Project Development

Into the FMP

| Phil Hill

At the very start of the MA, I was intending to explore an idea of community. Initially, this was very much rooted in how I would approach image making commercially: seek an interesting group of people and photograph them. So I set out to photograph the carnival culture of Somerset – of my home town. This led to a quick realisation that I was in effect looking at part of myself. Somerset carnivals are a cultural feature of the region and primarily run and driven by the working class communities of them. For me, coming from one of these working class communities, it was just a part of something that I escaped as I moved away to pursue education and my career. I am from a working class background in a town, which at the time felt like a trap, with low aspirations from my friends and own family. It sounds like a cliché, but I was told many times that the pursuit of my photography was a nice hobby, and I ought to learn a trade. Instead, I used my photography and education to leave and actively worked to disassociate myself from my upbringing – I considered it to be embarrassing to admit that I came from such a background. A clear example of this is my accent has changed. I sound like any generic middle-class Home Counties English person. Compare this to my parents, and that of my brothers, who sound distinctly West Country. My accent has been learned in order to place myself in what Lysney Hanley refers to as the ‘Second Room’:

“The more time you spend in this second room, the way that you use words – the order you put them in, the number of clauses and qualifiers you include in a sentence, even the sounds of the words themselves – begins to change … It involves learning another language entirely, one which places at its centre the act of thinking, and thinking about doing things in the future as opposed to doing them right now.”

(2017: 38)

A large part of discovery throughout the modules has been this realisation that when I refer to things like community, connection and identity, I am effectively wanting to explore them for myself – the work is about me. Subsequent modules shifted focus onto the place that I live now, a place that I have never considered a connection that you might associate with home. Moving away from the place of my upbringing led to a long period of moving around, which created a feeling that I would move again. Watford was a place I moved to by accident and I never intended to stay. In the 7 years that I have lived here however, I met my wife and we have a 3 year old daughter born here. What other signals for being settled down would I need?! My work explored this through an investigation of then place, it centred on the idea of edgelands, which Watford is – between countryside and the expanse of London, but not either of these. A certain liminality exists here in not being one thing or another. This idea links quite well back to this notion of Hanley’s ‘rooms,’ for me I am no longer working class but I am not quite middle class either (only perhaps on paper).

The exploration of community within the town I live and linking to other concepts that bring in place and object have been really valuable for my work. Up to this point however, I do feel that it has been relatively surface in the way that I am presenting a view of community and avoiding the underlying reasons for wanting to explore it. Of course, it is good that the realisation is now, and reflects on the journey and evolution that my photography has undertaken. I have spent some time considering the underlying ideas that have driven my exploration to this point. Ferdinand Tonnies provides a concept of community Gemienschaft (community from close emotional bonds, such as family) and Gesselschaft (community as it is in civil society) (2001). My project has looked at the civil society aand should now progress onto the closer network and emotional connections formed through the idea of family.

The challenge here, and essentially what becomes the root of things, is how disparate my family actually is. Parts of my family have not seen each other for over 20 years or more. They are spread far and uncommunicative. This is at the root of my own personal journey of disconnect and also crossing a class divide. I feel that there is a comment to be made on the idea of family narratives and the way that we construct our history.

Ideas carrying forward
  • Liminality/Edgelands
  • Class – crossing class divides
  • Object orientated ontology
  • Photographs as objects
  • Narrative structures
  • Carmencita/Kodak Grant proposal
Bibliography

Key Ideas

| Phil Hill

I’ve written well over 35 blog posts for this module so felt it would be a good idea to signpost some key blog posts that underpin my ideas and research throughout Sustainable Prospects.

In the below link, I have created a contents page of all of the posts created for Sustainable Prospects that also includes notes to summarise content and highlight key themes of research and ideas:

PHO704 Contents

Assignments

PHO704 Oral Presentation
PHO704 WIPP

WIPP Development – sequence conundrum

| Phil Hill

Although, I have been enjoying the sequence that I made in combining my portraits and landscapes, I seem to be receiving similar feedback of the differences between my landscapes and my portraits. It was suggested in the last webinar (26/11) that I might consider a sequence of only landscapes as they are stronger, which is Interesting as feedback for the last module was that my portraits were stronger. For Sustainable Prospects, I have created more of a focus on the landscape and potentially gone too far the other way!

Figure 1: Nial McDiarmid (2012) Hertford Street, Coventry
Figure 2: Phil Hill (September, 2020) Mum

The challenge that I have is in my portraits are formally shot and in the landscape but not of the landscape. Colin made reference to Nial Mcdiarmid and how his portraits do essentially the same in that the location is almost irrelevant (fig: 1 & 2). I have referenced Mcdiarmid’s photography before and found his work to be quite influential (even owning Town to Town), however if I consider the lesson from the Messy Truth podcast episode with Alex Coggin (2019), have I been aware of this influence in my consumption of it? This is something that I will need to investigate further.

Resolution?
Figure 3: Phil Hill (October, 2020) Tom
Figure 4: Phil Hill (October, 2020) Alistair

Are my portraits really that disparate from the rest of the images? Yes and no. I take on board the feedback received from Colin and others and is something that I will need to be aware of moving forward. More can be done to place the people in my portraits into the landscape. I do feel like I have made improvements into this for this module compared to the way that I approached my portraits for the last one. For example, I have aimed to include elements of the location much more into recent works, and have consciously shot some further away to show more of the location (Fig 3 & 4). Colin’s critique is of course based on the formality of my portraits compared to some of the landscape imagery, which is a mixture of formal and less formal compositions. Ross mentioned this when I asked for peer feedback and suggested that it is my formal gaze that creates the strongest images for him. It would be useful to re-evaluate this gaze and see if there are other ways that I can approach the images I make of people, which at the moment is possibly tied to the challenge I find it in approaching and creating them.

Figure 5: Vanessa Winship (2014) images from ‘Georgia Seeds Carried by the Wind’

When I consider the work of others, there are photographers who combine formal portraits with images of the landscape. For example, Vanessa Winship’s series ‘Georgia Seeds Carried by the Winds’ (2014), which mixes differing levels of formality in the portrait in line with Winship’s signature style (Fig: 5). It is clear that these are people all from the same place however, it could be argued that seen in isolation, each portrait is alienated from the place that it was photographed. With Winship there is a great sense of building the narrative through the sum of its parts as each image individually is as great as the whole.

I have looked at Winship’s work before to try and resolve the disconnect others note of my portraits and landscapes. I like the way that her images suggest a subtle nod to the location that they are taken. I also enjoy the idea of having the reader work for this, which I feel Winship does quite well. The narrative structure that I am applying should also be considered as a sum of parts that includes locations and characters. I have taken this so far but clearly have further to go.

Back to Barthes

How to Live Together – Roland Barthes
Figure 6: Phil Hill (February, 2020) Roland Barthes’ ‘How to Live Together’ analysis

If there is a disconnect to be found between the portraits and the landscapes then this can be linked back to some earlier research I did into the way that Roland Barthes discusses the ‘Iddiorythmic’ way that we live together within communities yet each of us according to an individual rhythm (Fig: 6). The idea centers on idiorrhythmic monasticism, where monks would live within the confines of the same compound but leading an individual existence within it. As Barthes notes: “Fantasmically speaking, there’s nothing contradictory about wanting to live alone and wanting to live together” (2012: 4-5). Barthes exploration could be considered a comment on our own contemporary tribalism. Within communities, there is a socially abstract way that we carry out our lives without an awareness of how others around – we place ‘value on distance’ (p. 132).

It is from the analysis of Barthes text ‘How to Live Together’ that I first came across the Robert Frost Poem ‘Desert Places,’ as a metaphor for this separation of individuals from places and other individuals, and potentially from oneself: “The idea that the desert represents an important metaphor that may inspire new ideas in the problems of living together (Stene-Johansen, et al., 2013: 16).

“the rhythm of existence is a result of social formations and economical structures as well as individual choice: we meet at work, in bars, in the theatre, and then go back to our shelters, our apartments” (2013: 16).

My portraits are disparate because of the nature of the communities that we live in. This is reflected in my constructed narrative. My project is a journey, which takes you through the place only to stop consider these character you are normally abstracted from. I am interested in the stopping as much as the continued journey.

Formal?
Figure 7: Bryan Schutmaat (2015) From ‘Grays the Mountain Sends’

One method to resolve this may be to only sequence formal composed portraits with those landscapes considered more formal. The resolution may then be in the treatment of both people and place by me. I have written about how Bryan Schutmaat seems to create a character from the land (Fig: 7). Perhaps when I treat the landscape in the same formal way that I photograph people, it could be considered that my landscape is also another character in my narrative and part of the structure that I have applied. This again is a way of utilising Graham Harmon’s Object Orientated ontology in the way that all objects, animate or inanimate have characteristics that create an influence: “All objects must be given equal attention, whether they be human, non-human, natural, cultural, real or fictional” (2018, p. 9). I will aim to create a new iteration of my wipp that includes the more formal people and places photographed.

Figure 8: Pieter Hugo (2013) Pieter Hugo, Ann Sallies, who worked for my parents and helped raise their children,  Douglas, 2013.

Pieter Hugo’s book ‘Kin’ (2015), also mixes the formality and contextualisation of political and personal portraiture with the landscape (Fig: 8). Jean Dykstra notes that “It isn’t clear, for the most part, how, or whether, many of the subjects are related to each other: but this body of work would seem to suggest that their specific relationships are less important than their shared humanity” (2013) that seems to support the observation of Winship’s work of the sum of the parts creating a collective whole. What is clear in both the work of Winship and Hugo and potentially where I need to put the work in, is the defined cultural signifiers that also place a sense of the location on the work. This is a clear area of development for me if it is also not being seen in my images by others.

Text?
Figure 9: Pieter Hugo (2015) Spread from ‘Kin’

Hugo uses Text in Kin (Fig: 9), providing snippets of information into the people he has photographed and potentially an area for me to look at. The right title may be all that’s needed to lift the contextualisation and place clear links on the people to the land.

Let go?

It is also important to respond to the feedback that I am receiving and create an iteration without people. I am keen to share a sequence without portraits to see if they really can exist without images together.

Bibliography

Barthes, R., 2012. How to Live Together: Novelistic Simulations of some Everyday Spaces. Translation ed. New York: Columbia University Press.

Coggin, A., 2019. The Messy Truth: Alex Coggin on Authorship [Interview] (May 2019).

Dykstra, J., 2013. Photograph Magazine – PIETER HUGO: KIN. [Online]
Available at: http://photographmag.com/reviews/pieter-hugo-kin/
[Accessed 27 November 2020].

Harmon, G., 2018. Object Orientated Ontology – A New Theory of Everything. 1st ed. London: Pelican Books.

Hugo, P., 2015. Kin. 1 ed. New York: Aperture.

Stene-Johansen, K., Refsum, C. & Schimanski, 2013. Living Together: Roland Barthes, the Individual and the Community. Bielefeld: Transcript Verlag.

Winship, V., 2014. GEORGIA SEEDS CARRIED BY THE WIND. [Online]
Available at: https://www.vanessawinship.com/gallery.php?ProjectID=175
[Accessed 27 November 2020].

Working Title

| Phil Hill

Considering the feedback that I have received for the first iteration of my WIPP (Fig: 1), I wanted to create a title for the work that lends a certain ambiguity to the reading. As the work is in part inspired by the Robert Frost Poem, I looked again at how Bryan Schutmaat titled his work ‘Grays the Mountain Sends’ (Fig: 2), which was inspired by the poetry of Richard Hugo. His title is taken from a line in the poem ‘Degrees of Gray in Philipsburg’: “Hatred of the various grays the mountain sends, hatred of the mill,  The Silver Bill repeal, the best liked girls who leave each year for Butte” (1992). Hugo’s poem uses the idea of ‘degrees of gray’ to paint a picture of the ebb and flow of human relationships, which relates to Hugo’s own personal experiences prior to writing this poem (Potts, 2012). For Schutmaat, this is a translation into the relationship between the people and the landscape in his photo series.

PHO704 WIPP Peer Feedback
Figure 1: Phil Hill (November, 2020) Peer Feedback on WIPP V1 blog post
Figure 2: Bryan Schutmaat (2014) Cover of ‘Grays the Mountain Sends’
A Desert Place vs Between Stars

Initially, I thought about titling this series ‘A Desert Place’ in a direct reference to the poem however, this could be quite obvious so instead I have considered the metaphor within the poem to see if any connections to my work can be made. A phrase that jumps out at me immediately is “Between stars – on stars where no human race is” (Frost, 1936, p. 44). Frost uses this line as a way of contrasting a vastness of space with the narrators own internal desert, which aims to create a kind of hope of putting one’s own personal challenges into a kind of perspective. According to analysis by Li Wang, this comparison “serves to aggrandise the speaker and the importance of his own personal desert” (2013, p. 2095). I can use the line ‘between stars’ as a way of emphasising the in-between nature of my images, or rurality of them. It also references the idea of connection to place.

More lonely ere

Another line from Frost’s poem is: “And lonely as it is, that loneliness Will be more lonely ere” (1936, p. 44). The word ere is a preposition meaning ‘before in time’ and I quite like the idea of naming the series ‘more lonely ere,’ to create a sense of the connection that I am attempting to explore with the sequence. This again is a way of placing me into the series and also an attempt of putting emphasis on the reader being the protagonist on the journey. As Wang also notes:

“It is an archaic word. As we have known that Frost’s language  is  so  simple  and  ordinary  that  the  common readers  can  understand  it.  But  this  only  archaic  word  appears  here  to  remind  us  of  focusing  on  what  the  adjacent sentences want to emphasize. It emphasizes the intensification of mood. The implied rebirth in the necessary melting of the snow and the re-emergence of the field as a real thing is an unassimilated lump of hope”

(2013, p. 2096)

I believe that this provides the best link between the poem, the metaphor and my images. Ultimately, my journey story is an intensification of mood from ‘the call’ at the start through ‘the journey’ and ‘the ordeals,’ toward a resolution and ‘the goal.’ Within the bleakness of some of the images that I am presenting, my aim is that is some kind of hope still, represented in the end of the sequence, and the goal (Fig: 3). The idea of ‘more lonely ere‘ essentially translates to ‘more lonely before,’ as to suggest that the act of completing the journey provides hope for a better relationship with place.

Reflection – Project development
Figure 3: Phil Hill (November, 2020) Project Development and Narrative
Cover
Figure 4: Robert Frost (1936) ‘A Further Range’ book cover
Figure 5: Phil Hill (November, 2020) Cover design iterations.

I have taken further inspiration from Robert Frost and used the cover from the book ‘A Further Range’ where ‘Desert Places’ is published as inspiration (Fig: 4). Initially, I sought to emulate the cover but found that I need to develop this further and as I evolved the title, I aim to do the same with the cover. The basic referenced elements are there and I have change the colour to a green as a further reference to rurality and also included a three star symbol between the title and my name to visually represent the in-between element of the title (Fig: 5).

Bibliography

Frost, R., 1936. A Further Range. Transcribed eBook ed. s.l.:Proofreaders Canada.

Hugo, R., 1992. Making Certain It Goes On: The Collected Poems of Richard Hugo.. Re-Issue ed. New York: W. W. Norton & Co.

Potts, M., 2012. On Richard Hugo’s, “Degrees of Gray in Philipsburg”. [Online]
Available at: https://michaelpotts.livejournal.com/8861.html [Accessed 26 11 2020].

Schutmaat, B., 2014. Grays the Mountain Send. [Online]Available at: http://www.bryanschutmaat.com/grays [Accessed 26, November, 2020].

Wang, L., 2013. An Artistic Analysis on Robert Frost’s Desert Places. Theory and Practice in Language Studies, 3(11), pp. 2092-2097.