OCA Study Visit – 26/05/12 Burtynsky’s “Oil” at The Photographers Gallery

 
This was an exhibition ambitious in its scale and the size of its subject. It was set over two floors of the gallery and the images were printed and mounted in large frames. The contrast between seeing the images at this size and looking at them in a book or on a monitor made all the difference to the way I perceived them. At such a large scale I was able to look very closely at the detail of each of the images.
From We Are OCA:
“How is it that these two extreme poles of function can coexist in a single image?” … thought provoking question.
Posted to "We Are OCA" forum in reply to Dewald's post on Jose’s question:
A reproduction of the print at the start of this article was on sale in the gallery bookshop for £2500. I assume Jose was alluding to this when posing his question. Perhaps the question should be "These extreme poles of function do exist within these documentary images and is it right that they should be traded as art?"
From a wider perspective, is this a reflection of the change from a market economy to a market society where everything has a price tag and very little has value?
Jose replied to my post:
Good question too Richard. £2,500…in my opinion as soon as a photograph operates at that level of perceived value it starts to function like a fetish object. It becomes desirable because the prospective buyer feels that by possessing the object they may acquire some of the symbolic qualities of the object – e.g. environmental credentials. And a process of positive feedback begins. Paradoxically, I think that this process also enhances the documentary value of the photograph.
But the problem of ambiguity of meaning remains, which I what I implied in my question.
My reply
Another facet of the argument I hadn’t considered Jose, thanks for making the point. If it is the purpose of Art to promote discussion, Burtynsky certainly succeeds.
I also posted this summary to "We Are OCA" forum:
I think the exhibition posed more questions than it answered. Ultimately it comes down to individual perception. I was impressed more by the technical quality and impact of individual images than by the collection's documentary qualities. It is such a vast subject with so many overlaying and interlinked causes and effects that each could furnish a documentary project on its own.
This exhibition certainly provoked a lot of discussion, both on the forum, at the gallery and after the visit on the day. My personal view of the exhibition is summarised above. This is only my second study visit so I still learning about critique and how people perceive and express their ideas. I am hoping that future visits will give me the experience to express my ideas more freely and confidently.

"il faut que je sois" Roeland Verhallen

12 May 2012
This small exhibition at Kings College Cambridge was enigmatic to say the least.
"The photographs will be presented alongside a critical review from the viewpoint of photographic theory, as delivered by Simeon Koole, a Cambridge graduate researcher in photographic history and theory. The exhibition creates a triad consisting of photographs, text and viewer, thereby facilitating constant interaction of all three elements."
"It must be that I am" http://www.roelandverhallen.com/
“I’m Roeland Verhallen. 20-years-old. Dutch. Photographer.
I’m always looking for new combinations of situations, objects and people.
Why take photographs of something that is there for everyone to photograph,
when you can create something unique instead?
It’s all about creating a certain ambience where someone can step in,
bathe in, and get out from with a feeling that will be with them
throughout the rest of the day.”
I recall the exhibition was about Time, Being and Ancestry. The review below gives some hint about its meaning although at this stage in my studies, much of it was lost on me. The photographs were beautifully composed and printed from a medium format (6x6) Hasselblad camera. The use of film is explained in the review.
http://www.varsity.co.uk/reviews/4679

Exhibition – Jane Bown - Exposures

There is a link here to the Guardian interactive pages showing the images and video from the exhibition.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/interactive/2009/oct/22/jane-bown-photography
This was a very enjoyable exhibition covering the decades since 1949 when Jane Bown  had her first portrait printed in the Observer. I must have seen a lot of these early ones. The Observer was the Sunday paper of choice in our house when I was growing up and I used to make a point of looking at all the pictures even though the text didn’t interest me.

The accompanying video to the exhibition made it clear how simply Jane Bown worked, black and white film, available light, f2.8 at 1/125sec. With subjects as diverse as Lucien Freud and the Queen, she was able to engage them all to produce stunning portraits, some formal,(Orson Welles) others relaxed and playful (Bjork) This was a complete contrast to last week’s exhibition and a valuable insight into journalistic portraiture. especially those subjects who were photographed in context, Francis Bacon, Henri Cartier Bresson, Ninette de Valois, Jacob Epstein, which tell you so much more that a simple head shot.

Winchester Photographic Society Exhibition

A very large range of photographic subjects were covered by this exhibition, some stunning black and white portraits, wonderful wildlife and some nice landscapes. It’s a shame that HDR software seems to predominate the colour landscapes but I hope that as a gimmick it will soon pass. I think it makes everything too samey. That is a discussion for another forum. On the whole I enjoyed the work shown. A link to the Society’s website where some of the images are on display: http://www.winphotosoc.co.uk/site_1/index.php

Gallery Visit 24th July & 4th August

 

 

Pallant House Gallery – Chichester

I looked at four exhibits here, three connected to the artists Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. The fourth showed the work of documentary photographer Anna Fox: "Resort". Anna Fox's website shows more images and those included in the exhibition: http://www.annafox.co.uk/work-in-progres/resort/

 

Resort

This exhibit was the primary reason for my visit to the gallery. The Butlin's holiday camp at Bognor Regis (my home town) played a not insignificant part in my life as an adolescent. The old style camp was a popular venue for days out in the summer and the only place to go in the town for a brief spell when the camp opened it's doors to locals in the winter as the Butlin's Winter Social Club. (My father, a local magistrate at the time, banned us from here as it was a "den of iniquity". I think this says more about him than it does about Butlin’s. What better reason for going!)

The photographer was commissioned to make these photographs by the gallery to coincide with Butlin’s 75th Anniversary. My first impression of the exhibition from the publicity (and the title) made me think I was going to to see something along the lines of Martin Parr’s “Last Resort”. This was however, very different. The images were big, brightly coloured and beautifully lit. The photographs did look carefully staged but at the subsequent talk, Anna Fox explained how it was done. This exhibition concentrates on the Family Breaks offered at Butlin’s. There is another collection of images, different in character which may form the “Adult Breaks” exhibition in the future.
Anna Fox was born in 1961, the year following  the original camp opening at Bognor. The preamble to the exhibition states;
"...captured the British at leisure………..vital and highly charged insight into the contemporary Butlin's holiday experience", which is described as "truly democratic and accessible to all". The work was informed by the John Hinde postcard collections' of Butlin's in the 1970's. http://www.johnhindecollection.com/butlins.html by photographers including Edmund Nagele and Elmar Ludwig. I've looked at examples of the old photographs and there is definitely a direct comparison, with the careful staging and vivid colours.
I read Edmund Nagele's account of his early career with John Hinde Studios: in the introduction to the book "Nothing to Write Home About": http://nagelestock.com/2010/Postcard.html in which he describes the way in which the colour separations were made and the content and colours were altered to provide the perfect holiday memory and to make the postcards stand out from the competition on the display stands.. So, the early photographs were staged; pre and post production.
 

Talk by Anna Fox Thursday 4th August 2011

Professor of Contemporary Photography at UCA. Studied at UCA Farnham under Martin Parr (among others)
Her body of work is detailed on the URL above. She chatted briefly about this before describing her current exhibition.
The exhibition was commissioned by the Pallant House Gallery to document the contemporary Butlin's holiday experience at Bognor Regis at the 75th anniversary of the company. (see above for my interest)

The scale of the project was daunting, with a crew of up to 18 people including a lighting director. The project was shot on 5x4 sheet film with a Hasselblad digital MF camera as back up. 6 - 8 lights to completely light the set. Although the images have the "staged" look about, them the normal activities of the holidaymakers were interrupted as little as possible. The location was set up and the photographs were taken as the activities unfolded. Beyond asking the participants to "freeze" as the shutter was fired, and being told what was happening, they received little or no direction. (f16 was used to give adequate depth of field in most cases, ghosting of movement at shutter intervals as slow as 1/4s was unavoidable) The John Hinde photographers would freeze the action by careful posing for up to four seconds.  There were several comments in the visitors book and I had noted this myself, many of the children looked bemused, not smiling and less than happy. The comment was passed the perhaps we had enough pictures of children smiling. I think Ms Fox recorded things as they were. She did make the valid point  that as soon as you produce a camera, people’s behaviour changes, sometimes subtly, sometimes (as in the case of some of the children featured) dramatically and unreasonably. I know, I have grandchildren! 

From the discussions, there seemed to be a bit of a conflict between the artistic/documentary endeavours of the photographer and the commercial interests of the company, mainly to do with the inclusion of certain images and the insistence (understandably) that the family holiday images be kept entirely separate from the adult weekend images which may form another exhibit at a later date. A clear indication in which the way society’s attitude to photography has changed since the 1960s comes from the Splash Water world picture, which Butlins would not allow to be taken with holiday families. The photographer had to work when the pool was closed and with families of the crew as volunteers.

The majority of the photographs exhibited were from colour negative stock with a few from the digital Hasselblad. Several images were digitally made composites where frames were blended and layered to give the best image of what occurred over a short period. Questioned about the voracity of this approach for a documentary photographer, Ms Fox defended the practice, saying that nothing was added to the scene that wasn’t there, only the time that people appeared in the scene was altered.

 

Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera Exhibit

These paintings, mainly self portraits of Frida Kahlo were interesting to see but weren’t a major attraction. There was however a collection of photographs by her father Guillermo Kahlo (1871-1941).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guillermo_Kahlo

These were silver gelatin prints of sacred buildings in Mexico City made between 1904 and 1908 for showing at the Mexican Centennial Exhibition in 1910. Also interesting were several colour Carbro print portraits of Frida Kahlo made by Nickolas Muray (1892-1965)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nickolas_Muray

See link below for details of the Carbro process.

http://www.clinteley.com/carbro/Notes%20on%20the%20carbro%20process/slides/carbro%20notesp1%20copy.html

Gods and Monsters Exhibition

07/01/11

As a starting point in gaining a broader understanding of the different genres within photography, I went to this exhibition at the Pallant House Gallery in Chichester. (These are brief notes as background information, regardless of the direct relevance to the current course work)

Deakin died at the age of 60 in 1972. In WW2 he was a war photographer and subsequently spent two periods working for Vogue in the 40s and 50s. He was sacked twice. His  "blistering personality, bad behaviour and total disregard for others" has contributed to his notorious reputation.

An aspiring painter, Deakin did not seem to care about what happened to his photographs, many of which are lost and those that remain are in poor condition. The larger prints in the exhibition are creased and torn and many of  the portraits are frames of contact prints of the sessions. My overall impression of the portraits was how contempory they looked bearing in mind they were taken nearly sixty years ago. I always think of the 50s as a time of formality in portraiture but there was realistic "warts and all" quality about them. This is what Deakin wanted when he took photographs, he is quoted as saying "........what I want to do when I take a photograph is make a revelation about it. So my sitters turn into my victims."
Quotes and biography: WikipediaMy main interest was obviously the photographs, I had only ever heard of three of the painters, Freud, Sutherland and Bacon and at present, know little about them.