SPACE FRAMED: PHOTOGRAPHY AND THE HUMAN HABITAT

Project Proposal

Michael Hayes

My proposal is to make a project concerned with contemporary patterns of habitation in the Irish landscape i.e. The housing estate.

During the course of this seminar I've found myself naturally drawn to the documentary style of Walker Evans and the survey-like work of Robert Adams. While it remains to be seen whether their approach to photography is appropriate to this project, I think it's a suitable starting point.

For me the housing estate is a subject that encompasses many of the topics we've already discussed such as the observation of the ordinary, the comparison of typologies, and man'scolonisation of the landscape. However, at this point, I'm probably most interested in capturing human occupancy at a smaller scale; how individuals' attempt to live within the boundaries handed to them, whether its just leaving a pair of shoes outside the front door or sitting on a garden wall having a chat.

In terms of presentation, I feel that a book/catalogue represents too unified an object given the subject matter. Therefore I propose (for now at least) that the final images will be presented as individual postcards on a typical, revolving newsagent's stand. There idea here would be that each image, though repeated many times, becomes an object itself which may transfer ownership from exhibition to audience and thereby leading to further fragmentation and decontextualisation.

Below are a series of preparatory images (taken from our studio project in cahir) that just show a number of different approaches to the subject and which might give a better idea of what I'm thinking of...

"The landscape is the place we live... we cannot therefore scan it without scanning ourselves."
- John Swarovski, introduction to The New West

Robert Adams work is focused on how the western landscapes of North America have been shaped by human influence. His photography takes a stance of apparent neutrality, refraining from any obvious judgement of the subject matter.

Adams' was a professor of English at the University of Colorado before taking up photography. This background is clear in the way he addressed the destruction of the western landscape and discussed some of the attitudinal shifts that would be necessary for its future preservation,"if we call places by names that are accurate, we may ultimately find it easier to live in them". In a similar fashion Adams photographs offer a lesson in the value of candor. His picture make fresh what we think we have seen and know. He rediscovers the known landscape and returns it to a state similar to that found in survey photographs: strange, unknown and unnamed.
Unlike typical survey publications though, Adams' pictures are not accompanied by diagrams or maps. However the minimal amount of text serves to underline the scientific and informational purity of the pictures themselves. Their seemingly prosaic, unpictorial character gives them the semblance of images made for the purpose of date alone.
Meanwhile, Adams skillfully and subtly plays with the would-be objective and seemingly non-selective character of survey photography and uses it to his own subjective ends. For example, the separation of title from image, and the image's consequent isolation allows for a symbolical representation of a much larger idea of the West rather than a limited geographical area. For Adams, space is a stage without a centre, and his lack of a singular, clearly established subject corresponds to the apparent infinity of western expansion.

Garry Winogrand

Garry is born in 1928 in New York city and died in 1984 in Mexico. He made his first rentable appearance in 1963 at an exhibition at the museum of Modern art in New York . He was influenced by Walker Evans and Robert Frank and theirs respective publications. American photographs and the American . His first book is the Animal in 1969 which is a collection of pictures where he observes the connection between Animal and human. These photographs capture the evolution of the 20th and 21th century phenomenon . He photographed incessantly , mostly on the street and publishing journalistic images in numerous magazines. The main subject in this book The man in the crowd in 1998 is the relationship between people each other and the town. For Garry the street is as an enigma, a theater where everything is possible and he photographed the men , women, unknowns people. Most people who walk through in a city ignore it but he said the absolute opposite and spent most of his walking like hunting down and fellow citizens watching , looking and photographing. The famous picture of Winogrand shows women on the bench where we can see different groups and affinity on the same bench . He recording here so spontaneous , complexity as the banality of the city life. Through his book he shows some people alone or not and at the end of the book he submits a work on the crowd. In the crowd , the affective life made legible in faces and bodies in motion. In this part of the book , we often see violent and political scenes. The variation in the crowd picture are, in fact, so strenuous, the poses of bodies in motion so dissimilar.

CANDIDA HÖFER

 

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Candida Höfer (*1944) is a german photographer.

From 1973 to 1982 she studied at the Academy of Arts in Düsseldorf.
First she was studying film and from 1976 photography under Bernd Becher.
Along with Thomas Ruff, also from the Becher-Class, she was one of the first of Bechers students who took color-photographs and showed her works as slide-projections.

In the beginning Candida Höfer photographed the Turkish Immigrant Workers in Germany at different places like shops, cafés and parks.

Later the people disappeared completely from her photographs.
Höfer began to take color-photographs of interiors of public buildings. First there were rooms like offices, banks or waiting rooms. Later she specialized in large format photographs of "empty" interiors and social spaces.

She has been really interested in representing public spaces such as museums, libraries, national archives of opera houses - devoid of all human presence. 
The presence of human beings has become ever more keenly manifest in her "empty" rooms, attested to by the absence of those for whom the interiors or exteriors were actually built.
Höfers photographs of public spaces are sober and ascetic in feel.
The atmosphere is disturbed by neither visitors nor users. There is a great silence in the pictures.Also the colors attract more attention.

Often the photographs present the significant work of famous architects but this seems to be not really important.

If you look to Höfers photographs maybe you can imagine a world without people. Maybe you can just see these "empty" rooms in another way and forget everything what actually happens in these rooms.

BERND & HILLA BECHER

Bernd Becher (*1931; +2007) and Hilla Becher (*1934) are an photographer couple from Germany.

They are really famous for their black&white photographs of framework houses and industrial buildings like watertowers, blast furnaces, gas tanks, winding towers etcetera.
Both oft them studied at the Academy of Arts in Düsseldorf from 1957 to 1961.
There they get to know each other and began to work together.

Bernd and Hilla Becher are two of the most influential visual artists of our time.
Since the beginning of the 1960s together they have documented industrial buildings all over the world  with unparalleled systematicness. This passion has resulted photographs that are documents of cultural and technological history from a vanishing industrial era.

The most interesting thing for the Bechers is the fact, that the architecture of these industrial buildings is totally dictated by the function.  
Once Hilla Becher said it is like "sacred architecture of technique".

For the Bechers it is also very interesting, how different the buildings are in different countries.
The buildings have got many small details and that is what the Bechers want to show with  their also very detailed and precise photographs.

Their famous work should not have any social critic, only the documentary work is important for them.

It's all about the different basic forms of these industrial buildings.
That is also the reason, why the Bechers decided to take only black&white photos.
Something like for example a blue sky would only distract.
The best conditions for there photographs were diffused light, as little shadow as possible an no bright sun.

To describe the great work of the Bechers maybe these words of Paul Klee would be right ones: "Art does not reproduce the visible rather it makes visible".

Joel Sternfeld

1. Wet n' Wild Aquatic Theme Park, Orlando, Florida, September 1980

2. After A Flash Flood, Rancho Mirage, California 1979

3. McLean, Virginia, December 1978

4. The Space Shuttle Columbia Lands at Kelly Air Force Base, San Antonio, Texas, March 1979

Joel Sternfeld is born in 1944 in New York city. he is a fine art color photographer noted for his large format documentary pictures of the United States.

He has influenced a generation of color photographers including Andreas Grusky who borrows many of his techniques. Indeed , for his pictures he used a 8*10 view camera to render detail and the distance also allows Sternfeld to put more information in this pictures.

He write some books , the first is American prospects in 1987 which he explores the irony of human altered landscape in the united states , to make this books he photographed ordinary things , including unsuccessful towns, landscape and people. By the title he might be referring both the America's future with the relationship between the human and industrial, agricultural landscape. We can see , with some example that the work of light and color is an important element of his photographs. Color is for Joel never arbitrary and it's to connect elements and resonate emotions. For him colors add another level of complexity and he always maintains a balance between shade of colors and loaded details. To make this work he choose the time of the day and the quality of light. Many of this photographs are taken in the suburb , rail , road , river way, factories , gas station, motels and old buildings appear in these pictures. It's interesting because all of his photographs have a title , sometimes some text.

The other of this book is On the site, landscape in memorial , which is about the violence in America where is photographed sites of recent tragedies. He studied and photographed also the social class and stereotypes in America.

This primary tools are : distance, color, disjunction and humor !

William Klein

Klein was born in 1928 in New York. His approach to photography was revolutionary and changed the way the photographic document was perceived. He describes his work as “in search of the straightest of straight documents, the rawest snapshot, the zero degree of photography”. Originally a painter he won his first camera in a card game. This casual approach to the medium was define his style as a photographer.

He was part of a Jewish immigrant family. His father lost his business in the 1928 crash. As a Jewish boy growing up in an Irish neighbourhood he experienced anti-semitism first hand and always felt alienated from mass culture. At the age of 14 he enrolled in college to study sociology. He then enrolled in the US army at 18 at was stationed in Germany and France as a radio operator. After the was he enrolled in the Sorbonne in Paris, here he studied painting under Fernard Leger. As a teacher Leger encouraged his students to revolt and reject conformity. Notably he said they should go out and work in the streets. When Klein returned to New York in 1954 he feel in love with the city. All the sights and sounds that he had forgotten or never seen suddenly inspired him. He set himself the challenge of photographing New York in a new way. As an american who had living abroad for 6 years he felt “oddly foreign”, and wished to capture the essence of New York in a photographic Diary.

The Book 'New York – (Life Is Good And Good For You In New York) was a scandal. His photos were blurred and out of focus. Just as important as the content of the book is its layout. “Like a movie I thought the book should be”. Pictures are cropped, pasted together and extend to the very edge of the page. This approach to bookmaking has influenced every photographer since. Vogue who commissioned the project saw it as crude, aggressive and vulgar – not the image they were trying to promote. The art world saw it a photographically incompetent. Klein earned the reputation as the “anti photographers photographer” for his rebellious approach. Having been received badly in America he to the book to France in search of a publisher. When finally they managed to get the book published it went on to win the Nadar prize.

“A technique of no taboos: blur, grain, contrast cock eyed framing, accidents”

Paul Seawright - Volunteer

Paul Seawright was in conversation with Professor Colin Graham at the Kerlin Gallery yesterday evening to open his exhibition Volunteer. 

Seawright discussed the project, both in the context of his own practice and methodologies and global politics. His interests lie in conflict and cities. This body of work addresses recruitment for the Afghanistan war across America. The photographs are taken at recruitment centre sites across America. 

Seawright spoke about how he researched and thought about this project for over a year before beginning any work on it. He discussed the long inception some projects have, and how some never make it to fruition. With this project, he was wondering how to address issues around American policy in relation to the war, and the resulting human cost, particularly in certain strata of American society. 

Navy Recruiting Centre, Post Office - Butte Montana. 1956 - Robert Frank

He talked about how, when teaching one day, he was showing his students Robert Frank's The Americans, this photograph (above) of a Navy recruitment center came up. He knew then how he would proceed with the project. He decided to document the recruitment centres, conscious of the often controversial recruitment techniques and short timeframe between recruitment and deployment to Afghanistan. His photographs never address the centres themselves, but look back into the surrounding territory, as though the viewer is looking through the eyes of one newly recruited. 

Untitled (UPS) from the Volunteer series, 2011, Lightjet mounted on aluminium, Framed with UV Plexi-Glass, Edition 1 of 6 +AP, 99 x 124 x 5cm framed - Paul Seawright

Seawright discussed how there are rarely people in the series as he thinks the viewer finds it harder to empathize when confronted directly with photographs of people. By putting the viewer firmly into the context in which recruitment takes place, Seawright enables some understanding of the predicament the recruited found themselves in.
Graham then linked this back to Seawright's much earlier Sectarian Murder Series made in Northern Ireland in 1988. In this he photographed sites of Sectarian murders in the 1970's, which also bring the viewer firmly into the situation.

Tuesday 30th January, 1973 from Sectarian Murder series, 1988 - Paul Seawright

Seawright then talked about how when photographing the American landscape, or indeed anywhere, he finds it really important to make authentic photographs, something that is voicing his concerns. When photographing the American landscape, he said he found it hard to ignore the resonances, both physical and theoretical, with New Topographics and Frank's What We Bought. He said that photographic references always come with him, and sometimes he makes deliberate references to  them, as when he took this photograph (below) in response to the Afghanistan war in 2002 for the Hidden series, commissioned by the Imperial War Museum in London.

Valley 2002 from the series Hidden, Collection Imperial War Museum - Paul Seawright

Valley of the Shadow of Death, 1855, Salt Print 10 7/8 x 13 3/4 in. - Roger Fenton

But Seawright emphasized that while photographic work is always about photography, he is not interested in his work being solely about photography.

He finds he works by bringing his own narrative to the places he works in, so his work is a response to the issue he is researching, not directly a response to the place. He mentioned Szarkowski when talking about photography as an editing process to support his narrative, to enable constructed meaning in the photograph.

Untitled (Hooters) from the Volunteer series, 2011, Lightjet print mounted on aluminium, Framed with UV Plexi-glass, edition 1 of 6 +AP, 99x124x5cm framed - Paul Seawright

Seawright discussed his Invisible Cities project in Nigeria, and he talked a little about how, inspired by Calvino's Invisible Cities, he sees cities as being made of small moments, connections and fleeting spatial relationships. 

Crossing, from the series Invisible Cities, 2005 - Paul Seawright

Seawright also talked about how his work is always personal, even when dealing with themes very far from his own personal experience. He described how in Calvino's Invisible Cities each of the multiple cities described by Marco Polo was always his own city, Venice.  In some way, Seawright feels he is always photographing Belfast and that a photographer is always photographing his or her own memories and thoughts. 

Stains, from the series Volunteer, 2011 - Paul Seawright

Paul Seawright at the Kerlin

Paul Seawright - at the Kerlin Gallery
25-Feb - 02 Apr 2011
Volunteer
Volunteer is a survey of sorts, landscapes from today's fraying, centreless post 9-11 North American cities. Each photograph has been made at the location of a military recruiting station, where a different battle is being fought - to find young men and women to volunteer for service in Afghanistan Made at the locations of military recruitment offices in 15 states including Texas, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, Arkansas, Kansas and Mississippi, these new works comment not just on the ongoing war and the battle to recruit new soldiers, but the contemporary North American city, a landscape littered with thrift stores, gun dealerships, strip malls and pawn shops.

Photographers discuss their work

Garry Winogrand



Stephen Shore


Robert Adams


William Klein

Week 4 - New Topographics

This week we will be looking at New Topographics, edited by Britt Salvesen. The essay in the book is particularly important.
We will then look at four photographers from the exhibition and their work in more detail:
Stephen Shore - Uncommon Places
Robert Adams - What we Bought
Louis Baltz - The new Industrial Parks near Irvine, California
Bernd & Hille Becher - Basic Forms of Industrial Buildings

Eugene Atget wasborn in Libourne, near Bordeaux, in 1857. Only at the age of 40 did he quit a rather unsuccessful career in acting and became a photographer. Little is known of his absolute intentions, though a lack of theorizing and experimentation might suggest that Atget saw little to value in his own workbeyond a commercial products sold to artists.

Atget's technological approach was outdated before he even began. He photographed Paris with a large format, wooden bellows camera with a rapid rectilinear lens. His photography, consequentially, is characterised by a wispy, drawn out sense of light due to long exposures; a fairly wide view that suggested space and ambiance more than surface detail; and an intentionally limited range of scenes.

Atget occupies a unique position in the history of photography, being claimed as the father of two diverging ideologies. One the one hand, he is presented as the forerunner for transparent, no frills, unpretentious photography. His work a recording of traditional French life on the old back streets of Paris before they were bulldozed by modernity. On the other, Atget is seen as the first Modernist photographer. His images of snatched glimpses, tangential perspectives, odd reflections and bizarre details providing the basis for Surrealism.

The truth maybe somewhere in between. Eugene Atget ought to be viewed as a hinge joining the 19th and 20th centuries. His work bridges the gap between photography as a transparent, almost anonymous record of reality and as an artistic construct practiced self-consciously and intentionally. His genius lies in this synthesis.