RPS 154th International Print Exhibition – Study Visit, 9th March 2012

As an RPS member for 3 years, I have been aware of this annual competition but this is the first time I have had an opportunity to see the travelling exhibition that results each year.  There were 120 images on show, chosen from just under 3000 entries – from all over the world, as the title suggests.  I have to say, in honesty, that I approached the exhibition with some degree of scepticism, fearing, in short, that it might display more of the RPS’ tradition than a celebration of photography today.  Having seen it, I think the scepticism was misplaced and, whilst that RPS tradition was present in no small numbers, the overall reality was an extremely wide range of images representing many photographic genres, both traditional and contemporary.

The images are here and the catalogue is downloadable as a pdf on that page.

The very wide diversity of images on display has a number of implications:

·         It certainly makes for interesting comparisons.

·         It confirms, maybe even celebrates, the diversity of the photographic practice.  The RPS President in the intro to the catalogue says that it combines “contemporary cutting edge and more traditional work”.  Just how cutting are the edges on display might be open to debate – but some are certainly edgy.

·         It means that the hanging of the exhibition has its challenges.  Where there was an attempt to put together themes, it was sometimes a little forced; and the 'hanger' can end up, with ‘odds and ends’, which certainly seemed to happen here on occasions.  Going down the ‘random’ route has its merits, but it then challenges the viewer to cope with the variety that meets the eye on any particular occasion.  All-in-all, the hanging of this exhibition didn’t trouble me a great deal – other than the very practical fact that some images were hung a bit high for those of average/short stature (and those of us looking through varifocal lenses)!

·         This level of diversity in an open competition does mean that one is, on the whole, viewing individual images outside of their context and without any supporting information about the artist or their intention.  Some are very obviously part of a series.  One can always do more research afterwards, of course – see below – but it can make the ‘reading’ in the exhibition difficult and it certainly led to a large part of the discussion that took place during and after the visit.

One striking factor was the truly international nature of the exhibition with, in particular, many Asian photographers represented.  This may partly reflect the international reputation of the RPS.

There was a lot of ‘over-processing’ (in my opinion), though it wasn’t as prominent or dominant as I had feared.  It was no bad thing to be able to make direct comparisons between heavily HDR-ed landscapes/cityscapes and those images with more obvious ‘purpose’.  I don’t recall any of the former generating discussion amongst the group!

With 120 images on display, it isn’t possible to include comment on all, or even very many of them.  Indeed it isn’t even easy to spend much time looking at most of them whilst present.  I am going to focus on a few that were the subject of significant discussion, and which I have subsequently followed up with further online research.

I’ll start with the striking images – there were two in the exhibition – from Tobias Slater Hunt’s Closer to God series.  This is a classic example of how viewing just 1 or 2 images tells only a tiny fragment of the whole story.  The distinctly unglamorous and deadpan portraits of two naked women, both with, seemingly, disfigured faces, will have caught the attention of everyone visiting the exhibition.  Few will, one suspects, have taken the trouble to find out more, and many will have gone away unsure just what is going on.  As soon as I went to research further, I realised that I had seen another image from this series – at the Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait exhibition, which I wrote about previously here.  Having read Slater-Hunt’s statement, I admit that I am still not very clear.  ‘Closer to God’ is itself part of a wider piece of work, linking to Dante’s Inferno and Renaissance paintings, whilst also reflecting the photographers own experience of living with chronic illness.  The images are manipulated – and does that mean the ‘disfigurements’ are themselves not real?  The question is still hanging in the air for me – but I don’t feel motivated to explore the complexity of the work any further.  The images on display certainly provoke questions, but how far can those questions take the viewer without at least some of this background?

Another image that provoked much discussion was Aaron Dempsey’s ‘The Dolls School’.  A young girl, dressed in a white cotton nightdress, sits on one side of a double bed, looking, without expression, into the camera (i.e. directly at the viewer).  The bedclothes are folded back and there are two pillows.  The bedroom has an ‘old-fashioned’ look and there is an open fire burning in a fireplace beside the bed.  Above the brass bed end hangs an image (could be painting or could be photo) showing a young girl ‘schooling’ her dolls.  There was discussion of the photographer’s intent, in what was clearly a carefully ‘staged’ image.  Many felt that it hinted, quite powerfully, at child abuse, in one context or another.  Further investigation reveals that Aaron Dempsey does indeed stage his (assumption here – regarding gender) images, and that this is from a sequence entitled ‘Dreams’.  This series recreates female dreams, mainly fear-related, as recounted by the dreamer.  This particular one is that of a six year old girl and can best be seen, with the rest, via Dempsey’s Facebook page, here.  Dempsey’s work feels inspired by the likes of Gregory Crewdson.  If my gender assumption is correct, the exploration of female dreams is interesting.  Another useful observation, for me, would be to note the effectiveness of the use of text/caption when the images are presented on the Facebook page as opposed to the single, uncaptioned (though titled) image in the exhibition.  As already discussed in a previous post here, I am certainly going to use text as part of the image presentation for my final assignment in People & Place.

The ‘winner’ of the informal OCA Study Visit competition for best photo went to ‘Recess’ by Feng Zhang, which I can’t reproduce here and nor can I find a link, other than to say that it is on page 70 of the catalogue.  Two young girls are sleeping, presumably in a break from their schooling because they are lying on wooden tables with their heads resting on colourful ‘Western-style’ school bags.  We are looking from directly above them, perhaps from a balcony, and can see the rough concrete floor beneath their tables, a worn and crumbling wall, plus various wooden stools around the tables.  The stools and the tables are of old, heavy rough-hewn wood, in contrast to the girls’ more modern dress and their up-to-date school bags.  The lighting is soft and natural, highlighting the two girls across the centre of the frame.  The tones, the textures, the subtle colours, the soft lighting, and the quality of the print all made it an eye-catching image, but further looking raises questions about the intent – the contrast between the old and the new, the softness of the human forms with the hardness of the wood and concrete, the anomaly of sleeping in such rough hard surroundings, and so on.  The angle of the shot – looking down on the scene, implies a captured moment, even if it is, in reality, a posed shot.  The natural light and the gentleness with which the image has been processed lends it a realistic feel, whether or not it is in fact ‘real’.

Which I find to be in sharp contrast with another image much discussed on the visit – 'Goal' by Chan Kwok Hung.  This is certainly a striking image, with young boys – Buddhist monks in training – playing football, seemingly on a hillside.  The colours and the composition, not least the captured instance, absolutely grab the viewer’s attention.  Striking as it may be, however, the image made me uncomfortable.  The heavy processing, the unnaturalness of the light (the source of which is very hard to pin down), the perfection of the composition (such as the ball in the very centre of the image and exactly positioned between the two main protagonists in the football game) all made the image feel unreal.  I found myself questioning its veracity and wondering whether it was, in fact, a manipulation.  It may not be – but if that is the case, the photographer hasn’t done himself any favours, in my view, by presenting it in this ‘other-wordly’ style. (Edit after original post - I forgot to mention that Chan Kwok Hung was winner of the CIWEM Environmental Photographer of the Year Award last year with this image.  Again - a stunning image, but I find myself questioning the appropriateness of the processing.  Does it detract from the messsage?  I feel it might.)

Another general reflection that has run through my mind after the event takes me back again to some previous thoughts on painting and photography.  There were a few images in the exhibition with the ‘painterly’ feel about them – ‘Mist’ by Jialiang Luo and ‘Okavango Scene with Wild Dogs’ by John Cucksey being two (very different) such images that spring to mind.  One could question the point of creating a photographic image that has the look of a painting.  But then likewise, one could question the point of painters who paint in an ultra-real, ‘photographic’ style – Gerhard Richter being one highly respected example, and I discussed others in my blog after seeing the BP Portrait Prize exhibition last year.  It’s certainly an interesting debating point and, at the very least, a challenging observation that artists from these two different mediums choose to work in this way.  Are the photographers frustrated painters and/or the painters mocking the photographers?  To my mind it is the intention and the outcome that matters, not a generic view of which is right/wrong/best/appropriate or whatever.

So, many thanks to Gareth, Jose, and Maggie (who I am tempted to refer to as Mary!) (a comment that will only be meaningful to those present!) for organising and attending another useful and interesting study visit; it has certainly provoked some useful reflection and learning for me.

Study Visit – Whitechapel Gallery, London – Thomas Struth

On Saturday 3^rd September, I attended an OCA Study Visit to the Whitechapel Gallery, where there was an exhibition of photography by Thomas Struth.  In reflecting on the event (and these are immediate reflections, the day after the visit), I want to put it into a context, and a context with a number of strands.

The event is free, which is a great benefit to be had from studying with the OCA, but in this case, of course, it involved time and money travelling from Yorkshire to London, which makes one want to maximise the advantage.  In my case, that included choosing to travel the day before, with my wife, and visiting other galleries/exhibitions – good opportunities for comparison (see later) but also some potential for ‘gallery overload’!

Then there was the unexpected context – that some right-wing group, who shall remain nameless here, chose Saturday to plan a demonstration in Whitechapel, which meant that at least one left-wing group made sure that they would also be present, and which then ‘necessitated’ the presence of several thousand police officers from all over the UK – an unusual atmosphere in which to approach the gallery on Saturday morning!

Thirdly, this was an organised study visit, which naturally implies some formal element.  In this case a representative from the gallery led us around the exhibition, presenting certain background, themes and interpretations; and taking questions.

And then finally, there is the context that one is visiting the exhibition in a group, with others, not on one’s own.  The group included both students and tutors, some of whom I have come to know over the last year or so – a bit like meeting up with old friends – and others who I met for the first time.

Actually, I say finally, but there is perhaps another context.  Independent of this study visit, I happen to have read a fair amount about Struth’s work before.  He is, of course, well respected in the world of art photography so that his work appears in, and is commented on, in many places – two images in Stephen Shore’s ‘The Nature of Photographs’, for example, and in Charlotte Cotton’s ‘The Photograph as Contemporary Art’.  Even more significantly for me have been the pages devoted to Struth in Michael Fried’s ‘Why Photography Matters as Art as Never Before’.  I won’t claim to have fully understood everything written in the latter, but the depth of analysis of Struth’s family portraits and his museum/audience images meant that I came to the exhibition with a fair amount of pre-awareness (baggage?).

And so ... to some reactions ...

It is difficult to ignore scale as a starting point.  Monumental is a word that has been used often about much contemporary art photography in galleries, and it is appropriate here.  Without doubt, seeing the images in this format is a very different experience from seeing them on the pages of books, and entirely different from seeing them on a monitor.  Since Struth intends them to be seen in this way, it is reasonable to assess them as such – but perhaps with one proviso.  Some of us watched a film that accompanied the exhibition, in which Struth talked about his work and specifically walked around the Whitechapel Gallery as the images were propped against the walls waiting to be hung.  He described the Whitechapel space as comparable to a ‘studio visit’ (and Michael Lawton, our guide for the exhibition had also mentioned this in passing); more intimate was the implication, and it might even have been said specifically by Struth.  That makes me wonder.  The images of museum spaces, places of worship etc often look into vast spaces and perhaps, ideally, Struth would see them hanging in similar large-scale galleries.  Certainly, there has to be an appropriate relationship between the size at which an image is presented and the space in which it is placed.  I partly mention it because I heard comment from more than one person that they were uncertain whether they liked the large scale presentation (and, if I’m honest, I was less impressed by it than I expected) and it just makes me reflect as to whether they might have looked different again in a larger, even more formal gallery environment.  No implied criticism of the Whitechapel or the hanging and presentation, just a question that comes to my mind.

That takes me to another topic of discussion that came up as we looked around informally and at leisure after the formal tour.  At this size, images are not as ‘sharp’ in the print as some of us might have expected (though, and again it is just a reflection after the event, I wonder whether some of the newer images were sharper and whether there is a technical development issue – assuming the older images were printed some time ago).  Of course, in a more intimate space we get drawn more easily to look closely at the surface, but I also remember having a similar sensation looked at very large scale prints of Joel Meyerowitz’s ‘Aftermath’ (from 2002) images at the National Media Museum.  Interestingly, I don’t recall this sensation with Simon Robert’s ‘We England’ at the NMM last year.  Since arriving home, I’ve noted another ‘print/presentation’ issue.  Tucked away in a corner at the Whitechapel was Struth’s ‘National Gallery 2, London 2001’ (seen here for sale at Christies – at a price that makes you think!).  In the version on show, and behind reflective Perspex, the left half was so dark that the only thing visible was one’s own reflection.  In the context of an exhibition where many of the works lead us into the issues around viewing art, the significance/role of the viewer etc, that was perhaps quite an effective (deliberate?) notion.  However, when I then look at the print in the exhibition guide and in my copy of Fried’s book, the dark shadow area on the left includes a corner of the gallery space, just visible, and a small segment of the rope that separates the viewer from the work.  Could be I was just careless when viewing it in the gallery, but I think this was a particularly dark version, or it wasn’t helped by the light.

OK – let’s acknowledge; I’m being especially picky here.  However, as I’ve visited more and more photography exhibitions over the last few years, I find myself looking closely at the way images are presented.  As you do that, you start to observe details that do or don’t work particularly well.  The other comparison that I find myself making, after also visiting the V&A and the National Portrait Gallery whilst in London, is how effective, really, are these large ‘gallery-size’ photographic images, as works of art, when one compares them with paintings, for example.  And that comparison (and this has nothing directly to do with the Struth exhibition) gets more complex when I take into account that several of the contemporary paintings on show at the National, in the BP Portrait Awards exhibition, were ultra-realistic, ‘photo-like’ oils.  I’m engaging with a big and complicated issue here, so not a lot of point trying to ask the question about which is best!  And, I have already admitted to the possibility of ‘gallery overload’!

Something else that comes about from regular visits to exhibitions is the tendency to ask the ‘Why?’ and ‘How?’ questions.  In the film accompanying the exhibition, Struth came across as a quietly-spoken intellectual, highly thoughtful and quite intense.  His art is, I think, also highly intellectual, which means that the motivational aspect – the ‘Why?’ question – is also going to be complex.  I already knew that from the Fried commentary.  I have commented before in this blog that I am increasingly conscious of the complexity and intensity that goes into the making of art.  Compare Struth with Engstrom, for example, who has also featured in here before.  Both demonstrate this intensity of creativity – but in such different ways.  Struth, as I say, is the intellectual, the analytical, with a creative process that can take a very long time (eighteen months, he said in the film, for an image of Notre Dame, Paris) to produce a single, monumental piece of work that will be presented to us large-scale, but also in the context of ‘big scale’ issues about the nature of cutting edge technology or the meaning of paradise.  Engstrom, on the other hand, emotional and personal, can sometimes fire off spontaneous images that come from the heart and combine together into a series that takes you deep into his (your own) psyche.  I’m probably over-simplifying, but these seem like worthwhile reflections as one tries to unravel one’s own direction.

Picking up on a couple of the points I made earlier about context – I’ll just reflect on the ‘formal’ and ‘group’ aspects of a study visit such as this.  It wasn’t easy for our ‘guide’ to lead a group of 20+ people around a public gallery where there were other ‘paying guests’ around; and we seemed a very large group in a relatively small gallery.  In addition, I got the impression that at times he wasn’t quite sure where to pitch what he was saying to us – whether to go for the full-scale analysis of potentially complex works or just give the edited highlights.  For these reasons, I’m not sure that this formal aspect quite worked for me on this visit.  ‘Looking’ or ‘viewing’ exhibits in a group context isn’t easy anyway.  It has its merits, of course.  You discuss and compare views; you feed off each other; you see things that you wouldn’t see on your own; and so on.  But you don’t (or at least I don’t) spend personal time looking and reflecting and exploring.  I (yes, I’ll turn it back to the personal!) find myself aware of others and less focused on the art.  A sad admission, maybe, but I might be better at attending exhibitions on my own!!  What a loser, you think!

Actually, the greatest thing of all about attending an OCA Study Day such as this one is the interaction with others.  It is invaluable to have the chance for face-to-face exchanges (actually, in an exhibition, it is often side-by-side!) with tutors and students – not just about the exhibition but also the courses, the OCA, art/photography in general, distance learning.  As I said above, some are becoming ‘old friends’ and the network builds each time you meet new people.  Some of us, just before we left, reflected again on the desirability of finding ways to enable more effective interaction and support over the Internet.  That is something to take forward in my Student Association role.

Thanks to Gareth and OCA for organising; thanks to tutors who attended – much appreciated; thanks to fellow students; and sorry that I didn’t get a chance to talk to even more people.  Here’s to next time.

(A monumental blog for some monumental art, I think!!)

National Media Museum – ‘JH Engström – In Conversation’

Yesterday, with a Group from the OCA, I attended this event at the National Media Museum.  JH Engström, whose joint exhibition with Anders Petersen ‘From Back Home’ I have commented on elsewhere (here) was talking to the NMM’s Greg Hobson, and showing his film about Anders Petersen, as well as presenting a slideshow of his latest work.  Petersen was also due to be there but is ill and had been advised not to travel.

The event was well-attended, and the conversation lasted perhaps 45-50 minutes, followed by the film, which was also around 50 minutes, and then 15 minutes or so of questions.  The OCA group followed up with c30mins discussion in the NMM cafe.  Engström didn’t seem to be an easy and natural communicator, often looking downwards and failing to make eye contact with his interviewer, but at the same time, he came across as an open individual, willing to open up (as far as he could) about himself, his work, and Petersen.  I wrote quite a few notes during the discussion, from which I draw the following observations:

·         Engström’s work is essentially autobiographical and intensely personal.  He is “always doubting, questioning and soul-searching”.  He says that he “looks for presence” in his work, but that the doubt returns whenever he gets close.

·         The notion of ‘closeness’ came up frequently, meaning, I think, closeness to people.  I wonder whether, to an extent, he envies Petersen’s ability to get close to people – but then that is always likely to be a challenge for someone so deeply bound up in his own doubts and questioning as Engström seems to be.

·         There is a restlessness about the style of Engström’s work, perhaps reflecting the constant questions and doubts, and it came across strongly in the slideshow of his recent work (a narrative based around the love story with his wife/partner and the birth of their children).

§  The mixing of colour and black and white within a sequence;

§  The mixing of formats, from 4x5 on a tripod to disposable cameras;

§  The mixing of clear images with blurred, out-of-focus;

§  The deliberate use of over-exposure (though he says that this idea, which started as a mistake but was then used deliberately, is no longer a surprise, so he doesn’t use it anymore).

·         He says that photography is a language; it isn’t life (and I’m sure Petersen said more or less the opposite in the film!).  He tries to give the photograph some presence, but then realises it’s just a piece of paper.  Clearly he is never satisfied with his work; always, it seems, grappling with the medium and with his own feelings & concerns – but always seeking to challenge the viewer, as well, I would suggest.

There is a temptation, I must admit, to say ‘get over it’; life is for living; stop being so intense and get on with it.  Yet, from the first time I saw his part of the ‘From Back Home’ exhibition back in January something attracted me to it, even though it is a style that doesn’t usually appeal.  I think there is an honesty about it – back to his willingness to be ‘open’, to put himself out there – and an energy that consumes you, if you let it.

His film about Petersen was similar in style – restless, broken narrative, etc – but it was different in one way – in that it was definitely about his friend and mentor and not so autobiographical as his other work.  I think it was Gareth, in the discussion afterwards, who referred to Petersen as something of a performer, and I think there was definitely some of that going on.  We also saw him ‘performing’ with his photographic subjects – drawing something out of them by the way he handles them, by the way he gets ‘close to them’.  Engström and Petersen are clearly very close friends – Petersen as the ‘father figure’ (and Engström referring back to some issues with his actual father, and with the move to Paris when he was very young, and the unsettling effect it had on him, and the notion that it is the source of his art ... and more doubting/questioning ...) – but they are also very different.  That difference is another of the attractions of the combined exhibition, of course.  What a pity that Petersen couldn’t have been present yesterday!

(Random meanderings, these, but they are my honest reflections on yesterday.  Thankyou Alan & Gareth for organising – looking forward to seeing the video on ‘We are OCA’.)

Format Festival - Derby

On Saturday, I spent the day in Derby, attending the Format Foto Festival with a group of fellow OCA students and tutors.  It proved to be a great opportunity to spend time with the group, discussing photographs and photography with like-minded people.  It was hard work, but worthwhile, if only for the stimulus that came from serious conversation with other members of the party.

Full marks to Derby for establishing and building such a marvellous Foto Festival - it seemed well-organised, well-laid-out, well-curated, and all for free (including lunch from the OCA - 'many thanks').

Titled 'Right Here, Right Now', the theme this year is street photography, which is, of course, highly relevant for me at the stage I'm at with People and Place.  Plus, there seems to be a revival of this genre, with the 'Street Photography Now; project, the 'In-Public' Group, and some highly active Flickr groups devoted to 'street'.

I was already familiar with many, perhaps most, of the photographers whose work was on show, and even with a lot of the images.  So, when tutor CliveW asked me mid-afternoon if I'd seen anything in particular that inspired me, my hesitation before answering probably said it all - plenty to inform, but perhaps nothing in particular to inspire.  Some things that I would note, in no particular order:

• George Georgiou - having enjoyed his work in both Hotshoe and BJP in the last few months, it was good to see the 'genuine article'.  His work is here and I particularly like the tones and colours of his 'landscapes' of the East/West 'frontier' towns.  I was already aware that he often uses quite an early Sony digital camera, because it has a large sensor, giving the images something of the full-format/view camera feel; also that he deliberately likes to shoot on dull days - something that I found myself doing on the Landscape course - for the soft even light and the avoidance of highly saturated skies.  In the context of his camera choice, it was worth noting that his prints were on the whole larger than the others in the exhibitions.
• Raoul Gatepin was a new name to me (see here) - empty, soulless urban landscapes, responding to the financial crisis of 2008 (the project is called Piramid), and evoking that mood very well, in my opinion.  I particularly recall the image of tracks leading off a road (the system running off course); the containers locked behind wire fencing, all with the word 'Time' on the side; and the beautiful colours of a sunlit scene that wasn't real because it was shot as an out-of-focus reflection in a drab, dirty window pane.
• The work of Nate Larson and Marni Shindelman in their 'Telepathic Witness' project here was interesting - images created at the site of Tweet messages, which they have tracked via GPS, captioned with the original Tweet.  It's an original idea, for a start, and they have managed to juxtapose text/image in a manner that raises questions and provokes thought e.g. the model of Concorde and a statuette on a domestic window-sill; the surveillance cameras, caged and fixed to an anonymous grey wall.  OCA tutor, Jose, prompted discussion on why the images were laid out in the manner/order that they were - a closely aligned grid of nine pictures.  We never really resolved the ordering, though it clearly couldn't have been random, but it did occur to me afterwards that the 'grid' resembled a bank of surveillance screens - perhaps suggesting that we are spying/prying on the purveyor of the 'private' Tweet - but that nothing is private in todays world.

Which brings me to one thing that I have brought away from Format, in particular, the presentation of street images as prints, in an exhibition.  I feel inspired to print my own street images, and in particular to present my Assignment 2 images as prints.  The style, in general, was to print on board/metal (won't be doing that!), unframed, and bled to (even wrapped around) the edge (might try that).  It's hardly a new idea to recognise that photographic images work most effectively in a real, tangible form as opposed to digital/web images, but looking at exhibitions always reaffirms it for me - and Format was no exception.

I must just add that I didn't feel a very positive response to the work of Bruce Gilden (though I doubt he will be too concerned with what I think!).  I've seen it in books, of course, and even commented on it earlier in my blog - in relation to my concerns about the 'hip shot' - but I have to say that I found his 'flash' portraits less that inspiring.  I couldn't see that he had captured anything of his subjects beyond their (understandable) surpise at being confonted by him, his camera, and a very bright flash.  Discussing that feeling with one of the tutors, he commented, and I understand and agree, that there is much more of the photographer than the subject in those images.

And finally, whilst repeating how stimulating it is to meet and talk with others in this type of event, I will have to go back to Format again before it finishes, if possible.  One spends so much time discussing that one doesn't see everything - so I need to fill in some gaps.