I have been quite enthralled by the topic of representation
and authenticity during this week’s discussion and webinars. I have been
incredibly guilty in the past of considering that what I do is a pure form of
truth telling and visual record of the facts, when in actual fact there is no
such thing as a neutral image (Luvera, 2020). Authenticity
appears to be assumed on the part of the reader merely because the photograph
is able to reproduce in a naturalistic manner.
Figure 1. Phil Hill (2010) Dawn on Bamburi Beach, Mombasa, Kenya.
Unconsciously, I have always used the notion of representation in my own work. This was very prevalent during the time I was shooting for freelance for travel editorial publications. I would knowingly select and edit out the images that would not present a location in a positive light (Fig. 1), however unaware of the implications of representing an actuality (Berger, 2013, p. 8). As an example, I shot some images of Bamburi Beach in Mombasa, Kenya showing how beautiful the location was however neglecting to also photograph the immense poverty that was sometimes literally outside of my frame (Fig. 2). This has much to do with the context of how these images are consumed however, figure 2 for example was part of a set of images that were used to illustrate a story on illegal mining practices in parts of Kenya (Kivner.
As I discussed earlier for an experimentation into how I might portray community through creating a set of images that utilise a forensic approach due to the upcoming sale of my rented home by my land lady.
Figure 2. Phil Hill (2010) Illegal gold miner, Kenya. Image also uploaded to Alamy archive.
My initial plan for this experiment was to photograph all of the negative aspects of the house in which I live and are in a state of disrepair. These images would be in direct contrast to the attempt to gloss over the detrimental view of the house that the estate agents would ultimately take (See Post). I have just started to scan and edit these images to remove the dust that attached itself to the negative during the scanning process. A fairly standard practice for film images. However, this week have raised a number of questions:
Figure 2. Phil Hill (February, 2020) Scanned image from medium format negative that has been retouched. ‘Moth Trap’ from my evidence experiment.
In terms of authenticity, a film image is behold as containing more ‘truth’ over digital, which is perceived to be easily manipulated and has caused concern in this regard since its introduction (Cosgrove, 2020). However, the modern workflow process of scanning and digitising negatives creates an even more problematic version of this truth if we still consider it to have more veracity then a digital image. My first scanned image (Fig. 3) required quite a bit of ‘spotting,’ as a result the image that also contains quite a ‘busy’ layer of all of the retouching, healing brush that I used, which poses the question of how much of the original is left, and how much of this naturalistic reproduction can be consider an icon; how much of this image is now indexical.
Figure 3. Phil Hill (February, 2020) Retouching layer from ‘Moth Trap’
To highlight the difference, I have saved a version of the image that only shows the retouching layer against a white background (Fig. 4). This image feels indexical to me, that it is based on the things that existed in the real world but bears no real resemblance to it anymore. Any amount of editing and retouching could be considered in this way.
Bibliography
Berger, J., 2013. Understanding a Photograph. London:
Penguin Classics.
Cosgrove, S., 2020. Week 2 Presentation: Is it Really Real?, s.l.: Falmouth.
Hill, P., 2010. Dawn on Bamburi Beach. Mombasa, Kenya. [Photo].
Hill, P., 2010. Illegal Gold Miner, Kenya. [Photo].
Hill, P., 2020. Moth Trap. [Photo].
Hill, P., 2020. Retouching Layer from ‘Moth Trap’. [Photo].
Kinver, M., 2013. Nations agree on legally binding mercury rules. [Online] Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21078176 [Accessed 7 February 2020].
Luvera, A.,
2020. Countercurrent Podcast: Anthony Luvera in conversation with Roger
Kneebone [Interview] (13 January 2020).
Everyone seems to want to defend their own reading
and interpretation of an image that they have taken, especially their own
images, and this includes me and my own images. It is interesting that through
the forums this week I have noticed that many of the descriptions of the
presented images do not necessarily translate to what I can see in the image.
Although, what is being written of the image is indeed what the photographer
believes that image to be about, or what did occur at the moment of when that image
was captured, it is telling that with this text removed, the image would read
differently to me.
Context and meaning are going to fall away from the
image, especially over time (Sontag, 1979, p. 106), so it is important
to realise that your work will inevitably be read in multiple ways. I do find
this somewhat a challenging concept in the present as the temptation and habit
of adding a certain amount of attributed information is ever present in the
attempt to help others understand my work. I guess, that is the challenge for
many practitioners, do we have the confidence to remove all of this attributed
reading of our own photography to allow others carte blanche to make their own
assumptions and interpretations.
Figure 1. Nadav Kander’s triangle (Kander, 2019).
Authenticity appears to me, bound by context, or at least a viewer’s understanding of context. Representation is bound by the subject’s understanding of the use of the image. Is it for authors to attribute either context, or use without the collaboration of the other two. This is a clear link to the triangle (Fig. 1) that Nadav Kander refers to (Kander, 2019), and the death of the author analysis by Roland Barthes (Barthes, 1977, pp. 142-149).
Where this applies to my own work, I think that I am quite interested in the notion of the photograph as a valuable index of truth (Snyder & Allen, 1975, p. 159). As I have commented in the previous forum, I think that when you consider the definition of representation, it is to take the broad consensus of ideas and opinions which I think is where the photograph can occupy and create authenticity. So it is not a complete evidential and based on all the facts, however there are traces of facts embedded in the image, perpetuated by the notion of its naturalistic appearance (1975, p. 144). This potentially, has more in common with ideology which assumes much about reality and certainly John Berger notes this by stating that photography can play an important role in ideological struggle, in reference to the way media use photography (Berger, 2013, p. 21).
For my work to move forward, I need to consider the
indexical nature of my own photographs and perhaps construct images that use
this as a means of communication. However, this is potentially something that
will be more prevalent during the editing stage of the project.
Countercurrent Podcast
This week, I also listened to an episode of Countercurrent podcast featuring Anthony Luvera discussing his approach to socially engaged photography (Levera, 2020). The subject of representation came up during the discussion and the power balance that exists between the artist and the subject of their art. Traditionally, there have been a number of incidences throughout the history of photography where a particular group or culture has been photographed in a particular way and has led to tropes which has a knock on impact of effecting the way they are represented and even the conversation, political, and societal decisions are affected by these representations. Although not referred to in the podcast, this reminds me of the work that Patrick Waterhouse did when working with the Walpiri of the Northern Territory in Australia (Fig. 2), which was a way of considering, not only the colonial gaze, but also the way anthropological photography was used as a method of reducing the value of cultures other than the white European (Waterhouse, 2019).
Figure 2. Patrick Waterhouse (2019) From the book ‘Restricted Images’ by Patrick Waterhouse and the Walpiri
Levera does not believe that the problematic
photographic representation can easily be solved and that no photograph is
neutral, however we can aim to redress the balance through collaborative
practice (2020).
It was also noted that a tension exists between the
artist and the subject when any kind of process of working together exists and
when circulating this work to audiences.
Index and the Icon
How I use these within my own work has been useful
to consider. I believe for the most part my photography uses the iconic, I
photograph things that look like what they are supposed to, for the most part.
I consider how this has changed in the present short term (assuming that I continue to focus on the iconic in my work) from the commercial practice, where I would use elements such as photo-blur to get around such things as model releases for people on the street. This also had the added aesthetic quality of creating an atmosphere of a busy urban area. The work that I have been creating for the last module concentrates on what is in front of me, what exists in the real world. Context is a driver of how we can present the icon and the indexical, during the seminar the example of wedding photography was given in that the audience of this work expects to see a certain image of the posed groups. This reminds me of the work of commercial photographer John Keatley who has become well known for how he plays with the notion of the family portrait (Fig. 3), and has even taken it to the extreme of getting actors to pose in the images as him and his wife – although his children are the same (Keatley, 2018). This really plays with the icon and the indexical. Keatley us subverting the shared vocabulary of what we expect to see from a family portrait, an image of the family. However by removing himself from the image he has still created something that exists in the real world, the photograph is of something that exists, it is not a photograph of Keatley, even though he has titled it as such. Keatley has taken the image, could this be considered a trace? There is no truth to this image and the actors that are portraying the artist are arbitrary, however Keatley has had a tangible connection to the construction of the image.
Figure 3. John Keatley (2018) Keatley Family Portrait
A photograph is not nuanced in all things that are
based in the real world the way that photography is portrayed, It cannot
portray all of the subtle variety that exists, it is a blunt snapshot in time
of something that existed – A fossil, which is indexical to the thing that
existed.
What
this week has prompted me to look at more is how the environment of community
which has now become my focus might be comprised of indexical elements that I
could photograph as part of the work. What are the traces of the community that
I am photographing over the wandering and photographing anything of interest.
Having a clear intention for why I have photographed and included them within a
final edit was always one of my aims
Bibliography
Barthes, R., 1977. Death of the Author. In: Image,
Music, Text. New York: Fontana, pp. 142-149.
Berger, J.,
2013. Understanding a Photograph. London: Penguin Classics.
Kander, N.,
2019. Prix Pictet: A Lens on Sustainability. Photography as Witness [Interview]
(5 November 2019).
Keatley, J., 2018. Keatley Family 2018. [Online] Available at: https://www.keatleyphoto.com/portraits/keatley-family/ [Accessed 6 February 2020].
Luvera, A., 2020. Countercurrent Podcast: Anthony Luvera in conversation with Roger Kneebone [Interview] (13 January 2020).
Snyder, J.
& Allen, N. W., 1975. Photography, Vision, and Representation. Critical
Enquiry, 2(1), pp. 143-169.
Sontag, S.,
1979. On Photography. London: Penguin.
Waterhouse,
P., 2019. Restricted Images by Patrick Waterhouse and the Walpiri. 1st
ed. London: SPBH Editions.
A number of developments occurred during the break between modules leading me to consider how to approach and begin to be more experimental.
The shift into looking into my local area has also coincided with my landlady taking the decision to sell my rented home here in Watford spurred on by the recent general election and final push on Brexit, not including the litany of issues with the house that she felt could no longer support fixing (there are a lot!), when every time we asked to be fixed, feared a push on the rental cost each month.
I have found it interesting that as I turn my camera onto my local community, it could inherently change as we decide whether we will need to move out of the area to find affordable rental prices, or make the jump to buy, meaning an even further move. The community that I described during the last module is in question again. As a renter, I find myself never truly connected to place, with the constant fear of upheaval.
Figure 1. Pentax 645 with mounted light.
Figure 2. Ilford HP5 pushed to 800.
As a way to explore this, I am going to create a smaller body of work alongside the psychogeography approach I outlined for my first shoot plan and document the condition of my rented home with a forensic approach. I intend to use a medium format film camera with a top mounted video light (Fig. 1) and Ilford HP5 film (Fig. 2) for this approach, which represents a complete departure from the images that I was shooting during the last module.
My idea is to play with the narrative of my home, which was never truly my home. There is the space that I occupy and have lived in for the past 5 years and the areas of the house that have been neglected due to the nature of it being a rental property. These initial images could be compared to the narrative that will be presented by the estate agent once they come into the space and take their own images, which will need to be sympathetic to the true owner of the house, this will be mirrored by the description of the house used to sell it. My black and white medium format images will be in complete opposition to the digital compact images taken by the estate agent and could play with the notion of photographic truth in a similar way to how Jack Latham used police archive images as part of his ‘Sugar Paper Theories’ series (Latham, 2016).
I am also interested to explore the notion of the rectangle as the most basic form of power, outlined by Roland Barthes (Barthes, 2012, p.114). The exchange of such rectangles, in the form of the most ubiquitous, our homes, could be a way of framing the current housing crisis for example. By focussing on my own space of rectangles (or what I thought was mine, in the lived sense), I hope to start considering the community that happens from within the home. One of the outlined aims in my project proposal was to look at the environment and typology of community, and these typologies could also be found within this realm, which again Barthes used in his analysis of the rectangle through the language of beds (Barthes, 2012, p114), this is where I can start to explore these concepts.
Collaborating with others
As a way to investigate a more collaborative approach to my work, I have also asked 3 work colleagues who live in the local area, and who are all artists, to take a small film camera that I have provided and take some images of the local area. My intention is to start extending my approach to the initial psychogeography and explore ways that I can respond to these images.
Bibliography
Barthes, R., 2012. How to Live Together: Novelistic Simulations of Some Everyday Spaces. Translation Edition ed. New York: Columbia University Press.
Latham, J., Gudjonsson, G. and Russell, R. (2016). Sugar paper theories. 2nd ed. London: Here Press.
I connect with the selective nature of photography that Szarwaski discusses. My images for the last module were very much based in the selectiveness of the moments that I photographed and the images I ultimately selected for my gallery. This was to construct an image that was of my making as opposed to the staged poses that many of my subjects would automatically assume.
It is in the frame, that I also resonated with. I am conscious of many of the things that are allowed into the frame and what is not
His reference to how photography has never been successful at narrative is interesting to me because I spent a good time last module aiming to develop an effective narrative of my work. This notion of photography and narrative is very much echoed by Lewis Bush however somewhat challenged by Todd Hido, albeit he does not necessarily start with a narrative in mind.
Mostly images seem to be about an exchange of validation or a kind of visual gratification that can never truly be fulfilled. The photographer takes an image for validation, the reader is validated in their interpretation of the image.
