Study Visit to Nottingham Contemporary 14th November 2013

General Comments

This proved to be one of the best study visits I have attended. We visited only two exhibitions and one symposium and there was plenty of time to chat with other students and discuss what we had seen and our reactions. (The symposium followed the time set aside for this chat and there was time set aside for a further period of reflection at the end of the day). It has always been a feeling of mine, and it is certainly true in my case, that many study visits try to cram too much viewing into the time available at the cost of thinking and discussion time. At large events, such as that at Derby, there are hundreds of images to see and after a time they merge into one and I have reached saturation point. At this visit there were a limited number of images in the Asco visit and the Geoffrey Farmer exhibition was a whole series of statuary and made objects and no photographs.

The Building

The day we visited Nottingham Contemporary was its 4th Birthday and I understand that it was 3 years in the planning and building. It is without doubt a striking building that cannot be ignored not least because it is so at odds with its surroundings. I knew the area very well, my first job after leaving school (1956) was with the Royal Exchanger Assurance Company who had offices at 7 Low Pavement (now part of the Marks and Spencers store) and I sometimes spent my lunch hour exploring the area around St Mary's Church and the Shire Hall (now a museum). I also have a family connection to the Lace Market as my maternal grandmother worked for a number of years as a lacemaker both in the district and at home. The houses of the rich merchants and factory owners who made their fortune from Nottingham Lace are still in the area together with the Churches their money built. The houses are now largely Chambers for Barristers and their clerks (the Shire Hall was where  the Quarter Sessions and Assizes were held prior to the creation of Crown Courts as we know them today) but retain their facades and stand in stark contrast to the modern building in their midst.

I suppose if you do not wish to create something that is sympathetic to its surroundings then it is more satisfactory to create something that makes a statement about its modernity.

Internally the same 'brutal' approach continued and whilst the space is cleverly used, and there is plenty of it, I was left with the feeling that I had wandered into some abandoned warehouse that was being squatted in by a band of artists and stallholders. For photography, where the images are framed and behind reflective glass, the lighting leaves much to be desired. There comes a point where seeing yourself as a more than ghostly image in the display becomes a nuisance and I found myself constantly shifting my position in an attempt to reduce the excessive reflections. Also the very high ceilings provide poor acoustics for specific purposes such as the guided tour where the guide's narrative is difficult to follow.

It is perhaps appropriate at this point to mention the staff - the people who man the galleries. I spent a lot of my time talking to them. Without exception they showed a considerable depth of knowledge and enthusiasm about the works being shown. They were an invaluable resource for learning about the different elements but also, because of their previous training, they were able to provide context that helped understanding.

Asco

Asco, an  artist collective, was created in the early 1970's by four Mexican Americans - Harry Gamboa jr., Pattsi Valdez, Gronk and Willie F. Herron III. At this time America as a whole was being riven by the controversy about America's involvement in the Vietnam War. It was also a time of unrest and dissatisfaction with agitation by various movements seeking betterment of the lot of women, youth, ethnic groups amongst others. There were also often violent reactions including riots to police brutality and other examples of violent state control. In the case of Mexican Americans they felt that, like their black counterparts, they were, as an ethnic group, taking more than their fair share of drafting into the armed forces that was more easily avoided by white middle class Americans. All groups of protestors felt that in some way they were excluded from mainstream politics and society.

The term Asco means disgust or revulsion in Spanish and relates to the reaction of the group and others to the perceived oppressive regime they felt was suffered by the American/Mexican community. Through their photographs and actions they tried to express this disgust. At this remove, some 40 years on, it is difficult to judge whether they were successful or not in achieving their stated aims. Other photographers experiences, such as photojournalists, suggests that the answer would be No. Don McCullin whose work covers most of the major conflicts since the Second World War in the Western world came to a negative conclusion about his impact upon war and conflict. In the catalogue for the 2013 Visa Pour L'image held in Perpignan McCullin admitted his distress and weariness: he saw that ultimately his efforts and commitment had served no purpose (p96). Perhaps it is the lot of photographers, who believe that their work will help to change the world in some way, are always destined to become a footnote in the history of the world with their only claim to fame to have been the start or instigators of some movement in photography. In the handout we were given by the Gallery staff in the exhibition areas relating to the two exhibitions on show one can read the following about Asco:

"Their way of parodying pop culture (fashion, rock music, the movie industry), its gender politics and distribution strategies (public access cable tv, zines, fotonovelas) make them in retrospect, important forerunners of postmodernism and post-punk culture in general". 

What of the images themselves. Again we see them through a culture some 40 years into the future from the time these images were created.  They failed to involve me emotionally and I found myself applying modern day critique of the photograph as an object rather than an image that was attempting to convey a message. It was difficult to see beyond the off key colours as though the images were enlarged copies of prints that had been stored for decades with the resultant damage to the ink structure. They were in a sense unreal and not part of my world now. I had seen similar images of the unrest in America on my TV only a few hours after the event and in retrospect the sheer volume of images had inured me to their message. It had about the same impact as watching a war film at the cinema. These images had about as much impact as heroic paintings of war - they offered some insight but left no lasting impression.

Having said that there were three images that were linked to each other. The artist portrayed felt that he was being held back from creating the work that he considered was his purpose by a 'doll' that in some way prevented  him from achieving his aims. In the three photographs we are offered a view of how the doll was part of his world and in the final photograph we are shown the doll in flames. He was destroying the block to his ambitions. Seen individually the photographs were simply of interest but once I understood the link they became a powerful message.  Here lies the problem for all photographers who wish to convey a message - how much text should be provided to encourage the viewer to see what you want them to see. I have to confess that on first viewing I had failed to see the message and found the images puzzling. Later I was talking to one of the gallery assistants who explained the connection to me and all was revealed.

Later in the afternoon we met as a group over a cup of coffee and a common theme was the block experienced by students as they tackled specific assignments and I was reminded of the three pictures seen only a few minutes before.  There was a general agreement about how difficult it was to move forward as though something was holding us back. I had never thought of it being anything other than my own reluctance to place my knowledge or lack thereof in the general domain. Certainly I had not created a 'doll' although my internal reasoning constantly sought excuses/reasons outside of myself without any 'target' for the causes. I am not too sure that setting fire to an effigy of my tutor would have helped me move on but who knows!?

Geoffrey Farmer - Let's Make the Water Turn Black

Unfortunately the exhibition, which combines artefacts, music and light to create the complete show was not working, so we were only able to see the artefacts created by Geoffrey Farmer. However it did give us a chance to see the creation without the distraction of other things going on around us. Not that we could necessarily understand the whole show but we could see the placement of things within the exhibition space. I was reminded of the Clock in the Victoria Centre in Nottingham that was designed by Ronald Searle. On the hour it comes 'alive' with wheels turning, flowers opening, and music playing. Seeing Farmer's exhibition allowed led me to imagining a workshop in the world of Searle where all the pieces are laid out before assembly so that whilst, perhaps, sense can be made of the whole, each individual piece is wrapped in its own mystery inviting the viewer to try to work out what each part does.

I could not help thinking that the creation would have benefited from allowing young children to play, unfettered, in this wonderful fantasy world.

The Symposium.

The symposium was entitled "The Poetics and Politics of Disgust". To quote from the Nottingham Contemporary website: "Through reading and discussion, four sessions led by Tracey Potts of the University of Nottingham Centre for Critical Theory address disgust within art, theory, and the social realm, bringing in references from theories of abjection to TV documentaries". Unfortunately we only attended one session and we seemed to have missed half of that session. It would seem unreasonable to draw conclusions on the whole programme from a very limited part. Hopefully other speakers were more competent than the one's we had to endure. I have to confess to two pet hates in listening to presentations - one is where the presenter simply reads, almost without taking breath, from a prepared script and the second is saying "quote"......."unquote" whenever using a quote from another person. The first speaker was guilty of both and the second was a 'reader'. The overall quality of the presentation was severely damaged by the first speaker being unable to answer a question from one of her peers and instead of stating so tried lamely to talk her way out of it finally saying that "perhaps she should have thought of it."

At the first opportunity I left the theatre as did others. However the first speaker did raise an interesting point. She showed stills from a performance art presentation where the artist had tried to forcibly feed himself hot dogs having swallowed tomato ketchup which he had also smeared onto his body together with mustard. We were told that this was a comment on the consumerist society. His 'stuffing' of his face apparently reached the point that his body was attempting to vomit the whole mess. In the presentation there was comment on the disgusting nature of what the artist was doing i.e he was being disgusting; and the reaction of the audience who were disgusted by the performance to the point of feeling the need to vomit. Apparently the artist had first presented this spectacle to a small invited audience of his friends. This proved to be so stressful that he stopped giving live performances and produced a video. We, as an audience, saw only two stills.

The question was asked whether the method of presentation affected an audience's reaction - was the disgust greater in a live performance than in a video? Certainly I was not disgusted by what I was being shown on the screen - in some ways I found the whole thing risible. The interaction between the artist and a live audience is necessarily more intense than say a video or still portrayal. We can feel as well as see the whole performance and our bodily reactions will become affected by our natural reaction of disgust at such behaviour. Further seeing and hearing someone retch and gag is likely to provoke a sympathetic reaction in ourselves.

To sit and watch a video is a common experience for most of us and modern presentations have pushed further and further the realism in what we are shown. It is not unusual now to be shown the gory details of a murder close up and even post-mortems are offered in every minute detail. We learn from this a technique, unique to ourselves, that protects us from the reality. It is though through many years of experience of watching television we have discovered a way of strengthening our ability to see as unreal anything that is shocking. Such reaction applies to even real events so that our sympathies and emotions are dulled. Any video presentation is going to suffer from this deadening of our visceral reaction.

Stills are even easier to reject as unreal and therefore containable by our emotions and empathetic reaction. The famous photograph of the young Vietnamese girl running, screaming from the pain of napalm only impacts upon us the first time we see it and then only initially because to accept the reality of what we are being shown is to risk madness because only madness can cope with insane actions.

There is much more to consider from the day but this is only likely to happen over a lengthy period of time as the lessons seen, but not necessarily understood, come up against life's experiences.

Instinctive or Controlled?

Currently I am studying the background and work of Gregory Crewdson. What is evident is the amount of control he exercises over the content and final production of the image. This led me to thinking about whether his work is photography or something else but also where he fitted in, if at all, with our general ideas about a 'photographer'. It occurred to me that the term 'photographer' includes a wide range of individual approaches to photography and that it could be usefully considered as a normal distribution curve.

with the baseline ranging from instinctive to  total control where the two end terms relate to the photographic type as judged by the work of the individual. It is important to state that the judgement relates solely on what we perceive when we examine any particular photographer's work. It would be wrong, in my view, to extrapolate from the person's work to a general statement about his/her personality type. If there is any reality in what I am proposing then the majority (approx 70%) of photographers (here I am thinking both professional and amateur photographers) lie in that area where photographs are chosen and the photographer has some control over the resulting image.

Lets first deal with the question - "Can Crewdson's work can be considered to be photography?"  Of course the answer lies in how you define what is a photograph. A suitably broad answer would include everything (A photograph is a photograph because I describe it as a photograph!). Perhaps a more limiting answer, and probably more acceptable to most, would be the definition Roland Barthes provides in the book Camera Lucida. (1. Barthes R (1980) . Camera Lucida. Translated edition (2000) London Vintage). Barthes in “Camera Lucida” (p76) argues that it is not possible to deny that the subject of the photograph “has been there”. It is this unique property that is the essence (Barthes uses the term ‘noeme’ ) of Photography. He gives the noeme a name: “That has been”. It is argued that a photograph is a photograph because it shows something ‘that has been’.  what we see is a photograph because all the elements within that photograph "have been". Although much of Crewdson's work can be described as created, what we see existed in front of the camera at the time the shot was taken and that what we see is a 'photograph' because all the elements "have been".

It is probably an injustice to describe the images Crewdson creates as a single frame from a movie film but in essence that is what they are. The result, although a single image, is the  coming together of Crewdson's original idea, created by a specialist team and using up to 60 people with all the paraphernalia (scenery, location, and lighting etc.) of the movie set. Crewdson has almost complete control of everything except the weather conditions when shooting outside. There is a moment in the DVD Gregory Crewdson: Brief Encounters (I have only scene a trailer as the DVD itself is only available in the format used in the States which is not compatible with UK players) when he says to crew members - "Look at that sky. It is the best sky we have ever had".  The climatic conditions are the one uncertainty in his world at the time of shooting so although he may be very close to the 'total control' end of the continuum he is not quite there. Where the set has been created and photographed in a studio then he can exercise total control but this is only part of his work.

Early photographers necessarily had to exercise a great deal of control because of the limitations of their equipment and processes. However as exposure times fell then they had greater degrees of freedom in the images that they could create. For an early example of someone who would exercise total control one has only to look at the work of Julia Margaret Cameron (1815 - 1879). She was given a camera by her daughter in 1863 when she was 48 years old and she records that the first print with which she was satisfied was taken in January 1864. In broad terms her work can be divided into two main groups - portraits and creations based on religious or literary works. In portraiture she would ask that her subjects patiently wait as she made numerous exposures that necessitated her preparing each wet plate separately. Cameron's control here lay in her almost obsessive desire to get the perfect image.  For her allegorical work she exercised the same control whilst insisting on a specific pose that reflected the original work. One of her most famous images is Beatrice Cenci:

© V&A Museum

Cameron posed May Prinsep a relative of Alfred Lord Tennyson as Beatrice Cenci illustrating the story of the girl who killed her father and was subsequently executed.

A more recent example is the work of Maisie Broadhead who produces modern interpretations of old masterpieces by such artist as Vermeer and Velasquez. One example is the work shown as part of the Seduced by Art Exhibition held at the National Gallery from 31 October 2012 - 20 January 2013. The two thumbnails below are taken from the book - Hope Kingsley (2012) Seduced by Art Phtography Past and Present  London National Gallery Co. Ltd that for those who were unfortunate to miss the exhibition is an invaluable resource. 

The top image is by Simon Vouet entitled "An allegory of Wealth (La Richesse)" about 1635. Oil on Canvas 170 x 124cm. Musée du Louvre, Paris.

The lower image is by Maisie Broadhead "Keep them sweet" 2010 Digital C Print 145 x 106.5cm Represented by Sarah Myerscough Fine Art, London.

All aspects of the photograph were under the control of Ms Broadhead although I say this with some doubt having recently spent an afternoon photographing young children who were a little bit older than the two in the image!! Perhaps it would be unfair to place Broadhead at the far right of the baseline.

At the same exhibition was an image by Jeff Wall ("The Destroyed Room" 1978 printed 1987 Cibachrome transparency in fluorescent Lightbox 158.8 x 229cm National Gallery of Canada Ottawa that was inspired by Delacroix,s "The Death of Sardanapalus"). Wall has stated ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yG2k4C4zrU) that he sees but does not photograph until he has re-created what he saw in the Studio. Presumably he is in a very similar position to the painter who is at liberty, when painting, to move the relative positions of the various elements to create a more idealistic scene. I would suggest here that Wall can assert complete control over all aspects of the shoot and therefore can be placed on the far right of the baseline.

Where then do we find phtographs at the 'instinctive' side of the distribution. Three examples that came to mind were war photographers, street photographers and wildlife photographers. In both situations the photographer is faced with a multiplicity of opportunities that may vary only slightly from all that surrounds the 'best' image. The greats of the trade instinctively (without conscious thought) take the right one. The instinct is probably a combination of training and experience, 'something' tells him/her that this is the shot, but the reaction is instant and defies rational thought. Some have the question mark as to whether the photographer was just lucky, as in the following shot

entitled South Vietnam National Police Chief Nguyen Ngoe Loan executes a suspected Viet Cong member 1968. Taken by Eddie Adams it is a Silver Print and is ©World Press Photo/The Associated Press New York. Yet it can be argued that Adams experience told him that something dramatic was about to happen so the shot was taken.

Wildlife photographers spend many years learning and assimilating the movements of the wildlife they photograph. In this image Michael Nichols working for the National Geographic Magazine catches the magic moment between these two Serengeti lions.

Again I would argue that the many years of experience led to an awareness that created the opportunity for the image.

The next image is a mix of conflict and street photography Don McCullin took the image in Londonderry Northern Ireland in 1971 and shows the moment British soldiers commit themselves to 'battle'.

McCullin's instincts have been honed over years of being in the middle of conflict.

Are there lessons to be learnt from such an analysis of types of photographer? Probably only at the individual level for only the individual can decide what sort of personality he brings to his/her photography. It may help someone to decide what type of photography they are best suited for so that they can direct their learning and gain experience in the type that best suits them and in which they will be most comfortable.

Agreement with Tutor

Have reached agreement with my Tutor on the 'contract' for this Course. I can now proceed to plan ahead on the main topics of photography which are - Portraiture (formal and informal); the changing built environment; the abstract image; and landscape/seascapes of East Anglia. In addition there will be a Critical Studies element for each of these assignments. The fifth assignment will be a critical review of a relevant photographer. Assignment 6 will be the submission of the final project together with a self assessment of how I feel that the final result matches up to the original proposal. Throughout the whole process there will be the need to write a learning log ( in my case a blog) which will include not only a proposed plan of work to achieve the requirements of each assignment but also a discussion/description of what actually happened on the way.