Assignment Two Update

In my last update I mentioned two approaches for assignments two (and three). The first was Easdale Island and the second was Home.

i. Easdale Island

So, this is a small selection from our week in Easdale...a fascinating island which if you're interested here is a link...no cars, streetlights or roads...wheelbarrows are the mode of transport!! So, I have a set of fairly nice images. But 'nice' is boring. I'm asking myself 'so what?' 'why bother?' 'what did I learn from taking these?'  There is no interesting narrative or intention behind them. They're sadly cosmetic and shallow!! How could this series inform my practice? In my view it doesn't. So I won't be submitting these for assignment, I don't want to waste my tutor's time advising me how to improve on a series of essentially holiday images that I have no interest in developing or reproducing. I tried...

ii. Home

This was the series I envisaged having more scope for development. An early setback was the lady I was hoping to speak with, the dweller who has lived in the village the longest has health issues and has been unavailable. Without her, my knowledge is limited. I'm not in a position to force this issue.  In addition the symbiosis of landscape/place/inhabitants both historical and how to present this in a photograph is still unresolved in my head. So for the time being, I'm not in a position to pursue this, but it may be something I come back to.

Thoughts on assignment two (and three)

This was supposed to be a succinct post of my intended work schedule for assignment two.  It has turned in to an unwieldy rambling about 'place' for which I apologize. Nevertheless, if you bear with me, I feel it is worthy of sharing.

So for assignment two (one acre) I have two ideas, both of which I'll carry out and decide after the event which I will submit.

i. Easdale Island in Scotland.

Now I am aware of the danger of doing an assignment on holiday and the inherent dangers of coming back with a reel full of cliched holiday snaps.  However, for two reasons I will go ahead anyway:

• I cannot currently take a picture in the Lakes without asking myself why I am taking it and what I am wishing to convey.  And that can weigh heavy sometimes.
• I want to take photos of an area that I 'feel' rather than 'think' about, without feeling obliged to delve too deeply or think too much about or feel too involved with. Parachute journalism I think they call it.  This will be my stab at it.

ii. Home.

I have mentioned the pitfalls of the above approach and I will be carrying out a local project too that will extend beyond the remit of assignments two (one acre) and three (a linking theme) but will be used to feed them.  

Compared to the 'Domestic Sublime' concept, it will be with a more 'objective' hand that I approach this project. It will be carried out, as qualitative research, to gain a better understanding of the social and cultural relevance of living within a sublime landscape, but right on my doorstep...here in my village...and with people who live in my midst...maybe this will help inform me as to how to 'see' beyond the beauty of the Lakes. Rather than my own point of view (which essentially is what the Domestic Sublime project is), this is seeking out the views of others and exploring their relationship with where they live.

I will be looking at three aspects in particular:

• the relationship that local residents have with the landscape in which they live
• the notion of 'place' and the significance of place(s) on its people
• the concept of 'time'/historic context of the landscape 

I have been thinking about the concept of 'Place' a bit recently after reading the book with the same title by Tacita Dean and Jeremy Millar.  And the definition of place is indeed hard to define but actually quite an important consideration, when it comes to inhabited landscapes, as 'place' can have greater connotations than the 'landscape'. Take these insights from the aforesaid book.

A landscape is the land transformed, whether through the physical act of inhabitation or enclosure, clearance or cultivation or through human perception.

Certainly place is something more often sensed than understood, an indistinct region of awareness rather than something clearly defined. 'Place' has no fixed identity, as places themselves do not...

Place is thus space in which the process of remembrance continues to activate the past as something which, to quote the philosopher Henri Bergson, is 'lived and acted, rather than represented'.

It is interesting to consider, for example, how many important historical events are now known simply by the name of the place in which they occurred - Hiroshima, Auschwitz, Chernobyl - although despite this, the place does not assume a dominance over the event but seems, instead, to give itself over to it wholly, as though the place can now mean little else.

This last extract struck me in particular.  When is 'landscape' a place? And so what becomes of those places not 'giving themselves over to a particular event'?

Relating to this, I've recently just finished a novel, Year of Wonders by Geraldine Brooks.  It is centred on the village of Eyam in the Peak District, and is based on factual accounts of the Bubonic Plague in 1666.  It only occurred to me after I finished reading it why I had had a dark cloud hanging over me the past few days...blessed are we now for antibiotics.

Without going in to too much detail the story begins with a piece of cloth and its delivery from London to a tailor in Eyam. It arrived flea-ridden and damp. It was warmed through in front of a fire, alighting the infected fleas that sought food on unwitting humans instead of rats. Carriers of the plague, the first death in the tailor came a week later, followed by neighbours in ones and twos, and then later in their scores. The villagers, under the guidance of the rector, make the brave decision to isolate the village, to stop the disease spreading yet further. Only two abscond after the pact is made. Indeed, this decision did contain the death toll to the village. The Plague Village remained isolated for over a year during which time 260 of 350 inhabitants died, their self-imposed quarantine, will have saved many more lives.  It is a harrowing tale.

Anyway, it made me think about 'place' and you will see if you google 'plague village' it is Eyam that fills the search engine. Eyam is indeed synonymous with this one event. The sacrifices the villagers made nearly 350 years ago is almost entirely unique and remains of great significance to this day.  On the the plague village website it reads:

Most stories of Eyam revolve around the plague that so badly affected the village but there's more to Eyam than just the tragic story of death.

And one suspects that this one event is such a fundamental part of its heritage that it will dominate and influence its future for evermore. Interestingly George May writes that

...some of the villagers who were in contact with those who caught the plague but did not catch it themselves was because they had a chromosome which gave them protection.  This same chromosome has been shown to still exist in those who are direct descendants of those who survived the plague, and are still living in the village at the present time. 

History can feel detached from us as it alludes to times and events that are incomprehensible to imagine. Yet we are all characters in the book of history, our chapter is currently being written.  The set or place in which we perform is intrinsically part of who we are, as it was our ancestors before us, and this social aspect of landscape I find bewildering.

And so turning my attention to the village in which I live and have lived for a short five years...an offcomer for sure. There has been no 'event' such as the Plague to calcify the character of my village. Nor would we want it to...the neighbouring village of Lamplugh, is testament to this. However, there are a good number of residents who have lived here for a life-time and it does have a rich seam of history, as every village everywhere will have and therefore worthy of exploration.  I know such studies have been carried out on sites of historic importance such as the Aushwitz work of Ori Gersht. However the study of my village will lack the prefundity for sure.  

I feel inspired to talk to some of the village's longest-standing residents and identify those places that hold a common historical resonance and personal significance. Time is always against such tasks as the eldest with most knowledge take with them the history too.  

It will involve me pursuing two lines of enquiry:

• the landscapes of significance, past and present (assignment two). 
• portraits of some of the existing residents (assignment three)

So this will be where my focus lies for the next six months or so...domestic sublime will be considered concurrently and I am hoping by carrying out this piece of work it will inform the other.

Oh, and yes, it's all going to done on the large format...hopefully!!

Barbed

So, 'Barbed' provides a happy distraction from the Domestic Sublime series, but is sort of connected too. It is something I've been meaning to progress for a little while. I had intended to pursue it on the large format camera. But realised the clarity is less important with this series because of the short depth of field and I wanted to test the concept anyway.

As with any new project, it's difficult to get a sense of how you feel about it early on.  I have enjoyed putting it together because it has lifted me out of self-made 'stalemate'. But I can see it might have its own merits too.

The Concept
The project is called 'barbed' and as you might have guessed from the image, it focusses on barbed wire...I liked the idea of something so 'evil' as barbed wire being photographed in such a way that it transforms it in to something more beautiful and interesting, and perhaps even bestow it with some anthropomorphic qualities...taking the lens' gaze away from the Lakeland landscape. Ha, managed it, by hook or by crook...

The idea was borne out of recent turbulence arising from my attendance of, and outfall thereof, the Roger Ballen masterclass. It is the concept of 'simplicity' that was sent home with me, bleating loudly out of my rucksack! Out of sheer badness, I think I chose something as boring as a wire fence which I thought I couldn't possibly complicate...but the idea kind of grew on me.

So from the moment of composing the image, to cropping and post-processing, this mantra, Keep It Simple, played in my mind...refine and minimise...and so I have taken a methodical and systematic approach to my photography...deciding what goes in each image, what doesn't and why to both.

Depending on how the idea matures, I may pursue this for assignment three (linking theme).

Technical and Aesthetic Decisions

After trying a variety of formats, I have finally settled on a square format. I'm not sure if this is because of the angularity of wire fencing and the symmetry/asymmetry it highlights, or how I have composed the images, but whatever the reason, it just seemed to work better.  

The short depth of field was selected to draw attention to the wire and not the backdrop. I tried both colour and monochrome but given the receding colour of the wire and dominant colours of meadows and lush countryside behind I decided to retain focus on the wire by desaturating. How I have composed the image is I suppose the newest addition to my approach.  I have been systematic and disciplined as to where in the image the barbed wire sits and have been consistent throughout, creating a typological series I suppose. To make the wire a stable or constant in the image I think highlights fascinating 'characteristics' in each wire. Anyway, you kind of get my drift.

The Video
This is my first 'public' video, well, film of still images.  It is a trial really to see how it works. There is a problem with the quality in some of the dark areas that seem to be distorting.  The image files are fine but when I import in to imovie it does it. I'm not sure if I can get around this or not. Again, you'll hopefully get what I'm trying to achieve.


Barbed from marmalade on Vimeo.