I have become interested in a number of concepts that I am aiming to explore throughout this module. This has in part been inspired by some of the ‘documentary aesthetic’ research that I have been conducting, which had led me to explore the use of black and white film during this module.
Figure 1: Justine Quinell (2010) Solargraph of Clifton in Bristol showing the rise and fall of the sun.
Solargraph
Figure 2: Phil Hill (June, 2020) Pinhole camera from a beer can making process.
I actually have been using a similar set-up during this lock-down period to expose a series of ‘solargraphs’ around my home using pin-hole cameras made from beer cans (Fig: 2), which then have photographic paper placed inside to expose over a long period of time. This was inspired by artist Justin Quinnell who creates these that have exposure times of 6 months or more (Fig: 1). My idea was to record the period of time inside the home (Fig: 3).
Figure 3: Phil Hill (March – June, 2020) Solargraph of bedroom exposed during lock down.
The image is built up over time so that you can start to see how the light changes and the rise and fall of the sun tracing over the sky, for example. As a way of showing time, these are really interesting. The photo paper cannot be fixed in the usual way or the image would be ruined, so the paper would continue to expose and eventually turn black, which could be used as a metaphor for the present time, or creating a sense that the photograph itself has a life that begins and ends. At the end of its life, only the digital scan would remain. My primary interest is in portrait photographs, however there are links to be made between this process and how Roland Barthes’ discusses the image: “As if the (terrified) photographer must exert himself to the utmost to keep the photograph from becoming death. But I – already an object, I do not struggle” (Barthes & Wells, 2002, p. 23). In the solargraph , it becomes an object the personifies this decay and is unable to be embalmed as Barthes’ states.
Figure 4: Phil Hill (March – June) Solargrams exposed during lock down [Click to Enlarge]
Pinhole.
Figure 5: Phil Hill (June, 2020) Window image shot on 35mm film
For the week 4 ‘Hands off’ task, I decided to create a pinhole camera to shoot film, which is something I had never done before. I modified a new beer can pinhole, which needed to be lined in order to make it usable for film and to reduce reflection inside the can. Working out the exposure time was quite a challenge but an important one as I only had a few strips of film to play with. The idea of separation and abstraction has been a feature of some of the work that I am producing, which included the barrier created by my windows. I have come back to this at the start of this module by re-photographing them onto film (Fig: 5), so decided to see how I could abstract the view using a different method.
The fstop for my pinhole camera is around 250, which creates a much longer exposure time. In low light it would have meant factoring in reciprocity failure. However, during the day if metering f22 at 1/30th second, my pinhole would need to expose for 8 seconds. The resulting images show the view through my windows, something that I had not done with my other window images, yet they are still abstracted because of the time it took to expose leading to some inevitable movement (Fig: 6).
Figure 6: Phil Hill (June, 2020) Windows taken with beer can pinhole camera [Click to enlarge].
Could I use this in my research project?
I think that the technique used is not something that I would take into my research project but the idea of abstraction, which creates a separation in the image is an interesting concept to take forward. I feel that even if the image is strictly lens based, indexical and also iconic, it can still be abstracted. Abstracted in the sense that all images are untruths, All images are unable to be true representations. This could then be introduced to my research project subtly as even a digital scan of my photographs is an abstraction of the negative, which is an abstraction of the reality it recorded.
Bibliography
Barthes, R. & Wells, L., 2002. The Photography Reader: Extracts from Camera Lucida. 4 ed. London: Routledge.
Figure 1: Richard Mosse (2012) Image from Infra, which utilised an infrared film and camera.Figure 2: Linda Alterwitz (2013) Image from ‘Signature of Heat’
Black and white, photographically, could be considered a method of De-privileging human perception from how we perceive the world around us. We do not see the world in black and white, we see in colour, yet this perception of the world is still limited in the wider spectrum that exists. Richard Mosse as an example, utilises infrared camera technology and film to show the world outside our human range of perception (Fig: 1), additionally, Linda Alterwitz created her series ‘signatures of Heat’ by utilising a thermal imaging camera, which seems to have particular resonance now we are living in the ‘new normal’ (Fig: 2). Although I have used film photography a fair amount in my time as a photographer, being old enough to have studied the subject without digital technology having the kind of impact that it does now, I would not comfortably use the medium to produce work that I was invested in as much as the MA. This is very much tied into the ability to check and recheck on the spot until I was able to achieve the result I needed. The more I am shooting with the medium format camera however, the more careful I have become in the setting up and creating of my images, not to say that I still do not make mistakes – some of the images have come back soft, or in the extreme, technical issues have led to losing images.
Figure 3: Dorothea Lange (1939) ‘Migrant Mother’ before and after retouching.
In terms of viewing the world outside how we perceive it however, Black and white is a more common way of showing us this. Aesthetically we as humans find its look quite pleasing and our collective learned knowledge creates the perception of black and white as ‘art,’ or for more ‘serious’ work, which is born from the collective experience of a history of images presented in black and white; the ubiquity and fame of ‘Migrant Mother’ is a notable example of this, as Sally Stein points out: “often circulated as the centrepiece of the documentary canon” (2020, p. 62), which is despite its problematic approach to the facts surrounding the story and the notorious retouching of the thumb from the frame (Fig: 3). Human perception has in part been shaped by this view of the world even though we do not process the objects within it in this way, these images stay with us and create a collective memory of them.
As I have started to consider the photograph as a kind of object, shooting film creates this in a way that digital does not. The negative is a tangible object and shooting in a 6X7 format also attributes a preciousness to it. I am now acutely aware of each frame shot; each one must be carefully considered as each one costs money to produce. A roll of 120 film cost me between £4.50 – £5 allowing 10 frames per roll of film equaling 50 pence per frame, however factoring in processing and time, this would easily be over a £1 per image. As a process existing outside of my usual comfort zone, it is also an apparatus that I am not used to using either, which links to this week’s consideration of de-privileging the lens. Although I am not rejecting the lens completely, I am moving away from an easier approach to my photography and making it more of a precious object once again; more of a de-privileging the digital sensor and the ease in which I can make my images. These parameters can support a more focused approach to the creation of the work.
Figure 4: Phil Hill (June, 2020) Portrait affected by light leaking into RB67 Film back.
Technically, as mentioned earlier, this is not without its challenges. I had a glitch with an early roll of film that resulted in a serious light leak that ruined the majority of that film (Fig: 4). The portraits that I have been seeking in the public space are hard work for me to approach and shoot as it takes a fair amount of pushing myself to approach people, usually a good couple of weeks in each of the modules spent talking myself into taking these pictures to the point where it might just be easier to do something else, which makes any issues with the results doubly frustrating. However, this does create a more personal connection to the work as I become much more invested in all of the steps of the process in order to achieve a good result. People are at the heart of what I am trying to achieve.
Reality as we perceive it, has qualities and characteristics, which are tangible to us, to our senses, and some qualities, which are not tangible but nether-the-less fundamental to our understanding. By de-privileging the human there is an acknowledgment that the object continues to exist regardless of whether the human perceives it or not, Graham Harmon notes: “the infamous claim that the Pharaoh Ramses II cannot have died of tuberculosis, since in ancient Egypt that disease was not yet discovered” (2020, p. 33), which points out to us that it is easy to forget that our human perception is just part of the spectrum of representation and things exist outside of our awareness.
When photographing this reality, I am transferring some of these qualities onto the surface of the digital sensor, or the emulsion of the film. Qualities are transferred into an impression of this concrete world yet, there are also the qualities of the medium that are important to consider, which also have an effect on the way that the object based in the reality is perceived. Black and white seem the most obvious because it strips out information that we as humans are used to using to understand the world. However the object exists in multiple ways it can be perceived, outside the human range of perception, as the examples of Mosse and Alterwitz show. Black and white in these terms is an equally valid representation in that it is equally limited.
Figure 5: Sebastiano Pomata & Phil Hill (May, 2020) Negative re-photographed
It occurred to me that even though I am shooting film, I am still reliant on my DSLR to digitise the negative (mainly because of the lock down it is my only means of scanning, yet the point would remain for other forms of digitisation). The qualities transferred from reality onto the film emulsion are once again transferred onto another apparatus, the digital camera; One apparatus transferring to another apparatus. I made reference to this in an earlier exploration, where I took a negative I invited a friend to shoot for me and I copied it onto another roll of film, which appropriates that image and creates an object that is mine even though I have never been to Barcelona (Fig: 5). The reality of the image that I copied becomes even further removed from the reality that my friend Seb originally photographed.
Flusser notes that: “Aparatuses are black boxes that simulate thinking” (2000, p. 32), so what is the thinking that I am trying to simulate? The first black box is the film camera, which is being used to create a sense of the documentary aesthetic, a sense of the nostalgia, to a connection to a past that is perceived to be in decline. I have aimed to start making this palpable in the current idea of the ‘new normal,’ there might be a longing for the time before the pandemic. Aesthetically, I know that the images will be pleasing to look at, as if they could be from ‘another time’ as was noted of Alys Tomlinson’s Ex-Voto series (Molloy, 2019). There is a pathos in our collective understanding of images made during this time.
If reality has qualities that transfer and become in part replaced by the qualities of the film camera and emulsion, then both of these have certain agency over the representation of the object of that image – this agency then takes a role in shaping how we perceive. Those transferred qualities are then transferred and changed again when the negative becomes digitised and the reality recorded is another step removed. This digital image is a copy of a copy and many of the qualities of the black and white negative have been changed, and in some cases limited by the use of the digital camera. Ironically, some of my choices for using film are because of its opposition to the look of digital imagery but needs to be turned into a digital image in order for it to be useful online.
The second black box is the digital camera I am using to ‘scan’ the negative and has become a necessary part of the process to get my work in front of an audience. This black box is used as a means of translating the simulated thinking of the 1st black box into a usable form, yet it is important to consider the process and chain of qualities that have taken place having been fundamentally changed from the recorded reality, apparatus to apparatus.
Bibliography
Flusser, V., 2000. Towards a Philosophy of Photography. 2018 Reprint ed. London: Reaktion Books.
Harmon, G., 2020. Art and Objects. 1st Paperback ed. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Lamarque, P. & Olsen, S. H., 2004. Aesthetics and thne Philosophy of Art. 2 ed. Massachusetts: Blackwell.
Molloy, C., 2019. Alys Tomlinson. [Online] Available at: https://www.1000wordsmag.com/alys-tomlinson/ [Accessed 15 June 2020].
Figure 1: Phil Hill (June, 2020) First contact sheet from medium format film shoots [Click to Enlarge]
This week’s webinar, I put together a contact sheet of images from my recent medium format film shoots, primarily the portraits that I have begun to collect again (Fig: 1). All of the people in these images are taking very locally to where I live on the recreation ground and playing fields nearby. As the lock down is starting to be lifted, I am seeing many more people come together in these spaces and start to enjoy the outdoors and meet up with people they might not have seen for many weeks.
I have been very pleased with how many of these images are starting to come together. After some initial technical challenges with the equipment and getting used to shooting in this way again, I feel that I have managed to take some string images to move forward with my project and it has been quite a nice validation for my new approach, after having to really work up the courage to engage with people and take their photograph.
This was echoed by Cemre during my feedback, who noted that I have some really good portraits to work with when it comes to the next wipp edit and submission. What I am lacking at the moment is the images, which link all of these people together in terms to the space and connection between them. This is fundamental to the work that I am trying to produce. It was also noted that for this kind of work that is completed in the place where the photographer lives is almost always about the photographer as much as it is about the place, which is something that really resonates with me as my intention for the work has always been to explore the idea of my connection to the place that I live. Although Cemre made reference to this as an idea to explore for the idea of community, it is yet to show effectively in my research project; a series of portraits is not enough for a resolved strong submission.
To develop this, I am considering a number of approaches. I made a comment on Andy’s images from this week that he might want to consider keeping a journal to record his thoughts and feelings whilst taking his images so that he could use the text to support the visual. It occurred to me as I was saying this, that this is something that I should also do as a way of showing my personal narrative in the work via my own reflections before, during and after I take my pictures. Additionally, it is something that I could write when I take my daughter to the same spaces; ultimately, I use these places in a similar way to the people that I am photographing so I should be in there somewhere.
Figure 2: Alec Soth (2010) From ‘Broken Manual’ on Soth’s website
It was suggested that I also take a look at Alec Soth’s ‘Broken Manual’ series (Fig: 2). I have been getting quite familiar with his work ‘Songbook’ in relation to this idea of the documentary aesthetic and how it was employed overtly for this series, however I have not taken a wider look at Soth’s other work (during the MA anyway), so this would be useful to start really considering the way that portrait and landscape images can work together and the potential to re-introduce colour at some point. Another really valuable suggestion was to look at Vanessa Winship’s series ‘She Dances on Jackson’ which is a really beautiful blend of portraiture and landscape images that creates a really strong contextualisation of the work (Fig: 3). I aim to read some more into both of these bodies of work and create a reflection on them.
Figure 3: Vanessa Winship (2013) From She Dances on Jackson
The key takeaway from the webinar was that I need to really start asking the question of what is drawing me to these people, and what is my place within this community? Should I be taking a step back and question why I took this image. Once I have an answer to these questions, I can really start to focus on it.
The idea of non-human photography is an interesting one as at some point in the process there has to have been a human action involved. For example, I was quite taken with Flusser’s assertion that: “The green of a photographed field, for example, is an image of the concept ‘green’, just as it occurs in chemical theory, and the camera (or rather the film inserted into it) is programmed to translate this concept into the image” (2000:43) And the same could be said of how a digital sensor resolves an image according to its programmed values. Each film emulsion and camera sensor has qualities that are unique to them, which have been developed by a human. For example, the way that a Canon camera is able to resolve skin-tones vs the way a Nikon is able to all have a subtle impact in the way that the image is read and albeit highly subtle, a bias can be attributed to these differing programmed values.
Figure 1: Nikolaus Studnicka (2004) Overview and detail of the digital elevation model of the Giza Plateau created by 4 single scans from the top of the Cheops Pyramid visualised in ARC GIS 8.2
For my example, I have chosen this laser scan of the pyramids (Fig:1), which is slowly replacing the use of large format film cameras as a way of recording them. It is a non-lens based technology that is started and then left to conduct multiple scans the object (in this case one of the pyramids of Giza), which is then composited together to form the image. The use of ai and computational modelling is part of the process in creating these images. Arguably more representative than any traditional form of lens based capture as it requires direct contact of the laser to the object in order to create an image vs photographic reflection of light, however a human would have created the technology and the program for it to run.
Bibliography
Flusser, V., 2000. Towards a Philosophy of Photography. 2018 Reprint ed. London: Reaktion Books.
