Research Point - Diane Arbus

'A lot of nonsense is talked about Arbus's empathy with her subjects; what is mirrored on most of those faces is faint bewilderment and timid resentment. The subjects have no names because Arbus neither knew nor cared who they were.' Greer (2005).

Germaine Greer posed for Arbus in a hotel room in 1971. Arbus kneeled astride her, pinning Greer to the bed. With her lens just inches from Greer's face, Arbus waited for her moment.

'I understood that as soon as I exhibited any signs of distress, she would have her picture. Immobilised between her knees I denied her, for hour after hour. Arbus waited me out. Nothing would happen for minutes on end, until I sighed, or frowned, and then the flash would pop. Greer (2005).

The above snippets are from a Guardian article that Germaine Greer wrote in 2005, shortly after an Arbus retrospective in London. The piece gives an interesting insight into the methods Arbus used. I've read elsewhere that once she had permission to make a portrait she would follow her subject about for days - back and forth from their home to work until she had what she wanted.

From what I've read about Arbus she was a troubled person. She knew she had flaws and was able to easily detect them in others. Arbus manner was apparently quiet and non-confrontational. She would ingratiate herself with her subjects, use flattery and niceness, to disguise a ruthless streak. Arbus was always open to that moment when a person would briefly drop their public mask - and Arbus was ready with her camera.

From a moral standpoint I don't think Arbus really considered her subjects. Most of her images are captioned in a way that people are types rather than individuals. In my view she was making a kind of typology of the masks that people wore. This is why Arbus was so interested in 'freaks.' Being on the margins of society and cast as 'Others' their masks were easily discernible (and often worn with pride) and therefore of much value to her. I think in Arbus's view the gap between normalcy and 'freakdom' is not so great. She saw that in herself and looked for it in others.

Arbus also emphasised the oddness in people. We all know that the photographer can choose to flatter or insult their subject. One only has to take a look at the contact sheet for 'Child with Toy Hand Grenade in Central Park, New York City' Arbus (1962). The contact sheet shows a normal looking boy posing for the camera. Arbus specifically chooses one frame, the most oddball shot, because it fitted her intent - to find the oddness in everyone.

'The camera has the power to catch so called normal people in such a way as to make them look abnormal. The photographer chooses oddity, chases it, frames it, develops it, titles it.' Sontag (1977).

I think, like most of photography, it come down to intent. What was Arbus looking for when she took those photographs? Was she looking for the oddness in everyone - our flaws and insecurities in a damaged world of our own making? And If so, did she have the right to project her personal and creative view onto her subjects?

I agree that we all wear masks, both public and private. I think about this a lot with my own photography. I like to make work that highlights this in some way. But I don't think I could ever prowl around a subject, trying to get them to react or pose in a way that exposes them as Arbus work seems to do. The Greer article continued with her thoughts on her experience with Arbus in that hotel room in 1971.

"She may have thought she was getting the mask off, but what she was photographing was actually the clumsy ill-drawn mask itself." Greer (2005).

That's a view I find quite intruiging.





References:

Arbus, D. (1962) Child with Toy Hand Grenade in Central Park, New York City 1962.

Greer J. (2005) Wrestling With Diane Arbus. The Guardian. Ed: 8th October 2005.

Sontag, S. (1977) On Photography: America, Seen Through Photographs, Darkly. London, UK: Penguin Books Ltd.

Washington Post. (2005) [online] Available from: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/05/11/AR2005051102052.html [Accessed 29th August 2014]

Exercise - shooting from the hip

I chose Leysdown, a seaside town in Kent, that seems to attract a large number of Londoners for my shooting from the hip exercise. I'm not quite sure what the attraction is for so many Londoners to this place but it is very popular and compared to some south coast towns it is bustling with people and energy. I looked at the course notes for this exercise and followed some of the advice in the web links - mainly to take care and not appear too obvious. I wasn't going to be putting my camera in anybody's faces like Martin Parr or Gary Winogrand.

One useful tip was to put my camera on a strap and use the interval timer to take surreptitious photos. That was definitely more me. I set the camera to quiet mode too which stopped the tell-tale focus beep from going off. As it happens the biggest problem was hearing the shutter going off on the crowded town streets. I could turn and point the camera, strung sideways across my body, to point at interesting people or situations but I had no idea if the shutter was due to fire in the 40 second intervals selected. I overcame this by taking out my phone and using its stopwatch feature. Every 40 seconds or so I prepared to compose a picture and that helped a lot.

This exercise is quite hard to do. The images are all slanted so the camera needs adjusting for the next time I try this exercise. I don't mind that too much but for every image it can get a bit monotonous. I've found that street photography isn't really my thing anymore. I feel I've moved on from it. I did enjoy the exercise but I wasn't entirely comfortable photographing people without their knowledge to be honest. There are certain shots that I've left out because of this. A shot of a bare chested, overweight man with his dog, springs to mind.

I think the images are fairly honest. I have gone for an edit that shows colour and pattern by focusing on the slightly gaudy seaside surroundings. I can see that using this technique on multiple trips to the same location could be quite rewarding in terms of achieving a coherent photo-set for a project. It feels a bit like 'fishing' though? Going back again and again to capture compositions to fit a sequence is not something that particularly interests me. That is probably why I have moved more towards constructed imagery in my own work.

The 'truth' of a photograph

I watched the above video of photographer, Gary Winogrand, as he shared his thoughts on the truth of street photography. I made some notes of his points below:

• Photographing something changes it.

• There is not a photograph in the world that has any narrative ability - any of them.

• Photographs are mute. They cannot tell you what is happening. They do not tell stories. They tell you what something looks like to a camera.

• The minute you relate this thing [an image] to what was photographed, it's a lie.

His comments appear to be confined to his own genre of work (street photography) but also ring true with me and align with my own thoughts on the shaky ground that photojournalism and documentary photography can find itself.

I do wonder about his point that photographs do not have a narrative ability. I am curious about what Winogrand would make of conceptual photography. In this genre images are often specifically made to convey a narrative message. I'm thinking here of photographers like Jeff Wall.

I think that because Winogrand is specifically speaking about street photography he is conflating narrative with truth. In his view the actual narrative events taking place in reality can be misrepresented by an image - a slice of time that is frozen can easily be used to deceive. In that sense he is right. But I do not think it is true that all photographs (I'm thinking of constructed images here) are without narrative ability.

Although it is also true that the reader of an image will add much more in a narrative sense to an image than may be there in truth or reality. The viewer can add many levels of denotation or even connotation and take the reading in a completely different or oppositional direction. In this respect Winogrand is right.

'All images are mute. They tell you what something looks like to a camera.'

It is only through reading the Semiotic signs and symbols correctly, based on mutual cultural assumptions, that an image creator can hope to convey an intended message.

Exercise: The Journey

'Go on a journey. This needn't be a long journey but make it a journey you haven't done before.'

This is my second attempt at this exercise. The first one to a local beauty spot was a bit of a failure in terms of a photo essay. I liked the images. I just couldn't find a narrative in them and they were all a bit too similar. Knowing when to put aside work is a valuable skill that I've acquired in the last module. It's all about confidence really, and having the strength to move on - even if a lot of work and emotional energy has been invested.

With my second attempt I decided to use Hastings as a location. I've been to the seafront here before and I wanted to see if I could look at the place with fresh eyes - find vistas and elements that were new to me. Hasting's seafront was easily a good choice to go on a journey. The British seaside is awash with sights and sounds to inspire a photographer - bright colours, crazy people behaving out of character etc. Once I had the images processed I analysed what I had and began to detect certain key elements to form a structure to my photo essay. I'd photographed a number of signs and symbols, most of them made out of brightly coloured plastic, such as the ice cream cone pictured below. In my sequencing I paired these up with other more explanatory images using long shots of the pier or landscape type images of the sea and beach. I've also included brightly coloured municipal flower beds and other detail shots that I found interesting.

I find that pairing them up with one another on a spread is a complex matter. There are a lot of elements in the design process that need to be taken into account. To keep it simple I decided to use a plain layout with centred images that match in either colour, style, or content. So, I looked at the sequence below and attempted to make matches using my planned strategy. The chosen sequence has a certain Martin Parr feel about it - although I have opted more for a 'sense of place' as denoted by the objects and street architecture than by the people themselves.

My discards from the contact sheet are below. I printed all my first selections out and cut them up to arrange on a table. I've probably mentioned this before but I find that the best way to sequence images is to physically move them around, sorting and re-sorting. I just cannot do this in the same way on a computer screen. Patterns and links between images are much more easily spotted when laid out like this.

As you can see I photographed the area with a number of different concepts in mind. The easiest one to spot is the images of shop fronts. I was thinking about highlighting some of the quirky and more traditional business premises. Similarly I took a number of shots of the fire damaged pier and the construction work being undertaken. These were weeded out of my first selection and the remainder on subsequent revisions.

Spectacles and Illusions - Anandi Ramamurthy

I read this chapter of the course reader  'Photography - a critical Introduction' edited by Liz Wells, and found it to be very informative with regards to how advertising photography operates in a modern day capitalist society. The chapter begins by introducing Guy Debord, a Situationist, who has written on the nature of working class society in the industrialised world and how it has become passive and depoliticised. The means by which this has happened is, Debord states, by an ever encroaching society of spectacles in the mass media that holds our attention away from more extreme political acts or injustices. We become absorbed into this world into a state of false consciousness, thinking that we have choices and freedoms in a democratic society, but ultimately, we are slaves to a capitalist commodity culture. One that wants us to constantly consume products to make profit for corporations. Advertising photography plays a very large role in this practice.

Advertising photography is described in detail, breaking down its function and process. The history of photography and its popular appeal and how that has been subsumed into a means to make a profit in commodity culture is touched upon. By glamorising products using photography and advertising they have become fetishised and imbued with false meanings.

Semiotics is discussed and how signs and symbols play a part in the way that advertising images are encoded and decoded. It is possible for images to be interpreted in many different ways, because of cultural and other factors, and advertisers frequently use montage and text to try and lock down the meaning of their images.

Because advertising photography is used ultimately to sell products and make profit, by their nature they do not tend to challenge the status quo. This means that ideas in society that are dominant are perpetuated. This leads to the construction and reinforcing of stereotypes that has increased until they appear natural.

I have ordered the book 'Society of the Spectacle' by Guy Debord as it is referenced a lot during this chapter of the course reader. I imagine it is hard going but I think to try and understand some of the concepts of Marxist thinking about Capitalist society will prove very useful in my studies.