I asked a colleague to create some images for me to start
experimenting with the idea of collaboration with my project. James is an
artist so his sense of composition so clear, he is not used to film
photography, which was a useful gauge to see if the people that I would work
with will be able to create anything that could be used for the project moving
forward. I very much like the aesthetic of James’s images in the regard, I
think that – selfishly – there is a useful differentiation between my images
and those that James took, however moving forward, it may be useful to include
more delivery on taking and exposing the image, which would be in turn useful
to support the collaboration but also to maintain a sense of me as director.
What I find works quite well with this set is that if the
vernacular and perhaps some of the images and views that I might not have
considered shooting myself. My initial intention for this experiment was to
create responses to James’s images that could either be displayed alongside, or
for my own images to take their place. I am wondering whether creating a
narrative that merges both my images and those I have asked others to do will
create a more interesting narrative.
Figure 1. Phil Hill (March, 2020) Images drawn from a couple of recent shoots. [Click to Enlarge]
The images in this contact sheet are from a number of shoots and put together to see if there is any areas that I need to develop further (Fig. 1). Already, I know that I need to continue collecting more portraits so that I have a strong selection to edit down ready for structuring my narrative ready for submission.
I am continuing to experiment with my approach (See posts
listed below), however, my intent for this module is to look at applying the
ideas, first in a conceptual way and then see how I can apply it to my project
looking at the naturalistic and the actual (Berger, 2013, p. 8). Not to say that I won’t be looking at
a more conceptual approach for future modules but I am happy with the look and
feel of the way my project is coming together and also how the experimentation
is starting to have an impact on it.
Figure2. Phil Hill (February, 2020) Estate agent image juxtaposed with an image that I took in response.
For example, I intend to bring in elements of the ‘Evidence’ shoot that I did as a reaction to the sale of my house (Fig. 2). I have re shot some of these images in colour, however I still like the aesthetic nature of the black and white images as some kind of perceives further truth to the image. John Tagg discussing Foucault states that ‘truth’ within society has close ties to scientific discourse (Tagg, 1988, p. 172), so we can view the myth of how we place value on, considering and believing photographic evidence and truth, which is linked to how photography was born of scientific discovery with its chemical and technological developments being a wonder of the industrial revolution. The distinct aesthetics of film images interwoven with my colour digital imagery will play with the notion of photographic truth and create an interesting contribution to my narrative, as Jack Latham does with ‘Sugar Paper Theories’ (Fig. 3).
Figure 3. Jack Latham (2019) Spread from ‘Sugar Paper Theories’ Utilising Jack Latham’s photography and Black and White Police Archive images
To further explore this, I have also been asking some of my subjects to photograph using black and white film. Initially so that I could react and create images inspired by them, however I am considering whether I can also add these into my work to further test the idea of representation, in a subtle manner. Some of my subjects representing themselves. This feels much more collaborative in the way that Anthony Luvera creates assisted self-portraits (Luvera, 2019). I also was interested in Uta Barth’s idea of visual perception and will aim to look at the inclusion of more abstract elements in my work, also supporting the evolution of my look at social capital into more of a social abstraction creating more ambiguity and negate intentional fallacy that is at the core of Peter Lamarques analysis of Barthe’s ‘Death of the Author:’
“Where there is no determinate meaning there is no author” (Lamarque, 2004, p.440)
An interpretation that I gained from Uta Barth, was a sense
that the camera’s focus, potentially even her gaze, was on a subject that had
yet to enter the scene (See Post). Therefore, having others create images for
me takes this concept in a tangential relation to the subject not in front of
the scene, but the reader is aware that they are behind the camera, still
within the scene, providing some kind of acknowledgement of this has happened
in the form of a caption, or supportive text.
Also having others create images, provides a perspective that I may not consider and start to shape the way the project comes together. I also believe that there are links being made to the iddiorythmic, that Barthe’s discussed (Barthes, 2012),* how we live our separate lives within the community together with others also living their separate lives. Resemblance does not equate to representation, as a metaphor has the power to represent without resembling the subject
At the moment, very little of my narrative is likely to make sense to the reader. Partly because, I have not started to put it together.† I am also keen to maintain a certain amount of ambiguity in my work so that the reader is able to create their own interpretation. The project has started to evolve into an autobiographical look at how I fit into the community where I live so I am starting to consider how text will play an important role in creating the dominant reading of the work, whilst much of the work can allow for reader narrative to evolve. For example, there is potential to collect text from my subjects and also add elements of my experiences of engaging with my local community within this body of work.
And this is in part to continue creating the work organically and form my narrative towards the end in the way that Todd Hido approaches his ‘paper movies’ (Hido, 2014, p. 114), as I have discussed previously.
Bibliography
Barthes, R., 1977.
Death of the Author. In: Image, Music, Text. New York: Fontana, pp.
142-149.
Barthes, R., 2012. How to Live Together: Novelistic
Simulations of some Everyday Spaces. Translation ed. New York: Columbia
University Press.
Berger, J., 2013. Understanding a Photograph. London:
Penguin Classics.
Hido, T., 2014. Todd Hido on Landscapes, Interiors,
and the Nude. New York: Aperture.
Latham, J., 2019. Sugar Paper Theories. 2nd Edition ed. London: Here Press.
Lamarque, P. & Olsen, S. H., 2004. Aesthetics and thne Philosophy of Art. 2 ed. Massachusetts: Blackwell.
Luvera, A., 2019. Assisted Self-Portraits. [Photo].
Tagg, J., 1988. The Burden of Representation:
Essays on Photographies and Histories. 1st paperback ed. Basingstoke:
Palgrave Macmillan.
Figure 1. Phil Hill (February, 2020) Selected Images from shoot [Click to enlarge images]
Figure 2. Phil Hill (February, 2020) Full Contact Sheet From shoot [Click to enlarge images]
Part of my exploration this module has been to look at the environment that would inevitably accompany my portraits. I think that up until now, I have considered these images secondary and transitional in terms of the narrative that takes you from portrait to portrait. As a result, I was unsure of how to begin this process and decided to use a psychogeography approach that we looked at during the previous module, That gave me the route, and for the content, I came across the shooting scripts written for the FSA photographers in Todd Hido’s book ‘On Landscapes, interiors, and the Nude’ (Hido, 2014, p. 123). Additionally, I think there is also a clear influence on the part of the New Topographic style of banal photography, that I have come back to time and time again when shooting this kind of image (Fig. 3).
Figure 3. Phil Hill (2019) Image taken last summer whilst in Canada. ‘Peterborough Appliances Truck Load Sale. Ontario, Canada.’
The approach, has been to go out and collect images using the above influences, I have not aimed to focus on anything specific as yet. For this shoot however, I had the benefit of a light that I was happy to shoot with and as I ended up walking past locations from my first shoot 1 (See post). I took the opportunity to re shoot some of my images for comparison (Fig. 4 & 5). Hido discusses his approach to projects where he tends to shoot first and allow the narratives reveal themselves in the editing process (Hido, 2014, p. 114). I have enjoyed following that ethos up to this point, however considering the topics for week 5, I believe there is an opportunity to look at the land in the same way that I have approached finding my portraits and developing my approach to create images to better reflect my intentions. This is an important consideration.
Figure 4. Phil Hill (January, 2020) Palm tree from 1st shoot. ‘Palm Tree, Northwestern Avenue’ 25/01/2020
Figure 5. Phil Hill (February, 2020) Re-shot image of the palm tree with better light. ‘Palm Tree, Northwestern Avenue’ 08/02/2020 (Hill, 2020).
Many of the images that I have shot seem to reveal a tendency to focus on the detritus that I come across along my route, for example there were at least 4 fridges* fly-tipped on the streets which although were there and existed I chose to photograph one of them owing to the children’s stickers still on the top door (Fig. 6). This for me was indexical of the family that once owned this appliance, who were seemingly able replace it, they were not apparently in the position to properly dispose of it. Having been left on the pavement denotes a potential poverty of the area, or at least a reduction of civic pride that you might not find in a more gentrified area. My intention on this shoot was not necessarily to highlight the poverty and civic pride of the environment, however part of my look at my local community is my connection to it, especially now I am being forced to move home once again (See post) and makes links back to the writing of Robert Putnam, who discusses how “residential stability is strongly associated with civic engagement” (Putnam, 2000, p. 211). The images of detritus are reflective of the people who live there, though only reflective and not necessarily representative of them as people.
Figure 6. Phil Hill (February, 2020) Fridge Freezer left on the pavement. St Albans Road
How can an
environment and the land reflect people?
This is the fundamental question that I can ask myself
moving forward with the environmental images that I am taking. When considering
the gaze in which we all view the world, the reference t the Freudian idea of
anthropomorphising the land into something that is feminine, discussed in the
body and the land presentation (Alexander, 2020) intrigues me. Where
I feel more study is needed for me to recognise the feminine in the landscape,
I do see the correlation of how men occupy the world through their rugged pursuits
and women are there to be occupied, in the sense of being objectified, which
was also a conclusion drawn when John Berger interviewed a group of women in
response to an episode of ‘Ways of Seeing’ (1972). An anthropomorphising
of the land can be seen in other ways, as we potentially see those reflections
and indexical traces of the people living in them, especially within the urban
and built up areas in which I am focussing. What people throw away gives away a
fair amount of information about the people who occupy a space. As I have
mentioned previously, it can also give us clues to how connected they might be
within the community; if you are prepared to throw away and leave the discarded
where it falls, how proud are you about the place where you live? If others are
not challenging this, how worried are they about the cohesiveness of their
community? You can in essence look at a picture of a pile of rubbish within the
environment, and create a mental image of the person who contributed to it and
the socio-economic space in which they occupy.
I have discussed the neutrality of the image a lot over my
last few posts. No image is neutral, no gaze can be neutral, and also images of
landscapes also cannot be neutral. After reading the text ‘Of Mother Nature and
Marlboro Men’ by Deborah Bright (Bright, 1985) I can see that the
land forms part of the cultural myth. For the US, the Landscape is part of the
national narrative of overcoming great odds in order to occupy and control
their world, with no mention of how this might have been at the expense of the
indigenous population. In the tradition of European oil painting, the landscape
image was created to denote the spectator owners vast wealth (Ways of Seeing, 1972).
Figure 7. Roy Stryker (1939) Shooting script for a small town
I started my project for this module with the shooting script on photographing the small town (Stryker, 1939) which I found a useful starting topography in seeking out all of the images that might be considered part of the town vernacular. I previously reflected and discussed the use of language in creating the conditions for gaze (see post), and the same could be said of the FSA shooting script that I started with (Fig. 7). The lists were written in order to focus on specific elements of society in order to present them in a way consistent with the goals of the FSA project, that is to say, to show the value of the poorest in American society, albeit not hiding the fact it was an exercise in propaganda: “A pictorial documentation of our rural areas and rural problems (Stryker’s words)” (Sontag, 1979, p. 62). The lists could encourage and exacerbate how we gaze at such problems.
Figure 8. Phil Hill (February, 2020) Dog Bone. ‘Near Churchfield Road’
I enjoy many of the images that I took on this shoot, so the question of where they could sit in the narrative is crucial, as it the representation and also the gaze. If I am focussing on the indexical, then there is much potential to include images such as the dog bone (Fig. 8), this trace that someone was here is useful to understand the diversity of the area when I am unable to photograph everyone who lives here. My dominant reading will change depending on the way that I sequence this work, so I should work to clear up any ambiguity in my intention. Something that I don’t think will happen until the very end of this project.
*
I could start a project on fridges with some more material.
Bibliography
Alexander, J.,
2020. Week 5: The Body and The Land. Falmouth: Falmouth University.
Bright, D., 1985. Of Mother Nature and Marlborough
Men. Exposure, 23(1), p. Online.
Hido, T., 2014. Todd Hido on Landscapes, Interiors,
and the Nude. New York: Aperture.
Hill, P., 2019. ‘Peterborough Appliances Truck Load Sale. Ontario, Canada.’. [Photo].
Hill, P., 2020. Dog bone near Churchfield Road. [Photo].
Hill, P., 2020. Fridge Freezer left out on the pavement. St Albans Road.. [Photo].
Hill, P., 2020. Palm Tree, Northwestern Avenue 08/02. [Photo].
Hill, P., 2020. Palm Tree, Northwestern Avenue 25/01. [Photo].
Putnam, R., 2000. Bowling Alone. 1 ed. New
York: Simon & Schuster.
Sontag, S., 1979. On Photography. London:
Penguin.
Stryker, R., 1939. Shooting script on the Small
Town, Washington DC: Library of Congress.
Ways of Seeing. 1972. [Film] Directed by
Michael Dibb. UK: BBC.
I have written about my reasons for photographing the house
previously, however to understand some of the context behind my reasons for
conducting the experiment, it is important to note here again that the house is
in a state of disrepair and out of our reach in terms of south east property
prices, perpetuating the fractured community that I am looking at.
Figure 1. Rightmove (2020) Images from Rightmove.co.uk online advert for property. [click images to enlarge]
SUMMARY Don’t miss out on this beautiful two bedroom mid-terrace family home located on Leavesden Road. Throughout the property provides ample living accomadation [sic] and period features. Here at Brown and Merry we strongly advise early viewings to avoid missing out!
DESCRIPTION Brown and Merry are proud to present this attractive mid terrace, with the benefit of private off street parking to the rear. The property comprises of kitchen/diner and lounge with period features and storage cupboard under stairs, upstairs you will find bathroom with shower cubicle and bath off the landing and two double bedrooms in addition to access to loft.
The property is located 0.4 miles from Watford Junction Station, and benefits from gas central heating, double glazing and period features.
Call now to avoid disappointment!!
Figure 2. Online description of the property (Rightmove, 2020).
Dominant
The edit of the work has coincided with week 4’s readers and images. Looking at the photographs that the estate agent used (Fig. 1), the dominant reading is to show the home in the best light in order to make the sale for the best price – as you would expect them to do. Our learned knowledge of how an estate agent operates, is in the way that they exaggerate and embellish the facts. We understand this is the way of things, in the same way you do not fully trust someone selling a car, or negotiating your next phone contract yet still take part in the process.
The use of a wide-angle lens in the corner of the rooms creates a sense of space and the images appear on the site in low resolution which has the effect of hiding a multitude of sins. It is the description of the house (Fig. 2) that provides additional context to the images and highlights to the intent of the agent (and by extension the homeowner) stating “Don’t miss out on this beautiful two-bedroom mid-terrace family home” (Rightmove, 2020). Barthes states that speech and text provide the full terms of the informational structure of how we read the image world (Barthes, 1977, p. 38), and here the use of language creates a construction that suggests that the home is in a better state of repair than it is, and the images provided do not necessarily refute this.
Oppositional
This leads to the oppositional reading of the images. Living in the home for 5 years means that I have a clear understanding of the many nuances that this home has. I can look at the description of the “beautiful family home” (2020) alongside the agent images with the ability to look through them to see many issues of the property that would suggest it is vastly overpriced. Additionally, I am most likely viewing them in the room in which they were taken.
My bias is clear. The home has been valued at the very top end of the market currently, outside my own ability to afford it and remain within this community. It is important to understand that I am not suggesting that I live in abject poverty, I do not, but the very nature of living in a long-term rental property that has never been properly maintained means that the condition of the house is vastly lower than if we owned it ourselves. This is in a sense a comment on the rental trap.
Negotiated
A negotiated reading of the images could be from the people
viewing the property with the hope of buying it. This is not something that I
can confirm, as a renter, I am outside that chain of dialogue. However, if i was
to speculate, those interested in the property would view the images online
together with the description and consider it a viable home to view. Once
viewed, many of the issues would be quickly apparent; the described beautiful
home would require a new kitchen, bathroom, windows, secure exterior doors, and
so on that at the top end of this price range, represents a larger investment
of time and money than the advertisement would suggest.
Figure 3. Phil Hill (February, 2020) My response. Contact Sheet from house ‘evidence’ shoot. [Click to enlarge in gallery]
I made the decision to photograph the poor state of the house as a direct contrast to the way the estate agent would ultimately present it (Fig. 3). This was inspired by Jack Latham’s approach of using police evidence imagery as part of the narrative for ‘Sugar Paper Theories’ (Fig. 4) and my own experience of working on the Panorama shoot (See post). Here, my ‘evidence’ images represent more of a construction compared to Latham’s use of the police archive, with the agent imagery taking the role of the archive. My intention was to use the aesthetic of the evidence image to play with the dominant reading seen in the agent images. The use of film and black and white encourages the reader to override the agent’s dominant reading and replace it with mine. My oppositional reading becomes the dominant reading in this context.
Figure 4. Jack Latham (2019) One of the police archive images from ‘Sugar Paper Theories’
To show this in my edit, I have looked at putting the images and text together in a number of ways. Firstly, I wanted to see how my new images would work with the original text of the agent listing in order to subvert the dominant reading described by the agent, in an obvious and confrontational way. I have placed my images first and the text second (Fig 5), however I feel that considering the outcome, it would create more of a shock to the reader if the description id first and then be presented with my oppositional imagery (Fig 6).
Figure 5. Phil Hill (February, 2020) Edited ‘evidence’ images left with agent text on the right.
Juxtapositions
Figure 6. Phil Hill (February, 2020) Agent images juxtaposed with my ‘evidence’ imagery. [Click to enlarge in gallery]
Personally, I feel that the juxtapositions work better. They
are subtler and require more of an examination of the pair together. I present
the agent image and then one of my own images which requires the reader to
investigate, comparing and contrasting two conflicting views of the room. There
is potential to further develop and add some kind of caption to further extend
and create a sense of the context and intent that I am aiming to get across.
Using the FSA Hole Punched to ‘Kill’ The images
My last edit was to re-introduce the idea of the ‘killed’ (Taylor, 2017) image that was used by Roy Stryker when rejecting FSA images (See post). I copied one the hole-punches from a rejected FSA image by Arthur Rothstein photograph (Fig. 7) and added it to my evidence imagery of the house (Fig. 8).
Figure 7. Arthur Rothstein (1939) Untitled photo, possibly related to: Blue Ribbon No. 2 Mine, one of the largest gopher holes, Williamson County, Illinois
This was also to consider the role of the ‘ostracised’ that
I have been looking at through the lens of Barthes and his notion that we also
need to consider those excluded from society and community in order to
understand the functions of it (Barthes, 2012, p. 81). And Dexter Dias, who suggests that those who
cast out members of a community, ultimately leads to a more cohesion (Dias,
2017, p. 124)
which is an area that I feel warrants more investigation.
Figure 8. Phil Hill (February, 2020) Edited ‘evidence’ images to include FSA hole punches. [Click to enlarge into gallery].
My images represent a view of the property that shows it in a less than positive way. The agent would potentially reject these in their selective view of the home. The hole-punch also adds to the images’ reading by creating a point of focus instantly creating a sense of censorship, which is also from a learned knowledge of the world that we share (Fig. 9).
Figure 9. Bong Joon Ho (2019) Parasite movie poster with censorship bar across the eyes
I am unsure how I am going to move this experiment forward
as potentially I have taken this area as far as I can at the moment. These
images primarily only really exist for me (Barthes, 1981, p. 73), this is an event
that resonates because I am the one who is affected by the sale. If I am to
develop this, I would need to consider how these are read by others.
Bibliography
Barthes, R., 1977.
Image, Music, Text. London: Fontana Press.
Barthes, R., 1981. Camera Lucida. 1st ed.
London: Vintage.
Barthes, R., 2012. How to Live Together: Novelistic
Simulations of Some Everyday Spaces (European Perspectives: A Series in Social
Thought and Cultural Criticism). Translation Edition ed. New York:
Columbia University Press.
Dias, D., 2017. The Ten Types of Human. 1st
Paperback Edition ed. London: Windmill Books.
Latham, J., 2019. Sugar Paper Theories. 2nd ed.
London: Here Press.
Parasite. 2019. [Film] Directed by Bong
Joon Ho. South Korea: Barunson E&A; CJ E&M Film Financing &
Investment Entertainment & Comics; CJ Entertainment; TMS Comics; TMS
Entertainment.
Rightmove, 2020. Rightmove: 2 bedroom terraced house for sale. [Online] Available at: https://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-for-sale/property-68153202.html [Accessed 15 February 2010].
Rothstein, A., 1939. Untitled photo, possibly related to: Blue Ribbon No. 2 Mine, one of the largest gopher holes, Williamson County, Illinois. [Art] Farm Security Administration – Office of War Information Photograph Collection (Library of Congress).
Taylor, A., 2017. Holes Punched Through History. [Online] Available at: https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2017/02/holes-punched-through-history/518115/ [Accessed 17 February 2020].
