A5—Additional context

It has taken me some to return to A5 since completing CAN, in part because of the mental distancing that occurs once a final assignment is submitted for a course, and in part because of my workplace involvement in Canada’s response to the COVID-19 virus over the last several weeks. Reasons and excuses aside, though, it is time to return to my tutor’s suggestions for further analysis around the artists that I have referenced for A5, as well as the role of the “mirror as a recurring element in reflexive practices.”

Ilse Bing and 1930s concerns with the nature of vision and photography itself

Photographer (Frankfurt, 1899–NYC, 1998)
University of Frankfurt, 1920, to study mathematics, but moved to Vienna to study art history. Began doctoral program studying architecture in 1924 and photographed buildings for her dissertation, which she did not submit. In 1929, moved to Paris to work with Florence Henri and other Modernists. Henri took similar self-portrait with mirrors — link to Bing’s work?
Worked in photojournalism, architectural photography, advertising and fashion (Le Monde Illustré, Harper’s Bazaar, Vogue).
Modernism, Surrealism, New Vision. Experimented with perspectives, unconventional cropping, use of natural light, geometries; pioneered a type of solarisation independently of Man Ray.
Early adopter of Leica in Paris, “Queen of the Leica” (Sougez).
Work was included in the first modern photography exhibition held at the Louvre, 1936.
Traveled to New York City, “Photography 1839–1937” at MoMA. Fled France to NYC, June 1941.
Style evolved in NYC: harder forms, clear lines. Experimented with colour in the 1950s, then gave up photography. Renewed interest in her work from mid-1970s to the early 1990s.
Self-Portrait in Mirrors, 1931 reveals the mechanics of the artifice that lies behind the image, like a magician showing how a trick works.
“The above self-portrait of the photographer and her camera – taken in 1931 and currently on display as part of the Barnes Foundation’s exhibition of French photography from 1890 to 1950, titled Live and Life Will Give You Pictures – is one of Bing’s most famous works, and a key icon of modernist photography. It is a compositionally complex image that shows Bing capturing herself in a mirror with another mirror (possibly the opposite side arm) angled so as to reflect her and her beloved Leica in profile. It demonstrates a broad range of tactile tones and textures, from the deep-black, slightly bobbled fabric of Bing’s jacket, to the oversized, rippling silver button on its sleeve, to the sheeny curtain, with its deep folds, glistening behind her. The objects on the desk in front of her – a sheet of paper, an electric cord and what looks like a box of matches – interrupt the formality of the set-up and point to the image-maker’s interest in the banal details of urban living. 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).
“I didn’t choose photography; it chose me,” she reflected in later life. “I didn’t know it at the time. An artist doesn’t think first and then do it, he [sic] is driven. Now over 50 years later, I can look back and explain it. In a way, it was the trend of the time; it was the time when you started to see differently… And the camera, that was, in a way, the beginning of the mechanical device penetrating into the field of art” (AnOther, 2016).

Tracey Moffatt

Lens-based artist: photography, video (Brisbane, 1960–)
White father, Aboriginal mother. Fostered out at 3 years of age; grew up as the eldest of three daughters in a white family and often left to look after her foster sisters.
Degree in visual communications, Queensland College of Art, 1982. Honorary doctorate, 2004.
Work often focuses on cultural and social views of Australian Aboriginal people.
Short film Nice Coloured Girls, 1987: 16-minute story of three young Aboriginal women contrasted with historical oppression of Indigenous women by white men.
Something more, 1989: series of six Cibachrome and three black-and-white prints; narrative of a young woman looking for more out of life than violent rural upbringing.
Film, Night Cries, 1989/1990: inspired by 1955 Australian film Jedda; about an Aboriginal women forced to care for her aging white mother.
Series through the 1990s on themes of sexuality, history, representation, race and violence.
Work in 2000s on fame and celebrity.
Represented Australia (first Indigenous artist to do so) at Venice Biennale 2017 with solo exhibition “My Horizon” consisting of videos, The White Ghosts Sailed In and Vigil, and two series of photographs, Body Remembers and Passage. Colonialism and imperialism in Australia and impacts on indigenous population.

Piero Fornasetti

Artist, engraver, decorator, industrial designer (Milan, 1913–1988)
Expelled from Milan’s Brera Art Academy. Later expelled from Italy and developed as an artist in Switzerland.
Known for motifs such as sun, moon, playing cards, animals, and other Surrealist imagery. Recurring face of opera singer Lina Cavalieri, including a series of 350 individual plates.
Most pieces in black and white, total number over 10,000.
Unlike many modernists, focused on surface enrichment rather than form, covering the surfaces with surreal hand-painted images.

Elina Brotherus – Artist and Model Reflected in a Mirror

Photographer, videographer (Helsinki, 1972–)
Early work on universal experiences, presence and absence of love.
Series “The New Painting” (2000-05), relation of photography to art history. “Model Studies” (2002-08) and “Artist and her model” (2005-2011), human figure within a landscape, and gaze of artist on model. “12 ans après” (2011-2012) and “Annonciation” (2009-2013) autobiographical.
Series “12 ans après” makes frequent use of mirror images in self-portraits which seem to serve as a metaphor for reflecting on one’s own life as the artist returns to a residence in which she had lived for a while. The mirror also makes explicit, visually, that the artist is playing a double-role as both the viewer and the viewed. It looks to me that there is a ‘knowingness’ about it, as if she invites others to view her as she views herself. Her use of a visible cable release in a number of the images also makes explicit the artifice involved in taking the self-portrait: 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 the artifice.

Diego Velázquez – Las Meninas (1656).

Painter (Seville, 1599–Madrid, 1660)
Leading artist in court of King Philip IV during Spanish Golden Age. Scenes of historical and cultural significance, portraits of Spanish royal family and commoners, including Las Meninas (1656). Model for 19th century realist and impressionist painters. Reinterpreted by numerous modrn painters.
Interesting that the painting should have been named for the ladies in waiting rather than the princess, and that a dwarf and the painter should appear so prominently when the king and queen are relegated to the background: “the mirror in the background, with its reflection of the king and queen, was the artist’s clever way of revealing what is on the front of the large canvas on which he is working” (Jacobs, 2015). Is the image about roles and their reversal? Is it a benign image of a royal household or something else?
Playing with perspective, location and status? Truly a constructed image. “Fact is turned into fiction,” Brown writes. The work is “purely a product of the painter’s imagination.” (Jonathan Brown, 1986 in Lesser, 2018).
“But the debate as to what the mirror was intended to show had at least the effect of drawing attention to the monarchs’ likely presence in the room, whether as models or as spectators. And this in turn helped promote an idea that would give the painting an especial relevance to the modern age: that the monarchs, if they really are in the artist’s studio, would be occupying the same position as we ourselves do in viewing the work. This was a notion that opened up a whole new range of interpretative possibilities. It marked a turning point in the appreciation of Las Meninas. A moment when an icon of realism was transformed into what the contemporary British artist Mark Wallinger has called the first “self-conscious” work of modern art. A moment when a painting that captures so astonishingly the surface of life became as well a profound meditation on the relationship between life and art” (Jacobs, 2015). Multiple planes and reflections/vantage points.
“The fascinating painting places viewers in the position of the king and queen. This interesting twist makes whoever is looking at the painting both a spectator and a participant” (The History and Mystery of ‘Las Meninas’ by Diego Velázquez, 2019).
Foucault: |In appearance, this locus is a simple one; a matter of pure reciprocity: we are looking at a picture in which the painter is in turn looking out at us. A mere confrontation, eyes catching one another’s glance, direct looks superimposing themselves upon one another as they cross.” […] “But, inversely, the painter’s gaze, addressed to the void confronting him outside the picture, accepts as many models as there are spectators; in this precise but neutral place, the observer and the observed take part in a ceaseless exchange. No gaze is stable, or rather in the neutral furrow of the gaze piercing at a right angle through the canvas, subject and object, the spectator and the model, reverse their roles infinity. And here the great canvas with its back to us on the extreme left of the picture exercises its second function: stubbornly invisible, it prevents the relation of these gazes from ever being discoverable or definitely established.” […] “Because we can see only that reverse side, we do not know who we are, or what we are doing. Seen or seeing? The painter is observing a place which, from moment to moment, never ceases to change its content, its form, its face, its identity.” […] “We are observing ourselves being observed by the painter, and made visible to his eyes by the same light that enables us to see him. And just as we are about to apprehend ourselves, transcribed by his hand as though in a mirror, we find that we can in fact apprehend nothing of that mirror but its lustreless back. The other side of a psyche.” […] “But there, in the midst of this dispersion which it is simultaneously grouping together and spreading out before us, indicated compellingly from every side, is an essential void: the necessary disappearance of that which is its foundation – of the person it resembles and the person in whose eyes it is only a resemblance. This very subject – which is the same – has been elided. And representation, freed finally from the relation that was impeding it, can offer itself as representation in its pure form.”

Jeff Wall – Picture for Women (1979). Plenty online, Campany for instance.

Photographer (Vancouver, 1946– )
Large-scale back-lit cibachrome photographs and art history writing. Helped define Vancouver School .
Experimented with conceptual art while undergraduate at UBC. Many transparencies are staged and refer to history of art and philosophical problems of representation. Compositions often allude to work of artists like Diego Velázquez, Hokusai, and Édouard Manet, or writers such as Franz Kafka, Yukio Mishima, Ralph Ellison.
Picture for Women is a 142.5 × 204.5 cm cibachrome transparency mounted on a lightbox. Along with The Destroyed Room, Wall considers Picture for Women to be his first success in challenging photographic tradition. According to Tate Modern, this success allows Wall to reference “both popular culture (the illuminated signs of cinema and advertising hoardings) and the sense of scale he admires in classical painting. As three-dimensional objects, the lightboxes take on a sculptural presence, impacting on the viewer’s physical sense of orientation in relationship to the work.”
“Some of Wall’s early pictures evoke the history of image making by overtly referring to 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. These two pictures are models of a thread in Wall’s work that the artist calls “blatant artifice”: pictures that foreground the theatricality of both their subject and their production” (Jeff Wall, 2018).
“Picture for Women addresses the male gaze, a topic increasingly analyzed, debated, and often resisted within the art world in the years surrounding this picture’s creation and display. […] Since the viewer can clearly see the back of her body reflected in the mirror along with the face of a man facing her, the viewer is directly implicated in the scene by supposedly occupying the very space of the patron. Not only do we see the male gaze in action, we are also participating in it. Similarly, Wall’s photograph puts viewers in the center of the image by aiming the camera lens directly at us, highlighting our participation in the observation of the woman in the photograph while also witnessing Wall fix his male gaze upon her too. The viewers then also fall victim to the male gaze, as the photographer supposedly captures our image with the camera as well” (Jeff Wall Photography, Bio, Ideas, s.d.).
“For de Duve, Picture for Women dramatises and finds its own unique solution to photography’s split loyalty to Modernism. Pulled in opposite directions, photographic Modernism has a wish to be ‘true to itself’ by producing illusionistic space and a wish to negate this and bring the viewer up to its characteristically invisible surface. This split runs right through photography’s fraught artistic identity. It is there in everything from Pictorialist photography’s interest in ‘painterly’ print finishes (such as tactile, hand-brushed emulsions) to high Modernist photography’s exaggeration of the world’s textures in contrast to its own industrial smoothness (photography of the New Objectivity and the f64 group, for example). It registers in the countless images resulting from the medium’s compulsive desire to encounter mirrors and also in choices of subject matter that might serve to draw attention to the camera’s optical account of thing” (David Campany, 2007:16).
“The presence of the camera or a mirror in a photograph often suggests to the viewer the ‘cone of vision’, the means of spatial organisation which photography inherits from classical perspective. However, while an optical model of vision may provide us with an account of the appearance of an image, it cannot provide a model of response or interpretation, not least to Picture for Women. A diagrammatic theory of optics is quite unsuited for mapping the processes of the unconscious that are at play in the making of meaning, especially in the depiction of social/sexual subjects. The condensations and displacements of desire obey neither linear perspective nor optical logic. The cold, dead eye of geometry cannot account for desire, which comes to warp space and undo its coherence. While the cone of vision may suggest ‘the’ viewer as an idealized, impossible point in the rigorous geometry of a picture, it is frequently blind to matters of subjectivity and difference. Similarly the phrase ‘point of view’ in everyday day speech refers to values or opinions about things (‘What’s your point of view?’), while in photography it also refers to where you put the camera in relation to the subject. So it is tempting to draw a parallel between a photographer’s attitude to the world and the position from which they shoot it. There is always some kind of relation between the two but it cannot be formulated exactly. Much of the tension in Wall’s photograph flows from the staging of this split” (David Campany, 2007:18).
“Moreover it is not unrealistic to read Picture For Women as a visual illustration of the central tenet of what is perhaps the key essay of visual culture of the 1970s, Laura Mulvey’s ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ (1975). Mulvey argued that “‘Woman”, connotes “to-be-looked-at-ness” in a visual culture organised by the unconscious of patriarchy’. Where the essay made an iconoclastic and political call for a practice that might shatter this existing order, Wall opted for an art that promised to bring out something of its character as a ‘moment of unease’ within a tightly organised picture. Indeed moments of unease came to dominate Wall’s depiction of people, particularly relations between men and women” (David Campany, 2007:21).
“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. In 1978, the year before Wall made Picture for Women, Craig Owens discussed photographs of mirrors as means of putting the medium en abyme. The presence of a mirror allows the image to reproduce at an internal level a fundamental quality of photography as a whole. He compared photographers’ strong attraction to mirrors to a young child’s compulsion to turn the sounds it hears into communication by repeating them (ma-ma, da-da). Repetition becomes a way to turn the arbitrary into the intentional and produce an imaginary control. There need not be a grasp of meaning at the level of content, merely a demonstration of the blind mechanism, rather like Echo in Greek mythology who is condemned to repeat the last words of sentences spoken to her. In a similar way, 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. As a rite of passage, it says: ‘I am curious about this’ or even ‘I am serious about this.’ (Owens alludes to Jacques Lacan’s ‘Mirror Phase’ through which the young child learns to identify with the imaginary wholeness of an ideal-ego, but the connection is not made explicit)” (David Campany, 2007:23).
“The third solution, which seems over time to be the favoured one, is to depict people facing away or partially away from the camera so that we are not forced to confront so headlong their artifice nor they ours as gallery-goers. The recent Catalogue Raisonne’ gives us the first opportunity to see Wall’s oeuvre in chronological order, and it is striking to note how his figures start off facing the camera and gradually turn away over the decades. In those early works, people and objects face the camera almost as unflinchingly as the ‘ideas’ that inform them. Increasingly the profile and the back of the head become prevalent. Wall’s imagery has grown quieter, less emphatic and, I would venture, more likeable than admirable” (David Campany, 2007:25).

Szarkowski, Mirrors and windows: American photography since 1960

“The prejudices and inclinations expressed by the pictures in this book suggest positions that are familiar from older disputes. In terms of the best photography of a half century ago, one might say that Alfred Stieglitz is the patron of the first half of this book and Eugene Atget of the second. In either case, what artist Gould want a more distinguished sponsor? The distance between them is to be measured not in terms of the relative force or originality of their work, but in terms of their conceptions of what a photograph is: 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).

Helmut Newton – Self-Portrait with Wife and Models (1981).

Interesting that this image should be presented as a self-portrait when the image of the photographer seems almost incidental to everything else that is going on in the frame. Nevertheless, it is Newton who has set the scene and arranged all three of his models—a nude woman seen from behind but whose full-length image appears in a mirror, another woman whose legs appear in the frame as if by accident, and the photographer’s wife who sits facing the scene with an attitude of apparent boredom.
The title image appears as if it might have happened by chance, but the contact sheet shows clearly that Newton has worked the scene to get the effect he is after, with all of the models posed in just the right position, in right relation to one another and to the photographer himself.
Only Newton and his wife are fully dressed. Is this a statement of power? Of concealment? Age? All of the above? The choice of a trench coat could be linked with clichés of men either exposing themselves or engaging in seamy activities. Are both suggested here?

“Further, he becomes the object of the female gaze, as June observes him observing the naked woman. Newton has been, in essence, “caught looking.” In this image, June stands in for the symbolic as she employs the gaze. This could be a commentary on marriage, as a state and religious sanctioned institution and, thereby, device of the symbolic. Under the regulatory matrimonial gaze, Newton is caught and exposed. This is not to say that Jane is implicated in his subjection. This is, after all, a purposefully staged image – a performance of the gaze – in which she takes part. As Burgin notes, it is important to consider Newton’s trenchcoat as not only a symbol of voyeurism but also of exhibitionism. It is the stereotypical dress of the “flasher.” Burgin points out that “it is not normal for the photographer to expose himself” (McDowell, 2008:199).

Newton’s face is hidden as he focuses the camera, which might suggest that he uses the equipment to remain concealed. And he shoots from behind the model while exposing her front and back with the aid of a mirror. More concealment. His wife, facing him, sees all head-on, although she cannot see as much of the scene as the photographer—or the viewer—because of the relationship of the camera to the mirror. The combination of camera and mirror appear to reveal all, except for the appearance of the photographer himself.

References

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Artist and her model (2005-2011) (s.d.) At: http://www.elinabrotherus.com/artist-and-her-model (Accessed 21/04/2020).

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).

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A5—Reflection

Demonstration of technical and visual skills

I am satisfied with the results I achieved for A5.
I won’t dwell on a discussion of the technical and visual skills required to make my constructed image a reality because much of that has already been covered in the text of the assignment itself.
It is worth noting, however, that once I had a clear idea of what I wanted to accomplish visually, much of the work involved solving a series of technical problems: lighting the scene evenly, eliminating all reflections that the lights left in the window, making sure that the subject’s face was adequately lit, firing the camera remotely, etc. This has easily been the most challenging and considered image I have ever made.

Quality of outcome

I am pleased with the results I achieved, because they represent well the concept I had for the shoot. The image took clear shape in my mind before it became a scene in front of the camera.
Beyond the issue of faithfulness to my vision for the image, I think that the picture holds up well as a photograph and I look forward to printing it. I believe that it is an engaging ‘constructed reality’ and I will be interested to see the reaction it receives from viewers.
I tried to keep in mind the emphasis my tutor placed on attention to detail and the need to ‘dress the set’ carefully, and I think think it has paid off. I have a better appreciation of the fact that viewers will ‘read’ every element in the frame as they construct its meaning for themselves, so it is only right to do my work with that awareness. I should have known this, given the time that I take to pore over every clue and sign when reading a photograph, but it is good to be reminded when one is the writer of images, rather than the reader.

Demonstration of creativity

The creativity in this assignment came about in two distinct aspects: formulating the vision itself and finding ways to overcome technical issues through a combination of imagination, knowledge and… work. The image was clear enough in my mind, though, that I was not willing to stop until I had the results I was looking for.
Another creative aspect demonstrated in A5 is my continued growth as a photographer. This is my second attempt at a self-portrait and I find that the thinking and reflection involved in the work have been very helpful, both in terms of producing images and also personally. I did not expect this, so it has been a surprising side-benefit.

Context

Much of the context for this assignment came from drawing on a combination of factors that help to feed my visual imagination: gallery visits, research for other portions of CAN, familiarity with the history of photography, and attention to my own preoccupations and thought processes.
Part of the context for the assignment also has to do with my growing awareness of what I am doing when I make photographs. I have taken pictures for years of things that caught my eye and have usually been able to explain why I took the picture in the way that I did. I don’t think it ever occurred to me, though, that I could use photography as a tool to give expression to an active—rather than ‘passive’—vision. I knew that other people did this, but I could not imagine me doing it. The assignments of CAN are opening up a new world to me.

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.

A4—Reflection

Demonstration of technical and visual skills

The category of “visual skills” does not apply in the usual way for this assignment because I did not have to create any imagery. The category does apply, however, in the sense of applying those skills in looking carefully at an image created by someone else. I will give my comments on how successfully I did that in the “Quality of outcome” sub-section.
The other technical skills employed for this assignment were connected with my writing ability. I am confident that my writing is clear and cogent, and does not suffer from too many basic faults.

Quality of outcome

I am quite pleased with the outcome of the assignment in a number of respects. The first of these is that I gave myself the time to spend just looking at Strand’s image and to explore it fully. Wall Street, 1915 is a picture that has stayed in my mind for many years and I have never really articulated to myself, much less anyone else, why it had such a hold in my imagination. It was a kind of gift for me to be able to give it sustained attention and help to answer my own question: why do I care about this picture?
I was not interested in putting together a collection of views and insights lifted from other interpreters, but wanted to do the close work of doing my own interpretive work. I think I have achieved that.

Demonstration of creativity

I made an effort to delve into some of the intertextuality that Wall Street, 1915 suggested to me. The first of these was Fritz Lang’s film, Metropolis, so it was exciting to me to find out that Strand himself had returned to the scene of his still image to give it a place in his own film, Manhatta.
I also used my imagination in looking at the walkers and thinking about what their postures, attitudes and clothing might suggest. I did the same with the bold lines of the shadows, buildings and sidewalks.
Can I be sure that my views and interpretations are accurate? Of course not. What would the standard be and which view would trump—the studium of Strand (Barthes’ Operator), my own assessment and punctum, or someone else’s? But did I enjoy the activity and writing the reflective essay? Absolutely.

Context

The context for the essay is a course on photographic Context and Narrative, and the assignment has taught me something about both aspects of the title. I have seen how Wall Street, 1915 found its context in a number of places and I can appreciate that it would have been apprehended differently in each of them—on the wall of Stieglitz’s New York gallery, in the pages of Camera Work with other early examples of Modernist photography, as a few seconds of homage in a movie, and in collections and retrospectives of Strand’s work over the last 100 years.
I have tried to tease out some of the more striking aspects of the photograph’s narrative by entering the little world inside its frame and seeing how the various elements work together to make a coherent and powerful visual story.
Just as important for me has been the chance to consider my own context as a viewer / interpreter and to have the chance to apply new tools that help me to understand and articulate my own response to a famous image that has stuck with me for years.

A3—Reflection

Demonstration of technical and visual skills

I am satisfied with the results I achieved for A3.
The technical and visual skills required to realise these images were a little different from what I have done with other exercises and assignments. Most important, I was the subject, so I had to work to ensure that I would remain in focus while moving around in front of the camera. I accomplished this in a few ways:
- by setting the camera on a two-second timer to give me enough time to get in front of the lens;
- by setting the aperture on the lens (f/8) to give sufficient depth of field;
- by using a gel-coloured flash, remotely-triggered and fired into a reflective umbrella to freeze motion; and
- by ensuring that there was no ambient light in the room, which meant that the flash was the only source of light.

Quality of outcome

I am pleased with the results I achieved, in that they represent well what I had in mind once I landed on my concept / approach.
The images are sharp; I had enough exposures to give me a good selection of photographs for the series; and the colours from the gel-covered flash gave some extra dynamism to the images.
The four images I chose for the final set also compliment each other well in terms of movement, position of the subject, and the colours chosen for each.
If I were to do this again, though, I might look at letting a little ambient light into the frame and dragging the shutter. This would introduce more movement into the frame, but it might take away from the over all effect.

Demonstration of creativity

The creativity for me in this assignment does not lie in the techniques required to produce the images. Taking pictures with a flash in an umbrella is not that complicated, once you get a feel for what you are doing.
Instead, I believe that the creativity lies mostly in the desire to use the assignment to support some personal growth. I realise that a fear of dancing—coupled with a real dislike of pictures of myself—may seem trivial to some people, but it is significant for me. (I am guessing that many of those same people might run from speaking opportunities, while I have little difficulty addressing hundreds of people.)

Context

The reflection I did for this assignment continues the direction in some sense from A2 (which I will almost certainly rework in light of the feedback I received from my tutor), where I looked at issues of personal identity through a collection of artefacts.
In A3 I have again turned to personal exploration, although this time the imagery involves me directly rather than a series of proxies.
At the beginning of the feedback I received from my tutor in response to A2, he included the following quotation:

‘If I throw a stick in one direction in a field it does not mean that I am obliged to
retrieve it like a dog. If I throw a stick it is to eliminate or exclude this direction, to
feel free to research what is not indicated yet.’
Tomasz Wendland (2008)

I interpreted that as encouragement to resist following my initial leanings for A3 and to open up a new range of possible directions by deliberately turning from familiar things. Looking at my self as the subject of my photographs is something that I have never done, so being pushed was good for my growth as a photographer (and perhaps as a person). Rather than taking on a self-portrait in a relatively distant or even impersonal way, I decided to tackle a discomfort and a fear head-on.
I have also been glad of the opportunity to explore more personal topics in what I hope has been a positive way. Everyone faces challenges in the course of life—some much more so than others—but it has bothered me that so many personal artistic explorations seem to be negative in nature. I think I would have real difficulty sustaining a personal project that focused on the negative and I would also be reluctant to share it with others. I want to grow and I am usually better fed turning outward and forward, rather than focusing inward and down.
This does not mean that I cannot learn from and appreciate the work of artists whose work is darker—it just means that I may not want to follow their examples.

Reference

Wendland, T. (2008) ‘THE UNKNOWN: That what I say is not what I mean’ [Ph.D. Dissertation] Dartington College of Arts, University of Plymouth. At: https://pearl.plymouth.ac.uk/handle/10026.1/2796 (Accessed 24/11/2019).

A2—Reflection

Demonstration of technical and visual skills

I am satisfied with the results I achieved for A2.
At the same time, I think it is fair to say that technical and visual skills were probably less important for this assignment than they have been for the work I did for A1 or during the time I was taking EYV. I see this as evidence of learning for me because I have been relatively comfortable with photographic technique for some time, but this assignment was a chance to branch out into more conceptual work.
I would not want to completely underplay the place of technique, though, as it was important for me to learn about how museums use photography to document the artifacts in their collections. I have followed most of these fairly closely (neutral background, even light, attention to details, brief descriptive text, scale, consistency of approach).

Quality of outcome

Once I had landed on the concept I wanted to pursue (pointing to “unseen” family through their personal objects), it gradually dawned on me that I could ‘universalize’ the topic by presenting the objects as though they were artefacts in a museum. I think the concept holds together fairly well and that anyone who had been to a museum would be able to recognize the form of the work.
I had imagined what I wanted to achieve before I began shooting and was able to find resources that outlined the elements / techniques that help to achieve something false more… authentically.
If I were to print these images for display, I think I would keep the print size relatively small (no larger than 8″ x 12″, or so) and would use a relatively flat, ‘clinical’ or ‘scientific’ presentation—loose, rather than framed, for example, and perhaps contained in a simple folder. Alternatively, they could be printed as a section of a small, folded museum / collection guide.

Demonstration of creativity

I think that this is where most of the learning took place in this assignment. As I mentioned above, there was perhaps a little less emphasis on skill or technique and more weight on the concept behind the series of images.
I deliberately turned away from my initial idea (church buildings as a visible manifestation of faith / the unseen) because it was very quickly leading me down a path I have travelled enough. Instead, I wanted to develop my thinking and work around something that marked out a new direction (toward the more conceptual) about subjects that are important to me (interpretation / construction of meaning; understanding the place of family ties).

Context

The reflection I did for this assignment was perhaps more personal and less based on referencing a particular artist. I did, however, spend quite a bit of time looking at the techniques and conventions of photographing and presenting artefacts. I also looked for examples of artists drawing on personal objets trouvés, but this was a more difficult search. Tracy Emin’s My Bed popped up repeatedly, but most of the objects appropriated by other artists seemed to derive their power from the fact that they were not personal, from Marcel Duchamp’s 1917 Fountain, on.
In the end, I decided to strike out on my own and do the project as the idea presented itself to me: personal objects that pointed to my unseen family members, presented as museum pieces.

References

Tate (s.d.) ‘Fountain’, Marcel Duchamp, 1917, replica 1964. At: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/duchamp-fountain-t07573 (Accessed on 23 September 2019a)

Tate (s.d.) ‘My Bed’, Tracey Emin, 1998. At: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/emin-my-bed-l03662 (Accessed on 23 September 2019b)

A1—Reflection

Demonstration of technical and visual skills

I am, for the most part, happy with the results I achieved for A1. I think that there is still room for improvement in the composition of some of the images, however. My main concern was that there would be enough pedestrian traffic in the frame to provide the desired blurring effect during the time the shutter was open. Next time, I will also pay more attention to the background of the images.
Even with a 10-stop filter, I found that exposure times could be shorter than what I was after, depending upon how bright the sun was. A uniform set of overcast days would have been ideal. I could have had much longer exposure times at night, obviously, but I did not want the assignment to become a ‘night photography’ exercise where ambient lights and colours might distract from the desired effect on the pedestrians.
The 10-stop filter also created some challenges around the white balance of the RAW images. Although the filter was not cheap and was fairly neutral in terms of colour cast, it was not perfect. I matched the colour balances of the individual long- and short-exposures as best I could, but it is not perfect. If I use this technique again, there are probably a few things I could do: post-produce the final images in black and white (perhaps this is why Titarenko opted for monochrome); take more time with colour balancing in my editing software; and/or do additional test shots of each scene with a grey card to help ensure accurate colour rendition.

Quality of outcome

I had a good idea of the effect that I wanted to achieve before I began shooting and, for the most part, achieved it.
I am happy with my conceptual approach and believe that I have expressed it effectively, both visually and in my documentation on the blog.
If I print these images for display, I think I might do so as a more obvious set of diptychs: not just side-by-side as a series of images with similar backgrounds, but as a set of diptychs with two pictures printed on a single sheet of photographic paper.

Demonstration of creativity

It is always tricky to speak of one’s own demonstration of creativity, but I think that I brought a slightly new twist to the brief of ‘two sides of the story.’ From my scan of other OCA student blogs, it appears that many achieve their ‘two sides’ by changing the camera’s viewpoint or by altering the subject matter from frame to frame. I decided to play with the dimension of time without altering the viewpoint or subject matter and I think it has been effective.
If it is any indication of my satisfaction with the results—not complete satisfaction, but pleased enough—I think that I would like to return to this approach again where appropriate for later work, whether for the OCA or for myself. I wouldn’t simply repeat what I have done here, but try to improve my technique (see above) and push the concepts further. There is still more for me to do with the effects of time and our perceptions of it.

Context

As I discussed with my tutor when I began CAN, I already had a rough idea of the approach I wanted to take with A1. My research, particularly of Titarenko’s work helped to focus the visual approach to my work: I could see that limiting the exposures to a few seconds created more interesting images than my original idea of having people disappear entirely through extremely long exposures. I did try this for some of my earlier attempts and thought that the results were a bit boring and could possibly confuse viewers (“Were people really there, or are you playing games with us?”).
The discussions by Rutherford and Campany were also helpful to me in terms of better communicating the original concept I had in mind and setting it within an ongoing discourse about the ‘reliability’ of still photographic images and their impact upon our perception of time and truth.

Reflection—documentary photography

Before beginning work on Part 1 of CAN, I suppose I had the idea that there were still distinct fields called ‘documentary photography,’ ‘photojournalism’ and ‘art photography.’

At the same time, I knew that there was some degree of blurring between the categories because of the attention paid to many Instagram accounts where individuals ‘document’ their lives in images that are presented as candid but clearly required a lot of work to set up. A similar approach appears in the work of photographers like Kevin Mullins, for example, who brands himself as a ‘documentary wedding photographer‘ and mentions that his approach goes under a number of names: “wedding photojournalism, documentary wedding photography and reportage wedding photography.” His approach is “completely candid” and all “about weaving the images together to tell the tale of your wedding day.” This results in photographs that are presented as a neutral and natural witness to an event while leaving nothing to chance and creating a narrative to please a paying client. No matter how unobtrusive Mullins is, however, everyone at the wedding will be aware that he has been hired to take pictures of them.

If blurring between categories happens because of the borrowing of techniques, another blurring happens when documentary photographs show up on gallery walls. One of the most obvious examples of this is in the work of Don McCullin, whose photojournalistic images of war zones and urban poverty entered the art world years ago. It is strange, then, to read that McCullin does not see himself as an artist:

I’m in a very funny place: I’m in an art gallery and yet I’m a photographer saying I don’t want to be an artist. The reason I’ve agreed to be involved, apart from the honour of it all, is that if I leave my photographs in yellow boxes in my house, no one will ever see the work I’ve done that condemns war, famine, starvation and tragedies. It’s a great opportunity to release the propaganda of all the evil things I’ve seen in the world, which are not humanly right. So that’s my justification in putting my work, as a photographer, in an art gallery. But I’m not an artist.
Don McCullin in Bond, J. (2019).

Similarly, McCullin rejects any description of his work as ‘iconic’ because “in a way it turns my photography into a kind of compositioned work that borders on the art world. But I like to keep photography really pure. I’m a bit prickly about this art stuff.”

Whatever McCullin’s views of his identity or the purity of his photography, three decades of representation by Hamiltons Gallery—whose clients include Irving Penn, Richard Avedon, Helmut Newton and Robert Mapplethorpe—along with a retrospective exhibit at Tate Britain, would qualify anyone else as an artist.

Given the above, I would now see ‘documentary photography’ as an orientation to image-making that may exist in the mind of the photographer and communicated through the use of a particular set of visual conventions, but as a distinction which holds up less and less in practice. I think this is an issue both of ‘narrative’—as approaches and techniques to creating images are blurred within the photographic frame—and of ‘context,’ as photographic images created in one set of circumstances are regularly viewed in many different settings.

In short, the lines between documentary, reportage, photojournalism and art photography seem fluid to me and the terms themselves may no longer be very useful.

Reference

Bond, J. (2019) Don McCullin on why he is showing at Tate Britain even though he is ‘not an artist’. At: https://www.theartnewspaper.com/preview/tate-britain-celebrates-reluctant-artist-don-mccullin [Accessed 7 July 2019].

Don McCullin. (s.d.) At: http://www.artnet.com/artists/don-mccullin/ [Accessed 7 July 2019].

Don McCullin. (s.d.) At: https://www.hamiltonsgallery.com/artists/don-mccullin/ [Accessed 7 July 2019].

Wedding Photographer shooting across the UK and Europe. (s.d.) At: https://www.kevinmullinsphotography.co.uk/ [Accessed 7 July 2019].