Author: tim512301
Protected: Assignment 5 Feedback
Protected: Assignment 4 Feedback
Protected: Reflection and Assessment Criteria – Assignment 5
Protected: Assignment 5: Removing the Figure
Protected: Assignment 5: Preparation
Paul Seawright – Sectarian Murder
Paul Seawright grew up and began his photographic practice in North Belfast. He completed his degree in Photography, Film and Video Studies at West Surrey College of Art and Design, and gained a PhD from the University of Wales. He is currently Head of the School of Art, and Professor of Photography at the University of Ulster.
Seawright describes his work as best known for ‘post conflict landscape that deals with memory, identity, place, landscape and landscape production. And they are all bound together by one common theme, …the city’ (Seawright 2014).
In his series, Sectarian Murder, Seawright presents images of sites on the outskirts of Belfast where victims of sectarian murders were found during the early 1970’s. Seawright pairs each image with a newspaper report of the murder. He removed all references to religion of victim, thereby commenting generally on civilian loses during ‘The Troubles’. The series was very much about ‘the banality of the place and that these places only become changed…. when you know what happened there’ (Seawright 2014).
Another recurring theme across his work is ‘the invisible, the unseen, the subject matter that doesn’t easily present itself to the camera’ (Seawright).
Some critics claim that Seawright work isn’t explicit enough, leaving the viewer searching for an ambiguous and obscure narrative. Seawright however, suggests that his work must strike a fine balance, ‘if its too explicit, then it becomes journalistic…. if it’s too ambiguous, it becomes meaningless’ (Seawright 2013).
Seawright (2013) believes that good art must visually engage people and draw them in, then give itself up slowly, revealing it’s meaning. For him, the exiting thing about art is that the construction of meaning is done by the viewer and that successful art will allow space for that to happen otherwise you risk it being closer to an editorial picture in a magazine.
Reference
Badger, G. (2007) The Genius of Photography: How photography has changed our lives, London: Quadrille.
Cotton, C. (2009) the photograph as contemporary art, new ed. London: Thames & Hudson.
Imperial War Museum (2013) ‘Catalyst: Paul Seawright’, Catalyst: Contemporary Art and War , available: https://vimeo.com/channels/606847/76940827 [accessed 26 Aug 2018].
Nation Gallery of Ireland (2014) ‘Paul Seawright in conversation’ , 14 Apr, available: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sL0QBCYuxpg [accessed 26 Aug 2018].
Seawright, P. (2018) Paul Seawright [online], available: http://www.paulseawright.com/sectarian/ [accessed 26 Aug 2018].
Exercise: 5.3 A Journey
Your journey may not involve traveling the world or an excursion across Russia. You might see your journey to the post office every Monday as particularly relevant – or the journey from your bed to the kitchen in the morning. Note the journeys you go on regularly and reflect upon them.
Now photograph them. Remember to aim for consistency in your pictures. If you choose to photograph all the charity shops you’ve visited in a week, try to photograph them all using the same camera, lens, standing position, lighting, etc. This will help keep your project honed to the subject matter rather than you, the photographer.
Having walked the Grand Canal a number of years ago and loved the experience, I decided to carry out this exercise on a recent multi-day walk along the other great canal in Ireland, The Royal Canal. While my walk along the canal wasn’t an everyday journey, it was one that was carried out over a sustained period of time. I used my Fujifilm X100s with 23mm lens (approximately 35mm equivalent) to aid a consistent set of images. There was a great sense of freedom placing one foot in front of the other, noting and photographing the bridges, lock gates and wider vistas, which changed rather slowly as I progressed. Following this experience, I can really appreciate the “sense of subtle internal and physiological change” which Paul Gaffney (in his series, We Make the Path by Walking ) describes “one may undergo while negotiating the landscape” (Gaffney 2018).
I feel that my journey along the canal afforded me the opportunity to explore the subject of beauty through my camera without the time pressures that I often place upon myself. The way in which the landscape gradually changed with my progress, provided me with an abundance of time to access, understand and appreciate what I was looking at. This was a very rewarding exercise in observation.
Reference
Gaffney, P. (2018) Paul Gaffney [online], available: http://www.paulgaffneyphotography.com/We-Make-the-Path-by-Walking [accessed 23 Aug 2018].
Jeff Rich – The Watershed Project
The Merriam-Webster (2018) online dictionary describe a watershed as ‘the area of land that includes a particular river or lake and all the rivers, streams, etc., that flow into it’.
The Watershed Project by Jeff Rich highlights the relationship between land, water, and man within the Mississippi River watershed, the largest watershed in North America. The Southern portion of the Mississippi watershed is made up of three major river basins, The French Broad, The Tennessee and The Mississippi. Each of these basins form a chapter of The Watershed Project. Rich states that “the common misconception of a watershed is that it’s all about the water. While water does play a large part, the land plays an even larger role by directing the water to a common point, such as a river or ocean. Thus, human impact on the land directly affects the water that runs over it” (Rich 2009).
Many of his images, particularly those that depict pollution or other man-made interruptions in the river’s flow, are shot using strong diagonals or else imposingly square on. His composition allows the interfering force to assert it’s position in conflict with the river, thus engaging with the viewer.
Rich first “became fascinated by the mountain topography that has shaped this water into something that can clear hills and flood towns in a matter of hours”. He “began to see the problems that man caused” and searched out “the most polluted sections of the river and biggest polluters; paper mills, power plants and quarries” (Rich 2009). But The Watershed Project is more than just the story of a polluted water course. As Rich traveled the rivers, he discovered that many of the residents he met “had one section of the river that they considered there own, and ultimately some responsibility towards. The idea that each resident can adopt his/her own piece of land, holds the promise of a sustainable relationship with the watershed” (Rich 2009).
A very interesting point Jeff Rich makes is that he notice “that people would always speak of up stream in the past tense, and with a sense of anger and helplessness. However, when speaking of their own place on the river, it was in the present tense and with a sense of pride” (Rich 2009). He draws parallels between this view, the linear flow of the river and the history of the river.
Reference
Daylight Multimedia (2009) ‘Daylight January 2009 Podcast’ , available: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MwACRZaDLQk [accessed 1 Aug 2018].
FlakPhoto.com (2012) ‘Watershed: The French Broad River’ [online], available: http://flakphoto.com/content/watershed-the-french-broad-river-jeff-rich-rod-slemmons#photo-1 [accessed 1 Aug 2018].
Rich, J. (2015) Jeff Rich Photography [online], available: http://www.jeffreyrich.com/work.html [accessed 1 Aug 2018].
Exercise: 5.2 View from a Window
The French writer Georges Perec wrote a book called An Attempt at Exhausting a Place in Paris (1975) in which he wrote down everything he could see from a certain viewpoint. You may like to read it.
Choose a viewpoint, perhaps looking out of your window or from a café in the central square, and write down everything you can see. No matter how boring it seems or how detailed, just write it down. Spend at least an hour on this exercise.
Here are some areas to consider:
- Can you transform this into a photography version?
- Would you stay in the same place or get in close to the things you listed?
- Would you choose to use your camera phone in order to be discreet or would you get your tripod out?
- Would it be better in black and white or colour?
- Would you include your list with the final images? You may choose to turn this into a photography project if it interests you.
For this exercise, I decided to sit on a stool in the window of a cafe on Rutland Street in Limerick City. From my vantage point, the field of view through the window is relatively narrow, but looks out at The Hunt Museum, a traffic junction, across a bridge to St. Mary’s medieval Cathedral.
Museum, railings, gates, pillars, plastic horses, house, bridge, balustrade, hanging baskets, traffic lights, street lights, street signs, bollards, cathedral, bell tower, parapet, battlements, the potato market, roof slates, chimneys, chimney pots, crows, sash windows, blinds, flag poles, flags, road, double yellow lines, manhole cover, street, footpath, chewing gum, litter bin, sweet wrapper, cigarette butts, Trees, leaves, branches, hedges, bushes, people, life saving rings, Steps, kerb, Seagulls, benches, tourists, cameras, map, phone, cap, coats, sky, clouds, drain, bricks, doors, Flowers, cars, motorbike, bicycle, fire engine, bin truck, handcart, boxes, reflections, hanging baskets, flowers, padlock, builders, hi viz vest, children, pram, parents, dog, coffee cup, green light, amber light, red light, rain jacket, jeans, runners, boots, flip flops, shorts, t-shirts, sweat shirt, keys, watch, shopping bags, backpack, suit, brown case, police car, bus, wheelchair, beard, glasses, doc martin boots, soles, laces, buttons, zips
I believed this exercise was going to be quite easy, really just a matter of drinking a coffee while I jot down what I saw. I started by quickly noting the obvious items followed by the detail. But you soon get to a point where its a real struggle to come up a new word. You could easily list every type and colour car that passes, but I think the point of the exercise was to force me to look more closely at individual items. So, a boot isn’t just a boot, but a collection of other items.
In order to put this into a photography version, you could simply take a photograph from my stool. However that would lack the detail that I recorded, plus, my list was compiled over 30 minutes, so my view was constantly changing, albeit only slightly. You could break the overall view down into specific areas or possibly photographic genres such as, street, architecture, people, traffic, abstract elements etc. The different style or genre may determine the approach, eg. whether to shoot wide-angle, mid range or with zoom lens, depth of field consideration, tripod use. Whether I would use colour or black and white would depend on the types of image I shoot, and often I don’t know which looks better until I see an image in both, an advantage to working digitally.
This exercise, didn’t interest me, although it was nice to stop and appreciated the detail in the ordinary.
Identity Place Photos 