Assignment Five: Gurning

I had the wonderful opportunity to attend the Egremont Crab Fair last month and gained permission to photograph the World Gurning Championships. As mentioned in this post, I wanted to use this series of images for assignment five, a photo-essay.  Egremont Crab Fair is one of the World's oldest fairs, dating back to 1267. The fair is still characterised by its 800 year old traditions and heritage, with ancient events such as the Parade of the Crab Apple Cart, Climbing the Greasy Pole, Pig's Bladder Football and the famous World Gurning Championship. This exceptional fair attracts visitors from all over the world. 

'Gurning' is the art of contorting your facial expression. Framed by a horse's collar, contestants are judged on their relative transformation before and after pulling a face. The late champion Peter Jackman described it; 

Say you're oogly in the first place, and ya pull a gurn, an you don't look much different, well, just because you're oogly doesn't mean to say that ya win it. Because gurnin' means the Art of Pullin' Faces, not oogliness.

My intention was to make a collection of black and white portraits of each contestant, gurning and also, not gurning. I could then record the transformations taking place. This turned out to be impossible in all but the three placed males which I photographed backstage after the event.

I wanted to focus on the 'texture' of the gurn; contorted facial features, ungainly expressions and protruding lines which I felt wasn’t coming through in images I’d seen.  To address this, I decided a mono, low-key aesthetic would ‘bring-out’ this aspect of their faces and provide a framework for a consistent format. I found the work of Jane Bown and John Angerson's 'Last Man Smoking' an exemplar for the aesthetic I wished to adopt. However, I was aware that to be too prescriptive I was in danger of not allowing the event to show its' own magic. In addition, low-light conditions and the unpredictable nature of the event would demand my flexibility. I had been warned to 'expect the unexpected' and justifiably so, it was one of the most extraordinary evenings I have ever attended!  

The images are neither manipulated nor orchestrated. In this sense they could be considered as newsworthy as any other. Arguably less objective was how I executed it.  I had considered the aesthetic and technical aspects well in advance. I knew how I wanted the images to look but did not know if this was practicable. I experimented with settings at home and ultimately used manual settings; direct flash to ‘counteract’ the stage lighting, light the face and recede the background; and underexposed it a touch to avoid glare.  I used the same settings for all the gurning portraits.  I have chosen to present a typological series, with thumbnails of each gurner to enhance the humourous and peculiarity of the event. The purpose of this assignment I have produced a mock-up which follows at the bottom of this post.

Tommy Mattinson (below) won for the 13th time. Anne Woods, sadly retired after winning 28 times. The new champ is Claire Moffat.  I'm happy with how the images turned out.

The 2011 World Gurning Champion

Women's Champion: Claire Moffat

Previous winner Anne Woods

Publication Mock-up

Planning for Assignment Five

You may already have heard of the Egremont Crab Fair or if not, I'm sure you'll have heard about or seen pictures of the gurners.  Well, I am intrigued, this seems to be no ordinary country fair. The first one was held in 1267...it is one of the World's oldest fairs and has a number of very ancient events too such as the 'greasy pole' climb and the parade of the crab apple cart. But probably its most famous event is the World Gurning Championships. The fair and its unusual events sound beautifully eccentric to me, in a very quirky British way. So I have asked permission to photograph the gurners.

I'm hoping not to tempt providence here, but the plan is this, I would like to take a black and white portrait of each gurner, gurning and another of each gurner, not gurning, preferably head-on with eye-contact, although I'm not sure how feasible this will be. I have seen images by Jane Bown and this image by John Angerson that I particularly like. The event goes on well in to the night so light conditions will be extremely challenging and I know my camera is deficient in such conditions.  However, I do have a couple of relatively fast lenses and I do have an excellent speedlight flash which I have complete confidence in.  So there you have it....it takes place in just under a month...so in the meantime I've time to practice shooting in low-light conditions. My attention will turn to finalising the assessment stuff such as tweaking my critical review which I should have done months ago, fine tuning my images for assessment and forging forward with the portfolio. I will write a separate post on the portfolio soon. An essential element of assignment five (which incidently is to create a photo-essay) is the planning. The idea is this:

PLANNING DETAILS

Location: Egremont Crab Fair
Date: 17 September 2011

Event: World Gurning Championship

Permissions: no unauthorised photography. Have written and been given authorisation 

Concept: a series of straight faced competitors and a series of gurning competitors

Aesthetic: to be black and white, and ideally I would like to go for low key, wanting to avoid distractions behind or different colour lights. See my practice shot below (my husband will not thank me for this!!). I think mono will draw out the lines, tensions and features of the faces when gurning. This was taken with flash -2/3, shutter speed 1/2000 and F3.  I really do not want these images to be blurred.

Concerns: I have no control or idea what the lighting will be like.  It is indoors and I suspect relatively dark. But I am anxious about this. To get a low key image may therefore be impossible. However I would like ideally to make an A2 poster with all the gurners, a bit like the one below. Again, sorry hubby!!

  

And then a similar poster with the faces straight. Again, whilst I have been given permission, I'm not sure whether it will be feasible getting the straight faced photos. I suspect I'll be photographing what happens rather than staged portraits. So will have to play this one by year.

Assignment Five: The Plan

Well, for November assessment, I need to have everything tied up by the beginning of October ideally, to ensure this assignment, plus the portfolio have been viewed by my tutor and then his comments incorporated in time.  I want to put this course to bed so, funds allowing, I can start a new module in January...that's the plan!!

I have, in this blog, hinted at all sorts of different ideas and projects in the past...and for a variety of reasons...they haven't all come to fruition...like me failing to continue with the spn project in a phase of despondency and how an interview I was hoping to have with an artist from Skipsea for my portfolio failed to materialise... I worry about stating my future plans just in case they come to nothing. But then, that is sort of the purpose of this blog...

To bring you up to speed, for this assignment I can think of the landscape/personality idea, the holga idea and more recently and not posted on here are the market, beach, holiday/nature themed projects I tried whilst away. Well, I haven't worked out how to photograph the landscape/personality idea yet, the holga idea is quite an undertaking and won't be ready to submit for October and didn't really fit the brief anyway, then the market and beach ideas I tried and abandoned. Finally the holiday/nature project was based on the concept of va.ca.tion - the desire to vacate our home and our need to control and manage our 'vacated-to' home and the battle thereof between man and nature. I have a set I could submit for assignment five which I kind of like but probably won't submit now.  I explain why further down this post.

What do you do with the sets you don't submit?  I'm not sure...do they just sit on your hard drive until you forget about them?...mine tend to! Anyway, I've posted below the unrefined va.ca.tion set. Entitled va.ca.tion as firstly a derivative of vacation is used in many languages and to have the phonic version emphasises the definition of the word too. I quite liked the postcard idea, like Martin Parr, as a way of emphasising the disparity between the idyllic postcard scenes we're accustomed to seeing, and the reality.

I do like this set, however, I suspect this will probably become my back up set as there is something else I really wish to do and have just gained permission to do, yay! I was going to allude to it here, but have hesitated, just in case for whatever reason it doesn't come off.  It is a simple idea that will entail making a series of black and white portraits at an event, much closer to home. Assignment five requires an objective approach without 'an angle' which I suspect will fit this idea better than the more 'subjective' va.ca.tion idea. Apologies for my caution but I really want it to work and don't want to tempt providence. By late September I'll hopefully be able to share the results...