The Photograph
I have now completed reading Graham Clarke's The Photograph. There are eleven chapters and some 130 photographs in the book from a wide range of photographers within 11 chapters. The author says, "They are chosen for their historical significance often because they pose important questions about the nature of photography and photography in its wider context ... "and because of the critical issues they raise in relation to what photography means and the kind of status we give to it." The book engages both with individual images and individual photographers. I shall attempt to make some comments on each chapter.
Chapter 1 asks, "What is a photograph?" It goes back to the very beginnings of photography with Daguerre and Fox Talbot. as pioneers of the modern photograph. I had always been aware of these two pioneers and I have been in Fox Talbot's village of Lacock many times but this chapter made me more aware of the early developments and where, as modern photographers, our heritage has come from, with Kodak bringing the camera to us, the masses, with the box Brownie in 1900. So what is a photograph? "At its most basic level a picture, likeness of facsimile obtained by photography." But there are historical, cultural, social and technical contexts which establish its meaning as a photograph. I must admit to not having thought too much about context previously to this course. The chapter also explains how photographs are placed in categories - art being very different from documentary for example. There is also the issue of how photographs are sized and presented - something which I have thought a lot about as someone making 20x16 inch borderless black & white prints in the 1960s to a recent colour triptych with small images. The chapter inspires me to think more about these issues of context, size and presentation in my own photography.
Chapter 2 asks, "How do we read a photograph?" Rather than the notion of looking, which suggests a passive act, the author insists that we are reading a photograph. And that implies "a series of problematic, ambiguous and often contradictory meanings. Daine Arbus called it "the endlessly seductive puzzle of sight" and her photograph of the two identical twins is used show an image that has been "neutralised" and denied context. But then we see other photographs in the chapter where there is context originating from the photographer's point of view be it aesthetic, polemical, political or ideological and also by where the photograph stands in terms of a series of wider histories at once aesthetic, cultural and social. In terms of genre, each category has its own conventions and terms of reference. I am thinking more about my photographs being "read" rather than viewed, the issues of context and also the external issues such as political and social issues.
Chapter 3 is about photography and the nineteenth century. There is a lot of referencing to drawing, photography and art in this chapter relating to how photography took a lot of its early influences to art, mixing traditional fine art to the scientific aspects of photography. Roger Fenton (1819 - 1869) is given as an example of someone who produced landscaped, cityscapes, still lifes and portraits in much the same way as Fox Talbot viewing the world to a strict traditional hierarchy of values much associated with the upper class. Other developments included the emergence of travel photography with new cultures portrayed but observed and documented through the eyes of western eyes and assumptions. The photograph was regarded as 'evidence' and unique "but this was the very ambiguity that was going to be carried forward into the 20th century" the author emphasises. I would have like to have been a pioneer during this period capturing new lands and people - although there were elements of danger in this new colonisation!
Chapter 4 is about the genre of landscape photography. It seems that over the years, landscape photography has moved between two poles of reference - the natural landscape and the idyllic tourism type photograph. I particular liked the reference to Roger Fenton in this chapter and the photograph of the terrace and park at Harewood House (1860) having been there recently as a National Trust property, whilst the American photographers such as Ansel Adams provide interesting images of the big country scenes. I like the modern industrialised landscape of Britain that is also captured by photographers like John Davies with Agecroft Power Station (1983) having seen so much of heavy industry (coal & steel) problems in Wales and it's consequences like the Aberfan disaster in 1966. Finally two photographers mentioned I did not expect to see categorised in this chapter which shows my ignorance of categorisation - Martin Parr and Anna Fox, where the landscape now can signify a cultural, not 'natural' context.
Chapter 5 is about the city in photography and being a city dweller this is perhaps more my territory! The author opens by stating that "If landscape photography fed from earlier developments in landscape painting then photographing the city has its foundations in the way urban spaces were beginning to be viewed in the late 18th and 19th centuries." There are lots of interesting issues in this chapter and probably not the space to write about them to much here, but the city opens up new vistas resulting from urban development in the form of buildings (vertical and horizontal format) but with regards to people humanising the street too and even becoming the subjects. This chapter makes me think more about what I might take in the city and the balance between buildings and people and also activity.
Chapter 6 is concerned with the portrait in photography. People and portraiture are one of my key areas of interest. Its described by the author as one of the most problematic areas of photography and I was surprised to read this as my approach has always been quite simplistic - the street photography snapshot, the happy snap of family and friends, and the carefully contrived studio shot with a subject (and no context). Character revelation is described as the essence of good portraiture. I need to explore this area more and look in more detail at some of the photographers and their work (and try to understand some of their work a little more). My afterthought is to be thinking of the three-way relationship in portraiture - the photographer, the subject and the viewer - and to think more about what 'agenda' and context we are we pursuing in a shoot.
Chapter 7 is about the body in photography which the author describes as one of the most contentious. There are larger issues here, not least in relation to women. This area of photography has been influenced by advertising and films as well as the traditional and classical approaches. Not an area of interest for me although I accept that in the context of this book it is an important genre. Some of the photographs are weird and I am not quite sure why they are in the book.
Chapter 8 is about documentary photography. This is a fascinating area as we live daily through witnessing still and moving images in the media, many of which are tragic. "Document means evidence" the author writes. But the chapter also emphasises that "In many contexts the notion of a literal and objective record of 'history' is a limited illusion. I saw one photograph from the amazing National Museum of Wales photographic collection ( http://www.museumwales.ac.uk/204/) that shows rows of coal wagons in the docks which give the impression of massive coal movement (which there was) but the wagons did not stay still for long like this and this photo I was told was taken during a coal strike when the wagons where stacked (rather like today ferries are closed and the lorries queue on the M20). Similarly, the image by Dorothy Lange of Migrant Mother (1936) which I have seen in other books, photographed for the US Government farm programme, has been since used in many contexts in a symbolic way. Finally the inclusion of war photographs by photographers such as McCullin and Hung Cong Ut of the Vietnam war bring back memories from the news we lived through at the time and memories of what I felt was a war-shocked McCullin when I heard him speak at the Cardiff University in the 1980s. Increasing technology makes it difficult to know what is real and what has been faked writes the author. I will look more at context, meaning and authenticity in the future and also consider this in my own photography in terms of meaning, message and context.
Chapter 9 looks at the photograph as fine art. There has been discussions about whether photography is art for a long time. For example, Camera Work, a leading photographic journal of the early 1900s carried much debate about this with De Zayas calling art photography as 'pure, a conceptual idealisation of form which seeks realisation free of all representative systems.' Thus he moved on between nineteenth century parallels between painting and photography. Alfred Stieglitz extolled photography as an art from in its own right and had his own photographs and the photographs of others on display in his gallery in New York. He rejected photo manipulation and searched for purity of vision. Edward Weston also advocated pure photography and similarly, Ansel Adams was concerned with unity and form. Weston, Adams and Imogen Cunningham establshed F.64, a small group of art photographers. An interesting chapter which illustrates how acceptance of photography as an art gradually developed but I did not get enough from the chapter on the debates and developments of more recent times.
Chapter 10 is about the manipulated photograph and explains that from the 1900s onwards there is a series of photographic responses that seek to recast the photographic act in the new language of modernism. Alvin Langdon Coburn asked, 'why should not the camera artist break away from the worn put conventions ... and claim the freedom of expression which any art must have to be alive? There was a move with some photographers to practice new techniques and not be so concerned with mirroring the literal world. Man Ray's Glass Tears (1930) depends on a very visual effect using glass tears on a face. And it was the twentieth century that really saw the rise of the manipulated image. The chapter has a quote from American Surrealist photographer Clarence John Laughan (1905 - 85) 'The physical object to me is merely a stepping stone to an inner world ... of subconscious drives ... ' The chapter ends with 'So much then for the mirror image'
Finally, Chapter 11 is entitled The Cabinet of Infinite Curiosities. These words are echoed in the final sentence of the chapter and book - "From its inception it has always been a cabinet of infinite curiosities." This is a very interesting chapter reflecting on some of the great photographers and trends. Much is made of Henri Cartier-Bresson's work and his capturing of the moment. He alerts us to the human context as does Sebastiao Salgado with his photograph of a child being weighed as part of a supplementary relief programme (1985). We are told that these types of photos are about decoding and unpacking images. Tom Stoddart's photograph of a child in a Romanian Institution (1990) is an example of a newspaper photograph where the addition of newspaper text and the story seeks to involve the viewer and within the newspaper, it takes on a very specific significance. I particularly liked the work of Garry Winogrand and subsequently researched more of his images on the internet. Like Bresson, he called himself a photographer whereas many would describe him as a street photographer. There are many quotes attributed to Winogrand including, "I photograph to see what things look like photographed." Eric Kim's Street Photography Blog has a great piece entitled "10 Things Garry Winogrand Can Teach You About Street photography." Finally the chapter returns to where we started referring to 'the development of such an extraordinary medium referring to Daguerre's work and Niepce's work saying 'They remain as enigmatic tokens of the varying claims of the photograph."
Summary
This is a very interesting book and it came as part of the introductory package from OCA. Some chapters I found more difficult to follow that others, probably because I had no previous knowledge of most of the work presented in this book from which to frame my understanding. At times it was heavy going but the way in which the book was presented in genres was useful and I shall probably refer back to some of the contents from time to time as I progress my own creative ideas in the future and seek to reference them within genres and the work of other photographers.
I have now completed reading Graham Clarke's The Photograph. There are eleven chapters and some 130 photographs in the book from a wide range of photographers within 11 chapters. The author says, "They are chosen for their historical significance often because they pose important questions about the nature of photography and photography in its wider context ... "and because of the critical issues they raise in relation to what photography means and the kind of status we give to it." The book engages both with individual images and individual photographers. I shall attempt to make some comments on each chapter.
Chapter 1 asks, "What is a photograph?" It goes back to the very beginnings of photography with Daguerre and Fox Talbot. as pioneers of the modern photograph. I had always been aware of these two pioneers and I have been in Fox Talbot's village of Lacock many times but this chapter made me more aware of the early developments and where, as modern photographers, our heritage has come from, with Kodak bringing the camera to us, the masses, with the box Brownie in 1900. So what is a photograph? "At its most basic level a picture, likeness of facsimile obtained by photography." But there are historical, cultural, social and technical contexts which establish its meaning as a photograph. I must admit to not having thought too much about context previously to this course. The chapter also explains how photographs are placed in categories - art being very different from documentary for example. There is also the issue of how photographs are sized and presented - something which I have thought a lot about as someone making 20x16 inch borderless black & white prints in the 1960s to a recent colour triptych with small images. The chapter inspires me to think more about these issues of context, size and presentation in my own photography.
Chapter 2 asks, "How do we read a photograph?" Rather than the notion of looking, which suggests a passive act, the author insists that we are reading a photograph. And that implies "a series of problematic, ambiguous and often contradictory meanings. Daine Arbus called it "the endlessly seductive puzzle of sight" and her photograph of the two identical twins is used show an image that has been "neutralised" and denied context. But then we see other photographs in the chapter where there is context originating from the photographer's point of view be it aesthetic, polemical, political or ideological and also by where the photograph stands in terms of a series of wider histories at once aesthetic, cultural and social. In terms of genre, each category has its own conventions and terms of reference. I am thinking more about my photographs being "read" rather than viewed, the issues of context and also the external issues such as political and social issues.
Chapter 3 is about photography and the nineteenth century. There is a lot of referencing to drawing, photography and art in this chapter relating to how photography took a lot of its early influences to art, mixing traditional fine art to the scientific aspects of photography. Roger Fenton (1819 - 1869) is given as an example of someone who produced landscaped, cityscapes, still lifes and portraits in much the same way as Fox Talbot viewing the world to a strict traditional hierarchy of values much associated with the upper class. Other developments included the emergence of travel photography with new cultures portrayed but observed and documented through the eyes of western eyes and assumptions. The photograph was regarded as 'evidence' and unique "but this was the very ambiguity that was going to be carried forward into the 20th century" the author emphasises. I would have like to have been a pioneer during this period capturing new lands and people - although there were elements of danger in this new colonisation!
Chapter 4 is about the genre of landscape photography. It seems that over the years, landscape photography has moved between two poles of reference - the natural landscape and the idyllic tourism type photograph. I particular liked the reference to Roger Fenton in this chapter and the photograph of the terrace and park at Harewood House (1860) having been there recently as a National Trust property, whilst the American photographers such as Ansel Adams provide interesting images of the big country scenes. I like the modern industrialised landscape of Britain that is also captured by photographers like John Davies with Agecroft Power Station (1983) having seen so much of heavy industry (coal & steel) problems in Wales and it's consequences like the Aberfan disaster in 1966. Finally two photographers mentioned I did not expect to see categorised in this chapter which shows my ignorance of categorisation - Martin Parr and Anna Fox, where the landscape now can signify a cultural, not 'natural' context.
Chapter 5 is about the city in photography and being a city dweller this is perhaps more my territory! The author opens by stating that "If landscape photography fed from earlier developments in landscape painting then photographing the city has its foundations in the way urban spaces were beginning to be viewed in the late 18th and 19th centuries." There are lots of interesting issues in this chapter and probably not the space to write about them to much here, but the city opens up new vistas resulting from urban development in the form of buildings (vertical and horizontal format) but with regards to people humanising the street too and even becoming the subjects. This chapter makes me think more about what I might take in the city and the balance between buildings and people and also activity.
Chapter 6 is concerned with the portrait in photography. People and portraiture are one of my key areas of interest. Its described by the author as one of the most problematic areas of photography and I was surprised to read this as my approach has always been quite simplistic - the street photography snapshot, the happy snap of family and friends, and the carefully contrived studio shot with a subject (and no context). Character revelation is described as the essence of good portraiture. I need to explore this area more and look in more detail at some of the photographers and their work (and try to understand some of their work a little more). My afterthought is to be thinking of the three-way relationship in portraiture - the photographer, the subject and the viewer - and to think more about what 'agenda' and context we are we pursuing in a shoot.
Chapter 7 is about the body in photography which the author describes as one of the most contentious. There are larger issues here, not least in relation to women. This area of photography has been influenced by advertising and films as well as the traditional and classical approaches. Not an area of interest for me although I accept that in the context of this book it is an important genre. Some of the photographs are weird and I am not quite sure why they are in the book.
Chapter 8 is about documentary photography. This is a fascinating area as we live daily through witnessing still and moving images in the media, many of which are tragic. "Document means evidence" the author writes. But the chapter also emphasises that "In many contexts the notion of a literal and objective record of 'history' is a limited illusion. I saw one photograph from the amazing National Museum of Wales photographic collection ( http://www.museumwales.ac.uk/204/) that shows rows of coal wagons in the docks which give the impression of massive coal movement (which there was) but the wagons did not stay still for long like this and this photo I was told was taken during a coal strike when the wagons where stacked (rather like today ferries are closed and the lorries queue on the M20). Similarly, the image by Dorothy Lange of Migrant Mother (1936) which I have seen in other books, photographed for the US Government farm programme, has been since used in many contexts in a symbolic way. Finally the inclusion of war photographs by photographers such as McCullin and Hung Cong Ut of the Vietnam war bring back memories from the news we lived through at the time and memories of what I felt was a war-shocked McCullin when I heard him speak at the Cardiff University in the 1980s. Increasing technology makes it difficult to know what is real and what has been faked writes the author. I will look more at context, meaning and authenticity in the future and also consider this in my own photography in terms of meaning, message and context.
Chapter 9 looks at the photograph as fine art. There has been discussions about whether photography is art for a long time. For example, Camera Work, a leading photographic journal of the early 1900s carried much debate about this with De Zayas calling art photography as 'pure, a conceptual idealisation of form which seeks realisation free of all representative systems.' Thus he moved on between nineteenth century parallels between painting and photography. Alfred Stieglitz extolled photography as an art from in its own right and had his own photographs and the photographs of others on display in his gallery in New York. He rejected photo manipulation and searched for purity of vision. Edward Weston also advocated pure photography and similarly, Ansel Adams was concerned with unity and form. Weston, Adams and Imogen Cunningham establshed F.64, a small group of art photographers. An interesting chapter which illustrates how acceptance of photography as an art gradually developed but I did not get enough from the chapter on the debates and developments of more recent times.
Chapter 10 is about the manipulated photograph and explains that from the 1900s onwards there is a series of photographic responses that seek to recast the photographic act in the new language of modernism. Alvin Langdon Coburn asked, 'why should not the camera artist break away from the worn put conventions ... and claim the freedom of expression which any art must have to be alive? There was a move with some photographers to practice new techniques and not be so concerned with mirroring the literal world. Man Ray's Glass Tears (1930) depends on a very visual effect using glass tears on a face. And it was the twentieth century that really saw the rise of the manipulated image. The chapter has a quote from American Surrealist photographer Clarence John Laughan (1905 - 85) 'The physical object to me is merely a stepping stone to an inner world ... of subconscious drives ... ' The chapter ends with 'So much then for the mirror image'
Finally, Chapter 11 is entitled The Cabinet of Infinite Curiosities. These words are echoed in the final sentence of the chapter and book - "From its inception it has always been a cabinet of infinite curiosities." This is a very interesting chapter reflecting on some of the great photographers and trends. Much is made of Henri Cartier-Bresson's work and his capturing of the moment. He alerts us to the human context as does Sebastiao Salgado with his photograph of a child being weighed as part of a supplementary relief programme (1985). We are told that these types of photos are about decoding and unpacking images. Tom Stoddart's photograph of a child in a Romanian Institution (1990) is an example of a newspaper photograph where the addition of newspaper text and the story seeks to involve the viewer and within the newspaper, it takes on a very specific significance. I particularly liked the work of Garry Winogrand and subsequently researched more of his images on the internet. Like Bresson, he called himself a photographer whereas many would describe him as a street photographer. There are many quotes attributed to Winogrand including, "I photograph to see what things look like photographed." Eric Kim's Street Photography Blog has a great piece entitled "10 Things Garry Winogrand Can Teach You About Street photography." Finally the chapter returns to where we started referring to 'the development of such an extraordinary medium referring to Daguerre's work and Niepce's work saying 'They remain as enigmatic tokens of the varying claims of the photograph."
Summary
This is a very interesting book and it came as part of the introductory package from OCA. Some chapters I found more difficult to follow that others, probably because I had no previous knowledge of most of the work presented in this book from which to frame my understanding. At times it was heavy going but the way in which the book was presented in genres was useful and I shall probably refer back to some of the contents from time to time as I progress my own creative ideas in the future and seek to reference them within genres and the work of other photographers.