terra firma

After so long at home, a short break away in Naples was a throwback to a pre-pandemic time for me. Looking at the photographs now, I can see the style of those days but my recent project has definitely left its mark too.

  

Significantly signs of the pandemic - apart from conscientious mask wearing - are few but responses to the latest crisis in Europe are evident.

 

So where's the black and white ones on film? Well it's another sign of my times. I did bring my camera but found my mobile - as I had a few years ago after a break - has become my new extension. The transplant is complete, almost.

 

rites of spring

The first days of spring are bringing darker days, not lighter. The stress and struggle of the last two years have been put in context in an unimaginable way. 

It brings me back abruptly to my New Europe project. That project was borne of travelling to cities around Europe, freely. Of acknowledging London as a city of refugee and refugees.

 

That also seems a distant memory right now.

 

the past and other foreign countries

Pleased to announce the arrival of a test copy of my first foray into zine territory New Europe 2015-19. 

I've appended the dates since I put this together last year as it really does feel like another world. Perhaps pre-2020 will become a phrase of the future freighted with meaning. In the meantime it already has an nostalgia skin to the wonderful Café Royal books. I see so many instances of our former paradigm of privilege that it puts the themes I was exploring into profound perspective.  

Here's my original thinking, way back last year... 

European cities have long been shaped and identified by immigrant populations. No news there. It's how they've historically grown and prospered. This time things are different. Attitudes and assumptions are being challenged. The essence of what it is to be a citizen is being fought for, intellectually and physically. 

When I think of London I don't think of monuments to the past. I think of people. People like my parents who came here for a better life. But it's not easy. London is a dream as much as a place. The streets don't always glitter with gold. But still people come from all around the world. We make lives, love, work, bring up families. Along the way we keep a connection to the home country. But something else happens. Out on the street we share the everyday. Struggles. Triumphs. Despair. We share space and time. 

We belong.

Well. 

The ease of travelling to European cities for the fortunate is now elevated to an aspiration for the few.

National consciousness is heightened. Borders are porous to this particular migrant. Tensions rise between city and village.

The advent of social distancing, a contender for phrase of the year, makes some of these images appear reckless. Some may say good riddance, granted. 

Will we ever return to that way of walking, way of life even, with the same confidence? I'm sure we will but right now, with talk of one-way pavements, it feels a little distant.

Here's to the memory. 

time bends

Ever wondered what it's like to travel back in time? Well I've just managed to go back thirty years to a former synagogue off Brick Lane via a disused shop in Rotterdam. Just like Mr Benn.

  

Why was I there? Let me start at the end. 

I don't often put my work forward for awards. I like to find a particular angle of interest. I'm a photographer obvs. Gus Powell's curation of a show in Los Angeles last year ticked a couple of boxes as someone's whose work I respected in a city where one of my daughter's was living at the time. 

This year my eye was caught by Shutter Hub's STREET/FORM show featuring photographs printed on newsprint pasted around the walls of a disused shop in the south of Rotterdam, part of POW WOW NOW a festival of urban culture encompassing graffiti and spoken word artists, street dance, music and sports. I ran out of boxes to tick.

 

I selected work from New Europe I thought would work well in that format. Graphical, lots of tones and with a common theme.  

I was really pleased three were selected and even more so when I saw them up as part of a group show of seventy photographers from around the world. The theme leaned towards the fabric of the street rather than people so it was interesting to see my work in that context especially as I'm trying to bring more of the environment around us into my pictures.

I also enjoyed the irreverence of using newsprint and sticking them to the wall with tape. It immediately took me back to one of my first photography shows in the late 80s in 19 Princelet Street in a place immortalised in Rodzinsky's Room by Rachel Lichtenstein and Iain Sinclair

The former synagogue was in transition to becoming a heritage centre and we seized the opportunity to put on a show of painting and photography. I took the basement as a suitable space to reflect my aesthetic, taking pleasure in dragging pieces of corrugated iron down the stairs to paste my photocopied photos on to. Hey forgive me. I was young and crazy. I do remember taking a sack truck out of the building along Brick Lane and wondering about the circumstances it last made that journey. 

I pause to reflect. Have I moved forward at all? I hesitate to use the world professionally so let's use the art word practice.  It's the same technical approach using essentially the same cameras. The location is constant and any variation is again very similar. So that's the How. What about the Why? 

I confess there's something obsessive if not insane about repeating the same task over and over again hoping for a different outcome. My pictures are to a large degree the same. I find it fascinating that my earlier work in particular has a timeless/locationless (is that a word?) quality. It means I miss out on a chance to submit to the tremendous Cafe Royal Books as they really don't work as site or date specific documents of those times. However for me they convey something more universal and that's taken me into the territory of a more oblique kind of storytelling: metaphor, suggestion, ambiguity. Not a radical departure granted but another way of seeing, another way of walking. 

Another point of departure.

zine take two

New Europe has certainly benefited from new work from Berlin and London. I've now put together a second draft of the zine. 

In terms of format I'm now looking at A5 pocket size and the layout is more magazine-y with images cropped and overlaid. For me it's giving more urgency and pace to the experience of flicking through it. It's about finding a (poly)rhythm that reflects the theme.

New Europe zine next draft from Sean McDonnell on Vimeo 

The hard questions remain over sequencing. It's a challenge in a more traditional one-image-a-page-one-opposite but here I've sets of threes and sixes to juggle. It's great to have a collaborator in this situation and so far Fabrizio and I are still talking ;) 

Take a peek.

first shoots

My first crop of work from this season includes pictures from Berlin. It was a flying visit so having the framework of New Europe in my mind was a useful focus, as much as in my contact sheet editing as on the street. It's a tricky balancing act. I've shied away from looking for pre-meditated - as much as anyone can - pictures but I think I've found a position that creates the possibility of pictures that still have my beloved ambiguity without being too didactic.

Anyway. I'll let you be the judge.  

Willkommen to my world.

 

Now I feel ready to add these to the ongoing zine project. 

I'm looking forward to some cool origami action.

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walking with ghosts

I've grabbed a chance to spend a few days in Berlin. It means putting my zine project on hold but if I can add some new ideas as I managed with my Stockholm visit last year then it'll be worth it :)

On reflection it's unbelievable this is my first visit to Berlin. It represents so many of my fascinations. Streets layered with history. A city divided geographically and psychologically. At the heart of a continent with a traumatic history that echoes today.

For me it's a great lesson in bringing to life historic events I've experienced through other's eyes. Travelling to Alexanderplatz on the U-Bahn, stepping across the stumbling stones, witnessing political demonstrations in the streets of Potsdamer Platz are powerful and inspirational. 

Channeling that while working intuitively is my goal. Following not just what's become my natural inclination to look for instances of street serendipity but also moments that have a layer of symbolism without analysis paralysis is challenging but it's pushing me into a new way of walking as well as working. 

London's waiting.

one step beyond

Despite best advice to approach my new publishing project with a cool head, systematically categorising my photographs according to style, composition and symbolism I've gone ahead and put a flow together intuitively, serendipitously and accidentally. 

I've just realised it echoes my Three Graces of street photography so perhaps there's a method to my madness. 

New Europe zine first draft from Sean McDonnell on Vimeo 

Hey it's first draft. Please be gentle.

the unbelievable truth

I'm trying to develop my ideas around New Europe so when I saw an event billed as Experiencing Europe: Borderless Artists I had to go. 

It was really rewarding in ways I didn't expect. Elisa Perrigueur described the motivation behind her powerful illustrations of refugees seeking to enter mainland Europe and the UK was to find a better way of describing her experiences than through her primary role as a journalist. The practice of photojournalism is well known but Perrigeur deliberately didn't choose this medium. Illustration as an art form without any obligation to be faithful to reality, visually at least, gave her the liberty to tell her own story.

For me it illuminated a topical debate about truth and photography. It's easy to say we're at the point now where it seems naïve to put both those words in the same sentence. As well as the ease and sophistication with which images can be manipulated, there is a broader cynicism about any attempt to document real life in words or in pictures. 

For those taking pictures on the street it's an even more contentious topic and the preservation of an unadulterated decisive moment an article of faith for many. Using film my only involvement with post production is scanning prints to publish on my website so my opportunity - and interest - in any manipulation is minimal. My interest in this topic has always been around context and the caption in particular which can be a far more powerful way that the viewer can be misdirected. 

All of which brings me back round to thoughts on my own work. Apologies for the tangents but hey it's why I blog. I've never used captions on my work - well OK then, maybe Untitled once in a while - but inevitably any kind of titling of a collection or a book certainly leads the viewer towards a particular interpretation of the related photographs. In the past these have been more around their compositional relationships.

That technique will certainly be a factor in the New Europe zine but I'm looking at another strand to help tell my story. Will it be purely how I sequence and layout the images or are there are other techniques I can use. Introducing other media as I've done before in Portrait of a Street Photographer? Perhaps different sorts or paper to give a more tactile impression? Or is now the opportunity to use augmented reality to really engage the senses? 

Well that was fun. Thanks for reading.

renga time

I'm thinking of making a zine with the photographs from my New Europe collection. Why zine? Wouldn't it be an opportunity to add to my fabulous publishing empire? Well I'm seeing this as a punctuation point not an end. This is still very much a work in progress, as is the immigration debate itself of course.

I have to credit my friend Fabrizio from my local LIP group for the inspiration as he has used the zine format to really complement his wonderful work. 

One characteristic of a zine I like is that you can do away with the reverence of the high end reproduction values of a book. For me it's a more accessible way of presenting images and their sequencing in a visceral way that can really engage you. It reminds me of my conscious rejecting of what I called the white gloves school of photography back in the day. For me the word zine recalls the work of Jamie Reid. In no way could I call myself a punk but the DIY ethos of creating art - whether music, design, film or photography - of picking up whoever or whatever is around you and expressing yourself is really vital to the individual and society.

This is also another opportunity to do something different to how I've worked before by collaborating on the selection and flow of my pictures. Typical of my practice it's always been a solitary process. I had a foray into collaborative working thanks to the Ambiguous Book Project which was quite magical so the seeds are there. This time I'm keen to use the process to interrogate my own work.It's taken me time to feel comfortable doing that myself so I'm excited...and a little nervous.

Fabrizio and I have shared our separate experiences of taking photographs in Tokyo and so listening to the radio this week I was caught by the Japanese phrase Renga.  It's a genre of collaborative poetry but for me it captured perfectly what I'm trying to do...and I never miss an opportunity to see serendipity.

Kore wo yarimashou!

same old waltz

Stockholm's not been one of my top cities to visit but in a twist of fate - very street - I had a few days there this month and found it offered a different dimension to my New Europe project. 

Sweden's image as a model society of tolerance and equality has recently been challenged by, guess what, the rise of a populist agenda driven by fear of immigrants. To help me get closer to the experience of this it was great to see an exhibition at the Moderna Museet called With The Future Behind Us

A range of artists addressed the themes of the show neatly expressed in the title, looking at the past, present and future experience of daily life in Sweden and weaving a narrative through a diverse collection of pieces that for me expressed the tension of life in Europe today as commonly held principles of society appear to be teetering on the edge of falling apart.

I find the experience of going to different sorts of exhibitions really informs my work but I know I gravitate to pieces where the street forms a constituent part. This show was no different and I really liked the piece by John Willgren set in a street in Stockholm where with a devastatingly simple idea critiqued the current political situation with reference to a period of European history that is now seen as a lesson that we seem deaf to hear.

Now I have a project to work to I find it fascinating how it informs my way of taking pictures which I've prided myself - perhaps through my own insecurities - as being of the moment with no agenda or conscious plan behind it.  

I'm finding that I'm not deliberately looking - if such a concept is true - for the themes that are already emerging but it's really helping me look differently at my contact sheets beyond what I'd regard as a "good" picture i.e. compositionally into something which not be as good but in context works to help tell a story. I'm sorry this is hardly a profound insight but hey these things take time.

new europe dawns

It's early days but I'm beginning to see a story developing with the New Europe series. I was busy this year on the streets of London, of course, and Rome, for the first time. The cities give me the opportunity to counterpoint the frontline of Italy with a peculiar phoney war feel to the UK.

The sequence on the website is still pretty random but I'm still shuffling the sequence as I sense some threads to work with.  

People seeking inspiration, direction.

People coming together.

 

Barriers, Resistance.

I accept it's simple stuff but for me at least, which is kinda why I do this, it's a way of developing my style of work to depict a different sort of personal story.

More to follow.
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open city?

Rome has been in my sights for a while now. 

Perhaps it's the influence of William Klein, Roberto Rosslini, or even Francesco Totti but it also has present day relevance at the front line of the debate about immigration, nationality and citizenship. 

My series New Europe is a personal reflection I've been developing around the context of my pictures. Not the specific location or time of day. Still respecting the anonymity/ambiguity of people. Back to one of my favourite words, palimpsest. Another layer of interpretation, of possible meaning, that intrigues me.

 

Anyway. It's a good opportunity to show a contact sheet and start the post-conception phase I enjoy! 

looking for a new Europe

My reflections at the end of last year have led me to looking at my work in a bigger context. For a long time I resisted any kind of interpretation of my work. Hey this blog was the cause/effect of doing just that.

My idea is to develop a body of work around people in cities – no surprise there – but recognising Europe is in a particular period of change. European cities were in the vanguard of the first waves of urbanisation. They are now the destination for another mass movement of people. So far so good. It's how they've historically grown and prospered. This time things are different. Attitudes and assumptions are being challenged. The essence of what it is to be a citizen is being fought for, intellectually and physically.    

 

I’ll say up front my pictures aren’t documentary in terms of taking a journalistic approach. These are more personal which I appreciate can be a euphemism for self-referential shoe-gazing. As if.

My angle on this story is an appreciation in some way of what it is to be a child of Irish immigrants. Granted with the privilege of blending in but still with an appreciation of what it is to be an outsider. 

There’s no set plan or timetable yet. I’ll share work in progress here. I’m also interested in other forms of presenting it. I’m not rejecting books by default but hey it’s 2017 and other ways and means are possible. 

Wish me luck.

veni, vidi, vici

Last year's cameraphone experiments were rewarding but, a little like following a particularly restrictive diet, left me hungry for more. A recent trip to Italy gave me the opportunity to indulge myself with a full menu of digital and film, colour and black & white. The first time I've worked with these combinations all together. The modern world, eh? 

Well despite my fears of analysis paralysis it didn't really disrupt my natural ways of working. In the same way my fears of "thinking too hard" about my work by reviewing and editing my pictures for a book were unfounded, walking the streets of Venice with 3 different camera types felt more like enhancing my ways of expression. More seasoning if you will. Never miss a chance to overextend a metaphor...

Another first for this work was the resurrection of my social presence. I've tried Instagram but the way of collecting images together on Flickr was particularly useful for this piece of work. I appreciate I'm missing out on the sharing/following/interacting bit but that's for another time. 

Patience, patience.

portrait of a street photograph, part 2

Well I've made an edit of the images from Barcelona which, on a cold, dark day in London, is a welcome tonic! One of the consequences of the gestation of my work is an appreciation not only of the passage of time but of season in particular. The scraps of sunshine in the winter city are both a promise of days to come and a reminder of the capriciousness I'm at the mercy of.

I'm really happy the potential mise-en-scene of the contact sheet I was particularly occupied by has been realised. This is a first for me! I've left out the don't go back ingredient of my own recipe for street photography. Before now my experience has been that I can never beat that initial, gut response to a possible picture. Any second attempts become 3T: too thought through. 

On this occasion I managed to keep the spontaneity of the first contact and, by turning the dance of the street to my advantage, come away with two images that both stand alone and together.

Hope the London saying about waiting for a bus for a long time and then two come along together will be true for me. Twenty years will be a long time to wait for another such opportunity!

See more sunshine here.

portrait of a street photograph, part 1

I'm about to embark on a selection of images from some recent work from Barcelona and thought you might like to come along for the ride.

First stop is the contact sheet. Click on it for a bigger version.

On first take the contact sheet represents a chaotic, random way of working. I'd like to think there's method in my madness. For me facing the moment I originally took the photograph is one part of my work that has noticeably changed over time. At first it was a time of high expectation, regularly dashed on the rocks of my ambition. Over time as I've put more time between taking and printing images my attitude has become more sanguine, an appreciation of each moment on its own merit.

The Barcelona work is interesting as I've a clear memory of the circumstances surrounding a number of the images. The sequence I've latched onto from the particular contact sheet above is one revolving, literally, around an argument in the street between a young man and woman.

The street at the time was relatively empty so I was keen to be unobtrusive, not for any great ethical motivation, but to try to get as close as possible. The result is two frames, 14 & 17, of the event, spliced by two others where I was moving around it. Intriguingly these four images, presented as they are on the contact sheet, become a sequence themselves related not just by time and space but something, for me at least, more evocative, almost cinematic.

I'll explore this in the next part of the process. Can't say what that'll be yet as I don't know myself!