Exercise—The archive

Does their presence on a gallery wall give these images an elevated status?

Yes, certainly. An artist has selected the images, built a show around them, displayed them in a gallery and invited others to view them—this imbues the photographs with significance. The fact that people were willing to attend the show and buy the works demonstrates that what once had little or no value, has now gained in value.

Where does their meaning derive from?

The meaning of the photographs derives from a number of sources, but the gallery presentation may be the most important. The new context for the images changes the way that they will be viewed: they will be seen as a collection (although they did not originally belong together); they will have status because someone else has granted it (artist, gallery, media reports, other viewers); and they will be seen as art rather than simple, personal photographs (the mere act of hanging on a wall will go a long way to attracting the ‘art’ label).

When they are sold (again on eBay, via auction direct from the gallery) is their value increased by the fact that they’re now ‘art’?

I would expect that the photographs will gain appreciably in value (both artistic and monetary). They may have sold for a pound or two before—or not at all—but their new notoriety and ‘art’ status gives them a cachet that will raise their prices.
I would also expect that the competitive nature of human beings in an auction will further increase the selling price of the photographs. Few people knew or cared about them when they were first offered up on eBay, but the potential market has increased in size and no one likes to feel that they have lost an opportunity to a rival bidder. The aggressive behaviour of bidders I have witnessed in eBay auctions often inflates the cost of buying even ordinary items. And these are no longer ordinary items.

Reference

Question for Seller – Nicky Bird (s.d.) At: http://nickybird.com/projects/question-for-seller/ (Accessed 28/01/2020).

A1—Discussion with tutor

I had a good discussion with my tutor following submission of Assignment 1. Although he will send me a written summary of his feedback, I am doing this write-up based on the notes I took during our chat. Robert’s comments about the assignment were positive and I found them both encouraging and an opportunity for further reflection.

I mentioned that I had changed my original vision for the assignment, which was to have two images of each scene, one with frozen people and the other where the length of exposure meant that traces of people disappeared entirely. I did try this, but I decided that I wanted to leave a trace of movement similar to the way that Alexey Titarenko had done with his series. The reason I did this was not to follow Titarenko, but to avoid confusing viewers who would see every second image with a background and no people at all. I was concerned that this would be “too conceptual” and Robert replied that being conceptual is not a problem in a course like this! To my mind, “too conceptual” means that I would have to explain to viewers what they were looking at, because it would not be at all obvious from the images. I suppose that some of my reaction is because I do not want to produce images that are so conceptually “heavy” they require lengthy written explanations. This is the case for two reasons: 1) if I wanted a description of a concept, I would use words rather than images; and 2) I think I would be embarrassed to produce work that was so precious or clever that it could not be understood without an arty accompanying text. I don’t see me moving from that position in the near future, but I am now better aware of my own discomfort.

All the same, Robert’s view was that my series was conceptually coherent and that I had successfully achieved the concept visually and elegantly.

A couple of minor points on the images themselves, the first pointed out by me and the second by Robert:

the white balance was difficult to correct between the diptychs, but I managed to get close enough in every pair except the ones showing the Millennium Bridge and St. Paul’s (I may have another crack at this before assessment).
the two images showing the casino in Leicester Square are slightly out of register (this will be easier to resolve and I will definitely fix it before assessment).

A more important point, however, was the fact that my series shows a side of the city that most Londoners do not frequent: tourist London. This was not my intent: I had merely wanted to be in places where I was guaranteed a steady pedestrian flow without a tripod slowing commuters down on their way to or from work. The unintended consequence, however, was that the places I chose were all tourist haunts—so the cumulative effect is a series that could very well be ‘read’ as a comment on tourists or tourism, rather than more neutrally on the camera’s exposure of our perception of time and the artificiality of the photographic record. In other words, I wound up ‘saying’ visually more than I meant to. I saw Robert’s point immediately and will make a point of paying more attention to this aspect of my work in future.

The final point we discussed was my use of the term ‘reality.’ I had used it to describe the way that people commonly act as though a photograph gives them some direct experience of the world around them (a “phenomenological” approach; Smith, 2018). I realize that I left my understanding of the term unspoken and will go back to my A1 text to rework it slightly before I submit it for assessment.

All in all, a very positive tutorial and some new points for me to reflect on as I continue developing my approach to building visual narratives.

Reference

Smith, D.W. (2018) ‘Phenomenology’ In: Zalta, E.N. (ed.) The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University. At: https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2018/entries/phenomenology/ (Accessed on 23 July 2019)

A1—Alexey Titarenko

Alexey Titarenko (1962- , Leningrad)

Graduated with honours from the Department of Cinematic and Photographic Art at Leningrad’s Institute of Culture
Influenced by Russian avant-garde works of Kazimir Malevich, Alexander Rodchenko and Dada art
Published series of collages, photomontages and superimposed negatives, Nomenklatura of Signs in 1988 as commentary on the Communist regime
During and after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991–1992, produced several series using long exposure and intentional camera movement in street photography
City of Shadows urban landscapes reference Odessa Steps (also known as the Primorsky or Potemkin Stairs) scene from film The Battleship Potemkin.
Venice series between 2001 and 2008 references “Venice of the North,” Saint Petersburg.
Shoots film and does own darkroom work—bleaching and toning, solarisation, Sabattier effect.
2011 exhibition of 15 gelatin silver prints from Havana, Cuba series (2003-2006).
U.S. citizen since 2011 and lives in NYC.

I became aware of Alexey Titarenko’s work through an introduction to contemporary street photography (Howarth and McLaren, 2010) as well as through a series of videos I had seen online (Artist Series: Alexey Titarenko, 2016). I was captivated by the way he showed movement of people through the streets of Leningrad by means of the ghostly traces created by long exposure (Titarenko and Tchmyreva, 2001). It seemed to me that the indistinct layers of the figures suggested something about the transience of life, particularly when set against the unforgiving, hard lines of a city going through difficult times. The long exposure is a technique that Titarenko has continued to use effectively on other projects—most notably his series entitled “Time Standing Still” and “Venice” (Titarenko, s.d.)—along with other analogue, post-production methods (like solarisation and the Sabbatier effect) for heightening the surreal appearance of his photographs (Meyers, 2008).

The discussion in Rutherford (2014) of the photographic techniques used by Titarenko and others is helpful for demonstrating how their work demonstrates another, valid view of the ‘photographicness’ of works that show an altered reality or perspective. It is just as much—or perhaps more—a property of photography that it creates a reality more than it provides a true depiction of it. Because of this, Rutherford believes that it is always more correct to say that a picture is actively ‘made’ rather than passively ‘taken.’ In a brief reference to Titarenko’s images from City of Shadows, Rutherford (2014: 208) says that “the modus operandi of the medium has transformed the Things in Front of the Lens to produce results which are uniquely ‘photographic’.”

Most important for my thinking in preparation for Assignment 1, goes on to assert (2014: 210) that:

“… as a result of the ways in which the medium interprets, juxtaposes and renders the Things in Front of the Lens at that moment and from that perspective, photographs are capable of depicting scenes, events and moments that did not exist and could not have existed until brought into being by the act of photographing them.”

This is exactly where I wanted to go with the assignment—to look at how the very properties of the camera itself allow us to see two or more versions of the same scene (what Rutherford repeatedly calls the Things in Front of the Lens ), where every version has the same claim as any other to be a ‘faithful’ representation. And if they are all faithful and all different, perhaps none of them can be said to be truly faithful.

This combination of Titarenko’s photographic technique and Rutherford’s theoretical discussion will be useful for me as I develop and position my work for the assignment.

References

Alexey Titarenko (2019) In: Wikipedia. At: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Alexey_Titarenko&oldid=904212618 (Accessed on 13 July 2019)

Alexey Titarenko (s.d.) At: http://www.alexeytitarenko.com (Accessed on 13 July 2019)

Alexey Titarenko – 27 Artworks, Bio & Shows on Artsy (s.d.) At: https://www.artsy.net/artist/alexey-titarenko (Accessed on 13 July 2019)

Artist Series: Alexey Titarenko. (2016) Directed by The Art of Photography At: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=whoZ8SRgi2s (Accessed on 13 July 2019)

Galerie municipale du château d’eau and Dieuzaide, M. (2000) Alexei Titarenko: Toulouse, 21 juin-4 septembre 2000.

Howarth, S. and McLaren, S. (2010) Street photography now. London ; New York: Thames & Hudson.

Meyers, W. “Alexey Titarenko’s Venetian Style” (2008) In: The New York Sun (New York, NY) 24 April 2008 p.17. [online] At: https://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A178223382/STND?u=ucca&sid=STND&xid=07ae77f9 (Accessed on 13 July 2019)

Rutherford (2014) ‘Photography as an act of collaboration’ In: Journal of Media Practice 15 (3) pp.206–227. [online] At: https://doi.org/10.1080/14682753.2014.1000043 (Accessed on 13 July 2019)

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

Other works by Alexey Titarenko

Nomenklatura of Signs (1985-1991) (s.d.) At: http://www.alexeytitarenko.com/nomenclatureofsigns (Accessed on 13 July 2019)

Titarenko, A. et al. (2003) Alexey Titarenko, photographs. New York? N. Alexander.

Titarenko, A. (2015) The city is a novel. Bologna: Damiani.

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.