Zemni Photography Blog

Photography projects, inspiration and research by Linda Mayoux

Joan Fontcuberta

Category: Documentary

  • Joan Fontcuberta

    Joan Fontcuberta co-opts all forms of media and public communication. In essence, he creates modern-day Trojan-horse-type bodies of work and presents them, deadpan, in scholarly journals, hard-bound “scientific” books, large-scale legitimate museum exhibitions, and as newsworthy “discoveries” that fool even the most professional of experts, journalists, and their readers.
    He produced a number of series:

    • Miracles & Co. (documenting the miraculous powers of a
      secluded religious sect);
    • Orogenesis (which “tricks” military satellite terrain-imaging software to create images derived from paintings and photographs rather than satellite imagery);
    • Herbarium and Fauna (botanical and biological findings of previously undiscovered bizarre plants and animals);
      Sputnik (mythical story of a Russian cosmonaut who is still lost in space),
    • Pin Zhuang (when a US spy plane crashed in China, the Chinese re-assembled the pieces into a variety of working spacecraft);
      Hemograms (exploring identity through blood and its self-expression as abstract art);
    • A series of photomosaics using photo-imaging freeware and Google’s image search engine to re-create popular media images (as usual, the supporting text often contains the “real” message).

    He is the author/creator of more than 20 books, including The Artist and the Photograph, which “proves” that Picasso, Dali, Miro and other famous painters actually used photographs as the original source material for some of their greatest masterpieces. That work created a real shock and backlash from the art world, because so many people believed it was true. (Serious museums joined in the joke and presented the “original” photos side by side with the actual paintings, and even experts in their fields got duped — and then angry). His latest book, “Landscapes without Memory”, is published by Aperture.

    Joan Fontcuberta

  • Thomas Demand

    Thomas Demand, (born 1964 in Munich, Germany) is a German sculptor and photographer. He currently lives and works in Berlin and Los Angeles, and teaches at the University of Fine Arts, Hamburg.

    He invites us to question the reality of what we are looking at—not just in his photographs, but in everyday life as well. At first glance, his images appear to be photographic records of “real” and oddly familiar places. Then the viewer realises that they are looking at something entirely artificial. It is this sudden realisation that something so apparently real that gives Demand’s work its undeniable psychological impact

    His art-making process begins with selecting photographic images from the mass media, often of rooms or spaces that are politically or historically charged (for example, the kitchen in Saddam Hussein’s hideaway in Tikrit, Iraq).

    Trained as a sculptor, Demand then creates life-size replicas of the chosen image using colored paper and cardboard. But he strips his creations of the detail, frames of reference (and of any people) that would create a specific context; Saddam’s kitchen, for instance, could be almost anyone’s.

     

    The next step is to photograph the tableaux.

     

    Then, finally, he destroys his constructions.

     

    .

  • Exhibiting documentary photography

    Exhibiting your images
    In many cases of social documentary the natural vehicle to bring the work to the public is
    exhibition followed by or simultaneous with a book. There are a number of issues to be resolved:
    • Who will stage the exhibition?
    • Where will it be seen?
    • Who will it be seen by?
    The work itself will have been based around some decisions made before the shoot took place.
    There must be a context and there will be a relationship between the subject and context that
    you will explore. This may influence format and quality which may in turn impact on the nature
    of the equipment involved. If your images are made using a mobile phone then you’re unlikely
    to get A1 reproduction.
    The aesthetic supporting the work may justify a departure from conventional sharp prints or
    solid colour. It may be that the exhibited prints are from a professional level piece of equipment
    and yet are printed postcard-sized – again an aesthetic consideration of the photographer.
    All of these factors will support the condition of the work relative to the reality that you as
    photographer want to convey. Your work may be seen as part of an installation where the viewer
    becomes part of the experience. It may be placed exclusively online as a media-based piece. The
    book may be interactive or stand separately from the exhibition. You’ll need to look at the cost
    of bringing the work to the market – the viewers that are its intended destination – before the
    project starts.

  • Can documentary photography make a difference? How?

    This discusses non-profit – the future of the photographer/author and the delivery of images
    rights-free to give voice to a cause. Is there a connection to be made with the work of Riis and
    Hine in the first half of the twentieth century? Can a documentary photographer really make a
    difference?

  • Documentary Integrity and Truth

    Being there

    How will you operate as a photographer?

    Will you ask permission or will you be a fly on the wall,
    a ghost who never affects the image? This is a major question relevant to your production ethics.
    If you tell people what you’re doing, then they’ll react differently to you; they may be guarded or
    wary of how you’ll portray them.

    Photographers who lived with the communities they were photographing:

    • Chris Killip with the sea coal gatherers in the North East
      of England
    • Martin Parr with the people of Hebden Bridge in Yorkshire.
    • Bruce Davidson has done a similar thing in New York.

    This is very different to the approach of Garry Winogrand or Cartier-Bresson, neither of whom interfered or announced their presence. Winogrand operated like a ghost but got quite close to the action to produce his wide-angle views, whereas Cartier-Bresson
    remained peripheral, on the edge, trying not to be important to the subject.

    Truth
    This is a big one for the social documentary practitioner. The image has to have integrity – it has to be honest and factual in order to validate it for the viewer as an accurate portrayal. This is arguably where the boundary lies between social documentary and photojournalism where the image has more of an editorial purpose. In photojournalism the choice of photographer and the style of image-making will always have to suit the editorial nature of the publication and this is perhaps a bridge too far for the documentary photographer. Most documentary photographers would have no objection to any magazine or media publishing their documentary images provided that they were published as the photographer intended the viewer to see them, not cropped or enhanced.

    Kendall Walton ‘Transparent Pictures’

    ‘Ambiguities and discontinuities’  Berger & Mohr 1995 p91.

    Bazin

    For the first time, between the originating object and its reproduction there intervenes only the instrumentality of a non-living agent. For the first time an image of the world is formed automatically, without the creative intervention of man…in spite of any objections our critical spirit may offer, we are forced to accept as real the existence of the object reproduced, actually, re-presented…’

    The Ontology of the Photographic Image 1945

    Sekula

    If we accept the fundamental premise that information is the outcome of a culturally determined relationship, then we can no longer ascribe an intrinsic or universal meaning to the photographic image.

    On the Invention of Photographic Meaning 1997 p454

  • Reality and hyperreality

    This is a practice-based course so we won’t be going into detail about the nature of truth,
    hermeneutics, reality and hyperreality. What follows is a very brief summary. However you may
    want to research some of these areas for yourself. You could start by looking at some of the titles
    in the reading list at the end of this course guide.
    We all feel that we’re aware of reality but what is ‘real’? If you live in a desert region perhaps
    access to a tap with fresh clean water within five minutes walk is fantasy. This is not the world
    of the suburb where everyone has several taps of their own. Therefore one person’s reality and
    normality is not that of another. The freedom to travel is a reality for most of us, but not in
    all countries. As a tourist it’s possible to travel from region to region in Cuba but for a Cuban
    national it isn’t – unless you’ve got the correct paperwork. If we see a travel programme on
    TV we see a reality for the tourist, for the paying visitor, a valued source of national income.
    There may be many issues that are a reality of life in the countries we visit that we’re not aware
    of and wouldn’t like if we were. This is not to say that there is a judgment to be made by us.
    As a tourist with a completely different set of values that underpin your reality, how can you
    make such a judgment? This is where the photographer living within a society must start to
    consider the nature of the imagery that is produced. How will it portray the subject – in reality
    or hyperreality?
    Philosophers and critics talk about hyperreality where the human mind can’t distinguish reality
    from a simulation of reality. Hyperreality is what our consciousness defines as ‘real’ in a situation
    where media shape or filter an original event or experience. In other words, it’s ‘reality by proxy’.
    As photographers we need to understand where we are with the images we produce in terms
    of their reality. Is the image reality, a representation of reality or a simulation of reality? Jean
    Photography 2 Gesture and Meaning 47
    Baudrillard (1929–2007) was a French philosopher who addressed hyperreality and who talked
    about the nature of reality in terms of simulacra and simulation.
    The link below will take you to an interview that discusses simulacra and simulation. It talks
    about the destabilisation of the media and our ability to identify what’s real and what’s not real.
    www.youtube.com/watch?v=80osUvkFIzI
    In a nutshell, simulation is the process whereby representations of things come to replace
    the things being represented and indeed become more important than the real thing. At the
    extreme, you end up with a simulacrum which has no relation to reality. So an image may:
    • truly reflect of reality
    • mask and pervert reality
    • mask the absence of reality
    • bear no relation to any reality – it is its own simulacrum.
    We need to be careful to avoid simulation lest we engage with hyperreality as a reality without
    recognising its values.
    Jorge Louis Borges (1899–1986) in his work An Exactitude of Science (1946) describes
    hyperreality as “a condition in which ‘reality’ has been replaced by simulacra.” Borges felt that
    language had nothing to do with reality. Reality is a combination of perceptions, emotions,
    facts, feeling, whereas language is a series of structured rules that we need to obey to help
    others perceive our reality. The same is true of visual language.
    Baudrillard argues that today we only experience prepared realities – edited war footage,
    meaningless acts of terrorism, the Jerry Springer Show:
    “The very definition of the real has become: that of which it is possible to give
    an equivalent reproduction… The real is not only what can be reproduced,
    but that which is always already reproduced: that is the hyperreal… which
    is entirely in simulation. Illusion is no longer possible, because the real is no
    longer possible.”
    Baudrillard argues that we must attain an understanding of our state of perception and the
    message content that is communicated in terms of the images we construct. Even if we see it as
    a straight record of what we saw on the day, can this be a reality and, if so, for whom?
    48 Photography 2 Gesture and Meaning
    Documentary photographers are entering a new age with a new set of criteria. The issue of
    technical quality is not relevant. Images from mobile phones that capture the ‘moment’ will
    be printed by newspapers if the image tells the story. Where then is the need for a bag full of
    cameras and kit? In a new age of photography the documentarist will need to engage with the
    issue of hyperreality by establishing credibility, motivation and integrity. The reputation or name
    is then the status giver, the endorser of reality and truth to the images produced and offered to
    the media and the public.

  • Landscape as a Call to Action

    Photography, and the manipulation of photographs, is often used to highlight and raise political questions. Landscape photography in particular is often used in environmental activism – images of environmental degradation, urban squalor. In NGO advertising (eg GreenPeace) photographs are often manipulated to juxtapose elements that are then countered by a caption.

    • Peter Kennard produces explicit political photomontage in the dadaist tradition linked to political campaigning organisations – for example his ‘Hay Wain with Cruise Missiles’ (1980)
    • Edward Burtynsky produces large-format photographs of industrial landscapes altered by industry – an ‘industrial sublime’ creating tension between awe-inspiring beauty and the compromised environments he depicts.
    • Mitch Epstein also uses large format, but less ‘beautiful’ images that do not aim to convey a specific message, and are more documentary in juxtaposing complex narratives.
    • Dana Lixenberg in works like the Last Days of Shishmaref uses landscape and portrait photography alongside working with environmentalists and local activists to produce powerful participatory social documentary.
    • Ikka Halso uses digital montage, including 3D, to build dystopian landscapes that raise questions about the ways in which human beings are attempting to control nature.

    Exercise 3.4: A persuasive image

  • Jacob Aue Sobol

    Jacob is a member of Magnum Photos. Yossi Milo Gallery in New York, Rita Castelotte Gallery in Madrid and RTR Gallery in Paris also represent him.

    Jacob was born in Denmark, in 1976 and grew up in Brøndby Strand in the suburbs south of Copenhagen. He lived as an exchange student in Strathroy, Canada from 1994-95 and as a hunter and fisherman in Tiniteqilaaq, Greenland from 2000-2002. In Spring 2006 he moved to Tokyo, staying there 18 months before returning to Denmark in August 2008. He now lives and works in Copenhagen.

    After studying at the European Film College, Jacob was admitted to Fatamorgana, the Danish School of Documentary and Art Photography in 1998. There he developed a unique, expressive style of black-and-white photography, which he has since refined and further developed.

    Sabine: In the autumn of 1999 he went to live in the settlement Tiniteqilaaq on the East Coast of Greenland. Over the next three years he lived mainly in this township with his Greenlandic girlfriend Sabine and her family, living the life of a fisherman and hunter but also photographing. The resultant book Sabine was published in 2004 and the work was nominated for the 2005 Deutsche Börse Photography Prize.

    Gomez-Brito family: In the summer of 2005 Jacob travelled with a film crew to Guatemala to make a documentary about a young Mayan girl’s first journey to the ocean. The following year he returned by himself to the mountains of Guatemala where he met the indigenous family Gomez-Brito. He stayed with them for a month to tell the story of their everyday life. The series won the First Prize Award, Daily Life Stories, World Press Photo 2006.

    I, Tokyo: In 2006 he moved to Tokyo and during the next two years he created the images from his resent book I, Tokyo. The book was awarded the Leica European Publishers Award 2008 and published by Actes Sud (France), Apeiron (Greece), Dewi Lewis Publishing (Great Britain), Edition Braus (Germany), Lunwerg Editores (Spain), Peliti Associati (Italy) and Mets & Schilt (The Netherlands)

    Bangkok Encounter:2008

    2009 Home, Copenhagen.

    Arrivals and Departures – a journey from Moscow to Beijing – in co-operation with Leica Camera.

  • Mapping and Other Technologies

    A ‘map’ isn’t necessarily something used to navigate through unfamiliar territory; it’s also a visual ordering of features and information…a means of making sense of our physical surroundings in new ways. Alexander 2013 p67

    Liz Nicol the Rubber Band Project (1997)

    Ian Brown’s series Walking the Land (2007)

    Other artists and photographers who layer numerous different photographs include Idris Khan, Jon Spencer and Isidro Ramirez.

    Creative possibilities  have been opened up by digital technologies like:

    •  Google Earth (2005): allows users to make a journey to literally anywhere in the world from the comfort of their computer, scrolling around sites of interest from the vantage point of Google’s satellite images.
    • Google Street View (2007): is limited in terms of its global coverage, but provides a more intimate, street-level view of our landscape.

    ‘Stay-at-home street photographers’ who have used these images – trawling through endless Street View images, framing and selecting these digital views as their own photographs – as a form of ‘appropriation’ art include:

     Project 2.4: Is appropriation appropriate?

  • The Road

    The road has featured prominently in art and literature as a means to get characters from one place to another, and as a stage for narratives to be played out. It has been used as a symbol for:

    • notion of a journey – attaining greater understanding and with a coming of age, as explored in The Road to Perdition (2002) directed by Sam Mendes, for example.
    • symbol of liberation and  means of exploration and adventure, by permitting its users to travel freely from place to place, as in Jack Kerouac’s On the Road (1957) or Laurie Lee’s As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning (1969). Endless ‘road movies’ have perpetuated the ideology of America as a unified place of opportunity and escape.
    • unfamiliar –  change of pace (for instance by walking instead of driving) brings out a sense of the unheimliche; something very familiar by one means of transport can feel alien when experienced by another.  Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (2006);  Chris Coekin’s photographic project The Hitcher.
    •  environmental damage and climate change – particularly with cars. Lee Friedlander monograph America by Car (2010)
    • cultural exploration American Photographs (1938) by Walker Evans (1903–75) and Les Américains (1958) by Robert Frank; Paul Graham A1 – The Great North Road ; Chris Coekin’s monograph The Hitcher (2007)

    Rivers have also been used to define routes to structure photographic exploration.

     2.2 Explore a Road