A5—Reworked

Following the self-portrait that I created for Assignment 3, where I explored visually my fear of dancing, I decided to construct an image where I could again portray something that has been occupying my thoughts: aging. In this case, the issue is less one of fear and more a question of making sense of my changing place in the world. I will be eligible to retire in 2021, which still seems surprising to me. I am not yet ‘old,’ but I am clearly not a young man, either. It is the experience of ‘in-betweenness’ that I wanted to suggest in a photograph.

I am looking backward and forward at the same time: more than half of my life is behind me, but there may be several decades yet ahead. I want my viewers to ask themselves, in effect, “[…] is it a mirror, reflecting a portrait of the artist who made it, or a window, through which one might better know the world?” (Szarkowski and Museum of Modern Art, 1978:25).

My starting point was Ilse Bing’s Self-Portrait in Mirrors, 1931, which seemed a clever way to ensure that the photographer is at once both viewed and viewer. Bing’s play with reflections in a self-portrait means that she can see herself, look at the viewer, and see herself being seen. Her image allows for self-examination, a subject who is not only a participant in the visual game being played, but also to a large degree the one controlling it. Bing’s self-portrait reveals the mechanics of the artifice that lies behind the image, like a magician showing how a trick works. It is the ‘knowingness’ of the picture that is so intriguing—Bing knows that the viewer is viewing her and returns the favour with confidence: “The double presence of the artist at work, and the intentness of her gaze, serves to highlight the newfound independence that women were enjoying at the time, while the prominent inclusion of the camera symbolises the burgeoning technical revolution of the period and the fresh opportunity for creative expression it enabled” (AnOther, 2016). The items scattered around the desk may appear random and casual, but the care shown in the way the shot is set up suggests that nothing has been left to chance. Bing is in charge of it all.

If Ilse Bing was direct and face-on, I was also gripped by Tracey Moffat’s Spanish Window, a large-scale photograph of the back view of a woman looking out of a window that I saw during a visit to the National Gallery of Canada. There is a calm harmony between the outdoor lighting, the palette inside the room and the tones in the woman’s hair, skin and clothes. But most striking is the sense of intruding on a private moment and the way the woman’s face is hidden. Part of Moffat’s Body Remembers series, the photograph invites the viewer to imagine what the woman is contemplating in the scene before her and what she might be remembering. The result is quietly disturbing: “It is day but the paraffin lamp is lit. Like a Magritte, there’s a sense of disquiet. The light is wrong, the day is wrong, something unseen is wrong” (Searle, 2017). Moffat stands at a threshold between interior and exterior worlds, at “the collision of looking and being looked at” (Stephens, 2019). It is an invitation to the viewer to see the world—and a family history—through Moffat’s eyes as she embodies a domestic servant, a role played by both her mother and grandmother (Tracey Moffatt: Vigils, s.d.). This is a running theme throughout much of Moffat’s work, as she slyly compels her audience to confront issues of ‘otherness’: women and girls facing male oppression, Indigenous identity and its suppression, colonialism and its aftermath, and rural versus urban experience and opportunity.

I was determined to find a way to incorporate all the elements: a back-view of the subject, a window with an exterior view, an interior, a mirror, and a gaze that confronts the viewer. According to Elina Brotherus, a subject shot from behind is an “invitation to a shared contemplation” while a subject shot head-on is a “confrontation” (Brotherus, 2015). Rather than use the mirror to catch the photographer armed with a camera, I wanted to ensure that it is the viewer who is “caught looking” (McDowell, 2008:199).

In her series “12 ans après” Brotherus’ (Elina Brotherus, s.d.) frequent use of mirror images in self-portraits serve as a visual metaphor for reflecting on her own life as she returns to a former residence. The mirror also makes explicit that the artist is playing a double-role as both the viewer and the viewed. Brotherus’ visible use of a cable release in a number of the images also makes explicit the artifice involved: I know what I’m doing, I’m showing you what I’m doing and now we both know that we know. There is apparently no mask, and that is exactly the artifice.

I aimed for a similar degree of ‘knowingness’ in my own image—the viewer and I make eye contact—but I tried to give it a twist so viewers could also believe for a moment that they are viewing me from behind, unguarded. David Campany touches on this element of awareness in his discussion of Jeff Wall’s well-known Picture for Women: “A photograph automatically produces a double of the world, a naturalistic substitute. A photo that includes a mirror doubles the double. Moreover it promises a mastering knowledge of the whole phenomenon, for photographer and viewer. The mirror image is photography made ‘self-conscious’ in a very direct, if literal, way” (Campany, 2007:23).

My self-portrait serves two purposes, then. It is an opportunity for me to explore a point in life where I feel compelled to look both forward and behind. And it is also a statement that, in carefully constructing this image, I am ready for a new stage in my development as a photographer:

[…] photographers will often seek out the camera’s own kinds of echoes in mirrors and reflections. Most point the camera at the mirror at an early stage in their exploration of the medium. It is more than just a coming to terms with the nature of the apparatus as a picturing device. While discovering what photography is for them, they attempt to confirm or recognise themselves as photographers. The two go together in a private moment of self-assertion, made public when the resulting image is fixed (Campany, 2007:23).

References

AnOther (2016) Uncovering the Critical Influence of Photographer Ilse Bing. At: https://www.anothermag.com/art-photography/9266/uncovering-the-critical-influence-of-photographer-ilse-bing (Accessed 20/04/2020).

Brotherus, Elina (2015) “Elina Brotherus Talk,” Open College of the Arts. At: https://player.vimeo.com/video/114291781 (Accessed 25/04/2020).

David Campany (2007) ‘‘A Theoretical Diagram in an Empty Classroom’: Jeff Wall’s Picture for Women’ In: Oxford Art Journal 30 (1) pp.9–25. At: www.jstor.org/stable/4500042 (Accessed 03/05/2020).

Elina Brotherus (s.d.) At: https://camaraoscura.net/portfolio/elina-brotherus/?lang=en (Accessed 21/04/2020).

Ilse Bing. Self-Portrait in Mirrors. 1931 | MoMA (s.d.) At: https://www.moma.org/collection/works/44571 (Accessed 10/02/2020).

Masters, C. (2011) Windows in art. London: Merrell.

McDowell, K. (2008) Perverse singularity: Modernist practice and masculine subjectivity. ProQuest Dissertations Publishing. At: http://ucreative.summon.serialssolutions.com

Searle, A. (2017) ‘Tracey Moffatt review – horrible histories from Australia’s Venice envoy’ In: The Guardian 10/05/2017 At: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2017/may/10/tracey-moffatt-my-horizon-australia-pavilion-venice-biennale (Accessed 31/05/2020).

Stephens, A. (2019) Tracey Moffatt show at Tarrawarra a window on memory and loss. At: https://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/tracey-moffatt-show-at-tarrawarra-a-window-on-memory-and-loss-20190318-h1ci5q.html (Accessed 11/02/2020).

Szarkowski, J. and Museum of Modern Art (New York, N.Y.) (eds.) (1978) Mirrors and windows: American photography since 1960. New York : Boston: Museum of Modern Art ; distributed by New York Graphic Society.

Tracey Moffatt: Vigils (s.d.) At: https://museemagazine.com/culture/2018/5/8/tracey-moffatt-vigils (Accessed 31/05/2020).

A5—Setup

Introduction

Following the self-portrait that I created for Assignment 3, where I explored visually my fear of dancing, I decided to work on a constructed image where I could again portray something that has been occupying my thoughts: aging. In this case, the issue is less one of fear and more a question of making sense of my changing place in the world. I will be eligible to retire in about 18 months, which still seems surprising to me. I am not yet ‘old,’ but I am clearly not a young man, either. It is the experience of ‘in-betweenness’ that I would like to suggest in a photograph.

When I began to think about how I would go about this, I realised that I wanted to be able to look backward and forward at the same time: more than half of my life is behind me, but there may be several decades yet ahead of me. I could see myself using both a window to look through and a mirror to look back. I also decided that I wanted to confront the viewer and that the mirror would help me to do this. I imagined the final image looking something like the following:

In a sense, I wanted to be sure that I was inviting the viewer to look in several directions in a single frame: I and the viewer would have multiple viewpoints. I have always been taken by Ilse Bing’s Self-Portrait in Mirrors, 1931, which seemed a clever way to ensure that the photographer is at once both viewed and viewer: her play with reflections in a self-portrait means that she can see herself, look at the viewer, and see herself being seen. Her image allows for self-examination while being a subject who is not only a participant in the visual game being played, but also to a large degree the one controlling it.

*Ilse Bing*, *Self-Portrait in Mirrors*, 1931 — © 2019 The Ilse Bing Estate

I had also been struck by a painting of the back view of a woman looking out of a window that I saw during a recent visit to the National Gallery of Canada. There is a calm harmony between the outdoor lighting, the palette inside the room and the tones in the woman’s hair, skin and clothes. The image invites the viewer to imagine what the woman is contemplating in the scene before her and what she might be preparing herself for, gas lamp at the ready. The viewer is invited to join the subject of the painting in looking outside, while still being party to some of the view inside the building. It is a painting of a threshold between interior and exterior worlds, and “the collision of looking and being looked at” (Stephens, 2019).

The multiple elements were important to me and I was determined to find a way to incorporate them all: a back-view of the subject, a window with an exterior view, an interior, a mirror, and a gaze that confronts the viewer.

Process

As I thought about how best to create the image and effect that I was looking for, it was clear to me that I would need to use artificial lighting to ensure a close balance between the interior and exterior light levels—I wanted the the image to feel seamless as the viewer looked across and through it. I made the decision to keep the number of props down so that the image was as visually spare as possible—I like relative simplicity and the I was aware that the view from the window would already add a degree of complexity.

View through picture window with initial lighting setup

Ilse Bing’s play with mirrors was interesting to me, but I also wanted to give place to the view outside, beyond the window. For that reason, I deliberately created my set with relatively few props: a chair and a table looking facing a picture window with a winter scene, a mirror and—at least initially—an old graduation portrait of me. My tutor had suggested that including the portrait of the younger me might be telegraphing too much of my intent (my words, not his), so I decided to set the scene both with and without the photograph (I ended up agreeing with my tutor and the final image does not contain the photograph).

I chose a table and chair in neutral colours to complement both the painted wall and the subdued colours of the winter landscape visible through the window. I bought a simple mirror that could be tilted into place to ensure that I could precisely adjust the angle of view between my eyes and the camera. Although only my shoulders would be visible in the frame, I chose a white dress shirt to continue the neutral colour theme (I made a similar choice for my self-portrait for A3).

The major challenge for this constructed image, however, was lighting the set well. Achieving even, balanced lighting inside the room in a way that was not too many stops different from the outdoor scene was difficult, but doable. I had planned to use two 35W LED continuous lights through umbrellas to create a soft light, but I found that I needed to remove the umbrellas to get the most light possible from the two units.

View showing camera position, along with placement of the two LED lights and off-camera flash

Even more challenging was ensuring that there were no reflection from the lights in the picture window. It took a lot of trial and error with repeated trips to the camera’s rear screen to place the lights precisely so that no reflection appeared.

Once I had the room lit satisfactorily, I found that the reflection of my face in the mirror was too dark to be seen properly. I resolved this by placing an off-camera flash on the table in front of me. I set the flash at its lowest power, pointed it at my face and got it to fire with a wireless trigger mounted on the camera. By this point I was attempting to control and compensate for five light sources: windows in front and to my left side, two continuous lights behind me, and a flash in front of me. But it seemed to be working.

Lighting diagram for final series of images

The next step was to pose myself. For each shot, I relaxed my arms and shoulder and positioned my head in one of three ways: looking straight out the window with my eyes turned to the mirror; turning my head toward the mirror; and a mid-point in between these two. I was able to check my position and fire the shutter by linking my camera to an app on my phone. Not only did this give me control of my camera, but it also allowed me to adjust my posture by showing me exactly what the camera behind me could see.

In terms of my reflection, I decided to adopt a facial expression that was at odds with the rest of the scene. The room is calm, the outside scene is a quiet winter’s day in a wooded lot, and my posture is relaxed. My expression works against the general calmness, however, and I believe it serves nicely as a little point that is somewhat ‘off’ in the frame. It is not the largest element in the scene, but humans are naturally drawn to look at faces and I think viewers may be struck by what I believe is a confrontational gaze.

To complete the image, I opened up of any remaining shadows in the room using an image editing program.

Contact sheets

Final image

References

Ilse Bing. Self-Portrait in Mirrors. 1931 | MoMA (s.d.) At: https://www.moma.org/collection/works/44571 (Accessed 10/02/2020).

Masters, C. (2011) Windows in art. London: Merrell.

Research point—Gregory Crewdson

Gregory Crewdson (Brooklyn, 1962– )

B.A. from SUNY, 1985; M.F.A. from Yale, 1988.
Professor Adjunct in Graduate Photography at Yale School of Art.
Represented by Gagosian Gallery in New York and White Cube in London.
Elaborately staged scenes in small town American. Cinematic, extensive support crew for staging and lighting.
“In all my pictures what I am ultimately interested in is that moment of transcendence or transportation, where one is transported into another place, into a perfect, still world. Despite my compulsion to create this still world, it always meets up against the impossibility of doing so. So, I like the collision between this need for order and perfection and how it collides with a sense of the impossible. I like where possibility and impossibly meet.” (Gregory Crewdson (2016))
Influences include movies Vertigo, The Night of the Hunter, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Blue Velvet, and Safe, also Edward Hopper, Diane Arbus.
Retrospective of work from 1985–2005 shown in Europe from 2005–08. Skowhegan Medal for Photography, the National Endowment for the Arts Visual Artists Fellowship and the Aaron Siskind Fellowship.

Responses

There is certainly more to Crewdson’s work than aesthetic beauty, although it undeniably has that. The coldness of the images and the unsettling scenes they portray have an uncanniness to them—they seem more real than real. The attention to detail, flawless lighting and calculated impact on the viewer reveal suggest that the artist is not simply drawing on aesthetic categories, but using the everyday to produce a particular effect or experience.
The work certainly seems ‘psychological’ to me, in that it is designed to produce an unease and questioning in the mind of the viewer. There is a distinct sense of foreboding, the same kind one feels when watching a thriller—what ‘it’ is has not yet happened, but it is about to and the psychological tension is palpable. It verges on the physical, as if the viewer was about to experience the events directly. If anything, many of these images are like Nordic Noirs in a single frame.
My main goal when making pictures has not at all been to create an elaborate world of my imagination, but to respond to things that I find visually appealing (in a broad sense: light, line, colour, form, mood…). My studies with the OCA have been leading me to question this approach, however, as I see the opportunity to make images in an entirely new way—more deliberate and purposeful, rather than just responsive. I don’t think that there is anything wrong with making beauty one’s main goal—we could certainly use more beauty in the world—but I think that aesthetics for the sake of aesthetics can become divorced from other important commitments like truth or justice. Beauty itself can be fickle and concentration on it can lead us down some very strange paths, like self-indulgence, an unhealthy preoccupation with certain kinds of beauty or deliberately ignoring the non-beautiful.
I don’t think it is necessary to set “elaborate direction”against “subtlety and nuance” in photography, any more than it is necessary to set pure fantasy against documentary or biography in any other art form, such as cinema. There is a place to appreciate all of them and the different responses they call forth, while keeping in mind that they are all, to some extent, fabrications.

References

Gregory Crewdson (2016) At: https://www.icp.org/browse/archive/constituents/gregory-crewdson (Accessed 27/01/2020).

Gregory Crewdson (2018) At: https://gagosian.com/artists/gregory-crewdson/ (Accessed 27/01/2020).

Gregory Crewdson (s.d.) At: https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/artist/gregory-crewdson (Accessed 27/01/2020).

Gregory Crewdson | artnet (s.d.) At: http://www.artnet.com/artists/gregory-crewdson/ (Accessed 27/01/2020).

Gregory Crewdson – 84 Artworks, Bio & Shows on Artsy (s.d.) At: https://www.artsy.net/artist/gregory-crewdson (Accessed 27/01/2020).

Gregory Crewdson – Bio | The Broad (s.d.) At: https://www.thebroad.org/art/gregory-crewdson (Accessed 27/01/2020).

Photographers in Focus: Gregory Crewdson (s.d.) At: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpIRm5BsXeE (Accessed 27/01/2020).

Silverman, R. (2016) Alone, in a Crowd, With Gregory Crewdson. At: https://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/01/25/alone-in-a-crowd-with-gregory-crewdson/ (Accessed 27/01/2020).

Research—Setting the scene

Jeff Wall (Vancouver, 1946– )

MA art history from UBC, 1970. Postgraduate research at the Courtauld Institute in London from 1970–73.
Draws on elements from other art forms—including painting, cinema, and literature—in an approach he calls “cinematography.” Large scale constructions and montages. Conceptualism.
Frequently displays work as backlit color transparencies, similar to street advertising, but has more recently worked with b/w printing and inkjet colour.
Early work sometimes evoked other artworks: “The Destroyed Room (1978) explores themes of violence and eroticism inspired by Eugène Delacroix’s monumental painting The Death of Sardanapalus (1827), while Picture for Women (1979) recalls Édouard Manet’s A Bar at the Folies-Bergère (1882) and brings the implications of that famous painting into the context of the cultural politics of the late 1970s.”
“Near documentary” work made in collaboration with non-professional models who appear in them.

Jeff Wall (2018) At: https://gagosian.com/artists/jeff-wall/ (Accessed 26/01/2020).

Jeff Wall (2020) In: Wikipedia. At: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jeff_Wall&oldid=934463406 (Accessed 26/01/2020).

Jeff Wall Photography, Bio, Ideas (s.d.) At: https://www.theartstory.org/artist/wall-jeff/ (Accessed 26/01/2020). Tate (s.d.)

Jeff Wall: room guide, room 6. At: https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/jeff-wall/jeff-wall-room-guide/jeff-wall-room-guide-room-6 (Accessed 26/01/2020).

Lubow, A. (2007) ‘The Luminist’ In: The New York Times 25/02/2007 At: https://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/25/magazine/25Wall.t.html (Accessed 26/01/2020).

Hannah Starkey (Belfast, 1971– )

Studied photography and film at Napier University, Edinburgh (1992–1995) and photography at the Royal College of Art, London (1996–1997). Lives and works in London.
Works predominantly with women as subjects, actresses as well as people she meets on-site to develop scenes. Stark architecture and strong colour.
Says of her photographs that they are “explorations of everyday experiences and observations of inner city life from a female perspective.”
Works are frequently untitled and show freeze-framed crisis points: issues of class, race, gender, and identity. Intimate moments.

Hannah Starkey | artnet (s.d.) At: http://www.artnet.com/artists/hannah-starkey/ (Accessed 26/01/2020).

Hannah Starkey – Artists – Tanya Bonakdar Gallery (s.d.) At: http://www.tanyabonakdargallery.com/artists/hannah-starkey/series-photography_4 (Accessed 26/01/2020).

Hannah Starkey – Artist’s Profile – The Saatchi Gallery (s.d.) At: https://www.saatchigallery.com/artists/hannah_starkey.htm (Accessed 26/01/2020).

O’Hagan, S. (2018) ‘The photography of Hannah Starkey – in pictures’ In: The Guardian 08/12/2018 At: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2018/dec/08/the-photography-of-hannah-starkey-in-pictures (Accessed 26/01/2020).

Tom Hunter (Bournemouth, 1965– )

Works in photography and film. Photographs often reference and reimagine classical paintings. First photographer to have a one-man show at the National Gallery, London.
Socially- and politically-motivated work.
“Painters inspire me most – Caravaggio, Vermeer – but I also like Dorothea Lange and Sally Mann.”
Series “Persons Unknown”: portraits of squatters in the abandoned Hackney warehouses. Won the Photographic Portrait Award at the National Portrait Gallery in 1998 for an image of a young woman with a baby beside her, reading a possession order, shot like a Vermeer painting.

Pulver, A. (2009) ‘Photographer Tom Hunter’s best shot’ In: The Guardian 04/11/2009 At: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2009/nov/04/photography-tom-hunter-best-shot (Accessed 26/01/2020).

Tom Hunter – Artist (s.d.) At: http://www.tomhunter.org/ (Accessed 26/01/2020).

Tom Hunter – 29 Artworks, Bio & Shows on Artsy (s.d.) At: https://www.artsy.net/artist/tom-hunter (Accessed 26/01/2020). Tom Hunter – Artists – Yancey Richardson (s.d.) At: http://www.yanceyrichardson.com/artists/tom-hunter (Accessed 26/01/2020).

Tom Hunter – Artist’s Profile – The Saatchi Gallery (s.d.) At: https://www.saatchigallery.com/artists/tom_hunter.htm (Accessed 26/01/2020).

Unheralded Stories Series | Tom Hunter (s.d.) At: http://www.tomhunter.org/unheralded-stories-series/ (Accessed 26/01/2020).

Taryn Simon (NYC, 1975– )

Multidisciplinary artist in photography, text, sculpture, and performance. Work featured in the Venice Biennale (2015). Guggenheim Fellow, 2001.
Studied environmental sciences at Brown University but transferred to a degree in art-semiotics, while taking photography classes at Rhode Island School of Design. BA 1997. Visiting artist at Yale, Bard, Columbia, School of Visual Arts, and Parsons School of Design.
The Innocents (2003) — stories of individuals wrongly sentenced to death or life, then released and gained exoneration due to DNA evidence. Mistaken identity, questionable reliability of evidence.
An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar (2007) — objects, sites, and spaces integral to America but not accessible to public (radioactive capsules at a nuclear waste storage facility; black bear hibernating; CIA art collection).
Heavy research and preparation for each project: “The majority of my work is about preparation. The act of taking photographs is actually a very small part of the process. I work with a small team, just my sister and one assistant.”

O’Hagan, S. (2011) ‘Taryn Simon: the woman in the picture’ In: The Observer 21/05/2011 At: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2011/may/22/taryn-simon-tate-modern-interview (Accessed 26/01/2020).

Taryn Simon (s.d.) At: http://www.tarynsimon.com/ (Accessed 26/01/2020a).

Taryn Simon (s.d.) At: https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/artist/taryn-simon (Accessed 26/01/2020b).

Taryn Simon – 107 Artworks, Bio & Shows on Artsy (s.d.) At: https://www.artsy.net/artist/taryn-simon (Accessed 26/01/2020).

Philip-Lorca DiCorcia (Hartford, 1951– )

Studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Then attended Yale, MFA Photography, 1979. Lives and works in NYC and teaches at Yale.
Mixes snapshots and staged compositions that are theatrical in nature. Carefully planned staging, documentary, cinema and advertising. Line between reality and artifice/fantasy blurred.
Accidental poses, unintended movements, insignificant facial expressions. Series, Hustlers, Streetwork, Heads, A Storybook Life, and Lucky Thirteen, conceptual in nature.

DiCorcia, P.-L. (2001) Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Heads. Steidl Box Pacemacgill.

Kimmelman, M. (2001) Philip-Lorca diCorcia — ‘Heads’. At: http://www.nytimes.com/2001/09/14/arts/art-in-review-philip-lorca-dicorcia-heads.html

MoMA Learning. At: https://www.moma.org/learn/moma_learning/philip-lorca-dicorcia-head-10-2002

Philip-Lorca diCorcia | MoMA. At: https://www.moma.org/artists/7027

Philip-Lorca diCorcia | artnet (s.d.) At: http://www.artnet.com/artists/philip-lorca-dicorcia/ (Accessed 26/01/2020).

Philip-Lorca diCorcia – 46 Artworks, Bio & Shows on Artsy (s.d.) At: https://www.artsy.net/artist/philip-lorca-dicorcia (Accessed 26/01/2020).