OCA Study visit to the Deutsche Börse Photography Prize 2013

This visit was led by Sharon Boothroyd and Simon Barber who, after giving us all ample time to view the exhibition, then led us in discussion about what we had seen, in terms of the bodies of work and whether they had a place in the competition in the first instance.

The stated objectives were:

• gain a personal perspective on the work of the shortlisted photographers;
• reflect on the experience of seeing photography in a gallery and the nature of photography competitions; and
• network with other OCA students.

The Deutsche Börse Photography Prize rewards a "living photographer for a specific body of work in an exhibition or publication format, which has significantly contributed to photography in Europe in the previous year".  There were 4 finalists at the exhibition:

• Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin;
• Mishka Henner;
• Chris Killip; and
• Cristina De Middel.

I later learned that Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin had won the prize and were presented with the award on 10 June.

My biggest challenge about this exhibition is the differing interpretation of contemporary photography.  I will look at each indivuidually.

War Primer 2 - Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin

This work takes the original War Primer publication of 1955 by Bertoit Brecht and superimposes on it photographs obtained from the internet to create a comment in relation to the "war on terror".  An example of this is:

The colour photo from the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq is taken from a presentation by Philip Zimbardo on how ordinaryu people can, under the right circumstances, become evil.  http://technoccult.net/archives/2008/02/28/good-people-do-bad-things/

In the exhibition, each new, found, image is listed with the link to the source.  The book, and there are multiple copies, each turned to a different page, are presented in individual cases and the whole is more of an installation rather than an exhibition of photographs.

Is this contemporary photography?  It is certainly a collection of photographs old and new, and as a whole, the work replicates that done by Brecht in the first place, who himself obtained these poor quality images from newspapers and similar sources.  It is not an exhibition of photographs by a photographer, rather it follows the way that the internet is used by many to find and then pass on photographs which are of interest to them.  Another message which is put across here is that photographs have a currency or value, once taken, as they circulate around the world.  It is these which make this contemporary photography, no longer a photographer, rather the images speak for themselves.

No Man's Land - Mishka Henner

This work is far more challenging, as here we have a collection of images obtained from Google Street View (GSV).  It is not the first time this has been done, for example Michael Wolf makes use of such imagery and has published a book using these - "a series of unfortunate events".  Here Henner has done considerable research in regard to his theme, that of sex workers.  I was surprised, though should not have been, that a database of sex workers with GPS co-ordinates exist.  Using this as a basis, Henner selected images from GSV for his work.  The project is multi-media and includes a soundtrack, which I did not hear, of bird recordings.

Henner had previously collated definitions of Photography and published over 3,000 such phrases in a book, "Photography Is" (2010) - http://www.mishkahenner.com/Photography-Is. If one takes the definition of photography as a collection of photographs, then "No Man's Land" certainly works with that.

What surprised me was that these images do have basic compositional design attributes and one or two which I have seen would not be out of place in a fashion shoot.

Is this contemporary photography?  It is more the usage of photography, than the images themselves.  In a traditional approach to this social subject, the images would convey an interaction between the photographer and the subject.  In this case, they are distanced through this automated process.  It is certainly an interesting approach, and given a suitable project, I might make use of such found images.  One question which bothers me, would there be copyright infringement? Do these have creative commons?

Postcards from the edge - Chris Killip's Britain

Seeing these gave me the most comfort.  Here we have a collection of beautifully printed and present documentary photographs.  However, what are they doing here, after all they were taken between 1970 and 1990.  He was nominated for the LE BAL exhibition which originated in Germany.  The exhibitions have been curated and the one in The Photographer's Gallery is a smaller body of work focusing on the community and work.  It excludes some popular images, for example the picture of the head banging punks from a miners' dance.

I am reminded by a similar work, Homecoming, by Don McCullin, which also looks at social issues in Britain.  This is a retrospective, but it does remind one that powerful black and white images have a place in contemporary photography.

The Afronauts - Cristina de Middel

This started off as a book and has subsequently become a body of work which is hung.  It looks at the Zambian space programme which was started there when Zambia gained independence in 1964.  de Middel has put in an enormous amount of work in making all the props and costumes for the photographs which she took.  I feel that this is also a bit tongue in cheek, but there is substance behind all of this, illustrated by contemporary newspaper articles alongside the modern illustrations.  

There is a folkloric feel to this, in particular as some of the costumes and props have an African feel to them.  Typical of these is the image below.

As a body of work, this tells tells a fantastical story which is expanded through the use of sketches and original documents.  Is this representative of contemporary photography?  I feel that it is the aspect of self-publication as a book which is the key to this.  A body of work can be published by the photographer without the need to go to a publishing house and it is certainly a growing trend in photography.

References

Cristina de Middel

Chris Killip

Mishka Henner

Broomberg & Chanarin

Study Visit to the Gillian Wearing exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery

This was my first participation in a study visit, in this case to the exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery.  Gareth Dent and Clive White escorted quite a large group of students at the exhibition and guided us through an informal discussion on the work of the artist.

I have included a link to the photograph, Self Portrait at 17 Years old which features on the website and which is representative of the "family" series of self portraits.

But, to the beginning.  We were provided beforehand with information about the visit and some objectives.  The visit was to help students with:

• gaining a personal perspective on the work of Gillian Wearing;
• reflect on the experience of seeing photography and video in a gallery;
• network with other OCA students.

I'll work backwards through the objectives.

Networking - this certainly was achieved.  It was a great pleasure to meet Richard Down whom I recognised from blogs and from the OCA facebook site, in fact he recognised me first.  Social networking is certainly powerful!  Everybody I found to be really welcoming and friendly and we certainly had some pretty animated discussion over coffee! Many were working their way through TAOP or P&P, with Richard doing the Digital Film Production module

The experience of seeing photography and video in a gallery - I guess I am a relatively frequent visitor to galleries to view photographs, having first gone some 30 years ago to the Photographer's Gallery when it was in Great Newport Street!  The point here, however, was well made by Gareth in the context of this exhibition.  Would one have viewed the videos at home and would they have had the same impact as they clearly did at the Gallery.  I have to admit that I doubt if I would have viewed them at home.  Certainly the presentation of the videos in the gallery was done with great impact and it was clear that Gillian Wearing had  a considerable say in how the work was to be presented and viewed.  When you first walk in into the gallery, there are 4 constructions which house the video viewing areas.  Facing outwards the viewing areas are unfinished, bare wood, as though these were "backstage".  An interesting device which sets the tone for the exhibition.

The work of Gillian Wearing - Gillian Wearing's primary interest is in people and how they interact with the world by what is going on inside their mind. through the use of masks, and in the case of the self portrait as her brother, she gets under their skin.  Aside from the videos, which are a major part of her work, the still portraits and the "Signs that say what you want them to say, and not Signs that say what someone else wants you to say", series from 1992, to me, are the most interesting.

Taking the "Signs....." series, it was great to be able to see such a large number together, some 70 images out of the 600 which she had shot.  This was the first time that I had seen these together in such a large number and certainly they create a great impression of how people think.  There is a whole mix of emotions there: sadness, despair and humour.  The choice of location, including the Peckham shopping centre site of her "dance" adds to the images.  There is a curious juxtaposition of people against backdrop - Pink Elephant Parking on Pink Elephant Road.......  sometimes taking away from the feelings of the subject. Its interesting how times have changed on the surface, but beneath, the same issues remain.  This is very much the front stage / back stage of an individual.  This is brought up to date on the Whitechapel Gallery's Facebook site with a "Tell Gillian 2012-03-02 23:20:23", where many have submitted images of themselves in a similar vein - GW then choosing her favourites on the Guardian web site.

The self portraits fall into 2 distinct series, those of GW self portraits, "under the skin" of those who influenced her and the "family album"

The "influencers" were Arbus (2008), Mapplethorpe (2009), Warhol in drag (2010), Cahun (2012) and Sander (2012).  To me particularly striking was her take on the Mapplethorpe self-portrait as shown in the orginal form below (Credit to the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation web-site):

Robert Mapplethorpe Self Portrait 1988

The "family album" series was fascinating, but I felt somewhat disturbing.  I found it difficult to accept the concept of taking on the persona of other members of the family.  A particular example of this was the self portrait as her mother, shown below:

This image in the particular mask, as seen in the gallery, seems particularly expressionless and reminds me of  a porcelain doll.  Visions of a horror movie came to mind.  Nevertheless, I could appreciate the performance which was being enacted through the images rather than a post-production image manipulation in Photoshop.  The artist's own touch is also displayed here as the family portraits are all of a different size, with different colour frames and hung at different levels on the wall as though in a family home.  The intention, by the artist was to portray all at roughly the same age which adds to the viewer's confusion.  Only the grandparents were at their "correct" age.

Regarding the movies / video recordings, there is, the performance / dance in Peckham shopping centre.  There was no sound the dance music coming from within her head.  To me there seemed to be very little reaction / interaction with passers-by, perhaps by virtue of the camera on the tripod and, presumably others who were doing the filming.  Could this be that the passers-by wished to be disassociated with this performance?

The most significant video, in my mind, was left for us to see at the end.  This was the film "10-16" where adults lip sync to the words spoken by children within that age range.  The selection of the adults was very particular and intended match the sometimes happy, sometimes confused voices and feelings of the children.  I loved the 10-year old and the vision of playing in a tree house was very strong, as was also at the other end the matched actor to the anxieties of the16-year old, who was disturbed through having been fat and was struggling to find his sexuality.  In this last one, there is a connection to GW, as she appears, initially in the frame perfectly still with her back to the viewer as though to signify that this was indeed an interview.  As she is so still, could that have been a mannequin made to look like her?

In between there was the series of videos "confessions" where members of the public had responded to an advertisement and "confess" from behind the anonymity of a mask.  The confessions were disturbing in themselves, not least also due to the grotesqueness of the masks.

In summary, an enjoyable visit which certainly met its objectives and very thought-provoking.  Would I recommend this exhibition - absolutely.  I found it difficult to describe my emotions on here, so you must go to see it and experience it yourself.