged tuition.  During one of these classes she met Fernand Léger who advised her that her future was as a sculptor, not a painter.

Turning to her father’s indiscretions for inspiration- he had an affair with the family Nanny over several years- Bourgeois’ artwork is famous for its exceedingly personal themes: the unconscious, sexual desire, and the body.

Using art as a catharsis Bourgeois ‘transformed her experiences into a visual language using mythological and archetypal imagery’, utilising objects such as spirals, spiders, cages, medical tools, and sewn appendages to symbolize the feminine psyche, beauty, and psychological pain.

I really like her piece of work 10am is when you come to me. I love the symbolism of the time shared together with her assistant, the motif of the hand to symbolise dependency and support, the colour red to possibly symbolise emotional intensity and the musical score paper it is painted on ‘further emphasises the rhythm of Bourgeois and Gorovoy’s relationship’.

A full explanation of the piece is on the Tate website here.

It took a long time for Bourgeois to receive any real recognition and finally had her first retrospective in 1982, held by the MoMA in New York City. This was followed by another in 1989 at Documenta 9 in Kassel, Germany. In 2000 her works were selected to be shown at the opening of the Tate Modern in London and in 2001, she showed at the Hermitage Museum. Although Bourgeois exhibited with the Abstract Expressionists such as Robert Motherwell, Jackson Pollock, and Mark Rothko, and her work has much in common with Surrealism and Feminist art, she was not really part of any particular artistic movement.

On the Tate website there is a short video interview she gave.

More of her work is described here.

Like Kienholz she drew on personal experiences and passions for political and social issues to inform her artwork. Bourgeois created artwork for the AIDS activist organization ACT UP in 1993 and in 2010 she promoted LGBT equality by creating the piece I Do, depicting two flowers growing from one stem, to benefit the nonprofit organization Freedom to Marry. Bourgeois said ‘Everyone should have the right to marry. To make a commitment to love someone forever is a beautiful thing.’

Although an artist/sculptor rather than a photographer Louise Bourgeois was a brilliant person to research, as she once more underlined the way you can draw on personal/shared experiences to influence your creative processes in different directions. Also her use of quite surreal metaphors for ordinary everyday subjects was enlightening.

http://www.tate.org.uk/context-comment/video/tateshots-louise-bourgeois

http://www.tate.org.uk/context-comment/blogs/work-week-maman-louise-bourgeois

http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/bourgeois-10-am-is-when-you-come-to-me-al00345

http://www.theartstory.org/artist-bourgeois-louise.htm

https://www.artsy.net/artist/louise-bourgeois

Suggested Research – Edward Kienholz

Edward Kienholz 1927-1994

I’d never heard of Edward Kienholz therefore was intrigued over what I might find ‘challenging’ about his work when Russell suggested I look…on Googling him I soon found out why he is described as an ‘artist of unwavering originality, critical insight, and notoriety’; he certainly does seem to produce some obscure and in some cases repulsive, looking work!

His huge life-size three-dimensional tableaux were ‘immersive environments’ that strongly reflected upon ‘contemporary social and political issues of late twentieth-century America.’ These tableaux were mainly made from discarded items.

Kienholz was married several times, but eventually settled in a stable relationship with his fifth wife, the artist Nancy Reddin Kienholz, who worked closely with him in the conceptualisation and fabrication of his later works.

In the 1960s Kienholz took an even grittier approach to his materials than his predecessors by utilizing discarded objects that appeared grimy and damaged. In large-scale installations with life-sized figures and built environments, Kienholz made his work physically and emotionally immersive, breaking down the comfort zone between the art and its audience.

Echoing the degraded, filthy quality of his materials, his sculptures and tableaux often evoke American society’s sexual prudery, political corruption, moral hypocrisy, and oppression of marginalised groups. These works are designed to evoke complicated responses of revulsion and guilt, often making viewers feel complicit in their atrocities.
Due to its controversial subject matter and its unflinching portrayals of sex and violence, Kienholz’s work was frequently the target of debates over obscenity and the appropriate use of public funding for the arts, foreshadowing discussions about contemporary art that still continue to this day.

The more I found out about him the more I wanted to discover, looking on YouTube for videos of his installations was definitely eye-opening. His work is visceral, ugly, deformed, in some ways incomprehensible, whilst at the same time sending exactly the right message, which inexorably draws you in – well it did me. I could not just look and comment on one single installation.

The following block quote descriptions are all taken from the website The Art Story.

The Illegal Operation (1962)

Artwork description & Analysis: Made nearly a decade before the Supreme Court’s Roe v. Wade ruling, which legalized abortion in the United States, The Illegal Operation depicts the scene of an abortion at a time when the procedure was practiced in secrecy, often in dangerous and unregulated conditions. This early sculpture, created out of found objects including a shopping cart, a wooden stool, and a standing lamp, is a prime example of Kienholz’s Funk art assemblage. Its title hints at the taboo debate surrounding abortion rights, while its crudely hewn composition – with the cart reconfigured into a chair, the lampshade tilted askew, and the linens darkened with filth – suggests that something is clearly amiss. Through its visceral imagery, the sculpture draws attention to the country’s problematic handling of the abortion issue during the middle of the twentieth century. This piece was also based on Kienholz’s personal experience of abortion, since his wife at the time had undergone the same procedure during this period and was forced to do so illegally. Like much of his later work, The Illegal Operation broaches a controversial topic while insisting that matters of political and social discourse are never unwarranted artistic subjects.

I like the way he drew upon personal experiences a well as world events to base his pieces on.

The Back Seat Dodge ’38 (1964)

Artwork description & Analysis: When this work was displayed in Kienholz’s 1966 solo show at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, it caused an uproar, leading some local authorities to call it pornographic and others to plead for its removal from the exhibition. The sculpture portrays a youthful couple engaged in sexual activity in a truncated 1938 Dodge coupe with its passenger seat door propped ajar. The woman, cast in plaster, lies across the seat with the man, formed out of chicken wire, lying on top of her; the two figures are surrounded by beer bottles. As Kienholz has noted, this piece represents an adolescent experience common to many young adults who grew up in the new age of the automobile and is based on his own early sexual experimentation. The work, which can only be seen by gazing through the open door, gives the sense that the viewer has intruded upon the scene as a voyeur. By embedding the scene within the car, dimly lit by the car’s headlights and cab light, Kienholz engages simultaneous reactions of discomfort, revulsion, interest, and curiosity that evoke the mid-twentieth century American public’s attitudes towards sexuality.

What attracted me to this piece was that it could be altered by changing the lighting, which gave a completely different atmosphere. Again he was drawing on personal as well as most contemporary, Western adolescent experiences.

He may or may not have got inspiration from a Bobby Smith image taken in Tampa Florida in the 1950’s simply called The Back Seat of a Car.

Bobby Smith was the first female “messenger boy,” and co-founder of the Metropolitan Community Church in Tampa, Bobby Smith’s personal and professional photographs include both portraits and “everyday” shots of the LGBT community. The collection consists of nearly 450 photographs documenting Tampa’s Gay and Lesbian communities from the 1950s to the 1970s. Images of popular hang-outs, such as Jack’s Place, Knotty Pine, Jimmie White’s Tavern and the Brass Rail, are included. A small sample of the collection has been digitized and are available online at http://digital.lib.usf.edu/maniscalcor

The Beanery (1965)

The walk-in installation The Beanery is one of Kienholz’s most admired works. Inspired by Barney’s Beanery, a seedy pub located off the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles that was a famous hangout for celebrities, musicians, and artists, the work reconstructs a typical bar scene filtered through Kienholz’s unwieldy lens. While the installation reconstructs the general layout of the pub, The Beanery is also surreal, featuring denizens with faces formed out of clocks, all of which are set to the same time of 10:10. Kienholz has noted that time is suspended in the installation to underscore the escapism of the bar’s clientele; as he stated, “A bar is a sad place, a place full of strangers who are killing time, postponing the idea that they’re going to die.” Only the figure of Barney, the pub’s owner, has a human face, which acts as an emblem of the merciless passage of time.

As one of Kienholz’s most ambitious installations, this work also highlights the artist’s prowess as a craftsman. The tableau, which includes seventeen individuals scattered throughout the scene, combines cast elements with found objects that have been cleverly woven together; some figures are engaged in private interactions, creating multiple simultaneous narratives that are united through the looped soundtrack of clinking glasses and laughter that plays whenever the installation is displayed.

This installation has in recent years been re-displayed, with the museum concerned trying to restore it.

Suggested Research – Edward Hopper

Garry Winogrand extolled the virtues of looking at other arts and elements in normal life to give inspiration. Russell also suggested that I take a look at the work of Edward Hopper.

Edward Hopper 1882 – 1967

Edward Hopper  was a prominent American realist painter and print-maker. He died in 1967 and sadly his wife died ten months later. She bequeathed their joint collection of more than three thousand works to the Whitney Museum of American Art. Other significant paintings by Hopper are held by the Museum of Modern Art in New York, The Des Moines Art Center, and the Art Institute of Chicago.

Hopper mainly painted from two primary sources: the common features of American life  and its inhabitants and seascapes and rural landscapes. Urban architecture and cityscapes also were major subjects often depicting the city as desolate and dangerous.

Hopper’s individuals, usually depicted isolated and disconnected from their environments either literally by glass windows or metaphorically through formal means, are manifestations of the artist’s focus on the solitude of modern life. The starkness of detail and unmodulated revelatory light in many works builds a tension, drawing the viewer’s attention away from the given subject, and suggesting much about his emotional experience. In this way, the artist’s work acts as a bridge between the interest in everyday life exhibited by the contemporary Ashcan School and the exploration of mood by later existential artists.

He loved to create moods and atmosphere by using light and shadow: bright sunlight (as an emblem of insight or revelation), and the shadows it casts, played ‘symbolically powerful roles’ in Hopper paintings such as Early Sunday Morning (1930), Summertime (1943), Seven A.M. (1948), and Sun in an Empty Room (1963). His use of light and shadow have frequently been compared to ‘the cinematography of film noir.’ His use of saturated colour also heightened the contrast and created mood and atmosphere. Rooms by the Sea touched on the surreal.

Said to be  attracted to ‘an emblematic, anti-narrative symbolism’ he ‘painted short isolated moments of configuration, saturated with suggestion’ with his ‘silent spaces and uneasy encounters…[touching] us where we are most vulnerable.’ The images are said to have ‘a suggestion of melancholy.’

The best-known of Hopper’s paintings, Nighthawks (1942), is one of his paintings of groups. It shows customers sitting at the counter of an all-night diner. The shapes and diagonals are carefully constructed. The viewpoint is cinematic—from the sidewalk, as if the viewer were approaching the restaurant. The diner’s harsh electric light sets it apart from the dark night outside, enhancing the mood and subtle emotion. As in many Hopper paintings, the interaction is minimal. The restaurant depicted was inspired by one in Greenwich Village. Both Hopper and his wife posed for the figures, and Jo Hopper gave the painting its title. The inspiration for the picture may have come from Ernest Hemingway’s short story The Killers, which Hopper greatly admired, or from the more philosophical A Clean, Well-Lighted Place. In keeping with the title of his painting, Hopper later said, Nighthawks has more to do with the possibility of predators in the night than with loneliness.

Suggested Research – Gregory Crewdson

Gregory Crewdson was born in 1962 in Brooklyn, his career has spanned three decades with his work exhibited widely in the United States and Europe and included in many public collections such as The Museum of Modern Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Whitney Museum of American Art, The Brooklyn Museum, The Los Angeles County Museum and The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

His most well-known bodies of work are probably Natural Wonder, Twilight, Dream House (a 2002 commission by The New York Times Magazine), Beneath the Roses, and Sanctuary.

Beneath the Roses, a series of pictures that took nearly ten years to complete—with a crew of over one hundred cumulatively—was the subject of the 2012 feature documentary Gregory Crewdson: Brief Encounters, by Ben Shapiro.

Crewdson’s photographs usually take place in small-town America, but are dramatic and cinematic featuring often disturbing, surreal events that usually take place at twilight. In creating what he calls ‘frozen moments’, he has developed a process akin to the making of a feature film. Operating on an epic scale, he uses a large crew to shoot and then develop the images during post-production.They are elaborately staged and lit using crews familiar with motion picture production using motion picture film equipment and techniques.

He created a body of work titled Twilight ‘where every detail was meticulously planned and staged, in particular the lighting. In some instances, extra lighting and special effects such as artificial rain or dry ice are used to enhance a natural moment of twilight. In others, the effect of twilight is entirely artificially created.’

Crewdson has cited the films Vertigo, The Night of the Hunter, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Blue Velvet, and Safe as having influenced his style, as well as the painter Edward Hopper and photographer Diane Arbus.

He gave an insightful interview to The American Reader about his techniques as a ‘director’ and how little he tries to interact with his ‘subjects’, how he constructs his scenes, one was a scene from psycho…

 AR. …we learn that the bathroom is a reconstruction of the bathroom in Psycho. Do you want viewers to recognize these symbols and be subconsciously affected?

GC: Right. Well, in that particular case, for me that was the starting point. I started thinking of motel rooms, and I thought of that motel room in Psycho. But that was just a starting point, and through the process of making the picture, the picture changed.

I think subconsciously we all have a connection to that imagery and a certain kind of dread.

AR: Do photographs naturally inspire or have more potential to inspire dread? It’s so interesting that you used that word because I’ve felt that in front of photographs before and I’ve just never put my finger on it. Is there just something about a still image?

GC: That’s an interesting proposition. I do think that dread is about a certain kind of expectation. And the fact that a picture can never resolve itself the way a movie can—maybe that’s a specific kind of dread that becomes associated with a picture.

I also found this observation very telling

AR: Towards the end of the documentary you talk about the inevitable disappointment of this imperfect translation of the image in your mind into what it becomes. Are you always disappointed?

GC: Yes. I think that’s the nature of representation. No matter what it will disappoint, it will fail in some way.

But that’s also part of the magic of art. If every picture met my expectation in exactly the right way, there’d be no mystery; there’d be no gap between what’s in my head and the picture I make. So it’s necessary. But it sure disappoints you. It’s also what propels you to make the next one.

Suggested Research – Martin Parr

Martin Parr, where do you begin with a Magnum photographer like Martin Parr? He has had around 40 solo photobooks published, and has featured in around 80 exhibitions worldwide – including the international touring exhibition ParrWorld, and a retrospective at the Barbican Arts Centre, London, in 2002. He has also curated work the exhibition Strange and Familiar at the Barbican in 2016.

It isn’t simple enough to call him a documentary photographer he is more ‘a chronicler of our age.’ So much so that he has just been commissioned by the BBC to make their new idents.

Renowned for finding the extraordinary in the ordinary, I hope that the series of images Parr captures across the year will document everyday Britain in all its glory and serve as a fascinating and lasting record of 2017.

He is said to transcend ‘the traditional separation of the different types of photography’ using a strategy which presents and publishes the same photos in the ‘context of art photography, in exhibitions and in art books, as well as in the related fields of advertising and journalism.’

At first glance, his photographs seem exaggerated or even grotesque in fact he could be a modern day, colour Diane Arbus; strange motifs, garish colours and unusual perspectives. Revealing in a ‘penetrating way how we live, how we present ourselves to others, and what we value.’

But that isn’t what all of his work is about. Much of it is but some isn’t. In particular I love his recent work on The Rhubarb Triangle which focuses on one small industry and tells its story from beginning to end. I also liked his earlier work The Non Conformists which focused on one small community. What I am not so keen on is the garish images that to me are not a gentle mocking of the English at play but a more critical and condescending social commentary, for example ‘The Last Resort’. 1983-85, but that’s just my take on some of his stuff. The rest I find quite stunning. And even the images that make me inwardly cringe I have to admire because they are or were summing up our society. His images are not only interesting as in visually appealing but they are also meaningful, as in they inform us about society and ourselves.

His observation on the British way of life is uncanny and his work ethic second to none. A friend of mine is in awe of his contacts and how he manages to get into places and situations to obtain his images.

I was lucky enough to attend a talk and on going to the joint exhibition with Tony Ray Jones Only in England, I remember the advice he gave to a fellow student about taking more interesting images he said ‘get out of London!’ As time has moved on I think his style has mellowed slightly and I prefer a lot more of his work now than I did previously.

He is another photographer who thinks you should take a lot of images but be ruthless when you edit. Due to his diversity he is again a photographer that you can keep returning to for inspiration with black and white, embedding yourself in a community as with assignment one, single shots that stand alone yet sum up an emotion or atmosphere, looking towards assignment two, and those which work as a narrative looking further on into the coursework.

GB. England. West Yorkshire. Wakefield. Rhubarb Festival. The Rhubarb Triangle. 2015.

GB. England. West Yorkshire. Wakefield. Rhubarb Festival. The Rhubarb Triangle. 2015.

GB. England. West Yorkshire. Wakefield. Rhubarb Festival. The Rhubarb Triangle. 2015.

 

10 Things Martin Parr Can Teach You About Street Photography

http://www.huckmagazine.com/art-and-culture/photography-2/martin-parr-2/

http://www.beetlesandhuxley.com/artists/parr-martin-born-1952.html

http://www.itsnicethat.com/features/review-of-the-year-2016-photography-martin-parr-201216