Week Zero – A Short Statement

A word of warning – despite the title, this is not a short statement (but I do promise to take note, in future, of the tutor feedback from PHO704 on the length of my posts). Over the Christmas holidays I’ve been planning 2020 and thinking about how my Research Project can transition into my Final Major Project (FMP).

So where is my practice now? Essentially it is unchanged since the start of 2019. I describe myself as a photographer of landscapes (in the broadest sense, including city- and sea-scapes), of gardens (of which I provide images for titles such as The English Garden magazine) and pet projects that I have (the key one being building up an image library of bridges in Britain which loosely fits into a broad architectural photographic interest that I have). But my practice in the context of the MA has pushed me into new and uncomfortable areas for me, especially the portraiture of free miners and subterranean photography in the coal mines.

I’m comfortable with my core practice and was pleased with the tutor feedback that my images are intriguing and have a distinct feeling of peacefulness. But the MA has put me under pressure in unfamiliar circumstances which, by and large, has been a good thing. After all, I (and only I) have chosen the subject matter of coal free mining for my Research Project, so the logical extension is that it is me that is putting myself under pressure to experiment and see where this takes me. This is an important ‘human choice’ that I have made. This is particularly the case for me going down the mines to shoot the free miners at work, not easy when one has a mild disposition to claustrophobia. As Robert Adams says in his response in Aperture’s Forty Photographers on Process and Practice, “Flannery O’Connor only lived to be thirty-nine years old, but her advice was unambiguous: Be properly scared and go on doing what you have to do” (2019:16). I simply have to put myself through this to get the creative results, and who knows, perhaps these results will be more energised?

I’m also ‘getting over myself’ regarding the shooting of portraits. Whilst it might surprise some people who know me, I have an inherent shyness, and with this a desire to avoid making people feel uncomfortable when a camera is on hand. This is probably why I’ve always been drawn to shooting inanimate objects such as landscapes and, latterly, gardens. But I learned in 2019 that most people don’t mind being photographed (as long as they are asked) and if they prefer not to (as is the case with one free miner) then I have to respect their decision…and try again a few months later, once I’ve shown him images of all the other free miners that I have photographed. Persistence is a prerequisite for a successful photographer. I’ve gently and carefully worked on building trust with the free miners and this is starting to be repaid. At probably the most active mine, Wallsend, I now have an open invitation to come along whenever I want and they have added me to their private Facebook group so I now can follow everything that is going on at the gale, week by week. I’m now experimenting with different portraiture techniques and this will continue throughout this coming module. So far, I’ve been pleased with very recent images that I’ve shot over the break, both group images and individual portraits:

Compositionally these images could be a little more refined (by that I mean more distanced with breathing space and better context to the surroundings), especially with the first portrait where it appears that something is protruding from Phil’s right elbow (it’s actually the obligatory health and safety sign). I think the image of the coal screening works due to the diagonals of the screening machine, scaffolding and spades; I also like the way in which the free miners are looking in different directions – but perhaps the lighting could be a little more balanced.

I’ve been experimenting with monochrome but I agree with the recent summative feedback that this does not sit at all well with the colour landscapes (and the landscapes are working). So these images are in colour, which I think works.

Again, I feel these images do work but could be improved upon. I’m working in cramped conditions so have to shoot (by my standards) a large number of frames to get a half-decent result. In the second of these images, I wanted to convey the tight space that these miners are operating in (with the wooden supporting beams above their heads), as well as the dampness (the buckets are being filled with the sludge that has to be removed before you get to the actual coal itself).

At the end of my final post of 2019, I mentioned George Orwell, a writer who I have long admired for his sharp and wry observations on political theories and society. So I was interested to read an article by Eugenie Shinkle that recently appeared on the American Suburb X website. In it she writes, “When George Orwell went down a coal mine while researching his 1937 book The Road to Wigan Pier, he discovered a kind of hell. The miners worked in near-total darkness, amidst intense heat, deafening noise, and choking clouds of dust. For Orwell, the experience was a sharp reminder that the middle-class comforts he took for granted were built on the hidden labour of others. ‘It is even humiliating to watch coal-miners working,’ he wrote. ‘It raises in you a momentary doubt about your own status as an ‘intellectual’ ….  for it is brought home to you … that all of us really owe the comparative decency of our lives to poor drudges underground, blackened to the eyes, with their throats full of coal dust, driving their shovels forward with arms and belly muscles of steel.’” This is an eloquent example of the social history and culture of coal mining that still provokes a strong emotional response in Britain. The stories about free mining in the Forest of Dean that I have heard and read about really do depict a harsh and dangerous existence. Zola also famously wrote about this from a French perspective in Germinal. What is not so clear is the degree of worker exploitation by the gale owners. Would it have happened? Probably. But to what extent? That’s difficult to answer. And, like now, employment opportunities in the Forest of Dean 100-150 years ago were very limited, so mining was seized upon as a way to put food on the table.

How is this relevant to my Research Project? It provides a reminder of the harshness and exploitation in this bygone industry. And it’s easy in today’s debate about climate change to forget how economically important the coal mining industry was in Britain. It helped fuel the industrial revolution, and beyond. Now it is viewed by many as a pariah industry (especially when looking at China, the country that makes biggest contribution to global warming and uses numerous coal power stations). The free miners are caught between Scylla and Charybdis – understandably determined to preserve their ancient heritage and local culture, but with opinion and potential legislation making this more challenging in spite of the fact that the Forest of Dean barely registers on the list of today’s global coal mining output. We shall see what legislation DEFRA decides to impose in the UK.

As part of my continuing research on portraiture, I recently visited the 2019 Taylor Wessing exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery. This was a huge disappointment, and I overheard others making similar comments. I went hoping to see really stunning portraits that would grab my attention and fill me with admiration for the photographer. Instead, this year’s exhibition was, in my opinion, more concerned with contemporary, trending subject-matter rather than good photography. We had a mix of social issues that dominate current debate, including teenage transition, LGBT and gender identity, ethnic minorities, Downs Syndrome and dementia. To be clear, none of these are trivial issues. Many have been around for decades but are only now gaining a proper voice in the debating chamber of the world (AKA the internet). But it struck me that more often than not, the judges were more interested in the underlying story, rather than the actual image itself which was often disappointing. Very little arrested me, so I therefore learnt little that could help me inform my own practice. Two exceptions were Rory Doyle’s images from his series Delta Hill Riders (on an African-American cowboy community), and Chris Hoare’s images from his series The Worst Poem in the Universe, an irreverent investigation into the Australian notion of it being the “Lucky Country” (see image below). I think this was because I was drawn to the strength of the images and less so to the subject-matter.

Although it was captioned at the exhibition as being surreal and ambiguous, I rather thought this image summed up the stoic, tough (on the outside) Australian man – his lot may not be that great, but he’s not going to let it stop him lead as normal a life as possible. Well, that’s my impression, based on my limited knowledge of Australians and one visit to that country years ago. I love the frame of the veranda juxtaposed with the metal frame on his head and shoulders to help heal his broken neck, together with the shadows reminding us of the sunny outdoor nature of Australian life whilst acting as a metaphor for an alternative (better, healed?) life. The cynic in me thinks that Taylor Wessing, a City of London “magic circle” law firm, feels it is more important to be seen to be engaging with certain contemporary and probably minority subject-matters rather than concentrating first and foremost on the images themselves (with the subject-matter being an important, but secondary, priority).

A previous Taylor Wessing winner, Vanessa Winship, was one of the forty photographers interviewed for on Process and Practice (referred to earlier). In it she made an insightful observation about creating a body of work, especially in managing the reality that some images will be stronger (and thus carry greater weight) than others and therefore trying to get the entire body to sequence together in one narrative. She says: “It’s building visual sentences, complete with all forms of punctuation. Or, imagine a piece of music where different emphasis is created using long notes and short ones, crescendos and diminuendos, along with moments of silence, which act as breathing spaces” (2019:236). As someone with a bit of classical music training (grade 7 piano), and a wide and eclectic taste in musical genres, I felt her comments struck a chord with me (pun intended). As I move into my FMP mode in the early summer, I already know that a considerable amount of time will be devoted to editing and sequencing my images into a cohesive narrative. The exciting thing is that, at the moment, I have no idea how this is really going to look. It is also the scary thing as well. But I’m looking forward to the mental challenge, and testing my ideas with a few trusted pairs of eyes.

As a birthday treat, I took myself to the Dora Maar exhibition at Tate Modern, and was not disappointed. Her creative journey was beautifully displayed across nine salons, the first five of which were devoted to her photography (and the final one to her photograms). I was struck by her eye for composition, sometimes opportunistic when shooting on the street, and her move into surrealism (encouraged by Picasso, her lover) and her use of photomontages. Her social commentaries on the impoverished of Catalonia, Paris and London were impressive explorations of the camera bearing witness to hardship. The image below is from the on the street salon, displaying humour to a mundane and unglamorous job:

As 1843 Magazine wrote in its exhibition review, “Maar was a radical artist in her own right: a photographer who used montages to make daring, disturbing images inspired by dreams and the subconscious. She was as much a pioneer of photographic surrealism as her more famous friend Man Ray and she also appeared in several of his photographs.” It’s suggested that, creatively, Picasso pushed Maar who in return challenged Picasso, resulting in both producing ambitious and innovative work (Picasso was shortly to paint Guernica). Being a solitary photographer, I’m intrigued how fellow artists can challenge each other. In the case of Maar and Picasso it was no doubt electrified by them being lovers and working in very close physical proximity until they went their separate ways in the early 1940’s.

Landscape is, of course, a core part of my practice, so I was interested to read the Joe Cornish interview in January’s RPS Journal. I’ve never met him, but I’ve been told by numerous people “in the know” that he is an exceptional human being with an extraordinary eye. In the article he makes an apposite observation about composition in contemporary landscape photography: “What counts is how you organise the space and all the relationships within the frame” (2020:57). This is something I must constantly remind myself of when behind the viewfinder. Especially when shooting more distanced portraits of the free miners.

Over the break I read a recent interview with Martin Parr on the It’s Nice That website. Putting the ego and arrogance to one side, when asked for words of advice for his younger self, I was struck by his response: “You need some stamina, as the industry lets people fall away; people are lazy, they’re not as obsessed as I am. But you know, I see many other obsessed people and they’re the ones that flourish. I like photography because people think it’s easy, but in fact, it’s just as hard, if not harder, than any other medium. It appears to be very easy because all you have to do is pick up a camera and you don’t need any technical knowledge anymore; a camera does it all for you, and you click away. All you see is lazy photography everywhere”. This resonates with me. Stamina and obsession (along with persistence) are two of the most important prerequisites to produce strong work. And I am constantly learning to take my time compositionally, whenever possible, to deliver something I can be pleased with – and address the concerns I have that, in some eyes, my work is too pedestrian.

My plans for further development in this module are primarily to work on various portraits and images inside the mines. I need to give some space and context to some of the portraits. There are also a couple of mine sites that I still need to visit and shoot as landscapes. One is a new gale called Folly which is about to start being worked on, so I need to research this. I do love the way the free miners still use irony when naming their gales, carrying on a long-standing practice (others include Strip-and-at-it, Darkhill and Phoenix).

So, all in all, not so much a “short statement” as a long post of current thoughts and plans. I promise faithfully to be more succinct next time.

References:

WOLF, Sasha (editor). 2019. Photowork: Forty Photographers on Process and Practice. New York City: Aperture Foundation.

https://americansuburbx.com/2019/12/a-head-raised-to-the-heavens-and-a-foot-in-the-mud-david-omaras-if-you-can-piss.html? [accessed 15/01/20].

https://www.1843magazine.com/upfront/cheats-guide/what-women-did-for-surrealism [accessed 15/01/20].

JOURNAL (Royal Photographic Society). Bristol. Vol.160, Iss. 1, (Jan 2020).

https://www.itsnicethat.com/features/martin-parr-in-conversation-photography-090919 [accessed 10/01/19].