This project is designed to develop your research skills. If you haven’t yet begun to generate some ideas for possible approaches to Assignment Three, then this exercise could be a good starting point.
Using the internet, local library, museum or any other resources at your disposal, conduct a short investigation into a historical aspect of the area in which you live or are currently based. This could relate to industry or other narratives in the distant past, or a more recent event. Don’t spend more than half a day.
Gather some primary sources such as copies of photographs, illustrations, maps, written/oral accounts, and write a brief account (around 300 words) describing what you’ve researched and any ideas you have about how this subject might be photographed today in a project such as Assignment Three.
For this local history assignment – which was only supposed to take half a day – I started by doing an internet search – starting with a Google search on ‘Chesterton history’. I have lived in Cambridge since I came here as a student in 1972, and moved to East Chesterton in 1984. Witnessing very many changes. I have also selected different places on the River Cam where I walk everyday as the subject for Assignments 5 and 6.
I did not expect the internet search to be very enlightening – when I looked a couple of years ago there had not been much. But this time there is quite a lot – it seems that local history is a growing interest as people become more linked up through Facebook. This is now a new area of interest for me – I find it fascinating to find out more about the place where I live and when and why things have changed.
My general findings are draft edited in the following pdf, though there is a lot more I can follow up:
From my initial search I then followed up on the many links to specific areas, buildings and topics.
I started to Grassy Corner where there seemed to be quite a lot of information as the topic for Assignment 3. I found a book with old photos and there are even separate Facebook pages for places like the traveller caravan park.
I am planning now to incorporate local history research into my photographic submission for Assignment 5 : Bench and Assignment 6 Transitions: Bridge. I think this can be done in a number of ways:
Using local history as a framework for choosing particular places – their history significance to local people
Giving an insight on particular photographs and places already chosen – a backdrop to my own images, feelings and interpretation in order to contextualise my images
Since the very beginning of photography, the city has provided opportunities for the photographer: landscape and other subject matter.
Detachment
Daguerre’s. ‘View boulevard du temple’. First example of photograph of a person. Only rendered because he must have remained relatively still to have his shoes shined.
“The images of Paris remain passive and mute, and establish not so much the tourist eye-view, hungry for sights to record, as one that was looking for things to record… his London images, for example Nelson’s Column (1843), keep the city at a distance and follow the eye in its way within the urban world.”
(Clarke, 1997, p.77)
A recurring line of investigation is that of the city, not just as one complete interconnecting unit, but layers of different cities within cities. Sometimes these elements are briefly exposed to one another, but often they are designed to restrain their inhabitants from uncomfortable contact with each other. Eg film In Time.
Take some time out to develop the technique of shooting very quickly. You’ll probably produce some very blurred and even disastrous images, but fortunately mistakes aren’t as expensive in the digital age as they were when Winogrand was working the New York streets. Produce a set of eight images that demonstrate the life and vibrancy of city living. If you don’t live anywhere near a city, choose a spot or a day when there’s a lot going on – the busier the better. If you need to, re-read the safety advice in the Introduction to this course guide. Analyse and reflect on your final images in your learning log or blog: • What makes the successful images work well? • What difficulties did you experience? • How do you feel about this type of work? Is it honest? Are your images a truthful representation or did you edit the truth in some way, consciously or sub-consciously?
Outdoor Portraits
On a bright day photograph a person in the sunshine. Do this outdoors in three stages.
1. First, photograph them with your back to the sun. Write down the exposures and look at the issues involved in getting the person’s expression and pose right.
2. Next, photograph the person with their back to the sun. Write down the exposures. If you can, look at the highlights and the shadow readings given from the spot metering. If you can’t set spot metering then you can still get some indication of the difference in brightness. Look to see if there’s burn-out – over-exposure of the hair or black shadow areas without any light at all. The contrast ratio will be very high – what do you think it is?
3. Take the photograph again but this time use a reflector. Write down the reading that you get from the face and the contrast level. A reflector can be aluminum metal foil over a cardboard box. It can be a bed sheet, it can be a fancy professional item; it can be big (2m2) or small (30cm diameter), square or round – it makes no difference. What does make a difference is the quality of the light coming off it. To prove this, repeat the third shot with silver (kitchen foil on a board) and then white and note the difference. Put your reflective material on a stand or get someone to hold it for you. In practice, of course, you can use reflectors that already exist – a white wall, for example. Keep your eyes open for possible surfaces.
Analyse the differences between the images you’ve made in relation to the exposure you’ve used. Write up your findings with images in your learning log or blog.
How much difference has the reflector made?
Is there evidence of hard or soft light in this exercise?
Hollywood-style
What you do for this exercise will depend on whether you have access to a full set of studio lights and a studio to use them in. If you haven’t, don’t worry – go straight to Part B.
Part A: If you have lights You’re going to create your own version of Hurrell’s Bogart image. Choose someone who might fit the bill, borrow some props (or look in a charity shop), then take a good look at the Humphrey Bogart image and the lighting diagram again. Set up the lighting as shown in the diagram. You need a good distance to the background, perhaps about 3m. It should be Black. It is Black when it meters up 5 stops below the face reading for the exposure and not before; at 4 stops, it’s dark grey, at 2 stops it’s light grey. Remember you need plenty of space to avoid light bouncing about where it shouldn’t be.
For your next project you’ll move forward 20 or 30 years to look at the photographic portrait of the 60s, exemplified by the work of David Bailey. The light at the back is quite high, coming down on the sitter and washing over the shoulders. Note the shadow on top of the hat front side and the highlight along the top edge and also the light falling over the shoulder in front. All this tells you that the light’s quite high, probably 1m above the sitter. The fill dish indicated is a beauty dish with diffuser. It is straight on here as a fill light. Look at the shadow on the collar – that’s what you’re looking to reproduce. The black board indicated is to stop light going directly into the camera lens as this will cause flare and degrade the image. The light front left has a grille on it to stop the light straying around; it puts more light on the front rear shoulder and the left side of the hat image. You may need to place a little white card at the opening to bounce the light down a little. The light should be above head height. You’ll need a small table lamp with a soft light as the fill light and, if possible, a small off-camera flash gun to provide the left-hand light. This puts more light on the front rear shoulder and the coat area.
Part B: Without lights There are plenty of Hollywood images to choose from. Pick one that you enjoy and can re-create using window light and a small amount of bounced flash. You’ll need a suitable model, preferably someone who is prepared to enter into the spirit of the task! The first thing to do is analyse the lighting. Where is it coming from? Look for the deepest shadows for the main light. Then make your own lighting diagram and produce a Hollywoodstyle set of portrait images. Produce three images in black and white – 10×12” or A4 at 320 dpi.
Eric Kim who works on the street using a wide
range of approaches. Before you have a go at shooting from the hip yourself, follow up these
two links for some expert advice:
http://erickimphotography.com/blog/2010/11/how-to-take-street-portraits-without-beingawkward/
www.youtube.com/watch?v=J9vI79uflMY
Garry Winogrand (1928–84) was a street photographer known for his portrayal of America in the mid-20th century. Many of his photographs addressed contemporary life and dealt with areas that society failed to recognise as issues – either politically or socially. He became one of the first modern street photographers, photographing the streets of New York in the early 1960s.
Winogrand grew up in the then predominantly Jewish working-class area of the Bronx, New York, where his father, Abraham, was a leather worker, and his mother, Bertha, made neckties for piecemeal work.
Winogrand studied painting at City College of New York and painting and photography at Columbia University in New York City in 1948. He also attended a photojournalism class taught by Alexey Brodovich at The New School for Social Research in New York City in 1951.
Winogrand worked as a commercial photographer between 1952 and 1954 at the Pix Photo Agency in Manhattan and from 1954 at Brackman Associates.
In 1955 two of Winogrand’s photos appeared in The Family of Man exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York. Winogrand’s first one-man show was held at Image Gallery in New York City in 1959. His first notable appearance was in Five Unrelated Photographers in 1963, also at MoMA in New York City, along with Minor White,George Krause, Jerome Liebling and Ken Heyman. In 1966 Winogrand exhibited at the George Eastman House in Rochester, New York with Lee Friedlander, Duane Michals,Bruce Davidson, and Danny Lyon in an exhibition entitled Toward a Social Landscape. In 1967 he participated in the New Documents show at MoMA in New York City with Diane Arbus and Lee Friedlander, curated by John Szarkowski. John Szarkowski, the Director of Photography at New York’s Museum of Modern Art, became an editor and reviewer of Winogrand’s work.
In 1964 Winogrand was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship Award to travel through America. Some of the results of this work were shown in the New Documents exhibition. He was awarded his second Guggenheim Fellowship in 1969 to continue exploring media events and their effect on the public. Between 1969 and 1976 Winogrand shot about 700 rolls of film at public events, producing 6,500 eleven by fourteen inch prints for Tod Papageorge to select for the exhibition and book Public Relations. Winogrand received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in 1975. In 1979 with his third Guggenheim Fellowship he moved to Los Angeles to document California. While in LA he developed 8522 rolls of film.
Between 1971 and 1972 Winogrand taught photography at the Institute of Design, Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago and between 1973 and 1978 at the University of Texas in Austin.
In 1952 Winogrand married Adrienne Lubeau, separating in 1963 and divorcing in 1966, they had two children, Laurie and Ethan. Around 1967 Winogrand married his second wife Judy Teller, they were together until 1969. In 1972 he married Eileen Adele Hale, with whom he had a daughter, Melissa.
Winogrand died of gall bladder cancer, in 1984 at age 56.
At the time of his death there was discovered about 2,500 rolls of undeveloped film, 6,500 rolls of developed but not proofed exposures, and contact sheets made from about 3,000 rolls. Some of these images have been exhibited posthumously, and published by MoMA in the overview of his work Winogrand, Figments from the Real World.
Winogrand was influenced by Walker Evans and Robert Frank and their respective publications American Photographs and The Americans. Henri Cartier-Bresson was another influence although stylistically different. In the early 1960s Winogrand photographed on the streets of New York City alongside Joel Meyerowitz, Lee Friedlander, Tod Papageorge and Diane Arbus.
Technique
He roamed the streets of New York with his 35mm Leica camera rapidly taking photographs using a prefocused wide angle lens. His pictures frequently appeared as if they were driven by the energy of the events he was witnessing.
His images, even when posed, had a feeling of ‘just happening to be there’. He chose to go where there was a lot of action; part of the crowd, he captured images very quickly, sometimes getting the camera to eye level and sometimes shooting before it got there, so that his subjects barelyrealised they were being photographed. He was influenced by Cartier-Bresson and the idea of seizing the decisive moment – even though the style is so different.
Quotations
“A photograph is the illusion of a literal description of how the camera ‘saw’ a piece of time and space.”
“Photography is not about the thing photographed. It is about how that thing looks photographed.”
“I photograph to see what the world looks like in photographs.”
“I like to think of photographing as a two-way act of respect. Respect for the medium, by letting it do what it does best, describe. And respect for the subject, by describing as it is. A photograph must be responsible to both.”
“I don’t know if all the women in the photographs are beautiful, but I do know that the women are beautiful in the photographs.” (In reference to his book, “Women Are Beautiful.”)
“All things are photographable.”
“I don’t have anything to say in any picture. My only interest in photography is to see what something looks like as a photograph. I have no preconceptions.”
Books
The Animals. 1969. Museum of Modern Art, New York. Winogrand’s photographs of the Bronx Zoo and the Coney Island Aquarium made up his first book The Animals (1969), a collection of pictures that observes the connections between humans and animals.
Women are Beautiful. 1975. Light Gallery / Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Public Relations. 1977. Museum of Modern Art, New York
Public Relations (1977) shows press conferences with deer-in-the-headlight writers and politicians, protesters beaten by cops, and museum parties frequented by the self-satisfied cultural glitterati. These photographs capture the evolution of a uniquely 20th and 21st century phenomenon, the event created to be documented.
Stock Photographs: The Fort Worth Fat Stock Show and Rodeo. 1980. Olympic Marketing Corp. Winogrand published his views of the Fort Worth Fat Stock Show and Rodeo.
Composer, film-maker and photographer Gordon Parks (1912–2006) was born into a society
which was segregated and where black people could not make it out of menial work and poverty.
Like other black people, Parks was on the receiving end of intolerable bigotry in New York. He
vowed to document this after being made to eat at the back door of restaurants and being
refused service in shops. However, he soon found that photographing bigotry was no easy task;
the type of experience he had endured eluded the camera so he set off to photograph the plight
of black people in New York City. His work straddles documentary (his work on the FSA project),
photojournalism and editorial photography.
American Gothic is Parks’ most famous image,
taken in 1942 during his involvement with
the FSA project. It shows the subject (a black
woman) as object, an object to be pitied
or derided, as well as the conflict between
nationhood and nationality.
For the story of how Parks came to take this
photograph, visit:
http://layersofmeaning.org/
archives/000246.html
In American Gothic Parks uses the medium
of photography to expose aspects of the
treatment of black people in America.
However photography has also been used in a
less positive way in relation to race.
The French photographer Eugène Atget (1857–1927) produced documentary photography that
was far removed from the frontier of photojournalism. During a working life that lasted from
1890 to 1927, Atget produced 10,000 images of Paris, working with a large format 24x18cm
wooden camera and making and coating his own large glass plate negatives. Atget cared deeply
about the small traders, street musicians, actors, artists, ribbon sellers, etc., who were being
squeezed out of their livings by modernisation. He also cared for the architecture of the republic,
much of which was crumbling and in a state of squalor, just waiting to be demolished. Atget
was motivated more by the need to re-create, preserve and document the old city’s existence
than by a desire to create imagery for sale.
It’s not difficult to imagine these
works as paintings. (Compare Atget’s
Bitumiers with Gustave Caillebotte’s The
Floor Scrapers, for example.) You’ll find
more Atget images in the Bridgeman
Art Library. Follow the link on the OCA
student website. Some of Atget’s work
showed surrealist elements. Look at his
famous ‘corset shop’ photograph, for
example.
Project Photography as art
Water Lilies Eugène Atget. Not Paris this time, but recognisably
in a fine art tradition i.e. Monet.
Bitumiers
The flâneur archetype takes different forms but can easily be identified in the figure of Brassaï (1899–1984) who embodies Rebecca Solnit’s description of the flâneur as “… the image of an observant and solitary man strolling about Paris” (Solnit, 2001, p.198). Brassaï photographed, in both senses, the darker side of Paris. He photographed transvestites and homosexuals at underground bars and clubs, and he photographed the streets of Paris extensively at night, published in the celebrated Paris by Night (1933).
Brassaï (1899-1984) was a Hungarian-born French photographer who created countless iconic images of 1920s Parisian life.
He moved to Paris in 1924, working as a journalist and joined a circle of Hungarian artists and writers. His seminal book Paris de Nuit (Paris by Night 1933) documented the nightlife of prostitutes, street cleaners, and other scenes in his neighborhood of Montparnasse.
He also documented high society, including the ballet, opera, and intellectuals—among them his friends and contemporaries, Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dalí, Alberto Giacometti, and Henri Matisse. He was also interested in graffiti, seeing it as a form of Outsider Art that could open the door for new artistic expression.
His black and white images are very dark and moody with large areas of clipped black with rim lighting have influenced my work in Assignment 2.1 Bridge.
John Thomson (14 June 1837 – 29 September 1921) was a pioneering Scottish photographer, geographer and traveller. He was an accomplished photographer in many areas: landscapes, portraiture, street-photography, architectural photography. He was one of the first photographers to travel to the Far East, documenting the people, landscapes and artifacts of eastern cultures for his Victorian audience. He was however more concerned with the socio-economic situation of the people whose land he visited than landscape as a subject in itself (Jeffrey, 1981, p. 64).
On his return home, his pioneering work documenting the social conditions of the street is regarded as a classic instance of social documentary which laid the foundations for photojournalism. He went on to become a portrait photographer of High Society in Mayfair, gaining the Royal Warrant in 1881. His publishing activities mark him out as an innovator in combining photography with the printed word.
The son of William Thomson, a tobacco spinner and retail trader, and his wife Isabella, Thomson was born the eighth of nine children in Edinburgh. After his schooling in the early 1850s, he was apprenticed to a local optical and scientific instrument manufacturer, thought to be James Mackay Bryson. During this time, Thomson learned the principles of photography and completed his apprenticeship around 1858. In 1861 he became a member of the Royal Scottish Society of Arts.
South East Asia 1862-1872: Singapore, Malaya, Sumatra, Siam, Cambodia and China
Singapore
In April 1862, Thomson left Edinburgh for Singapore to join his older brother William, a watchmaker and photographer, beginning a ten-year period spent travelling around the Far East. Initially, he established a joint business with William to manufacture marine chronometers and optical and nautical instruments. He also established a photographic studio in Singapore, taking portraits of European merchants, and he developed an interest in local peoples and places. He travelled extensively throughout the mainland territories of Malaya and the island of Sumatra, exploring the villages and photographing the native peoples and their activities.
After visiting Ceylon and India from October to November 1864 to document the destruction caused by a recent cyclone, Thomson sold his Singapore studio and moved to Siam. After arrival in Bangkok in September 1865, Thomson undertook a series of photographs of the King of Siam and other senior members of the royal court and government.
Prea Sat Ling Poun, Angkor Wat, 1865.
Inspired by Henri Mouhot’s account of the rediscovery of the ancient cities of Angkor in the Cambodian jungle, Thomson embarked on what would become the first of his major photographic expeditions. He set off in January 1866 with his translator H. G. Kennedy, a British Consular official in Bangkok, who saved Thomson’s life when he contracted jungle fever en route. The pair spent two weeks at Angkor, where Thomson extensively documented the vast site, producing some of the earliest photographs of what is today a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Thomson then moved on to Phnom Penh and took photographs of the King of Cambodia and other members of the Cambodian Royal Family, before travelling on to Saigon. From there he stayed in Bangkok briefly, before returning to Britain in May or June in 1866.
While back home, Thomson lectured extensively to the British Association and published his photographs of Siam and Cambodia. He became a member of the Royal Ethnological Society of London and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society in 1866, and published his first book, The Antiquities of Cambodia, in early 1867.
There have however been accusations of plagiarism. In 2001 Phiphat Phongraphiphon, a Thai independent researcher in historical photography, published claims that Thomson plagiarised works by Thai court photographer Khun Sunthornsathitsalak (Christian name: Francis Chit) and published them as his own. Evidence to Phiphat’s claims include an analysis of a photograph in which the temple Wat Rajapradit, which was built before Thomson arrived in Bangkok, is missing.
Travels in China 1868-1872
Island Pagoda, about 1871, from the album, Foochow and the River Min
Images from Travels in Chinahttps://www.youtube.com/embed/RXPC31yH1pQ?autoplay=0&theme=dark&loop=0&fs=1&showinfo=1&modestbranding=0&iv_load_policy=3&color=red&autohide=1&disablekb=0&enablejsapi=1&version=3 https://www.youtube.com/embed/FV-13nn1aAE?autoplay=0&theme=dark&loop=0&fs=1&showinfo=1&modestbranding=0&iv_load_policy=3&color=red&autohide=1&disablekb=0&enablejsapi=1&version=3 https://www.youtube.com/embed/v=zGgrQ6QKaGo?autoplay=0&theme=dark&loop=0&fs=1&showinfo=1&modestbranding=0&iv_load_policy=3&color=red&autohide=1&disablekb=0&enablejsapi=1&version=3
After a year in Britain, Thomson again felt the desire to return to the Far East. He returned to Singapore in July 1867, before moving to Saigon for three months and finally settling in Hong Kong in 1868. He established a studio in the Commercial Bank building, and spent the next four years photographing the people of China and recording the diversity of Chinese culture.
Thomson travelled extensively throughout China, from the southern trading ports of Hong Kong and Canton to the cities of Peking and Shanghai, to the Great Wall in the north, and deep into central China. From 1870 to 1871 he visited the Fukien region, travelling up the Min River by boat with the American Protestant missionary Reverend Justus Doolittle, and then visited Amoy and Swatow.
He went on to visit the island of Formosa with the missionary Dr. James Laidlaw Maxwell, landing first in Takao in early April 1871. The pair visited the capital, Taiwanfu, before travelling on to the aboriginal villages on the west plains of the island. After leaving Formosa, Thomson spent the next three months travelling 3,000 miles up the Yangtze River, reaching Hupeh and Szechuan.
Thomson’s travels in China were often perilous, as he visited remote, almost unpopulated regions far inland. Most of the people he encountered had never seen a Westerner or camera before. His expeditions were also especially challenging because he had to transport his bulky wooden camera, many large, fragile glass plates, and potentially explosive chemicals. He photographed in a wide variety of conditions and often had to improvise because chemicals were difficult to acquire. His subject matter varied enormously: from humble beggars and street people to Mandarins, Princes and senior government officials; from remote monasteries to Imperial Palaces; from simple rural villages to magnificent landscapes.
Street Life in London
Images from Street Life in LondonThomson returned to England in 1872, settling in Brixton, London and, apart from a final photographic journey to Cyprus in 1878, Thomson never left again. Over the coming years he proceeded to lecture and publish, presenting the results of his travels in the Far East. His publications started initially in monthly magazines and were followed by a series of large, lavishly illustrated photographic books. He wrote extensively on photography, contributing many articles to photographic journals such as the British Journal of Photography. He also translated and edited Gaston Tissandier’s 1876 History and Handbook of Photography, which became a standard reference work.
In London, Thomson renewed his acquaintance with Adolphe Smith, a radical journalist whom he had met at the Royal Geographical Society in 1866. Together they collaborated in producing the monthly magazine, Street Life in London, from 1876 to 1877. The project documented in photographs and text the lives of the street people of London, establishing social documentary photography as an early type of photojournalism. The series of photographs was later published in book form in 1878.
The Crawlers, London, 1876-1877
He was elected a member of the Photographic Society, later the Royal Photographic Society, on 11 November 1879. With his reputation as an important photographer well established, Thomson opened a portrait studio in Buckingham Palace Road in 1879, later moving it to Mayfair. In 1881 he was appointed photographer to the British Royal Family by Queen Victoria, and his later work concentrated on studio portraiture of the rich and famous of High Society, giving him a comfortable living. From January 1886 he began instructing explorers at the Royal Geographical Society in the use of photography to document their travels.
After retiring from his commercial studio in 1910, Thomson spent most of his time back in Edinburgh, although he continued to write papers for the Royal Geographical Society on the uses of photography. He died of a heart attack in 1921 at the age of 84. In recognition of his work, one of the peaks of Mount Kenya was named “Point Thomson”.
A large collection of his glass negatives was donated to the Wellcome Library. Some of Thomson’s work may be seen at the Royal Geographical Society’s headquarters in London.https://www.youtube.com/embed/1iHxiVW3wjA?autoplay=0&theme=dark&loop=0&fs=1&showinfo=1&modestbranding=0&iv_load_policy=3&color=red&autohide=1&disablekb=0&enablejsapi=1&version=3
Selected publications
China Through the Lens of John Thomson 1868 -1872, River Books 2010.
The antiquities of Cambodia, 1867
Views on the North River, 1870.
Foochow and the River Min, 1873.
Illustrations of China and its people, 1873-1874 [1]
Street life in London, 1878
Through Cyprus with a camera in the autumn of 1878, 1879
