Has Digital Devalued the photograph? - My Course Forum.

One of the forums on the My Course Visual Exploration page is dedicated to the debate surrounding the dangers of digital photography compared to analogue. This debate has been raging ever since the birth of digital and a week hardly ever goes by without the letters page of Amateur Photography magazine containing at least one letter on the subject. By and large the course argue that there is room  for both but we must be careful that digital does not completely replace analogue. There are other dangers however.

One of the biggest dilemmas in the debate however surrounded manipulation with calls from Alex, in particular, to categorise heavily manipulated photographs as an seperate art form although he acknowledged working out where heavily manipulated photographs start being classified as such is another debate in itself. Coincidentally the very same day I was following Alex and Kristianne's exchange on this subject I read a small article in my newspaper which brought home to me the inherent dangers of digital.

As can be seen in this article, on the left, it is now very easy to manipulate photography and tell a story that is not entirely true and, even wors,e trick the viewer to thinking that the story that has been manipulated is the original work of a trusted journalistic source.

Once this manipulation is exposed the overriding problem is that trust is lost by the viewer and the old adage that "the camera never lies but plenty of photographers are liers" is tested on two fronts. People will very quickly give up "trusting" the photograph.

It is absolutely vital that in the case of documentary photography there is no manipulation and even if some is neccesary for whatever reasons, then the viewer must be informed.

We must treat digital photography with respect and caution, it is the way forward and we have to live with it. While digital manipulation will also be with us and can enhance and improve (especially say in the genre of advertising photography), it must always be acknowledged as digitally enhanced.

Exhibition Review

 Jane Bown "Exposures", Winchester Discovery Centre 23 March - 20 May 2012

In 1949 Jane Bown took her first portrait for the Observer newspaper, the "sitter"was Betrand Russell and that picture along with 47 others are on display in a new exhibition of Bown's work at the Winchester Discovery Centre. What was so remarkable about her photography is that she consistently achieved stunning results using the most simplest of techniques. Using black and white film in either a Rolleiflex or an Olympus OM1, she never had an assistant, used only natural light and rarely exposed more than two rolls. This economy was a major factor in ensuring she was "able to foster an absolute immediacy witgh the subject that in turn produces wonderfully insightful portraits". (DODD, L., 2009  Exposures Jane Bown. Guardian Books).

Dodd's words ring so true as you stare at some of her most famous work in this exhibition which consists entirely of images of the famous or once famous, from Orson Welles to Bob Hope, the Queen to Bjork and Samuel Beckett (probably her most famous portrait) to Truman Capote. The unnasuming Bown often charmed her subjects into full cooperation even to the extent notoriously difficult people like Richard Nixon went out of their way to ensure "Jane had her shot".

Interestingly the photographs on display have all been digitally printed on fibre-based photo baryta paper, with one exception a silver gelatin print of Rudolf Nureyev, never before printed.

As Dodd - who organised Bown's archive - writes later in his introduction to the book that accompanies this exhibition of her work "is remarkably democratic with photographs of celebrities cheek-by-jowl with ones of individuals who have long faded from from the public consciousness". This really is a wonderful chance to see the best work of one of Fleet Street's unsung photographic greats and if going by some of the following comments in the vistor's comments book are anything to go by you will not be disappointed - "wonderful", "striking", "fantastic", "takes your breath away", "excellent" were all there despite the exhibition only being open a couple of hours.

                                       Sinead O'Connor - taken backstage during rehearsals 1992

Copyright

Perusing March's copy of the British Journal of Photography an article on Polaroid copyright caught my eye enough to make a mention on my blog - plus it gives me the opportunity to present one of my all-time favourite self-portraits.
 Over the last 40 years Polaroid (the company) has built up a collection of between 16 and 24,000 Polaroids shot by some of the world's most famous artists/photographers included Ansel Adams, Warhol, Robert Frank and my favourite, Chuck Close (see below)

Nine-Part Self-Portrait

As everyone over the age of 30 will know Polaroid, of instant image fame, after a long illness finally perished with huge debts last year and as a consequence the courts have instructed an auction of all assets and this collection of Polaroids is one big asset. It is due to go under Sotheby's hammer in June 2012 but actual ownership of the collection (estimate $11.5m) is now being challenged by some of the artists themselves. Up to now copyright has contractually remained with the artist, but as American critic Allan Coleman explains in the article "what they are auctioning is not the copyright but the object, copyright stays with the photographer" but the fly in the ointment is that because a Polaroid is unique, then once it is sold and dispersed any rights originally struck with Polaroid will be nullified and easy access to the work will be virtually impossible. Close himself has told the New York Times that "there's nothing really like in the history of photography. To sell it is criminal". Sotheby's have already started marketing the auction but with some of the Polaroids worth upwards of $350,000 each I suspect the artists might yet attempt a last minute derailment. Watch this space.

Exhibition Review

All about Eve: the Photography of Eve Arnold : Art Sensus, London SW1 until 27 April 2012

For someone who was primarily self-taught, the American-born Eve Arnold went a long way in the competitive world of post-war professional photography but that was because she was a single-minded, determined, documentary photographer who, winning the trust of her mainly famous subjects, was able to capture intimate moments unreachable to lesser mortals. Her most iconic shots were of arguably one of the 20th Century biggest icons, Marilyn Monroe, but Arnold was so much more than just a chaser of Hollywood royalty, for even in her 70s she was travelling the globe in pursuit of the original, the quirky and the unknown.

Born in 1912, Eve Arnold took up photography comparatively late in life, but after the war she was invited to join Magnum Eve Arnold at Magnum an honour for a woman in what was then very much a man's world. Although her work with the famous film stars and politicians is legendary, this exhibition also includes much of her commission work undertaken in places like Cuba, Russia, China and Inner Mongolia from where the image below of training horses for the militia was taken in 1979.

This exhibition is a true, wide-ranging retrospective broken up into the different genres of her work and there is plenty of substance to grab attention. The sinister shot of the American Nazi Party attending a Black Rally in 1961 reminds us of the race problems that have haunted America since the civil war while the portrait of the little Cuban girl who's parents at the time tried to get Arnold to adopt her becomes even more poignant after she returned some 40 years later to trace her and then photograph her grandchildren. There is a humanity in virtually everything on show and if you listen to the taped programme on Arnold's life that plays on a loop you will understand why for she comes across as a curious, intelligent down-to-earth woman who simply loved doing what she did best. Accessing the inaccessible, pointing her camera and pressing the shutter.
This exhibition, coming just two months after her death at the age of 99, is an observational record of the second half of the last century, from the famous to the infamous, from the good to the bad and from the close-to-home to the lives of those far away.

"It is a big wide-ranging show, selected from the vast archive of one anonymous private collector" says Sean O'Hagan writing in the Observer, the week of the exhibition launch, and so, if you want to know "all about Eve" then the Art Sensus gallery is a good place to start as any.

Exhibition Review

Shaped by War - Don McCullin IWM 7 Oct 2011-15 April 2012

How Don McCullin is still sane after all he has witnessed and documented is a miracle in itself for there can't have been many conflicts in the world over the last half century that wasn't visited by his Nikons and rolls of black and white film. Indeed one of those iconic cameras possibly saved his life when it "took" an AK-47 Khmer Rouge bullet as McCullin crawled through a padi filed in Cambodia in 1970. Like McCullin that camera made it back to blighty and the results of that partnership now form the basis of a major retrospective at the Imperial War Museum.

However this exhibition should come with a health warning as many of the photographs make for harrowing viewing. McCullin risked life and limb in places as varied as Belfast, Biafra, Beiruit and the Belgian Congo in his quest to portray the futile brutality and degradation mankind sometimes inflicts upon itself; no punches are pulled as the viewer is not spared the gore and carnage. McCullin, who worked mainly for the Sunday Times, was probably the finest British war photojournalist of his generation and "getting the picture" no matter what the danger was to take its emotional toll. In his autobiography Unreasonable Behaviour (Cape 1990) he says "I felt I had seen so much horror that is was likely to destroy me" and wandering through this well-laid out exhibition it is plain to see why. If humanity ever needs to remind itself where sometimes it has gone off track then the necessary prod could well be found on the 2nd floor of this famous old museum in south-east London.

Happily McCullin conquered his depression, he gave up going to war zones but kept up his interest in photography, still using high contrast black and white film he now concentrated on more serene genres such as landscape and still life and this later work too is exhibited towards the end of the tour. It provides a soothing few minutes after all the horrors so plentiful earlier in his career.

a Turkish Cypriot villager lies dead, shot in his own house during the Cyprus conflict in 1964.



 Exhibition Review

     The Heart of the Great Alone - Queen's Gallery,  Buckingham Palace 21 Oct 2011-15 April 2012

There are two reasons to visit the above photographic exhibition on Scott and Shackleton's Antartic journeys, firstly the quality of the photography itself and secondly to appreciate the incredible story the images tell. There are two interlinked main rooms allocated to the two main photographers whose work is on display. Initial entry is via the "Green Room" devoted to Herbert Ponting's (1870-1935) portrayal of Scott's quest to be the first to the South Pole, up to and including his fatal last journey in 1912. Ponting was a professional photographer and both he and Scott fully appreciated the financial and historical value of visually documenting their Antartic experiences. What we have here is a masterclass in what photo journalism is all about, from a time when the equipment was massively ill-suited to the rigours and hardship of life at the bottom of the world. How Ponting managed to capture such magnificent portraits and evocative landscape scenes while working in freezing conditions is a wonder in itself but the near miracle doesn't end there. There were four other men who accompanied Scott on his final dash to the Pole in 1912 and one of them, Bowers, in Ponting's absence was trained to operate a camera to record what happened. His photograph of the five of them, taken as they had just arrived totally exhausted at their destination, only to find they had been beaten by just a few weeks by the Norwegian, Amundsen, is as evocative and poignant a picture you will ever see. Physically shattered and at the end of their tether, knowing that in just a few short weeks there was every chance they would  all be dead, knowing the incredible hardship still to come, knowing how incredibly disappointed they were, they still insisted on documenting the moment and in the picture you can just make out the cable release in Bowers's hand (standing left) which enabled them all to be in the frame (see below). Such devotion to picture taking means 100 years on we can still place ourselves at the Pole with these brave men. Bowers's negatives were found on his dead body in the tent where the explorers finally perished just 12 miles from safety on the homeward journey. They suitably illustrate a story that is forever in a nation's psyche.

There is a small side room dedicated to these five men and Ponting's five beautifully crafted and composed  silver bromide toned portraits are worth a visit to this exhibition by themselves.

Moving into the Blue Room, we discover a photographic tale of even greater fortitude and drama with Frank Hurley's (1885-1962) record of Shackleton's expedition of 1914-17. What happened to Shackleton and his men is scarcely believable as they lost their ship, The Endurance, crushed by ice to leave them all stranded on an drifting ice floe, before setting sail for Elephant Island in small boats. Shackleton then proceeded with a few men on one boat to South Georgia, a journey of 800 miles, where after walking the breadth of the island he was finally able to alert civilisation to his men's desperate plight and mount a successful rescue operation. Incredibly everyone survived - a testament to Shackleton's leadership and stamina. However from a photographic aspect it is a miracle that Hurley, throughout such deprivation, not only managed to take carefully constructed photographs at all, but also managed to then preserve a large number of bulky glass negatives at a time when basic survival must have been the predominant instinct. He was forced to smash 400 glass plates when Endurance started to sink and there must have been times when lugging the rest seemed foolhardy, as even precious food supplies had to be jettisoned on the boat trip because the vessels were too low in the water. Hurley was a consummate professional photographer who often risked his life to get the image which tells a story that otherwise would be virtually unimaginable. If you relish "Boys Own" type adventure stories and you want to be visually transported back into an age when men took huge risks in the name of exploration, this photographic exhibition is an absolute must.

 Exhibition Review

David Cotterell: Monsters of the Id, (curator Helen Sloan).

John Hansard Gallery 11 February- 31 March

Installation artist, David Cotterell was sent to Afghanistan by the Wellcome Foundation, in 2008, to document the conflict in Helmand province. Not content with just recording and photographing, he is presenting an “experiment with advanced display technologies” at Southampton’s Hansard Gallery. This exhibition attempts to capture the disorientation of civilian observers within a militarised environment by containing complex networked activity and interactive systems involving custom built hard/software.

Upon entrance one is immediately immersed within an eerie Afghani landscape projected onto a wall, before human bodies dramatically emerge, walking forward to confront the “voyeurs” (see below). We, the watching thus become the watched in an unsettling role reversal.

Next, a room-size chalk model of mountains upon which Cotterell has, via computer technology, created illusory human shadows randomly traversing the terrain which dovetails with a 6 channel-HD collimated display of a vitalised desert landscape where the viewer’s experience is encouraged to hover between “sublime reverie and the quiet anxiety between periods of violence”.

 Cotterell’s exhibition sets exciting standards in terms of technology, conception and originality by encouraging the public to fully interact, but although his work is visionary, even provocative, the uninitiated could conceivably benefit from more guidance in terms of his photographic work.

David Cotterrell's website


How others saw it? The Guardian Guide 25th Feb