Tag: London

Exercise—Street photography

I was on holiday in London for this exercise, so I decided to shoot my 60 images in an area where I would be guaranteed a never-ending supply of movement and subjects: Piccadilly Circus.

The contact sheets for my 30 black and white images are here:

I set the camera’s electronic viewfinder to black and white mode for this series to help me to visualise the final product more easily. Without the presence of colour in the frame, I found that I was drawn to cleaner lines, textures and contrasts. I find that the same thing happens when I review the completed images.

The contact sheets for my 30 colour images are here:

For the colour series, I set the electronic viewfinder back to a colour mode and found myself more often looking for striking colour, such as the presence of a red object in the frame. For a few frames I also tried to exaggerate the effect of some of the colour by using a longer shutter speed and panning with the movement of the subject. The colour images are naturally more like the world we see, and it was perhaps for that reason that I wanted to liven things up a bit by playing with intentional blur. And it is fair to say, as many people have, that black and white images are already an abstraction for people with normal sight.

At the same time, I am hesitant to overemphasise the changes I made in my approach to shooting or viewing colour versus black and white. I expect that, unless it specifically plays to the strengths inherent to colour or black and white, an image might be strong or weak regardless of the presence of colour.

I can’t say that I prefer one set over the other. Each has its place. I did, however, have a preference for black and white images for quite a while. There were probably a few reasons for this: they were more similar to what I had seen produced by the ‘legends’ of photography; they telegraphed to viewers that I was trying to do something a bit more ‘serious’ with my photographs; I learned to develop and print in a black and white darkroom; and, frankly, I found it easier to rescue marginal images (mixed lighting, blown highlights, etc.) with black and white processing techniques.

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.