Gallery Visit: Thomas Ruff

As the old saying goes it never rains but it pours. In a post a few weeks ago I lamented that I did not spend enough time looking at other photographers work, well in the past two weeks I have now been to 3 major exhibitions and seen a wide variety of stunning work.  This weekend, though, was the strange one.  At MOMA and the ICP the photography on display was both historically important and frequently aesthetically beautiful, but could always be easily described as photography.  The Thomas Ruff exhibit at the Haus der Kunst was something else entirely.  Although I am sure that Ruff would agree that he is a photographer, I think a better description would be "Digital Artist Working in the Medium of Photography".  This exhibit presented photography in entirely new ways, some wonderful, others banal, even shocking.

Thomas Ruff is yet another graduate of the Dusseldorf school and student of the Bechers, a group of photographers that seem to be becoming central to my study of photography.  Living in Germany, these are the superstars that get the wall space in the local galleries.  Ruff takes yet another direction in his work, but once again set alongside the work of Struth, Gursky and Hofer, as well as that of the Bechers, certain traits are all too familiar.  There is a visible detachment from reality in much of the work, early photographs in particular are very devoid of emotion, they are stark records of the past. And, of course, the sheer size of most of the photographs on display, I can only guess that someone in Dusseldorf was on very good terms with an industrial printer.

However, Ruff has clearly taken the medium of photography further and in more different directions than his contemporaries.  This exhibit was divided into about a dozen separately themed rooms covering his work from 1978 through to the present day.  Whilst Ruff is clearly a talented photographer, it is what he does to photographs that clearly marks his work apart.  On first entering the exhibit the first room is dominated by simply huge photographs showing details of the Martian landscape, clearly taken from orbit.  Ruff has appropriated these freely available NASA images and turned them into a mysterious art form.  He has taken a series of planar B&W images, then added perspective and colour to produce a sense of a topographical landscape.

This theme of taking a pre-existing photograph and processing in new and strange ways is a hallmark of Ruff's work.  One room was filled with strongly pornographic images downloaded from the web and then softened in software until the structure of the images is virtually obscured, maybe a comment on the overuse of such images.  In any case a special warning was preserved for this room, although it was visible from all the rooms around it.  I get the idea, but still think it is tacky.  A far more impressive use of this technology was in his series of jpegs of often famous sites or iconic images.  Each was broken down into square blocks of pixels, close up impossible to see as anything other than an abstraction, but changing as you moved further away.  The gallery was large and it was possible to get up to 100 feet from some of the images at which point they looked normal.  This I think was a fascinating study of how we see images and convert chaos into information.  It was also a good antidote to the crowd currently grumbling that the new Canon has only 22MP, not 38 like the new Nikon.  In these photos the Pixels were half a centimeter across, but still the images were wonderful.

The other aspect of his work that I came to see were the portraits, photographs that I most readily associate with Ruff:

Again they were presented at monumental size.  Asking his subjects to present themselves without any emotion, these are unusual portraits that say more about the structure of a face than the human it occupies.  I think he succeeded in his goal of making a portrait that spoke as a photograph rather than as a person. He believes that a photograph is simply a surface that it is not a capture of a person, this neutral expression reinforces that philosophy.

Throughout the exhibit the sense was of an artist looking for ways to project his own personality and way of seeing through the medium of the modern photograph, irrespective of where the photograph originated.  Each room expressed this feeling in different ways.  I can quite honestly say that I did not particularly like much of what I saw, I was impressed but not moved.  However, more than any other exhibition I have been to this one has opened my eyes to the possibilities of photography and the fact that it is not the finger on the shutter that matters it is the mind behind the final concept that defines the ultimate success or failure of the work as a piece of art.

Gallery Visit: The International Center for Photography & Weegee

I have to admit that I did not do my homework very well before arriving in New York, I came across this gallery simply by walking past it and then with great surprise found they were holding a WeeGee exhibition.  New York bliss!

This gallery contrasted sharply to MOMA, here photography was everything, .  The $10 entry was also a bargain compared to MOMA's $25, although clearly the scope was far narrower.

The gallery featured a major exhibit and several smaller ones dedicated to individual artists or themes.  In an area upstairs from the underground primary gallery space 3 photographers exhibited small collections.  Each was very much in the modern style of presentation, i.e.really BIG prints.  I suspect the Germans have much to answer for here (later today I am off to the Thomas Ruff exhibit in Munich)! This was a particular contrast for me when comparing to MOMA.  Most prints in MOMA were at best 30cm across, but offered a much more personal interaction than these huge modern prints.  These smaller prints drew me in to look at them, the larger prints pushed me away.  There is clearly an ongoing trend towards bigger is better in the art photography world.  I am not convinced this is a good thing.  I am beginning to think that my A3 prints are a good compromise between past and present practice.

Of the three photographers on display, Greg Girard's study of US military housing and base facilities caught our interest.  My wife grew up at a US base in Germany, going to school and working in and around the US military.  As a result these images were able to make a personal connection that others failed to achieve.  Much of the impact of modern photography is in the connection between viewer and artist.

However, the main event was the WeeGee exhibit.  Arthur Fellig, the Squeegee man who became one of New Yorks most celebrated photographers.  This was an excellent exhibit, combining his photographs with the sounds of the between war city and including artifacts from his life: his hat, his Speed Graphic, a reconstruction of the bed and desk he lived at in his darkroom.  Heidi chatted with one of the staff and they mentioned that the opening of the exhibit was delayed as far more material arrived for exhibit than they expected.  WeeGee was a feature of the city, people wanted to contribute to this celebration of his life and work.

WeeGee created a record of the social climate of New York, a landscape of crime, hedonism and poverty.  Although most famous for his lurid flash lit photographs of blood spattered corpses, car wrecks or fires, he also turned his camera on the people of the city capturing their reaction to these events.  Faces stretch into the frame, a mixture of excitement and terror, these photographs bring you into the crime ridden world of prohibition era New York

The above photo captures this time, kids jostle and fight at the scene of a murder, people laugh and smile.  This is an event, a catastrophe for a few, but street theater for the many.  It brings to mind the public hangings of the 17th and 18th centuries.  Supplying the tabloids it might be argued that WeeGee was an early paparazzi, I do not see him this way, he was a social documentarian, making his living capturing the horror of crime, but always turning his camera to the ordinary people of the city.  

The exhibit captured this diversity, including his shots of Coney Island holiday crowds and the theater goers of Manhatten.  This was a record of a man in love with the thrill of photography and the people of his city.

Photographer: Alfred Stieglitz New York by Bonnie Yochelson

Two years ago when I started with the OCA I began reading a number of histories or reviews of photography, encountering a great number of different photographers, whose names were completely new to me.  One photographer caught my attention , someone very firmly on a pedestal and a key influence in the development of photography as an art form rather than a mere reproduction technique.  This man was Alfred Stieglitz!  His impact on the world of art extended beyond photography as he was also instrumental in introducing many modern artists to the USA, including Picasso.

In a weeks time a major retorspective of Georgia O'Keeffe will visit Munich.  O'Keeffe was Stieglitz's second wife and some of his photographs, together with those of Paul Strand and Ansel Adams will accompany the exhibition.  Anticipation of this exhibition led me to reconsider Stieglitz and in particular a book I purchased a year ago that collects together photographs of New York.  Stieglitz grew up in New York, apart from a brief sojourn in Germany to further his education, taking many photographs during his time there.  He initially set out to perform a very systematic study of the city building towards a broad portfolio of images, however, this never really came to pass and his city photography progressed in a series of stops and starts.

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The book looks at three distinct phases in his photography of the city.  The first relates to his initial leaning towards the Pictorialists, photographs that have much of the atmosphere of painted work, in a sense an attempt to show that photography could be as much an art form.  These photographs form a fascinating record of turn of the century New York often captured in the freezing fog of winter.  The second section dwells on a modern fascination, the juxtaposition of old and new, back in the 1910's this was the growing city backdrop of skyscrapers against the aging low storied buildings they were replacing.  Stylistically there is no great change that I detect between these two stages.  It is in the final set of photographs, taken between 1930-37 and through the windows of his apartment or studio, where a significant difference can be seen in composition and subject.  He is clearly influenced by exposure to the cubist movement, something his New York gallery did much to promote.  The photographs capture the array of boxlike forms of buildings piled one atop another.  By varying the focal length he was able to shoot the same view over again, but with dramatically different impact.  These photographs represent the city as an almost abstract place, early morning absenting human activity from the images.  There is a stark formalism to the photographs, but also a personal element, these are the views Stieglitz woke to every day.  It is this attachment of art to person that makes these photographs special to me.

As my ongoing exploration of the Landscape of Munich continues, Stieglitz's different responses to his city fascinate me. From a very soft almost romantic view, to the hard edged realism of the skyscrapers, these photographs chart Stieglitz's transformation from a pictorialist to the father of modernist photography.  I find myself bouncing between these extremes, with the study of the park driving a soft view of the world, contrasting with the very sharply defined study of the Synagogue.  Where Stieglitz spent hours contemplating a single shot, I rattle off dozens of electronic captures, shifting electrons from one place to another.  I do wonder if anyone looking back on my photography in 100 years time would be able to discern any form of style from my current work, but then perhaps that is the nature of a student versus a great artist.

The book contains an excellent short biography of Stieglitz, looking at how his galleries, friends and loves, influenced his relationship with New York.  However, this story also contains a little technical nugget that made me smile.  There is a never ending debate about getting a photograph right in the camera versus capturing a scene and making compositional decisions later on with a cropping tool.  The purists generally refer back to the golden age of film, when it had to be right in the camera.  TOSH (Technical term for I disagree).  The first 3 plates in the book show 3 separate prints from the same negative, the first printed in 1907, the final one in the 20s or 30s.  The first print was portrait format, the final landscape.  The first clearly used half of the available negative, yielding a dramatic picture of a coach and horses driving through heavy snow.  The later image provided much more information about where the shot was taken and peripheral figures removed from the initial print.  I learn two things from this; cropping is a legitimate process clearly practiced by even the elite of photography, but most importantly that a photograph exists in its time, returning to it 20 years later might result in a very different desired end point that that which existed when it was taken.  A photograph once presented to the public carries inside it the intent of the artist, it is always a personal statement.  This statement is read in different ways by the viewer, but significantly the artist can revisit that work and modify the statement.

Photographer: Robert Misrach

Whilst pulling together the final images for Assignment 3 I was conscious of the fact that I had accumulated a series of photographs of the early morning sky.  These did not sit well alongside the images I was developing for the book or for the final assignment set, however, they interested me and were an important representation of the experience of early morning light in the Englischer Garten.  Part of what inspired me to turn my camera upwards is a uniquely beautiful volume of photographs by Robert Misrach, entitled "The Sky Book".

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This is a very special book, both for the photography, but for the place it has in my heart.  My father died 4 years ago, too early at the age of 67, from a post operative infection during a procedure that cured him of cancer, but also of life.  He fought the infection for 6 months, during which time he seemed to recede from the intellectually robust argumentative retired particle physicist that I remember, into a shadow.  During this time he kept this book close, there was something in Misrach's photos of infinity that provided comfort and perhaps a place in the grand scheme of things. After he died my mother gave me the book and I have treasured it ever since.  It is a little battered, clearly a book that has been read and not simply looked at.

As I worked towards the final group of images for the assignment, I found myself drawn to this volume over again.  Misrach images the sky in all its glory, but in the caption for the photographs refers to the location for the photo, the only clue in the colour studies that a ground was present.  These are pure studies of colour and sky.  The only time that solid matter enters the images is through the presence of planets or stars in long exposure star-trail images.  I suspect it was these photographs that drew my father, he was a long time amateur astronomer and his ashes can be found in the garden beneath the spot his telescope once stood.  For me, though it is the sky images that draw, the subtle colour gradations of twilight and the fierce orange glow of sunset.  Individually the photographs might be considered banal, another snap of a sunset, oh wow!  Together they resonate and build upon each other into a astonishing array of natural colour.  In fact at times it is hard to accept that they are photographs, they abstract into paintings of pure light and colour.

In my Transient Light study, I have almost always tried to bring the camera down, to look at how the light from the sky is interacting with the ground mist and water.  I frequently crop to eliminate the tops of trees and thus the sky, pushing the viewer into the photograph.  In a sense I am attempting the opposite of what Misrach is doing.  He eliminates trace of the ground to contemplate the origin of light; I have eliminated the sky to bring focus to the destination of the light.

However, I did not keep my camera pointed downwards, the sky pulled me to look up.  My own efforts at imaging the sky seem rather futile in comparison, but, I start somewhere.  Following is a montage of 20 photographs of the sky captured during my time in the park.  Unlike Misrach I have mostly anchored the photographs in the silhouette of the trees in the park.  

Although there is far less variety of image, and cloud is a key element of my photographs, I was surprised when pulling this set together at the variety of colour and form in the sky.  Planes make a significant presence, perhaps tying the images back to the city and humanity that frame the park.

I plan to continue my study of this small section of park, expanding the original idea of studying the mist into a broader study that brings in additional elements to the work, currently:

• Sky - further this study of the dawn sky
• Water - reflections and patterns
• Mist - Transient Light as it currently stands
• Trees - expand the inclusion of the trees
• City - extend to include the buildings fringing the park
• Park - broader landscape images
• People - imagery that captures people

I will keep the attention on the dawn, all photos will be in that short span either side of the physical sun rise in the park.

Photographer: Joel Meyerowitz

18 months ago, I blogged about Joel Meyerowitz whilst studying for my People and Place course.

http://sclarke-people-and-place.blogspot.com/2010/08/recent-reading_13.html

At this time I was very interested in social documentary and street photography, reacting to artists such as Shore, Parr, Winogrand, and Meyerowitz, trying to understand their style, technique and to a degree their motivation.  The volume of Meyerowitz's work I had to hand was a Phaidon retrospective consideration of his complete portfolio and at the time I found it fascinating how someone could step from the hustle and bustle of New York street photography into the calm considered use of an 8 x 10 view camera.  There exists a stark contrast between the complex yet momentary coming together of shape and colour that gives rise to a successful street capture versus the simple yet timelessness of his Cape Light photographs.

My surprise at this juxtaposition in his work, hints at the naivety of a newcomer to photography and the modern desire to pigeon hole anything and everything.  We want our musicians to belong to a genre and stay there, we divide art into modern or classical, we are horrified when someone moves from Rugby League to Union - in each case there is a sense of betrayal when someone steps across a cultural boundary.  In the process of studying for this degree we are encouraged to find a personal voice or style.  We eulogize those photographers whose work can be identified by personal style rather than needing an identifying label.  The inherent risk is that we pigeon hole ourselves and then find it hard to climb out of our self dug hole.

The camera is an astonishingly versatile and yet simple tool, it captures light rays and processes them onto a flat film or sensor.  We can discuss the relative merits of different films or digital platforms, and how these contribute to artistic personality, however, it is very much what we point the camera at that creates the "style".  When I started this course I was completely committed to an urban interpretation of "Landscape", eschewing the romantic idyll of the countryside for the angular environs of the city.  This was a noble ambition, but ultimately a tiring one. I quickly developed a need to explore soft as well as hard, to understand how tone rather than shape informs a photograph.  To this end I embarked on a personal project to document the early morning light in a park, still inside the city, but not urban - not countryside either.  That this has now grown into the foundations of my 3rd assignment, suggests that I was wrong to set limits on my development or visual "style".  My subject is still the city; this is driven as much by access as desire, I am here, the city is here, I do not need to travel distances to create photographs.  What has changed is how I interpret my world and in particular a loosening of the constraints on what and how I shoot.

Which brings me back to Joel Meyerowitz and my personal reading of his work.  He spans two worlds, the urban congestion of New York and the serenity of the the Cape.  And most likely many others, however, it is these two that interest me.  The excitement of his street work captured my imagination a year ago, now it is his sensitive interpretation of colours that guides me.  In his street work the driving compositional element is form, he is looking to capture moments in time when forms coalesce into a unique visually exciting pattern.  In Cape Light Meyerowitz simply considers the texture of colour. Time and shape have little meaning.  He has stepped into a completely different photographic world, from 35mm to 8x10, from 1/1000s to 10s, from contrast to harmony.  This is what brought me back to considering his work; he achieved in Cape Light what I have been seeking in my Transient Light study, to step away from shape into a consideration driven by tone and

What most impresses me about the photographs is their complex tonality, each time I look at them I seem to see deeper into the photographs.  There is an ebb and flow about them that reflects the sea that is often the subject.  In almost every photograph humanity is present, either directly or through the presence of their constructs, however, the photos never seem to be about a place or a person - each is a study of colour and light.  As an example, in many photos he uses a porch as the setting looking out to sea, I notice that in each the white frame of the wood serves to bring an extra tone into the photograph, reflecting the setting sun or adding a hard whiteness to the scene.  The two photographs that best capture what I believe to be his intent are in plates 41 and 42, almost identical and very simple images of a skylight, but each capturing a very different quality of light as it enters the room.  Even in those photographs where a strong form is present, such as the first plate showing interior rooms and doors, the overwhelming impression is one of overlapping shades of colour harmonizing in a soft light.

This is a very emotional set of photographs, a very personal take on a special landscape.  I relate to it because this is what I am currently trying to build - a set of photographs that capture my personal take on a place special to me and to others.  I find that the relationship of colour and texture in the images is more important than the placement of objects in the frame, although my current work does have a deliberate topological context.  His work gives me confidence and inspiration.

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The question now is still how to bring my personal world of colour and light into a form that will meet the specifications of the course.

Photographer: Michael Wolf

I first came across Michael Wolf in a compendium of photographers work published alongside the 3rd Prix Pictet in 2010.

The competition requested work looking at the theme of growth, predominantly being answered in the context of global development and its impact upon the planet and it's inhabitants.  Among the photographers nominated or shortlisted for the prize and thus included in the book, was the winner Mitch Epstein with his series "American Power", investigating the addiction of Americans to power and the hold it has over them.  Thomas Struth also featured with his Paradise series, as did Chris Jordan with his shocking series of images of decaying corpses of albatross chicks, their bodies full of plastic debris mistakenly fed to them.  However, the stand out for me, visually at least, if not politically, was a series of photographs by Michael Wolf of high density housing in Hong Kong.  I immediately ordered the volume from which this entry was taken

This was a definite case of not being quite sure what I had ordered, when it arrived there were 2 volumes, not 1, in a semi-transparent slip case, a fabulous package and now a very treasured possession.  The two volumes were labeled "Hong Kong Outside" and "Hong Kong Inside".  The former was a series of photographs of the external walls of vast high-rise housing developments, investigating the colour and form of these frankly terrifying places to live.  None of the photographs show either the sky or the ground, the buildings seem limitless.  The sense of infinity is further enhanced by the repetition of 102 images.  Although very similar, each is also quite different, the detail pulls the eye across the frame, looking into windows or at cloths hanging on frames.  The power here comes from the control of the frame and the use of repeating, but occasionally broken symmetry.

However, the first volume is the easy part, the second volume is a portrayal of comfort and horror, often contained in the same frame.  From outside he turned inward; 100 photographs of individual apartments, each no more than 120 square feet in size.  Every photo is taken from a very similar angle (no window or door is visible) and each reveals the inhabitant sitting within their tiny space.  Opposite each page is a brief description of age, profession, and why they like to live there.  At first it is quite shocking to see people in such small spaces, crowded with their possessions and furniture.  However, as I stepped through the book, I started to look at the details, photos on walls, small decorations, food they have just bought.  My gaze was pulled into each photograph and each demanded to be read, to delve into these peoples lives.  After a time, realization dawns that for most of these people this is not hell, it a comfortable place to live, surrounded by friends and their prized possessions.  

Except, that is for the rooms that are nearly empty.  Normally occupied by a single man, some of the rooms have little more than a bed, a chair, and perhaps a TV set. Here the comparison is immediately with a prison cell and questions arise as to why someone would choose such a spartan existence.  How do they fill their lives, why do they have nothing, why,...

These two books ask powerful questions about urban life, how many people can we sustain this way, how can we tolerate such living conditions.  However, in a world with continued population growth, this might be a vision of the future, not some kind of quasi-medieval past. Seen through European eyes, in which a house with 10 times this space is still considered small, these images are shocking; seen from an Asian perspective, I suspect not so much.

Photographically the strength of this work comes from repetition of form, illustrating difference by constant framing, enabling the eye to seek out the story without the distraction of first having to decipher the geometry of the photograph.  Although Michael Wolf is German, he studied in the US and works in Asia.  He is not a graduate of Duesseldorf, but, once again I see the influence of the Bechers and their typographies coming to the fore in this work.

Overall I find his work deeply fascinating and an excellent example of urban landscape photography, it strikes a chord somewhere deep in my psyche, perhaps my desire for order and symmetry finds a friend in his work.  Whilst I do not see myself stepping down the route of typographies, I do find inspiration in the control of the frame and the density of his images.  As I continue towards Assignment 2, I will keep this work in mind.

All of these photographs can be found on his web site: Michael Wolf

Study Visit: Thomas Struth

Completing one of my resolutions upon starting Landscape, this weekend I attended the OCA study visit to the Whitechapel Gallery to view the Thomas Struth exhibition.  Apart from the excitement of a major anti-facism demo going on just outside the doors, the event was well worth the travel for a variety of reasons. 


The primary goal was an opportunity to view a major photographers original work hung in a gallery in the format and scale that he originally intended.  However, equally important was the chance to network with other students and to meet Gareth and Clive from the OCA.This was the first time in two years that I have met anyone from the OCA and also more than 1 student.   The primary value of studying with the OCA versus simply pulling out a number of "how to" books is the ongoing tutor feedback from the assignments we complete and the peer review of photographs on flickr both by students and by tutors. Meeting some of these people that I have already been in a virtual dialog with was both fun and good for my enthusiasm.  It relieved a little of the sense of isolation of distance learning.


As I have written previously in this blog, I have an ongoing interest in the Düsseldorf school of Photography and the photographers that studied there under the tutelage of the Bechers.  I had previously obtained the book accompanying this exhibit, prior to knowing about the visit, so had some familiarity with Struth's work.

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The clear and obvious difference between looking at the images in the book and seeing them in reality was the overwhelming size of the work; and I use the word "overwhelming" deliberately, at times I felt that the images were too large, the small space of the gallery left me wanting to step further back from the work than was possible.  Conversely the size lent the images a three dimensionality, the detail within the shots almost drawing me into the photograph.  The sense I had was more of experiencing the photographs rather than looking at them, there was an element of cinema versus television about the exhibit.  This was further enhanced by an apparent luminosity to the photographs, the technique of bonding the prints to clear acrylic made them seem to glow, again more like a monitor screen than a print,  I suspect that the effect might be due to the prints being slightly transparent and that light was passing through and being reflected by the wall underneath as well as reflecting from the surface of the actual image.

What is it about German photographers that they need to print to such huge dimensions, Andreas Gursky and Thomas Ruff also pursue the bigger is better mantra.  It does change perception of the photographs, in Ruff's photographs of peoples faces the scale changes the experience from looking at a person to looking at a photograph of a person, but even so, I doubt that this Germany based photographer is going to be printing at 2x3 meters any time soon, although I have a couple at 80x80cm...

Whilst size is clearly a key feature in Struth's work, the exhibit revealed other aspects.  A key value in attending a guided visit was the insight from the museum curator and the OCA staff, helping to link what might otherwise be seen as disparate pieces of work.  What became clear was that his work follows a number of threads, to which he continues to revisit.  Whilst his style and approach have changed over the years, Struth's basic subject matter has remained remarkably constant, with Architecture, Technology, Peoples interaction with Art, and Family being consistent themes.  More recently he has also began a study of jungles, developing a series of photographs entitled Paradise.  These themes occur again and again, however, the complexity of his work is changing, images become fuller and more complex as time passes.  He seems to be moving from very carefully formally structured photographs to almost chaotic scenes in which the eye finds tremendous detail but searches in vain for an underlying symmetry or structure.

A central theme, in his work, is the management of space, whilst many photographs appear chaotic, they exist within a very tightly controlled space delineated by the frame.  He rarely allows much in the way of negative space around a subject, detail flows from the centre of the photograph all the way to the edge of the frame.  The degree to which he needs to manage the space is reflected in his occasionally hiring people to act as visitors in some of his more expansive museum shots, such as those taken at the Pergamon in Berlin. Another example are his series on families in which he arranges the space in which the people will pose, very carefully aligning the frame to objects, walls, doors, but, he does not manage the people within the space.  They can pose, stand, sit, wherever they wish, but clearly must be within this very tightly controlled frame.

So what did I learn, how can this inform my own practice:

1.     I am attracted to the idea of developing central threads to my own work.  I already have my underwater photography to which I return every year, however, I need to think about how I can develop similar continuities in my above water work.  It may be too early to really specialize, but there clearly is value in returning again and again to themes, if for no other reason than to see how I am developing.

2.     Think very carefully about the frame, not just the subject.  I do know this, but often fail to appreciate how important it is to consider what sits at the edge of the photograph rather than what sits in the middle.  For Struth the edges of the frame were what clearly differentiated his early typographies from those of the Bechers.  The Bechers almost always kept the frame edges clear, Sturth almost always runs the buildings through the edge.

3.     Typographies have been done!  It might be fun to compile one for my own interests, but no one is going to be too impressed if I submit such a thing as an assignment. 




I also had a chance on my return trip to Munich to reflect on the exhibition and to consider some ideas for future assignments:

1.     People engaged with the city.  I have a tendency to eliminate people, I need to include more people in my landscape work.

2.     Remember that architecture is about people not buildings, people add scale, movement and purpose to a building.

3.     Although not wanting to do a typography, certain key threads might work in my imagery:

1.     Places of Worship

2.     Jewish legacy in Munich - the new Synagogue complex is a great subject and one with great social and historical context for the city.

3.     A deeper look at the cities Nazi past and how modern Munich copes with this element of its' heritage. 

All in all a great weekend, the first and certainly no the last study visit I plan to attend

Photographer: Stephen Shore

Since starting on the long road towards a BA, one photographer has continued to capture my imagination, Stephen Shore.  His volume on the Nature of Photographs was an excellent visual introduction in the selection of subject and composition of photograph, a book I return to over again to look for ideas and refine my thinking.

http://sclarke-dpp.blogspot.com/2010/11/reading-nature-of-photographs.html

I also have a copy of "Uncommon Places, The Complete Works", however, most recently I have been dipping in and out of "American Surfaces":

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This is a remarkable collection of what are essentially snapshots taking with a very basic camera and encompassing pretty much anything he saw that interested him.  Many of the photographs are almost banal; insides of motel rooms, toilets, what he had for dinner that day, the building across the road.  Individually the photographs have limited value, except perhaps as a record of a specific place at a specific time; collectively they paint a broad picture of the United States, the geography, the people that live there and the small details that make up the fabric of life. Taken between 1972 and 1973 on a prolonged road trip, they combine to create a collective landscape, a composite image of the United States.

This collection of photographs attests to the power of a photobook, and very much follows the tradition of Walker Evans and Robert Frank.  As I struggle with my own selection of photographs to make up a 12 image submission for Assignment 1, I envy the freedom and creativity that a photobook offers.  I do not, however, underestimate the challenge involved in sequencing and selection that underlies such a project.  Perhaps I have chosen too broad a subject for this first assignment, but that is the bed I made and where I must lie.

The volume is not intended to be seen as landscape photography, I think most people would not consider it as such, but I see it very much as landscape - it is a description of a place and time using the medium of photography.  That place is too large to capture with a single photograph, its' landscape must be built out of multiple images framing the diversity of place and people.

Photographer: Candida Höfer

Following on from seeing some of her photographs at the Villa Stuck exhibition and having some exposure in the Düsseledorf School volume, I thought it would be interesting to take some time to look at more of Candida Höfers work.

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The most characteristic element in her photographs is the almost complete absence of people.  In some of her earlier work she studied the immigrant Turkish population in Germany and so this has not always been the case, however, in the two volumes of her work I have in my collection it takes time to find a photograph in which there is a human presence.  Even if a person is present long exposures lend them a blurred ghostlike presence, or they are on the very periphery of the images.

Her work focuses primarily on interior spaces and has a quite architectural feel to it.  Her photographs are not intimate studies of peoples living space, rather they treat interior space as a form of sculpture that needs to be visually analysed and placed in some sort of order.  The overall impact of looking at a volume of her work is one of dissociation from society, the spaces she photographs are clearly intended to be used, libraries, theatres, dining rooms all feature, however, the absence in them drives an eerie sense that something is wrong.  It is reminiscent of a post apocalyptic event that has destroyed humanity and yet left the buildings pristine.

Technically the photographs are very precise, the lighting is even and informative.  I found it difficult to tell whether she had used supplemental lighting within the photographs.  Her colour palette is quite restrained, not muted, but soft.  This clearly distinguishes her style from that of architectural photographers who tend to adopt a very crisp saturated look to their images.  Although the subject is a building the treatment is not architecture.  Two aspects of her work particularly appeal to me and that is the frequent use of strong symmetry and repetition within the images.  To a degree buildings always exhibit symmetry and repitition in structure is not uncommon. Her work accentuates this, lines of chairs seem to march diagonally across the frame and books span from floor to ceiling.

Although the photographs are interiors exhibiting little or no natural forms I would argue that this is a form of landscape photography, but a very constrained and localized landscape.  Individually the photographs are not terribly special, seen as a whole they leave a powerful sense of dissociation from reality.  This is a struggle for me, with the OCA assignments we typically present 12 images, each of which has to be strong on its own, if we were asked to present 100 images I would deliver a very different set.  My takeaway from this book, landscape is everywhere it is simply a matter of how you choose to look at it!

Photographers: The Dusseldorf School of Photography

When I set out on this course, I determined that a key element of my course work would be the study of other photographers, both to provide historical context, but also to consider how different styles influence my own.  A growing pile of books testifies to my interest, the lack of entries thus far in this blog testifies to my laziness, although in my defense I am currently working 60+ hours a week to be able to afford all these photo books.

My first entry considers a school of photography rather than an individual photographer, this is the increasingly lauded Duesseldorf School of Photography:

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Since starting out with the OCA two major photographic movements have interested me and inspired my development as a photographer, the first is the New Topographics, the second the German photographers who emerged from Duesseldorf.  I had come across many of them individually, the Bechers, Gursky, Ruff, Struth, to name a few, however, I had not connected these artists together as belonging to such a tightly integrated group.

At the same time I had also started looking at the work of August Sander, although more in the context of Social Documentary than Landscape, through his work "Face of our Time".  Sander's study of the different "types" of people who made up the population of Germany in the 1920' and 30's was reflected in the typographies of industrial buildings that constitute the immense body of work associated with Bernd and Hilla Becher.  As a former student of Physics and Mathematics the methodical nature of their photographs and the detailed structural symmetries of the typographies appealed to my desire to find order in a chaotic world.  I am also a child of the industrial north of England, my grandfather was a boiler maker and his family miners in the Lancashire coal fields.  I had experienced the structures they recorded, but also witnessed the gradual loss of these structures as the mines closed and the sites were redeveloped.  The Bechers work is an important record of a world that has largely vanished, however, is it really art.  For me, yes! Simply put, I would gladly hang a reproduction of their work on my wall and enjoy it.

With this book, the connection from Sander, through the Bechers to the modern German photographers became clear, the Bechers were the teachers of many artists studying photography in Duesseldorf.  They developed this concept of New Objectivity, driving an aesthetic that dwelled on accurate recording and lacking in emotion or subjectivity.  Thomas Ruff tried to remove the person from portraits by shooting expressionless people and then enlarging to huge dimensions.  Candida Hofer took the people out of buildings, photographing largely empty interiors, structurally brilliant photographs, but lacking humanity.  Andreas Gursky used digital manipulation to combine photographs into vast collages with strong translational symmetry.  Thomas Struth photographed the complexities of modern manufacturing and science, but again with limited human engagement.

This objectivity translates well to Landscape and the majority of the work displayed in the book appears to me to have landscape as its theme, whether the inside of a building, racing circuit, or exterior architecture.  The scale is less important than the treatment and the structure of the final image.

Recently, their work has now come into question, the following article analyzes the influence of the Bechers upon modern photography, arguing that their influence has been too great and even malign

Has the Düsseldorf School killed photography?

Perhaps! Much work is being produced in their style with similar flat tonality and printed at huge scale, however, fashion frequently dictates production.  If the art world buys into this, then artists who want to make money will produce for it.  In my case, I buy into their style, objectivity is not a problem, however a degree of subjectivity must inform my work, otherwise whose work is it really.  At my stage of development and with the type of photographs I currently want to create, there is much to learn from the Bechers and their students, the key is to balance that learning with the study of other artists with different style and content.

Finally I also believe that society drives art, these photographers are all German, all studied in an industrial city in the heart of Germany's decaying industrial landscape of the Ruhr.  They also grew up in post war Germany at a time when peoples right not to be observed by the state was a reaction to the experience of the 30's and 40's.  In a country where it is illegal to display a photograph in which a person is clearly prominent without their express permission, street and documentary styles of photography are not easy to pursue.  Objectivity, a desire to present the world as it is and preserve memories of landscape might also be a response to the terrible destruction wrought on German cities by aerial bombing and the invasion by the Soviet army in 1945. German art has a complex relationship with the past, perhaps objective recording of the present avoids asking the most difficult questions.