Needling through the disparate throng of tourists and sight-seers on Great Russell Street, splashing in grey puddles and sopping wet at the edges, I go round in dizzying circles trying to find my destination.  I peer in the rain at my iPhone, instructed that I have arrived, and look up to see a cordoned off, peeling façade where A Beautiful World should be situated, an exhibition I’ve come to visit.  Damp and starting to chafe in innumerable ways, I wheel around a few more times to see if I can find alternative entry, but pass only stony faced doors refusing to yield.  I’m about to leave when I spot a pink neon sign jutting out into a rather drab street, and I approach intrigued.  A doorway looms, leading into a bright cavernous room.  I step inside, and enter a different world to that I had anticipated.

This I discover is the home of Boy Story, an exhibition of photographs the culmination of 5 years work by Magnus Arrevad.  They vividly document the international, subterranean scene of male performance, taken in cities ranging from New York to London, Copenhagen, Berlin and Paris, with cabaret performers, drag queens, strippers and go-go dancers all forming part of his eclectic tapestry.  His shots strike a perceptive balance between realism, fetishism and subjectivity; refreshing given his approach could have so easily been sensationalist.  Shot in black and white, rich with detail and displaying a striking, expressionistic use of light and shadow, Arrevad’s style bestows a solemn dignity on the performers.  His work underlines the seriousness of their personal transformations, depicting not only the creation of a new external self, but documenting an internal journey.  In Arrevad’s words, he captures them bringing “the dream of oneself into being.”

Making the conscious decision not to photograph his subjects as their final incarnation but instead during quiet moments off stage (in contemplation, preparing for a routine) Arrevad is able to explore something more psychologically incisive; the delicate journey of ‘becoming’.  This is deftly expressed in a number of shots.  Through the motif of mirrors to reflect back the idealised self, the camera captures a tension between the objective and the subjective.  The picture of Felicity Carmichaels for example, his back to the camera, juxtaposes his short hair in the right hand side of the frame with the image of his arched eyebrows, focused gaze and mascara-clad lashes in a small round mirror, channelling the look of the drag queens pictured in front of him.  In another shot blurring ‘being’ and ‘becoming’, a man in a mask, out of focus in close up, stands on the left hand side of the frame.  On the right is a reflection of an identically dressed man.  Set further back, he is in clear focus, a chiselled torso on display with leather straps snaking around it.  It could almost be the same person, picturing an imagined, phantasy version of himself in the mirror.  Through a blurring of subject and object, reality and phantasy, Arrevad articulates this process of ‘becoming’ an idealised self.

For many performers their transformations are a process of liberating themselves “from the roles they observe through the daylight hours.”  This resultant sense of freedom is visible in one of Arrevad’s shots of a Marie Antoinette styled drag-queen, with large wig and elaborate gown, kicking his heel up on a rooftop overlooking New York.  His subjects are shown bringing their idealised selves to life through their physicality, make-up or costume, allowing them to live the fantasy of themselves.  Rather than understanding their self-created identities as personas, Arrevad describes how “the application of make up each night was [a process] in which a mask was taken off, not put on.”  Similarly, his own personal journey, chronicled in more depth in his book Boy Story: A Picture Book For Boys, was equally transformative; taking him from being a “sheltered Danish photographer” to a fully immersed participant in the world of ‘Boylesque’, which he says “became my idea of being myself.  I was learning, and I felt free.”

– Daniel Pateman

Boy Story is open at weekends and runs until the 31^st January 2016.

5 Willoughby Street,

London,

WC1A 1JD

Image Captions

1 – Felicity Carmichaels at Darcelle XV Showplace, Portland, Oregon © Michael Arrevad

2 – Copenhagen # 1 © Michael Arrevad

3 – Faux Pas on a rooftop in New York © Michael Arrevad

 Daniel Pateman  studied Humanities and Media at Birkbeck University and continues to indulge his abiding interest in the arts. He has enjoyed writing since a young age and currently produces articles for a number of online publications.  He keeps a blog called The End of Fiction, consisting of his poetry, prose and other creative work, and is currently looking to forge a new career in the creative industries.

Looking back on this year’s Urban Photo Festival (UPF), it appears that the genre known as Street Photography has been given something of a shakeup. The festival’s packed out and wide-ranging events came to a close at the end of October (including but not limited to numerous London-based exhibitions, a two-day Tate Britain conference, guided walks, seminars, discussions and photography master classes), with debates about the purpose and potential of the genre resonating with many who attended. While an expansive, forward-looking conception of Street Photography caused a few people some consternation, others found their perceptions positively challenged, leaving them inspired to further reflect on the topic of Urbanism and their own output. As Paul Halliday (the creative director of UPF) stated, the intention of the festival was to “push the boundaries beyond traditional notions of what counts as ‘street photography’” and “explore how artists, photographers and urbanists might rethink how they approach the street.”

For many the term ‘Street Photography’ conjures up pictures of strangers caught in chance altercations; the spectacle of the busy street with its fleeting joys, frustrations and absurdities. Nick Turpin is one such photographer adopting this more conventional approach to his work. His shooting method is instinctive, unplanned and revelatory: “there is no specific subject matter and only the issue of ‘life’ in general” he says. “[The photographer] does not leave the house in the morning with an agenda and he doesn’t visualise his photographs in advance of taking them.” However, despite the fascination of the public spectacle and the insights it can provide, it seems that this singular concept of Street Photography now runs the risk of becoming irrelevant. As Michael Sweet despairs, the practice is now inundated by “hundreds of thousands of dull, hackneyed images of random strangers”. The genre, he argues, tends to lack a critical eye, with social media encouraging the notion that each picture taken is a potential piece of art worthy of attention.

The Bunker © Carlo Navato 2015

Responding to the current challenges facing the practice of Street Photography today, UPF15 was inspired to rigorously investigate and expand its significance beyond a single methodology or philosophy. The Drift exhibition was one example of such an attempt, located at the Truman Brewery just off busy Brick Lane. Here a stunning variety of works were on display, all in their different ways responding to the notion of the urban environment; how we shape it, how it shapes us, how it is experienced and represented. Carlo Navato’s series Spaces of Otherness was mysterious, sparse and beguiling; images at the crossroads of past, present and future. Engaging with Michel Foucault’s idea of ‘heterotopia’, these places can be described as being ‘neither here nor there’, and of having a psychological as well as a spatial dimension. Navato describes the series as shot in “a classic ‘edgeland’ – a space outside the confines of town or city, but urban in that man has had a significant hand in its development.” His photos, rural land with remains of human influence, illustrated in their referents (a road sign, a wind sock, an entrance to an ex-military site) the way spaces change over time; how the rural slowly succeeds to the urban and how sometimes nature gets its sovereignty back.

Beatrice Tura’s series Terra Firma also challenged the conception of the city as a fixed, un-yielding concrete colossus. Like Navato, she sees the urban environment as transitional, in dialogue with its inhabitants; pavements as altered by the thousands of tramping feet as we are shepherded by its streets. Tura demonstrates an abstract, unconventional approach to the urban by taking extreme close up shots of anonymous streets; gum and paint marked pavements; the edges of new tarmacked paths rising up against old concrete ones; change, erosion, “the constant movement of the urban soil.”

© Kevin Fitzgerald 2015

A lot of the work of the festival challenged me to consider that, while it is difficult to think to think of photography as providing more than a visual experience, urban life itself is not dominated by one single sense. Remove the plethora of smells from the streetfood stalls and curry houses along Brick Lane, the bustle of the crowds and sounds of street musicians, and you become blind to at least half the experience. It is this fact that Kevin Fitzgerald seeks to elucidate in his series Audiographies. As well as questioning our visiocentric society, he encourages the viewer “to not only reconsider the relationship between the aural and visual but the relationship between all the senses.” Sound, it is easy to forget, helps shape our understanding of what we perceive; informing us further about a thing’s quality or nature. Photography as a representational tool can imply sound but it cannot embody it. Fitzgerald highlights the aural by drawing our attention to its absence; abstracting his images from a wider context and de-engaging our visual sense. His photos ask the viewer to fill in the blanks, “to see with their ears.” You wonder, looking at his images, where you are, what you are seeing. He challenges us for example with a close up of the corner of a room; a shot of a window indoors with no view and few discerning features. Sound, you realise, is the sense missing which would allow you to ‘see’ your environment; filling in the gaps of your awareness vision cannot grasp alone (the sound of cars on the busy street below your window, for example). It is our metaphorical blindness to the images which forces us to acknowledge this.

Another compelling exhibition over in south London which investigated the effect of the aural sense in urban life was Retention, by artists Anne Zeitz and David Boureau. This immersive piece was installed at the Old Police Station in Deptford and was a contemporaneous work replicating the soundscape of the Mesnil Amelot 2 detention centre. Based in Paris just north of the Charles de Gaulle airport, it currently holds hundreds of illegal immigrants. Using a quadriphonic speaker setup, the soundscape of the detention centre filled the room, consisting of the all-consuming roar of the airplanes that pass daily over the detainees’ heads, interspersed with radio communications between pilots and the control tower. In a visceral way, it reflected the oppressed state of the immigrants inside the centre. Not only are they aurally subjugated by the noise of the passing planes, but they are reminded of their lack of physical autonomy as other people pass freely overhead. Reinforcing their plight was the visual exploration Cartographies of Fear #1, which portrayed the different ways in which migrants interpret and experience their new (often hostile) urban surroundings.

Graffiti, Harlem, 2015 © Rebecca Locke

Moving on to the 71a Gallery in Shoreditch, the exhibition Streetopolis consisted of a range of work from across the globe, providing examples of the urban from Russia to New York, Copenhagen to Jakarta, and Atlanta to Paris. The artists’ responses to the idea of “streets of the world” were varied, creative and incisive. Rather than simply documenting the urban environment, they sought in their different ways to draw out its contradictions and complexities. Rebecca Locke’s series We Are Paper, We Are Celluloid, We Are Digital, showed her wandering New York City in the guise of Princess Leia, her fantastical appearance contrasting with the banal realities of the city. With New York being synonymous with film, these images raised questions about how the urban environment helps to shape identity, as well as asking how our media-induced fantasies might isolate us from the real world in front of us.

A number of other artists’ work explored the clash between the natural world and the urban milieu. Michael Frank’s photographs from his series Tiger Schmiger responded to the increasing sightings of strange beasts and big cats in our increasingly urbanised world. These sightings, often imaginings, are what Frank believes to be the result of “ecological boredom”; our secret yearning for the wild in our over-developed, insulated modern landscape. These still night-time shots evoke an apprehension, as if waiting for something to crawl into our city streets at any moment. Peter Coles riffs on similar themes in Urban Forrest, Paris, with his moody monochrome photos of enclosed lone trees, fenced off and isolated amidst the concrete jungle. They appear forced into submission by the city, dominated over by the surrounding buildings as if the urban had gained ascendency over the natural world.

© Michael Frank 2015

The festival rounded off its six day photographic odyssey at The Greenwich Gallery, with a private view of Framing Urban Narratives, the last exhibition of the festival. Showcasing the work of 10 recent graduates from Goldsmiths University, it expounded on contemporary urban topics such as homelessness, regeneration, the environment and community. The gallery also hosted the closing reception, and everyone was left to toast their collective hard work with drinks and a (stoically optimistic) BBQ. Having covered an extraordinary breadth of work and engaging with a host of critical approaches, the festival resulted in some challenging and fascinating debate, as well as producing a slew of striking photography. Deconstructing assumptions about what Street Photography is ‘supposed’ to be, it re-evaluated the practices importance in our changing modern world, as well as suggesting the genre’s potentialities. Reiterating what was clearly demonstrated in the numerous exhibitions was Paul Halliday’s comment that “people can interpret what the street means to them. They can come at it from a range of perspectives and approaches.” Which they indeed did, intelligently and with aplomb.

– Daniel Pateman

Looking back on this year’s Urban Photo Festival (UPF), it appears that the genre known as Street Photography has been given something of a shakeup.  The festival’s packed out and wide-ranging events came to a close at the end of October (including but not limited to numerous London based exhibitions, a two day Tate Britain conference, guided walks, seminars, discussions and photography master classes), with debates about the purpose and potential of the genre resonating with many who attended.  While an expansive, forward looking conception of Street Photography caused a few people some consternation, others found their perceptions positively challenged, leaving them inspired to further reflect on the topic of Urbanism and their own output.  As Paul Halliday (the creative director of UPF) stated, the intention of the festival was to “push the boundaries beyond traditional notions of what counts as ‘street photography’” and “explore how artists, photographers and urbanists might rethink how they approach the street.”

For many the term ‘Street Photography’ conjures up pictures of strangers caught in chance altercations; the spectacle of the busy street with its fleeting joys, frustrations and absurdities.  Nick Turpin is one such photographer adopting this more conventional approach to his work.  His shooting method is instinctive, unplanned and revelatory: “there is no specific subject matter and only the issue of ‘life’ in general” he says.  “[The photographer] does not leave the house in the morning with an agenda and he doesn’t visualise his photographs in advance of taking them.”  However, despite the fascination of the public spectacle and the insights it can provide, it seems that this singular concept of Street Photography now runs the risk of becoming irrelevant.  As Michael Sweet despairs, the practice is now inundated by “hundreds of thousands of dull, hackneyed images of random strangers”.  The genre, he argues, tends to lack a critical eye, with social media encouraging the notion that each picture taken is a potential piece of art worthy of attention.

The Bunker © Carlo Navato 2015

Responding to the current challenges facing the practice of Street Photography today, UPF15 was inspired to rigorously investigate and expand its significance beyond a single methodology or philosophy.  The Drift exhibition was one example of such an attempt, located at the Truman Brewery just off busy Brick Lane.  Here a stunning variety of works were on display, all in their different ways responding to the notion of the urban environment; how we shape it, how it shapes us, how it is experienced and represented.  Carlo Navato’s series Spaces of Otherness was mysterious, sparse and beguiling; images at the crossroads of past, present and future.  Engaging with Michel Foucault’s idea of ‘heterotopia’, these places can be described as being ‘neither here nor there’, and of having a psychological as well as a spatial dimension.  Navato describes the series as shot in “a classic ‘edgeland’ – a space outside the confines of town or city, but urban in that man has had a significant hand in its development.”  His photos, rural land with remains of human influence, illustrated in their referents (a road sign, a wind sock, an entrance to an ex-military site) the way spaces change over time; how the rural slowly succeeds to the urban and how sometimes nature gets its sovereignty back.

Beatrice Tura’s series Terra Firma also challenged the conception of the city as a fixed, un-yielding concrete colossus.  Like Navato, she sees the urban environment as transitional, in dialogue with its inhabitants; pavements as altered by the thousands of tramping feet as we are shepherded by its streets.  Tura demonstrates an abstract, unconventional approach to the urban by taking extreme close up shots of anonymous streets; gum and paint marked pavements; the edges of new tarmacked paths rising up against old concrete ones; change, erosion, “the constant movement of the urban soil.”

© Kevin Fitzgerald 2015

A lot of the work of the festival challenged me to consider that, while it is difficult to think of photography as providing more than a visual experience, urban life itself is not dominated by one single sense.  Remove the plethora of smells from the streetfood stalls and curry houses along Brick Lane, the bustle of the crowds and sounds of street musicians, and you become blind to at least half the experience.  It is this fact that Kevin Fitzgerald seeks to elucidate in his series Audiographies.  As well as questioning our visiocentric society, he encourages the viewer “to not only reconsider the relationship between the aural and visual but the relationship between all the senses.”  Sound, it is easy to forget, helps shape our understanding of what we perceive; informing us further about a thing’s quality or nature.  Photography as a representational tool can imply sound but it cannot embody it.  Fitzgerald highlights the aural by drawing our attention to its absence; abstracting his images from a wider context and de-engaging our visual sense.  His photos ask the viewer to fill in the blanks, “to see with their ears.”  You wonder, looking at his images, where you are, what you are seeing.  He challenges us for example with a close up of the corner of a room; a shot of a window indoors with no view and few discerning features.  Sound, you realise, is the sense missing which would allow you to ‘see’ your environment; filing in the gaps of your awareness vision cannot grasp alone (the sound of cars on the busy street below your window, for example).  It is our metaphorical blindness to the images which forces us to acknowledge this.

Another compelling exhibition over in south London which investigated the effect of the aural sense in urban life was Retention, by artists Anne Zeitz and David Boureau.  This immersive piece was installed at the Old Police Station in Deptford and was a contemporaneous work replicating the soundscape of the Mesnil Amelot 2 detention centre.  Based in Paris just north of the Charles de Gaulle airport, it currently holds hundreds of illegal immigrants.  Using a quadriphonic speaker setup, the soundscape of the detention centre filled the room, consisting of the all-consuming roar of the airplanes that pass daily over the detainees’ heads, interspersed with radio communications between pilots and the control tower.  In a visceral way, it reflected the oppressed state of the immigrants inside the centre.  Not only are they aurally subjugated by the noise of the passing planes, but they are reminded of their lack of physical autonomy as other people pass freely overhead.  Reinforcing their plight was the visual exploration Cartographies of Fear #1, which portrayed the different ways in which migrants interpret and experience their new (often hostile) urban surroundings.

Graffiti, Harlem, 2015 © Rebecca Locke

Moving on to the 71a Gallery in Shoreditch, the exhibition Streetopolis consisted of a range of work from across the globe, providing examples of the urban from Russia to New York, Copenhagen to Jakarta, and Atlanta to Paris.  The artists’ responses to the idea of “streets of the world” were varied, creative and incisive.  Rather than simply documenting the urban environment, they sought in their different ways to draw out its contradictions and complexities.  Rebecca Locke’s series We Are Paper, We Are Celluloid, We Are Digital, showed her wandering New York City in the guise of Princess Leia, her fantastical appearance contrasting with the banal realities of the city.  With New York being synonymous with film, these images raised questions about how the urban environment helps to shape identity, as well as asking how our media-induced fantasies might isolate us from the real world in front of us.

A number of other artists’ work explored the clash between the natural world and the urban milieu.  Michael Frank’s photographs from his series Tiger Schmiger responded to the rise in sightings of strange beasts and big cats in our increasingly urbanised world.  These sightings, often imaginings, are what Frank believes to be the result of “ecological boredom”; our secret yearning for the wild in our over-developed, insulated modern landscape.  These still night-time shots evoke an apprehension, as if waiting for something to crawl into our city streets at any moment.  Peter Coles riffs on similar themes in Urban Forrest, Paris, with his moody monochrome photos of enclosed lone trees, fenced off and isolated amidst the concrete jungle.  They appear forced into submission by the city, dominated over by the surrounding buildings as if the urban had gained ascendency over the natural world.

© Michael Frank 2015

The festival rounded off its 6 day photographic odyssey at The Greenwich Gallery, with a private view of Framing Urban Narratives, the last exhibition of the festival.  Showcasing the work of 10 recent graduates from Goldsmiths University, it expounded on contemporary urban topics such as homelessness, regeneration, the environment and community.  The gallery also hosted the closing reception, and everyone was left to toast their collective hard work with drinks and a (stoically optimistic) BBQ.   Having covered an extraordinary breadth of work and engaging with a host of critical approaches, the festival resulted in some challenging and fascinating debate, as well as producing a slew of striking photography.  Deconstructing assumptions about what Street Photography is ‘supposed’ to be, it re-evaluated the practices importance in our changing modern world, as well as suggesting the genre’s potentialities.  Reiterating what was clearly demonstrated in the numerous exhibitions was Paul Halliday’s comment that “people can interpret what the street means to them.  They can come at it from a range of perspectives and approaches.”  Which they indeed did, intelligently and with aplomb.

– Daniel Pateman

Sofia Lahti is as Curator of Collections at the Finnish Museum of Photography. She is an art historian with a background in medieval art and has been at FMP for over ten years.

How long have you been a photography curator?
I have worked as a curator since 2004, so that’s over 10 years already!

Over that time, what are some of the changes that you have identified in your field?
First, digital printing has taken over the darkroom processes – and now the old darkroom techniques are making a comeback! Digital photography has also made it much easier for museums to manage their collections databases. At the same time, museums have found new ways of sharing and interacting with their audiences in the internet and in the social media. In the world of curating, the amount of professional curators and producers has increased in Finland due to new lines of education.

What’s your favourite photography project or object in the collection? Why?
Favourites come and go depending on the projects I’m working on. Right now I’m in love with a home-made enlarger from the 1950s. It’s made from an old aluminium milk can, and the maker even invented and painted his own logo on the enlarger, although he was just using it for his hobby. I haven’t worked with our collection of photographic tools and gadgets before, and it’s a fascinating world.

What’s the biggest influence on your curatorial approach?
I’d still say it is the “To look or to see” exhibition I mention in my article (What About Finnishness, Photography and Art?) , a beautiful and intelligent interplay of art and cultural history.

Why is a photography museum necessary? What differences do you think it holds over a photography department in an art or science museum? How does context in a collection influence photography?
In a museum like ours, we have the unique multiple perspective on photography: the simultaneous interest in its technical, visual and cultural aspects. While photographs in the collections of culture-historical museums are mainly seen as visual documentation, in art museums they are seen as artworks among others. In a museum of photography, we can focus on the work of the photographer and the relation between the technique, the expression and the content.

Who is your main audience?
There are several types of audiences. School classes are important, but also art lovers and photography enthusiasts. We try to address them all – and to find new audiences, of course.

How do museums manage this vast collection?
(I suppose you mean how does our museum manage our collection?) We register everything in our database. It has at least three levels: 1) the acquisition, which can include several images, objects, documents or such. 2) the group level, in which we divide the acquisition into thematic or typological groups, such as prints, negatives, cameras – or according to different projects in a photographer’s career, for instance. 3) Finally, if possible, each image or object is catalogued separately.

How does the museum make decisions on acquisition?
We have frequent meetings about issues related to the collection, and in those meetings we also decide about acquisitions. Many things play a role: for instance the price, size, condition, and copyright status of the works and their relation to the already existing items in our collections.

You mentioned that FMP does not collect photographic works such as video installations, although it would like to exhibit them. Why does FMP skip such mediums?
We do not collect moving image. Each museum has to define its collecting policies, and for us it has been to concentrate on photography. Widening our scope to collecting video or multi-media art would require us to invest on their correct preservation and recruit staff specialized on those media, and at least for the time being, it is not possible. Fortunately, other museums of contemporary art are able to do that.

When you suggest the collaboration between the FMP and other institutions, does FMP influence on or associate with the acquisition of their collections?
No. Each institution decides on their own acquisitions. However, it might be useful to have more communication about acquisitions to avoid overlapping. In the ideal world, museum collections would complement each other.

During an exhibition, a historic photograph might be able to provide aesthetic enjoyment to the audiences. Does this change influence on the characteristics of this photograph? Would it modify the status and categorisation of the photograph in the collection?
For us, all photographs are here to be seen from several points of view: both historical and aesthetical perspectives can perfectly co-exist. Usually the images are catalogued and categorized according to their original genre, and that does not essentially limit the ways in which they can be used and seen in the exhibitions. And even if we show an image outside of its original context, we can simultaneously offer the information of its background and history to the audience.

What’s the difference between curating art photography and other kinds of artwork?
The main differences are based on their technical qualities, such as their higher sensitivity to light. Paper-based prints are also sensitive to changes in humidity and temperature. Another aspect is the availability of several prints from the same original. In the old times, a photographer would present his/her best print in the exhibition. Today, some photographers don’t work with the exhibition in mind at all, and the right way of exhibiting has to be found together with them.

Does the museum collaborate with guest curators? Why?
We do work with visiting curators once in a while. Sometimes they are the ones suggesting a new project, sometimes we invite someone to bring us their particular way of looking at things. It is always refreshing!

China has a booming market for photography. Many cities plan to build their own photography museums. Similarly, international photography festivals are popular across the world. What do you think about the high price of photography? How does it influence on the acquisition of the museum?
The growing prices of contemporary art photography are a wonderful thing for the artists and the art market, but as I mentioned in the article, it does have an impact on our acquisitions. Because of the current prices, we have not been able to collect the Finnish art photography of the two latest decades as comprehensively as we did in the 1990s.

What do you think about the popularity of photography? How does it influence on your curatorial approach?
It’s amazing – everyone is a photographer now. Our museum exists for all those people – they just need to find us! When people take photographs themselves, even if it is just with the mobile phone, they learn to look at photographs and appreciate the work of professionals. At the same time, amateur and snapshot photography shared in social media is a new and interesting aspect of photographic culture. We want to embrace and document that, too. Our big exhibition #snapshot, from last year, was focusing exactly on that. In our current exhibition, the Darkroom, we also show how old darkroom printing techniques are the models for the tricks and filters people now use digitally.

Can you give any essential advice for Chinese collectors and Chinese photography museums in terms of curating and collecting?
Specially for the museums: invest on good databases and storage spaces and specialized conservators. Take good care of negatives, too. Tell the artists not to ditch their vintage prints even if they might think their new ink jet prints are better.

When you mention about updating the article, what do you want to change? And why?
It seems so much has already happened since I wrote the article – but I ended up just updating the part about sharing our collections. We now have a Flickr page where we share copyright-free images from our collection for unlimited use. Also, we now have a small gallery (a corner of the big exhibition space) dedicated to the collections: it’s called the Angle. It will always have an exhibition related to our collections, and it can be a comment on our larger exhibitions, an example of a recent art or research project on the collections, or something completely different.

The Chinese version of this article is published on Raycenter.org

Fangfei Chen is a Ph.D candidate of History at the University of Essex, with a primary focus on the research of photographic materials. She is from China and has an MA in Arts Market Appraisal from Kingston University, and an MA from the University of St. Andrews in the History of Photography. She has worked as Assistant Manager in the Beijing Huachen Auction House Photography Department, as well as working for several photographic archives such as in the University of St. Andrews. Her interviews and reviews have been published by Art Gallery, Art Guide and The World of Photography, among other publications. Her interests include the history of Chinese photography, the photographic market, management, and festivals.

Image credits:
Reino Pietinen, Family Pietinen, 1910′s, Autochrome. Courtesy of The Finnish Museum of Photography.
I.K. Inha，Boys at Hietalahti harbour. 1908, .Helsinki. Glass negative. Courtesy of The Finnish Museum of Photography.
Virve Laustela, Courtesy of The Finnish Museum of Photography, 2015.
Carl Klein（Atelier Universal）Ellinor Ivalo，Digitized from original negative. Courtesy of The Finnish Museum of Photography.

Earlier this month, the first UK solo exhibition of Magnum photographer Alec Soth opened at Media Space, a still relatively new and highly innovative gallery space dedicated to photography and located within the Science Museum, London. The London Photography Diary, in collaboration with Hemera, had an opportunity to get a first glimpse of the exhibition and speak to head of photography Kate Bush about her thoughts on Soth’s work and methods for curating this impressive mid-career survey entitled Gathered Leaves: Photographs by Alec Soth.

The exhibition forms a dynamic experience, progressing chronologically through lyrical displays of Soth’s four main series to date, Sleeping by the Mississippi (2004), Niagara (2006), Broken Manual (2010) and Songbook (2014, seen here for the first time in a UK show). Photographs in book and newspaper format and those framed and hung in a variety of sizes are in ready dialogue with the array of conceptual materials that informed Soth’s projects. The set-up reflects a combination Kate Bush’s non-invasive but no less creative curatorial approach and Soth’s restless experimentation across the many forms that photography can take, from prints and books to zines and digital media.

Fangfei Chen:
Could you please introduce your role as the head of photography for the Science Museum Group? Why did you choose to exhibit Alec Soth’s work in this museum specifically?

Kate Bush:
I serve as head of photography at the Science Museum Group and I work across the museums in the group – so I have a role at the National Media Museum in Bradford, in addition to my responsibility for the programming at these beautiful new galleries called Media Space on the second floor of the Science Museum.

The intention behind Media Space is to create a new destination for national and international visitors, lovers of photography, and we’re going to do that in two ways. Firstly, we are going to work to bring to public attention the fantastic, incredible collection that belongs to the Science Museum. It’s one of the best collections in the world, particularly in the early period of photography and from the beginnings of photography up to the First World War, an absolutely exceptional collection.

We also have a very strong British documentary collection – but the idea behind the Media Space programme is that we are both profiling and allowing people to share this marvellous collection alongside exhibitions that are being made by international photographers, living and dead. So we have two gallery spaces and the idea is to continually juxtapose historical projects with contemporary projects.

We’re pleased at present to be opening a major new exhibition by Alec Soth, who is one of the most significant mid-career photographers in America working today.

Elizabeth Breiner:
Soth speaks about not being a big believer in documentary truth, and in his work explicitly tries to experiment with this as a concept, test its limits, even undermine it… As with the Fontcuberta exhibition earlier this year, it seems as though the Science Museum has a particular interest in toying with or even revealing the fallacy of the idea of any real documentary truth, and I wondered if you think there’s a deliberate irony in displaying these types of work within a science museum or if it says something about the unconventional nature of the space itself?

KB:
I don’t think we’re intending to be ironic in the programming at Media Space – what we want to do is represent the breadth of photographic practice. Sometimes those projects will have particular emphasis on science and technology, but equally they may not, and I think it’s sort of a question of creating an identity for a new photography programme that is located in a science museum but isn’t necessarily just about science.

And of course, at the heart of photography there’s always been this historical mixed identity, or double identity if you like, whereby it’s always been a form of technology; and, indeed, when it was collected by the Science Museum it was treated as chemistry. So it is a technology but it’s also become an art form.

Next door, we have a display by Julia Margaret Cameron, one of the incredibly influential pioneers who really worked to establish photography as an expressive art form in its own right. So I’d say we’re not programmatically going down a particular route, I think the intention is really to represent the photographic medium today in as wide and varied a form as it takes.

FC:
Where does the exhibition’s title Gathered Leaves come from? The idea of gathering leaves is interesting – in a sense, like the process of preparing a book and gathering materials page by page. How does this idea relate to Soth’s photographic practice?

KB:
The title of the exhibition is Gathered Leaves, and that title came from Alec at an early point in the process when we were working out how to give the show its very particular identity. And one of the early ideas, which we express in this show, is the relationship to the books, the books that Alec is very well known for, and the printed photograph in a framed form, in an exhibition form. In every room we create a conversation between the project in printed form and as a framed print on the wall.

So in one sense Gathered Leaves simply means the gathering up together of sheets of paper, which essentially is what photography is – apart from when it’s in a digital format, of course. At the same time it’s a direct reference, a quote from Walt Whitman’s American epic poem ‘Song of Myself’, which he wrote in 1855 as America was on the eve of civil war. In that poem, Walt Whitman wanders through the nation and notes many different facets of people in society and so on. There’s also a very important idea in that poem about the relationship of the self with the world and the cosmos.

I don’t think Alec would want to compare himself to Walt Whitman because he’s far too unpretentious to do that, but I think it’s sort of a guiding theme that evokes a little bit of what I think he’s setting out to do. I think this is a photographer who is making a very big body of work, it’s an epic body of work, and it’s a body of work in which he himself is very much part of the thought process of it – sometimes he appears literally in the work – but I think he’s always very conscious of his subjectivity in the world when he’s photographing, in the way that Walt Whitman was with that poem.

FC:
Was the publication for Gathered Leaves created in conjunction with the curatorial process?

KB:
The publication for Gathered Leaves is not a traditional exhibition catalogue by any means, and in fact it was a project that Alec and Michael Mack, his publisher, embarked on in tandem, but also, in a way, to complement this exhibition. Basically, in the show we are doing a mid-career survey, even though we’re not calling it that, because we’re showing the four major bodies of work that Alec has made over the last ten years – and essentially, the Gathered Leaves book does the same thing. It does it, I think, in a really joyous and generous way.

What they’ve done, rather miraculously, is to shrink the four books. Only one of those, Songbook, is still in print, and it’s very, very difficult to get Sleeping by the Mississippi and Niagara, and Broken Manual was only ever published in a very, very small edition, so what Michael and Alec have done is create miniature versions of each of the four books; and they arrive in a box, rather like a beautiful box of chocolates that you open, and you can literally read everything and see everything that was in the original books. So it’s like a kind of mini survey in a box, just as an exhibition is a type of survey in a box.

FC:
During the artist tour [given by Soth during the press view of the exhibition], Soth suggests that the three-dimensional exhibition space creates certain challenges for interpreting and presenting his work. How have you taken advantage of this exhibition space – this three-dimensional format – to alter and enhance the relationship between the audience and these photographs?

KB:
I think one of the things to me that is very tricky about photography is the different forms and formats in which it exists, and the different relationships you have with it as a viewer. So whereas a painting is really only experienced in a gallery, where you are physically in front of it, a photograph can live in many places – and principally, of course, the book is the format that most great photographers want to work in.

And what we try to get at in this show is that all these different methods or media are valid in different ways. So in this exhibition, we’ve tried to dramatise the difference between a large framed print on the wall and the relationship you have with a book or a periodical or a zine. Obviously they are related, but still different, and I think you have a quite different physical relationship with a large, beautifully printed photograph that’s lit perfectly, that’s luminous on the wall, than you do with a book when you’re sitting down and experiencing a sequence and a narrative that the photographer intended. So they are different but related media, I would say.

EB:
To piggyback off these ideas you’ve mentioned about the viewer’s relation to the work, Soth has expressed often this interest in creating actual distance between himself and his subjects – especially in Broken Manual, where he deliberately elongated that distance between photographer and subject – and I wondered where you think the viewer comes into that dynamic, and if this disconnect between photographer and subject is something that you feel comes across, especially in a physical space such as this.

KB:
Well I think in a sense, the viewer is always the photographer’s proxy. I mean, you’re always in the position in relation to the image that the photographer has taken in relationship to that image. And I think Alec worked very carefully to create particular underlying structures and associative mechanisms to catalyse the kind of empathy or feeling that he had for the subject in front of him. And you can see him do that in all sorts of interesting ways. You know, in Songbook it’s about extrapolating lyrics from these very famous popular songs so that when you read that, it’ll trigger a memory or associative response.

In Niagara, there’s often a very repeated motif that sometimes you can barely see or only notice if it is pointed out, but there are hearts, that sort of swim through those pictures in different places. And I think Alec is very conscious of the way that he works with his subjects… he says of the men in Broken Manual that he felt great tenderness towards them, because he can identify in a way with this desire to withdraw and this desire to find a very intense introspective space. As an artist, I think he identifies very strongly with that.

But then there’s another moment in Songbook that he’s very much in the world like a photojournalist going after that story, and he’s photographing it in a slightly more objective register, so you’re not quite as aware of his emotions in front of that subject. But nevertheless, I think there is always a movement between something that is joyful and full of humanity and something that is more of a romantic or sort of despairing or introspective position in the world. And that’s what I enjoy about his work, I think it has a very wide emotional range to it.

Exhibition information:
6 October 2015 – 28 March 2016, Media Space, Science Museum, London
Admission £8, Seniors £7, Concessions £6 (prices include donation)
22 April – 26 June 2016, National Media Museum, Bradford

Supported by: People’s Postcode Lottery
Principal Founding Sponsor: Virgin Media
Principal Founding Donor: Michael and Jane Wilson
Founding Donor: Dana and Albert R Broccoli Foundation
More info

Interview conducted by Fangfei Chen of Hemera and Elizabeth Breiner of London Photography Diary.

Undoubtedly, prevailing zeitgeist for the last decade has been the development and self-critique of social media.  If the 70s spawned the Me Generation, then surely, the last decade belongs to the We Generation and our collective, incessant sharers of information and images.  Take your pick from Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, Facebook, Tumblr, Flickr or Twitter to date, or previous incarnations.

The need to massage online (and off-line) egos has become an obsessive one, as has the desire for gif-me-quick imagery.  The consumerist aesthetic that ties in with strong brand awareness presents us as discerning self-curators and stylists.

Music performers and their savvy strategists have tapped into this, deploying social media to build lines of communication with fans.  Lady Gaga and Katy Perry are just two stars using Facebook and Twitter to share pictures and videos as a way of creating bonds.  Earlier this year, it was estimated that Perry had almost 64 million Twitter followers – a sure sign that, as a means of building your fan base, social media works.

We Want More: Image-Making and Music in the 21st Century, an exhibition at London’s Photographers’ Gallery, takes a look at how image-makers, musicians and their devotees have, in many cases, formed a strong, mutually beneficial alliance.

The exhibition, neatly divided into two parts, threads a narrative between photographers — who play a significant part in building the fame of musicians — and music fans, whose devotion is pivotal to the success in making them stars.

Jason Evans’ publicity photographs of Radiohead taken between 2001 and 2008 were taken when he spent time on the road with them.  Evans’ subjective images rely more on technique and less on straightforward portraiture to allow for the band’s identity. This, then, is persona-building dependent on specific photographic processes — his startling colour-streaked imagery and ‘bullet-riddled’ contacts adding to the band’s enigma.

Stylists Inez and Vinoodh opt for a completely different approach. In their pictures, Lady Gaga, in a’s reflection of her discrete personalities on YouTube and on Facebook personalities, gazes towards are presented to the camera in  wearing a selection of guises, each more theatrical than the last.

There’s Gaga is captured as a hippy chick, as Goth, and even as a Pre-Raphaelite muse.  In looking at these photographs, you get one is struck with a strong sense that the singer knows exactly what she wants to project and how.  More multi-personas of the singer, in an installation of her pop videos, continue the theme of allure and image construction.

Also included to underline the intention of the music industry’s use of visual stimuli to attract and beguile, some of the most stunning music videos ever produced were included in the exhbiition.  Directed by such luminaries as Jonathan Glazer (Radiohead’s Karma Police), Michel Gondry (Foo Fighters) and Spike Jonze (The Pharcyde’s Drop), these works are profile enhancers as well as promotional tools.

In the second part of We Want More… we see adoration taken to the dizzy heights.  Whereas before, fans wrote to film and music stars and, maybe, if they were lucky, they’d receive a reply, in a series of photographs of Jackson fans, shot by Lorena Turner, the public went to extraordinary lengths to emulate their idol.  Every detail – from Jackson’s glove to his dramatic make-up, and even his nose — is lovingly recreated; appropriation taken to extremes.  In this montage, Turner encapsulates the essence of fan worship – slavish adulation, mimicry and the birds-of-a-feather factor.

We Want More: Image-Making and Music in the 21^st Century takes disparate strands to weave a rich tapestry of the music industry. It’s all here: garage clubbers, as captured by photographer Ewen Spencer, Ryan McGinley’s pictures for The Face magazine and Ryan Enn Hughes’ series of gifs based on Katy Perry’s pop Video: Birthday – his variation on a theme: the memes put online by fans.     

-Frances Green   

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Photoville - New York, New York

Transphotographique - Lille, France

Festival Photo La Gacilly - Gacilly, France

Les Rencontres d'Arles - Arles, France

Encuentros Abiertos Festival de la Luz - Buenos Aires, Argentina

Cortona On The Move - Cortona, Italy

Recontres Internacionale de la Photographie en Gaspesie - Gaspesie, Canada

Tiff Festival - Breslau, Poland

Ballarat International Foto Biennale - Ballarat, Australia

+1000 Photography Festival - Gstaad, Switzerland

GETXOPHOTO: Bilbao, Spain

Kaunas Photo - Kaunas, Lithuania

Tbilisi Photo Festival - Tbilisi, Georgia

Rencontres Photographique de Toulouse - Toulouse, France

Encontros da Imagem - Braga, Portugal

Paraty Em Foco - Paraty, Brazil

Filter Photo Festival - Chicago, Illinois

Slow Exposures - Pike County, Georgia

Indian Photography Festival - Hyderabad, India

Photo Fairs Shanghai - Shanghai, China

Unseen Photo Fair - Amsterdam, Netherlands

Guernsey Photography Festival - Guernsey, Channel Islands

Uppsala Foto Festival - Uppsala, Sweden

Atlanta Celebrates Photography - Atlanta, Georgia

Bursa Photo Fest - Bursa, Turkey

Festival of Ethical Photography - Lodi, Italy

Noorderlicht International Photo Festival - Groningen, Netherlands

Lugano Photo Days - Lugano, Switzerland

Zoom Photo Festival - Saguenay, Canada

FotoDoks - Munich, Germany

Medium - San Diego, California

Review Santa Fe Photo Festival - Santa Fe, New Mexico

Photoreporter - Baie of Saint Brieuc, France

LagosPhoto Festival - Lagos, Nigeria

Month of Photography Bratislava - Bratislava, Slovakia

Paris Photo - Paris, France

FotoArtFestival - Bielsko-Biała, Poland

PhotoNOLA - New Orleans, Louisiana

Lianzhoufoto - Lianzhou, China

PhotoLux - Lucca, Italy

Rencontres de Bamako - Bamako, Mali

Photo North Festival – Harrogate, UK

Angkor Photo Festival - Angkor, Cambodia

Miami Street Photography Festival - Miami, Florida

Pluie Images - Brest, France

Europäischer Monat der Fotografie Berlin - Berlin, Germany

CLICK! Triangle Photography Festival - North Carolina, U.S.

Photo Basel - Basel, Switzerland

Fotofusion - West Palm Beach, Florida

PhotoLA - Los Angeles, California

Exposure Photography Festival - Calgary, Canada

Chobi Mela - Dhaka, Bangladesh

Fotofestival - Mannheim, Germany

Format - Derby, United Kingdom

Eyes On: Monat der Fotografie Wien - Vienna, Austria

Belgrade Photo Month - Belgrade, Serbia

Emoi Photographique - Angouleme, France

Hong Kong Photo Festival - Hong Kong

Image Festival Amman - Amman, Jordan

Circulation(s) Festival de la jeune photographie européenne - Paris, France

Photometria - Ioannina, Greece

Summer of Photography - Brussels, Belgium

Itinéraires des Photographes Voyageurs - Bordeaux, France

Cork Photo - Cork, Ireland

Photolucida - Portland, Oregon

HeadOn Photo Festival - Sydney, Australia

Capture Photography Festival - Vancouver, Canada

Photo Festival - Milan, Italy

Le Mois de la Photo - Paris, France

Reclaim Photography Festival - West Midlands, UK

Fotografia Europea - Reggio Emilia, Italy

Kyotographie International Photography Festival - Kyoto, Japan

Photo - Melbourne, Australia

Seoul Photo - Seoul, South Korea

Darmstädter Tage der Fotografie - Därmstadt, Germany

Glasgow Photography Festival - Glasgow, Scotland

Hyeres Festival of Fashion and Photography - Hyres, France

PhotoOn Festival - Valencia, Spain

Photo Festival Leiden - Leiden, Netherlands

Nordic Light Festival - Kristiansund, Norway

Photo Festival Naarden - Naarden, Netherlands

Photo Med: Festival of Mediterranean Photography - Sanary-sur-Mer, France

Prague Photo Festival - Prague, Czech Republic

Riga Photo Month - Riga, Latvia

Rovinj Photo Days - Rojinj, Croatia

imageSingulières - Sète, France

Internationale Photoszene Köln - Cologne, Germany

Les Boutographies - Montpellier, France

Scotiabank CONTACT Photography Festival - Toronto, Canada

May 2020

Auckland Festival of Photography - Auckland, New Zealand

Palm Springs Photo Festival - Palm Springs, California

Art Photo Bcn - Barcelona, Spain

Images: Festival des Arts Visuels de Vevey - Vevey, Switzerland

Photo London - London, UK

Fotorama Fest - Kragujevac, Serbia

Photomonth in Krakow - Lodz, Poland

Malmo Photo Biennal - Malmo, Sweden

Organ Vida - Zagreb, Croatia

Internationales Fotografiefestival F/Stop Leipzig - Leipzig, Germany

LUMIX Festival of Young Photojournalism - Hannover, Germany

Athens Photo Festival - Athens, Greece

Belfast Photo Festival - Belfast, Ireland

PHotoEspaña - Madrid, Spain

Festival de Fotografia de Tiradentes - Tiradentes, Brazil

Photonic Moments - Ljubljana, Slovenia

Copenhagen Photo Festival - Copenhagen, Denmark

Antiparos Photo Festival - Antiparos, Greece

Voies Off - Arles, France

WARM Festival - Sarajevo, Bosnia

Fotoseptiembre: San Antonio, Texas

Fotonoviembre - Tenerife, Spain

Helsinki Photo Festival: HELPHOTO - Helsinki, Finland

FotoFest International - Houston, Texas

Higashikawa International Photo Festival - Higashikawa, Japan

Visa Pour L’Image – Perpignan, France

Mt. Rokko International Photography Festival - Kobe, Japan

Wiesbadener Fototage - Wiesbaden, Germany

Kuala Lumpur Photography Festival - Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Landskrona Foto Festival - Landskrona, Sweden

Singapore International Photo Festival - Singapore, Malaysia

Backlight Photo Festival - Tampere, Finland

Xposure Festival - Sharjah, UAE

Verzasca Foto Festival - Valle Verzasca, Switzerland

BredaPhoto: International Photo Festival - Breda, Netherlands

FotoFocus - Cincinatti, Ohio

Brighton Photo Biennal - Brighton, UK

Brighton Photo Fringe - Brighton, UK

PhotoVisa - Krasnodar, Russia

Photo Oxford - Oxford, UK

Doha Photography Festival - Doha, Qatar

Addis Foto Fest - Addis Abeba, Ethiopia

Diffusion Festival - Cardiff, UK

Month of Photography - Luxembourg

San Jose Foto - San Jose, Uruguay

Triennale der Photographie Hamburg - Germany, Hamburg

BIP - Biennial of the Possible Image, Liège, Belgium

Imago Lisboa Foto Festival- Lisbon, Portugal

Death and decay, the precarious fate of humanity, our disregard for the environment; it would be easy (though complacent) to see The Abyss Gazes Into You as an exhibition seeped in cynicism.  It doesn’t help to dissuade this impression that Nietzsche, a philosopher with a notorious reputation as a nihilist, is quoted for the exhibition’s title.  However, while a sense of desolation and existential despair may be a strain running through the work, it’s the wider sweep of existence and how we relate to it that Spencer Murphy is captivated by, and eager to explore.

Greatly influenced by the 18^th century Romantic Movement, especially the landscape painter Caspar David Friedrich, Murphy expresses a similar fascination for the majesty and intangibility of nature.  Like Friedrich’s Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog (1817), the exhibition includes a number of photographs in which lone figures look thoughtfully over wild, sprawling landscapes.  In Kurt and Jara, Lighthouse Beach, Tasmania, 2010, a man stands atop his van staring out over the ocean as the sun starts to go down, in an assumed communion with the natural world.  Elevated as such, his diminished aspect contrasts against the vast stretch of sky.  In capturing these contemplative figures reflecting on the natural world, attention is in turn drawn to their significance in the grand scheme of things.  In contemplating the external world, they are forced also to contemplate themselves.

As Murphy explains, nature is both divine and dangerous, “the creator and potential destroyer of man.”  This uneasy relationship is perfectly encapsulated in Dawn, Bewl Water, 2009.  Taken on a winter’s day, four men stand in the middle of a frozen lake, chatting on the body of ice which stretches across the frame.  Their presence in the photo is vaguely incongruous.  Despite the incipient danger, their casual posture and body language suggests young friends hanging out on a street corner.  This photo illustrates the delicate balance between us and the natural world; evoking its beauty but also the possibility that it could collapse under us at any moment.

His work also explores our interdependency with the world and the idea that “although we are a part of the natural world, we see ourselves as separate from it and somehow as higher beings”.  In other words, we see ourselves as inhabitants on earth but not of being “of” the earth.  Our symbiotic relationship with nature is evident in both the photos Fox By a Pile of Tin, 2006 and Tin Mountain.  In the former, human activity is indicated by the pile of rusted metal in the junk yard, a single fox sitting at its edge.  In the later, the populousness of the human race and our wastefulness is suggested by having disused tin fill the frame from side to side, bottom to top, with just a small slither of sky to make clear its towering proportions.  These images highlight that, as much as nature can be vast and destructive, our own actions can be as foreboding and disastrous to the ecology we inhabit.

The work presented here is beguiling, mysterious.  Partly about how we relate to the world and how the world relates to us.  As Murphy himself admits, the essence of the collection is difficult to articulate, “as it’s more about a feeling or emotion that strikes us in those moments [of contemplation].”  It would seem then that the aim of his work is embodying those rare instances of enlightenment when, like a Rubik’s cube finally fitting together, the universe silently whispers its secrets in your ear and everything makes sense, if only for a second.

Daniel Pateman

Daniel Pateman studied Humanities and Media at Birkbeck University and continues to indulge his abiding interest in the arts. He has enjoyed writing since a young age and currently produces articles for a number of online publications.  He keeps a blog called The End of Fiction, consisting of his poetry, prose and other creative work, and is currently looking to forge a new career in the creative industries.

Image credits:

Dawn, Bewl Water, 2009. From the series ‘The Abyss Gazes Into You’ © Spencer Murphy
Memento Mori, 2009.  From the series ‘The Abyss Gazes Into You’ © Spencer Murphy
Andy at the Abandoned Airfield, 2009.  From the series ‘The Abyss Gazes Into You’ © Spencer Murphy

‘Aesthetic Paranoia’, is a series of nineteen photographs by German artist Jürgen Klauke presented at Annely Juda Fine Art. The large black and white prints of the eponymous series are somewhat of a trademark of the artist, since the 1980’s. Refined and minimalistic, the image sequences depict staged scenarios of an anonymous man in a suit, on a white bed. A mass of long black hair engulfs the subject as an allegorical entity threatening  identity, while also ironically remaining inseparable from it.

Klauke is considered an initiator of performance art. Here, as often done before, the artist uses photography to document an act for the spectator to attend, entering the domain of the inexpressible, one image at a time. Such works explore the notion of system, both in creative approach and psychoanalytic content: it considers the representation of mental process, each sequence providing the spectator with a ‘possibility’ of interpretation, a possible reaction to a confined situation. Referred to as ‘body art’ in photography, the images reveal the conflicts of the self within a disturbing, but quiet setting. Placing his own body at the centre of his work, Jürgen Klauke explores behavioural patterns and psychological states in a figurative manner, questioning socialised gender norms as well as mental and physical identities.

The neutrality of décor, often made of quotidian objects such as chairs, tables or a bed, as well as the single character, construct a surrealistic space and, at times, unsettling tableau of solitary dialogue, as the world echoes on an isolated figure. The series recalls the works of artists Pierre Molinier or Hans Bellmer, and philosopher Georges Bataille, relocating body identity to material in a study of the absurdity of life.. 

More an indication than a definition, the title ‘Aesthetic Paranoia’ offers a particular approach to the series. Projecting the identities of dramatized subjects onto his own body, Klauke investigates the depth of paranoid existence and human perception as the entangled self battles through a frame of boredom – obscured by a wall of hair, or sensually trapped in a net of black locks. In a narration reminiscent of séance, the anonymous persona might appear to be lost or submissive, fighting, or ultimately acceptant and transformed while challenging gender associations and human mutation as the hair becomes a psychological veil – a feminine mane or a hostile mass.

Returning to the notion of aesthetics, the title of the work evokes a sensory judgement. The etymology of ‘aesthetics’ relates to the study of perception, while perception itself relates to paranoia as a form of excessive interpretation.

Indeed, the paranoid self is the one that is devoured by a clouded vision of reality. The work demonstrates an obvious use of both notions.  The ‘Loose Connection’ series doesn’t imply any explicit relationship to the portrait work. Although, looking closer, the hair and animated power cables in this series might suggest the presence of a similar ghostly force. The countless plugs and a negative version of the print could be seen as the inner mind and its multiple possibilities of associated connections..

In a relentless duel, the man seems to embody both the possessed soul and the creator of its demon inspiring its reality himself. Together, the works invite the viewer to consider the real instigator of the scenes, the one actor believing in his own myth, the paranoid self-embracing the surreal presence.

What is so striking about Jürgen Klauke’s work is its clinical beauty. While nothing in the image should be specifically referred to as a beautiful object or person, the whole vision firstly moves us by its singular coherence. The artist seems to photograph with what could be considered a dictatorial composition. Under a perfect angle, the image unfolds in a most orderly way, as even the black hair unrealistically follows the contour of the bed.

The beauty of it all may reside in our conflicting selves, and here such confrontation is subtly portrayed in its bare situation, empty from each previous viewer’s personal projection.

Celine Bodin

Céline Bodin is a French photographer. After studying literature and architecture, she graduated from a photography BA at Gobelins, L’école de l’image in Paris. In 2013 she completed a Photography MA at the London College of Communication. As well as regularly writing about photography, her personal practice explores themes of identity, gender, and the metaphysical frustration of the medium in representation.

Shirley Baker was one of the most compelling yet unsung heroes of British Documentary photography. Born in Kersal, Greater Manchester in 1932, she showed an interest in photography from an early age, attending Manchester College of Technology to study the subject. It was in the 1960s, while teaching at Salford College of Art, that she began to photograph the slums of Greater Manchester. These inner-city areas were barely inhabitable; examples of poorly conceived and rushed construction – a legacy of the Industrial Revolution. For many years these areas had been designated for demolition, but the gears of change were slow.

This exhibition focuses on the 15 year period during the 1960s and 1970s when Baker recorded the lives of ordinary working people in the urban areas of Hulme, Salford and Manchester. The scope of her work relfects the protracted changes these environments underwent. Through her work we can trace the cramped, dilapidated rows of dank buildings giving way to streets of half-demolished houses, as newly constructed apartment blocks gradually rise up in the background.

The majority of Baker’s photography, strikingly detailed in black and white, evokes an antiquated world, at odds with the notion of England as a developed country. Some of her images are Dickensian; dirt smeared children playing in muddy cobbled streets. Others suggest a World War 2 era landscape; devastated buildings and debris strewn play areas, children sporting gas masks.

Evident in much of the exhibition is the infamous squalor referred to in The City of Manchester Plan of 1945, which condemned “the drab streets, the dilapidated shops […] the sulphurous and sunless atmosphere” of Manchester’s inner-city areas. The industry polluted skies and monochromatic surroundings only increase the disparity of time and place depicted by Baker; one at odds with the collective memory of the sixties as one of ‘flower power’ and colourful psychedelia.

Her work is refreshing, especially in the context of our ‘selfy obsessed ‘ times, because it shows people truly engaging with their environment and with each other. She affectionately observes people in the streets: in one shot a young boy mimics his father who leans against a wall, his work colleagues looking on amused drinking tea. In another, two boys reach into an open drainpipe to retrieve something (“Health and Safety”, who?).

What shines through this series of photographs strongest is the sense of community, of people coming together.  As the narrator says in the documentary The Changing Face of Salford 1967-1970, “though it is an accepted fact that the new housing conditions are beyond comparison with the old, there is one sad loss; the sense of communal life so strong in these slum areas”.  Community is the glue of these neighbourhoods and of Baker’s work.  While these pictures document a world of dissolution and poverty, they are not mired in misery.  The dirty streets are their meeting places and playgrounds. Men seek solace together outside abandoned buildings. Groups of women smile and chat on their doorsteps. Children rummage among the rubble with friends, seemingly unburdened by their surroundings.  Adults work, children play: people endure

Shirley Baker: Women, Children, and Loitering Men runs at The Photographers’ Gallery until September 20th

Daniel Pateman studied Humanities and Media at Birkbeck University and continues to indulge his abiding interest in the arts. He has enjoyed writing since a young age and currently produces articles for a number of online publications.  He keeps a blog called The End of Fiction, consisting of his poetry, prose and other creative work, and is currently looking to forge a new career in the creative industries.

Image credits:
 Shirley Baker, Manchester 1968 © Shirley Baker Courtesy of The Photographers’ Gallery
 Shirley Baker, Manchester, 1967 © Shirley Baker Courtesy of The Photographers’ Gallery
                    

According to various news sources, in 2011 and 2014 then-host of Comedy Central’s The Daily Show with Jon Stewart met with President Obama at the White House. But why are Stewart’s previously unreported visits newsworthy? Stewart is a comedian, and The Daily Show is a satirical broadcast. However, the host’s influential presence in public discourse cannot be denied. He is even credited with impacting governmental policy. For instance, three days after he interviewed 9-11 first responders, Congress passed a filibustered bill to aid responders whose service resulted in chronic illness. Politico also reported that White House aides were advised to field calls from Stewart’s staff. Did the comedian’s relationship with Obama’s administration compromise journalistic integrity? If Stewart was a news broadcaster, the answer more likely could be yes. Because he is a comedian, no matter how astutely he engages with current events, the answer remains more nebulous.

Photography maintains a similarly imprecise relationship to journalistic ethics. If the aim is to use images to impact public discourse, photographic illustrations and staged compositions can communicate some content as adeptly as photojournalism can. But Altered Images: 150 Years of Posed and Manipulated Documentary Photography, a recent exhibition at the Bronx Documentary Center (BDC), tried to hold the line regarding what constitutes proper documentary practices. The exhibition declared, “Documentary photographs and photojournalism must be accurate representations of the scene before the photographer’s camera—without alteration. If the public is to have faith in the integrity of the image before them, and by extension the media, images must be taken and published in a forthright manner.” However, after viewing the exhibition, it remains difficult to maintain a definitive boundary between those documentary practices deemed as accurate or forthright and those not.

Altered Images culled together forty photographs from the medium’s history. Co-curated by photojournalist and BDC founder Michael Kamber and Gallery Manager Bianca Farrow, the show categorized alterations under three labels: staging, post-production, and captions. Staging included Roger Fenton’s much-studied 1855 The Valley of the Shadow of Death, Crimea, Ukraine and Chris Arnade’s 2015 image of a South Bronx sex worker exposing her breasts. The analog removal of Nikolai Yezhov, chief of Soviet secret police, from a 1930s photograph after he fell out of Joseph Stalin’s favor and Matt Mahurin’s darkening of O.J. Simpson’s mugshot for a 1994 cover of Time demonstrated post-production modifications. And in 2007, Newsweek deceptively captioned one of Balazs Gardi’s photographs from Afghanistan. A man holds a boy who was wounded during a U.S. airstrike, yet the magazine inaccurately implied that a suicide bomber caused the boy’s injuries. For each example, wall text described the “representation” vis-à-vis the “reality.”

Photographs have been altered over the course of the medium’s history, so why is this show important now? Altered Images framed the contemporary moment as one with a “crisis of credibility.” Kamber associates this crisis with a generational shift; he posits that younger photographers are more comfortable altering images with newer technologies and have not been taught about the problems of distributing altered images in documentary contexts. The exhibition, the BDC’s mission, and the organization’s array of classes and other programs attempt to combat this crisis.

If dodging and burning were acceptable ways to enhance earlier photographs, can a photographer use digital technologies to alter the light levels in the frame? Adjust the colors or contrast? Crop an image? BDC’s exhibition presented photographs that have been altered, most by unacceptable means or in ways that greatly impact the content of the images. But where to draw the line between acceptable enhancement and unacceptable alteration remains somewhat unclear as evidenced by the contradictions that arose from the exhibit.

For example, the back corner of the gallery contained video interviews with a range of experts. Charles Johnson, founder of the weblog Little Green Footballs, spotted and reported numerous cases of photo-manipulation in recent press photographs. In his interview, he chides Iran, North Korea, and Russia for using manipulated images as propaganda. He advises that, overall, we should trust “more reputable” periodicals like The New York Times and The Washington Post, sources that he claims would not deliberately publish altered images. But if he could have looked out from the screen that presented his talking head in the gallery, he would have seen the May 1, 2003, The New York Times hanging nearby. J. Scott Applewhite’s front-page “Mission Accomplished” image of George W. Bush shows that the U.S. government also choreographs photo opportunities, and a “reputable” source distributed this image. Such contradictions in the exhibition are productive. They force us to examine the bounds of our own acceptance of photographic alterations.

It is also worthwhile to note the exhibition’s uneven approach to physical objects. The gallery display presented some “original” images as they would have been distributed, such Time’s cover image of Simpson. Many other examples appeared as matted and framed color printouts. Because the exhibition focused on the alteration of photographs more than the images’ materiality, the inclusion of color copies did not deter from the show’s aims. Presenting various formats also allowed the BDC to create their own. A few examples hung in transparent layers; viewers could separate the alteration from the image’s original appearance. The BDC also posted an online version of the exhibition complete with images, exhibition text, and videos to continue the discussion beyond the end of the exhibit’s gallery run.

While Altered Images presents numerous alterations that have been deemed unacceptable within journalism, it also highlights the difficulty of defining what is allowable. There remains a place for constructed illustrations to impact public discourse, just as Stewart’s commentary shaped recent discussions. And photojournalists make many decisions about formal concerns that impact viewers’ understandings of what was in front of the camera. But we can thank the BDC for revealing a range of alterations to unknowing viewers and for raising questions about the manipulation of photographs, even if the judgment of “accuracy,” or the line between illustrative and documentary, may not be as clear as it sometimes should be.

Exhibit information:
Altered Images: 150 Years of Posed and Manipulated Documentary Photography
Bronx Documentary Center
20 June – 2 August 2015
Available online at: http://www.alteredimagesbdc.org/

Corey Dzenko earned her Ph.D. in the History of Photography from the University of New Mexico. Her research interests include the intersections of photography, performance, and new media; art as an agent of social change; and the ideologies of identity. She has presented in numerous national and international conferences, has published in sources including Afterimage: The Journal of Media and Cultural Criticism and the anthology Gravity in Art, and was a 2014 Visiting Fellow at the University of Nottingham. Currently, she is an Assistant Professor of Art History at Monmouth University in New Jersey.