Exercise 7 - book covers, choosing your imagery

Exercise 6 - experiment with layouts

Experimenting with different fonts for headings, captions, and sample body text has been interesting. The "rules" state that serif fonts are best for large sections of text as it easier for the eye to scan as these fonts flow from one character to the next. Sans-serif fonts are best used for headings and captions. I was also surprised to read that a mix of font types is best on a page as long as no more than three fonts are used. This was a surprise to me as I'd always assumed it best to stick to one font to keep the layout simple and to just vary the size for headings and body text. This was a rule I used to stick to when writing reports in my previous life as a computer engineer. This misapprehension probably came about because in that world nobody really cared that much about the style of a report it was the contents that were important. In the publishing world a visual approach is more appropriate and I can see how style matters. 

Layout 1:

In layout 1 I used Verdana bold 16pt for my heading. The body text is Georgia regular 8pt and the caption is Arial regular 8pt. I stuck with the rules and ensured that I chose a sans-serif heading and caption and used serif for the body text. The heading is bold and the caption and body text are regular.

Layout 2:

This layout uses the same fonts only made larger - 18pt for the heading and 10pt for the body text and the caption is kept at 8pt. When printed out the first layout is visually neater and looks more professional. On the other hand the larger font of the second layout is easier to read - particularly for people like me whose eyesight is not that brilliant. There appears to be a trade off between these two aspects that needs to be thought about when planing a layout.

Layout 3:

I chose Verdana regular instead of bold and kept the size to 18pt. A completely different font, Helvetica light oblique, was used at 10pt for the body text. The caption remains the same at Arial regular 8pt. This font looks okay on screen but very wishy-washy when printed. The difference between how all the fonts look on screen and when printed is quite marked. Generally the fonts look larger on paper than on screen and this has to be taken into account.

 Layout 4:

Times New Roman bold at 20pt was chosen for the heading on this layout. The body text is Trebuchet MS regular at 8pt and the caption is Arial Narrow italic, 8pt. I deliberately chose a serif font for the heading to see if breaking the rule would really matter. The font does look a bit odd now. I probably wouldn't have thought too much about it before if I'm honest. Now I'll probably find myself analysing fonts whenever I look at anything and making a judgement of some kind. I think I have a bit of a steep learning curve ahead of me again.

Different ways of using Type

Just by looking through any magazine a whole load of different ways of using type can be seen. I've scanned and commented on the ones that caught my attention below:

Exercise 5 - type tools: getting started

In this exercise I've been experimenting with type using fonts, sizing, colour and drop shadows to familiarise myself with the text and type options in Photoshop. I've also read the link files regarding leading, kerning, and all the other options to adjust the way type looks on the page.

I hadn't realised that there were so many options for making minute adjustments to text. It was also useful to learn about rastering and how this enables text to be treated as a shape that can be edited in the same way that an image can - although this needs to be done once the type amendments have been made as once rastered, it can no longer be edited as text.

Tom Hunter - study visit

I recently attended a talk by the photographer Tom Hunter at a gallery in Hackney. The day was organised by the OCA and the artist gave the students a glimpse into the artistic thought processes he used to make his work. He began by describing how he originally came to photography and talked about the life he led in the squats of Hackney and the people that he met and was influenced by. This was a time when the London borough was vastly under resourced and many empty buildings were left in disrepair. Hunter described the artistic and alternative community that flourished despite an attempt by the media to portray them as worthless and a burden on society. Hunter was living and studying as a photographer during this period and began to look to Fine Art painting that hung in prestigious galleries as a means to reference the lives of the people around him - an attempt to portray his reality rather than one imposed on his group by the media to further a political and ideological agenda.

Hunter's talk was slideshow based and we saw the juxtaposition of his photographs against the paintings that inspired them. It was interesting to see the references that he made even though I was unfamiliar with most of the paintings except Millais' Ophelia.

Tom Hunter is a lively character and the talk was very enjoyable. I came away thinking that photography projects are a bit like writing in that it is sometimes best to stick with a subject that you know really well - otherwise there is a risk of becoming out of your depth and losing authenticity in the project. The other point made during the chat session afterwards was that Hunter refuted the allegation often made to him that he should not be making aesthetic images of the people that surrounded him as this was morally wrong - that their plight (such as the homeless woman) was too serious to be dealt with in this way. Hunter's argument was that aesthetic images draw people in and in this way their subject's situation can be portrayed in a more subliminal way than say black and white documentary - and he intimated that documentary is not his style and he finds it a bit suspect. He talked quite a bit about "hit and run" or "grab and go" photographers like Martin Parr that arrive in a situation and take from it. This is in contrast to his own style of working as he is nearly always concerned with the environment around Hackney and he still lives just down the road. His other point was that he was trying to portray his subjects as beautiful in opposition to a media definition of them as worthless and ugly.

I am an admirer of Hunter's work and agree with a lot of what he had to say. I think that sometimes too many rules and objections are put onto the work of photographers with inaccurate claims of immorality being made without fully understanding the nature of the work. Whilst there are many valid arguments for a moral and ethical stance in photography I don't think the accusation that making serious and thought provoking work "beautiful" is morally wrong is always a valid point. A moral straightjacket on creativity is the last thing an artist needs. In Tom Hunter's case he is living and working with many of his subjects and from this perspective his point of view is an authentic and valid one.

Writing about photography - reflection

In this section I have spent time thinking, analysing, and writing about photographs. I have found that these skills are useful tools to help develop my academic standards and also improve my analytical ability when looking at work in galleries and books. The initial exercise to write about a photograph in free flow without any restrictions on content or word count was useful when compared to the later exercises. It was interesting to move on from this and write captions with differing content and a restricted word count. This made me think closely about the necessity of every word and how my sentences needed to be constructed and concise.

The later exercises involved research around a suggested photograph and required searching the Internet to find suitable material and ensure that I only referred to factual information rather than opinion. This task of gathering data and collating it into a readable style of essay was time consuming but I enjoyed it.

The last exercise was to analyse a well known essay by John Berger. I made a lot of notes as I thought about the topics being discussed and tried to pull together my thoughts on it. This exercise was much more difficult as I am not used to discussing some of these topics in any depth but I tried my best. I am aware that I will need to hone these skills further for one of the assignments later in the course.

I'm not entirely sure how these skills will help improve my photographic practise when it comes to making photographs - maybe the knowledge and skills gained will probably bubble up to the surface at some point and I will have a light bulb moment. When the time is right to start promoting my own work then I can see how what I have learned can be put to good use - particularly with the construction of catalogues and artist's statements and the like. I think at this moment in my development the most practical use for these skills is in studying photography and visiting galleries and exhibitions - anything I can do to improve my analytical skills in this area can only be a good thing.

Exercise 5 - analyse an essay

John Berger - Understanding a Photograph

Summary:

1. Photographers have argued that photography is a Fine Art. The vast majority of people do not think this.
2. Photographs have not been held in sacred isolation in museums therefore the public do not think them beyond them.
3. All Fine Art is now considered property and is opposed to all other values.
4. Photographs have no property value as they are not rare and can be reproduced.
5. A photograph is a decision to record an event or object.
6. Photography is the process of rendering a self-conscious observation of an event. The message is comprehensible to a greater or lesser extent dependant on the image.
7. Painting is an art of arrangement and composition in the formative sense is not visible in ALL photographs.
8. The formal arrangement of a photograph explains nothing. The events are only explicable according to the viewers prior knowledge.
9. The proper meaning of photography is the recording and absence of event/objects in a given space of time.
10. Painting interprets the world translating it into its own language. Photography has no language of its own. All references are external to itself.
11. The unique power of photography is to isolate events/objects in time. To highlight the relationship between what is present and what is absent.
12. A photograph is effective when it contains a generally applicable quantum of truth which is revealing about what is absent as about what is present and this truth must not be independent of the viewer.
13. Photography does not deal in constructs and there is no transforming in photography.
14. Photography is a means of testing, confirming and constructing a total view of reality and can be used as an ideological weapon by and against us.

John Berger's essay is written from a political viewpoint. Berger is a Marxist Humanist. It is fairly obvious that this is the case as in paragraph 3 of his essay when he talks about property and paragraph 14 when he refers to photography as an ideological weapon. First off, art is property? Is it? Is that all that it is? To a collector and a rich elite maybe. I think the art market and art in itself should be held in the mind as two separate entities. So what if someone wants to pay millions for a painting or a photograph? I'm quite happy with framed prints on my walls. It does not detract from my appreciation of them that they are not originals - and when I tire of them I have no problem binning them in favour of something else. To look at the argument from another perspective surely everything can be defined as property. Food in the home is property if looked at from a Marxist viewpoint. That doesn't exclude it from being something else as well. Food is still sustenance as art (including photography) is a way for us to understand ourselves. 

Berger opens his essay with the statement that the vast majority of people do not consider photography art. This may have been the case in 1972 but the popular view of photography has changed to a certain extent (much more so in some countries like America). I think that unlike painting photography has many uses and Berger unfairly singles out the more mundane aspects such as family photography to make this claim. Many people do buy photographs to hang on their walls. The kind of images (macro shots of flowers, landscapes, seascapes, etc) that can be purchased ready framed in places like Ikea may appear banal but they are considered art by the person that buys them. And what about the photographs that hang in galleries and museums - the exhibitions of photography that have been put on? How many hundreds of thousands (millions) have now flocked to see The Family of Man exhibition over the years.

I am not convinced by many aspects of Berger's argument. His reasoning that a formal arrangement of a photograph explains nothing does not take into account advances in photographic theory in the art world such as conceptual photography. I would also take exception to the argument that photography has no rarity value. Since this essay was written in 1972 photographs have become very collectible and have sold for vast sums on the art market. Photo-books have also become expensive collectors items.

Why the attack on composition? Why is still-life absurd? He does not give a reason for this statement. Is it because he wants to dismiss still-life because it does not fit in with his theory that composition and theoretical constructs do not exist in photography? Photographs in series (like Cindy Sheman's Untitled Film Stills concerning gender identity) deal in constructs. Tom Hunter's still-life portraits are constructed images of everyday events that reference fine art paintings.

I agree with elements of what he has to say - particularly the concept of recording what is present/absent in a given moment in time. But I do not think this is the whole picture and images can be interpreted in many different ways and from different viewpoints not just political, but environmental, feminist, aesthetic etc. 

Berger's writing style is very readable. His writing flows and his ideas are clearly set out in paragraphs containing the nub of his argument. But it is an outdated argument that has been made redundant by the passage of time and from the advances of photography into many areas of conceptual art. To some extent it could be argued that photography has superseded painting and other art forms in being able to express complex conceptual ideas and this is just one aspect of the argument that I feel makes photography worthy of being considered a Fine Art.

 

     

Exercise 4 - research and analyse

Pikes Peak Park, Colorado Springs, Colorado 1970 - Robert Adams

This black and white image shows a newly constructed housing development. The caption names this place as, "Pikes Peak Park" in Colorado Springs. The image is dated 1970 and is by the photographer Robert Adams. The development looks new because there are expanses of bare earth where there should be grass and landscaping. The concrete drive stands in contrast to the soil and looks particularly "fresh" with its hard edges. The bottom half of the image is composed of similar box-like houses as they gently slope up a hillside and continue out of the edge of the frame - an indication that there may be many more similar constructions in this uniform development. It is a sunny day and the light is strong as it strikes on the sides of the houses leaving others in shadow. The sky is full of brightly lit clouds and takes up almost half the image. A line of utility poles cross the horizon. The landscape feels empty. In fact, there is a solitary child playing in the mid foreground, very small in the frame, with a toy waggon of some sort. The reproduction on my screen is not that large so it is difficult to make out. The child is playing in the road, at the entrance to the foreground house, and this solitude adds to the sense of isolation. There is not a single other person about and the only additional sign of human habitation is a truck parked on a driveway of a house in the middle distance.

New Topographics is part of the modern landscape genre - defined by an influential exhibition called, New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape in 1975 at the International Museum of Photography at George Eastman House, New York. The exhibition was curated by William Jenkins and drew a small number of like minded photographers such as Adams, Bernd and Hilla Becher and Stephen Shore, (Cowlard, 2010). The exhibition has grown in stature over the years and the catalogue is now an expensive collectors item. "Pikes Peak Park, Colorado Springs, Colorado 1970," is a gelatin silver print (15.2 x 14.8,) and is now held by MOMA, New York, (MOMA, 2013).

The style of New Topographics has been defined as having "no style".  Aesthetic values have been stripped from the image in an attempt to record just the detail of what is before the photographer. It has also been stated that the New Topographics artists were influenced by the artist/photographer, Ed Ruscha and his work "Twenty Six Gasoline Stations," (Ruscha, 1962.) Ruscha's photographic style has been characterised by the BBC series The Genius of Photography as,

Left to its own devices the camera can be nothing more than a slack-jawed dumb recorder of whatever is put in front of it - which is exactly what Ed Ruscha allowed it to be in a series of seminal books he produced in the 1960s, milestones in the history of photography and pop art. (BBC, 2007)

I would say that when a cursory glance is cast over this type of image it often appears that little thought has gone into making it. But it is the very nature of the image and its mundane subject matter that draws the viewer in to examine further - to try and work out what it is that drew the photographer to make it. On closer inspection the image can be unpicked. From a compositional perspective we can see that the facing sides of the houses are evenly lit by the sun and range from a mid to very bright tones. The photographer either planned and waited for the sun to strike at this angle or happened to be in the right place at the right time and took advantage of the composition before him. Without the inclusion of bright light, creating a succession of uniform shapes receding up the slope, this image would look very flat. The child in mid foreground is also well placed in the composition - whether this is fortuitous or prompted is unknown. The image has an even focus, indicating a small aperture has been selected for a large depth of field, and is well exposed.

What is the intent of the photographer? To show how urbanisation destroys the natural landscape? To show ugly things in a beautiful place? How these environments foster isolation and loneliness - and that through the gradual erosion of cultural values we destroy not only the landscape but ourselves? Adams is known for taking an interest in his environment and his work usually depicts the urban sprawl of tract housing and accompanying infrastructure that begins to overtake the unspoilt landscape of California and Oregon in 1960 & 70s. The images also usually infer a sense of isolation and loneliness. Adams has also said that underpinning all his work is an appreciation of light, (Getty Museum, 2013).

By the above criteria, is "Pikes Peak Park, Colorado Springs, Colorado 1970," a success? I would say on the whole that it is. It is obviously part of a wider sequence. As a stand-alone image it is not an iconic one. Not in the way that Adam's, "Colorado Springs, Colorado 1968," of a woman in silhouette through a window of a suburban home is regarded, (Adams, 1968). From the perspective of New Topographics, though, it more than fulfils the criteria of recording the detail - although I would dispute the claims made in the early days of New Topographics - that the genre was an attempt to brush aside aesthetic and humanistic concerns in favour of objectivity. The sense of isolation created by including solitary human figures in the compositions of many of the works (including this one) show that there is a clear agenda at work here.

Adams also talks about his love of light and how that affects the way he works. It is hard to analyse the image in this respect without seeing the original print. The online versions are generally small compared to the (approx) 15 x 14 original. I know that seeing the original work is crucial whenever a proper assessment is required. Many times I have wondered why a particular photograph is held in such high esteem - only to have my eyes opened when seeing the usually much larger work in real life am I able to appreciate it.






Reference list:

Adams, R (1968) [online] Available from: http://www.pbs.org/art21/images/robert-adams/colorado-springs-colorado-1968 [Accessed 8th February 20130].

BBC. (2007) [online] Available from: http://www.bbc.co.uk/photography/genius/gallery/ruscha.shtml [Accessed 8th February 2013].

Cowlard, D. (2010) [online] Available from: http://www.blueprintmagazine.co.uk/index.php/reviews/new-topographics/ [Accessed 5th February 2013].

Getty, J.P. Museum (2013) [online] Available from: http://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/adams/ [Accessed 8th February 2013].

MOMA. (2013) [online] Available from: http://www.moma.org/collection/browse_results.php?criteria=O%3AAD%3AE%3A66&page_number=20&template_id=1&sort_order=1 [Accessed 5th February 2013].

Ruscha, E. (1962) Twenty Six Gasoline Stations. 1st edition. Alhambra, USA: Cunningham Press.