talking pictures

It was lovely to have the opportunity to talk about my work in front of a live audience as part of London Independent Photography's Members Day. It's been a few years!

This was the first time the event was held in a local satellite group so it seemed fitting to talk about my Living Lockdown project from the streets of Ealing. I wanted to show the impact the pandemic had brought to my work so it was nice to resurrect some of my black and white photographs from London's West End too.

I brought some of Stuart Keegan's prints along too and it reminded me that there are many I never had scanned for the website. It would be great to find a way to do them justice!

The event was also the launch of the latest fLIP magazine where I've written a review of The Book of Veles by Jonas Bendiksen. Its origins were in a talk I gave to my local group earlier this year and I enjoyed spending more time on reflecting on its cosequences for documentary photography.

As Bendiksen reflects, for him documentary photography is photography which has the intention of being part of the conversation about us, us meaning us humans, and the situations we find ourselves in. The questions we're facing. The solutions that we're aspiring to. Documentary photography is photography that relates directly to those somehow. However you make it.

It's a candid assessment and, in the light of his experience, a view worth listening to. Is this a natural evolution or heresy? Will the Book of Veles be seen as prophecy or prank? 

If we care about this form of photography, I suggest we keep paying attention.

 

flatter to deceive

I first became aware of Jonas Bendiksen in a photography show at the PM Gallery when I remember being struck by an image from his Satellites project. This was a classic piece of Magnum photojournalism: humanist stories, documented against a backdrop of political and social turmoil. It was fascinating to discover that he had used the reputation of his persona and of Magnum to create a fictional documentary project, The Book of Veles, raising questions about authenticity, trust and the photography establishment.

It was a topic of interest for a number of us in my local photography group so I put together a short talk. In retrospect it's a companion to one I gave over a year ago on ethics.

There are lots of sources that describe the story but I found Ben Smith's interview very interesting and well worth a listen.

 

 

portraits in their place

"How does one inject oneself momentarily into someone's life and come away with something that resonates with some real aspect of the individual?"                           Dawoud Bey 

I've recently had the privilege of experiencing a new work by Dawoud Bey called Street Portraits. It's a collection of powerful photographs of African American individuals and couples largely from the streets of Brooklyn and Rochester made between 1989 and 1991. I use the word powerful carefully as he also describes his work as about 'not only the picture making part but there was very clearly the social part'. His portraits give a sense of agency, respect and yes power to the people photographed. I have a real sense of a collaboration, understanding and empathy between them and the photographer through their eyes, gestures and poses. 

For me this makes the images incredibly uplifting. It's more than the composition of the photographs and their reproduction, which are both magnificent, but they really speak to me if I can use such a contrived phrase. The titles of the images are at the back of the book so all the viewer has to work with on initial viewing is the pure photograph. Granted I still acknowledge the social and political context in a very simplistic way and having spent a short but significant part of my life in New York at this time there's a further, tenuous chord they strike.

Coincidentally I've been enjoying a series of online talks and discussions courtesy of Paul Halliday from a range of photographers including Bas Losekoot discussing his recent book Out of Place. I love the way the images have been brought literally off the page using different size pages to overlap each other and simulate the chaos and serendipity of the street. The insertion of improvised film scripts as a commentary on the photographs as stills is another neat angle.  

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However for me the making of the images was a throwback to a way of working which I admire but find it harder to reconcile. Dropping into a society for a short period of time and finding ways to depict it, to give it meaning, can lend itself to decisions on subject and composition that make for interesting images but are open to question on representation of those cultures. It made me think of work by Philip-Lorca diCorcia and Alex Majoli which I enjoy but now find wanting...

I'm certainly not one to throw stones as it's a style of working I've been privileged to follow for a number of years The motivation behind my last book New Europe 2015-19 was to find a way of giving more social context to my photographs beyond the pure aesthetic of street life from different cities. I still have lots to do and I accept the limitations of this kind of photography. Street portraits used to be an oxymoron for me but Dawoud Bey's work is inspirational.

 

 

augmenting realities

Little did I know my last gallery experience pre-Lockdown was a portent of things to come. The Deutsche Börse show in 2020 featured the work of Mohamed Bourouissa and my review included a piece of augmented reality that transposed itself into the space. Now 12 months on that at-a-distance experience is all we have by way of a gallery going event. This year's Format Festival was virtual and the gallery dedicated to the to the pandemic was is a particularly poignant site-specific setting for the work. 

I joined a tour where some of the photographers spoke about their work as we were guided by a hidden, dextrous hand around the space. The selection was really interesting. I had an immediate response to Chris Hoare's Street Cleaners in Bristol. The images play on their hi-viz appearance but the low visibility of their appreciation. It's a well made point. Ironically when I see a street cleaner my heart sinks as I feel they've just swept away a moment of detritus, a piece of history of our times. Whether it's another Deliveroo receipt or a broken Corona bottle, they're all potential representations of the mundane that in future we'll look at with different eyes.

It was great to see Jaskirt Boora's Birmingham Lockdown Stories featured having found her book very moving. These documentary style pieces were then bridged into more personal responses in Playing Their Part by Shaista Chishty, juxtaposing representations of people of colour in the context of World War 2 and the pandemic. It's a valuable perspective on the wartime spirit that's been evoked over the last twelve months.

The other piece I responded to was Field by Jemima Yong transforming the observed into something more symbolic, combining the consequential images of isolation and social distancing into a piece of performance art. Evoking for me Hayahisa Tomiyasu's TTP project it's a much more significant piece as the context of it is a profound commentary of life lived now. Do watch.

Virtual galleries do present challenges, comparable in a way galleries in the real world - as we've come to call it - do in terms of accessibility. However the opportunity to hear photographers talk about and show their work to potentially a global audience should not be ignored. The last year has and continues to expose me to work I would not have had the opportunity to before so it's one, at least, upside to our current life.

Indeed, it may become a habit.

 

sacred cows

The topic of ethics is never far away from documentary photography, and street work in particular, so my presentation on Post-Production to my local London Independent Photography group was a great entry point for me into that theme. I opened by apologising I'm the least qualified person in the group to talk to this topic, working in film as I do with no overt digital manipulation. Yet the very nature of photography is a manipulation of time and space so...anyway you're see where I'm going.

Since being introduced to The Corners by Chris Dorley-Brown discussed at a Street London event I'd been intrigued by reactions to it. I personally found it an exciting evolution of street photography, accounting for new technology - as street has always done - but retaining a fascination with the serendipities of people and place. I confess to have been taken in by the conceit until paying attention to the titles of the photographs and also listening to a great interview with him by Ben Smith.

This reminded me of the work of Peter Funch, someone else who had provoked questions about the legitimacy of composite images as street photography. I found the relationship between his series Babel Tales and the later work 42nd And Vanderbilt really interesting as the former threw doubt on the latter which, arguably, "fitted" the traditional definition of candid, non-manipulated photography more closely. At this point I was drawn to give some historical perspective and, to my opening premise, highlight examples of post production from other genres of photograph i.e. the surrealists including Dora Maar who herself bridged documentary and art in an inspirational way.

Falling headlong back in time we then found ourselves on the battlefields of the Crimea where the primacy of staged above found images give another dimension to the debate. Pre-Production perhaps? Roger Fenton's arrangement of cannonballs set a precedent that also bridged the realms of documentary and art into one of story-telling that runs until this day. Who is telling whose story has for me always stood in the shadows of photojournalism and this has now become such a topic of debate. It felt apt to close with an example of the work of Steve McCurry which for me is now a watershed from that Life magazine tradition which so inspired me growing up but which I now see with much more social and political context.

So, quite a meander through a history of photography but one I enjoyed researching at least! Here it is for the record.

 

 

life class

It was wonderful to give another talk at The School of Life earlier this month. Many thanks to Nick Turpin and the participants of the Photographing London weekend workshop for a really inspirational afternoon.

Sean McDonnell street photography 2011 from Sean McDonnell

I am impressed at the quality of work at these sessions. Once again it's a real lesson for me in setting oneself parameters or a challenge. Inevitably I search for a metaphor in these instances and the mental and physical effort required is certainly of Olympian proportions.

Two marvellous images are worth noting from Laura Fitzpatrick and Tony White. Each in their own way exemplify for me the essence of street photography.

Tony's image, and style now I'm glad to have discovered more of his work, has a real warmth and a resonance with the sensitivity of Tony Ray-Jones. There's certainly an undefinable Englishness to this picture which is a joy.

In contrast Laura's photograph at the foot of Nelson's Column is a tour de force of geometry and timing. It feels so perfect that it ironically touches on contemporary practices of digital manipulation and staged flash mobs, even though the image is entirely of the moment, taken as found with no intervention other than being in the right place at the right time and having the presence of mind to take the picture.

Easy, eh?

photographing London at the School of Life

Last week I had the pleasure of discussing my work with a wonderful group of people participating in a street photography weekend run by Nick Turpin at the equally wonderful School of Life in the heart of London.

The School of Life's strapline is "Ideas to live by". It was I felt a very appropriate venue to consider the practice of street photography which for me is characterised by its representation of every day life, one step removed. The 'takeaway' from my talk to the group was to simply appreciate the experience of coming off standby mode, where we live much of our lives, to a more switched on state where, to quote Ian Sinclair in Lights Out For The Territory quoting William S. Burroughs,

"...the important fact about urban living: the continual stream of second attention awareness. Every licence plate, street sign, passing strangers, are saying something to you."

I appreciated they'd had a tough weekend walking the streets of London, fulfilling stretching briefs set by Nick, but I hope this message had some resonance. The more I talk it through in front of people, the more it makes sense. To me at least.

It was fascinating to see each member of the group's different, and common, interpretations to the challenges they had been set. The idea of working as a pack in this way, sharing a common purpose but following your own instincts, is intriguing and not one I've experienced. There's an inherent contradiction for me in undertaking what is essentially a solo pursuit in this manner, but there are certainly photographers out there who practice in this way.

The Ambiguous Book Project has got me thinking about collaboration. It's a virtual project where every participant is working independently. Even more so when I'm asking them not to go out onto the street but to stay indoors and look at their personal collections! However we are still sharing an approach, reflecting on images and how they can reveal more than we may have originally intended. I wonder how we could develop that into a realtime, in person activity?

Hey look at me, already thinking of the sequel.That's a little way off just yet!

street photography talk at Photofusion

I was fortunate enough to be invited to talk to a group of street photographers at a course run by David Gibson of In-Public at Photofusion in London last week. It was the first time I'd done something like that and I certainly hope those on the receiving end enjoyed it as much as I did.

In the spirit of this website I wanted to convey "the how" and "the why" of my work as much as the end product, the picture itself.
Preparing the talk lead me to review my work in a chronological way. Surprisingly to me, but perhaps inevitably, I couldn't separate it from my own journey, from the certainty of youth to the less than certainty of older age.

If you're interested you can see the pictures I talked about at the bottom of this entry.
I wanted to break up the presentation of my images with ideas that gave a little more background to my state of mind at the time so, before you look at them, I'll explain some of the more random ones...

I characterised my pull to the febrile atmosphere of New York City through the images of David Byrne, an icon of the New York art/music scene, and Telly Savalas, an icon of my misspent youth watching TV, the New York City detective Kojak. I could have gone on to include Andy Kaufman from Taxi and Gene Anthony Ray from Fame but I think I got the idea across...
The technique I'd developed, more by accident than design, was releasing the camera's shutter away from my body, requiring a degree of hand-eye coordination. Who better than the tennis player John McEnroe to represent that? Then, sticking with sporting metaphors and perhaps pushing them too far, I chose an image of the great Austrian skier Franz Klammer to represent my physical approach on the street of moving at speed but with control. Make sense? No, perhaps only to me.
The other images I've chosen are those of Shane McGowan and Viriginia Woolf. I admit I liked their juxtaposition but they also helped illustrate the part of my story where I've been influenced by musical and literary work.

The final pictures represent photographers I particularly admire. There are so many I could include but I chose these for my audience, ones which perhaps are not so obvious: Roy DeCarava, Ray Metzker, Daido Moriyama, Sylvia Plachy and Michael Ackerman.
You can certainly include Don McCullin in that group too. A photograph from his book Homecoming opens my talk.

Sean McDonnell's street photography 2010 from Sean McDonnell

There were some very good questions and comments which were really interesting for me, not having gone public in such a way before. I'll pick those up next time.