I took a number of approaches to this task and have found it quite useful in thinking about my own practice. I think that I have been doing forms of re-photography in quite a lot of then work that I produce.
Image 1
Figure 1: Phil Hill (April & June, 2020) Light on kitchen floor
This is one of the images submitted for the last module (Fig: 1). Although not exactly the same in terms of composition, the light cast onto the floor creates an interesting contrast between the two images. In terms of the passage of time, the first was taken in April when it was much cooler and the kitchen door was closed, compared to the recreation, where the door was open allowing more of the afternoon light come into the space.
Images 2 & 3
Figure 2: Phil Hill & Darius Dabrowski (March – June, 2020) Casiobury Park, WatfordFigure 3: Phil Hill & Darius Dubrowski (March – June, 2020) Watford Town Center
Again, during Informing contexts, one of my aims was to start collaborating with others (Fig: 2 & 3). I gave out cameras to some of the people that I met in my community in order for them to photograph it from their own perspective. Unfortunately, owing to the pandemic, I was unable to truly resolve and develop that approach so had to shelve it. I decided to use them for this task as it felt like a great way to apply the techniques by way of a collaboration. As my research project is about connection to community and idiorythym, I am interested in how other perceive the same space as me.
Images 4 & 5
Figure 4: Phil Hill (April – June, 2020) Window imagesFigure 5: Phil Hill (April – June, 2020) Window Images
The final two images are part of the evolution of my research project as a result of having to adapt to the pandemic (Fig: 4&5). I was happy with the way that these abstract images of the windows in my home turned out, however they are also a reaction to a situation and something that I feel need further development if I am going to utilise it for future work. After reading Vilém Flusser during the break, I was interested in the way that he discusses the surface of the photograph and how it abstracts from reality: “traditional images are abstractions of the first order insofar as they abstract from the concrete world” (2000: 14), so I wanted to take this concept and start to purposefully abstract using different processes, including considering the photograph as an object itself. This is the first exploration in this are – the images on the left have been re-photographed using black and white film, which was pushed 5 stops (100 – 3200) beyond its normal capability to increase grain and reduce the resolution of the final negative. This was a useful task to start exploring these ideas.
Bibliography
Flusser, V., 2000. Towards a Philosophy of Photography. 2018 Reprint ed. London: Reaktion Books.
Now that I have processed two of the films I asked others to
shoot for me, it is worth looking at how they might fit into the rest of my
project and research.
Figure 1. James Petrucci (March, 2020) Image of a concrete road bridge support
James
James is a work colleague and who I initially asked to shoot
some film for me, partly as an experiment to see how this might work with the
other images I am creating (Fig. 1). James is the Fine Art lecturer at the
college I teach, so although some of the technical aspects of the images are
less than refined, his sense of composition, space, and attention to detail are
clear in the resulting images that he shot (Fig. 2).
Figure 2. James Petrucci (March, 2020) Steps outside Watford Town Hall
The first thing that struck me when I developed these images
was a sense of the banal and topographic within some of the subjects that James
decided to photograph (Fig. 3). James has shot a series of images on his
walking commute to the college where we both work and has placed emphasis on
some of the imposing brutalist concrete structures that occupy Watford. This is
a vernacular of Watford that I am not sure I will have made the link, or even
approached to photograph myself. However vernacular in the sense of the content
and not necessarily the aesthetic of the images, which is black and white film;
vernacular photography of the everyday seems to now be the domain of smartphone
photography.
Figure 3. James Petrucci (March, 2020) Building in Watford
The overbearing grey concrete architecture is one of the
myriad of reasons why I personally have never felt connected to the place;
Watford seems to me never super welcoming as a result, so potentially an area I
can personally develop and respond to. Interestingly, James also moved to
Watford to work at the college, as I did, so I will discuss with him his
feelings towards the town. These are the everyday banal features of the place
that we both live.
Figure 4. Phil Hill & James Petrucci (March, 2020)Layout experimentation for WIPP
I made a conscious decision to provide my collaborators with
black and white film for this part of the project. For the moment at least, I
felt it was important to differentiate the images of persons collaborating with
my own imagery and this approach is starting to come together as I explore ways
of sequencing the images (Fig. 4). The aesthetic choice of black and white is
also an evolution of my initial look at FSA photography and its blanket
approach to covering small towns in the US (Fig. 5), which incidentally could
encompass working with collaborators in a similar way to Roy Stryker and the
FSA photographers. John Tagg considers the aesthetic of the FSA as what was new
way to disseminate the message of state: “Mobilising
a new means of mass reproduction, the documentary practices of the 1930s, through
equally the province of a developing photographic profession, were addressed
not only to experts but also specific sectors of a broader lay audience, in a
concerted effort to recruit them to the discourse of paternalistic, state
directed reform” (Tagg, 1988, p. 12). We collectively understand that the
black and white documentary aesthetic is ‘evidential’ and a perceived record of
authenticity. For example, when I first introduced myself to the food bank
across the road from me, one of the volunteers asked if I was going to be
taking the images in black and white because this would seem more fitting of
the subject somehow; a learned behaviour that all documentary needs to be in
gritty black and white.
Figure 5. Roy Stryker (1939) Page from an FSA shooting script on a small town
Black and white photography plays with our learned knowledge
of what is truth and evidence in photography, as Tagg goes on to state: “Documentary photography traded on the
status of the official document as proof and inscribed relations of power in
representation which were structured like those of earlier practices of photo-documentation:
both speaking to those with relative power about those positioned as lacking,
as the ‘feminised’ other, as passive but pathetic objects capable only of
offering themselves up to a benevolent, transcendent gaze” (p. 12).
The reference to ‘Documentary photography’ is closely linked to the use of
black and white, especially when considering the context in which Tagg is
discussing. Giving a camera to people that I collaborate with in some ways
rebalances the power that Tagg refers to here; they are able to tell their own
story and representation. However, I am aware that by including these images
into my own narrative I am creating a constructed ‘legitimacy’ for myself in a
number of ways. The black and white aesthetic states ‘documentary’ it also
creates a perception of authenticity that readers may engage with more fully
that merely viewing my images individually; readers expect to believe the black
and white image, and this is supported by its own vernacular and positioning
having been taken by the collaborator themselves, essentially providing more
proof of its place in the actual and naturalistic, and again Tagg informs us: “it has been argued that this insertion of
the ‘natural and universal’ in the photograph is particularly forceful because
of photography’s privileged status as a guaranteed witness of the actuality of
the events it represents” (p. 160). I use this to my
advantage when I sequence my images together with those of my collaborators,
and will need to carefully consider how the balance of power as stated by Tagg
is influenced in sequencing and if an oppositional reading is developing from
this work.
Darius
Figure 6. Darius Dabrowski (March, 2020) Cassiobury Park protected tree
I met Darius at the food bank who is a regular user of the service, and asked him to shoot a roll of film for me, I decided to not give a great deal of instruction just yet, only to go and tell his own story so that we could talk through the images together. When I processed these images, I was surprised to find that the majority of them were shot in Cassiobury Park here in Watford (Fig. 6), Darius has chosen to photograph the picturesque in contrast to James’s view of brutalist concrete (Fig.3). I find this representation of himself interesting and wonder if Darius sought to photograph scenes he thought would fit a picturesque photographic aesthetic (Fig. 7) owing to the average perception of photography which occupies the learnt visual style of publications, such as National Geographic, which I have discussed at length (View Post) and have set the mythological status of the picturesque image.
Figure 7. Darius Dabrowski (March, 2020) Somewhere in Cassiobury Park
The concern here is that Darius’s images is that they are
not representative of his story insomuch as they are a projection of what he
thinks that I am looking for. The same can be said for James’s series that has
sought to look for aesthetic compositions within its banal brutalist look at
Watford. This does not however mean that the images do not hold value when I
create a sequence of the work. As Perter Lamarque writes of representation: “So to write a story or paint a picture is
(usually) to bring into being a new story or picture world. This makes the existence
of fictional worlds, unlike that of possible ones, a contingent matter” (Lamarque
& Olsen, 2004, p. 354), which clearly puts
the new sequence into the realm of the constructed narrative and was always
going to be the case as I seek to blend the collaborative narrative together.
The picturesque images that Darius took, were surprising to me because of my assumptions of the life that Darius might lead outside of his visits to the food bank. This was not based on any other information other than my knowledge of Darius and the Food bank and highlights to me that I clearly have some bias in the expectation of what I might see when I processed the images. Looking at Darius’s set, there are some images that could really work with the narrative, for example figure 6 is an iconic view of the well-known protected tree situated in the park and would really provide context to the place I am photographing, where I have yet to shoot this kind of panoramic landscape.
Choosing to sequence my work next to that of my
collaborators presents an interesting question about authorship. Logistically
speaking, I have asked everyone involved to sign an assignment of copyright
agreement to in essence give me ownership over the images to use as part of my
project. Lamarque posits that authorship has a relationship to legal rights, which
is, as Lamarque suggests, the basis for Foucault’s argument of the author (Lamarque
& Olsen, 2004, p. 434). I am appropriating
these images, for sure, but my intention is to create a narrative that
considers the Barthesian idiorrythmic concept of everyone living separate lives,
whilst also living together in the same places: “Where each individual lives
according to his own rythym” (Barthes, 2012, p. 178). James and Darius,
directed by me, have created a series of images that allow me to view parts of their
iddiorrythm, and I aim to contribute mine.
Figure 8. Darius Dabrowski (March, 2020) Watford Town centre
Bibliography
Barthes, R., 2012.
How to Live Together: Novelistic Simulations of some Everyday Spaces. Translation
ed. New York: Columbia University Press.
Dubrowski, D. & Hill, P., 2020. Cassiobury Park protected tree. [ Photo ].
Dubrowski, D. & Hill, P., 2020. Somewhere in Cassiobury Park. [ Photo ].
Dubrowski, D. & Hill, P., 2020. Watford Town Center. [ Photo ].
Hill, P., 2020. Layout Experimentation: Mark and Concrete support image. [ Photo ].
Lamarque, P. & Olsen, S. H., 2004. Aesthetics
and thne Philosophy of Art. 2 ed. Massachusetts: Blackwell.
Library of Congress, 2011. Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Written Records: Selected Documents. [Online] Available at: Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Written Records: Selected Documents [Accessed 11 12 2019].
Petrucci, J. & Hill, P., 2020. Steps outside Watford Town Hall. [ Photo ].
Petrucci, J. & Hill, P., 2020. Building in Watford. [ Photo ].
Petrucci, J. & Hill, P., 2020. concrete road bridge support. [Photo].
Tagg, J., 1988. The Burden of Representation:
Essays on Photographies and Histories. 1st paperback ed. Basingstoke:
Palgrave Macmillan.
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.