A2—Reworked

Following the feedback I received from my tutor, I decided to rework both my selection of images for this assignment and the way I presented them.

I decided that a more uniform presentation would avoid breaking the series and allow me to concentrate more closely on particular aspects of the images. I narrowed my set of artefacts to just the books I have in my possession from one line of my family—all of which are related to Christian worship in the Church of England. Furthermore, each book carries an inscription with either the name of my grandfather or my great-grandmother and, in some cases their names in their own handwriting.

I re-shot the assignment with a clearer sense of purpose and did my best to maintain consistency of approach: two shots of each book (closed and opened to the inscription page), no ruler for scale (I decided that the effort to be clinical or ‘archaeological’ was a bit forced), and a plain white background with even lighting. This last consideration has turned out to be more difficult than I thought it might—I’ve done my best to maintain a consistent white balance across the images, but it is not quite perfect.

In sum, the little collection of devotional books gives a glimpse into one aspect of the childhoods of two family members. I do not know if they continued church attendance into adulthood. It’s not a lot on which to build an understanding of a branch of the family: some books that suggest a degree of religious observance in youth, some handwriting, a surname, place names from the island my family left in the mid-1960s. In this sense, I think that the shots respond to the brief for Assignment 2 (photographing the unseen) by being suggestive rather than conclusive about family origins and identity.

Still, the connections are there if I choose to make them, as I see things that continue to be important to me: books, history, faith and place. Other viewers will almost certainly imagine other “unseens” in response to the series.

A2—Photographing the unseen

My work covers a number of the “unseens” that I identified as I began to think about this assignment: the past, the dead, missing people and secrets. Every family has its share of those and mine is no different. I know very little about my father’s branch of the family so, over the last few years, I have begun to unearth what I can through official records and archives in the UK. If it were left only to the physical evidence left to me—that is, the few objects in my possession—I would know very little about the people who came before me.

I present images of those objects here in the way that a museum or archive might, described simply and following archival technique (Online Museum Training – Photographing Collection Items. [s.d.]). I have done this because that is how I have come to read the pieces: for me, they are akin to museum artefacts in that they are from the past, are on display and are divorced from their original context. Individually, they might be read as objets trouvés, “objects or products with non-art functions that are placed into an art context and made part of an artwork” (History of the Found Object in Art [s.d.]).

Taken together, however, the objects form a collection that I try to fit with some difficulty and much imagination into a narrative about the people who owned them. In my mind, they hint at aspects of the daily lives of my paternal grandfather, grandmother and great-grandmother over a period of some 60 years, all before I was born. Without more detail and context, however, I realise that any interpretation I make contains a lot of projection and speculation.

And that is interesting to me. If I as a direct descendant am not able to tease out much of the context and narrative of these pieces, viewers with no personal connection are free to construct an even broader range of interpretations. We might all be able to view the pieces as signs, but it is unlikely we would all agree on what they signify (Hall, 2007, p.10). Would others’ narratives about the lives of my unseen family be any more or less valid than mine?

How would I know? Would it matter?

Item 1-1. Embossed silver cigarette case. Made by Frederick Field, Birmingham. No date.

*Item 1-2. Detail of cigarette case showing embossed initials.*

*Item 2-1. Board slipcase containing pocket Book of Common Prayer and Hymns Ancient and Modern.*

*Item 2-2. Frontispiece of Book of Common Prayer with handwritten inscription, 9 January 1891.*

*Item 3-1. Cardboard booklet with commemorative sticker on cover.*

*Item 3-2. Booklet, showing handwritten inscription and Sunday School stickers, 1915–1916.*

*Item 4-1. Kodak Six-20 folding Brownie camera.* Manufactured circa 1951–1955, London, UK.

*Item 4-2. Side view of camera, unfolded.*

*Item 5-1. Wooden presentation box containing 6-piece, stainless steel cutlery set.* No date.

References

ARTifacts as ART and Inspiration (s.d.) At: http://www.SandraMcLeanArts.com/artifacts-as-art-and-inspiration.html (Accessed on 23 September 2019)

Hall, S. (2007) This Means This, This Means That: a user’s guide to semiotics. London: King.

History of the Found Object in Art (s.d.) At: http://www.artspace.com/magazine/art_101/the-history-of-the-found-object-in-art (Accessed on 23 September 2019)

Mary Mary Quite Contrary (s.d.) At: http://www.marymaryquitecontrary.org.uk/ (Accessed on 23 September 2019)

Museum in a Box – Crawford College of Art & Design (s.d.) At: https://crawford.cit.ie/museum-in-a-box/ (Accessed on 23 September 2019)

Online Museum Training – Photographing Collection Items. (s.d.) At: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUgG7HEpvyo (Accessed on 21 September 2019)

A2—Approach and contact sheets

After deciding to change direction and pursue the idea of “photographing the unseen” of history of one line of my family, I also decided to take the few items that have come into my possession as artifacts. To do this, I consulted a range of materials that outline some of the technical considerations necessary to photograph items accurately as part of a scientific or historical record. The video produced by the Australian Museums and Galleries Association Victoria ( Online Museum Training – Photographing Collection Items. [s.d.]) was particularly useful and contained a lot of practical advice.

The main technical considerations I took away were the following:

Use a neutral background. I opted for a white background rather than black because some of the objects were already quite dark and I did not want to obscure any details in shade.
Ensure even lighting around the object. Rather than using artificial light, I used a light tent with natural daylight.
Show the object from more than one angle and highlight any important details. I did this for each object and made additional exposures for inscriptions inside books and for objects kept within cases.
Include a scale to provide a way to understand the size of the object. I used a drafting scale that is marked in 1 cm increments.
Provide a brief descriptive text or label for the photographed object.

The contact sheet of the unprocessed images I took for Assignment 2 is available as a downloadable PDF at the link below:

can-a2-contact-sheet Download

References

hsscarchaeology (2015) Photographing Artifacts. At: https://hsscarchaeology.wordpress.com/2015/06/09/photographing-artifacts/ (Accessed on 21 September 2019)

Karin (2011) Museums Nova Scotia: Photographing Artifacts – the good, the bad, and the ugly. At: http://passagemuseums.blogspot.com/2011/02/photographing-artifacts-good-bad-and.html (Accessed on 21 September 2019)

Online Museum Training – Photographing Collection Items. (s.d.) At: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUgG7HEpvyo (Accessed on 21 September 2019)

Pezzati, A. (2002) Adventures in Photography: Expeditions of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. Philadelphia, UNITED STATES: University Museum Publications. At: http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucreative-ebooks/detail.action?docID=3441604 (Accessed on 21 September 2019)

Exercise—Three case studies

I enjoyed reading through the accounts of the three student works and viewing the images that accompanied them.

Question 1: I appreciated the thoughtful approach of all three photographers, but I found it more difficult to connect with Peter Mansell’s project. I have not been around illness or disability very much, so it is hard for me to get past imagining the situation that prompted the work. I admire Mansell for turning his world into a subject for documentary and artistic exploration. I don’t know how well I would fare under similar circumstances. I was taken with his point about how the project had given him a degree of emotional release—I found it very personal and poignant.

It was easier for me to enter into the worlds of Dewald Botha and Jodie Taylor because I could relate more easily to the issues that prompted them to begin their projects. Both are dealing with the intersections of identity and place, Botha as an outsider in place and Taylor as an insider in place, but from another time. Perhaps their reliance on metaphor and concept are easier for me to navigate and manage than the hard reality of Mansell’s world bound by disability and institutional health care.

Question 2: I don’t think I have any particular difficulty with the loss of authorial control: I accept it. In my academic work years ago I studied the history of interpretation of ancient texts and am accustomed to the idea that different readers bring different lenses to the same works for many different reasons. It is not a new idea to me at all. Much of my work life, too, has consisted of providing advice and being used to the fact that it may or may not be accepted, in part or in whole. I have a degree of control over how I shape and communicate my advice, but I cannot know how it might ultimately be received or used. In some cases—although not always!—this can lead to more interesting and richer discussions as others are able to bring new perspectives that I had not considered.

When it comes to the images I make, I don’t know that I have ever been very precious about how other people viewed them or projected onto them. At the same time, I admit that I have found it more difficult when people have reacted to them but not been able (or willing?) to offer a reason why. I’m happy to discuss and disagree, but I do find it annoying when an exchange is just a dead end.

People will read things as they will. As I come to care more about the images I produce it may be that my loss of control and the ‘misunderstandings’ of others may bother more than it currently does—it is easy to hold lightly those things in which we are not very invested. We’ll see how I do as I continue through the course and the program…

References

Peter Mansell Imagery (s.d.) At: http://paralysed.weebly.com/ (Accessed on 5 September 2019)

Photography and Nostalgia (2013) At: https://www.oca.ac.uk/weareoca/archived/photography-and-nostalgia/ (Accessed on 5 September 2019)

Ring Road (s.d.) At: https://www.dewaldbotha.net/ring-road.html (Accessed on 5 September 2019)

A2—Initial thoughts

Rather than wait until the assignment is upon me, I started my thinking ahead of time for A2 “Photographing the unseen.” A few times of reflection on things that are unseen led to the list below, although I am not pretending that this is exhaustive:

Emotions
States of mind
Spiritual world
Buried cities
Dreams
Hopes and aspirations
Talent and potential
The unborn
The dead
The wind
Microscopic life (can be seen, but not by the unaided eye), atomic particles
Physical health, disease
Electricity
Time (past or future)

Much of the animal world, most of the time
Things camouflaged or concealed
Objects in the dark
Sites that are off-limits
Works that are banned or censored
Missing people
Broken relationships
Secrets
Lies
The ‘disappeared’
People and names written out of narratives and records, whether deliberately or through forgetfulness / neglect

Along with these thoughts, the title of the assignment itself (“Photographing the unseen”) reminded me strongly of a verse from the New Testament: “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (Epistle to the Hebrews 11:1). As I thought more about faith being “…the evidence of things not seen” it occurred to me that the writer of this passage is suggesting that the faith held by people points to spiritual realities. The acts and behaviours (not just beliefs) of believers are offered as evidence (not proof) of a particular God.

I wanted to explore this further, because it seems to me that “photographing the unseen” is usually going to involve some kind of proxy for the thing that is absent. Something visible must point to what is not visible. Perhaps this is similar to the way that scientists look at black holes: by definition, black holes do not emit light and are therefore invisible, so we learn about them and gather evidence through observing the effects they have on their surroundings.

This line of thinking holds for the entire list above of things we cannot photograph. We cannot see any of them directly, but we must often infer them by indirect evidence.

In the case of religious faith, we can observe acts, rituals and objects that communicate the confidence of believing communities. And if we gather evidence of the unseen through their surroundings, few signs of faith are more publicly apparent than the sustained investment of time, energy and money in places of worship. A church building does not prove the existence of God, but it does show that the people who build churches have faith in “the unseen.”

This needs more thought yet, but my “photographing the unseen” for A2 may involve the role of churches as signs of faith in our built landscape.