Link to Gesture & Meaning - Level Two

My next section, Gesture & Meaning,  can be seen here ....

Response to Tutor for Assignment Five

Thank You for your comments on my Assignment 5.

I know I have to include more people but actually I did photograph everyone was that was there that day, I was quite impressed at doing so,  but I shall move forward to try and increase this in future.

I have struggled with my contextual summary mainly, like my essay, because it is something I have never done before and have struggled with whats right and wrong - and wasn't sure how to do it or whats required.  Anyway you have given me some ideas so I shall try and do this and add to my Assignment along with my changes. Now can be seen here ... (File Name : Contextual Summary)

Reading through your comments I shall make some amendments,  I shall remove the reception sign and have a look at cropping the pigeons.

I shall also remove the kittens - which is hard as they are so cute - but your right we need to move on - I want to keep the barn image as it is a main part of the Centre and is where the dogs are kept.   (I shall have a look to see if there is something I prefer and will consider it, maybe )..

Also, the picture you didn't like is the main cattery so I felt it needed to be included as it was a part of the set up there but I appreciate that the picture itself doesn't tell that story.  So again I will look at a replacement.

I shall also look at page / picture numbering ... even reading your notes I see how it would help !!

My Blog is now up to date with the course work and I am still adding other extra bits.. (including David Bailey review )..

Below is the image of the cattery and I was thinking to use one of the other two images.  The first is of the cattery interior which tells more of a story .. or the girl with the slightly unfriendly cat - her favourite - she is wearing her uniform and the picture is taken in the cattery, although you cant really see this from the photo.  I think I shall go with her .. for now !

Crowd Funding / Documentary Projects

Other Students Documentary work

Not  Our Time By Penny Watson

The work is about Pennys Grandmother, her blog can be seen here..

And also Chris white and Maggie Milner are talking about it here...


Behind the Scenes By Beth Aston

This is about her own body image, this is not really my favourite type of work although I can appreciate the photos.  It isn't something I would ever chose to do.  But it always interests me what people chose to pick as their subject. Its very hard to be original.


A Dozen Eggs by Harry Pearce

This is his view of a family album of his family and siblings.  Again its a good idea and it looks like he has different angles on his pictures.

I like these pictures and they are very unglamorous with a sense of humour about them and for their family a good collection of the 'tribe'..
His website link is here...


Feet by Omar Camilleri

Omars web page can be seen here...

I didnt personally feel that this collection photos of feet was documentary, maybe I was missing the point, but I was getting confused looking at these as I wouldnt have chosen all pictures of the same thing as telling a story.

Why FEET? This is an original project which will bring out the diversities of life and at the same time it reflects today’s realities and challenges. Any theme is a challenge for any artist. And any theme can be a source of inspiration.

FEET – is an interesting theme that surely provoked the participating artists to look at their creativity from a different angle, with beautiful and surprising results. A painter-artist, Giuseppe Schembri Bonaci and a Photographer-artist Omar Camilleri were brought together by Josephine Vassallo, who instigated this event and together, three people from different spheres and professions had to see and interpret reality through the concept and visual parameters of ‘feet’.

The installation is a path between death-rebirth-birth. A continuous passage, a continuous pilgrimage leading to what one may believe in. The photo material was carefully chosen to reflect this particular element. As in nature which is full of cylical repetitions, the photo development underlines similarly this cyclic character. One keeps on toiling and getting back onto a similar position of toil, sufferance and death. Toiling, life, love, death, birth, toiling, life, love, death, rebirth, toiling, life, love, death, rebirth. The work, a cooperation between three individuals stemming from different fields and beliefs succeeded to synthesise their artistic differences in one organic entity. Josephine with her pragmatic-managerial skills and acute artistic eye, with Giuseppe’s philosophical-artistic stubbornness, coupled with Omar’s love of technical perfection, all went into this fascinating

result. The installation is the result of more than three months of love and work—more than three thousand photographs were taken, – discussions, convincing, arguments and great solidarity – from which ninety were shortlisted, and further on 27 chosen. These 27 had to tell a story and as in life the story cannot be just a nice linear narrative, the story as in life has to have its distortions, its dead-ends, its sufferance. Artistically the method chosen was to install the works within a Maltese festa form i.e. within a ‘pavaljun’ form. Each pavaljun tells a story, sometimes in a sharp clear way, sometimes in a strange bizarre way and sometimes in a contorted way, as life itself is clear, contorted and bizarre. Each ‘pavaljun’ leads onto the other until a whole cycle with all its repetitions becomes manifest.

The installation tried to amalgamate the aesthetic element with the philosophical-spiritual task. Both had to be integrally and organically linked. Neither the aesthetic nor the philosophical-spiritual side had the right to overpower the other. Both are vitally necessary to create a work that must have meaning, existential meaning.

FEET is being brought to you thanks to the support of Bank of Valletta, Kinnie, Salvo Grima, The Merchants Street Business Community, Notte Bianca and Ladybird Organic Farm.

The Dad Project - by Briony Campbell

This is her time prior to her dads death, as said is both personal and universal.  Her web page can be seen here.. here...

I found this hard to read and view, and I don't know if i would have taken such pictures of my own father for a project but I am moved and they have definitely had an effect on me.

100th Street by Tanya Ahmed

You can listen to Tanya talking about her project here..

and listen to Maggy Milner also discussing this here ...

In the 1960 Bruce Davidson photograph a block in East Harlem - 40 years later Tanya Ahmed returned to the street to photograph the new residents.
I really like this idea, returning to a project and finding a whole new set of images, new people and new stories.



BJP online - with a little help from my friends ...

www.bjp-online.com/british-journal-of-photography/feature/1936101/crowd-funding-little-help-friends



Oca Crowd Funding ....

http://www.weareoca.com/photography/crowd-funding/ here ..

Had Jacob Riis been born in the age of the Internet he may well have invented crowd funding. As a photographer committed to bring about social change, as Miles Orvell noted in his book American Photography, the late-19th-century photographer used his images to influence public opinion and as an instrument for direct appeal. Riis was a dedicated social documentary photographer; he epitomised the concerned photojournalist committed to a noble cause. Thanks to recent crowd-funding strategies such as those offered by Kickstarter it seems to me that we are finally coming full circle, going back to the very essence of documentary more than one hundred years after photographers like Jacob Riis lay the foundations of the genre.

Launched in 2009 as a web platform for funding personal creative projects,Kickstarter is the original crowd-funding concept. Thanks to Kickstarterphotographer Pete Brook has been able to raise nearly $8,000 for his Prison Photography project. A worthwhile cause of universal social appeal, coupled with an intelligent marketing strategy, will allow Brook to develop his project and, like Riis, put pressure through public opinion and raise awareness of the social issues he is concerned with. Pete Brook’s pitch is sophisticated and extremely well conceived. By engaging award-winning photographers he made sure that the web worked for him doing what it does best: creating viral connections, disseminating information. By tapping the collective conscience, that boiling pot full of conflicting feelings about ‘the other’, and offering attractive consumer goods as ‘rewards’ (limited editions prints, signed prints, books on the project, etc…) Brook has enticed 142 people so far to support him financially. Kickstarter projects are only funded if the fundraising target is met. Amazon manages donations but no money exchanges hands until the deadline for raising funds is over. It is only then that Kickstarter and Amazon get their commission – 5% and 3-5% respectively. So simple, so effective. Here in the UK WeFund has been live for nearly 1 year. As the first UK-based crowd-funding platform for creative projects it has had great success and has helped to fund many worthwhile projects.

Earlier this year Empash.is, a specialist photojournalism crowd-funding forum, was launched. As a platform to bring an audience and a source of funding for photojournalists, Emphas.is is a direct-action solution to the financial crisis that photojournalism is facing.  Engaged, long-term documentary projects, traditionally difficult to finance, have a new channel for raising funds. Emphas.is deals with donations and takes 15% commission for operational costs if the bid is successful – projects have to reach 100% or more of its fundraising target.

The benefits of crowd-funding platforms for photography projects are pretty obvious. Not only do they provide with a realistic source of financial support but they also open new forums for documentary photography. But most importantly, they are helping to redefine the concept of ‘professional’ photography: professional work reaches its intended audience. Whether that is done for profit or not is not necessarily the issue. For the traditionalists of you reading this and choking as a result of my statement please bear in mind that a great deal of the most inspiring photographic work being done out there, that which truly brings about social change, is actually done on a non-for-profit basis – think about any of the documentary awards such as the W.E.Smith Memorial Fund, or the Alexia Foundation Award.

So far so good. Now that Kickstarter and Emphas.is are in place we wonder how come similar solutions weren’t conceived a decade ago. But is it all truly good though? Or is there a caveat somewhere? I’m concerned that the boundary between that which is of public interest and has universal appeal and that which is comparatively trivial and self-indulgent may be dangerously blurred in crowd-funding. You only have to browse the eclectic range of bids on Kickstarter andWeFund to realise that. But I suppose that web users are savvy enough to tell a genuine bid from a fanciful project.  However, what really preoccupies me is what happens to all the visual material generated before and during the crowd-funded projects. Specifically, whether successful documentary bidders, having been funded, may decide to publicise their work on a pro-bono basis. The result would be a surplus of quality and free documentary work. In other words, a panacea for editors.

Which brings me back to the concept of ‘professional’ work. 15 years ago professional and commercial would have gone hand-in-hand. Nowadays that is not the case anymore. Work can be professional even if its non-commercial. The quality of the work that you can see inEmphas.is, the funds it can raise, and the wide audience it reaches out are good evidence of it. I’m not saying that is necessarily good, but it’s an inevitable side effect of the web.

Digital democratised photography and crowd-funding is democratising documentary. It all makes sense to me.

ASSIGNMENT FIVE - PERSONAL PROJECT

I have a word document for my assignment 5 which can be seen here....

The file name is .. TraceyFieldDocAss5

The shortlist of photos are also on this link and the file name is .. Ass5 photos shortlist

Exercise - Kingsmead Eyes

Visit web pages of ...

www. kingsmeadeyes.org

One example of collaborative documentary is that of Photographer Gideon Mendel and the school children of Kingsmead, a deprived Hackney school.

Kingsmead Eyes Speak’ is a radical collaboration between the children and staff of Kingsmead Primary School and photographers Gideon Mendel and Crispin Hughes . A class of 10 year old pupils spent an intensive week working with the photographers in the school, then a month documenting their friends, families, community and school life..

I have been looking at the images on the website here ...

ABOUT KINGSMEAD EYES 2009

Kingsmead Eyes was the result of a unique collaboration between photographer Gideon Mendel and 28 pupils from Kingsmead School in Hackney which took place in 2009. The children documented their world over six months, photographing their friends, families, community and school to create an accomplished and vibrant body of work. At the same time Mendel undertook a parallel photographic engagement in the school and the Kingsmead Estate. Using old Rolleiflex cameras he made a portrait of every child in the school. These 249 portraits were all used in this video and assembled into a composite image for the exhibition. With the remarkable diversity and origins of these children in more than 46 countries this became a truly global portrait, taken in a small Hackney school. This video installation was part of the Kingsmead Eyes exhibition which was on display at the V&A Museum of Childhood between November 2009 and February 2010.

ABOUT THE KINGSMEAD ESTATE

The Kingsmead Estate, home to many of the pupils, is recognised as among the highest 4% for deprivation in the UK. The estate has suffered from a negative reputation in the past but conditions have improved in recent years and regeneration initiatives have encouraged a stronger sense of community. The school has played a major role in this turnaround, striving to achieve the highest standards with academic achievement above the national average – all the more impressive considering that 85% of pupils speak English as a second language. The success and creativity of the school has long been a source of local pride. For this project the ten year-old pupils were trained in the use of digital cameras in a series of workshops led by photographer, Crispin Hughes.

Kings Mead Eyes and Kings mead eyes Speak

I really like this idea of photographers working with children.  I think as I am sometimes stilted for ideas I would love their fresh approach.  They have no fear of camera or surroundings and just click away developing their projects.

It is good that the photographers are critical of their work and make them make a selection of their best work, editing harshly and also then looking at their own image in a completely different way and writing a poem to go with it.  This can be either explanatory  or completely imaginary, making a whole new story for their picture.  Giving their picture flexibility and removing any ‘rules’ or restrictions, allowing them to look at their work in many different ways and having fun.

They we free to make anything they wanted keeping it of their home life and surroundings.  They were taught to compose a picture not just snap one, and they experimented with light ( not using a flash ) composition etc ..

I loved to look at their  work and poems, this would be a lovely thing to be apart of.  I really hope the children got something out of this and maybe get them interested in photography in the long term.   I can imagine it was great fun  and something more fun than normal in the school reportoir .. 

At first when I looked at the website it just looked like lots of school pictures of children from a very multi national school and wasn’t sure what it was all about.

I later discovered that each child had their own space and you click on their photo to discover their work, their written poem and the poem spoken on a video link.

This is great the children must be so proud, it makes it accessible if you only want to look at a specific child and I feel all the media types work well together.  In fact very organised.  Much better then my very first glance..

Post Documentary Photography, Art and Ethics

...


http://www.oca-student.com/sites/default/files/oca-content/key-resources/res-files/inegevers.pdf


When looking at documentary photographs we can be made to feel many different ways.  Sometimes
we are unaffected, and others can be life changing, if not for us then for others around us.

Documentary has its own history and over the years there has been a blurring of the boundaries and a mixing of disciplines. Its hard to tell if something is a document, piece of information, or just an art form.

There are a number of difficulties in post documentary that inspire critical action. Image makers are managing to stretch the boundaries of perception. Where aesthetics and ethics meet each other is not just with post documentary, it happens with all disciplines.
Aesthetics stood for the capacity to remove yourself from your own framework so you could learn to see the unprecedented from that view point. It grew from an 'ethics of perception' into a concept that appeared to be more autonomous, only accountable to itself.  Previously, beauty and good meant the same, but ended in a stalemate.

Aesthetics seduces you to open and broaden.  I makes you notice what you had not previously seen.
We are no longer capable of anything but perceive and recognise according to endless repeated principles.  Aesthetics threatens to colonise our gaze.

Post documentary photographers are asking themselves whether their engagement can be defined on the basis of an ethical instead of purely aesthetic perspective.  Oscar Van Alphen, a documentary photographer, was inspired to give a form to his engagement and turn away from aesthetics and images that functioned as illustrations of other peoples interpretations.

Photography opens up our world and enlarges our awareness, it creates knowledge and makes everyone share experiences.

Anton Corbijn seduces us into another way of seeing his photograph of musicians.  Firstly you see musicians its only on the second look that you see they are handicapped in some way.  Instead of sensationalising the fact they are handicapped, it creates space for the viewer and those who are represented in the picture.
Photography can also bring the opposite, turning people into objects reducing their vitality to a picture, losing their individuality

Sontag concludes that photography has contributed at least as much to the numbering of our conscience as to it development.   Documentary made a false start presenting itself as a mirror of reality, it has too been subservient to that reality.   Photographic pictures of the world around us are experienced as more real than real.   Although nobody believes anymore in the reality effects of documentary photography everyone is still expected to behave as though they do.  In this way image perception, language and consciousness continually reproduce and confirm each other.

Documentary photography has endured much post colonial criticism at the moment that ‘documentary practice’ seems to have had its day. 

After photographys invention it was used also in scientific areas.  The camera became not only suitable for building up an archive but also used for research. 

In the medical area electric shocks were carried out before the camera and a record was made of the outcome.  Also the convulsions of a person having a fit .

These weren’t shown to the person as they were just kept for medical reasons.  These pictures were not only intended to record reality but to explain it.

These images were a violation to the person involved.

This medical view of people perverted to a monstrous degree during the Nazi regime.  Pictures of children were taken like a normal album and then after that there were pictures taken of their skulls once they were killed.

Martha Rosler not herself a documentary photographer but makes use of it in her work.  Her work – The Bowery – is about the homeless and alcoholism in her neighbourhood.  By emphasising the inadequacy she give the people space to regain  control.  These people get back their individuality rather than an identity judged by their condition and hence their life. 

Roslers works are conceived on the basis of an ethical awareness and are never just about people, they combined projects and people, giving the people a voice.

A similar approach is the work of Allan Sekula who is a documentary photographer.   He opts for a more consciously for a recognisable aesthetic approach, with the goal of involving the viewer in an ambiguous world with all its pitfalls.  His project focus on social, political and cultural in todays society.

The photographic work never stands by itself, text is added to tell the story.

His work has a sense of humour which engages the viewer.

Another example of harrowing photographic documents were during Pol Pots reign of terror – there were portraits taken of the prisoners just before their execution.  Two photographers, Douglas Niven and Christopher Riley developed a project to save this threatened archive.  They were presented to a worldwide audience and finally had their book printed in 1995 – The Killing Fields.

In 1997 the MoMA in New York exhibited a selection of these portraits oblivious to their problematic role in the politics of misrepresentation.  The public however regarded them as art. 

The presentation of this archive also came in for criticism because of the ‘muteness’ of those portrayed.  The medium of photography was seen as preventing the deceased subject from speaking.  Powerless to give the subject a voice when living.

In 1950, Hannah Arendt – the choice is to no longer accept the world as it is or as it appears, but to see the world that we experience and participate in as a complex of problems and challenges that we have to face. 

Alan Badiou’s essay Understanding of Evil,  says the artist is someone who feels the necessity to pursue a personal truth and to remain faithful to it in spite of considerable opposition.  According to this argument, being an artist an ethics are inextricable bound up with each other.

Badiou is looking for an intiating, active and processual form of ethics.

According to Badiou abstract ethics is a farce if only because there is no such thing as an abstract subject.

Martha Rosler argues todays  documentary photography is no longer seduced by grand narratives.  Photographers have moved to the small and personal.  Their goal no longer seems to want to change the world but to know it.

The danger of this is that it becomes swallowed up in what you would call general visual culture and is them made harmless by the system.

It is up to the viewer as co author to give weight to pictures.

A process that gives the viewer a ‘ moment of insight’ which is able to help resist the prison of quotation perception.  A process that enables not only the first maker but also the one who consummates to become someone. 

It is here that ethics and aesthetics merge.  Images that initiate something that is expressive of more than what the material thing ‘a sich’ reveals, have the potential to appeal to the viewer in a aesthetical / ethical sense.

A broad minded perception is the beginning and it is precisely there that ethics and aesthetics can achieve a great deal in partnership. 

Jim Goldberg - Open See

Watch Video ...

http://vimeo.com/22120588


Visit ..

www.opensee.org

This below was copied from the open see web page ..

Open See tells the story of refugees, immigrants, and trafficked individuals journeying from their countries of origin to their new homes in Europe. This project addresses the struggle of immigrants to leave conditions where war, disease, and economic devastation prevail. It also addresses their struggle to adapt to new European cultures and the reciprocal struggle of those cultures to adapt to them in turn. My approach to creation and distribution requires personal, active engagement with the material from both artist and participant. With this work, I hope to shift attitudes, experience, and public perception. 

-Jim Goldberg, 2011




Golberg was asked to take pictures in Greece in the run up to the 2004 Olympics.

As above the open see project tells the story of refugees and immigrants and trafficked persons and their journeys from their homes to a new place in Europe.

The first pictures in the video were in a multi level building and each floor there was a different imigrent of refugee group, most of them illegal.  Prostitution is legal in Greece and his picture of a working woman shows a fair woman and he also notice the men are blond too.  This shows that these people are not native Greek.  These people were forced to be there and not there of there own choice.

These people had a dream to come to Europe and hoped for a better life and try to get a better life.

There is a picture of a boy crossing a river which could have been an idyllic setting but the boy probably has a more desperate story, crossing a polluted river filled with dead fish and near an industrial area, and the boy is trying to cross the river to a better place.

There is also a picture of a human trafficker, he used to be a fisherman but like so many lost his job and the said picture tells of his journey getting to Europe.

There is an underground economy, globalisation and wars starting all have an effect and push these people to search for something new and better.

I dont think this would have given a very upbeat image prior to the olympics but maybe thats the point, we sweep all the problems under the carpet whilst we watch the glossy sports.