Research point—Documentary and art

Paul Seawright’s Sectarian Murder series challenges the boundaries between documentary and art by deliberately blurring them. The locations of crime scenes he depicts are abstracted in several ways: time has passed since the events in question; there is no discernible evidence of a crime in the frame; we are told that the accompanying text has been redacted to remove any reference to the religion of the people involved; and the images have been framed and lit in a way that makes them visually interesting and appealing (rather than being strictly ‘descriptive’ as one might expect from a photojournalistic approach). Ultimately, there is no way of knowing if Seawright has shot a location associated with the crimes described in the accompanying texts or if he has fabricated a scene.

The core of Seawright’s argument is that the construction of meaning is not done by the artist but by the viewer and that the distinction between art and journalism is how quickly a piece “gives up its meaning.” I think this is true to a degree—in that there is no way to predict how a reader or viewer might understand the text or object in front of them—but it suggests a greater distance between the artist and the work than is actually the case. Given that Seawright has chosen a particular light, angle of view, framing and explanatory text, it seems a bit disingenuous for him to absolve himself of guiding the viewer toward meaning. The viewer is still free to come up with his or her own appreciation of the work, but the artist has already pointed the viewer in a particular direction. The range of possible understandings is not wide open but has been somewhat restricted.

If we accept the starting point of this course—narrative is what happens within the frame and context is everything outside it—then we must also see that there is an interaction between the two. Defining a piece of documentary photography as art immediately alters the context of the photograph and will influence how its narrative is read by the viewer.

References

(2018) Catalyst: Paul Seawright. At: https://vimeo.com/76940827

Sectarian Murder. At: http://www.paulseawright.com/sectarian

Toronto’s Contact photo festival

Toronto plays host to a month-long photography festival each May and, over the last few years, I have been driving down to take in as many of the exhibits as I can in a weekend.

Having attended Photo London at roughly the same time last year, it was hard not to draw comparisons between the two shows. London is more convenient to visit as all the exhibits are contained within the walls of Somerset House. Toronto’s Contact Photography Festival, on the other hand, is a sprawling, city-wide festival that includes museums, smaller galleries and street installations. You could take in most of Photo London in a day if you are willing to keep moving (and miss the panel discussions and presentations), but doing the same in Toronto is impossible—there’s just too much and travel time eats into your schedule very quickly. Corporate sponsorship has its benefits, however, and the free (and massive!) catalogue to the 250+ exhibits is the ideal guide for choosing between them and mapping out a route. It is also an indispensable introduction to many lesser-known photographers.

And that, to me, is the real benefit of Toronto’s Contact photo festival: exposure to new and less-familiar talent. Photo London is largely a gallery show where you can see the work of established photographers, living and dead, but I got the sense that there weren’t a lot of risks being taken (except, perhaps, by those ensuring the value of prints in the tens-of-thousands of dollars range). There’s a place for both shows but, if I had to choose just one, Toronto would win hands-down (although I’ve since been told by another OCA student that Photo London’s offerings this year might have leaned a little less on established names than last year).

Now that I’ve said all that, I’ll need to back-track a bit. The two photographers whose work impressed me most at Contact this years were Carrie Mae Weems and Robert Mapplethorpe—not exactly beginners (or even alive, in Mapplethorpe’s case). Weems’ images struck me for the way their consistent social engagement over decades, sometimes head-on and other times much more subtly. In the case of Mapplethorpe, I had only seen reproductions of his work before and was blown away by the precision of his work: every angle and shadow—even of human bodies—shot with exacting care. In the case of one specific picture of a lily I initially thought that the stem of the plant exited the frame in a strange place—until I realised that the shadow of the stem exited the frame precisely at the corner. I had not expected to see such attention to detail, along with the clean blacks, whites and rich tonal range of an Ansel Adams print in the work of someone who had shot as much fetish photography. I mentioned to one of the gallery staff how impressed I was with the very high standards of Mapplethorpe’s pictures and was told that, yes, he was very demanding that way… and was a total pain to work with.

Research point—Street photography

It is strange that the CAN manual takes time to distinguish documentary photography from reportage, but refers to ‘street photography’ without offering any definition. The most common features of street photography seem to be images made outside the studio, often as a result of random encounters with people in an urban setting. Nevertheless, some examples do not include people at all and others have been created in non-urban environments. Perhaps the most useful working definition of street photography is a broad one: “the impulse to take candid pictures in the stream of everyday life.” (Howarth and McLaren, 2011, p.9)

Helen Levitt (1913-2009, NYC) — worked for commercial photographer, inspired by Walker Evans and Henri Cartier-Bresson. Images of children and immigrant communities in NYC. Works included in the inaugural exhibition of MoMA’s photography department in 1939. Guggenheim Fellowships in 1959 and 1960.

Joel Meyerowitz (1938- , NYC) — an early advocate of colour photography. Worked with different formats for street photography, from 35mm to large format. Only photographer allocated unrestricted access to Ground Zero in Manhattan. Guggenheim Fellow twice and awarded a Centenary Medal and Honorary Fellowship from the Royal Photographic Society in 2012.

Paul Graham (1956- , Stafford, UK) — sequential colour prints of people engaged in daily life. Twelve-volume photobook A Shimmer of Possibility (2007) calling attention to overlooked activities or places. First show 1986; color photographs with Martin Parr and Richard Billingham.

Joel Sternfeld (1944- , NYC) — large-format color photographs of American towns and cities. Disused places, derelict sites, dispossessed people. Influenced by roadside photography of Walker Evans. Began producing colour photographs during the early 1970s after reading both Johannes Itten’s and Josef Albers’s theories on colour. Has taught photography at Sarah Lawrence College since 1985.

Martin Parr (1952- , Epsom, UK) — themes of consumerism, globalization, and social class. Switched from black-and-white to colour photography in 1984, became a member of Magnum Photos in 1988. Photobooks, filmmaking and fashion editorial work.

Fred Herzog (1930- , Stuttgart, Germany) — moved to Vancouver in 1953. Substantial body of images of life in Vancouver over 50 years. Much of the work was produced on slow Kodachrome stock. Anticipated “New Colour” of Stephen Shore and William Eggleston? Active in Vancouver’s art scene while working as a medical photographer from 1957 to 1990.

Brandon Stanton (1984- , Marietta, GA) — photographer, blogger and author of Humans of New York. Set out to photograph 10,000 New Yorkers and plot portraits on a city map. This became the “Humans of New York” Facebook page, which he started in November 2010 and later a book of the same name. Street portraits with short quotes from subjects.

References

Campany, D. et al. (2017) Fred Herzog: modern color. Hatje Cantz.

Howarth, S.and McLaren, S. (2011) Street photography now. Thames & Hudson.

Parr, M.and Phillips, S.S. (2007) Martin Parr. Phaidon Press.

Stanton, B. (2013) Humans of New York. St. Martin’s Press.

Westerbeck, C. and Meyerowitz, J. (2005) Joel Meyerowitz. Phaidon.

Cindy Sherman at the NPG

Images from Cindy Sherman’s “Society Portraits” (National Portrait Gallery, 28 June 2019)

The visit, led by OCA tutor Jayne Taylor, began with a brief overview of the Sherman retrospective by Giselle Torres from the National Portrait Gallery. While a good idea, the overview went over a lot of the material already covered in the suggested readings. This suggests two things: the reading/viewings may be sufficient on their own and, if there is to be a speaker, it might be helpful to let her know what has been provided to participants. (To be fair, speakers may already have a prepared text to work from and it may not be reasonable to ask them to customize it for groups.)

The exhibit covered a broad sweep of Sherman’s career, from the time of her student days in Buffalo to works of the last couple of years. The photographer has been dressing up since she was a child and has stayed true to her means of expression, even while evolving in her practice and picking up technical skill along the way. Her earliest works are in series of black and white photographs where the print size is uniformly small. Over time, Sherman moved to colour photography, and from analogue processes to digital, in progressively-larger print sizes. She has also taken on a movie/video production at different points, from brief stop-action animation using photographic cut-outs, to short videos, to a feature-length, low-budget horror movie (Sherman’s favourite film genre).

What struck me across the rooms of the exhibit was how consistent Sherman has been in her approach, even as her work has evolved and become more sophisticated. It seems to me that she has collected a set of types — or stereotypes — and she has used them to challenge viewers about the ambiguity of the images we see every day. The best, and most accessible, example of this is her “Untitled Film Stills” series that offers up familiar-looking images that could have been shot on a movie set. None of the photographs is drawn from a particular movie, however, so the sense of familiarity comes not from having seen the film but from being immersed in the visual language of many films. Without much effort or prompting, we imagine narratives about the women in the images because we have seen this visual language at play in countless films.

ItItSherman’s later series similarly draw on stock elements of a visual language or rhetoric, some of it quite familiar (centrefolds, cover girls, pornography, horror movies, clowns and medieval paintings) and some of it less so (her later work parodying wealthy patrons of fashion shows and society women). Much of this work is designed to subvert visual tropes that we have taken for granted in Western culture, particularly those that customarily reduce women to vulnerable victims or objects of desire. It is cleverly done, with its artifice lying in plain view: Sherman frequently leaves the camera’s cable release lying in the frame, or uses garish lighting and/or makeup, or does not attempt to hide the edges of the prosthesis that she is wearing.

I have to say that I have not always appreciated all of Sherman’s work and thought that she has perhaps more attention than was deserved. After this visit, however, I believe I have a better understanding of what she has been trying to accomplish and think she has done it masterfully.

I still have some questions, however:

Could it have been possible for a man to create a similar body of work with similar effect? Or was no male “Cindy Sherman” possible? (Or necessary?)
If much of Sherman’s work calls into question or confronts the “male gaze,” does any of it demonstrate a female gaze? Is that what some of her ‘society women’ portraits are meant to do, or is female concern over aging and social standing a response to male standards?
How effective is parody once you become part of the very class that you purport to parody? (I have the same question about comedians.) What does it mean when major corporations know you are attempting to subvert their worlds, but pay you to do it because they know they will make a profit anyway?
Is Cindy Sherman’s time up? Some students suggested as much during the post-visit discussion. Or is it more the case that superstars in the art world simply move into another sphere of recognition as brands and commodities?

References

HENITalks (2019) Hal Foster – Under the Gaze: The Art of Cindy Sherman. At: https://vimeo.com/266364876

National Portrait Gallery Press Release. https://www.npg.org.uk/assets/files/pdf/press/2018/CindySherman-Announcement.pdf

O’Hagan, S. (2019) Cindy Sherman: ‘I enjoy doing the really difficult things that people can’t buy’. At: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2019/jun/08/cindy-sherman-interview-exhibition-national-portrait-gallery

Sherman, C. and Goldsmith, D. (1993). “Cindy Sherman.” Aperture, (133), 34-43. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/24471695

Sherman, C. et al. (2019) Cindy Sherman. National Portrait Gallery.

(2019) Cindy Sherman – Nobodys Here But Me (1994). At: https://vimeo.com/228996446

Nan Goldin at Tate Modern

One of the great things about travelling is the chance to take advantage of cultural happenings beyond one’s usual circle.

Nan Goldin’s “The Ballad of Sexual Dependency” is on at Tate Modern at the moment so I decided to have a look. I’ve seen many of the images before and the project is hardly new, but I wondered if there might be an angle available in the exhibit that I hadn’t seen before.

A mock-up of the book was on display and Goldin’s original slide show of images set to music was running in an adjacent room. I’ve only seen the images in book or online form before, but even the larger print and projected sizes didn’t make a lot of difference to their impact for me.

I think there might be a couple of reasons for this. The first is that some of the images are shocking the first time you see them, but may lose some of their power after more viewings.

The second might be that I don’t find Goldin’s work very appealing. I appreciate that she helped to open up a field of unflinching documentation of a life “from the inside,” but it is not a life I recognise or necessarily want to explore further. At the same time, viewing the exhibition did lead me to think more about documentary and photojournalism in connection with some of the readings for Part One of CAN and wonder if Goldin hasn’t in some way commodified her own suffering.

Perhaps I am being harsh. Goldin has certainly added to the world of art photography and I’ll make a point of looking at her later images to see if there is something I can latch onto.

Research Point — Photojournalism

On balance, I think it is fair to say that photography by itself has rarely, if ever, moved the public to action. The Time article demonstrates this by showing how successive genocides have been documented and how the cry, “never again!” is more accurately “again and again.” Regimes have set up mini-bureaucracies to catalogue their victims, little realizing (or caring?) how these records will be used to convict the perpetrators of crimes against humanity once the inevitable change of fortunes occurs.

People who have participated in successive waves of mass murder and other crimes have had available to them the images of previous horrific acts, but it has not changed their behaviour. In some cases, photographs might have helped to motivate them and/or provide them with terrible trophies.

As for the viewing public, rather than the actors themselves, I think that photography can indeed distance us from, and inure us to, the horrific. Acts that could be called “unspeakable” are somehow viewable, and we can get used to it. Images that we might only have imagined imperfectly (mass murder, cruelty and abuse, violence) are now available to us at the press of a button — we no longer have to imagine them. Yesterday’s “unthinkable” can become today’s new baseline. And, as Rosler suggests, showing the disturbing in photojournalism can be passed off as altruistic and in the service of a higher good, while clearly benefiting (only?) the photographer. The danger is not just that photojournalism can feed voyeurism, but that it can make a commodity out of someone else’s suffering. Your pain becomes my art, becomes my reputation, my livelihood, my profit motive.

I wonder, too, if photography (including photojournalism) is more often a way to confirm opinions already held by viewers. The public does not feel compelled to change by the images it sees, but finds in them evidence for the views it already holds. We see what we want to see. And when the image in front of us is too challenging, we can always reinterpret it or reject it outright (“fake news”). In this way, the value of photojournalism may lie not so much in its ability to change opinion, but to galvanize and justify it once it has begun to form. So, should we stop producing photojournalism? I think the answer is clearly no, for there is a definite benefit to documenting happenings, even (and sometimes especially) those that are horrific. But we may want to think about how and where images are displayed — the context as well as the narrative — and be more honest as producers and consumers of images about their real and potential impacts.

References

Rosler, Martha (1993) ‘In, Around, and Afterthoughts: On Documentary Photography’ In: Bolton, Richard (ed.) The contest of meaning: critical histories of photography. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.

Time. 2019. Available at: http://time.com/3426427/syrian-torture-archive-when-photographs-of-atrocities-dont-shock

Martha Rosler on documentary photography

Quotations, questions and thoughts

Documentary photography has been much more comfortable in the company of moralism than wedded to a rhetoric or program of revolutionary politics.

A large part of Rosler’s argument is that documentary does not aim so much to change the structures responsible for the world around us, but that it is designed to comfort viewers and confirm that there is no reason to act.

Documentary is a little like horror movies, putting a face on fear and transforming threat into fantasy, into imagery. One can handle imagery by leaving it behind. (It is them, not us.)

Does documentary distance the real world and make it safe for us by pulling its teeth?

But which political battles have been fought and won by someone for someone else?

Does documentary really lead to meaningful change? Do the creators and consumers of documentary fool themselves into thinking that they are able to effect the “right” change or any change at all?

It is easy to understand why what has ceased to be news becomes testimonial to the bearer of the news. Documentary testifies finally, to the bravery or (dare we name it?) the manipulativeness and savvy of the photographer, who entered a situation of
physical danger, social restrictedness, human decay, or combinations of these and saved us the trouble.

Rosler goes on to name a Who’s Who of well-known “documentarian stars” to make a very sharp point: the focus of documentary is not the photographic subject but the photographer, whatever narrative is offered to the viewer.

An early –1940s, perhaps–Kodak movie book tells North American travelers, such as the Rodman C. Pells of San Francisco, pictured in the act of photographing a Tahitian, how to film natives so that they seem unconscious of the camera.

Documentary photography is not just subject to portraying a particular embedded viewpoint but is, at times, subject to manipulation to better make a point or achieve a desired effect.

…topicality drops away as epochs fade, and the aesthetic aspect is, if anything, enhanced by the loss of specific reference.

With the passage of time (and the reception of the images as art?), the specific content of documentary becomes less and less relevant. Whatever the original justification might have been (social benefit? newsworthiness?), the documentary subject becomes a free-floating object.

An analysis which reveals social institutions as serving one class by legitimating and enforcing its domination while hiding behind the false mantle of even-handed universality necessitates an attack on the monolithic cultural myth of objectivity (transparency, unmediatedness), which implicates not only photography but all journalistic and reportorial objectivity used by mainstream media to claim ownership of all truth.

This comes back to Rosler’s argument that documentary does not seriously challenge the established social order but actually helps to prop it up—the subjects are not us and we can make judgements about them from a distance and a superior height.

[A] new generation of photographers has directed the documentary approach toward more personal ends. Their aim has not been to reform life, but to know it. Their work betrays a sympathy (almost an affection(for the imperfections and the frailties of society. They like the real world, in spite of its terrors, as the source of all wonder and fascination and value(no less precious for being irrational. . . . What they hold in common is the belief that the commonplace is really worth looking at, and the courage to look at it with a minimum of theorizing. [quoting John Szarkowski]

Rosler has no time for Szarkowski’s misty-eyed view of the documentarians of the 60s and 70s. Instead, she sees in them an aloofness toward their subjects that produces images of spectacle and people as unwitting circus performers. This doesn’t seem to be any better than the moralizing of the previous generation of photographers and the result is the same in Rosler’s estimation: the established social order can sleep safe.

But the common acceptance of the idea that documentary precedes, supplants, transcends, or cures full, substantive social activism is an indicator that we do not yet have a real documentary.

Perhaps Rosler develops this thought somewhere else, but I found it a frustrating end to her article. We are aware of the contempt that she had for documentary photography until the 1980s, but what does she think “a real documentary” would look like? Her closing sentence implies that something of the kind is possible, but how would it avoid all of the pitfalls of what had gone before? Who would practise it? Would there be an audience for it?

This last point is something that I have wondered about as I have looked at the work of environmental (e.g. Burtynsky), conflict (e.g. McCullin) and journalistic (e.g. McCurry) photographers: if the images they show us are not aesthetically or emotionally compelling, will we want to look at them for long? And if we don’t want to look at their images, what would any of these photographers achieve? (Apart from recognition and money, of course.)

I found Rosler’s essay more complex than it needed to be, but important. Her questions and accusations have to be faced if we are to be honest about the nature of society and the motivations of individuals. People with any degree of standing or power have an interest in preserving the status quo, and more of us belong in that camp than would like to admit it. In some ways, her writing reminds me of the response I had to John Berger’s Ways of Seeing—Berger is gentler, but there is a persistent, useful Marxist social critique lying behind his observations and I suspect that the same philosophical strain lies behind Martha Rosler’s work.

I wonder, though, if Rosler’s argument was just too bleak. Having offered a withering critique of documentary, does she leave us with anywhere to go?

Reference

Berger, John (ed.) (1990) Ways of seeing: based on the BBC television series with John Berger. (Repr) London: British Broadcasting Corporation and Penguin Books.

Rosler, Martha (1993) ‘In, Around, and Afterthoughts: On Documentary Photography’ In: Bolton, Richard (ed.) The contest of meaning: critical histories of photography. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.

Some definitions

The introductory material for CAN begins by looking at issues of definition around the terms “context” and “narrative.” Context seems to be particularly broad as it encompasses not only the physical placement of an image but also possible intellectual/social settings. Narrative pertains more to the world inside the frame of an image or the coherence across a series of images. The definitions seem a little arbitrary, but they will serve as a kind of shorthand for the two sets of reference, inside and outside the frame.

Photographers are encouraged to keep context and narrative in mind as they create and display their work and this makes sense. At the same time, I can see some potential pitfalls: first, no artist can be fully aware of the narratives that might exist or be perceived within the frame of his or her work; second, artists may not have complete control over the context within which their work is displayed.

I think, then, that we will do well to bring a good level of awareness and mindfulness to our work—such as what is going in the art world and the broader society, as well as what sorts of codes or references we may be drawing on consciously or otherwise. But we must also resign ourselves to the fact that what we think we are putting into our work may not be what comes out of it for audiences…because of the complexities of context and narrative.

Reference

Boothroyd, Sharon (2017) ‘Introduction’ In: Context and Narrative. (s.l.): Open College of the Arts. pp.13–20.

And we’re off…

Context and Narrative (CAN) is my third course with the Open College of the Arts (OCA) and the first since I decided that I would not follow the Creative Arts pathway but concentrate on Photography.

It was great to begin this morning with a video chat with my new tutor. With the previous two courses I only met with the tutor for discussion of work I had submitted for assignments, so I appreciated the opportunity to get to know one another a bit and get some early direction and feedback on where I might go with CAN.

We discussed my experience of completing EYV and submitting the work for the July 2019 assessment. Robert indicated that A4-sized prints would have been acceptable for Level 1 but that submitting in A3+ was a good indication of confidence. I think it might be more accurate to say that it was an indication of ignorance, but I will hope that the assessors are more inclined to Robert’s view of things. I also mentioned the cost of shipping materials to the UK from Canada (CAD $188 this time) and how the narrow two-week window set by the OCA complicates things: it becomes necessary to choose a more expensive shipping option to ensure that the work arrives neither too early nor too late.

I indicated that I would need to follow a fairly tight schedule for submitting work for this course because I must complete Level 1 by the end of February 2020. This will require some real discipline on my part, but I believe it is doable.

We also talked briefly about what I wanted to concentrate on in CAN: visual storytelling, greater facility with developing concepts and more consistent planning in my work. I am also interested in strengthening my critical approach, particularly in connection with my own photography.

I was pleased to hear that Robert is looking for a sense of enthusiasm and engagement from his students, as well as a desire to share work and enter into dialogue about it. I think I can manage all that. He also encouraged me to engage with writers I like, since positive response could be a sign that those writers are articulating something that I may not have been able to express as yet.

So, with my first CAN tutor discussion under my belt… we’re off and running!