Into the dark: A history of night photography - British Journal of Photography

Into the dark: A history of night photography - British Journal of Photography:

'via Blog this'

The May 2012 edition of BJP had the theme of night photography so - given my interest in what they humorously call the 'Dark Arts' - I was more than usually keen to get the wrapper of this particular edition. Inside however I found a bit of a mixed bag - summed up for me by the irony of running a review of two cameras which have sufficiently high ISO capabilities that you can photograph in dark situations as if it were daylight.

A significant proportion of the photos and sets seemed to be about defeating darkness, rather than using its creative potential - one set even used 'artificial' darkness - overpowering daylight by the use of flash lighting. I'm not trying to say that some of these shots did not have merit in their own rights - but I'm not sure they live up to the promise of the headline. James Nizam's Thought Forms set is a case in point - they are extremely clever, well executed and quite thought provoking, but they are more about light than they are about dark.

I was less clear about the merits of the shots which 'reveal' secret military exercises and missile launches. Quite what I'm supposed to make of the revelation that the American military practises night fighting in the dark eludes me.

On the flip side the set by Bill Henson seem to me to catch the essence of night with his dark, murky dream worlds hinting at unseen terrors  - touching on some of our primal concerns, and maybe fantasies, about darkness. Miti Ruangkritya's portfolio of flood shots in Bangkok were given added mystery and poignancy by the dark, and the photographs of Inuit people by Donald Weber using the characteristic light of an LCD screen was a clever take on the challenges facing a people who have moved from the stone age to the digital age in a single generation.

So overall - the usual BJP mix of stunning photos, clever ideas and stuff which I don't get (yet - if ever). Plenty of food for thought though, and it  makes me wish for the earlier night-falls again (sorry).

Photo anthologies

Not sure anthology is the right word, but I’m talking about collections of photos from a variety of photographers. I have three of these so thought I’d do a mini-review of each as a single post.

World Photography: Ed. Bryn Campbell 1981

This is an excellent collection if you can lay your hands on a copy (there are several on Amazon). It has a dozen photo portfolio from each of 25 of the biggest names in photography – Erwitt, Friedlander, Cartier-Bresson, Bailey, Meyerowitz, Brandt etc. together with an extensive essay featuring the works of a further couple of dozen.

The print quality, particularly for the black and whites, is excellent, and the size of the pages means that the photos are reproduced at a decent size. Plenty of highlights in a collection this big, but favourites include Erwitt’s dog photos, Burt Glinn’s photos of Japan and Brassai’s Paris photos.

Some of the photos are hard to look at – McCullin’s war photos are the most obvious example, but there are similar scattered through the book. In contrast some are just delightful – Hamaya’s photo of Japanese kids walking through the snow in straw snow coats is perhaps my favourite in the whole book although Cartier-Bresson’s little boy with a large bottle of wine in each arm runs it a close second.

Masters of Photography: Ed. Reuel Golden 2008

A much smaller book than the previous one although picture quality is still pretty good. This one contains small portfolios (4-6 photos each) representing around 50 rather more contemporary, but still ‘classic’ photographers, together with some short biographical notes. A few of the pictures are spoiled by being printed over two pages, but the book does contain some almost iconic images – Moonrise over Hernandez (Adams), some shots from Steve McCurry’s Monsoon series, and Migrant Mother (Lange) being obvious examples. The downside of books of this type is that you get very little feel for an overall style from the photographers, but that is set against the sheer range of material on display. I doubt I’d have come across the work of Bert Hardy without it for example, and Nick Knight’s ‘Susie Smoking’ was completely new to me, but is now one of my favourite photos.

The range of artists and the tie period covered also throws up some interesting contrasts and comparisons – for example the street photography of Doisneau or Atget  and Martin Parr, or the rather tawdry-feeling implicit sexuality of some Nan Goldin material with the rather glossy, sanitised Helmut Newton version. These kind of comparisons abound and make the book worth regular visits. It’s also quite a source of inspiration and ideas for development, or simply for playing with.

Art Photography Now: Susan Bright (Revised and Expanded 2011)

According to the blurb this book presents the work of 80 of the ‘most important and best loved artist-photographers in the world today’. Unlike the two above it is divided by broad subject area rather than photographer, and there is very little overlap in terms of photographers with those books – Sherman, Goldin and Gursky being the most obvious exceptions. The portraiture section is big on the ‘snap-shot’ ethic of modern practice – not intended as a denigration – merely a description. Tina Barney’s work is an excellent example of the contradiction this poses – with the work apparently being captured on a large format (4x5) camera, while retaining the feel of genuine family photos. The introduction to the Landscape section makes the following observation which had not really occurred to me before: “The complexities of landscape, which can at first seem the most straightforward of artistic genres, are not to be underestimated…..landscape photography offers the space to explore ever-present artistic and philosophical concerns about our place in the worlds.” The Gursky and Misrach examples provided are to my mind classic cases of those concerns. I was also taken by the New Opposition series from Doug Aitken – something to explore in Landscape 2.

There were further sections on Object, Narrative, Document, FAshion, City and Transitions, all of which are worth exploring – although I’ve concentrated here on the two sections which seemed to have most relevance for this module.

Summary

It’s clearly difficult to do real justice to the work of any photographer in no more than a dozen shots, and no matter how good the reproduction it is not always possible to get the true impact of an image in book format (Holdsworth’s Iceland shots in Art photography Now are a good case in point). However, if, like me, you live in a relatively remote country area where a visit to a gallery is a full day’s outing, this type of collection is something of a life-line, as valuable as tracking down a photographers website, and one of the few ways to get a reasonably structured insight into the relationship between photographers and their practises.

A Bigger Message – Conversations with David Hockney: Martin Gayford

Martin Gayford is an art critic and, on the basis of this book, appears to be quite a close friend of David Hockney’s. In this book he has captured a series of conversations with Hockney about many different aspects of art – including photography. I picked it up because I’ve had an interest in Hockney’s stuff since seeing ‘Bigger Trees near Warter’ at the art museum in York about a year ago.
The subjects range quite widely, and the book is going to bear multiple readings. Hockney is extremely articulate and clearly very well informed about the history and philosophy of art in general – and he has some very interesting views about photography in particular. For example: “We live in an age when vast numbers of images are made that do not claim to be art. They claim something much more dubious. They claim to be reality.” and “I’ve always assumed that the photograph is nearly right, but that little bit by which it misses makes it miss by a mile.”
A key theme is perspective and the creation of space in images. He clearly feels that the single point perspective of a camera does not do this very effectively – his collages of the late ‘70s/early ‘80s are a testament to his experiments with this – he regards them as more akin to drawing than photography because they do not restrict the artist to a single viewpoint. On a related note his ‘non-panorama’ of 25 trees which he has joined using painting/drawing techniques reflects his take on scrolls as a stationary movie, and there is an interesting section on the use of isometric (rather than vanishing point) perspective in Chinese scrolls. He feels that it’s not possible to take a good photo of the Grand Canyon because you lose the sense of space – it might be interesting to review some of Ansel Adam’s shots with this thought in mind.
Another key theme is the importance of seeing, rather than just looking , in art. Chunks of this were about draughtsmanship and the benefit of painting from memory after properly studying a subject.
On a more philosophical bent, there were interesting discussions on photography and their perception as reality – which they aren’t. As he observed – this is not an issue for painting.
There’s lots more – he has some interesting views, with solid, if circumstantial evidence, on the use of pinhole cameras/camera obscura in Renaissance art, based in part on the odd perspectives we find in some of these images.
He also has an interesting chapter or two on using the i-phone/i-pad for drawing. In particular , because it is always with him it provides opportunities for quick ‘paintings’ of almost anything – his feet, an ashtray, his cap, whatever takes his fancy. He feels this to be a new development – although I can see some parallels with small cameras and photo-a-day.
Some of these discussions are cut down versions of some of the stuff in Sontag, and to a lesser extent, Barthes, but to me they have the real advantage that they are discussed in the light of experience.
All in all I can’t recommend this book highly enough. I suspect it will be a regular colleague as I move on to Landscape 2.

Seven Discourses on Art: Sir Joshua Reynolds

This caught my eye in the free books on Amazon’s Kindle and seemed worth a read. It is, very obviously, a book of its time – with lots of references to Italian and Dutch painting – one of which Reynolds admired (in parts) the other he didn’t. It is quite a fascinating insight into the personal tastes of Sir Joshua, who is clearly not backward at coming forward when he thinks something is of little value.

More pertinently, because they are lectures to groups of students passing through the Royal Academy, the discourses have quite a lots of Sir Joshua’s ideas on how to develop into an artist – some of which still ring true today for a photographer.

My favourite quote:

“..it is but poor eloquence which only shows that the orator can talk. Words should be employed as the means, not the end: language is the instrument, conviction is the work.”

This seems to encapsulate a lot of what the tutors who frequent the forum say – it’s about not being a slave to technique, or judging a work of art on purely technical grounds – which, given it was delivered in 1771, is quite a post-modern idea.

He rails against the use of copying as a method of progression, effectively suggesting that it gives you technical competence but no more, and suggests that a good method of progress is to look at a scene and imagine how a master would have painted it. This could be considered to stifle inventiveness, but Reynolds argues that “A student unacquainted with the attempts of former adventurers is always apt to overrate his own abilities, to mistake the most trifling excursions for discoveries of moment, and every coast new to him for a new-found country”. He is clearly of the view that a decent understanding of the canon is essential to the development of creativity and that a willingness to build on this history is a pre-requisite of being considered a genius.

I could go on – there are many quotable quotes in this vein that seem pertinent to the kinds of discussions we regularly have in the student forums – but I’ll finish with just two more: “..it is enough to pursue his (the Masters) course; you need not tread in his footsteps, and you certainly have a right to outstrip him if you can” and “Be as select in those whom you endeavour to please as in those whom you endeavour to imitate”.

In spite of it being rather quaint at times, and in spite of Sir Joshua’s occasional tendency to spend too long bashing those he regards as sub-standard, I can recommend this as an interesting take on how to develop as an artist – in whatever medium. Some of it is still relevant, some of it appears in the light of modern opinions as errant nonsense, but it is none the less, thought provoking and engaging. And, as if that weren’t enough – it’s free.

In praise of lesser photography

Having posted the link on a previous post I have now had a good read of this little manifesto for simpler photography. As is often the case with American authored self help books it is full of home-spun wisdom and lashings of Mom’s apple pie, but tucked away inside is the core of an idea that rings true if you don’t wear it as a strait-jacket – that spending money on kit doesn’t improve your art and that the viewer doesn’t really care what kit you used.
It’s an interesting irony that in order to experience this for myself I ‘had’ to buy another camera, but I’m glad I did because it’s changed my thought processes to a degree. The camera was the Pen E-P1, which is small, fully controllable and equipped in my variant with a 17mm prime lens (35mm equivalent on a 35mm camera – the PEN has a four-thirds sensor). I still love my E-3, but it stays at home more frequently these days, because I enjoy the simplicity of a single focal length, and the portability of a small camera.
A single focal length makes you work, and think , harder. I think my photography has improved as a result. Using the same focal length again and again gives you a real understanding of what does and doesn’t work effectively. It also forces you to think about composition so that all your photos don’t come out the same. A slightly wide angle lens can make everything seem small and insignificant unless you work at it. You have to work a bit harder to give the subject some context:

Of course, you can also use it to ‘get everything in’ when that’s appropriate:

One thing I’ve not been convinced by is “zooming with your feet”. With a relatively wide lens on distortion soon creeps in and I’ve found it preferable, rather than attempting to fill the frame, to use composition to put the emphasis where you want it.




And adopting this approach has changed the way I use my ‘full-size’ kit as well. I used to take everything out with me – but now I tend to think ’Today I’ll go wide/standard/tele” and just take the appropriate zoom rather than all three.

Modernism and Post-modernism: A bit of background reading

 

Modernism: A Very Short Introduction – Christopher Butler

Not sure what to make of this book. I think I came away with a few of the basic ideas behind modernism – use of modern techniques, a move away from simple representation, belief that art is a valid tool for explaining the world, attempts to rationalise /simplify art to reach basic truths etc etc, but I can’t help the feeling it was made vastly more complicated than necessary.

If I can write a press release that explains who,what,where,when,why and perhaps even how in around 30 words I see little reason to scatter a book with sentences in excess of 100 words long and full of subordinate clauses and jargon.  In a fully fledged text book you might (just) find this acceptable – but a short introduction? Perhaps I should be unsurprised in a book on modernism, which also seems to be associated with highbrow – raising art above the masses, discussing its meaning in complex terms and so on.

I understand that Modernism probably reached its apex in literature, but for a photography student the very heavy slanted to literature rather than the visual arts is a bit of an issue – and not having read any Joyce or Sartre or Proust this didn’t make it easier to follow. I certainly didn’t make me want to read any of this stuff, although it did pique my interest in Schoenberg and his 12-tone musical technique. Back to photography and I think I can extract from it why Ansel Adams, for example, could be regarded as a modernist, with his emphasis on photographic purity and the use of faultless photographic technique to provide insight. On the other hand, the book makes only a fairly brief reference to Stieglitz who was instrumental in moving photography away from pictorialism  - little of which I could gather from this read.

So – all in all a little disappointing. I don’t mind having to work at a book to understand the principles it is espousing or explaining, and I did manage to extract what I feel is the essence of modernism. That said I do object to the erection of barriers to understanding through the use of unhelpfully highbrow language in an introductory text, and couldn’t help feeling that at times the author was more concerned with maintaining the supposed intellectual exclusivity of modernism, rather than shedding light on its manifesto.

I’m reading a similar introduction to post–modernism next – it’ll be interesting to see if the writing style is noticeably different.

Discover Postmodernism - Glen Ward: Hodder: 2011

This is an altogether more accessible book - the language is simpler, the explanations clearer  - and, in truth I understand modernism better as a result of reading this book. In fairness to the other book some of this may be down to the very flexibility of the idea of post-modernism. Although it is generally concerned with some key themes - such as the lack of distinction between high and low culture, and the tendency to borrow from other works, post-modernism seems to vary depending on the art form, which means the book too is meandering and varied, all of which keeps it an interesting read. This is augmented by being written , at times in a rather funky style - 'Welcome to Planet Baudrillard' - which by it's very nature encourages to stick with the more difficult patches.

Do I understand modernism or post-modernism after reading these books? In truth  - no. But, I do at least have some knowledge of the drivers behind both, and a chance of making more intelligent comment in the occasional debate on the OCA forums :0)

Family of Man

A few weeks back I found a catalogue from the Family of Man exhibition in a local second hand bookshop. Plenty of background to the exhibition here in Wikipedia and here at the MoMA website.

The basic premise of the exhibition was to demonstrate the commonalities that humanity shares and should be seen in the context of the end of World War II only a decade earlier, the recently ended Korean War and the ongoing Cold War.

The catalog contains some wonderful photography – and is neatly arranged by human themes such as religion, childbirth and work. Sometimes this works, as in the spread of people dancing, sometimes it seems to me to highlight difference rather than commonality – for example the father&son pictures while aiming to show the similarity seem to me highlight the differences between, for example, the hunting Bushmen and the suited middle class American on a couch with his son.

My favourite photo overall is probably the Hunting photo referenced above, although it is run close second by a rather emotional shot from Richard Avedon which seems rather at odds with the stuff for which he is usually recognised. My favourite spread is the double page of people dancing in circles, which seems to me to capture the commonality of the human experience better than anything else in the catalogue.

Other impressions – well, war is rather under-represented. I suspect that the timing meant that dwelling on images of war was probably never going to be popular but, given that it is not until the generation after the exhibition that war stops being a shared experience for most of humanity, it seems a bit of an oversight.

The other lasting impression is the over-representation of American photographers – who exactly is Homer Page? I’m going to have to look him up, because I don’t recall seeing him referenced anywhere before this exhibition – yet Arbus and Sanders get but a single shot each unless I’ve missed one – and why Lewis Carroll but not Muybridge, JM Cameron or Atget. And I can’t help feeling that the Ansel Adams shot is included simply as a nod to his popularity since the included shot has, at best, a tenuous connection to the stated theme.

For all this it is a truly fascinating collection – the photos can make you smile, make you reflect and sometimes just make you shake your head in despair. If you get a chance to by the catalogue – do it – for the photography, and for what it says about people.

Non-architectural photography of buildings/man-made spaces

The course notes observe that this “is not considered a genre in most photographic writing” and suggests that I will need to search in areas away from traditional architecture outlets to find examples. So I thought I’d give it a try, and to my surprise found that photos that reasonably fall into this category are in fairly short supply.

A flick through a couple of recent back issues of the BJP turned up nothing of note – ditto the Family of Man catalogue that I’ve recently acquired.

No problem I thought – I’ll try the Wanderlust Travel Photo of the Year Vol.4 – the cover photo of a Sikh meditating before the golden temple was promising, but in truth that was very nearly it. Very few other photos fitted with the idea of people interacting with space, a notable exception being: Coffee shop, Madurai, India | Wanderlust Photo of the Year 2007 - People section | Wanderlust which admirably caught the hustle and bustle of an Indian coffee bar.

Travel Photographer of the year – Journey Three offered a few more examples: shots by Karoki Lewis and Larry Louie being notable examples. Cat Vinton’s award winning series of a family dismantling and packing away a yurt is also worth seeing.

In truth however ‘interaction with place’ was in relatively short supply in books which I’d expected to feature it quite strongly. Perhaps travel photography is conventionally about ‘People’ or ‘Place’ rather than ‘People and Place’, but that does feel rather at odds with my perception of its aim.

Given the observation above about this kind of photography not being regarded as a genre the next place I went was a couple of ‘instruction’ books in my collection – Tom Ang’s Digital Photographers Handbook and Advanced Photography by John Hedgecoe. Both contain lots of pictures of ‘place’ and lots of pictures of ‘people’, but in the latter case they tend to be interacting with each other or an object – rather than there being any sense of interaction with their surroundings.

Oddly, Ang has sections on buildings and urban views and only one of the pictures features a person – surely the essence of urbanness is the population density. The documentary section has a rather nice shot of a charcoal maker (I assume) but the rest are shots of people looking at the camera (is this really documentary?). There are also one or two other examples dotted through the book, but given that it has 400 pages this book reflects the notion that people and place is not a recognised genre.

The Hedgecoe book does rather better – with sections called ‘People in Context’, ‘The Photo Interview’ and even the ‘On location’ section features people interacting with place. There is a rather nice picture of sculptor Henry Moore at work in his studio as well – in a section on camera movements. So perhaps there is a hint here of a genre – but no more than that.

Finally, as a complete contrast I thought I’d try Don McCullin, and it seems to be in documentary photography that ‘People and Place ‘ comes into its own – assuming this is representative. On reflection this is perhaps obvious – while the book contains some stunning people photos, they would be considerably less effective as documentary without some context. The Homeless, 1969 and Derry, 1971 are especially good examples  I couldn’t find either online although there is a short film that catches the spirit of, and some of the shots from, The Homeless on the BBC website.

For me the stand-out image in this context is Christian Gunmen in the Foyer of the Holiday Inn, Beiruit, 1976 which seems to encapsulate the idea of people and place, but in a way which challenges our perception. We have a clear idea of place – it’s a grand hotel, but it’s a mess - then we see the masked gunmen, using the building as shelter – in a weird perversion of the original intent of the building and a final touch of madness – there is a cardboard cut-out of a hostess behind the information desk (the punctum perhaps)

Final thoughts

It’s difficult to disagree with the opening idea that there is no genre of photography (perhaps not even a sub-genre) that captures the concept of People and Place. Travel competitions – which are perhaps a representation of the photography most of us do – tends to concentrate on one or the other, On the, albeit limited, evidence I’ve seen photo instruction books and magazines tend to gloss over it in the context of some other photographic activity.

There are very few examples of photography which seems intended to explain the space – even the McCullin shots are about the humans using the space, rather than the space being used. I’m not clear why this is – perhaps I’m looking in the wrong place and location advertising is the place to look, but even here I suspect the advertisers will not want to give the impression that the place is crowded. Maybe there’s the germ of an idea for a different kind of photography book here.

Book Review – Portrait:Theory Ed. Kelly Wise

Came across this book – which appears to be out of print - on Amazon while searching for books on Portrait Theory. Perhaps I was fooled by the word ‘theory’ in the title, and the promise of the 8 photographers featured talking about their work. The latter bit was correct but most of the essays cover technical aspects of the work rather than the theory or ideas behind them or what they were hoping to portray. On the plus side, the back story behind many of the images is quite interesting to read, and there are plenty of nuggets of photographic wisdom tucked away to think about.

Setting that aside this is an excellent collection of portraits by a group of photographers who, with the exception of Robert Mapplethorpe, I had not previously heard of.

Particular favourites included Evelyn Hofer – for the jet blacks she gets in her prints (examples here), and the way she captures light on peoples faces, and Robert Mapplethorpe for much the same reason.

On the flip side, I thought the low contrast murkiness of the platinum-palladium prints from Jan Groover spoiled otherwise excellent characterisations.

Irrespective of the techniques, I also found many of the photos of interest from a purely historical value – Lotte Jacobi’s wonderfully undersold ‘Albert Einstein, Physicist’ and ‘Alfred Stieglitz, Photographer’ for example. She clearly had access to the glitterati because her portfolio in the book also includes Eleanor Roosevelt and Paul Robeson.

So not quite what I expected, but a very enjoyable read and look, and one that I keep going back to

Book Review: Train Your Gaze – Roswell Angier

From the minute I opened it up this book felt different. Even in paperback it oozes class – the photos are well produced, the paper quality is high and the layout is clear and well thought through.

So what is it? Well, anyone buying it to learn the technical side of portraiture is going to be disappointed. Yes, there are some short techie sections at the back, but if you want to learn about depth of field or 3-light set-ups for portraiture this is not the book you need.

If, on the other hand, you are reasonably competent with the technology, and want to explore portraiture as an art form more deeply, then this seems like a good place to start. The book is divided into 12 chapters covering areas such as self-portraiture. voyeurism, darkness – each with a thoughtful assignment intended to help you explore your own feelings in the area concerned. Each chapter explores its subject by analysing the meaning of and thought processes behind photographs from a wide range of artists covering the period from the very beginning of photography to the present day (more or less). I doing so it points up some interesting contrasts – for example the opening chapter starts with and Avedon photo and then moves to Cindy Sherman via Julia Margaret Cameron.

One of the key achievements of the book for me was its accessibility. Angier writes in a free flowing style, largely free of the jargon and complexity that seems to haunt the photo theory texts I’ve read to date. This is most obvious when you compare his style with some of the many extensive quotes he provides.  Fortunately these are in the minority because the quotes themselves are another strength – especially those from the photographers whose shots he is discussing.
One thing that particularly strikes me is the number of photos in the book that require some understanding of the background before they make sense – which perhaps highlights the difficulty of analysing any photo in isolation from its home body of work and plays to the debate about whether artists statements are good or bad. On the evidence of this book I’ll go with the ‘good’ camp – I don’t want to be told what the photos mean, but it is certainly helpful to understand the context.

The over-riding idea I was left with after reading the book was, interestingly, not about portraiture per se. It was the analogy, introduced in the ‘Confrontation’ chapter, with Herrigel’s ‘Zen in the Art of Archery’ – something I’d already picked up myself earlier on in the discussion of decisive moments. Freeman also uses the same analogy in his book ‘The Photographers Eye’. Freeman uses it in the context of photographers having a, perhaps subconscious, repertoire of photo situations that we can draw on at very short notice to help us with composition etc. If nothing else, a good study of this book will help develop that sense and if, like me, you are keen to take your photography beyond the limits of the usual ‘how-to’ books, then Train Your Gaze is well worth the money and time you invest in it.