Lukas Strebel, surrealism and dreams

A renewed interest in surrealist images prompted me to see Lukas Strebel’s exhibition of photographs from the 1970s at Printspace in London. All of the images are constructs in the surrealist style. Most are single images but there are also dyptics, tryptics and quartets of related images.

Antoglyph, a photographic exhibition at Printspace, by Lukas Stebel

On first viewing, many of the images had me scratching my head in puzzlement: “what does this mean?” or “why on earth has he put this with that?” were frequent questions. Was I being obtuse? I hope not, but I did find myself having to adjust my expectations of the images. These images were not working at the same emotional level as most other photo exhibitions I go to. I abandoned any notion that there was a message in each picture, then found myself trying to construct a story for each of them. This was fun, and it made the exhibition much more “mine” than “Lukas Strebel’s”. Or perhaps more accurately, a collaboration between us in a way that is unusual in the viewer-photographer-subject triumvirate.

Lukas’ favorite image is, apparently,  Meus Volatus Magicus Supra Antoglyphum (1971), or as I call it, “the one with the pretentious title”. You can read some background at The Guardian’s excellent “My Best Shot” blog:

Meus Volatus Magicus Supra Antoglyphum (1971) by Lukas Strebel

Well yes, it is eye-catching, but it’s not top of my list. I prefer the obscurity and odd-ball humour of Pharoh’s Nightmare (1975) (yes that’s Pharoh not Pharaoh):

Pharoh's Nightmare (1975) by Lukas Strebel on display at Printspace

I recently had a dream that involved pink flamingos part-flying part-floating through the air blowing bubbles. This had no relationship to any other experience or memory that I am conscious of. It was very surreal and memorable not only for the weird dream-image but also because it is one of the few dreams I can remember now that I’m awake! But it immediately brought to mind the images in Lukas’s exhibition: they seem to be more the product of dreams than conscious thought. And I think that’s a better way of approaching these (and others’) surreal images – a tangible record of an unconscious image.

Background interview with Lukas Strebel by Tom Jeffries

My Best Shots by The Guardian

The UK newspaper The Guardian runs a series about photographers’ best pictures and what each picture means to the individual photographer and how it was created. Fascinating. Check it out at http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/series/mybestshot

New book: Musicians

I’ve taken pictures of musicians for a few years, trying to capture the moment of extreme concentration when they are “in the zone”. I want to add more images to this series, but I also wanted to put a book together at this stage even though the project is still a work in progress. Here’s the link to my Blurb Musicians book to view or buy

Tagliavini at Diemar/Noble

Some of Christian Tagliavini‘s detailed and rather beautifully-designed images from his portfolios “1503″ and “Dame di Cartone” are on display at the Diemar/Noble gallery in London until 7 January 2012. See them if you possibly can!

The first thing that struck me on entering the gallery is how much better the prints looked at near-life size than the reproductions I had previously seen in magazines and on-screen. Although I am often critical of photographs that are large just for the sake of it, in this case their size is definitely in their favour. This photo gives an idea of their scale:

Tagliavini's "1503" series at the Diemar/Noble Gallery. Photo by Malcolm Raggett

In the “1503″ series, the necks of the female models are a particularly striking feature. By clever illusion and, perhaps, careful selection of his models, Tagliavini has played on the key feature of the Renaissance painting “Madonna with the Long Neck” by Parmigianino (whose birth year was 1503 – not a coincidence I suspect):

Parmigianino. Madonna with the Long Neck c.1535

Downstairs you can view images from the “Dame di Cartone” series. These are a witty blend of 2-dimensional cardboard-cut-out-style costumes and 3-dimensional components in the form of sleeves, collars and the models’ heads and hands.

The photos are carefully researched, painstakingly crafted and well displayed (I particularly liked the face-to-face pairing of Ritratto d’uomo and Donna Clotilde). I am really looking forward to Tagliavini’s next portfolio!

Is Edward James’ garden, Las Pozas, surreal?

Edward James (1907-1984) was a wealthy Englishman who never quite fitted in to the high society life that he could have been a part of. Instead his artistic temperament  set him on a life-long search that led him to the town of Xilitla, about 200km north of Mexico City, where he bought land to create an orchid garden called Las Pozas.  Unusually heavy snow and low temperatures in the winter of 1962 wiped out many of the orchids but James didn’t replant. Instead he conceived a garden of exotically-shaped structures, sculptures and buildings made in reinforced concrete. For almost 2 decades construction took place, though many of the structures remain unfinished, and it is these structures for which Las Pozas is rightly world famous in gardening, architectural and artistic circles. This picture gives you an idea:

Colour photograph of unfinished structure, Las Pozas (note the person on the curved stairs to give an idea of scale). copyright Malcolm Raggett

Edward James associated with the surrealist movement for much of his life, acting as patron and collector. He was not a hands-off collector though: artists such as Dali and Magritte credited James with at least some of the inspiration for their pictures.  James had an innate tendency to turn the logical into the illogical, the rational to the irrational and the real into the surreal. But for many years he dismissed the idea that Las Pozas was a surreal garden, only later did he concede that there were surreal elements to it. The passage of time and the lack of money for maintenance since James’ death has meant that the structures have weathered and the jungle invaded to produce a (to me) marvellous combination of organically-inspired sculpture with natural foliage. This juxtaposition of reinforced concrete with sub-tropical jungle contains a distinct surreal concept. There are some visitors who cannot warm to this, and who even deny it
the label of “garden”, but for me it is without doubt a fantastical, exuberant surreal garden.

But how to photograph it? Taking colour photographs provides a great record but is somehow too “real”. Photographing in black & white provides a useful degree of abstraction to the images without being sufficiently surreal, so I tried black & white infrared film. I hoped that the pale foliage against the dark concrete would give me that other-worldliness I was after. Here are some examples. Do they work for you?

Image taken on black & white film without infrared filtration. The tonality of the foliage and the concrete are very similar. copyright Malcolm Raggett

Here's a similar image but taken on IR film with infrared filtration. The pale foliage against the dark concrete differentiate the two more clearly and give a surreal element to the image. copyright Malcolm Raggett

Here are some more examples, all using EFKE Aura 35mm film and a 720um IR filter:

copyright Malcolm Raggett

copyright Malcolm Raggett

Customising Adobe Lightroom metadata field names

This post shows you how to customise the labels associated with IPTC metadata in Lightroom. To achieve this you create a file in a specific format using a text editor. Here’s how…

---

I work on image digitisation projects were we use Adobe’s Lightroom as a metadata entry tool. Our approach is to embed the core metadata in the IPTC fields of each image. When the images are ready for ingestion to the Web site, a script extracts the metadata and populated the database fields. This approach has the advantage that (1) the metadata remains with the image so orphan images issues and database migration should be easier in the future, and (2) metadata entry and ingestion can be divided into more discrete, manageable steps.

Schema

IPTC fields are not designed for an image archive so we first had to map the fields we needed for the project onto the available IPTC fields to produce our in-house schema. This has not always been easy due to character length restrictions in the original IPTC specification. Some programs are more strict than others in applying field lengths, and we’ve found that new programs and even new versions of programs, have to be fully tested to see whether they truncate the data.

Re-labelling metadata field lists

Lightroom is tolerant on field lengths and, when paired with the plugin LR/Transporter, gives us batch manipulation and bulk copying of metadata. Another reason we like Lightroom is the ability to re-label the fields. Although there is a plugin that will help, it is relatively straight-forward to use a text editor for the re-labelling. The main purpose of this blog post is to make some information about this public, so here’s how to change the field labels:

Outline

1. Create a folder in your user area called (on Windows 7 machines):
   c:\Users\[username]\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Lightroom\Metadata Field Lists
   On Macs:
   ~/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Lightroom/Metadata Field Lists
2. Save the script that tells Lightroom what labels to use into this folder with the extension .lrtemplate
3. Run Lightroom (or re-start it if it’s already running) and this template will appear in the drop-down list. Lightroom will remember which template you last used and will start with this next time.

Editing the script

It helps if you have a script to start with so here’s ours for you to copy-and-paste into a text editor:

-- Custom field names for entering SOAS metadata via Lightroom
-- Malcolm Raggett, 2011-06-27

return {
   title = "SOAS Fields",
   items = {
      {
         "com.adobe.label",
         label = "About this file",
      },
      "com.adobe.metadataStatus",
      "com.adobe.filename",
      "com.adobe.filepath",
      {
	   "com.adobe.imageFileDimensions",
	   label = "Original W x H",
      },
      {
	   "com.adobe.imageCroppedDimensions",
	   label = "Cropped W x H",
      },
      "com.adobe.separator",
      {
         "com.adobe.label",
         label = "Digitisation Assistant input",
      },
      {
         formatter = "com.adobe.supplementalCategories",
         label = "Collection"
      },
      {
         formatter = "com.adobe.intellectualGenre",
         label = "Catalogue reference"
      },
      {
         formatter = "com.adobe.source",
         label = "Format of original"
      },
      {
         formatter = "com.adobe.creatorState",
         label = "Media type"
      },
      {
         formatter = "com.adobe.creatorCountry",
         label = "Language"
      },
      {
         formatter = "com.adobe.city",
         label = "Original reference"
      },
      {
         height_in_lines = 2,
         topLabel = true,
         formatter = "com.adobe.headline",
         label = "Original caption"
      },
      "com.adobe.country",
      {
         formatter = "com.adobe.provider",
         label = "Creator of Original"
      },
      "com.adobe.copyright",
      {
         formatter = "com.adobe.descriptionWriter",
         label = "Publisher"
      },
      {
         formatter = "com.adobe.creator",
         label = "Copy taken by"
      },
      {
         formatter = "com.adobe.dateCreated",
         label = "Date of copy"
      },
      {
         formatter = "com.adobe.creatorAddress",
         label = "For citation use"
      },
      "com.adobe.separator",
      {
         "com.adobe.label",
         label = "Consultant input",
      },
      {
         formatter = "com.adobe.title",
         topLabel = true
      },
      {
         height_in_lines = 5,
         allow_newlines = true,
         label = "Description",
         topLabel = true,
         formatter = "com.adobe.caption"
      },
      {
         formatter = "com.adobe.state",
         label = "State/Province"
      },
      "com.adobe.location",
      {
         formatter = "com.adobe.creatorZip",
         label = "Geodata KML"
      },
      {
         formatter = "com.adobe.creatorWorkPhone",
         label = "Date of original"
      },
      {
         height_in_lines = 3,
         allow_newlines = true,
         label = "Cross-reference",
         topLabel = true,
         formatter = "com.adobe.instructions"
      },
      {
         formatter = "com.adobe.creatorCity",
         label = "Ethnic group"
      },
      {
         formatter = "com.adobe.scene",
         label = "Sort Order"
      }
   },
}

The syntax is from the Lua scripting language, which thankfully is not very obscure (there is documentation from Adobe if you have time to burn!). There is very little you can do other than rearrange, re-label and sectionalise the labels. Here are the rules:

1. the title in the head section is what will appear in the Lightroom drop-down list, hence
   title = “SOAS Fields”, (don’t forget the quotes or the comma) and it will look like this:

   

   Drop-down list showing standard and custom Metadata Field Lists

2. if you want the metadata field to appear with the default label, just put an entry in the script like “com.adobe.metadataStatus”, (again, don’t forget the quotes or the comma)
3. the order you put these statements is the order they will appear in the Lightroom Metadata pane
4. to change the label use this syntax (you can write it all on one line if you want)

   	{
   	   "com.adobe.imageFileDimensions",
   	   label = "Original W x H",
   	},

   the most difficult part is working our what comes after the com.adobe. Sometimes you can make an accurate guess based on the IPTC field name but Adobe make subtle changes that make some names difficult to guess. Here’s a list of the ones I’ve found:

   	"com.adobe.filepath",
   	"com.adobe.basename",
   	"com.adobe.filenameExtension",
   	"com.adobe.originalFilename.ifDiffers",
   	"com.adobe.originalFilename",
   	"com.adobe.fileFormat",
   	"com.adobe.metadataDate",
   	"com.adobe.audioAnnotation",
   	"com.adobe.rating.string",
   	"com.adobe.ratingAndLabel",
   	"com.adobe.combinedImageFileDimensions",
   	"com.adobe.filesize",
   	"com.adobe.megapixels",
   	"com.adobe.captureDateTime",
   	"com.adobe.dateTime",
   	"com.adobe.dateTime.dateOnly",
   	"com.adobe.dateTime.timeOnly",
   	"com.adobe.dateTimeOriginal",
   	"com.adobe.dateTimeOriginal.onlyIfUnique",
   	"com.adobe.dateTimeDigitized",
   	"com.adobe.subjectDistance",
   	"com.adobe.GPSAltitude",
   	"com.adobe.exposureProgram",
   	"com.adobe.exposureBiasValue",
   	"com.adobe.meteringMode",
   	"com.adobe.lensSetting",
   	"com.adobe.focalLength35mm",
   	"com.adobe.maxApertureValue",
   	"com.adobe.rightsUsageTerms",
   	"com.adobe.copyrightInfoURL",
   	"com.adobe.creatorWorkEmail",
   	"com.adobe.creatorWorkWebsite",
   	"com.adobe.creatorWorkPhone",
   	"com.adobe.creatorCountry",
   	"com.adobe.creatorZip",
   	"com.adobe.creatorState",
   	"com.adobe.creatorCity",
   	"com.adobe.creatorJobTitle",
   	"com.adobe.creatorAddress",
   	"com.adobe.filename",
   	"com.adobe.sidecars",
   	"com.adobe.copyname",
   	"com.adobe.folder",
   	"com.adobe.metadataStatus",
   	"com.adobe.caption",
           "com.adobe.title",
           "com.adobe.headline",
           "com.adobe.provider",
           "com.adobe.instructions",
           "com.adobe.descriptionWriter",
   	"com.adobe.copyright",
   	"com.adobe.copyrightState",
   	"com.adobe.creator",
   	"com.adobe.dateCreated",
   	"com.adobe.intellectualGenre",
   	"com.adobe.scene",
   	"com.adobe.location",
   	"com.adobe.city",
   	"com.adobe.state",
   	"com.adobe.country",
   	"com.adobe.isoCountryCode",
           "com.adobe.supplementalCategories",
           "com.adobe.source",
   	"com.adobe.rating",
   	"com.adobe.colorLabels",
   	"com.adobe.captureTime",
   	"com.adobe.captureDate",
   	"com.adobe.imageFileDimensions",
   	"com.adobe.imageCroppedDimensions",
   	"com.adobe.exposure",
   	"com.adobe.focalLength",
   	"com.adobe.ISOSpeedRating",
   	"com.adobe.flash",
   	"com.adobe.make",
   	"com.adobe.model",
   	"com.adobe.lens",
   	"com.adobe.GPS"

5. if you want to insert a separator, use “com.adobe.separator”,
6. and if you want to put a heading under this separator, use

         {
            "com.adobe.label",
            label = "Put wording here",
         },

7. Save the file into the Metadata Field Lists folder with the extension .lrtemplate

If you make a mistake in the syntax Lightroom won’t tell you what’s wrong, it just won’t put your template into the drop-down list, so make sure your lines end with commas and the opening and closing braces balance.

If you have questions or additional information about metadata field lists, please add them as a comment to this post.

feet and footprints

I was recently in Bamberg, Germany, and had a chance conversation with a German that set me thinking about knowledge and intuition. I’ve occasionally thought that you can have too much knowledge and that this can impede the ability to marvel; for example, does an in-depth knowledge of biology reduce our appreciation of nature?

My memory for facts has never been good and I’ve reached the age when I find it increasingly difficult to retain information (and if I write it down I forget where I’ve put the piece of paper). Although I might not be able to recall the facts I’ve learned or the knowledge I’ve acquired, they still seem to contribute to who I am and the way I see the world – and hence the photographs I take.

I thought of a metaphor for this process: facts are like feet treading in soft clay. Some feet are memorable but most are forgotten. Well, not quite forgotten since they leave their footprint. Over time the footprints accumulate and it may be possible to see a general direction that these footprints are leading us in. Is this a reasonable analogy for intuition, experience, or even wisdom? Leave a comment if you want.

Something caused me to photograph this cross at Michaelberg overlooking the city of Bamberg. Some “pattern of footprints” made me think it was worth photographing whereas others wouldn’t look twice:

Crosses, Bamberg, Germany.

Paul Graham and the value of retrospectives

The Whitechapel Gallery has an exhibition of Paul Graham‘s work showing until 19 June 2011.  Paul has popped up on my photographic radar occasionally over the years. I remember his “A1 – the Great North Road” series when it first went public in the early 1980s. Although I’ve admired his photography, I confess to not being enthusiastic enough to buy any of his books for my shelf.

Before visiting the exhibition yesterday the impression that I had of Paul Graham is that he is intellectually honest and down-to-earth (I have never met him so I base this opinion on my interpretation of his work in books and magazines over the years).  I was therefore a bit dismayed when I initially entered the gallery to find his work being presented in large print sizes apparently as individual works of art rather than the narrative form I was expecting.  A retrospective is inevitably going to be selective and must therefore lose the original story, but has this exhibition diluted the honesty I was expecting and “sold-out” Paul Graham as an interpretive documentary artist?  Looking at the prints from the Great North Road series steadied me, and comparing this with later work such as the man cutting grass in A Shimmer of Possibility (2004-2006), I was reassured that the answer has to be “No”.  The exhibition isn’t about the narrative in each of the series on display, it is about the development of Paul Graham as an artist-photographer, which is hardly surprising given the title of the exhibition: Paul Graham. It is inevitable that the curation and display will be influenced by current trends and taste in gallery design, so even though I would have preferred more images at a smaller size, it is an excellent exhibition and well worth a visit.

Since Paul shares my opinion that books and other publications are a better way for most people to access photography than art galleries, I bought the exhibition catalogue (so yes, I now have a Paul Graham book on my shelf). I haven’t been through the catalogue in detail yet but it is clearly much more than the exhibition in book form.  So if you can’t get to the exhibition do try to see the book: Paul Graham. 2009. steidlMACK. ISBN 978-3-86521-858-2.

While I was looking at the Beyond Caring (1984-1985) series (a bleak look at the British Department of Health and Social Security or, as we knew it at the time, the Department of Stealth and Total Obscurity), which uses large blank areas and off-vertical angles in an attempt to achieve a distinctive appearance that now seems rather contrived, I overheard a couple of young gallery visitors remark with surprise how old this style actually was.  Perhaps that’s the real value of this  retrospective: it tells us that fashions and styles come and go – we need to look deeper for the real message.  For me, Paul Graham’s photographic series have these messages, about historical events as well as the human condition.

Leaf Aptus II 12 and Anagramm Production2 comparison

I don’t normally write about equipment in this blog but I’m making an exception in the hope that someone might find this interesting.

I recently compared the 80Mpx Leaf Aptus II 12 single-shot digital medium format back and the 312Mpx Anagramm Production2 5 x 4 inch scanning back. My employer has owned an Anagramm Production2 scanning back for several years. This has a resolution of 13,000 x 8,000 pixels and is used for digitising larger books, maps and artwork from our collections. (Each pixel records R, G & B colours hence the 13 x 8 x 3 Mpx count). We currently use Phase One P45+ backs (7,216 x 5,412px, i.e. 39Mpx) to digitise smaller items. Leaf recently released a back of 10,320 x 7,752 px, i.e. 80Mpx, and I recently spent an afternoon evaluating the Leaf back against the Anagramm. I was impressed by the quality of the Leaf to the point where I would advise anyone looking to invest in a scanning back to seriously consider the new 80Mpx backs from Leaf (since Phase One are releasing an 80Mpx back based on the same chip, this would also be worth evaluating, though the additional sophistication of the Phase One back will be largely wasted on the digitisation applications I am mostly involved with). In the time available I could only evaluate the fidelity of resolution, not colour. I used the same camera and lens, column stand, lights and original artwork, which ranged in size from roughly A4 to A3. The camera was a Linhof RD-1 with 180mm f5.6 lens. This lens had a built-in infra-red filter though this was only necessary for the Anagramm scanning back, since the Leaf has an infra-red blocking glass as part of its construction. It was necessary to adjust and re-focus the camera for each image and, since the Leaf has a much smaller sensor area than the Production2, I was more restricted on the size of original I could copy with the Leaf. I cropped much more tightly with the Leaf than the Anagramm, which had the effect that 100% enlargements were about the same size from both backs.

I chose 3 Japanese woodblock prints from our collections. These had a lot of detail right down to the paper grain and the inker’s wiping marks, so these should be a good test. All test shots were exposed so that the brightest highlight fell substantially under the 255 saturation point. The dynamic range of all medium and large format backs is well able to cope with the reproduction of the works of art we normally digitise, though I made sure I included an item with reflective gold on it just to make sure the Leaf could rise to this challenge (it did, with ease). I also white balanced all images against a Qpatch included in each shot. The Leaf back was set to its native ISO50 setting. The Anagramm back is not calibrated to ISO film speeds: instead I set the scan speed to Fast (1 notch down from Very Fast) and the fine control, or amplification, came out at 96% to achieve good exposure. I used well-ballasted continuous lighting for the tests. The ballasting reduces flicker, which is significant when the Anagramm back is scanning on fast and very fast settings. The ballasting won’t be of practical significance for the Leaf back.

So here are some results, full frame image and 100% enlargement:

Anagramm Production2, Linhof RD-1, Symmar 180mm f5.6 at f8. Grey balance applied

Leaf Aptus II 12, Linhof RD-1, Symmar 180mm f5.6 at f8. Grey balance applied

Anagramm Production2, Linhof RD-1, Symmar 180mm f5.6 at f8. Grey balance applied

Leaf Aptus II 12, Linhof RD-1, Symmar 180mm f5.6 at f8. Grey balance applied

Anagramm Production2, Linhof RD-1, Symmar 180mm f5.6 at f8. Grey balance applied

Leaf Aptus II 12, Linhof RD-1, Symmar 180mm f5.6 at f8. Grey balance applied

The results amazed me when I saw them side by side on the monitor: I had previously seen a significant difference between the 39Mp back and the Production2 back, but this time the ability of the 80Mpx Leaf and the 312Mpx Anagramm backs to distinguish detail was very similar. No sharpening was applied to the images, however the process of down-resolving to create the above JPEGs has reduced the quality noticably. Remember that the backs were not colour-profiled so you cannot judge the colour quality in this test.

Timings

I timed the process of composing, focusing, setting exposure and white balance and capturing the image. Both Anagramm and Leaf took 4 minutes 30 seconds. If subsequent images could be taken without further adjustment, the scan time of the Anagramm was a minute whereas the shutter speed for the Leaf was 1/30th of a second. So from a production point-of-view the Leaf would win hands down – this productivity is worth a lot of money. In practice we use Mamiya cameras with P45+ backs for their speed. We find that we can digitise 5 times as much material with the P45+ compared to the Production2, so we reserve the Production2 for large items such as maps. The Leaf Aptus II 12 and the Production2 both have a “live view” refreshed at several frames per second, which makes focusing so much easier and safer than using the Mamiya’s viewfinder a long way up a column stand – another reason to trade up to the Leaf, but this time from the P45+.

Conclusions

There is a tendancy for digital copying processes to enhance the contrast of the image in comparison to the original, and the Leaf did just that. Although a custom ICC profile would help (I will do this if I can get my hands on the back for a bit longer), it is still necessary to adjust the final image, from whatever source, manually alongside the original to get the ultimate fidelity to the original. I don’t normally have the budget to do this so it is important to me that the calibrated workflow gets as close as possible to the original without manual adjustment. The indication from my testing so far is that the Leaf will do an excellent job. The Leaf seems to come so close in quality to the Production2, with the advantage of speed and smaller file size, that it is hard to see the justification for the 312Mpx scanning back.

The quality achievable from high megapixel cameras needs scrupulous attention to detail in lens quality, rigidity of support and quality of lighting. Accurate focusing is also essential. But get these right and the Leaf Aptus II 12 can produce exceptional results.

Credits

My thanks go to Andy Quiney of Peartree Rental Ltd., and Yair Shahar, Product Manager at Leaf Imaging Ltd For their time, interest and equipment in making this test possible. The School of Oriental and African Studies provided its digitisation facility and equipment for the test.

Visualising in black & white

I was due to meet some friends in London a week ago, and thought I’d get there early and take some photos of whatever appealed to me. It was a grey wet day. Flat lighting. Great reflections and refractions. In the afternoon the rain stopped and the puddles dried up so I was left with the dull flat lighting. It didn’t seem lightly that I would get any photos, especially as conversation can be a distraction from photography, but I was wrong. The practice I’d had in the morning had some momentum into the afternoon and I got a couple of satisfying shots in Richmond. The dull light had made it a lot easier to visualise in black & white:

Railings, Richmond Hill

Circles, Richmond

Geoffrey H. Short

Geoffrey H Short talking about his photographs at the Diemar/Noble Gallery. copyright Malcolm Raggett

Geoffrey H. Short currently (until 12 March 2011) has 7 of the images from his “Towards Another (Big Bang) Theory” on display at the Diemar/Noble Gallery in London. In literal terms, they are photographs of the rapid combustion of various volatile oils, but they are also much more that that.

They are a visual stimulus to consider current social and political threats concerning terrorism, an issue that we in Europe and North America tend to be more aware of than in the photographer’s native New Zealand. Although this may be an immediate concern for some people, I found it more interesting to consider my reaction in terms of the fire and smoke. Fire, and the control of it, has fascinated man for tens of thousands of years: it can be life-sustaining and it can be fatal; it can warm and it can burn; it can cook and it can char. No wonder that it was long thought to be one of the fundamental elements. It inspires awe: that simultaneous attraction and repulsion we rapidly learn as a child when we touch something hot or, as Geoffrey put it “anything that can kill you must be fascinating”. There are echoes, too, of that 18th century notion of the Sublime: something that can be both beautiful and terrifying at the same time. But that opens a huge philosophical debate that would be way too long for a short blog like this!

The images chosen for display range from ones where some element – grass, tree or rock – is included that gives a sense of scale, through to photos that are quite abstract and highly absorbing to look at; I found myself spending longer staring into the images as they became increasingly abstract.  For example with Untitled Explosion #6CP

Untitled Explosion #6CP. Copyright Geoffrey H Short

After about 5 minutes I went from a 3-dimensional understanding of the image as a representation of a rather beautiful moment in the brief life of a fireball to a 2-dimensional shape with an interesting texture.  The heart-shape motif is obvious – do we love it or fear it, or both at the same time?

A very beautiful monochromatic image of smoke whisps

Untitled Explosion #8CF5. copyright Geoffrey H Short

brings to mind oriental calligraphy, or perhaps the work of an abstract artist. Scale is uncertain. We could be looking at ink drops in a jar of water or a disasterous mid-air collision. Wonderful!

My final and favourite image is the most intimate and close-up view of  flames in the exhibition

Untitled Explosion #XCF18. copyright Geoffrey H Short

This has a wonderful depth and range of colours and is quite Turner-esque in its drama. We could expect a square-rigged man-o’-war to sail out of the flames at any moment.  Or perhaps it could be the starship Enterprise returning from a distant galaxy – the image could easily be mistaken for a Hubble telescope composite of a distant nebula.

I urge you to see this exhibition not just for the beauty of the images but for what they mean to you. There may only be 7 to view but they are well chosen and displayed. Well done Geoff – now, when can we see more?! Geoffrey has a YouTube video on the making of the images.

Photolounge

The Photolounge was open at the Old Truman Bewery for a few days as part of East London’s Photomonth, so I took a look. The Old Truman Brewery at the north end of Brick Lane about 10 minutes walk from Liverpool Street station. There are lots of retail opportunities but above ground level there is lots of space available for exhibitions. Anyone could enter photographs but it was mainly keen photographers, some fresh from art school, others more established, who had their pictures on display. Some of the 30,000 entries in Photobox’s Around the World in 80 Days competition were also on display:

 

Photobox 80 Days competition result

 

It was good to have such an eclectic mix of images. I past by the Art School images fairly quickly: they tell me a lot more about the person behind the camera than what is being pictured, and to be honest I’m too old and I’ve seen too many introspective images to be that interested now. But I do like  to see the work of young photographers who have matured enough to be telling me truths about the wider world.

After a look at all of the images, the ones I dwelt on or went back to were by:

• Valerio Berdini
• Sonal Kantaria
• Alex Grace
• Andrew Meredith
• John Matthews

Lessons from Edward Weston

I finally made it, on the very last day, to the exhibition and sale of Edward Weston prints at the Chris Beetles Gallery in London.  I’ve admired Weston’s work, especially his landscapes and still lifes, for a long time.  I used to admire Ansel Adams’ landscapes even more than Weston’s but, whereas I now see  AA’s work as a little sentimental, pastoral and clichéd, I have retained my admiration for some, though not all of Weston’s. Like most people, I am familiar with their work from books.  Although I have seen some originals by Adams I don’t think I’ve ever seen originals of Weston’s; the prints in this exhibition are from the original EW negatives but printed by his son Cole, which means they are pretty close to EW’s vision and good enough for me!

LESSON 1: books and original prints are different. Printing technology has improved tremendously in the last 20 years and the quality achieved in the best books is superb but there is still something about the quality of the blacks in a fine silver gelatin print that isn’t quite achieved in any book. But that’s getting picky: for me the real difference is in looking, really looking, at a print in isolation that brings out layers of detail and meaning that I don’t see when looking at a book. Perhaps it is the shear number of pictures I am presented with in a book that dilutes the impact, or maybe I’m like a kid in a sweet shop, turning the pages too quickly. Note to self – take longer to look!

LESSON 2: Edward Weston’s photographs can be improved. In his day, EW was an artist pushing the boundaries of his cultural environment and doggedly pursuing his personal vision. He was of the opinion that the camera’s strength was in its ability to record of reality while acknowledging the abstraction of the 2-dimensional black & white print. This reflects my own view and is probably why I still like his photographs, that and the lack of sentimentality. But if I were taking the same landscapes I would probably aim for a more abstract effect. Here’s an example of what I mean: the first image is as EW interpreted Oceano in 1936

but I think that masking the top improves the photo

My own opinion is that removing the horizon strengthens the image and makes it more abstract, which I prefer. But then it’s no longer an Edward Weston photograph.

On On, No No!

I was out running near my home when I came across this road graffiti left over from a recent fun run. Only I came at it from the wrong direction so it read: NO NO instead of the more encouraging: ON ON. It seemed like an amusing metaphor for life!

Anthony Gormley sculptures at De La Warr Pavilion

I’ve been intending to visit the modernist De La Warr Pavilion on the south coast of England for some time, so when I heard that Anthony Gormley was exhibiting a version of Critical Mass on the pavilion’s roof, the opportunity to see both was too good to miss. It was a warm sunny and breezy day when I visited and the pavilion was at its best – a marvellous study in light and shade, which changes character as the sun moves round.

On the roof terrace were Anthony Gormley’s cast iron figures being brilliantly lit by the sun, which made the shadows as interesting as the figures. I started by seeing the sculptures as objects; cast iron shapes in almost abstract form, but as I walked between them looking at detail – the rust pockets, the fall of light and shade – I started seeing the resemblance to the bodies at Pompey, where the volcanic ash has preserved the shape of the huddled figures even though the body has long since decayed. It was as though Gormley’s figures and those at Pompey were negatives and positives of the same event. And the Gormley figures are a black – negative – version of his own white body from which the casts were made.

My final reaction to the sculptures was how they must resemble bodies on a battlefield or exhumed from a mass grave. Although I’ve never been in this situation for real, I can imagine anyone who has would have their memories re-kindled by this display.

Despite my rather macabre reaction to the exhibit, it is was well worth the visit.

Sally Mann exhibition

I’ve visited The Family and the Land: Sally Mann, an exhibition of Sally Mann’s photographs at London’s Photographers’ Gallery several times recently (July 2010), and my reactions have been different – evolving – each time.

Sally’s reputation-making series “Immediate Family” was strong, direct and candidly honest at the time it was published, and remains a set of excellently expressive portraits today. But this was not my main interest, I really wanted to see her more recent work, particularly her landscapes. She has been using hand-coated glass plates and the wet plate collodion process, which predates gelatin-based plates and film, and requires rapid pre and post exposure processing. This process was popular from about 1850-1890 and many example exist that show flawless technique, so we know it can be done. Flawless technique is definitely not what Sally is aiming for though: if you are expecting master craftsmanship you will be disappointed. In fact, in the film about her work she hopes that she never achieves this mastery. She want the serendipitous dust specks or coating flaws to achieve the look she seeks.

I found myself having to work to accept this concept. Sure, I’ve used simple lenses, pinholes and alternative processes myself, but I’ve never wanted the process to intrude on the image to the extent that Sally does. Still, after a couple of visits to the exhibition I could see the merits. For me it worked particularly well in the series of decaying bodies (What Remains) but less well in the closeup portraits; the extreme closeness, restricted plane of focus, primitive lens and process flaws all combine to produce photos taken to an extreme – into the realm of novelty rather than beauty, exaggerated beyond the point of real meaning or message. My reaction to the landscape images (Deep South) interested me a lot. They needed a long look and a second visit before I started to warm to them. My particular favourite was Swamp Bones, 1996, depicting the stumps and roots of swamp cypress, highly reminiscent of old bones, which was particularly appropriate given the juxtaposition of the photos of decomposing human bodies.

As a whole, it was a rather sombre exhibition with undertones of death and decay, so I can understand why Sally would want the last impression, exiting the gallery, to be one that is life-affirming, though as I’ve said these ultra-close, ultra-large portraits didn’t really do that for me since they have a marmoreal, death-mask quality to them.

Do try to watch the film (also showing in the gallery, What Remains: the Life and Work of Sally Mann. 2006. Director Steven Cantor. Zeitgeist Video) as this gives an excellent insight into Sally’s work and influences.

Full marks to the Photographers’ Gallery for this, their last show before refurbishment, and to the curator for giving the photographs the space they need. I look forward to many more when the gallery re-opens!

Ed Burtynsky’s Oil

Ed Burtynsky publicity poster at The Rooms, Newfoundland, Canada

I’ve been an admirer of Edward Burtynsky’s work since I first saw the Manufactured Landscapes book, which has a permanent place on my shelf.
More recently Oil has joined it but I had barely had time to flick through its impressive pages before going on holiday to Canada. I spent a few days in Saint John’s, Newfoundland, and was surprised and delighted to see that Ed’s Oil pictures were on show at The Rooms art gallery. What a fantastic selection of images! In his typically understated style, Ed produces consistently strong individual images, usually from an elevated view point, which combine into a collection that highlights important issues about oil-dependent societies and poses significant questions for business, politicians and citizens the world over. And he does this without shouting at the viewer, which makes his messages and questions all the more powerful.
The composition of the images is consistently high but varied enough not to become boring. This make my eyes want to linger on individual images and also on the pairings and juxtapositions designed into the exhibition. The detail contained in these enlargements, which are typically 1.5m on the long edge, makes me want to look closer. Taking this time to look starts to make me see beyond the content to the message about the fundamental unsustainability of oil-based economies and processes that are predicated on continuous growth. To the question of “how do we get ourselves out of this addiction to oil?” there are no answers, but just the posing of the question by this exhibition is enough.
This well-curated exhibition and book deserve to be seen around the world for both it’s artistic and journalistic values. Thank you Ed, really good. No, brilliant!

Worldwide pinhole photo day, 25 April 2010

I usually use the highest quality optics I can afford and strive for sharpness in my photographs, but once a year (at least) I replace my lenses with a pinhole and go out and celebrate Worldwide Pinhole Photography Day. In the past I’ve used a film camera but this year I used a digital camera with a Skink pinhole.

I had a few locations I wanted to explore fairly close to home. This was just as well because I quickly discovered that the standard shiny stainless steel finish on the inside of the Skink adaptor was giving a bright spot in the central area of the image, so I made a quick trip home to spray it matt black!

I didn’t have a theme in mind when I started out but what emerged was “intimations of water”, since all the pictures were taken close to ponds, streams, rivers or canals.

There are more examples on my Web site. It is interesting that the quality of the photos this year on the small digital format is noticably softer than my previous effort on roll film or 5×4 inch film, and the overcast conditions gave a moodier atmosphere.

It has also encouraged me to experiment a bit more with lens-based photography, so this weekend I set the camera on manual focus took out-of-focus picture to give a more impressionistic effect – it was great fun! Some examples:

Irving Penn and expectations

I made a point of seeing the Portraits exhibition by Irving Penn at the National Portrait Gallery, London, recently. I was underwhelmed, which was a surprise, and I’m curious about why this should be.

I have always admired Irving Penn’s photography. I have a copy of Passage on my bookshelf that dates from 1991; it’s a selection made by Penn of images from his career. Fascinating and admirable stuff but, like an autobiography, not an independent view. He also did photography a great service by rediscovering and promoting the platinum/palladium printing process. I remember seeing original pt/pd prints of his Cigarette series from the early 1970s. The quality was superb: he has the ability to elevate a trite, ignored subject into art; he sees and photographs things sufficiently differently that his images are eye-catching and with such quality that you want to look for longer.

It was with these preconceptions that I anticipated with some excitement the Portraits exhibition. Many of the portraits that helped make Irvin Penn’s name were present together with many less well know ones. They were arranged chronologically by decade, implying, with some justification, that Penn’s development showed significant evolution in tune with the decimal system. We are now used to these images and the styles are clearly of their time. At the time they would have been progressive and edgy, and many of them are regarded as classic portraits. But I kept wondering how much of what I was seeing was the photographer and how much the sitter. How much insight are we getting into the person being photographed? On the wall of the exhibition was written a quote from Penn: “…the inside is recordable only in so far as it is apparent on the outside.” Well, duh, yeh. If that level of insight is transferred to the portraits I really have to think that what we are seeing in Penn’s images is style rather than substance. Why should I be surprised at this? After all, he did earn his living from the fashion industry. I was underwhelmed because it didn’t meet my expectations, but that’s my fault not Penn’s; in the end, the exhibition has added another facet to my appreciation of his photography.

For what it’s worth, here are the notes I made as I went round the exhibition:

to 1948
Uniform even light. Full length poses. A distance between viewer and subject. Posing corner and posing carpet used frequently to get sitter’s reaction to an artificial situation. Little evidence of sitter’s environment.

1950s
Getting closer. Lighting more directional. Shadows becoming more important. Head shots more common. Cloths more prominent? Still no evidence of sitter’s environment – all studio stuff.

1950-1960s
Starting to chop off tops of heads – getting too close? Eyes/nose/mouth poses. Hands too. Directional lighting with shadows.

1970s and 1980s
A few smiles but mainly subject “just” looking (semi-engaged?)

1990s onwards
Higher contrast images – unfriendly?

Judging a good (or bad) artist

I attended an interesting discussion on Thursday (8 April) at the Garden Museum in Lambeth, London. A panel of 3 speakers stimulated the discussion by each giving a resume of 2 garden designers, then the audience could give their opinions. Getting away from the particulars of named individuals, the most interesting conclusion I reached is that in the world of landscapes and gardens, the reputation of a designer is based almost entirely on their writings rather than the quality of their designs.

This can be partly explained because gardens are a 4-dimensional art form: they change with time, are highly dependent on the maintenance they receive and they can easily disappear altogether.

Relating this to photography (and most other disciplines, come to think of it), it seems that publishing books is the fastest way to enhance a reputation, but a book is often a surrogate of the “real thing”. We usually think of the fine print as the photographic artist’s primary output, but how many photographers’ reputations are built on the fine print alone? None that I can think of. We are far more likely to know about a photographer from books, magazines, TV programmes or the Internet than their original work.

But at least the reproduction of a photograph is a close facsimile to the original, indeed some photographs are taken or printed for this specific purpose. We should feel sorry for the student of garden history though, who at best is only likely to see a photograph of a garden – a 2-dimensional representation of a 4D object loses a heck of a lot in translation however good the photographer. And gardens are more than a purely visual medium: the scents, sounds and general experiential nature of a garden will be lost.

An important foundation stone of western culture is the printed word. With improvements in mechanical reproducibility and literacy, this has become increasingly to mean The Book. The moving picture, particularly via television, has added to this, and in the last couple of decades digital technology has again increased our means of recording our culture (though in a lot of cases this just means a book on a screen rather than on paper). But even with these new layers of technology, unless the artists developed their artwork specifically for this medium, we are still only going to get a partial impression of the original.

There’s an adage “don’t judge a book by its cover”, but it seems we need another one: “don’t judge an artist by their books”.

risking failure

Most of us amateurs get our real opportunity to indulge in photography when we’re on holiday, and maybe at the weekends. That’s one of the frustrations of having to earn a living by doing something other than photography: although we’re not a slave to the customer’s wishes or to “The Market” as a professional would be, we don’t get that chance to continuously train our photographic eye. It’s also harder for us to push ourselves beyond the comfort zone of the aesthetic we know and love. Why use our precious photography time by breaking the rules? after all, the rules are there to help us succeed aren’t they? So why risk failure? Most of us are taught from an early age that to succeed is good, to fail is bad, right? But we learn most by making mistakes, so let’s try to learn something by risking failure! A while ago I’d been out taking large format photographs, with all the deliberate intent that goes into this process. At the end of the trip I was heading home with some film left unexposed. The light was appalling and the rain was bucketing down. We’d stopped the car by a lake to take a break so I thought I’d play with the left-over film and a pinhole. Maybe it was because I had no expectation of success and I thought “who’s going to know anyway?”, but for me this photo was the best of the trip.

Chris Dobrowolski

I went to a talk by Chris Dobrowolski last Friday at Essex University. Chris is a conceptual artist based in Colchester (UK) with a great sense of humour based on irony and juxtaposition, and he doesn’t take himself or his art too seriously (example: tank video). If you want to label him, he’s a sculptor in recycled materials. Although he’s not a photographic artist he uses photography to record his endeavours, which are very visual. He was selected for a project in the Antarctic, which was the theme of his exhibition at Essex University. His talk was also really entertaining. Go see his work and hear his talk, it’s well worth it on several levels. Nice one Chris!

Designer labels

Love em or hate em, designer labels are all over the place. This Bench was in Cambridge UK in January

Bench by Malcolm Raggett