Friday 21 June 2013

Deutsche Borse Prize 2013 - Winner Adam Broomberg & Oliver Chanarin



The final of the four Deutsche Borse nominees and eventual winners are Adam Broomberg & Oliver Chanarin - a duo that have taken a conceptual approach to the documentary genre. Their work "War Primer 2," takes the original "War Primer," a book by Bertold Brecht, and creates juxtaposition and montage by partly overlaying the original images with their own.

Adam Broomberg & Oliver Chanarin - War Primer 2

The subject matter of the Brecht book contained clipped images from the newspapers and four-line poems that questioned the truth of documentary imagery in the media. Bloomberg & Chanarin's overlays are also images culled from the media including world figures, the collapse of the twin towers and the treatment of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison. The poems remain intact and provide a poignant link from the original image to the overlay. Sometimes the original is almost completely obscured leaving one to wonder what is underneath.

These are not reproductions. Broomberg & Chanarin took 100 of the original books and painstakingly took them apart. They added their own images, including printing text over the original on the facing pages, then reconstructed them back into book form. The name War Primer & War Primer 2 refers to the fact that a primer is a study text for educational purposes. For the exhibition the books were placed into glass topped tables and opened at different pages. The tables, arranged in rows, are similar in form to ones used in classrooms. On the wall at the head of the row a reference list of titles for each open book is displayed.

One of the images shows the twin towers and underneath is an overview image of Berlin on fire. The smoke from the Berlin image appears to be coming out of the top of the tower making the visual plane of both images completely at odds with one another. This technique is used over and over with great effect. Bodies can be seen that are lined up with the heads and shoulders of tortured prisoners as army personnel lean in and smile for snapshots.

This work has many layers to it and Adam Broomberg did a recent interview with BBC Radio 4 where he explained his creative input. He described images such as George Bush holding a celebratory turkey on a platter and pasted over an image of Adolf Hitler eating stew as "moral equivalents." He talked about how the political photo opportunity operates and the difficulty of working as an embedded documentary photographer when all process and output are government controlled. In fact in an earlier work Broomberg & Chanarin managed to get themselves embedded with the British army in Afghanistan and instead of recording images of war and suffering exposed a roll of photographic paper in a light box - creating a very powerful response to the question of documentary truth and government control. The work can be seen here.

The Day That Nobody Died

I think that on reflection all the four nominees deserve their place in the Deutsche Borse exhibition. They all bring different elements yet at the same time question the truth of what we see before us; Whether that be through straight documentary, appropriation of images, or the blurring of the boundaries between fact and fiction.

Seeing all four exhibitions together brought up some interesting juxtapositions that made me think about the way that documentary photography has changed. At one time photojournalism was seen as a completely objective practice and the images that were supplied to the media depicted the truth of a situation. Now we are more critical of the media as we know that digital images can be manipulated to show subjective truths and even downright lies. What is sometimes forgotten is that the selection and manipulation of imagery for public consumption has been going on long before the digital age. The image can be very powerful though and we still have to be on our guard as we can still be all to willing to accept an image as "truth."






Thursday 20 June 2013

Deutsche Borse Photography Prize 2013 - Christina De Middel



On the floor above Mishka Henner and Chris Killip's work for the Deutsche Borse prize were the final two nominated artists.


During her research on strange psychological experiments Middel came across reports about one man's attempt to get Zambia involved in the 1960s space race. It seems Edward Makuka, a high school science teacher, with little funds and a lot of enthusiasm put together a small team of astronauts. A number of men, a spacegirl and some cats, were given some rudimentary training that mostly seemed to involve rolling down hills in oil drums. A lot of noise was made in the media at the time and Makuka requested seven hundred million pounds from the United Nations. But without funds or backing from his government Edward Makuka's dream to put Zambians on the moon came to nothing.

I've wanted to see this work for a while now. I had been aware of the growing popularity (and value) of Middel's photobook, "The Afronauts," through the many photography blogs that I read. The retro aesthetic that incorporated a quirky theme meshed with African culture and space technology grabbed my attention. My initial reaction to this work is that it is very engaging on a human level and the word I would use to describe it is playful.

The work has a strong narrative and it is the human element in attempting to re-create Edward Makuka's dream that I find touching. Alongside the images were newspaper cuttings, drawings, and documents that purported to be archive documents. Black and white images that showed the trainees practicing their mission were also included. Here is where it gets difficult to work out what is real and what is not. Middel blurs the boundaries between fact and fiction, playing with the notion of documentary photography as a medium that conveys only truth. It is interesting that when asked about her work in an interview that Middel replies:

I think all I have to say in photography is just a reaction to my days as a photojournalist and in some ways, revenge.

Interview, by Pat Padua. A full transcript from the Lay Flat blog can be found here - layflat blog.

Some of the other OCA students found the images racist and offensive - thinking that Africans were being mocked. I was surprised by this approach because I didn't feel this at all and was purely taken with the notion of a lone man following his ideals no matter what. Also, because there has been some discussion of the same points on the Net I felt sure that Christina De Middel must have been asked about this and I came across an interview in the Lay Flat photography blog - part of which is reproduced below:

PP: Do you think there's a danger that the Zambians project will be considered a joke?

CM: Well, the images are not offensive by themselves in any way. I am not making fun of the project or the idea, and I was very aware of the risk I was taking and how careful I had to be. Yet, it is true that people tend to laugh by only reading the headline "African Space Program," which is actually revealing prejudices that we might not even be aware of. I say the same every time that I am asked about this... if it was a German space program, you wouldn't be laughing, right?

One of my intentions with The Afronauts was to raise awareness of how we consume the image of Africa that is given in the media, and how a whole continent has been stigmatized. This uncomfortable reaction and prejudiced belongs to the viewer as it is not literally included in the images.

Interview, by Pat Padua. A full transcript from the Lay Flat blog can be found here - Lay Flat blog.

Christina De Middel's The Afronauts was one of my favourite series of work I have seen this year. I have a growing interest in constructed imagery and I like the way that she plays with the notion of real and fictionalised events in a playful way to question the documentary genre.


Wednesday 19 June 2013

Deutsche Borse Photography Prize 2013 - Chris Killip



Chris Killip - What Happened - Great Britain 1970 - 1990

The second nominee that I viewed at the Deutsche Borse prize was Chris Killip. His work was exhibited on the same floor of the Photographers Gallery as Mishka Henner. Walking through from Henner's contemporary work in colour to Killip's B&W documentary images was quite a shock.

Killip's work fits into the traditional image of documentary before a more conceptual approach started to make inroads into the genre. The images, taken in the north of England from 1970-1990, showed how the people lived through a disintegrating industrial economy. They conveyed grim poverty, despair, but also signs of change and hope too. Whilst there was bleakness, humanistic qualities also shone through in some of the portraits. "Boo and his Rabbit" and "Queens Silver Jubilee" being just two that balanced out the sequence. Having lived through the same time period I was struck by how dated the images looked. To me it doesn't seem that long ago but some of the subject matter could have been more like a hundred years past.

These images sit in the traditional style of documentary - more connected to Tony Ray-Jones and Walker Evans than Martin Parr or William Egglestone who were working in parallel in the same time frame. There is nothing wrong with that. I enjoyed analysing them all the same and the technique and process fits the subject matter very well. All the same, the difference between Henner and Killip in the gallery, juxtaposed side by side, was striking.

Tuesday 18 June 2013

Deutsche Borse Photography Prize 2013 - Study Day


On Saturday I travelled up to London for an OCA study day at The Photographers Gallery. The gallery is exhibiting the finalists and chosen winner of the Deutsche Borse photography prize 2013. The four exhibitions were:

No Man's Land by Mishka Henner

What Happened - Great Britain 1970-1990 by Chris Killip

The Afronauts by Christina De Middel

War Primer 2 by Adam Bloomberg & Oliver Chanarin

I have split the exhibition into four posts - one for each artist:

Mishka Henner - No Man's Land

Mishka Henner's work consisted of roadside images sourced and downloaded from Google Street View. The images showed women prostitutes waiting for clients in semi-rural locations in Southern Europe. The images were captured by Google Street View cars with cameras mounted on the roof as they passed intersections, underpasses, and lonely stretches of road. Henner's process involved data gathering in Internet chat rooms where men discussed these known locations. Once the sites were logged the co-ordinates were entered into Google Street View and the results scanned for signs of the women as the Google cars had passed by.

Firstly I found the images fascinating. I had no idea that prostitution was this out in the open and blatantly on show. One image even showed a woman in a portable chair as she sat under a parasol on the chevrons at a junction. She could just have easily been mistaken by the occupants of a passing car for someone selling roadside goods of an entirely different sort. There were images in the scrubland beneath a busy motorway flyover; Another of a woman by the road, in the trees and shrubs behind her a strange cave like opening in the brush - where presumably business is conducted.

The images themselves were well composed and not too bad quality for their fairly large size on the gallery wall. The artist must have trawled through a lot of images to find ones with good composition and subject matter. I would also be interested to know how much post processing of the images has been done by Henner to get them to exhibition or if they are relatively untouched.

Whilst in the gallery I heard a few of the other students questioning the appropriation of Google images and could it be considered as photography. I don't have an issue with this at all. Appropriation of material for artistic use is fine by me - the use of Google images is just a tool for an artist and it is the end result that counts. As has been stated in discussions around this topic many times artists have always done this. Yes, the quality is not as good as traditional methods but that is not really the point. Contemporary art photography has long moved on from the notion that the "craft" of photography is paramount. Not to say that there is still a place for a technically masterful image but it is the message conveyed and how well it is communicated that is important.

The nature of surveillance in today's society is also brought into question when looking at these images. We can no longer it seems go anywhere or do anything without being captured on camera - and by the cameras of a private global corporation at that. Henner has taken these images and used them for artistic purposes. Presumably men have also found the images and used them to initiate illicit sex. I wonder if the images could ever be used as evidence by the judicial system to prosecute prostitutes? The use of the image as map reference, "sex advertisement," evidence and art object changes with the context.

The question of the representation of women in art should also be considered. Women have often appeared in a paternalistic society as stereotypes and as objects for the gratification of men. Once again we have images of women as sex objects. It is often mentioned in the discussion of this topic that while the male viewer is allowed to freely gaze at the female form, the woman as an object of desire is rarely depicted as reciprocating. It is ironic that in Henner's images, once again, this time by use of Googles automated anti-identification software, even when caught looking back the women's faces are blurred.

Finally, I wanted to mention the exhibitions short film made up of the Google stills. The film very effectively showed through stop motion how the women appeared to the camera as the street car approached. The camera then appeared to pan towards the women and the viewer watched them recede into the distance a frame at a time. This sequence has been effectively put together by Henner by manipulating the Google street view software to turn and pan at the correct moments. I was left with an eerie feeling watching the women in these isolated and potentially dangerous situations as they disappeared into the distance.  

Thursday 13 June 2013

Look/13 - Walker Art Gallery



Over at the Walker Art Gallery we had a look at Double Take. This work comprised of images from the Keith Medley Archive. Keith Medley was a commercial press photographer that also undertook studio portraits and produced images for passport photos in an era before the instant photobooth. The passport images (taken between 1965-68) were made on 5x4 glass plate negatives (a technique that is surely quite anachronistic by 1965.) The plates each had two exposures showing the differences in posture and expression of the sitter in the time frame between the two shots. The images then would have been selected and cropped for the final passport photo.

The artists Mark Durden and Ken Grant have re-purposed these images, showing the double exposures in their entirety. The edges of the frame can now be inspected to examine the effect of the photographic process and the sitter can be compared between their two likenesses. As well as minute differences in expression some of the subjects have been caught unaware between the first and second exposure. These images can be much more revealing than the formal, public, face that is usually presented to the camera. Some of the images have had a strike mark put through them to signify that they are unusable. It is the strike mark or killed images that end up revealing the more interesting portraits.

Also in the gallery we looked at the Rankin exhibition, Alive: In the Face of Death. The images consisted of slick, shiny and colourful sets of images of people that are about to die and of others connected with the death industry. They have been given a sort of fashion shoot makeover and looked very vibrant. There was also a sequence of celebrity death masks in black and white that showed all the lines and pores of the face - not all the celebrities appear to have died so it was a bit confusing. Butterfly masks provided another vivid splash of colour. There is more to these images than I am describing but I was becoming a bit tired by this point and wasn't as engaged as I should have been. Also, anything connected to celebrity is always a huge turn off for me. To be honest they were far too slick and glossy looking for my taste.

We then had a quick look at the work of Martin Parr and Tom Wood in,  Every Man and Woman is a Star. I was interested to see Parr's older black and white work before the New Brighton type of images that we have become used to seeing. The older images are much more in the style of someone like Robert Frank. I wasn't familiar with Tom Wood and I will need to do some more research.

The work on display in the three galleries that we visited for the Liverpool Photography Festival was stimulating and I found something in each of them that I can take away with me and hopefully incorporate in to my own photographic practice.

Tuesday 11 June 2013

Look/13 - The Bluecoat Gallery

The Bluecoat

"I Exist (In Some Way),"is an exhibition of work from a variety of photographers from the perspective of the contemporary Arab world. The work of George Awde really caught my attention. "Shifting Grounds" deals with masculinity and what it is to be a Middle-Eastern male. His images have, at times, an engaging snapshot aesthetic that really humanises his subjects and firmly places them in their world. The image of two young boys passing the time as they lean over a car bonnet in the street has a softness to it that can be seen in the other works too. The composition is unconventional. The figure's torsos are bisected by the bottom edge of the frame and the figures take up only a small portion of the image. One of the boys gazes directly at the camera while the others face is obscured by a tree branch. The leaves of the tree frame the image adding to the overall effect of softness.

A second image that impressed me was a portrait of a man in a darkened room - his head and contours framed by shadow. His naked torso is lit by sunlight and I think it is because he has quite dark hair and beard that creates an interesting contrast between the sunlight and shadows. Again, the subject gazes directly back at the viewer, slightly deadpan in expression, but there is also a quizzical look behind the eyes. It is refreshing to see an image from the Middle East like this after we are fed so many others of pain and aggression. He is resting back on one arm in a relaxed position. The other arm is raised up to grasp his shoulder and in doing so displays a tattoo. It appears to be a heart with a message. I can't read it but on first glance it looked like, "hug me."  It isn't, but it did make me smile.

A third image shows a man standing with his back to the camera as he leans over a balcony. He appears to be preoccupied with something taking place in the street. He is blurred, the main focus of the composition being a tied knot in a piece of fabric that hangs down from the top of the frame. There is something very poignant about this image.



Look/13 events map

Upstairs in the Bluecoat Gallery were a selection of images by August Sander and Weegee from the collection at Newcastle's Side Gallery.

It's the first time I've seen Weegee's photographs on a gallery wall and was interested to see if they worked. After all as a chaser of sensationalist imagery for the tabloid press Weegee's images were never intended to be displayed in this way. The same could be said for Klein's work - although now, when it is blown up to huge proportions and hung at places like the Tate Moderns recent retrospective, it is easy to forget this fact. Unlike Klein, Weegee's images were small and neatly framed in a more traditional style. They worked for me. I think it is hard to look back with hindsight and try to unpick a previous generations sensibilities regarding art. We are so used to seeing different forms of work displayed in galleries these days that the original intention or source hardly seems to matter.

A juxtaposition of two images caught my attention. One was of a figure stepping out from the back of a police van. The figure lifts up their skirt to display a leg for the camera - all the while smiling broadly in a bold show of defiance for whatever crime they have been arrested. I was careful in my description to not state a gender for the figure as there seems to be some dispute - for me anyway. When I first saw the image at the gallery I was convinced that it was a man that had been caught in a situation dressed as a woman. I've read other readings that seem to take the gender at face value - maybe I'm reading too much into the image. Anyway, with either interpretation the interesting juxtaposition still stands with the image below it. The other image shows two men in the back of a similar police van. This time the contrast in their behaviour is markedly different. They are both wearing dark suits and use their hats to shield their faces from Weegee's flash and the harsh glare of publicity that is to follow.

I found a link to the two images on someones blog here.

The August Sander portraits always seem to me to put a lot of other portrait photographers work in the shade. They look masterful in their style and technique. The subjects almost jump out at the viewer. One of my favourites is the father and his two sons standing in a middle class and well furnished room at their home. The sons curiously appear to have their heads shaved and look incredibly thin. Have they been ill? Is the way they look perfectly normal for the fashions of the day? The father is a large and powerful looking figure. One hand rests on his son's shoulder in what seems to be a controlling grip. Both boys posture is slumped and they look downtrodden.

The other image that I like is of the worker in his hat and overcoat standing in a street. His shape creates such an arresting image and his expression is one of conviction. Has Sander asked the man to pose in this manner? It is a very strong and surreal composition.

I found an interesting article from Tate.Org about Sander here.

Edit:

The worker in his hat and coat is in fact the painter Anton Raderscheidt. He was a friend of Sanders and the portrait is based on a number of Randerscheidt own self portrait paintings that Sander admired.




Monday 10 June 2013

Look/13, Liverpool International Photography Festival - Open Eye Gallery

Look/13

I travelled up for the OCA study day in Liverpool at the weekend to attend the Look/13 Festival. The theme for this years show, that encompassed a number of galleries and spaces across the city, deals with questions of identity and representation. Patrick Henry, the festival Director, states in his introduction to the programme guide that:

The theme of Look/13 is summed up in the question 'who do you think you are?' The festival's programme looks at what happens when we turn the camera on ourselves and others to create images of identity, subjectivity and the self. 

These are interesting and problematic questions that I have recently become much more aware as I progress through my reading list and my level two studies. I'm still coming to grips with a lot of the material and ideas around the self, the concept of 'other,' representation and how identity is defined, named, and controlled through the media.

To try to better understand some of the work and underlying concepts I thought that I ought to do some research before attending the exhibitions. I used the time in my hotel room the night before to read (and re-read) what looked to be relevant essays contained in The Photography Reader, edited by Liz Wells. I concentrated on the chapter concerning image and identity and the essays by:

David A Bailey & Stuart Hall - The Vertigo of Displacement
bell hooks - In Our Glory: Photography and Black Life
Annette Kuhn: REMEMBRANCE: The Child I Never Was
Rosy Martin & Jo Spence - PHOTO-THERAPY: PSYCHIC REALISM AS A HEALING ART
Angela Kelly - SELF IMAGE: PERSONAL IS POLITICAL

The essays gave me a starting point with which to approach the exhibitions and our study visit began at the Open Eye Gallery on the Liverpool waterfront. The gallery is the first of three that we visited with Keith Roberts, one of the OCA tutors, who also happens to be my tutor for this PWDP module. I will cover the other gallery visits in subsequent posts.

  

The Open Eye Gallery:

The work of Charles Freger revolves around male identity both individual and collective. He had several sets of sequences on display - each image framed separately and hung horizontally in a linear format. The first sequence was of head and torso shots of Legionnaires in two rows, one directly above the other. The top row was of younger men, bare chested. The row below consisted of older men with beards in full uniform. Freger's sequences are interesting because the images at first appear repetitious and conform to the idea of the men as a collective military group. My eyes on first glance at the sequence darted from image to image missing the detail noting that they all looked the same - even the top group in their nakedness and short military haircuts. It is only on closer inspection and with more time does the differences become more apparent. Different body shape and bone structure come through. Some sport chest hair and/or tattoos - some don't. The eyes and the way that the individual looks at the camera give clues to individual identity. Further time spent with the images reveal that some of the men are standing in slightly different poses their torsos twisted obliquely to the camera. Because of the beards, hats and uniforms, the older men were harder as a viewer to individualise. This is no surprise as controlling governments and regimes have always used the uniform to mask the inherent individual and reinforce the concept of collective identity. They do this to ultimately control and wield these forces against their own and other groups of people. Once again, it is in the eyes that the differences are most easily noted although time and again I felt my gaze drawn away from their individuality by the detail of insignia on hats, sashes and colourful medals.

I liked Freger's other sequence of boys performing the Maori Haka in their school uniforms. In each image (if I remember rightly) the boys are in pairs, sometimes with arms linked. Their faces bear the familiar Maori line-markings. In sharp contrast to this tradition they are wearing their brightly coloured school jumpers with black trousers. The primary red or blue of the jumpers sits very effectively against the green grass and blue sky that dissects the background. Unlike the 'Legionnaires,' in the 'Short School Haka' sequence, the notion of collective and individual identity is combined into single images rather than separated out. The poses of the boys are dynamic as they perform the ritual Haka dance and they appear to clearly be enjoying themselves. As a minority group the Haka images raise the prospect of the concept of "other." By showing the boys in this way a proud tradition is represented but alongside the juxtaposition of modern-day school uniforms is the artist highlighting an issue of representation and racial stereotyping?

Eva Stenram's work "Drape" was on display in the upper gallery. This work involved found imagery that has been digitally manipulated. The images appear to be of models posing in rooms furnished sometime around the 1960s or 70s. The images have been manipulated so that drapes of curtain from the background now mostly obscure the foreground model. The models (always women) are only identified by protruding arms or legs from the drapery. The images are B&W and they look quite surreal. I think the found images may have once originated from the soft porn publishing industry and by interfering with the original intent the supposed sexual charge has dissipated - leaving the viewer to contemplate the ludicrous poses formed by the disembodied limbs and highlighting the issue of representation of women as sexual objects.

The work on display at this gallery was interesting and thought provoking. I have only covered a small section of the work and in the next post will move on to another of the galleries taking part in Look/13.




Monday 3 June 2013

Beneath The Surface / Hidden Place - Nicky Bird


Beneath The Surface: Hidden Place. Edinburgh. Bookworks
ISBN-13: 978-0906458075
 

In this book Nicky Bird once again examines social histories, investigating locations that have changed over time (but within living memory) and undergone some form of re-invention. Her approach to these stories is to create montages using found photographs, overlaying them onto an image of the scene as it stands today. The two blend into one another creating a ghostly effect that set up dialogues between the past and the present.

The cover of the book has an insert that folds out to reveal a clever map that shows a topography that has radically changed. Again, the overlay technique is used so that the viewer can see what was once tower blocks and a large public space replaced by smaller, individual houses, gardens and network of streets on a Scottish housing estate.

The artist collaborated with a number of people at different locations that came forward with their images and personal histories. It is noted in the accompanying text by Kirsten Lloyd, curator at the Stills Gallery, Edinburgh, that these images and anecdotes are hidden histories - the social aspect of peoples lives and knowledge not to be found in any archive. Two processes are taking place in parallel here. - the archaeological investigation of the changed location alongside the gathering of snapshots and anecdotes. These separate threads are then brought back together using the montages.

There were a number of visually arresting images:

A snapshot of a young child posing for the camera on top of a children's slide in a public play area - a massive tower block dominates the horizon behind her. Blended with the image is a row of smaller density new houses that show how much the landscape of the space has changed.

A family gathering outside a bungalow, their old wooden front fence fading away as the modern image reveals instead a hard standing with a parked up VW camper van - indicating levels of prosperity and changing aspirations that have taken place between the two scenes.

One image of some young adults inside a phone box didn't work quite so well for me. The other images were all taken outside and the montages were skilfully blended to meld with the new landscapes. I found it harder to read this image - the old interior background looked so radically different from the new one it was harder to visualise the montage as one image.

The book also showed the exhibition interiors. I really liked the table top with glass insert used in the Foxbar exhibit. The viewer could sit at the accompanying bench and examine the topographical maps that appeared to be laminated to the wooden surface. Like the insert book covers the same technique of overlaying the two topographies was used. Points on the map also indicated the spots referenced by the montages.

An inspiring piece of public work was also created at the site of a harbour that has now been filled in and grassed over. An old image of three young men posing and submerged to their necks in the harbour water has been incorporated into a glass or acrylic panel. The panel has been installed in-situ at the site and by looking through the panel to the grass area beyond a montage is created in the viewers own mind. I should imagine that the effect is quite powerful with the two scenes so radically different to one another.

I really enjoyed reading this book and thinking about the topics that Nicky Bird has raised. The work made me think back to my People and Place assignment 3 last year where I returned to photograph the site of my childhood home. I'd taken some old photographs back with me for my sister to hold to indicate our connection to the place. Bird's work has made me realise that there are so many different approaches to a subject and I might have a re-look at the work I have done there and maybe attempt to try a similar experiment myself.





edit:



A re-working of one of my assignment 3 images from the People and Place course. Using Nicky Bird's montage technique I played around with the opacity and colour saturation in Photoshop to blend the images together. The montage effect works best if an object can be meshed together in the images. Here I've lined the old photo up with the utility box and allowed its edge to bleed through into the old image.

I'm quite pleased with how it turned out. Particularly as my sister appears to be looking backwards in time at her younger self - the smallest girl in the middle of the family group.