Zemni Photography Blog

Photography projects, inspiration and research by Linda Mayoux

Landscape and Identity

Category: Identities

  • Landscape and Identity

    The concept of ‘identity’ is central to most landscape photography – the cultural, historical, ecological and industrial factors shaping identities of people and places and the ways in which the two interact. ‘Identity’ is however not fixed. Individuals and groups of people are continually trying to reconcile multiple and changing identities as a means of making sense of their place in the world. Identities are constantly manipulated and contested by others in political processes. In the same way, meanings of ‘landscape’ and symbolic associations of places are also multi-layered, changing and often manipulated in attempts to shape power relationships between people and groups of people and peoples’ control over and use of ‘nature’ and other resources.

    In deciding how to portray particular landscape/s key considerations are:

    • Who created, owns, uses and changes this landscape? How do these people relate to each other?
    • How is this ‘landscape’ distinguished from other similar places (who decides what is and what is not similar? by what criteria? why are those criteria important?)?
    • How do (different) users and inhabitants of a place feel towards (different aspects of) the landscape (pride, indifference, disrespect, fear of loss)?
    • What attitudes do (which) outsiders have towards it?

    Underlying all these considerations must also be a consideration of:

    • How are these feelings, identities and relationships manipulated, why and by whom? (See Part 3 landscape as political text)
    • Self-awareness on the part of the photographer of their own identity/ies and assumptions and power/desire (or lack of it) to manipulate and change things.

    See posts:

    Dana Lixenberg’s:  Last Days of Shishmaref
    Jacob Aue Sobol’s work Sabine (2004)

    ‘British-ness’, collective identities and the countryside

    “The concept of the countryside is a significant element of the British identity. All countries have rural areas, but Britain’s is one of its ‘unique selling points’.” (Alexander p119)

     4.2: The British landscape during World War II

    Attitudes towards social issues like renewable energy or housing policy are often polarised by ‘Not in My Back Yard’ ‘visual impact’ on the land according to rather idealised ‘picturesque’ notions of what the landscape used to/should look like.

    Personal identities and multiculturalism

    British photographers have questioned established and stereotyped images of the British landscape and its heritage. Photographers like Godwin and Darwell manipulate aesthetics of the image, beauty in texture, pattern and atmosphere to keep the viewer’s attention – then guide it to pose more challenging and shocking questions about the landscape and peoples’ relationship to it. The effort of extracting meaning in this way also makes the images more memorable. See posts:

    • Immigration and race:  Ingrid Pollard and Simon Roberts.
    • Access to the countryside:  Fay Godwin
    • Environmental pollution and degradation: John Darwell Dark Days (2001 Foot and Mouth Outbreak).
    • Relationship with animals: Clive Landen: sharp documentary style and brutal but images of death in Abyss (2001 Foot and Mouth Outbreak) and Familiar British Wildlife (series on roadkills).

    4.3 A subjective voice

  • Designing a project brief

    Project briefs are of different types and allow different levels of negotiation and artistic freedom.

    (what follows is from the Course Manual and will be revisited in Assignment 5)

    Commercial (client-led) briefs
    Any engagement with commercial photographic enterprise will involve a brief of some kind. This may be in the form of a legally binding contract, or it may be something much more informal. In a commercial context, a brief will usually be a document that is the conclusion of a verbal or email discussion about what the client is hoping to achieve from a shoot – i.e. what they want you to communicate with your photographs – and, importantly, what the intended outcome will be. Will the photographs be used in a book, for example? Or on a website? This second aspect has important ramifications in relation to the size, format and quality of files they are expecting, and may influence your choice of equipment. A brief written by a client may be fairly openended or it may include a list of specific products or subjects that need to be photographed, including aspect ratio and crop. It may be something prescriptive, to be referred to throughout the shoot, or something more abstract that you will respond to photographically using your own initiative.

    A brief should align the expectations of the clients with a realistic outcome on the part of the photographer. Whether you’re being paid generously for your services or doing a job as a favour, it is extremely important to have, in writing (email is fine), an agreement that clearly identifies the needs of the client and what you agree to supply them with, in order to prevent at best disappointment, or at worst, being sued. A brief should include the following:
    • A summary of the project and general purpose of the photographs.
    • What the photographs should communicate.
    • A list of any specific shots the client would like.
    • The amount of time that you will spend on the shoot (hours? days?) and timings.
    • The number of images you will supply to the client, and whether they will be processed or unprocessed.
    • Your fee, as well as/including any expenses you will incur.
    • Whether (if working digitally) your time for file processing is included or, if not, how this File format and size of processed images (and possibly colour profile and bit-depth).
    • Permission for using your photographs from the shoot: how will you permit the client to use your images, and for what period of time?
    • Whether you will administer Model and/or Property Release Forms.
    • Details of any other parties involved in the shoot, e.g. models/subjects.
    People who are in a position to commission photography may do so on a regular basis and, if so, will be expert in drawing up a brief and/or contract; other, just as valuable, clients may not. It may be down to you to put into writing their verbal description of what they want you to do. Forming a brief should be a negotiation between you and the client, and the specifics will depend on many factors, including your own particular workflow. The important thing is to make
    sure all parties are content with all aspects of the brief before commencing a shoot.

    [Although briefs are not discussed specifically, a wealth of related information can be found in Beyond the Lens: Rights, Ethics and Business Practice in Professional Photography, London: The Association of Photographers]

    Self-authored briefs
    This and subsequent courses you may study with OCA will ask you to set your own assignment briefs. The purpose of this is to allow you more creative freedom, to help you become a more independent student, and to encourage you to think of yourself as a creative, independent practitioner pursuing your own interests and working on personal projects, as opposed to making work within the confines of a prescriptive art and design course.
    Developing the ability to articulate your ideas for projects or enterprises is an essential skill for professional practice, within both commercial and art-based practice. For instance, you may identify a potential business opportunity to collaborate with an organisation that might be able to commission you, and approach them to propose a project. Or you may have an idea for a documentary or fine art project and need to apply for funding. In either case, you’ll need to
    write a brief. (This is explored further at Level 3.)

    A self-directed brief, particularly one conceived within an arts context (e.g. an academic environment such as OCA, or a proposal to a funding body such as the Arts Council – www. artscouncil.org.uk) will include some, but not necessarily the majority of the points listed above. You’ll still need to discuss money, in particular your justification for any special resources you may require. Appropriately contextualising the project within a critical framework rather than an economic one will be the most significant difference between the two types of brief. If you’re requesting funding or support for production, for an exhibition or publication, or for an artist’s residency, you must be able to convince whoever writes the cheques that you’re conversant with the subject you wish to research and that you have the ability and commitment to complete
    the project.

    Unlike a commercial brief, a self-directed brief is not a rigid plan but a more organic document, which you’ll appraise and update as you go along. This is certainly the case with the selfdirected projects you’ll propose whilst studying with the OCA.

  • Loretta Lux

    Loretta Lux specialises in photographs of children, often children of her friends, with the occasional adult or self-portrait. A former painter, Lux, 38, pays attention to form, shape and colour. “I don’t care about traditional photography I want more control.” The images, which can take up to a year to complete, are less about the subjects than they are a metaphor for the idea of childhood. “I want people to decide what to see,” she says. Whatever they do decide, they’re not likely to forget it.

    Her portraits are carefully controlled at every stage of production:

    • The formality of the poses she selects at the shooting stage, often using vintage outfits, including some of Lux’s own childhood things.
    •  Digital adjusted features: Elongated limbs, oversized heads, and eyes spaced just a little farther apart than average contribute to the strangeness of their cool gazes and isolated locations.
    •  Merging the subjects with their settings: she strips out the background and replaces it with a quiet setting–a grassy field, an abandoned building–either painted by Lux or taken from her photographs of various European landscapes and interiors. Then she erases any object that crowds the picture, like a tree or toy, so the child appears to be part of a dream.
    •  Using a narrow pastel palette in the final prints.
    •  The final images are produced as luminous Ilfochrome prints.

    Loretta Lux was born in 1969 in Dresden, Germany. She studied painting at Akademie der Bildenden Künste, Munich from 1990 to 1996. She began photographing in 1999 and produces about half a dozen finished pictures each year. Solo exhibitions of her work have been held at Yossi Milo Gallery, New York; Hague Museum of Photography, The Hague; and Torch Gallery, Amsterdam. Her photographs have also been featured in exhibitions at the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo; Australian Centre for Photography, Sydney; Art Institute of Chicago; and at the Museum of Contemporary Photography in its 2006 exhibition In Sight. She is the recipient of a Bayerischer Kunstförderpreis (2002) and The International Centre of Photography’s Infinity Award for Art (2005).

     Read more

  • Richard Billingham

    Billingham was born in Birmingham in 1970 and studied as a painter at Bournville College of Art and the University of Sunderland. He came to prominence through his candid photography of his family in Cradley Heath, a body of work later added to and published in the acclaimed book Ray’s A Laugh (1996).

    Ray’s a Laugh documents the life of his alcoholic father Ray, and obese, heavily-tattooed mother, Liz. It is a portrayal of the poverty and deprivation in which he grew up in Thatcher’s Britain. Billgham used a cheap low quality film and shot the images without caring about the composition; the result is a family portait stuffy and unconventional, characterised by a kind of lucidity which suggests both intellectual detachment and emotional closeness.The brash colours and bad focus which adds to the authenticity and frankness of the series.

    I have not used any digital cameras as I still find them very difficult to use. They make me look at things with a different kind of attention I think. Digital cameras always have a screen on the back of them nowadays that enables you to see your photograph as soon as you’ve taken it and that distracts me. I end up looking at the picture I’ve just taken and trying to better it. And as soon as I start doing that, the ‘moment’ is lost.

    He wasn’t initially concerned about photography when he was living with his father Ray. He was simply a would-be painter in need of a patient model:

    “I was living in this tower block; there was just me and him. He was an alcoholic, he would lie in the bed, drink, get to sleep, wake up, get to sleep, didn’t know if it was day or night. But it was difficult to get him to stay still for more than say 20 minutes at a time so I thought that if I could take photographs of him that would act as source material for these paintings and then I could make more detailed paintings later on. So that’s how I first started taking photographs.”

    “My dad had moved into my mum’s place by this time and I could not believe how it looked. She’d had two years away from my dad so she had created her own psychological space around herself that was very ‘carnivalesque’ and decorative. There were dolls, jigsaws everywhere. She’d got load of pets by this time; she had about ten cats … two, three dogs.”

    It has been called ‘an honest portrait’, partly depressing and partly funny, of the photographer’s family, composed by Ray, the alcoholic and unemployed father, Liz, the obese and heavy smoking mother, by the brother Jason and several pets. Ray, his father, and his mother Liz, appear at first glance as grotesque figures, with the alcoholic father drunk on his home brew, and the mother, an obese chain smoker with an apparent fascination for nicknacks and jigsaw puzzles.They all share the same messy and crowded apartment and are struck during their daily routine, almost unaware that someone is photographing them. The thing that makes Billingham’s work diferent is the total lack of barriers towards the audience: the subjects are photographed while eating on the couch, while playing with pets, while making a jigsaw puzzle, but also in some occasions that usually remain private: for example while lying in bed or passed out on the bathroom floor for having drunk too much.

    However, there is such integrity in this work that Ray and Liz ultimately shine through as troubled yet deeply human and touching personalities.

    Billingham’s work was included in the exhibition Sensation at the Royal Academy of Art which showcased the art collection of Charles Saatchi and included many of the Young British Artists.] Also in 1997, Billingham won the Citigroup Photography Prize. He was shortlisted for the 2001 Turner Prize, for his solo show at the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham.

    He has also made landscape photographs at places of personal significance around the Black Country, and more of these were commissioned in 2003 by the arts organisation The Public, resulting in a book. He has also experimented with video films and video projections.

    In late 2006, Billingham exhibited a major new series of photographs and videos inspired by his memories of visiting Dudley Zoo as a child. The series, entitled “Zoo”, was commissioned by Birmingham-based arts organisation, VIVID and was exhibited at Compton Verney Art Gallery in Warwickshire.

    In the following year he created a series of photographs of “Constable Country”, the area on the Essex / Suffolk border painted by John Constable. These were exhibited at the Town Hall Galleries, Ipswich. In 2009-2010, Billingham participated in a collective exhibition at the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Germany titled: Ich, zweifellos.

    He now lives near Swansea, and travels widely. He is a lecturer in Fine Art Photography at the University of Gloucestershire and a third year tutor at Middlesex University (2012).

  • Cindy Sherman

    Photographer Cindy Sherman (born 1954) initially used herself as model in many of her works.

    She has taken a stance against sexism and stereotyping since her early photo-series Centerfolds or Horizontals (1981). This examined the poses in men’s or pornographic magazines of the time.
    The images were rejected by the commissioning publication  ArtForum as reinforcing stereotypes.

    Sherman continued to challenge the ways in which women are seen and valued. In the 1992 Sex Pictures she used latex medical body parts to re-create poses seen in pornography. These images mimicked pornography whilst at the same time de-eroticising it, forcing the viewer to confront their attitudes to the female body and pornography and raising issues of voyeurism.
    interview on Sex Pictures with Cindy Sherman

    Sherman discusses the characters she has assumed in her work:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiszC33puc0&feature=related

    Sherman’s History Portraits (1989–90) parodied some of the portraits of women made by the Old Masters and others,
    highlighting the ways in which women have been objectified.

    Untitled (Balenciaga) (2008) explores the world of fashion and its victims. See:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?=MtATCPCC8b8&feature=relmfu

    Vimeo offerings that show Sherman’s early untitled film stills and a later set of Sherman characters – the rich and famous:
    http://vimeo.com/2176377
    http://vimeo.com/35780957

    Clowns (2003-04) was Sherman’s first major piece to
    be created digitally, hence the garish colour palette.
    The imagery examines how make-up transforms the
    individual and questions the complex emotional
    state that lies beneath the painted smile. It is also an
    investigation into what a clown is, why people choose
    to do it.

    For Sherman talking about Clowns and her work, visit: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tCkSQOaCf7s&feature=BFa&list=PL2DBA1E2449F0FDF2&lf=results_video

  • Shimon Attie

    website

    Wikipedia:

    Shimon Attie (born Los Angeles in 1957 ) is an American visual artist. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2008, The Rome Prize in 2001 and a Visual Artist Fellowship from Harvard University’s Radcliffe Institute for Advance Study in 2007. His work spans a variety of media, including photography, site-specific installation, multiple channel immersive video installation, performance, and new media. Much of Attie’s practice explores how a wide range of contemporary media may be used to re-imagine new relationships between space, time, place, and identity. Much, though not all, of Attie’s work in the 90s dealt with the history of the second world war. He aims to engage his audience in a direct confrontation with collective memory and the historical narrative of a place.

    The Writing on the Wall (1992–94)

    The work explores loss and trauma in relation to place. It consisted of a series of site-specific projections in Scheunenviertel, which was Berlin’s Jewish quarter. Through meticulous research, Attie used images from before the 1930s and projected these onto the remains of buildings, which have since been demolished as the area has been redeveloped. These ‘montages’ are very carefully arranged, so that pictorial elements from the projected photographs complement architectural details, such as windows and doorways. The resulting effects are provocative, ghost-like tableaux in a temporal transgression, where fractured narratives converge unnaturally in one space.

    See images

    Recent work

    More recent projects have involved using a range of media to engage local communities to find new ways of representing their history, memory and potential futures. Attie’s artworks and interventions are site-specific and immersive in nature, and tend to engage subject matter that is both social, political and psychological. In 2013, Shimon Attie was awarded the Lee Krasner Award for Lifetime Achievement in Art.

    See: http://www.shimonattie.net/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=13

    Lots of You Tube videos but rather long lectures

  • Nan Goldin

    Nan Goldin (born 1953) is another controversial photographer. She spent the early years of her career living with and acting as club photographer for a community of drag queens in New York.
    Goldin realised that what she saw on television was not reality but was, in Baudrillard’s terms, the simulacrum – an alternative false reality seen and accepted as reality by those who could not perceive or interpret its position in their lives.

    Goldin wanted to make images of real life. These images therefore blur the line between portraiture and social documentary. The subjects are posing – they acknowledge the camera and interact with the viewer of the image, as in portraiture. However, Goldin’s overall intent was to throw light on her subjects’ lives; it is this
    intent that would classify these portraits as social documentary.

    Analyse this image in the usual way, then come back to your analysis once you’ve explored the following links to see if your view has changed.

    Nan Goldin discusses her work:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Z3sihEuiEk

    Nan Goldin I’ll Be Your Mirror documentary Part One (follow the links to Parts Two and Three):
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUIAsWsqiyk

  • Sally Mann

    Sally Mann (born 1951) was named America’s best photographer by Time magazine in 2001. Her early work included black and white images of her own children which caused a degree of controversy, especially those images in which they adopted ‘adult’ poses, like the
    1989 image below.

    If you’re interested in finding out more about Sally Mann and some of the technical aspects of her work, the following link is to the first part of a three-part series What Remains: The Life and
    Work of Sally Mann. Follow the links on YouTube for Parts 2 and 3.
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNEd93H4pPY

    This link will take you to some photographs that Mann has taken of her husband of 40 years who has muscular dystrophy:
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACVN0bKze4Q

    Exercise: Mixed messages: Candy cigarette

    This is a more challenging image than any you’ve been asked to analyse previously because of the interplay between the young subject and the adult pose. As before, go through the various elements of the photograph one by one and note down how they
    contribute to the meaning that you take from the image – whatever that is. For example, you might think that Mann is deliberately challenging conventional attitudes to the portrayal of children or that she’s commenting on the child’s transition to adulthood.

    This image is called Candy Cigarette. Does that influence your interpretation of the image?

    This was a highly controversial image in 1989 when it was produced. What do you think the reaction would be to it today?

    Make notes in your learning log or blog. It might be interesting to go on the student forum and find out what other students have made of this image.

  • Exercise: Jack Nicholson

    Analyse Bailey’s portrait of Jack Nicholson. Take a good look at
    the portrait first. What mood does it convey? Who is this person?
    What was Bailey trying to do? As before, analyse the various
    elements independently then think

  • Portraits without People

    ‘Portraits without people’ sounds like a contradiction in terms but it refers to the collection of
    important and contextually relevant objects arranged and placed in a relationship to each other
    to convey the personality of the individual or a concept or an idea.
    You can use any items that mean something to you or that reflect your sitter’s life or personality.
    It could be a collection of parental keepsakes or familiar items from a childhood holiday
    destination. There may be music involved. It could be a multi-media piece with the portrait
    visually displaying the significant items accompanied by an imported smell (synthetic, easily
    bought these days).
    Take a look at the work of Robert Weingarten (born 1941) who uses photography to build
    complex compositions. He tends to illustrate myths and legends interspersed with themes from
    the lives of individuals.
    Visit: http://robertweingarten.com/home.html
    On the website you can listen to Weingarten talking about his work and how he goes about
    creating his portraits – unbound as he names them.

    Annie Leibovitz (born 1949) has investigated people and her own understanding of them
    through photographing their spaces and objects, as you can see from this TV interview:
    www.youtube.com/watch?v=kZsDcVJCccE
    For more on Annie Leibovitz:
    www.npg.org.uk/annieleibovitz/index.htm
    www.nytimes.com/library/photos/leibovitz/interview.html