Two items have been held up pending 10 weeks of illness then need to create portfolio work.
These are the Video that should have been made over the break and the Critical Review of Practice CRoP.
These have been taken together, but oddly manage to support the work. The following PDF is the mind map. A CRoP is a CRoP but it has to be about something so the overview of working practice and methodology is given as a mind map. The CRoP requirement (or part of) has been mapped onto it and requires further development like issuing a draft. However, there is some referencing to other practitioners still in research. Despite having this for earlier incarnations of the work (in earlier study Modules) the work has progressed on so time for the update.
To an extent I can argue about originality and a need to mask off external influences as the work is quite unique in its standing as a branch of Art based on Science. As blogged previously I’m never surprised anymore to find original thought crop up in other places of which two examples could be cited.
Top left hand in the mind map is the Critical Review of Practice from an earlier module assignment.
The bottom left hand is a storyboard outline for a useful video resource that is being created. (This proved very helpful to visitors to the summer exhibition).
Above this is the connection to the CRoP linked to Ghost Abstract Figurative Themes. While Ghosts per se have been dropped since the review with a book designer, the landscapes remain ghost images.
Practice location top right is the piece being updated for this dynamic project. It does need to settle down urgently prints, book, portable exhibition and talk to be worked on.
There is quite a challenge here as none of the work has been subcontracted to printers or anyone else so all of the skills from the photography through to all branches of making have been absorbed and this alongside all of the marked assignment work. For anyone wishing to embark on an MA Photography Course they may wish to consider how much work to outsource to specialists. Personally, outsourcing the Book making to an online offering is not preferred over an artists book dummy and hiring a book designer would lose some of the original intent to someone else’s view of what the market would stand. The work is still too dynamic for this.
Bottom right is the remainder of the CRoP assignment requirement, which pertains to the public showing.
In terms of evidencing the work as mentioned here in an FMP lecture video then on the subject of gaining public feedback, there is a need to reach out to practitioners to elicit attendance or somehow provide comment on the work.
I now have a date of the Easter Weekend for showing the work over four days at Amersham Studios tradesecrets.live Only now can approaches be made by reaching out.
As image-making is fundamental and has been a major focus, work has been flooding forward and is now starting to receive critique (two critiques were missed through technology issues).
There is scope for an earlier pop-up exhibition at the same location. No promises yet. Details will be published and a campaign run via Instagram account foto_graphical and Facebook.
A detail was examined of the source of image glow in humans
Michael Turner based on UV image by Dr J Crowther
Access to imaging scientists led to emanation being discarded as it is undetectable. Instead, attention is brought to body reflection in the visible light spectrum. The scope was introduced for a secondary effect caused by visible light having triggered bacterial fluorescence.
Further research and reflection have guided change and resulted in the adaption of digital darkroom processing that now uses simpler steps that are easier to manage and more flexible in fine-tuning the healing wound image.
Motherline (mtDNA) and Glow
The ancestral basis of identification between individuals had been established through the Motherline as an image Aura or Emanation.
The method still stands, but as trace rather than direct emanation. Trace is in cellular heat created by mtDNA / ATP processes. This is largely through the increased blood supply at a healing wound. Blood contains levels of mtDNA as do all of the other cells but does not contain nuclear DNA. Direct emanation by humans is a measurable process but it is only detectable using scientific instruments.
We have to discount bacterial fluorescence. Bacteria are necessary to our existence and are present in great numbers alongside our human cells. However, bacteria are not genetically human and so the glow created by bacterial fluorescence cannot be attributed to the ancestral link but to the general population instead. Bacterial glow does not develop the psychological process of identification with ancestors.
Equivalence
Equivalence has been found between:
Process A
In HDR Tone
Compress (gamma) and simplify (slider)
In Levels
Spread and decompress (gamma)
Process B (new)
Simplify (ACR Clarity)
Colour layer | Luminance
In Levels
Spread
Comparison A versus B
The effects are equivalent and the number of steps the same. Method A can lose image data by compressing and decompressing where Method B preserves data. Method B. This gives more scope to subtly enhance the through colour channel (RGB) adjustments.
Conclusion
Processing Method A (HDR Tone) remains valid although there is no direct detection of IR. Method B can be adopted in its place for improved data retention and colour processing. The effect applied can be more readily followed.
Visible light detection is what is present and derives mainly from the blood supply to and around the healing wound and is connected to Motherline mtDNA although. As nuclear DNA is not presented in blood this makes the detection a close.
The name Motherline is introduced into blog usage below as it is now being adopted. Motherline refers to the photography of healing wounds and the resultant abstract glow images from a digital post method.
Imaging Science
Long-awaited, the Symposium on imaging science took place at the University of Westminster. on Saturday 14 December 2019.
The opportunity existed to be introduced and meet people from the scientific and medical community. A number of those present were from the Kodak or Ilford companies and from the Universities or other professional bodies.
Imaging science participants were generous in giving their time to listen to the Motherline image glow and the post-processing techniques used.
Michael Turner based on UV image by Dr J CrowtherMichael Turner based on UV image by Dr J Crowther
A processed image was created from a UV image portrait captured after the Symposium talk Imaging the Skin – UV, visible light and IR
As preparation for attending the conference, research was conducted into image compression and decompression, as the techniques used in enhancing glow in Motherline photographs.
It became possible to describe to a medical forensic imaging expert the art interpretations of glow in healing and in return obtain vital and conclusive feedback.
A detailed discussion was had on the processing steps for potential infrared detection. The wavelengths for emanations from healing wounds at human body temperature are very long wavelength, well beyond consumer camera detection capability. The conclusion was that there will be no detection of IR emanation.
Where IR is received by a smartphone camera, in the example of the domestic remote control, the wavelength is short enough to be detected depending on the exact optics of a specific camera, lens and bayesian filter.
Blood Supply |Bacterial Fluorescence
However, in the project photography there is a glow present, so where does it come from? A general news article explains (Hrala, 2016).
Foremost is the presence of blood supply around a healing wound.
Potentially there is fluorescence present. Bacteria gather in the region of a healing wound. When excited by an external light source a glow will appear in the visible spectrum. A Japanese research paper examines this in detail (Koboyashi, 2009)
Detection used a cooled CCD in conditions of complete darkness. With a prosumer camera, there is no detection of direct bodily emanation from a healing wound. Rather than emanation, an external light source excites the bacteria and produces fluorescence in the visible light spectrum.
Both of these effects are the likely cause of the glow that appears in the photo project images.
The previous portfolio settled on monochrome and red. It is interesting to re-discover the following quotation from an external to MA course, The Power of Colour. KLC School of Design.
The following colour interpretations are there to be agreed or disagreed with.
“According to Benjamin Whorf’s Linguistic Relativity Hypothesis, the language a person speaks determines how he or she experiences the world. This can affect how someone perceives colour. For example, the Shona language in Zimbabwe does not distinguish between red and orange. There seems to be a pattern, however, in the order in which all languages recognise colours: all languages appear to have a name for black and white, and if a third colour is recognised, that is red, and next comes yellow or green. “
“People who live in sunny climates prefer warm, bright colours, whereas those from places with less sunlight prefer cooler, less saturated colours.”
Quotations from KLC School of Design
There is a useful article What Colors Mean in Other Cultures. This proved useful in the past and so is brought into the scope of this blog post.
Colour Psychology has been extensively written about, and again here in Chivers and Wright. However, there is often a willingness to accept what is prescribed yet the verdict around any rules and interpretations is open in terms of there being no absolute scientific validity.
A re-exploration of the roots of Abstract in Bauhaus, Modernism, Post Modernism and Abstract Expressionism. Here, for now, a start is made.
This blog post serves as a reminder to revisit the developments that led to Abstract Art. This research was started in an earlier module. As there is a link to the chosen abstract genre for the final photo project, there is a reason to extend the reading.
Historic references are recorded here from external to MA studies:
Albers work gained mention in an external course on colour but did not gain mention within the scope of this MA blog other than a blog this week PHO705: Artist Jake Wood Evans. To right this here a quotation is taken verbatim from (Affron, 2012) Page 302 as it ties together a number of references:
“Itten’s tenure at the Bauhaus was notoriously marked by the increasing incompatibility between the Expressionist and esoteric impulses of Ittenand his cohort and the functionalist ethos for which the school would become known. That tension is latent in Josef Albers’s Gitterbild (Lattice Picture), also known as Grid Mounted … Working on this piece as a student in the glass workshop of the Bauhaus, Albers cut and arranged squares on manufacturers’ samples of glass within a regular metal lattice. On the one hand, this straightforward grid composition foregrounds the materiality and variety of industrially produced glass, divested of the conventional esoteric connotations of coloured glass panes, for example in church windows. (Albers had created a stained glass window for a church four years earlier, and he would have been thoroughly familiar with the mystical connotations of stained glass). And yet, as light passes through Albers’ grid, Kandinsky’s immaterial fantasy of unbounded colour returns, finding subtle expressions through the chromatic emanation of light.”
(Affron. 2012) Page 302
Gitterbild (Lattice Picture) / Grid Mounted Josef Albers
The above plate is from the book Inventing Abstraction (Affron, 2012)
Alfred Stieglitz
Stieglitz work (Birgus, 2002) Pages 44 and 45 have visual similarities with the earlier portfolio images created for the MA as well as the current crop of images. Interestingly the 4×5 print format is common.
[metaslider id=3845 cssclass=””]
Images – Alfred Stieglitz
Laslo Maholy-Nagy
Having read photographic theory expounded by this writer and artist, and now having viewed a particular image, a chord has been struck. It concerns the appearance of the Christian symbol of the cross as it recurred in earlier work in the build-up to the MA portfolios.
In memory of Sibyl Maholy-Nagy – Laslo Maholy-Nagy
Wassily Kandinsky
Kandinsky is linked in the quotation above and has been previously blogged.
Affron, M., Bois, Y. and et al (2012) Inventing Abstraction 1910-1925. 3rd 2014. Edited by D. Frankel. New York: Department of Publications Museum of Modern Art. Available at: http://www.thamesandhudson.com.
Birgus, V. et al. (2002) Die Kunst der Abstrakten Fotografie The Art of Abstract Photography. Edited by Jager Gottfried. Stuttgart, Germany: Arnoldsche Art Publishers.
Attention was drawn to Irish artist Jake Wood Evans painting style.
Connected here is the use of Turner family archive photographs mixed with abstract art which has been trialled. Also, similar is the work of Susan Hiller – Aura, already referenced in this blog,
Paintings – Jake Wood Evans
There is something similar in intent. The final photo project images almost exclusively in black and white may benefit from hand colourization before mixing with mtDNA abstract art images. A basic sepia colouration might be a start.
What could be quite exciting would be the use of some muted or bold colour theory – this is getting quite exciting. Some practice and reading (Albers, 2013) and (Quiller, 2002), were conducted as part of the project research in an earlier module.
Also attended was a four-week course on The Power of Colour presented by the KLC School of Design. Colour theory also makes a regular appearance in Studio photography workshops at work.
Bibliography
Albers, J. (2013) Interaction of Color. 4th edn. Yale University Press. Available at: yalebooks.com/art.
Quiller, S. (2002) Color Choices Making Color Sense out of Color Theory. New York: Watson-Guptill Publications.
There are different commercial services that provide DNA testing connected with ancestry. One service is mentioned here as they have an option to have a personalised book and that fits well with researching visual language of DNA. Two services were inspected:
This is a continuation of earlier research. It looks at a specific book product of commercial DNA testing. The idea is to gain awareness of public perceptions around DNA by examining the visual language used by a company promoting DNA testing.
This current phase of research is prompted by the order and eventual arrival of a personalised analysis “Your DNA Adventure” (LivingDNA, 2019).
The content is predicated on three types of DNA we possess.
Family Ancestry (autosomal DNA)
Motherline Ancestry (mtDNA)
Fatherline Ancestry (Y-DNA)
As the photo project majors on the Motherline (a term now preferred to matriarchy as it softens potential for feminist bias.
The motherline is highly stable over thousands of years and once a change does occur it is passed down to descendants. The top-level term used is Haplogroup within which exist Subclades.
Descriptive language then takes over preventing opaqueness and is a strategy noted elsewhere for keeping others engaged.
There is a very good reference section to explore.
Within the publication the visual themes range across:
trees on African savanna (covers)
Note: The visual references are probably best viewed as a publication rather than my translate to text here.
Bibliography
LivingDNA (2019) Michael Turner – Your DNA Adventure.
Following the visit to the Wellcome Museum, it was clear that others must be working in an area where art is created from science.
Artsci is the term coined in the book (Miller, 2014) where Artsci acknowledges a convergence of Arts, Science and Technology.
Colliding Worlds – How Cutting-Edge Science is Redefining Contemporary Art (Miller 2014)
The work in bulk extensively sells the market for Artsci, by giving innumerable personal reflections on individual contributor after individual contributor, yet this is rebalanced in the final chapter by doubts over the acceptance of Artsci in restricted / specialist galleries being deemed almost gimmicky as an art form. However, examples are made in the ending of the rejection of Picasso and the Impressionists who had to set up their own groups. And so it is left to the reader as to whether or not to take up the “cause” of Artsci.
Millar describes the technical evolution of technology in computing in this book (Millar, 2014). So much resonates with my early career in technology as a world in which artist and scientist no longer are viewed strictly different disciplines. Art and science and engineering are disciplines seen as having a conceptual touchpoint in terms of methodologies e.g. minimalism and cubism.
An electronic signal called a butterfly transform, photographed on Polaroid film, was one of my earliest technical visualisations. I designed and built an electronic circuit to automatically tune to a signal frequency of a type used to communicate with deep space satellites. The active tuning process was viewed on an oscilloscope and the overall capture presented on film. During development one of the early characteristics was that of a squegging oscillator which pulsed on and off due to design tolerance issue in this automatic circuit. This was around the time that a successful MSc application was made to study the subject of Cybernetics that involves the control of machinery using feedback and software controllers. A funding issue arose that prevented the place from being taken up. Besides this, an economic downturn occurred that would certainly have blocked an immediate return to research and development within the industry.
The book runs a direct parallel to my early involvement in computing, discusses the various technological art movements and the establishment of schools for such art.
The book also discriminates between Media and Fine Art the former being linked to crafts and it notes the rejection that occurred on many fronts.
However, with repeated incursions of technology into art and advances in the modern world, it is argued that contemporary art can no longer exist without the structures and knowledge of the scientific world and they are seen to combine.
Artists are seen to look towards science and without getting directly involved with expensive equipment instead read the ideas and then through contemporary art communicate these ideas. Scientists look towards artists to understand how they approach a topic e.g. Nils Bhor and the wave-particle dichotomy of physics and the resolution of this through Picasso and the advent of Cubism, where it is fine to have multiple perspectives present all at once.
The question has to be where does this lead to in terms of the Final photo project? Well, it resolves why the author takes a technological view of art and provides an independent and solid standing. The intent of the work becomes understood in the wider context.
The book identifies the avant-garde as being the convergence of art, science and technology and it is seen as an exciting frontier in Contemporary art.
There is a summary for Antony Gormley, his influences including in science, and his work which was on display in London during visits there.
Another outcome is a strengthened resolve so as to honour or be true to one’s life experiences. Otherwise work would remain conflicted.
Had this work been uncovered earlier in the course, there would have been the time need to develop programmed work such as animations. These would be over and above the glow images attributed to mtDNA. What there is also are elements of identification (determined through psychoanalysis).
The book has been difficult to put down and yet the historical side has to stop at some point to allow time for project progress.
Computational Biology – Human Proteome Folding
Following a career in research and development in electronics and computing, sometime later, there was a formative even if only a side involvement in grid computing donating spare machine cycles to do then return completed calculations to researchers in computational biology. This was in the search for new drug treatments.
Specifically, spare machine cycles were donated to human proteome folding projects. These projects are highly visual as protein formation and attachment is shape-dependent.
These projects go back to around 2004 and there is little visual material remaining. In lieu of this, a TEDtalk was discovered that ably shows the visuals (Dill, 2013).
For 50 years, the “protein folding problem” has been a major mystery. How does a miniature string-like chemical — the protein molecule – encode the functions of living organisms: how our muscles exert force, how our immune systems reject pathogens, how our eyes see our surroundings, how plants convert solar energy, and all the rest. Huge progress is being made. Moreover, these amazing nano-machines could play important roles in health and disease and commerce in the future.
(Dill, 2013)
What this post identifies is what is behind the intent in making the photo project.
Art of Now
Research uncovered a BBC Radio 4 broadcast Art of Now. (McNamee, 2019)
Recombinant Rhymes and DNA Art
The successful sequencing of the human genome has not only had huge implications for medicine, bio-technology and the life sciences – but it has also provoked a great and growing reaction among artists and writers.
Anna McNamee meets poets, visual artists and scientists collaborating creatively on the frontiers of DNA science in a genre that Pulitzer Prize-nominated author of AI Renaissance Arthur Miller calls Art Sci.
In Melbourne, the bio-animator Drew Berry tells how his dramatic but scientifically exact visualizations of cellular and molecular processes have earned him fans around the world – including the musician Bjork.
The poet Sue Dymoke and the structural biologist Pietro Roversi reveal how their creative partnership has resulted in a three-dimensional, topsy turvy poem called DNA Time that mimics DNA’s unique and complex structure.
In his lab, the Canadian experimental poet Christian Bök has successfully encoded his work into the DNA of a bacterium creating what is essentially a living poem.
While at the European Bioinformatics Institute near Cambridge, the artist and filmmaker Charlotte Jarvis and the scientist Dr Nick Goldman have stored music in DNA which they then suspended in a soap solution and used to blow bubbles, quite literally, bathing their audiences in music.”
(McNamee, 2019)
Drew Berry
Drew Berry is a biomedical animator at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne, Australia. He produces animations of proteins and protein complexes to illustrate cellular and molecular processes (Berry, 2011).
Wikipedia
Animation Development
Berry describes the molecular level being sub-light wavelength and how he gained inspiration from the accurate scale drawings of David Goodsell:
Beyond this Berry incorporates measurements of cell dynamics and microscopic observations of larger cell structures to create his animations. His intent is to make work that viewers can take-in with avoidance of technical descriptions and acronyms which otherwise make the subject opaque and turn off the viewer (Berry, 2012)
Animations from Berry and molecular biologists and cell biologists:
Miller, A. I. (2014) Colliding Worlds – How Cutting-Edge Science is Redefining Contemporary Art. New York and London: W. W. Norton and Company. Available at: www.wwnorton.com
Following my 1-2-1 Final Proposal Review, I planned to visit the Wellcome Library and Museum. There are regular Insights Sessions held.
There is a useful Blog that has an older item from 2018 from the Broadcasting Health and Disease Conference.
A successful visit was made during the Being Human exhibition.
Wellcome Library Reading Rooms
[metaslider id=3466 cssclass=””]
“Glass Microbiology” Luke Jerram, 2014
l-r “Ebola”, “Giardia”, “MRSA”
photographs Michael Turner
These glass sculptures “challenge the virulent artificially-coloured depictions of bacteria and viruses seen in the media and popular culture.” Examples of the media representations with colour can be found in (Salter, 2017)
There is an ongoing tendency to fall into engaging conversations with artists and others. On this occasion, it was a certain Patricia who engaged in conversation around arts, whilst setting out easels for a class as I photographed the above. Subject matter ranged widely across subjects such as contextualisation, the so-called, death of the author, and Portrait Gallery open sketching sessions (my first ever portrait black paper white pencil):
Sketch from National Portrait Gallery (Patricia asked to see a photo of this (if anyone wondered why it is reproduced here))
The Being Human Permanent Exhibition – Genetics
Here on display was a CRISPR gene-editing kit. CRISPR allows cost-effective gene editing or even biohacking. Alongside is a portable gene sequencer as a smartphone app and attachment. Since the human genome was sequenced at the turn of the millennium, gene editing and sequencing has become portable and cost-effective. Devices have come out of the specialist laboratory and are entering the public consciousness. Such images lend to the genetic contextualisation of the abstract photo project.
[metaslider id=3480 cssclass=””]
A number of references were identified.
Trauma (in relation to close relatives, of victims of war, who withdrew emotionally) (Kolk, 2015)
Art in Science (in relation to the photo project visual contextualisation) (Salter, 2017)
Bibliography
Kolk, B. Van Der (2015) The Body Keeps the Score Mind, Brain and Body in the Transformation of Trauma. Penguin. Great Britain: Penguin Random House UK. Available at: http://www.greenpenguin.co.uk.
Salter, C. (2017) science is beautiful disease and medicine under the microscope. London, [England]: Batsford. Available at: http://www.pavilionbooks.com.
Photographs Michael Turner 2019 unless work is otherwise attributed
This research arises from a connection established with a geneticist. The value here is in the development of visual language for contextualisation of the photo project.
Mitotic Division is examined by augmented reality with the following app and educational workbook:
Note: Select English under the triple bar menu
The emphasis moved closer towards an interest in mitochondria explored in another recent blog post. While there is an abundance of archive images that explore the matriarchal lines of family, the visual context around genetics is being developed having been more restricted materially and in terms of ideas, which are constantly being expanded.
Use
The pdf says to print off the guidance – the app seems to work when reading the graphics directly from the screen graphics when Adobe Acrobat (or another reader is used).
In pursuing a World War 1 theme, or having done so, it would make sense to expand on the photo projects context by building a stock of images and other research. This was done earlier at IWM Duxford (IWM, 2019) and The Black Watch Castle and Museum Perth. These visits proved useful in contextualising abstract work.
Options have recently been generated to expand themes in new directions in other words, other than military. In the interests of keeping shooting, it would be useful to visit a number of sites.
This reading is used to extend research-driven practice into Family Constellations
(Hellinger, 2011) (Ulsamer, no date) (Preiss, 2012)
A Return to Family Constellation Research
Family Constellation is now on the second iteration of research in connection with this photographic practice. When looked at before, the emphasis was on the title word Therapy: Family Constellation Therapy used to describe a group or individual interaction under the guidance of a facilitator. In this sense, it appeared to have a disconnect with Family and mitochondria.
In the interests of promoting the research-driven photographic practice, Family Constellation is now subjected to a more critical appraisal.
First indications are positive. Who we are as a dependance on who we came from, which does connect with the current project. A search for love in these connections is said to satisfy the soul and allow the individual in the present to become free of ant entanglement and give focus to their own life or in other terms from the method, give birth to themselves.
The language does appear unscientific, that of a guru yet on a commercial level selling a product or more accurately a service that works on a psychological basis in a manner perhaps Yoga does for the physical and spiritual.
At a cursory level, it is easy to dismiss Family Constellation unless the reader of it is happy to believe in its principles. Acceptance of approaches to help individuals grow into management roles in a business context is probably very similar and more familiar. Trust in strategies such as Transactional Analysis PAC or Emotional Intelligence EI is normally readily established. Other areas are more difficult to accept for some such as Myers Briggs categorisations which seem to be wholeheartedly accepted or are accepted within a collection of similar strategies, with outlined limitations or in the opposite and quite commonly outright rejected, potentially as a threat of some sort regarding manipulation. And so with Family Constellations, there appears to be the same kind of barriers to acceptance. Not being so well known a technique it may be more difficult for it to gain widespread acceptance. The feeling is there is bound to be and seems to be a body of followers.
If we take the above as an a priori position and set about to prove or disprove, then we have a way of moving forward. More reading is required.
Summary
Going into this research with an open mind is quite revealing. What is clear from (Preiss , 2012) is that a number of family situations documented here could or can be linked to the family narratives of the Photographic Project e.g. Relationships (Preiss, 2012, Loc 3081) with heavy fates. What is offered is a way of maintaining a healthy link to family in the past in such a way as to gain release from entanglement and become free from it and do so in a respectful and healing manner.
From a set on non-academic texts of all things has come a realisation that there can now be a disconnect with the heavy load of the past carried through the project. In fact, in radical terms, it becomes possible to disconnect from the subject matter, which has not been feasible until now.
Already the project has been on a trajectory away from the military endeavours of the past to family photography archive and flora.
Investment and Direction
To take the photo project and stop dead with it would be brave if not risky a move. Such a move would also mean having to write off costly investments relating to the original subject.
If the themes of empathy and loss were to be set aside, there still remains the artistic interest in abstraction as the natural expression of the author and the ever-growing theme around mitochondria, photographing healing and movement into creating art from a science of Biology.
Hear hangs a major decision. A decision needs to be made.
Staying with the methods developed for making abstract work is the decision. More emphasis is beginning to be placed on the mitochondrial theme. Research is also being conducted into the themes of spectres or ghosts and into the weird and eerie to draw out those elements.
The latter is base on the appearance of landscapes, seascapes and consistently but more frequently the appearance of ghost images.
Bibliography
Preiss, I. T. (2012) Family Constellations Revealed. 2nd Editio. Antwerp, Belgium: Indra Torsten Preiss.
Hellinger, B. (2011) Laws of Healing. Bischofswiesen, Germany: Hellinger Publications.
Ulsamer, B. (no date) The Art and Practice of Family Constellations. Edited by C. Beaumont. Kindle Unlimited.
This reading is used to extend research-driven practice into Themes of Politics and History. (Derrida, 1994)
The blog title has been chosen as a phenomenology of personal experience in relation to objects. And the Simulacrum as a means by which the camera creates a version of reality. From the photograph of healing glow a version of reality abstracted in a direction based on personal experience of place and of people.
And so “… to render an account of, the effects of ghosts, of simulacra, of ‘synthetic images’, …” (Derrida, 1994) Page 94.
In discussing exorcism as a means of creating death and its comparison to a Coroner issuing a certificate in which that which was living is no longer alive. “… the dead can often be more powerful than the living …” (Derrida, 1994) Page 60.
There are many references within the text with some connection to the appearance of ghost images amongst the abstract work of the photographic project.
Out of original photographs of healing sites, there appeared from time to time an occasional ghost image. In the previous module, there was a flood of such images. This leads to the question being asked about the appearance of ghosts. There is a strong emotional effect in finding spectres and while they can be seen by the author, they were also clearly spotted by visitors to an exhibition of the work.
Derrida is a renowned philosopher who in writing about the spectre of Marx, yes in a context of the fall of communism, covers throughout the text the theme of apparitions.
In a discussion of the phenomenological and of the simulacrum there appears the following observation:
“For there is no ghost, there is never any becoming-specter of the spirit without at least an appearance of flesh, in a space of invisible visibility, like the dis-appearing of an apparition. For there to be (a) ghost, there must be a return to the body, but to a body that is more abstract than ever” P 157.
The photographic project takes that which may be invisible and makes it visible and does so from flesh and in making an abstract form. As Derrida contemplates the Specters of Marx, then so the project contemplates the spectres of ancestors. The theme thus far has been versed not as those lost but of those who suffered their loss. The mother who lost her son or soldier who lost a brother.
“Mourning always follows a trauma” (Derrida, 1994) Page 121 strikes a chord. On discovering the trauma of those previously not known there followed no doubt a form of mourning, even if displaced from the family it directly impacted onto to those who uncovered the events.
As quoted (ibid) forms of trauma, the classification of which is attributed to Freud include psychological trauma (the power of the unconscious over the conscious ego), and biological trauma. In the photo project, psychological trauma could be linked to the unconscious element of creating abstract imagery including ghost images, while the biological may be responsible for creating identification and the effect on the body. If so, these are powerful creative processes.
On writing on “Time is out of joint”, as Derrida wrestles with an interpretation of “… one time in the past, how would it be valid for all times?” (ibid) Page 61 again one is reminded of the photo project having a theme from mitochondria being unchanged for thousands of years and so of 100 years of history being collapsed into a moment.
By pure coincidence the last portfolio exhibited was monochrome with the red of blood – the cover of this book is monochrome and red.
Ghost Dance
Ghost Dance. (McMullen, 1983)” Through the experiences of two women in Paris and London, Ghost Dance offers a stunning analysis of the complexity of our conceptions of ghosts memory and the past.” – IMDB. This arthouse film is available on YouTube and features Jacques Derrida as himself.
This reading is used to extend research-driven practice into Beyond the Unheimlich (Fisher, 2016)
The Weird
A quality of the weird is the presence that does not belong. (Fisher, 2016) Page 61
The subject matter here is uncanny and although it is an essay about literature falling into the categories of the weird or eerie, the text relates to the photo project and the author’s experience. In creating imagery in the abstract, an image, that is strangely familiar emerges. The photograph of healing that translated into a seascape, reminiscent of the mudflats off of the Solway Coast. This place is in the southern Scottish lands, once lived in and where the historic research and photography was conducted. The German unheimlich relates to a feeling of the creepy. Unheimlich is used by Freud as a such creates a bias in meaning. This makes it difficult to focus on variations in the translation, it seems. Unhomely is one preferred example overtaken by Freud’s writing.
An obstruction found by (Fisher, 2016) Page 8 is an association with the genres of Horror and Science Fiction from which the author goes on to write of the common feature of “The strange – not the horrific.” and then to highlight the fascination for what “lies beyond standard perception, cognition and experience.”
Although abstract outputs of the photo project often have a sense of that which is there that would not be expected to be there, the result when colourful creates a sense of pleasure in the viewer as sensed at a recent Exhibition at which additional work, that which did not make the final edit, was shown.
In (Fisher, 2016) Page 39 there is a quotation from Zizek observing a condition of overtaking or “transference to find ourselves at a later point which we have already been.” The photo project, by contrast, collapses time into a moment. The present becomes linked to a past time one hundred years ago. Simultaneously, those from one hundred years ago transfer into the contemporary moment and this is where a psychological identification takes place from the present to those from the past. In this, the dead remain dead but the story that their lives contained becomes present. There is a knowing that their wounds healed by the same source of mitochondria that our connected flesh experience in healing.
(ibid) Page 40. Unlike in the 1969 novella, Behold the Man, the prospect of transporting back 2000 years to live the life of Christ including his crucifixion is barred. The photo project theme is based on common mitochondria passed down the maternal line. There would need to be a connection through the matriarchy back to Mary Magdelaine would never become proven. Such events are of course far beyond the project scope which only has certainty over a recorded history of one hundred years.
As the earlier form of the project had taken shape and images had been made, there was an uncanny Exhibition experience where Rachel Howard’s paintings (Howard, 2018), were seen to have distinct visual similarities. Howard’s paintings carried the Catholic theme of Christ’s crucifixion. This was blogged in a previous module and whilst there was an overwhelming experience of the weird, it was an example of coincidence. Photo image post-processing had a similar effect to an easel based art in which gravity acted on paint. Nevertheless, an unheimlich experience.
In (Fisher, 2016) Page 45 mention is made “There is another type of weird effect that is generated by strange loops”. In human biology, the mitochondria are set apart from the nuclear DNA within the cell. In the inter-spacial region, the mitochondrial DNA form loops, and act as the energy powerhouses of the bodies cells. There they create ATP molecules for energy storage and transfer. The mitochondria have been captured by the human cells and adapted to life there. However, the mitochondria are an ancient form of cellular structure that exists in a bacterial world where they are able to exist independently. (Cowell, 2019) Within the sperm, mitichondria power the race to the unfertilised egg. This endeavour is not rewarded as the egg with its own mitochondria overpower it.
Finally, on the subject of the weird, (Fisher, 2016) Page 58 describes how “we must attend to the strange folds, burrows and passageways of Inland Empire’s weird architectures. Here, there is a crossover into the miniature world of human biology. The loops that mitochondria form, increase the surface area through a crinkled effect of cristae. The outer membrane only is adapted to allow the passage of very small molecules into the mitochondria. Then through the various complex effects enzymes allow glucose to split into carbon components at the surface as the Kleb citric cycle takes place. During the process, an unequal potential is created between the outside and inside of the mitochondria whereupon further enzymes allow some of the processed results to reenter the mitochondria through multiple narrow channels. There is an expiration process, in which carbon dioxide and water are released. What is weird and striking is the architecture of restricted access and limited re-entry and uncanny parallel to the architecture of the fictional world in the Inland Empire.
Again, this is weird or unheimlich.
The Eerie
“The sensation of the eerie clings to certain kinds of physical spaces or landscapes.” (Fisher, 2016) Page 61
In the photo project, as post-processing unfolds, there evolve such spaces or landscapes. As with the eerie cry and its effect on the imagination, there may be a hint of something being missing. In the photo project, the spaces created are devoid of people yet their mark may be found on the landscape.
Update: reading into the eerie recommenced in the Christmas break.
(Fisher, 2016) Page 97″Repeatedly throughout his fiction, Garner points to the eerie power of the landscape, reminding us of the ways in which physical spaces condition perception, and of the ways in which particular terrains are stained by traumatic events” … “the mythic is part of the virtual infrastructure which makes human life as such possible”:
An interesting comment in (Fisher, 2016) Page 109:
“There are ghosts in the machine, and we are they, and they are we.”
Of portrayal in the film Interstellar (Fisher, 2016) Page 121:
“The immediate temptation here is to dismiss this (portrayal) as nothing more than kitsch sentimentality. Part of the power of Interstellar, however, comes from its readiness to take risks appearing to be naive, as well as emotionally and conceptually excessive.”
Clearly, there are potential traps of kitsch etc to be avoided in the photo project.
Fisher, M. (2016) The Weird and the Eerie. London, [England]: Repeater Books. Available at: https://www.repeaterbooks.com.
Howard, R. (2018) Repetition is Truth via Dolorosa. Edited by A. C. Beard Jason. London: Other Criteria Books. Available at: https://www.newportstreetgallery.com.
With the renewed focus called for in today’s Module Leader Group Critique that students drive their work forward as a research-driven practice, then it makes good sense to ramp up on this in the blog.
Research that ran strongly in an earlier module runs a lower level of engagement after a busy period of making and so the time is right to conduct more in-depth analysis.
A recent blog post highlighted areas of research interest, omitted sadly from the proposal by way of four texts.
This was a very useful 1-2-1 session guided by a true professional. Thank you for helping me to progress my work.
During the 1-2-1 there were some exciting and helpful turns, that I’d not expected. Thankfully I was able to address each point.
Referencing
Referencing had been deficient in my proposal. I’d not planned it to be a rushed job, but it was what it was, and I accept the comment. I’d since blogged my references, and was able to show these in my fully refreshed CRJ blog here.
In practice, my work is back on track, I just wasn’t able to assemble and organise references in time for the Proposal submission.
Proposal Organisation – Headings
A comment was made on the Proposal organisation. There was a need for more headings. The proposal was likened to a stream of consciousness, a comment which I love. There is a time and place I accept, but to be recognised as writing in the style of Roland Barthes, has to be an honour, surely?
Evidencing
Some assertions in my Proposal required evidencing. I can rectify the problem now, even if only for my own satisfaction. Points relate to detailing:
A planned Meeting with a Kodak scientist and specialist in digital imaging and medical imaging who works in the cosmetics industry.
A visit to a Digital Imaging Symposium in December – a Kodak scientist I’ve known since 2010 is set to give me an introduction. Note to self, I need to catch up with him on Friday.
My reviewer wanting to know more was encouraging. The project has been moving forward from interpretations of Biology theme and begins to enter a medical world of digital imaging. Why so? This originally was simply to validate a technical point around healing glow and Infrared emissions.
However, this research led me to investigate a bridge between Art and Science. especially following a Symposium back in September.
A further point that required evidencing concerned:
Creativity and the subconscious mind.
Direct evidence is present in the making of my work. The process is experiential. Appreciation of how abstract art is created cannot be assumed for the non-practitioner audience.
In academic terms, this is probably insufficient, or so I now realise. With the formal approach, I reference:
(Kandinsky, no date) Page ii on our spiritual relationship with the primitives, “… these artists sought to express in their work only internal truths, renouncing, in consequence, all considerations of external form”. So too I.
(Scarry 1987) page 21. “The human action of making entails two distinct phases – making up (mental imaging) and making-real (endowing the mental object with a material or verbal form).
Scarry ably described then, what became second nature in my work.
The Critical Review Journal CRJ (this blog)
As I’d shown my updated reference post and this later conjured interest in the CRJ. I was able to show a couple of relevant posts and by navigating to the bottom of the page, demonstrate the organisation:
Tag Cloud
Category selector and
Free text search
Next came the test, to retrieve a Portfolio from a prior module. That worked smoothly and was a testament to the preparations made. The search was a genuine thing as the Portfolio was then displayed and discussed. What followed was a connected piece on the next steps of project development. This at the time was a screen share of a prepared PDF on my computer desktop. Since the 1-2-1 the PDF has been posted here:
Bibliography
Kandinsky, W. (no date) Concerning the Spiritual in Art. Edited by M. Sadlier.
Scarry, E. (1987) The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World. New York, London: Oxford University Press-23 978-0-19-504996-1.
What are the options I feel might work in presenting my processed images?
From my research (Colberg, 2017) page 46 consideration is given to different groups having different degrees of visual sophistication, and this should shape the concept. As a book publication with the intent of avoiding small edition size, it is appropriate to make a photobook accessible. I should avoid making it overly complicated. I ought to add text that helps the viewer understand it.
This is my first obvious challenge as to date I’ve been aiming at multilayered meaning and have preferred by analogy Shakespeare prose rather than Daily Mirror. What is to be gained by trying to be too clever (and potentially failing at it too)?
(Colberg, 2017) page 47 also draws attention to the “zine form often looking like a sloppily made photobook.” I may have made the point elsewhere that I use the zine as part of my workflow when creating a hand-bound book. It is not a deliverable item in its own right.
Narrative
(Colberg, 2017) page 47 discusses narrative and how it both means “story” (as in what is the story being told here?) and the process or technique of telling a story (as in: how is the story being told?)
I have learned that “it is important to keep these two aspects of a photobook apart: what is the story? How is the story being told?”
Then does there have to be a story. No. Bit most photography os about something so there is probably some sort of story.
I’m going to try and keep these points in mind as I look at some options.
I have these ideas to take into the review this week, Week 6:
Use mixed images where archives and abstracts are somehow layered. Until I try it out I won’t really know how effective this will be.
Take each abstract as the main image and have around it two small related pictures; a family archive photo in one position, a narrative picture of a person or a newspaper quote of them.
The latter translates through the form of a timeline and should be comprehensible. A complication to this is the idea of time collapsed alluded to here. I now explore the metaphor of a ladder where there is the transmission of the gene as an information carrier. In fact the DNA double helix is visually like a ladder. At each rung, of my ladder there is a photographic archive print relating to relatives who share in common biology.
Still running for a book publication:
Use a template approach such as discussed previously by adapting the layout from Rachel Howard’s Repetition is Truth exhibition book.
The structure is:
Interview (including contextualising photos in miniature)
Prose (also the same with contextualising photos in miniature)
The main body of abstract paintings created using the hidden brush of gravity.
A collection of abstract miniatures giving a kind of contact sheet view accompanied by minor captions.
Adopting Howard’s method for me overcomes a problem of wanting to be like this artist and major in abstract imagery. I’m aware of personal significance I had gained from Howard’s exhibition that is not transferable to my audience. Then it is probably too early in the FMP module to bar more considered options.
Bibliography
Colberg, J. (2017) Understanding Photo Books the Form and Content of the Photographic Book. Edited by Taylor and Francis. New York: Focal Press.
I comment here on LO3, LO4, and LO6 as areas of focus. Perhaps I did not communicate these strongly in my Final Proposal.
LO3 Critical Contextualisation of Practice
I contextualise my photography and image creation in terms of healing and art, an earlier identification with suffering, along with the spirituality of connecting with family and our remembrance of them. The following references I associate my with:
Sick Photography Representations of Sickness in Art Photography (Tammi, 2017)
The Body in Pain The Making and Unmaking of the World (Scarry, 1985)
Family is the immediate audience. My work emerged from family as a collaboration.
Our staff and students within the University are audiences. This a step towards going public through assignments, portfolio reviews and critiques.
Accomplished photographers and digital artists I would reach out to as my primary audience.
Clinical photographers and scientist experts in digital and medical imaging are an emerging target audience. At present, I use the scientific community to test theory and assumptions.
Followers of my work, may or may not represent a professional context yet interaction here often brings pleasant surprises. Some from this group are from teaching or an arts and crafts background. They actively express interest in my work and have done so now for several years. Followers have earned special consideration.
There are several tried ways and other potential ways of reaching out. The exhibition has to be the main driving force, as experienced in an earlier module. From this springs the marketing and publicity of reaching a particular milestone. This would lead to a rich media environment and supporting materials and social media campaign.
A book is a recommended outcome for my work having demonstrated strong skills in making in an earlier module. I would create a book dummy and would seek to convert it into a professionally bound work. Numbers of interested parties might tally around ten at a first count. I need to give this more consideration.
Even if I restrict the list to these for now, I klnow from experience there is a whole lot more making:
Video for contextualisation.
Audio recording as for creating atmosphere.
Online gallery
As an emerging digital artist, it would fit to occupy a gallery space in one of the online communities. At present, this has to be aspirational as there is so much more to find out. I’ve participated in virtual world exhibitions several times, explicitly using Linden Second Life, a virtual world.
From an online world perspective creating a gallery is untried for me. I’m sure I would need to involve a virtual world developer. This is exciting, really exciting, even it flies in the face of materiality. I’m thinking through how the name Second Life becomes connected with the theme of my work which is really an aside. However, I see a great connection with the title, as sentiment and as the digital presentation of digital making. This would be a true mark of progress, given ancestors could never have predicted the rise of the internet and the discovery of knowledge of genetics. At some point, I was going to get carried away and here we are. I really need to focus right down on making rather than being distracted by technology. This can be saved for later.
LO6 Written and Oral Skills
My chosen area has been hard to convey to a general audience. This circumstance has been a constant for my time on this MA course and it is only through repeated practice that I hone this skill. The starting position each tome involves a trap. It is always too easy to over-elaborate and justify my work. In subsequent iterations this communication becomes more crisp.
Bibliography
Batchen, G. (2004) Forget me not. New York: Princeton Architectural Press. Available at: http://www.papress.com.
Kandinsky, W. (no date) Concerning the Spiritual in Art. Edited by M. Sadlier.
Scarry, E. (1987) The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World. New York, London: Oxford University Press-23 978-0-19-504996-1.
Tammi, M. (2017) Sick Photography Representations of Sickness in Art Photography. Edited by M. Tammi. Lahti, Finland: Aalto University Publication- Aalto ARTS Books Helsinki. Available at: https://shop.aalto.fi/.
I continue evidencing my research with reading that began in an earlier study module that I carry into my FMP.
I’ll return to make my update.
Bibliography
Kandinsky, W. (no date) Concerning the Spiritual in Art. Edited by M. Sadlier.
Kandinsky, W. (1977) Concerning the Spiritual in Art. Dover. Edited by M. Sadler. New York: Dover Publications, Inc. Available at: http://www.doverpublications.com.
I continue evidencing my research with reading that began in an earlier study module that I carry into my FMP.
I’ll return to update this blog.
For now, it is clear to me in my work that making-up is a part of the abstraction process driven by the subconscious mind following a period of deep immersion in the topic lasting now several decades. This is the result of collaborating with a history researcher.
The result though is the print that gives the abstract its material form, and so the tie-in to the following quotation:
“The human action of making entails two distinct phases – making up (mental imaging) and making-real (endowing the mental object with a material or verbal form) …” (Scarry, 1985)
Bibliography
Scarry, E. (1987) The Body in Pain: The Making and Unmaking of the World. New York, London: Oxford University Press-23 978-0-19-504996-1.
This is one of four contextualization blogs I intend to publish in Week 6 and will expand upon later. The post is meant to evidence some earlier research I started in a previous study module and that I carry through into my FMP.
My reading had led to the Aalto University doctoral dissertation 172/2017 as published in the book by this title: Sick Photography Representations of Sickness in Art Photography – Maija Tammi (Tammi, 2017).
This work covers a similar divide to my own, i.e. that between medical science and photographic art.
The publication overlaps into two exhibitions held in Finland.
Keywords: Sickness; disease; illness; art photography; abject; Kristeva; Kleinman
The best description I can offer for this difficult subject is the Author Maija Tammi’s own words from her book abstract which I have wholeheartedly copied below:
“This artistic research scrutinizes how sickness has been represented in art photography and examines the new ways to approach, think about and create photographic art about sickness. This dissertation combines theoretical research and artworks. t\he theoretical part shows that while scholars have concentrated the ethics of what kinds of images of sickness or suffering ought to be shown or on the psychology of why some images of sickness bother viewers, most art photographers have concentrated on depicting personal illness experiences. The research applies anthropologist Arthur Kleinman’s definitions of sickness, illness, and disease in a diagram to examine photographic artworks approach the topic.”
“To understand the functions and the meanings of the different approaches, the research draws especially from Julia Kristeva’s writings on the abject. The main results of the research, artworks Leftover and White Rabbit Fever are intertwined with the theoretical part. Leftover was exhibited at Photographic Gallery Hippolyte in Helsinki in January 2014, and White Rabbit Fever at Gallery Lapinlahti in Helsinki in September 2016. Both bodies of work have also been published as books: Leftover/Removal by Kehrer Verlag in 2014, and White Rabbit Fever by Bromide Book in 2017.”
Quotation
Charles Baudelaire, “… copying nature had nothing to do with art.” (Tammi, 2017) Page 54.
Perspective
Having read this work, it is clear there is a distinction present between the book with sickness, illness and disease versus the photo project and healing as glow. A similarity of sorts is in the book exemplifying the growing and dividing HeLa cells with the progressive colour change of the suspension. Beyond these comparisons the book and photo project are separate subject matters both involving the human body.
Common considerations do exist that have perhaps been down played or given cause to obscure and these relate to:
Ethical and aesthetic problems
Disturbing images
The difficulty of looking – the abject
Difficult photos – aversion; Freud’s uncanny; Misselhorn’s aesthetic of disgust
(Tammi, 2017) Pages 29, 37, 181-204, 215
“… it is not sickness that should be be re-defined or questioned but health.” Page 217 And healing in health is exactly what the photo project does focus upon.
Bibliography
Tammi, M. (2017) Sick Photography Representations of Sickness in Art Photography. Edited by M. Tammi. Lahti, Finland: Aalto University Publication- Aalto ARTS Books Helsinki. Available at: https://shop.aalto.fi/.
The basis of my Abstract practice is the healing glow captured by the camera sensor enhanced in post-processing. In my endeavour to research appropriate visual language, I’ve looked towards the scientific and medical communities to determine how such work enters the wider consciousness including the public. Through investigation I’d hope to understand how my images might be viewed and how I might layer in certain types of graphic. For example representations of XY chromosome and DNA test strip.
The latter I’d used to give context to the viewer and I’m looking for creative ways to expand the visuals.
Clinical Photography Guidelines
When photographs of healing are digitally processed I often find expression through highly saturated colours. From the heat camera image below there is a similar palette and so there is a consistency. There is a tendency to work in monochrome which suppresses these colours. My research determines if colour trivialises my work or represents a wider consciousness.
Voluntary adoption of working guidelines of Clinical Photography. (Naylor, 2003) creates an association with medical photography. The method leads to a closer inspection of healing sites and sometimes observations are made which can trigger the curiosity but is sidelined. However, the heat camera article in the newspaper serves to remind that medical observation can follow.
The heat camera item is a newspaper article and doesn’t carry the same weight as funded medical research. The Medical Photography heading though, does have weight. A reading shows there to be a new or emerging science of light in diagnosis. Even as a visual only there is close correspondence to the art images I make within the project.
In conclusion, it seems valid that I should anchor my work to medical science at least on a visual basis. This gives hope that the viewer of abstract art may read and correctly interpret the signs given.
The last item below, In Conversation, brings attention to the crossover between biological sciences and art. I feel this validates my choice of subject of healing glow as it sits at the boundary of art and science.
Commercial Heat Cameras
What has triggered the post were two more coincidences. A newspaper article reported on heat detection of cancer (Parker, 2019)
Bal Gill / PA
Medical Photography
Notice has been sent out regarding How light “of many different colours and flavours” can be used to diagnose disease in a number of remarkable new ways. (Macdonald, 2019)
RPS Medical Group
In the photograph above the red coloured left-hand image is very similar to the appearance I create within my image sets. The structure also has a correspondence with my work. This means the abstract practice is quite well founded in colour and form.
In conversation: Viewing the Invisible
Scientist and artists were brought together to explore the similarities in their working methods in Viewing the Invisible. (NPG, 2019) I was able to talk with a number of scientists about my art perspective on mitochondrial DNA.
This video was returned to on 16 October. This lecture tunes in to the representation of people through community collaborative practice.
I then relate Judy Harrison’s work to my practice to find out what I can take from it.
Studying at college with what were to become famous names such as Martin Parr and others, Judy was in good company. Judy’s work showed a great deal of social concern around the topic of identity, migration and racism. Her work also featured themes of strong women in farming and in the pottery industry.
Judy’s work showed genuine concern for people as she spent time talking with them. Examples here were the women working on farms. Judy noted the importance of engaging with the women who were her subjects. This was part of slowing down. She did not want to take advantage of her subjects.
An element of rephotography existed as Judy often returned to the original places and so was aware of changes that had occurred.
[metaslider id=3014 cssclass=””]
Judy instigated the setting up of workshops in migrant communities and by lending cameras, and by showing how to use them her subjects were able to document their own identities. This was a lengthy venture in which Judy was involved for 15 years.
The collaborative work toured and exhibited nationally.
[metaslider id=3022 cssclass=””]
Work began to locate in a third space, between shooting indoors and outdoors. Her collaborators were able to bring gestures of performance and create images of self-expression. People were given a voice. She would often go back over the years. The children had grown into adults and now had their own children.
Judy then became concerned to document place, people and school. Her concern was to mend a cultural divide, through a literacy project.
Her work changed to that of the decline in the potteries and she became deeply ingrained in the remaining industry and alludes to the sensory experience in that working environment with the smell of clay and dust.
[metaslider id=3035 cssclass=””]
Judy is an advocate of making work on photographic film as a means of slowing down. This compares with the Final photo project. As a photographer, 35mm film use has been readopted. However, its use is infrequent. The digital practice is unavoidable in the Final photo project where unseen data on the digital sensor is key. Slowing down still occurs but this occurs at the post-processing of image art in the digital darkroom.
#Advice
The work is not about Nostalgia. Is nostalgia a negative?
Obtain a balance between others’ interests and the photographer’s interests.
Collaboration is encouraged by the University. A challenge is knowing how to mark the work. Family archive prints are a newly introduced part of my project as I seek direction in mixing art with photographs others can identify with. If seen as collaboration it is in the context of using historical records.
Bibliography
Photographs – courtesy Judy Harrison from Falmouth University Guest Lecture
The project direction is such that an alternative figurative image direction is being sought. At the end of PHO703 a resolved body of work was created.
An attempt is is now to be made to move on from Warfare to a theme of place. The purpose is to create new work for an existing practice whose intent is Identification with people and place past.
[metaslider id=2177 cssclass=””]
The place is that of coastal inland where the landscape and seascape will have altered little other than the ruin of abandoned buildings.
So to enhance abstract work using images of the fauna and flora of today as representation of that experienced by ancestors.
Photographs made now span or collapse into a single moment a timespan of over 100 years. This is the same for a Biology of female transmission of the highly stable mitochondrial DNA. The two themes form a parallel, strengthening the identification of specific family members today with specific others in the past.
This was another video in the initial backlog of lectures that had gone unmentioned/undiscovered for reason(s) unknown.
Introduction
Jon Tonks is a British photographer based in the UK. His work focuses on telling stories about people’s lives shaped by history and geography. With an MA in Documentary Photography & Photojournalism from London College of Communication, his work has been featured in The New York Times, The Guardian, Sunday Times, Telegraph and FT Weekend Magazines, the British Journal of Photography and more. He has been shortlisted for the Taylor Wessing National Portrait Prize three times, twice for the Terry O’Neill Award, and in 2014, Tonks was presented with the Vic Odden Award by the Royal Photographic Society for his first book Empire – a journey across the South Atlantic exploring life on four remote British Overseas Territories. The book was hailed by Martin Parr as one of his best books of the year. His work is now in a number of private collections, both in the UK and abroad, including The Hyman Collection of British photography, and the Houston Museum of Fine Arts, Texas. https://www.jontonks.com/
Projects discussed:
Empire – this was based around Ascension, Saint Helena then Tristan de Cuna, 2007-2014.
Falklands for which a book was published
South Pacific 2014-2020
Multi-story arts-based charity commissions Magnum photographers. Took part in a project about the Black Country around Sandwell and the Polish and Eastern European migrants.
Vanuatu – a South Pacific island where colonial and missionary influences were rejected. Its people instead identified with the economic strength of the US and awaited the arrival of a white man as US citizen who would bring change.
[metaslider id=3095 cssclass=””]
#Advice
Jon’s work followed on from his photojournalism. He worked for a local newspaper for a while but it was very limiting. At this point, he turned to his study of the lesser-known Empire. Following portfolio review was asked to do something more exciting so went back to revisit. He showed the book dummy at University.
The experience in Jon’s case was he didn’t know what the outcomes might be for his work. Work just snowballed.
It can help to go to Photo Fairs and Portfolio Reviews, but these can be harsh and will reduce some people to tears.
Jon started with simple portraits. One a group of boys and a bicycle was put forward as a Taylor Wessing entry.
Tonks’ Falklands book was published by Dewe Lewis. The layout was of simple two page spreads with a photo on one page with the text opposite. A specialist was used to do the map artwork. Almost by surprise, the Falklands book sold out. A second edition was created, of which there are some left.
Doing the projects again, they’d be done in a slightly different manner.
Projects can take 6 years, 7 years and evolve.
Release forms were used with the Ascension project but this evolved to asking permission and taking contact details if the work was to be used in a commercial sense. What the work does is represent things as what are. Everyone knew why the photographer was there and what he was doing.
Self-funded projects were possible through weddings and some documentary work for the Nokia brand. Tonks relocated from London to cheaper areas. He felt he missed some openings and events.
There is the idea of pitching to a newspaper and building up a relationship. It is difficult to do it with full-time commissions.
The new location in Bath it quite centrally placed. Being local you get to pick up work there.
It is important to realise the kind of photographer you aren’t. Realise what you’re good at and not so good at. Try to remain focussed like an arrow.
Artist Susan Hiller’s work Auras: Homage to Marcel Duchamp 2008 features found portraits of individuals surrounded by clouds of light: ‘metaphors for our selves in the digital age.’ Hiller is alluding to the 1910 Portrait of Dr. Dumouchel by Duchamp (1887–1968), a historical aura portrait in the clairvoyant tradition. (Tate, 2019)
I wouldn’t want clairvoyance to be the dominant visual reading of my project. What I do is create intergenerational identification by gene transmission.
So, the question. Will my intent be taken the wrong way?
Hiller’s colour work Aura’s flows from this portrait of Dr Dumouchel:
Dr Dumouchel – Marcel Duchamp
Auras – Susan Hiller (Homage 2019)
Emanations – Michael Turner
My work could possibly be made to go in this direction as I now have archive portraits as well as a colour abstract. The abstract immediately above is similar to Aura’s.
A summary of Hiller’s career and work exhibited/installed at the Lisson Gallery is presented by the BBC in their Introducing Arts website (BBC 2015). An artist talk is provided on the site.
Sadly Hiller died and her obituary can be found on the BBC website. This contains the heading “Connection, empathy, identification” from which I sense a parallel with my practice as Identification is an underlying theme.
From the obituary (BBC, 2019) there is mention of ghosts, “Ghosts are invisible to most people, but visible to a few.”. There has to be some concern as this year, ghosts began to appear in my abstract work.
Artist 2 Evan Roth – Red Lines
The work of Roth is described at the Artangel website (Roth, 2020).
Connecting you to the landscape of the internet.
Evan Roth: red lines – from the ArtAngel website (Roth, 2019)
A network of mesmerising video landscapes is streamed free to your home or workplace in this pioneering new project by Evan Roth.
Roth has travelled to coastal sites around the world where the cables that make the internet possible emerge from the sea. Filmed in infrared, the same spectrum in which data is transmitted online, the videos reveal another side of the internet, one that moves at the speed of weather, wind, and tide.
Evan Roth – infrared from the ArtAngel website (Roth, 2019)
Red Lines can be experienced by anyone in the world. To join the network, all you need is a device like a smartphone, tablet or laptop, and an internet connection. Devices should ideally be plugged into power and connected to an internet connection with no data limits (check with your service provider) with the browser set to http://p2p.redlines.network.
In summary, the connection to my practice appears to be infrared, computers and landscape through internet transmission. The images are at places where internet cables emerge into the open at the end of a “red line” or connection to another geographic location.
A sentiment behind the work is given by this quote:
(In Maori culture)… your connection to the land you walk on helps shape your very identity. You are who you are because of who came before you; the earth and waters that supported them, now support you. – Janina Matthewson
Artist 3 David Fathi
David Fathi presents his work within the FMP module here. The interest for my work is the crossover between science and art. A blog post expands the research. The connected blog post from Week 5 can be found here.
Discussion as a reminder was about three projects, the first two books then the installation.
Book: Anecdotal … nuclear bomb testing on own lands e,g US Nevada
Book: Wolfgang … Pauli Quantum physics, anecdotes of things going wrong, CERN archive
Installation: The Last Road .. Henrietta Lacks archive HeLa cells
The migration to installations fell out from presenting Wolfgang creatively in numerous settings. Don’t let the form of archives seduce you. Maintain control.
Develop your photographic practice through the synthesis of practical work, contextual research and professional activities, and with the integration of other disciplines.
Make personal observations and form critical opinions to analyse and appraise your own work, as well as the work of your peers and other practitioners.
Establish an understanding of the range of professional contexts for the dissemination and consumption of contemporary photographic practice, and identify opportunities to engage with audiences and markets.
Apply a critical awareness of the diversity of contemporary photographic practice to the development of your own work, and inform your practice through historical, philosophical, ethical and economic contextualization.
Exercise discernment in the making, resolution and presentation of practical work, and an ability to communicate ideas through creative visual strategies.
Demonstrate an awareness of a range of photographic and image-making processes, and display accomplishment of photographic skills relevant to your practice specialism.
I’m spilling over into the ideas around external influences – reaching out from my work to other partitioners or genres. Also, I’m thinking aloud over some of the points necessary as inputs to the Oral Presentation.
I need to go back over this and tidy it up and add more of the reading I’ve been doing and some ancillary research I’ve conducted.
Flusser I derive my work by subverting the camera (filter and sensor) then undermining the external processing software. I challenge the algorithmic and break its limits. I recombine an image in myriad ways with itself to create something new, in part unexpected but linked to my intent.
Kandinski – the Spiritual
It is comforting to read Kandinski on The Spiritual in Art as the work I make springs from the soul. It is symphonic with strong inner value, and does not readily explain itself yet can be appreciated by those who are patient. Since writing this, I have ventured into mixing archive images with abstract to create access for the viewer to make their interpretation of the visual language.
My work has long now been subject to a spiritual influence that tracks back over decades something I attributed to chance although history drew me in. Presence became heightened in recent times, and still, I attribute events to chance. Chance worked to prevent my return to photography. An art gallery experience threw me with remarkable resemblances to my work in abstract photography. A discussion with Olympia in Damien Hirst’s gallery challenged my belief in God and led to a debate on chance events having such implausibility alongside a direct comparison of the artist’s paintings and my photographic work.
I subsequently watched Rachel Howard’s interview with Will Self, and it is clear that her work uses “the hidden hand of gravity”. It is that universal which linked our work.
There are more coincidences one with a Pentecostal Pastor, and each time I have to rationalise what happened. Events taint how I look at my work. It is easy to suspend judgement and accept conversion. I can see how that operates for some.
Science and Art
People I link to from a hundred years past have a direct information carrier through DNA. Not just the link that Barthes noticed is seeing a likeness, but in mitochondrial DNA that powers our bodies. We share common mitochondria and it diverges infrequently. It remains static for thousands of years. By comparison, X chromosome alters and mixes at each generation and so lacks connection over time that mitochondria have.
My photography method begins with the lens-based digital camera and captures information as the camera sees in a different way to the eye. I process the image to reveal and emphasise infrared light that manages to passthough and create data via the sensor.
I align passthrough infrared with the human healing process in a merging of science and Art.
Making Art is next. The glow images I obtain have an aesthetic that can be quite dramatic, but this is the stuff of Flickr groups and the like with categories such as the spectacle of bruising. I go beyond this through early discovery and subsequent pre-visualisation of how I can transform the data to make images in several well-defined categories. These originally were abstract landscapes and ghost images, and I now extend to seascapes, the inner space and outer space.
Those who died in the early 20th century would never have known of trace conducted through DNA relations or of internet record searches nor carriage by personal vehicle.
From the start, I worked with my Generally Accepted Rules of DNA inheritance focussed on mitochondria. I identify the dominant driving force of the Matriarchy and assume propriety in families. It may come as a surprise to learn that the male action dominated world, especially of 20th-century warfare, was powered biologically speaking by the female of the species.
Only recently have I adopted DNA testing with the specific intention of learning the visual culture of commercial testing companies. Commercial entities use marketing and advertisements to build public consciousness. I’ve now brought this into my practice.
I have worked in an interdisciplinary manner and deduced a biological interpretation. I have done so without medical qualification, and by closing in on commercial testing; this research has critically strengthened my analysis.
We remain naive even today when participating in DNA testing. If we allow the raw data to be set loose, there can be repercussions. If health insurers obtain the raw data, they could use it to penalise. Beyond this are discoveries yet to be made by science. We could leave ourselves open.
Week 8 and 9
During these study periods, I visited Arles 2019 Les Rencontres de la Photographie.
While I appreciated many many works, I also had a keen eye for the variety of presentation methods on display and for books I specialised in looking out for the various approaches to pamphlet style books. The display method is vital regarding my impending exhibition if I’m ever to get an edit in place in time and then for the book I have a limited number of pages to fill (around 32) hence the interest in pamphlet-sized presentations.
As an interactive aside and in the spirit of the course, I interacted with a Helen Levit poster then rephotographed an interaction with the actual print.
At another venue, I took over a blank wall for short photo session involving an evocation of a crucifixion (as one does?), then proceeded to photograph several linked items including crosses and a couple airing themselves by a fan in cruciform style.
In what follows is a reminder to self of where I visited which I can tie into the Exhibition Catalogue for a further reminder. Without this record the details would disappear into a fog, I’m sure so this way I can relive the experience and resurrect the details.
Day 1 Friday 26 July
1. Espace Van Gogh: Helen Levitt: Eve Arnold, Abigal Heyman and Susan Meislas
2. Eglise Des Trinitaires Toute un Historie ! Arlse A 50 Ans
3. Eglise Sainte-Anne Libuse Jarcovjakova 6. Salle Henri-Comte Tom Wood
PM
8. Chapelle de la Charite
9. Maison des Lices
Then a walk over to the station and visits to:
18. Monoprix: Mohamed Bourouissa
21. Ground Control: Prix Decouverte, Louis Roederer: Kurt Tong
19. Le Jardin: Mario del Curto
Day 2 Saturday 27 July 2019
16. Croisiere: Camille Fallet, Marjan Teeuwen, Lionel Astruc and Erik Bonner, Des Clics et des Classes, France Inter, Nuit de L’Annee, La Sage des Inventions, Clergue and Weston, Pixy Liao, La Zone, Yann Pocreau,, Guillaume Simoneau, Laurence Aegerter
17. Maison des Peintres: The Anonymous Project, Home Sweet Home, Christian Lutz, Arles, Au-Dela D’une Rencontre; Explorer L’Image.
24. Grande Halle; Mecanique Generale: Photo ! Brut, Marina Gadonneix, Valerie Belin, 50 ans 50 Livres, Prix Du Livre, Dummy Book Award, Une Attention Particuliere
25. Les Forges: Lei Lei, Corps Impatients
15. Couvent Saint-Cesaire: VR Arles Festival
Day 3 Sunday 28 July 2019
Critique – I took along my handmade book and my Exhibition in a box and obtained vital feedback (see Project Development blog page)
4. Palais De L’Archeveche: La Modiva, Chronique d’une Agitation
7. Fondation Manuel Rivera-Ortiz: Hey! What’s Going On?
Week 5
The book (Rexer, 2009) arrived after me writing, “No sign of The Edge of Vision the Rise of Abstraction – Lyle Rexer, appearing for a month. It does seem ever unlikely that the book will arrive in time to have any impact.” I was writing having had two orders frustrated by transportation damage at the sender end.
On the first inspection, I wonder if the book is a copy. Signs are, lack of copyright page discovered when I entered a citation. Next up the index was wrong when I used it to look up specific topics. I’ve written to the supplier. Being an expensive item it would be an attractive book to copy. I could be wrong, so let me see what transpires.
Already I have been inspired by the content, and it is helping me deepen my understanding as I further contextualise my abstract photography.
I was pleased to see my entries for artists; whose work I already follow: Ellen Carey, Gary Fabian Miller, Susan Derges and some recent arrivals on my scene, Gottfried Jager et al.
I have two other books on backorder. Jager, I wished to follow up as I’d studied Generative Art and wanted to find out the specifics for photography.
Bibliography
Rexer, L. (2009) The edge of vision : the rise of abstraction in photography. Aperture.
Week 4
I ordered twice and failed to have delivered Lyle Rexer, The Edge of Vision, The Rise of Abstraction in Photography, having been disappointed by two bookshops declaring damage in delivery to them (book dropped and damaged, book contaminated by wet chemical). I’m waiting for a second refund and my third order to be processed. These events fall into the category of superstition as it has affected my work at essential points in my practice.
Meanwhile, I have reading ongoing around Curating (George, no date), Photobooks (Colberg, 2017) and Exhibitions (Marincola, 2006)
Bibliography
Colberg, J. (2017). Understanding Photo Books the Form and Content of the Photographic Book. Edited by Taylor and Francis. New York: Focal Press.
George, A. (no date) The Curator’s Handbook. Kindle. Edited by A. George. Thames and Hudson.
Marincola, P. (2006) Questions of Practice What Makes a Great Exhibition?Philadelphia Exhibitions Initiative. Available at: http://www.pcah.us/exhibitions.
Week 3
Towards a philosophy of Photography, Vilem Flusser
I’ve analysed the reference (Flusser, 2012) a bit further following a group discussion. A recommendation was made that having read this, return to it and have another read. It is considered quite an important document.
What I do here on second reading is to gist the content for a fresh perspective in terms of the language used by Flusser, to describe photography.
Flusser concentrates on photography from the standpoint of the image, and he focusses the writing on the camera or apparatuses.
There is an existential theme where Flusser considers the human being, in conjunction with another discussion around the universe (photographic universe) and the magic that exists.
There is a concern for the technical aspects of the apparatus.
There are also many other factors introduced in a wide-ranging analysis covering anything from anthropology, and too many to mention considerations such as signs and signification, the qualitative etc., through to the identification of stakeholders to build reasoned actions and opinions coloured with emotional overtones of devastation and collapse.
From this body of analysis, Flusser makes many assertions including one about the camera as a tool, being technically complex and having constraints, but how otherwise a camera is simple to use as he considers the logical limits in terms of numerous references to “everything”. He is concerned with the lack of criticism that images receive.
He makes references to Lebanon, Jewish prophets and Greek philosophers but also mentions the Kodak brand.
Thinking about the negative assertions Flusser makes, these cover a vast range of considerations again and includes Marxism, ritual acts and fetishisation, Luddite just to mention a few aspects of his language. He also makes negative connotations around change, that which was that is no longer, and we return to indicate the electromagnetic.
There is just so much more that can be written about this reference, and so for now I settle for this summary that gives the gist of the topic. In essence, Flusser writes down on paper a personal life of experience of thinking about photography, and it is quite personal as he does not reference other work. Thus he takes ownership of a philosophy of photography. Clearly, other authors to cover the subject area, and there are many points where the various works inflect. Flusser makes a significant contribution to his aim, I would say, to fuel meaningful critical discussion about photography which as mentioned he found generally lacking.
You don’t know how much he was able to read of others, and in the end, there is no assumption that Flusser is actually a photographer. He may be more the thinker than a photographic practitioner.
Bibliography
Flusser, V. (2012) Towards a Philosophy of Photography. Kindle Flu. Edited by V. Flusser. London, [England]: Reaktion Books.
Week 2
Check out George LeGrady who’s earlier career was in digital computing and software or the like. The reason for making an association is to determine similarities in the approach I might find between our work methods.
I began looking at my work in more full ways and discussed this in Module Leader Office Hours. I need to be careful that I understand where my work comes from and maintain the resolved nature rather than take my work and cause it to fray at the edges. Resolved means resolved.
Several word definitions looked up to inspire various ways forward with my work.
Montage: 1. The act or process of making a composite photograph 5. Frequent cutting of camera viewpoint to create action cf mise en scene
Tableaux and tableaux vivant Vivid, suddenly created, action frozen for dramatic effect.
Guest Lecture – Victoria Forrest
It is a more than happy coincidence that we were able to gain advice from a practitioner in Bookmaking, particularly as my attempt to make my Ed Rusha hand made book has stalled. Apart from time pressure, I need to find a supply of doubled sided matte or gloss paper to print on. Gloss will emphasis the blacks in my Padlock series.
In allocating pages to so-called signatures, I probably need to work in the Adobe InDesign software and manually assign pages.
I need to work backwards from whatever format, e.g. start with 35mm format images then select a paper size that works. Images for full bleed want to be 3mm oversize to prevent unplanned white borders.
The cover could be a graphic of one of the images in reduced colour bearing in mind the challenge of printing on coloured paper/card. It is good to have some texture, and it is possible to stick on a sticker to the front cover.
Any book I make could be standalone, for exhibition or perhaps special edition. Contents remain the same, covers alter.
Note: look up Sally Mann Ambrotypes of thumbprints to check any parallels with my current practice.
It was all in the melting pot at this stage and a very uphill struggle at times. Engaging with the language of Roland Barthes translated from the French is made more difficult than is necessary, at least that was how I felt. Consecutive to this, I read Susan Sontag On Camera multiple times in the hope of extracting something of value for my practice. Maybe if there is very little or no overlap with practice then the work does become a labour.
When I returned to Camera Lucida I improbably discovered that by reading the last paragraph in the book first I at last made progress. I’d noticed this effect first when reading an interview with Jeff Wall. Nothing said struck any chord with my practice. When I turned to reverse reading two things happened:
comprehension. Ideas that made complete sense were then seen to be developed,
surprisingly many paragraphs were left hanging and this demanded attention and so the preceding paragraph had to be consumed.
Anyway, it worked better and allowed progess to be made again.
Revisiting print size
I’ve been sensitive about large scale printing of small scale subject matter (after all I would not wish for massive trauma only monitoring minor happenings and latterly memory of body from contact pressure). Now having read of Gurky’s large scale work in the Journal American Photo (Jan 1, 2015) I’m caused to analyse and challenge this. The first module sensitised me to low res pixelated image presentation. But I do not say a flat no to large scale prints. In fact I have some testing on the go using Artificial Intelligence AI software and can print up to a limit of 18ft using roll paper. Initial results were encouraging but I need time to do more over my return to materiality (a nod towards Carol Squiers ICP exhibition What is a Photograph?
Mark Rothko Chapel a Week 5 visit to this research topic
In terms of his life’s work snd how this impacts my Practice:
The phenomenology of perception is key to Mark Rothko’s work where this concerns the structures of experience and consciousness. There may be a risk in engaging in this world and so a hidden warning. At his peak, Mark Rothko died of a drug overdose in New York. It was this day exactly 49 years ago on the 25 February 1970.
This anniversary and many other coincidences around my work can lead to fetishisation – a false attribution. It goes on – by accidentally touch typing one letter to the right on this keyboard just now, “his” translated to jod before autocorrecting to god.
Rothko’s work moving again into my consciousness has a rational explanation. The timing of so many of these events can be harder to explain. Religious context moved to the fore twice last year in conversation with Olympia and Pastor Prince whom I met separately. My own work can become obsessive which requires one to chill out. An original manifestation of my practice changed to abstract expressionism. This helped normalise sustained emotional outpouring. Now the tears have been wiped away. In the written word this may seem overstated but feelings ran deep and challenged who I am as a person.
Rothko’s work becomes a performance work. The paintings emerge around floor level and are large scale so as to envelop the viewer. The paintings have no central focus, paint being evenly spread from edge to edge, and corner to corner. Upon closer inspection the viewer becomes immersed as layers of colour reveal at the edge transitions. In the context of the chapel the work provides a sacral experience and you begin to comprehend how some become enveloped in the here and now and are given cause to weep.
Sadly, the viewer may experience the “imminence and transcendence of the tragic in human existence”. I tend to express this as the motivation to create work but the intent towards the viewer could be quite the opposite. This holding two opposing ideas in mind simultaneously might be taken as fetishisation. I’m obviously conflicted and have a task to sort this out. The emotional impact was originally my punctum insofar as I understood this by the close of the first module.
It has been hinted at various times that we learn first about ourselves as practitioners in doing this MA Photography course. On that score and in light of the return to fetishisation, I would draw a parallel with my other professional practice outside of photography. Here, some are trained to think in linear terms, and go step by step through a problem solving it. In my personal experience, I had to learn to carry many states at once. I liken this to waves lapping a sandy beach. As the waves retreat, water, returns to the sea along many tributaries at once or even soaks into the sand as one.
It is clear that the artist has control over the terms and conditions of the work and its contextualisation.
Mark Rothko Chapel a week 2/3 visitation to this research topic
Here is one of the earlier videos watched on Rothko’s Abstract Expressionism (Mark Rothko (video) | Abstract Expressionism | Khan Academy, 2014): note: no frame; floor height and viewer stands “within’ the work; effect is painted all over rather than a core with corners and edges of less importance; and no frame. Not action painting like Pollock.
From a previous mention, Mark’s son on video Rothko Chapel (Rothko, 2015) acted as guide to the Rothko Chapel. He talked about his father’s work and how visitors of all faiths sit and experience the black and purple wall paintings and how many have been moved to tears.
The sentiment to his work differs from mine as I struggle to hone my message towards a celebration of life. At present it doesn’t always translate that way as my motivation to doing the work gets in the way of the message. In other words I try to separate the motivation that drives me to do the work from the voice I wish to express – they are almost opposites and voice is opposite too to Rothko’s work.
Let me read the PDF and gain from a comparative analysis.
Rothko, C. (2015) TCA Rothko Chapel Video on Vimeo. Available at: https://vimeo.com/127754629 (Accessed: 25 February 2019).
Week 4 Critical Thinking
Film Documentaries
Some documentary films were consumed Hidden Histories: WW1’s Forgotten Photographs (‘Hidden Histories: WW1’s Forgotten Photographs · BoB’, 2014)and The Genius of Photography (‘The Genius of Photography 1800-1914 Fixing the Shadows · BoB’, 2009)
Week 3 Critical Review – Reflective Thinking
As the next week of study begins (Week 4), I realise the Week I’m leaving behind needed some finishing off. I’d got distracted by making work and setting up the framework for the week to come and realise I need to act on advice and read to inform my work.
Of several books I’ve majored on this week, only one Campany(Campany, 2008)resonated enough to impact on my photographic practice. We’d previously been informed how comparing a medium (photography) with another medium (in my case this week Cinema), you begin to discover the essential nature of photography.
I’m going to set aside Barthes (Barthes and Howard, 1980) and Sontag (Sontag, 1977)
Before departing into the insights gained from Photography and cinema, I should also not broader aspects at this time whilst enumerating the sources I’d been to during research and study. Resources checked out following a library webinar include:
[A] insightful definitions of photographic genre (Szarkowski, 1980)
It seems wrong to categorise my work as Abstract in the vanilla sense as to be abstract it should not trace to a source, at least that is how I interpret and feel about it. I forever give away hints that tie the image back to the subject photographed. A closer genre I think, has to be Abstract Expressionism. I’m not fully settled on this as I do not wholly find expression in the negative, being more of the happy photographer aligned to the glow of life’s force and healing and the conceptual idea of impression upon the skin as analogy to photography, the latter being more in the realm of intellectual pursuit.
Also, a review during the week, highlighted the closeness of portfolio introductory images to the theme of title and captions used, and I agree. I can see a split now opening wide and I have to think whether to pursue trauma in its physical and mental modes, the theme that created for me the punctum that elevated the work above its previous status of illustration.
Trauma does depend on there being minor injury and when this falls away the subject matter becomes sparse. At first, I diverted towards the above mentioned theme of “Impressions”. Since then, there have been two instances of minor injury, one to me, the second to a close other. It is difficult at times as the taking needs another photographer really for perfection and ease of working whilst it remains slightly weird to be recording injury although by now it is understood and becoming tolerated. This new subject matter has led to a variation or economy of approach. As often now said, I follow the direction a photograph will move in based on practice, developed skill and latest informed intent. There are usually several points in the image making where multiple images can result. It does require a higher degree of image and file management. The approach is quite exciting though, as the photograph may lead to an image that invokes landscape, or incorporates the glow I so often seek or may demand comparison as monochrome. In fact the last image I made went off on the monochrome trajectory but with spot colour to let the eye rest and remind of injury.
In a sentence, several images worked/made from the base photograph. I wonder what my tutors would make of that? To find out I need to create something to view.
[B] access to hi res photography sources (Artstor, 2019)
I’ve been able to check the look of war photography, and as it happened around the American Civil War. This archive material so often is in the sepia style when I declared early on in my practice that they lived their lives in colour and so I would honour that in my representations based on their worlds. This did rather drive me to the logical extreme of highly saturated work. The colours are trace if not somewhat overwhelming but visually interesting. It is a specialised branch of my practice and has evolved due to studying this MA Photography course. It is marmite according to the responses received but hey, I like it. I like it a lot. It has a very strong aesthetic and is trace and solidly linked to trauma and healing.
Week 3 Informed Context:
Photograph and Cinema – Stillness
Photography has developed a trend towards slowing down alongside the burgeoning of the Fine Art market. I should note this as my Practice is not vernacular.
Photograph and Cinema – Paper Cinema
My practice is likely to take on the context of a book and it would be very worthwhile revisiting this chapter later.
Something I seem to have and is seen as a feature of cinema is the mingling of real and imaginary; present and past; the probable and the improbable. Possibly my practice contains less of the latter, or maybe it does have probability in the balance.(Campany, 2008, p62)
My work is intended to be didactic in that it may be adopted by a museum or be used as an example for genetics teaching. The aleatoric or presence of chance exists in the making process, but is guided by learning the art. (Campany, 2008, p67)
I should check which of these film shots applies to my photography and image making:
If moving still is used (it is anticipated) then consider dissolves etc (Campany, 2008, p83)
Photograph and Cinema – Photography in Film /
As noted by Barthes and recorded in Campaney underlying the stillness of photography is Death. Indeed that theme underlies the loss in my narrative and again as memory is lost as other pass. (Campany, 2008, p96)
The photo novel La Jetee I find has resonance with my practice. “European filmmakers since 1945 include memory, history, war, identity, loss, desire and uncertainty” as themes and many of these apply. (Campany, 2008, p96)
Taking La Jetee a step further is is described in terms of “the patchy nature of the imagination and promise of redemption” (Campany, 2008, p101). The former is a very strong theme of my abstraction process. I need to think how redemption applies or could be applied.
Photograph and Cinema – Art and the Film Still
Trompe l’oeile addresses the details that give realism to cinema/stills.(Campany, 2008, p119). I need to consider this aspect as I largely remove detail to spare the viewer, and improves the aesthetic. However, I wonder if the additional layer of lines of poetry for example would compensate if included visually in support of the abstractions.
There seems to be a problem of stills not carrying forward narrative meanings. (Campany, 2008, p135). Perhaps the origins of my work in a narrative text clouded this for me as photographer and I should give narrative more attention. So far, a title and call and response captions are all I use. Note to self, to think this through further.
Sontag, S. (1977) On Photography. Penguin Bo. Penguin Modern Classics.
Szarkowski, J. (1980) ‘Introduction [IN] The photographer’s eye’, in Szarkowski, J. (ed.) The photographer’s eye. London: Secker and Warburg, pp. 6–11.
Think about your work each week under the following headings:
1: Aim of the work
What are you trying to say or express with your work? What is its ‘intent’ (this will change from week to week, but in the final Critical Review should explicitly refer to your Work in Progress Portfolio). Refer to your research here – does anyone else try to explore similar issues?
The intent is to close a gap in communication made to me as a child where those missing were never mentioned and hence the gap, and how it has been possible decades later to recognise these gaps and magically fill in these gaps.
The intent is to relate myself and family as a diaspora to events of the past and to a culture left behind – a family healed.
The intent is to reference specific others in the past and through reflected trauma in the main create the closest of ties to ancestor.
How did you try achieve this intention? What does the work look like? What is it’s subject matter?. Is it successful? Why? How does it differ?
The work had three and this week another, so three strands of abstract imagery now based upon-
Trauma (healing) – Life’s Force (glow ) – and Impression (as image captured)
The images become consistent and yet have different characteristics:
Trauma both mental and physical take on a depiction upon which the injury as it was photographed allows the eye to settle. There is trace yet is unlikely that reality would reach out to the viewer.
Glow is apparent as an indicator of health and well being and localises to subject areas photographed and varies with shadow effect and source lighting or now use of flash.
Impression is the transitory mark left upon the body as a trace of some object.
There are two levels of abstract processing now often combined in my work. There are edges and marks with horizontal landscape and vertical atmosphere and combined where visible reference to tartan.
The second level is immediately noticed by the high saturation levels of colours. These are trace, being present in or reflected from the subject. As in the darkroom level s are reduced to allow glow to emerge, it is when the colours are again raised that the glow appears and the colour saturate.
I combine the techniques for different purposes mainly presentational.
As I experiment the work becomes more unified and some early images as in my last WIP Portfolio, which were remakes to fit the course constraints did not entirely fit in. In a sense they looked different, a little more bland than the originals and by then I’d started to manage colours to a theme that started with a earlier title Poppies are Red … (of course Himalayan poppies are also blue).
Given how long I’ve been working on these abstracts I am taken aback by how eye catching the images can be and so initial signs and impact for me are really good as I sense there is mileage in a project that indeed has a life of its own either inside or outside of the MA Photography Course.
That is the excitement of the practice that keep me working with it. Indeed there are already areas of improvement for real success if the work is to get out there.
During the assessment period I worked with colour and with luminosity and in other work for competition I seen increased recognition and I now start to develop further and apply these growing skills to my practice to make better work.
I started photographing again during Week 2 and by the end of the week new work was emerging from the Digital Darkroom.
3: Reflection: Research/Awareness
What/who has informed this work? Intent? Aesthetic? Subject matter? Are there any photographers who work in a similar way? (e.g. aesthetically, technically, conceptually etc.). Refer to your research here
The written narratives and many discussions within family and the academic research conducted by my wife all combined with visits to place and earlier work towards publishing a book.
There are other artists I have since discovered who make work with some visual references and mostly they are painters. Much of what I do is wholly unique and creative and exists and emerges from a world of digital computation and digital image processing.
Some references randomly connected with my work through religion, first through superstition then through conversations that I have now learned to classify as fetishistism. No not of a sexual perversity nature but of assigning powers to objects and happenings where in truth coincidence is more the likely action.
4: Reflection/Evaluation
Do you think your work is successful? Why? Are these any images that were less successful? How did this inform the development of ideas and practice?
As work in progress my practice needs numerous adaptions. Aside from the basis which is solid and integrating, I need to work on how I talk about it and need to be sensitive to not guiding others overly in any artists statement or in applying titles.
I sometimes think of strands within the work and yet when I take my gold standard of presentation Chloe Dewe Mathews Shot at Dawn, I have some way to go. I met Chloe and have spoken although not about this practice more on an earlier group book project as she reviewed the work Commissioned by Ruskin College Oxford, and feeling I know the artist at a more interactive level then her work is my choice, even if not abstract.
A look at my last WIP Portfolio is telling in its own right, (Turner, 2018). It has evolved as presented and ripe for further exciting creative inputs, The work is sustainable.
Significant close readings or re-readings this week are noted
Sontag (Sontag, 1977)
Suffice to say I’ve read and re-read and read again with help from the Audible reading. Usually I’m not in a position to take notes so for this resource, I’m only too glad to have broken through the barrier presented by the writing style and can do text searches as particular messages come to mind that need referencing to page level.
I also found another work and skim read this piece relating to a communication made for Amnesty International (Sontag, 2004). As my work has a background of loss in a war then this and a second reference on images of war (Stallabrass, 2013). I parked these for when I move apart from my emotional involvement with narratives and start to reach out to established references to contextualize my work. In the latter for example there is modern day example of captured prisoner torture method where by comparison my ancestor was captured but had no complaint and lived on a long life after the war.ß
Barthes (Barthes and Howard, no date)
So far I’ve read Part 1 and begun Part 2 in the available time, so intend of course to return.
Since reading this work again, I’ve been looking at my photography and that of other differently, and by the time of the Week 2 Group Seminar I was reading others photographs differently. I can now combine the aspects of detail and evidence of a concocted theme (not best) and how signs of accidental inclusions and uncontrived detail have powerful repercussions.
Within the area of Indexicality I got a much clearer understanding of Studium and Punctum
Barrett (Barrett, 2010)
Ah. I’m becoming progressively more organized and somehow in getting here I’ve mislaid some notes on this reading and have to skim back over. Lesson learnt I feel. Ah ha! Eureka ! A second reading has been transformative. The rambling list of musings (my first feeling) in the reference I’ve this time related closely to my practice and gained ideas and reinforcement of other ideas. This has been a top read and I say has really helped me. As I go into this it starts of as mere reflection, then catches fire as I see the writing in terms of my practice.
Week 2 Terry Barrett Principles of Interpreting Photographs
Danto’s theory of art and interpretation is referenced.
Photographs carry more credibility than other kinds of
images and especially require interpretation.
This is to draw upon the cognitive value.
Photography is persuasive and we need to check what we consume
Turn image into language an important consideration.
Rorty is quoted and draws together Photography and Poetry. And books and music emotions we have felt in our and others experiences.
Thoughts – Feelings – Actions over seen and experience.
The photograph as altered
Stop looking through a photograph … it is not a beach … it is a constructed image.
The Photograph as opinion
Be guided by feeling when interpreting
Goodman referenced in terms of feeling being more fundamental or important than cold intellectual endeavour.
Feeling and thought as false dichotomy
Indexicality in terms of light reflecting. Barthes referenced That which has been as Realist theory.
Notions pof Realist versus Conventionalist of factual and fictional: factual and metaphorical.
My practice is metaphorical.
We are reminded of the subtractive medium verses the additive medium in photograph versus painting.
The Photograph we are reminded is cut from a larger context.
The instantaneous nature of photography references Barthes a photograph is like death.
In uniqueness, selectivity instantness and credibility Modernism is mentioned as we live in a Post Modernist social environment.
Mention os made of post modernists playing off of modernist ideas.
The content of the photograph is considered and subject matter is different to subject. Mapplethorpe’s flowers are about sensuality.
The Form of my practice is determined in the digital darkroom. Any my context is causal around identification and closing a gap of 100 years. And the content of my work expresses healing and repair of wounds. I also mustn’t let language over-determine my photographs meaning.
Where my work is presented alters meaning: compare with the image of the living embryo then it shown on a placard in a demonstration.
I need to be aware that judgements formed may prevent other judgements.
Critical activities around my work in describing, interpreting, judging and theorising are interrelated and interdependent. I must try this in my Tutor presentations.
My work may lead to many non-unified interpretations so I will look out for other insights.
My work is definitely based in culture both my own technological culture and that of diaspora in family reunited. And in abstract the images result from other images both photograph and imagined.
There is also a world view in my work as a human family (biology) and of ongoing unceasing warfare.
My work in a way is diagrammatically close to Rorschach inkblots, but sign intrude to bring the images back to nearer what hey are our at least so as a group of images and other supporting signs (text).
I must accept that my work may take on meanings I did not mean. However, yes I try to create visually stimulating work that goes together. I have to realise any artist statement once out can take on meanings and other meanings. My work may have my intent as part of overall linguistic, cultural and artistic conventions operative at the time my work is produced. I should be aware I may put readers of intent into a passive mode and rob the viewer of the joy.
I must look out for viewers and readers interpretations as more or less reasonable, convincing, informative and enlightening.
Some interpretations made may be better than others or simply wrong especially if they do not interplay with other interpretations from tradition or previous. In this my work has to be relevant.
i shall too be aware of self satisfying ramblings if personal narratives are not made relative to the image being interpreted. I was guilty myself this week on critiquing a wolf with forest within as person made from typography. I was triggered but not relevant.
Hopefully my works critics will focus on my work and not me.
I should look out for individual critique and group critique.
For some reason Barrett then goes off on a major critique of Sally Mann’s children’s sexuality. Perhaps that could have been lessened.
Interpretation is self correcting within the group.
I have receive critique for my work and regularly about the statement but also about the images. i must encourage or invite others to link interpretations with others.
Berger (Berger, 2013)
The photograph as trace and innocent transcription.
This was an interesting read that advised we miss so much of a Photograph when viewing it as Fine Art. Through stages of developmental argument about the difference between Photography and Painting what’s not in being important as a photograph is an instance from a continuum versus art is placement within the frame.
Art transforms particular into the universal. Not photography is uses constructs. No transforming. NOW The degree to which I believe this is worth looking at can be judged by all that I am willingly NOT showing.
The argument develops towards use of photography within the Ideological Struggle. If there is such an ideology in my work it would be some aspect of loss and the futility of war.
So I am as yet facing the dichotomy of my work as art. For Fine Art I think at present the Photography has developed in its acceptance by museum or gallery curators and so photographs today do get room in galleries where Fine Art is displayed. Fine Art only by association but recognition nevertheless. Here is an example of the National Gallery written up in The Times (Campbell-Johnston, 2012)
Bibliography
Barrett, T. (2010) ‘Principles for Interpreting Photographs’, in Swinnen, J. and Deneulin, L. (eds) The Weight of Photography. Brussels, pp. 147–172.
Barthes, R. and Howard, R. (no date) Camera lucida: reflections on photography. London: Vintage.
Berger, J. (2013) ‘Understanding a photograph’, in Berger, J. and Dyer, G. (eds) Understanding a photograph. London: Penguin Classics, pp. 17–21.
Sontag, S. (1977) On Photography. Penguin Bo. Penguin Modern Classics.
Sontag, S. (2004) Regarding the pain of others. London: Penguin.
Stallabrass, J. (ed.) (2013) Memory of fire: images of war and the war of images. Maidstone: Photoworks.
Week 1 Contextualisation
Only brief notes at present as I start to assimilate the rush of information. All of these references I have consumed and need to digest either by way of a write-up here or by incorporation in other part of this Critical Review Journal CRJ.
Mark Rothko
Gary Fabian Millar
Technological Modernity
Medical Practice references Week 1 Photography Photographies
David Hockney
Vincent Van Gogh
Antony Gormley
FT Life of a song podcast
Formerly called FT Arts. Description by Financial times. October 2010 to April 2018.
I started out reporting back on webinars etc. week by week wondering whether or not to consolidate the blog entries, which is precisely what I’ve done here now.
There is a slight twist in structuring of the blog I’ve not been able to avoid. It’s like this. We were advised at the outset yet as we all know from paper filing systems, (we do all remember paper filing systems, yes?), you often get a document to file that should appear on more than one place within the cabinet drawers.
We kind of solved problem with electronic storage with the uptake of relational database management systems where referential integrity is maintained. That is not meant to impress. It is just that having suffered learning about it in the day I now try to find one opportunity each year to mention the terms. Apologies for that.
Anyway, in a blog such as this there is no relational control as it is down to the author and the capabilities or constraints of using a blogging platform. Stop!
Decision. What I’ve decide to do here is transcribe my written notes from my course notebook and rattle off salient point from each webinar listed. I still have the last two of the series to watch or catch-up on this week. I did have a family bereavement at week 1 of the module, but no excuse – I did continue to give the course priority (much to the exasperation of others?) as the “show must go on.”.
Reading
I found time for reading or, as termed in some circles, for standing on the shoulders of giants.
Susan Sontag, On Camera
I had to re-read this especially as there are sections covering: photography defining of beauty, photography as art, the difference between painting and photography and even the beauty in camera makes of even the mundane. Important stuff regards my abstract work. Talking of which, the style of writing by Sontag is made difficult as it consistently showcases the wide vocabulary of the author. In my case I keep having to pick up the dictionary to try and follow the metaphors used. I do find it a bit unnecessary but do understand that photography, as a new art, does need to be written about in such a style to give photography academic provenance. Is that it?
Marita Sturken and Lisa Cartwright, practices of looking.
I’m sure at postgraduate level this work is elementary, but it is still defining of visual culture and one chapter was recommended reading last module of this MA Photography. What I get from this book is a hot dip in the language of visual culture. Every time I’ve read the work I start to sound like I’ve swallowed a dictionary or perhaps sound more informed? At least people do look attentive to the new found knowledge when quizzed about photography. I do appreciate some of the psychological interpretations of gaze in this work too. That is a bonus. Sturken is quite good for stirring a bit of informed argument, as there are many interpretations of the world and some hold these dear. It’s good, the photography should gain some standing. I return to the work time and again.
Recommended Reading
I think this module I did manage to just about read everything put before me. Well all of the must reads.
I’ll take a highlight here on the subject of fashion photography and lifestyle magazines. As photography has been democratised, for where I stand it is good to learn of the growing movement of editors looking farther afield for personal work with a difference. So not exclusively the work of a seasoned pro, but photographer with ideas, fresh ideas. Although I’m not going to spring up next in fashion or magazines it is great to know that a tidy social media presence can fall before an editor.
In this vein of fashion and lifestyle, I discovered a piece of research or more precisely a detailed category comparison of print and web for a new lifestyle magazine versus the established Harpers Gazette. There is scope for new work as long as it targets its audience well. Simplicity in all things lifestyle was the winning major theme. We all have less time. Hipster fashion abounds as does the art of the back story.
Week 12
I have yet to watch.
Week 11 Talk and Q&A with Tim Clark
I have yet to watch. Was this postponed?
Week 10 Francesca Genovese
Important stuff (advice) if you are categorise your work as fine art.
Week 9 Presentation with Amy Simmons
A lovely insight how to breakthrough the the art editorial world, with a cheeky challenge attached at the end – create a treatment. I did that with sketches and layout design and didn’t post it back to the forum. Note to self.
I did feel rather smug at this presentation as it followed on directly from the pricing estimate of the following week and I’d managed to anticipate some snags and address them in my estimate so was broadly in keeping with Amy’s advice.
My other professional career is wide and varied, and gave full immersion in bid work so maybe a head start there. Win rate is often quoted in such circles and can be quite low. I’ve been lucky winning nearly everything bid for. How do these things happen? One thing I didn’t do last week was underbid and leave myself at potential risk of loss.
Week 8
Week 7 Live Talk and Q&A with David Chancellor
David has gone a long way on a self funding basis although now he does get commissioned. There could be a lesson here for us starting out.
Something common with his work is an element of blood and gore. Culling of wildlife ( for its own good as the elderly are removed from the population) versus the minor trauma abstracted in my portfolio. It’s not all about really good taste, but about issues of meaning or importance.
Week 6
Week 5
Week 4 In Conversation with Maximus Barnett
It is brilliant to see success and how it is brought about (focus and specialisation). Good also to learn how to approach with your own work increasing the chances of matching up with a picture editor. At least as far as I’m concerned having studied a bit on journalism (specifically hyperlocal journalism in my case).
Other Speakers
Colin Pantall
The political stage is not one i’ve encountered before. Pantall in photographing China for a Magnum publication has managed to weave around the glare of officialdom as we hear how states like to promote a vision of life that may not often tie up with the realities.
My personal opinion only, but maybe China (as many other countries including Britain) should be open to admission of truths, especially as a means of gaining broader acceptance in the world.
I recall comparison being made. Other photographers such as Parr have documented the country too, but each photographer brings their own style. There is room for more than one book on a single subject, so we should be encouraged to make our own work even if others have been there before us.
Jane Hilton
Hilton made it to the USA with her work. Having gained a film commission through the BBC it was amazing to hear how she was sent out with a BBC producer and film setup and was required to transfer her skills from stills to video.
If I’m honest, I have to admit to had already watched the resulting tv documentary in the day. I say admit as the subject is legal prostitution in a US state. I always have concerns about exploitation and so too does Hilton. The talk was maybe a glimpse or insight into a type of work that is constrained by or to gender. Knowing what you cant or don’t want to photograph is maybe as important as thinking you know what you do want to photograph.
An adVICE I liked about book publication was captioning. Hilton realises the failings of captions (viewer doesn’t pause on the images) so she put a slightly cryptic piece at the end so the viewer has to do some cross-reference work to match up captions.
I imagine the audience was like myself rather surprised to learn of women going into the trade due to having a sex addiction. Racey stuff indeed this photography business.
Clementine Schneiderman
Who would have thought that a young French national would visit Wales and stay in the Valleys?
The subject of Elvis fans had scope for falling into the category of a plastic version of the real. However, a certain sadness descends upon the subject and the lives of the people showcased? It was fascinating to see the subjects and how they obviously influence each other at the human level: friends dressing alike for Elvis conferences and children adopting the Elvis culture from parents. The thing going for the work is that Elvis is a well known phenomenon in the media so there is both subject and interested audience.
Showing a genuine interest in her adopted land has been acknowledged through those Welsh Art Council grants that were forthcoming. Not a strategy to be copied lightly.
And inspiration too, for those students intent on PhD research in photography. For me personally, yes there is a definite appeal in doctoral study but I realise too I need to up my game, get out there on a public stage and keep learning theory. Anyone that does go that route I’d be happy to stay in touch with in the future.
Simon Roberts
Being resourceful was demonstrated, as Roberts tapped into his wife’s Russian speaking skills. The post crash Russia work created put Roberts on the photographers political map and led to him being invited by Westminster to photograph a general election.
You have to listen to Roberts live to pick up on his skill. There is all the interest around photographing on the rooftop of a van but behind this are some serious perspectives sic. Yes actual perspective is altered as he looks down upon a scene and captures environmental details. He links several stories within his image into one theme. I tend always to simplify so it is great to see scope for busy photographs (as long as the content is consistent). But listen to Robert guide you through his photographs. He picks up on every detail. And that is the essence of a photograph, a picture of something in all its detail. A far cry from ny abstract work at present. I might get over it one day (next study module?)
Laura Hynd
What is there not to love about Hynd? That play on vulnerability, the beauty of her work. The naivety of the elements of the video work. It is not as all as I make it sound and maybe the whole is part of the branding both personal and work. So a rather clever approach to the market backed by the number of commissions obtained.
Alec Soth
I’ve followed his work so it was great to get a background on Sleeping by the Mississippi and other works.
It was interesting to hear him being pushed to reveal new work and his thoughts on the perils and gains of collaborating. I’ll keep a watch on that work where he gave cameras to children for a limited time to show their world from their perspective.
Other others
So many other talented and influential speakers to write of. That’s it, I draw a line here and hand in my assignment. I will return to give more detail.
Paulo is course leader in photography at London Metropolitan University, has had several Arts Council grants and works with Anthropologists on a migration work. It was as much a chance encounter as anything at The Regents University, on Saturday but after her giving a presentation I was able to spend time during lunch and again after my own showing of current photographs. Let’s be clear there is no comparison as her work is top notch and I am currently developing my visuals and I work in a totally different way.
However, I was glad to be able to engage in discussion and picked up many points of areas of development I can pursue. A point of inflection was that both our sets of images come alive once there is some spoken narrative. Paulo carefully selects an edit to build and maintain engagement and selects narratives that bring home the gravity of her work and personal connection is clearly demonstrated.
Gary Fabian Millar (thank you Sophie for making the association)
Gary Fabian Millar does work or has done work for sometime in fact that in abstract style is not too dissimilar to my earlier adventures into abstract imagery.
I think any similarity is in the look of our work. Beyond that our techniques and end products are totally different. I’m a digital worker compared to Gary who works more practically with the physical: making photograms, working camera-less and producing textile artefacts.
What I might take from researching his work is a triggering or reinforcement of some ideas I’ve yet to promote within my work.
Nature of Creativity
Creativity happens in a burst of energy for me during which my output is highly productive. I often wonder if I can repeat the work as I take from it an intuition and do not record the absolute steps. This makes each work unique and even going back to the same starting position I’d not be able to fully recreate an image.
Creativity I have learned has its ups and downs and I no longer am surprised to discover others have had the same or similar idea as myself. In passing, I mention my informal series of crafted small planet images based on closeups. In Gary’s work I spot he too has created a number of planet style images and there are other areas of overlap.
I think my efforts are a nod to the cult radio series H2G2, where a character is engaged in custom made planet building. It was just a passing phase for me.
This was a while ago but serves to illustrate further: I explored combined portraits, three into one. This can be done in camera or in post and through my established interest the latter is always going to be my preferred approach. I say this because if I can I like to introduce technology into my work. It is an expression of who I am and my professional background. Anyway, having experimented earlier in this manner I guess I should not have been surprised to find the identical style imagery done by an Associate of the RPS in one of the journals.
My current work abstracts minor trauma and whilst others have explored what I might term blood and guts, I tend to bring out the beauty of the healing process and the warm glow of life within. I’m wondering about controlling intensity of light in my work to represent basic phases of life.
Part of what I do seeks an element of medical observation as the type of processing I do amplifies structure otherwise unseen by the naked eye.
Extensions I’d like to try to my work and supported by review comments pre and post the Week 3 Tutor Webinar, would be the addition of context. I want viewers to take what they wish from my series of abstracts without my literal explanation and let the pictures speak more. I’d intend to increase the variety of media from text (of poetry perhaps relating to place and make my images sing in a similar manner), a series of stirring titles or outtakes from recognised work, or write my own lines – I like to write my own stuff with feeling or effect I suppose. I’d maybe also extend to audio as I always strongly associate sound with visuals and hope an audience might too.
Paulo is course leader in photography at London Metropolitan University, has had several Arts Council grants and works with Anthropologists on a migration work. It was as much a chance encounter as anything at The Regents University, on Saturday but after her giving a presentation I was able to spend time during lunch and again after my own showing of current photographs. Let’s be clear there is no comparison as her work is top-notch, and I am currently developing my visuals, and I work in a totally different way.
However, I was glad to be able to engage in discussion and picked up many points of areas of development I can pursue. A point of inflexion was that both our sets of images come alive once there is some spoken narrative. Paulo carefully selects an edit to build and maintain engagement and picks stories that bring home the gravity of her work and personal connection is clearly demonstrated.
Gary Fabian Millar (thank you, Sophie, for making the association)
Gary Fabian Millar does work or has done work for some time in fact that in abstract style is not too dissimilar to my earlier adventures into abstract imagery.
I think any similarity is in the look of our work. Beyond that, our techniques and end products are totally different. I’m a digital worker compared to Gary, who works more practically with the physical: making photograms, working camera-less and producing textile artefacts.
What I might take from researching his work is triggering or reinforcement of some ideas I’ve yet to promote within my work.
Nature of Creativity
Creativity happens in a burst of energy for me, during which my output is highly productive. I often wonder if I can repeat the work as I take from it intuition and do not record the simple steps. This makes each work unique and even going back to the same starting position I’d not be able to fully recreate an image.
Creativity I have learned has its ups and downs, and I no longer am surprised to discover others have had the same or similar idea as myself. In passing, I mention my informal series of crafted small planet images based on closeups. In Gary’s work, I spot he too has created several planet style images, and there are other areas of overlap.
I think my efforts are a nod to the cult radio series H2G2, where a character is engaged in custom made planet building. It was just a passing phase for me.
This was a while ago but serves to illustrate further: I explored combined portraits, three into one. This can be done in-camera, or in post-processing and through my established interest, the latter is always going to be my preferred approach. I say this because if I can, I like to introduce technology into my work. It is an expression of who I am and my professional background. Anyway, having experimented earlier in this manner, I guess I should not have been surprised to find the identical style imagery done by an Associate of the RPS in one of the journals.
My current work abstracts minor trauma, and while others have explored what I might term blood and guts, I tend to bring out the beauty of the healing process and the warm glow of life within. I’m wondering about controlling the intensity of light in my work to represent life.
Part of what I do seeks an element of medical observation as the type of processing I do amplifies structure otherwise unseen by the naked eye.
Extensions I’d like to try to my work and supported by review comments pre and post the Week 3 Tutor Webinar, would be the addition of context. I want viewers to take what they wish from my series of abstracts without my literal explanation and let the pictures speak more. I’d intend to increase the variety of media from the text (of poetry perhaps relating to a place and make my images sing similarly), a series of stirring titles or outtakes from recognised work, or write my own lines – I like to write my own stuff with feeling or effect I suppose. I’d maybe also extend to audio as I always strongly associate sound with visuals and hope an audience might too.
My best work, continues to fall down the gaps, as the flashes of creativity experienced have so far occurred in natural order, in very close proximity to module start dates but not close enough to qualify for publication. As a continued source of frustration, I’ve tried to slow down to coordinate with study module dates. Potentially, what has happened is that inspiration is drawn from within, without necessarily referencing the Module content, only due to circumstance
Scope
Having got the above out into the open, let me turn to two areas a) the continuing development of practice in Abstract Impressionism, and b) the following up of advice to simply continue shooting, following one’s intuition.
Abstract Expressionism
Stage I Art
This is the area in which I initially linked the beauty of the bodily healing processes to soldiers from the family who were wounded, and repaired and who repeatedly continued on into battle in the Great War.
Let me see if I can illustrate developments. Initially, I’d concentrated on impressions from the battlefield alongside the soldiers perspective on memories of home. My initial technique was Conceptual in using relevant images of colour and texture that in my artistic judgement provided scope for post-processing into the abstract. I preferred methods, including pixel stretching. Both vertical direction, representational of the environmental conditions and horizontal, representational of the landscape. Then combined, there is a layered intent similar in form to patterning found in Scottish tartan that might be missed by the viewer but conveniently supports the underlying Scottish theme.
This is just a base level of processing into image layers. These are then recombined with the original image in which line edge effects are enhanced. As required, layers are hand-painted using masks. The impact I obtained at first I found to be visually stunning. Through planned shooting, I had a wealth of relevant images within my personal catalogue. Overshooting proved necessary as the success rate can be low as not all source images provide enough inspiration for abstraction.
This was the first area of creativity excluded by the course. However, the technique was well practised and is available to reuse,. Having said that it does take time to read the base image and in the application of skill when applying post techniques. Often, and in favour of the work, the methods are not wholly repeatable. If I worked the same image again, the outcome would be different. I like that in this digital age. Although not a deliberate act of destructive editing, practically to resolve this, it might take a video recording of the creation process to accurately capture the steps.
Stage II Art
This is the next development in abstraction, and by chance, I discovered that post-processing colour beta value and applying simplification recreated an effect I’d long ago practised and had enjoyed. As I photograph minor trauma concerning mitochondrial DNA as the cellular powerhouse and generational link and do so in terms of the beauty of bodily healing, I find this technique can work really well in bringing out a healing glow alongside a feeling of layering and looking into the image. I like this direction a lot. One or two copies have immediately given this result. As experimentation continued, other trauma made for highly saturated representations of colours. An outcome obtained here is in drawing out areas of interest that the eye alone would miss. The camera records surface features and layers in post-processing that we do not ordinarily see. Again there is the same channelling of post-processing towards destructive editing.
Two more steps to go. The first relates to potential garishness in colour saturation which is not readily eliminated. A jury is out for me on this, but I may use this as a signature theme. Otherwise, I should experiment in further degrees of subtleness. In this sense, the image continues as a crafted piece of work, which I think adds to its value.
The second step is possibly reasonably intuitive, which is to cross, that is combine, stage I and stage II art. In fact, this has now been tried, and I like the outcome as it does tone down colour saturation which can overwhelm the senses. In retrospect that could be quite representational of any hurt suffered. The crossing does give the mellowing effect and refinement I thought I was looking for. Either way, there is no loss from learning how to control an image.
Technique
There are challenges when photographing even minor trauma not least in my project, is getting relatives onside. As a photographer, I’m more acutely aware of those minor accidents to self as they can hurt. Now instead of saying ouch and moving on, I immediately go for the camera, and as a person, my reaction has already been conditioned to this. The challenge is in photographing when a position may be challenging to deal with. There are circumstances where a smartphone camera is ideal, yet pixel resolution might show. Turning to macro techniques increases the challenges already faced as equipment becomes cumbersome and unwieldy in the circumstances. Problem-solving though is a part of photography to be enjoyed, isn’t it?
Image Audit
Not mentioned thus far, I feel I need to instigate a method of auditing from original file through to abstract. Earlier techniques were non-destructive, and most of the working could be preserved in saved layers, but no longer is this the case. I do need an audit method even if only for my own sanity if publishing later on.
Developments in Ongoing Shooting – the intuitive part
This topic ran parallel to my project and welcomed as it gives another frame of comparative reference compared to abstracting images of trauma.
This also hopefully demonstrate I’m active in photography in other ways throughout the current module.
Lending Support
I had an interlude photographing trees or large shrubs where gravity was getting the better of them, where the intervention of a gardener meant metal supports were provided. I found a temple garden where this was common. The plants flourished as nature adapted to the support provided. An initial motivation in the shooting was around the interesting triangular composition. This evolved into observations of how successful the ways are in which the assistance was provided. Then I tried to liken this to the support society gives to those in need. Thus a parallel is opened on a social or political comment.
The photographs were the first pass, and as the lighting was bright and contrasty. I would need to return with cloudier skies with more even light to obtain the desired exposure.
National Charity Engagement
This is an area I previously mentioned in a tutor group and which was viewed as a good thing in providing a backup project if the current work cannot proceed for one reason or another. It was also advised I be wary of being used as a photographer to the charities own ends.
Preliminary test shots were made, and I was due to go back when the time was right – here note the earlier comment about progressing a little too soon. Meanwhile, though, I managed to have a long discussion with one of the volunteers who was very helpful. I’d talked in terms of continued interest. And during our discussion, various narratives unfolded although at least one I’m sure I’d seen in their publicity somewhere. I gained a broader understanding of how I might embed. Without causing interference to the working processes. No further photographs have been taken at this stage.
Okay, let’s see how this works structurally and content-wise. Structurally, and I need to get this out of the system at the start, I’m doing a week by week blog entry on this headline topic. When I see other examples of other students work say, I might reform and change, if it can be done more efficiently.
Content-wise I’ll match up with the topics and Talis and revisit at each appropriate step.
Here we go then.
Will Hartley taught me (probably most of us) something.
Guest Lecture with Will Hartley
This guest for me resonated immediately because as a pre-university student Will studied nearby. I liked the advice offered and I’ll tighten up my act when supporting studio work. Another point that resonated was his having studied in Wales. A short but intense Community Journo course I did was with Prifysgol Caerdydd – ah, Newport not Cardiff.
I kind of figured before this course that I might fall nicely into a Picture Editor role (dream on) with John G Morris being a personal hero if I may be allowed such. There again, I would enjoy digital editing too if time allowed, and I have other unformed plans to go freelance. How good would it be to give up some time studio hosting for more practice at assisting or even grow practice at filming? For what it’s worth, I tend to think that human vision is more akin to video and ultimately an attractive prospect. Mind you, there is a good deal of talent out there already. I diverge, but please forgive, this is inspired by the lecture.
Advice to focus on personal practice was given and is genuinely inspirational really. I’m acutely aware the method breathes life back into the photographer’s job. I had for a short while taken to creating boards planning out this area of practice and keep it in reserve. One time the method failed me in trying to do 3D photography in a London graveyard, the subject in the main was nearly always too flat. But at least I tried and can eliminate this idea. I might spot the specific item that I know now that it can be effective with. Trail and error but on my own time. Another diversion I know but I’d love to build in 3D work to a project as it really draws in a viewer who can linger within the image examining detail – with the right subjects it can be rather entertaining and maybe qualifies academically under the banner of semiotics.
I liked the way editorial work was described as a shared workload when giving over editorial Instagram or web resources of contributing authors (including photographers. Given trust can be established, it is a smart idea to share the workload. I liked the balance between writing and photography mentioned in the talk. I liked how thought was given to the concepts that run alongside photographs.
Post this MA I could envisage making a studio and training centre print magazine. It’s the sort of thing delegates would likely pick up and peruse over lunch or after a visit.
I have a suggestion in reply to Max’s what can we do question. While I like novelty and am certain multimedia could be somehow incorporated into the editorial scene, one perhaps more sensible thing would be to feature poetry. Can you imagine opening up to a whole raft of new contributors and like Viveca Koh on this in her fellowship book submission, there could be everything from her work through to budding poets in school? Serious contributions with substantial cultural work in line with culture identification and development. This is really important to society. I might just pinch my own idea there.
___ ends for now with more to follow on other things from this week ___
Write-up responses to what you have seen, read or watched
Reading list: Photography Changes Everything
So really here, some notes to self in ramping up this area of the CRJ. The discussion below leads to a diagrammatic representation when capturing context.
Leaving behind the Positions and Practice Module and moving forward into the second module, Sustainable Prospects, I need to develop this area of the blog.
I had begun with notes I kept in word-processed files and that were made purely for my own interest and as such they were not of a publishable standard without further work. I’ve used the first module to setup a blog and get used to it’s structure and operation which we were allowed to do as the CRJ was not initially a marked assignment where now it is becoming so.
My moving from a scientific and management background into arts education will and has required a period of adaption especially as a number of the terms are unfamiliar, not only as definitions of the scope of what we need to write about, but also as a practice, these are areas that seemed unfamiliar to me, until I stopped to think through what the purpose might be.
I guess in my earlier design work with systems and processes, there is a way of working that entails the creation of a Context Diagram (CORE is an example although it was used for capturing COmmon REquirements). Perhaps at a philosophical level, the thinking approach is not too different between system thinking and the arts? If I proceed with the concepts I know and build on or adapt them for this course as required. It is a way of starting, meaning I can offer something forward and it can be reasonably structured and give Tutors or others scope to decide if my approach satisfies what is normally expected, without my going overboard.
Write-up responses to what you have seen, read or watched
Reading list: Photography Changes Everything
So really here, some notes to self in ramping up this area of the CRJ. The discussion below leads to a diagrammatic representation when capturing context.
Leaving behind the Positions and Practice Module and moving forward into the second module, Sustainable Prospects, I need to develop this area of the blog.
I had begun with notes I kept in word-processed files and that were made purely for my own interest and as such they were not of a publishable standard without further work. I’ve used the first module to setup a blog and get used to it’s structure and operation which we were allowed to do as the CRJ was not initially a marked assignment where now it is becoming so.
My moving from a scientific and management background into arts education will and has required a period of adaption especially as a number of the terms are unfamiliar, not only as definitions of the scope of what we need to write about, but also as a practice, these are areas that seemed unfamiliar to me, until I stopped to think through what the purpose might be.
I guess in my earlier design work with systems and processes, there is a way of working that entails the creation of a Context Diagram (CORE is an example although it was used for capturing COmmon REquirements). Perhaps at a philosophical level, the thinking approach is not too different between system thinking and the arts? If I proceed with the concepts I know and build on or adapt them for this course as required. It is a way of starting, meaning I can offer something forward and it can be reasonably structured and give Tutors or others scope to decide if my approach satisfies what is normally expected, without my going overboard.
Critical Research Journal 
