informing contexts
I was introduced to this book by a colleague. The book is about a woman trapped inside a man’s body in the 1950s and 1960s. her secret wasn’t discovered unit after her death and a large archive of letters were found. It’s a very moving story. The layout and photography of archive images are particularly interesting to me and my practice and will help me to develop new and hopefully exciting ideas.
Ken:To be destroyed
I wanted to continue my ‘play’ with images from the archive and found this wartime poster by the well known artist Howard Scott. He was an American artist but these poster were used world wide during the war. The message seemed appropriate, I love you Mum, but sometimes it would have been better if you'd kept quiet, at least occasionally.
This image was taken at my parent’s wedding in 1947, just two years after the end of the second-word war. This made me think about what memories my father had at this time. I know he was in Dresden soon after the horrific bombing. I wonder how he coped with such memories. Peer feedback was not positive, I think my Reidesque image has backed me into a corner with nowhere to go except creating a pastiche of Reid’s work.
The artist John Stezaker influenced image. I intend to alert the viewer to what my father has just been through less than two years before. What thoughts were going through his head at the time of his happiest day? Is it possible to forget the atrocities he had witnessed? Stezaker's work focused on found images from which he created deceptively simple montages which are both 'witty and poignant'.
My interpretation is not a copy of his work but uses his concept of the found picture. I introduced the image of the Churchill Tank (my father was in tanks most of the war), to mask my fathers face to inform the viewer that this is what happened to him, this is his memory. Stezaker quoted from the Guardian newspaper "When we look at a face, we assume that we are looking behind the face for a personality," and goes on to say "By making literal that behindness, I often create something that twists into an image of horror". (Guardian 2014)
My mother was a loving, kind person most of the time, at only 4'8" the matriarch of the family. She was the one who controlled the family, Sunday dinners, Easter, Christmas etc. She kept the family together. My mother, however, had a second side to her nature, one which could be brutal in its delivery. I wanted to try and display this 'other side' but using just the archive photography available, which was very challenging. At the same time, I was researching Jamie Reid's work and the Sex Pistols. I was around 15 yrs at the time of this movement and hugely influenced by this new wave aesthetic. Music, fashion and design turned on its head. This trend was to the disapproval of my parents, who still thought the Beatles were anarchic. The idea of using this style and associating it with my mother is entirely against all that they believed, but I believe it suits the subject. It is well documented Jamie Reid designed the record sleeves using a style he first adopted in the Suburban Press, a radical political magazine. This style he says came from the lack of funds to purchase Letraset and so used type cut from newspapers and magazines. Unable to afford a printer Reid did the typesetting himself which gave his work this particular design characteristic.
This very handily just arrived in the post today!
In my 1 to 1 with Sarah, we discussed my work and how it would progress. One of the practitioners suggested was the artist Richard Stezaker. His work 're-examines the various relationships to the photographic image: as documentation of truth, purveyor of memory, and symbol of modern culture. In his collages, Stezaker appropriates images found in books, magazines, and postcards and uses them as 'readymades'. Through his elegant juxtapositions, Stezaker adopts the content and contexts of the original images to convey his own witty and poignant meanings.' https://www.saatchigallery.com/artists/john_stezaker.htm I speculated if I could use this technique in a way that would help explain the narrative in my images. Not using it as a surreal expression but instead introducing images within images which can assist with explaining the narrative. Stezaker photos have informality and a light touch, but the complexity is soon apparent when trying to recreate similar work.
https://www.saatchigallery.com/artists/artpages/john_stezaker_old_mask_v_2.htm
Parents Wedding September 1947 with picture of Father as tank crew January 1945 - Photographers Unkown
Interpreting Stezaker work
Looking through the archives I find photographs interspersed with cigarette, and game cards. I will introduce these into my work as they tell a story about the archive.
Playing Card
I had a constructive 1 to 1 with Steph today were I voiced my concerns concerning finishing my project on time. I showed some of my photographs which had a mixed response. The gentler photos using the vase were positive; however, the more brutal not so much. We discussed the concept that the photographs could show the two sides to my mother's character. Steph suggested that I present my WIP in a book layout and agreed a written narrative can be included. I will try to have my CRJ up to date by the end of this week. Steph also gave me the names of several practitioners who may help in my research. Also, I was asked to look at the lecture I Remember I Remember, given to the BA students.
I wanted to produce a narrative of my mother’s loss and regret. The used flowers signal the death of my mother, the vase was hers and the picture empty picture frame is a device to let the viewer occupy the photograph with their memories.
‘As the fascination that photographs exercise is a reminder of death, it is also an invitation to sentimentality. Photographs turn the past into an object of tender regard, scrambling moral distinctions and disarming historical judgments by the generalized pathos of looking at time past ( Sontag 1971 p55)’
Dead flowers with empty picture frame
As part of an experiment, I chose to photograph flowers that my partner Jane had kept from our first meeting. She had them hanging on her study wall. It was, at least I thought, providing a link from my past to the present day. Following a meeting with Sarah, I decided not to continue with the idea. It did not fit with my other work, but I found it useful in experimenting with technique. The use of text in the photograph was an attempt to explain the narrative.
!00 year old orange and tankard
This photograph shows a 100-year-old orange which my great grandfather received as a Christmas present in his youth. So rare at the time and according to family folk law, he sat it on a shelf never to be touched. After many years it took on the patterner of pewter and resembled the finish of my grandfather's tankard. I liked the concept that organic material can look the same as that which is human-made. I decided to photograph the two together. It just seemed right with a great story attached. I'm not sure if this will be in my WIP as it does not fit in with my other images.
Found this interesting postcard today which gives me important information on which campaigns my father may have taken part in.
Self Portrait
Mother Circa 1940’s
Following on from a lecture with Sarah I decided to continue using artefacts, such as this flower jug and incorporate them with photographs of my parents. I am trying to link the history of my family with out having to resort to text.
Still Life of Vase with a picture taken by my Father
Due to my difficulty in walking at the moment, my only option is to concentrate on desktop photography. I began looking at artefacts belonging to my parents, following on from the theme I started last year. This jug has been in the family since I can remember and assume its dates from the 1950s. My mother would use it regularly for flower arrangements, but sadly in my possession has been relegated to a cupboard. I decided to use this vase as a narrative for my parent's love. My idea initially was to photograph the glass jar and pair it with another photograph creating a diptych. I will try this but decided I would attempt using other images as backgrounds. I found it successful in inserting images within the jar and began working with different photographs relating to the theme. One photo haunted me, taken by my Father in a hotel room he occupied soon after my Mothers death. The picture focuses on an empty chair a metaphor for my Mothers absence? I'm not sure my Father would have consciously thought that but who knows. I intend to explore this concept over the following weeks.
Photo Credit: Universal History Archive/Getty Images
To be discussed ……..
A BAFTA award-winning BBC series with John Berger, which rapidly became regarded as one of the most influential art programmes ever made. In the first progra...
Following a lecture by Dr Steph Cosgrove entitled Photography the Shapeshifter a particular passage resonated for me.
‘John Berger calls attention to the shifting contexts and meanings of photographs, saying that “An image is a sight that has been recreated or reproduced. It is an appearance, or a set of appearances, which has been detached from the place and time in which it first made its appearance and preserved – for a few moments or a few centuries.” He reminds us here that photographs are made things; however simple or transparent they might first appear, they are constructions. Just like a painting, photographs are the result of choices made by a photographer. For example: the subject matter; what’s included inside and outside of the frame; the aesthetic sensibilities and accompanying technical decisions being made’.