Selecting a subject

This little section of Part 2 seems to have been dropped into the course without a necessary connection to what comes before it, but it raises a helpful point all the same. Part of the challenge of working through the material in the exercises and assignments is to use them to further work that is interesting to me, rather than just to fulfill the requirements for an academic program. It is not as if we will meet all the briefs for CAN simply as test pieces and then, once we have completed the OCA program, break out of the mould and begin making work for ourselves.

I suspect that some students do this more naturally than others. I see a range of approaches in the online fora and in the Hangouts: some students feel compelled to follow the brief to the letter, while others have a greater sense of freedom—or perhaps an inner need—to express something that is innate to them. For the second group, the personal work comes first and the exercise or assignment is adjusted to fit it.

At this point I think I am probably somewhere between the two poles: still concerned to respond well to the brief, but not content to meet it mechanically as a pure exercise or ‘sampler.’ I’d like to continue to move toward a greater sense of self-directed work, though, and will do what I can to feed that approach. I think that I could do that through more sustained reflection, openness to a wide range of input and the willingness to follow up on impulses without worrying too much about ‘getting it right.’

Onward.

A1—Two Sides of the Story

Most people who give the issue more than a moment’s thought realize that a two-dimensional image does not give us direct access to three-dimensional “reality.” But since a camera contains a light-sensitive surface that is exposed for a specified period, the artifice of an image extends to include a fourth dimension: an often unquestioned perception of time. A camera is a time machine, after all.

A photographer may just have two fundamental controls: “where I stand and when I press the button” (Hurn and Jay, 1997: 25). But although David Hurn is probably being facetious about how simple image-making is, he might have usefully added that another part of the subjectivity the photographer brings to the image is how long to press the button.

We have become very used to photographs freezing time faster than sight allows, but the camera is just as capable of creating exposures that are much longer than what the eye can register. Japanese photographer Hirhoshi Sugimoto has explored this with his series of long-exposures in movie theatres to the point of information overload: his photographic record shows screens that are grossly over-exposed and therefore blank. And Alexey Titarenko’s City of Shadows series on St. Petersburg uses long exposures to capture the blurred movement of people in a dreary black-and-white cityscape (Titarenko and Tchmyreva, 2001). While Titarenko’s shutter is open, crowds leave vapour trails and begin to fade.

David Campany suggests that still images not only prompt our memories but shape how we understand the phenomenon of memory itself: “In popular consciousness (as opposed to popular unconsciousness) the still image continues to be thought of as being more memorable than those that move” (Campany, 2003).

None of the images I have prepared for this assignment is any less “true” than the photographs of frozen motion that we have become used to. In fact, both pictures in each set are artificial and neither reproduces what our eyes see. Both are ‘still’ images, but one is less still and hints at how quickly perception and memory fade.

We have simply become used to the photographic convention of stillness. But it is just one side of the story.

References

Campany, D. “Safety in Numbness: Some remarks on the problems of ‘Late Photography’’’ (2003) At: https://davidcampany.com/safety-in-numbness/ (Accessed on 14 July 2019)

Hurn, D. and Jay, B. (1997) On being a photographer: a practical guide. Portland, Oregon: Lenswork Publishing.

Theaters — Hiroshi Sugimoto (s.d.) At: https://www.sugimotohiroshi.com/new-page-7 (Accessed on 14 July 2019)

Titarenko, A. and Tchmyreva, I. (2001) City of shadows. St. Petersburg, Russia: APT Tema.

A1—Two sides of the story: initial idea

When I started thinking about a set of images aiming to “explore the convincing nature of documentary, even though what the viewer thinks they see may not in fact be true,” I remembered David Hurn’s statement that the photographer has “two fundamental controls: where I stand and when I press the button” (Hurn and Jay, 2001: 26).

It seemed to me that most people automatically think of these two controls when considering the ‘truthfulness’ of photography: what is the viewer not seeing because of the photographer’s selection of viewpoint and what was missed because the photographer selected to freeze one instant rather than another? If we think of it, any photographic tool works by exposing a light-sensitive sensor to a certain quantity of light for a certain quantity of time. In other words, there are other dimensions of photography that have an impact on the documentary nature of the image produced, and one of these is time.

We have become used to photographs freezing imagery and I think that we take this characteristic as one of photography’s chief gifts: letting us see things that happen too quickly for the eye to register properly and preserving them for us to examine at our leisure. But how often do we remember that a photograph can also let us see things that take place over such a long period that the eye cannot register them?

Aren’t long exposures just as true—or false—a representation of reality as short exposures? What I’d like to do then, is to create a series of images of the same scenes shot at different shutter speeds, with each version having an equal claim to being ‘true.’

I am aware that Alexey Titarenko has produced a number of series of street photography images using long exposures, so I will make a point of researching his work.

Reference

Alexey Titarenko. At: http://www.alexeytitarenko.com/

Hurn, D. and Jay, B. (2001) On being a photographer: a practical guide. LensWork Pub.