This is not a book about landscape photography as such but I nevertheless mention it here because it relates to one of the issues that was thrown up by the work that I did for the critical review in Assignment 4: to what extent does an artist’s outsider status, specifically so far as a particular place is concerned, affect or inform their photographs of that place and offer a new perspective on it. This book, which is effectively the catalogue of a show at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem in 2013 looks as if it might go some way towards answering that question, or at least offering a further perspective on it.
I had not come across this show or book before but within the last week or so my wife listened to an on-line talk given by the author and tipped me off. Nor have I yet had time to delve into it beyond a quick first glance to see who is in it. The answer to that question is just about everyone who was a significant figure in photography, particularly during the first half of the last century. Too many to mention in full, but Robert Frank and William Klein, key figures in my essay, are there in some numbers.
After the work that I did, I am firmly of the view that inevitably one’s relationship to a particular place will have an effect on how one sees and portrays it. Where that relationship is as an “outsider” then the possibilities arise of disclosing new insights, as Frank and Klein did.
At the moment I do not really have to time to indulge in a further detailed investigation of this subject as I am presently more preoccupied with this particular course: getting Assignment 5 finished (it is very nearly there); finalising Assignment 6; and then getting ready for Assessment (which looks as if it is going to be quite a big job since the processes changed). I will though nevertheless be thinking more about this issue once I have the time, not least because it occurs to me that this might be something that will be touched on in my next module in so far as I am thinking of doing Self and Other.
Perez, N.N, (2013). Displaced visions. Jerusalem: The Israel Museum
At my tutor’s suggestion I have had a look at an old television programme called Return Journey (which dates back to 1981 but is available on YouTube). This focuses on three photographers: Humphrey Spender and the work he did in Bolton (“Worktown”) for Mass Observation, Derek Smith, and Jimmy Forsyth. The question with which I approached this programme was what, if anything, does it have to say about the thesis I proposed for the Assignment 4 essay. The short answer is, I think, not a lot, but nevertheless it raises some interesting points that are relevant.
Mass Observation, and Spender’s work for the scheme, was expressly anthropological in nature (the programme begins with a somewhat tongue in cheek description of the discovery of that exotic race the Northern Working Class was discovered and needed to be investigated and documented which unfortunately does not disguise what comes across as a sometimes fundamentally patronising streak in Mass Observation, worthy though the scheme certainly was) recording how people lived. It was not so concerned with where they lived, with portraying the environment they inhabited, except to the extent that environment influenced the way the people lived. It was not a visual description of Bolton, or any other generic northern working town, in the same way that Klein described New York.
Smith’s work does not take me much further forward. His story was more to do with his return to Newcastle after studying in London, his ceasing to work as a photographer, becoming involved instead with Amber Films and the Side Gallery (some interesting shots of the old interior of the gallery as I remember it in the mid-1980s).
Forsyth of course spent much of his life on Tyneside and all of his work was done there. It is his that is perhaps the most relevant to the question that I was exploring. Rather than include examples of his work here I am instead putting a link below to the Amber archive of his work, which includes some really nice examples of what he did. Does he fit my thesis? I have to say I do not think so. He was in many ways a classic street photographer, taking pictures of the people, places, things, that he saw around the Scotswood Road. I do not feel that he was making a photographic portrait of his adopted city through the medium and subject matter of its people in anything like the way Klein did. If anything, although not formally so, I feel he was again acting in more of an anthropological way, even if he would not necessarily have seen it that way. He simply set out to record the area and its people as the old fabric of this part of the city was gradually, but inexorably, destroyed. Not just the physical environment (hardly anything of the old Scotswood survives) but, more importantly, the communities that lived there who were dispersed or housed in new high-rise blocks (most of which have also since fallen prey to the wrecking ball). Yes of course his work does describe the city through its people to some extent but that does not appear to have been his intention. Perhaps therefore, albeit in a negative way, his work might be seen as support for the argument that I mooted that one of the key elements in determining the effect of such bodies of work is the intention of the photographer. Klein wanted to depict New York “in a new way” but that was not also Forsyth’s aim.
So what do I get from this programme, apart from the simple pleasure of seeing really good work in an interesting and well made documentary? Above all I suppose it is more questions. It certainly does not close the open question that I ended my speculation on. It certainly highlights for me the slippery and unreliable, and ultimately unhelpful, categories and genres into which we try to force so much photographic work. Here the boundaries are so blurred as to be almost meaningless. At the same time this work is anthropological, typological, social documentary, topographical, portraiture, etcetera, etcetera. It all depends on the purpose of the work, the intentions of the photographer, and how that work is used subsequently by editors, curators, critics. What this particularly brings back to mind is something that Paul Hill said in his lecture (on YouTube, again; link below):
“Landscape photography is not about the land. Like all photography genres it is about the medium – and the maker – not the subject matter …”
Although there is a danger of this being used as a Humpty-Dumptyish credo (“When I use a word it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.”) this is something with which I very much agree. To the extent there is any firm conclusion to be drawn from the issues that I considered in the essay, this perhaps is it.
Carroll, L, (ed. Gardner, M), (1966). The Annotated Alice. London: Penguin
Despite what I have just written with regard to my tutor’s feedback on the Assignment 4 essay, I already find myself looking at it again! What has brought it back into focus is leafing through a little book that I bought recently, effectively a catalogue of an exhibition put on by Street Level Photoworks in Glasgow of the work of Oscar Marzaroli.
I have known Marzaroli’s work for some time, but it did not really come to mind when working on the essay. At the time, because of the relative breadth of his subject matter, and the way his work is often presented simply as street photography influenced by the likes of HCB, it did not seem to fit my thesis. This recent exhibition (which I did not see) and the accompanying book though have changed my view. By focusing on work that he did in Glasgow it puts his work there in a different light. These are predominantly pictures of Glaswegians rather than Glasgow itself. Whilst his aesthetic was very different from that of William Klein, it nevertheless now strikes me that Marzaroli actually did something similar for Glasgow: by portraying the city’s people he was showing us something of the city itself, as it was in the 1960s in particular, a city that has long since ceased to exist, both socially and physically. To that extent it might be said that this element of his work fits the thesis I was exploring in that essay.
It also adds to my question about the role of, or the importance of being, an “outsider”. Like Klein in New York, he was a native of Glasgow, but did his work there after an absence of a number of years in Sweden and London.
Regardless, it is good to see this work again, which is warm and deeply sympathetic, and deserves to be better known in its own right. In turn this makes me realise that Tish Murtha was also doing something similar with her work on the west end of Newcastle (another returnee after time away from her home region, after studying with David Hurn in Newport). Why that did not occur at the time is beyond me! Perhaps I am going to find something similar when I revisit Jimmy Forsyth’s work.
Dickson, M, (2020). Oscar Marzaroli. Glasgow: Street Level Photoworks
Whilst the feedback from my tutor on Assignments 3 and 4 has been very positive, indeed throughout this course, I have nevertheless been thinking about whether there is still anything that I need to reflect upon and address.
So far as Assignment 3 is concerned I think there are two points, both of which I have already addressed to an extent elsewhere. The first relates to presentation of the work. At the time I produced the work I did not give this much thought. Since then I have of course gone on to use the final set for the print on demand exercise and have had actually had the book made up. For the purposes of presentation for assessment I do not now think there is anything more that I need to do with this work and I could simply put the book forward in the vent of physical submission. Whether OCA reverts to this of course remains to be seen.
The other point relates to the development of a personal voice, which was something my tutor and I discussed at some length. This is something that I wrote about specifically at the time (https://markrobinsonocalandscape.photo.blog/2020/04/29/further-musings-on-development-of-a-voice-body-of-work/). I have since continued to think about this issue but I am not sure I have got very much further forward with it. The issue is, I feel, that whilst I do seem to be finding a particular voice of my own, it is at the moment, inevitably, very much tied to the nature of the work required by this module. I have found an aspect of landscape photography that especially interests me and that has produced a recurring theme throughout that I have done so far. Whether I will want to continue in a similar vein once this module has been completed, whether it will feed through into what I do for the next module, or whether I will explore this further in my personal projects (not that I have much time for them at the moment!), I cannot yet tell. For now I have to recognise that I am still developing and there are plenty of other avenues yet to explore.
This actually strikes me as a good thing and that development and change are to be welcomed and embraced. And this leads me to my second general point from the feedback. In previous modules it has been a case of completing an assignment and moving on to the next. To an extent that is perhaps a result of the nature of the earlier modules and the way they have been constructed. The present LPE module comes across to me as more integrated, at least thematically linked and consistent. As a result, each step calls for a reassessment of what has gone before. This, as my tutor has observed, is what I have been doing by going back to look again at the work done for earlier assignments and reconsidering it in the light of more recent work and developments in my thinking and experience. It has felt important to me to consider how earlier work might be developed or readdressed, so that the assignments have become for me, to an extent, not fixed but dynamic pieces of work. This is why I have gone back to each of the first three assignments and done more work on them, in particular with a view to means and modes of presentation. This is probably also what is behind my decision for Assignment 5 to produce two distinct sets of images exploring different ideas about landscape photography.
So far as Assignment 4 is concerned, I do not think there is much more that I can add for now. I still very regard this as an introductory piece, a first look into my chosen subject that in some ways raises more questions than it answers. It would really benefit from expansion and development but I do not see that as a realistic prospect within the confines of the current course. I suspect though that in the future I am going to think more about those further questions as I can see that they might well be relevant to work that I do in the future. Whilst the essay in its current form does not necessarily, at least at face value, fit within the continuum of the work for the previous three assignments, and what I am doing for the next two, I do nevertheless see what the work on the essay has done is affect might broader thinking about landscape and the role of photography as a means of expressing my ideas of landscape.
On a few other points that have arisen out of the tutorial: I did look at Chris Steele Perkins Japanese work in connection with Assignment 2, but I will look at it again with a view to working out how best to present the work for Assignment 6. Shibata’s influence on what I am doing for Assignment 5 is something I have already addressed in writing about research for that project. Otherwise, I will follow up the Mass Observation and Jimmy Forsyth suggestions soon.
Mark Robinson's OCA Landscape, Place & Environment Blog 