Write a 2,000-word essay (excluding any quotes) on one of the areas of landscape practice you have encountered during this course so far.The critical review is an opportunity for you to gain a greater insight into an area, theme, debate or other issue relating to landscape photography that is of particular interest to you.You must choose a topic that’s relevant to your own practice in some way, in order to help you to contextualise your practice and to show that your understanding of landscape photography is informed by relevant practitioners. You should include an in-depth evaluation of the work of key practitioners that you reference in your essay. Where appropriate, also reference your own individual images, bodies of work and ongoing or forthcoming projects.Your written work should clearly show that you have engaged with theoretical, historical and cultural debates around landscape practice within photography and visual culture, and demonstrate that you have developed academically as well as creatively.To sum up, your critical review should demonstrate that you can:• understand relevant topics and issues around landscape practice• use research skills competently• analyse appropriate resources• articulate your own, informed ideas at a level commensurate with HE5 level study.Remember to include:• correctly cited references and quotations (Harvard referencing system)• referenced illustrations• word counts, both excluding and including quotations.Finally, make sure that your essay is critical rather than narrative. This means that you should focus your efforts on evaluating, comparing, contrasting and questioning the work and theoretical ideas, and not on recounting biographical or historical information, unless it has a significant relation to practice.
My proposal is to do this around the idea of ‘safari’ – the way that African landscapes have been photographed and promoted, not only by Western tourists, but also African photographers.– Background to views of Africa in terms of exotic other – from anthropology and colonial accounts. Linked to discussions of the picturesque, but also beautiful and sublime ‘darkest Africa’– How this image has been and currently is promoted by both private and government-sponsored tourism. Equation of ‘Africa’ with animals and the ‘exotic primitive’ is even more pronounced than for most other regions.– How have African photographers responded. Many have followed the same trend as urban outsiders in the same way as urban populations in the UK idealise the British countryside. Particularly eg South Africa. Others have been more in the documentary tradition.– What are the implications for my own photographic practice in my work in Africa – different types of images for different markets? but what are the ethical issues.– What difference does it make if I ask people from the communities with which I work how they would want their lives and environment to be portrayed?Working method?Kander: working method: he does not plan everything in advance. But uses the photographic process as a means of discovering more and more what resonates with him. He went back to China 5 times, taking fewer but more focused pictures each time.I have started to review internet sites with ‘safari’ pictures, African photographers and my own earlier images of journey through Africa.Tutor responseYour thoughts for your Critical Review are very interesting – looking at the safari and colonialism. In your notes, there is a lot to examine in the list of things you mention. I suggest that you might be trying to pack too much into the essay, so getting a tighter focus would be better and would allow you to enter into greater critical depth. I would suggest your essay first addresses the topic fairly broadly – proposing the problems / criticisms, and then look at an example of work that fits into the traditionally ‘problematic’ approach, followed by a critique of a practitioner who is making a ‘better’ effort – or perhaps might actually not be making as good an effort as they might think, or their critics might think.(Sontag mentions safaris fairly near the beginning of On Photography – worth having a look.)There is also a good book, Photography and Africa by Erin Haney which might be worth looking athttp://www.amazon.co.uk/Photography-Africa-Exposures-Erin-Haney/dp/1861893825
My tutor thought that my first proposal is too broad (a lot of work!). Re-reading the task instructions I see the possibility of looking at and reviewing bodies of my own work. I would now like to focus much more narrowly on some of the challenges for my own practice, whether and how other photographers may have addressed them and/or any other ideas I myself could propose after this reflection. I want to focus on some issues I became interested in Assignment 2 ‘journeys’ but were left pending. Comparing the ways I might approach ‘journeys’ in UK (supposedly my ‘own’ society’) compared to the way I photograph journeys in Africa. This does raise some of the issues about ‘colonial gaze’ and travel photography in general, but I want to focus more on the challenges of photographing ‘journeys’ revisiting specific sets of images I have taken on journeys in Africa. Drawing on the way contemporary African and non-African photographers have depicted similar landscapes both as studied landscapes and as journeys/journey narratives.The word ‘safari’ means journey in Swahili from the Arabic root ‘safar’ travel. It was used by colonial powers to refer to game hunts. This is now being changed by African governments and tour companies to refer more to eco-travel to photograph national parks, but also African tourism more generally. I travel a lot for work, but unlike professional photographers am employed to do a job. I do increasingly have opportunities to do documentary portraits – now my photography skills are better. But, like a tourist, I have fleeting opportunities to do more contextual landscape or environmental work. I have a number of series of images taken on journeys from different perspectives taken before, during and since Assignment 2. These include:
This review is partly a way of really taking stock of the photographs I have and how they can be made more meaningful through selection, processing and narrative sequencing. Partly a way of comparing my images to those of professional photographers who have dealt with the same types of images. In order to draw implications for possibilities for my own practice in future. The questions that really interest me in order to make the best of the opportunities I have is:
This means getting less bound up with all the academic literature on colonialism and photography (which I started to read but seems a bit done to death) and focusing more on further investigation of ideas I had in Assignment 2 but applying these to my photography in Africa.
We never look at just one thing; we are always looking at the relation between things and ourselves
John Berger, Ways of Seeing
Photography is not, and cannot be an ‘objective’ art. Although the camera can only capture light bouncing off objects that are in front of the lens, the photographer behind the lens will always be making subjective judgements about:
– what exactly to include in and out of the image and composition
– when to take the image to include what they want in terms of eg action and lighting
– how to take the image eg type of lens, depth of field, shutter speed
Although all the above are affected by technological possibilities and constraints of particular cameras that have changed over time, photographs have always been made in relation to the photographer’s subjective purpose for the image:
– feelings about the object (even if photographing cells under a microscope)
– intended communication of those feelings for a particular audience
– subjective reactions of different audiences to the image
Lee Miller’s photograph is really intriguing – and becomes even more so the more I look and then read how it was made and constructed. I first saw Lee Miller’s work about 20 years ago at an exhibition in Paris.
When I first saw the image in the context of the topic thread here, I assumed that the rectangle was a small looking glass like the ones one often sees in bathrooms in India and Islamic countries. So a blank mirror reflecting nothing back of the photographer as if her mind was clouded, blank and probably depressed. Echoing then the arid stone desert outside. Obviously somewhere like Egypt or North Africa/Arabia but no culture or distinguishing features to be seen. A bleak landscape through a torn curtain seen by a blank mind. Just space.
But when I looked up the discussion about how this particular version of the scene was constructed and why it was selected, I discovered I had misunderstood.
Lee altered the framing of the whole photograph to try to accommodate a rectangular window in a square format camera exposure. The version seen here is taken very much closer to the window than earlier takes to de-emphasise the window, and focus more on the torn curtain.
The ‘mirror’ is not actually a mirror at all, but one of a number of versions of framing that direct the viewer’s eye. In other versions the small black frame was positioned to focus on the escarpment on the left that was positioned so that the top converging lines of the curtain led the eye to the frame. It seems this was because the cabin where she stayed was one used by officials and visitors who might be more interested in the only ‘landscape feature’, rather than the stone desert. Placing the frame so that it frames part of the washed out sky is the ‘Portrait of Space’.
But the viewer can choose where they look in the frame and let their gaze wander through different spaces, including examination of the torn curtain that now provides another frame, rather than a device to direct the eye to the horizon.
So this is an image that is a choice of different windows, but actually revealing very little of what ‘objectively’ exists. The mirror being I think less a reflection of the photographer, than of what the viewer chooses to look at. And how far they choose to see past what the photographer has hidden through the device of the curtain.
In my own work I range across a whole continuum from windows to mirrors, and the various barriers between. Some of my projects have been research-based more documentary images eg in preparing a Blurb photobook Anywhere Road I consciously question a range of different perspectives and photographic interpretations to become more aware of my subjectivity – and discovered a lot of new things in the process. Others projects are much more obviously my own interpretation of what I see. I have also been very interested in photographic textures eg in wood and stone that suggest fiction narratives but inspired by the particular location.
One project ‘Through the Window Pane’ was shot in Shingle Street on the Suffolk Coast, referencing Alice Through the Looking Glass and clouded mirrors that distort and put things back to front.. I had unfortunately hurt my ankle just a day before the trip, so could not go out. And I was imprisoned watching Liz Truss’ budget and ware in Ukraine on the TV, just looking through the window. So I decided to make the most of it through a photoseries of the changing light, weather and views on my iPhone. This does I think indicate a lot about myself, what I choose to shoot and also select, how I interprete and then also manipulate what I have shot to further communicate my mood and sometimes a message.
Through the Window
Reflecting the Photographer
What is on the ‘window lens’ distorting my view?
Through the Window Pane Blurb Photobook with poetry and text (Links to my SMUGMUG external website.)
Whether working directly with another photographer or practitioner in the creative process,
drawing upon the work or materials of others can offer new ways of thinking and new
opportunities for creative output. Collaboration is also integral to operating effectively in
professional arenas: you’ll need to utilise expertise that, for whatever reason, may not be
readily accessible to you. Developing a positive approach to collaboration will lead to more
opportunities and potentially make your practice more engaging.
Reflect on your creative practice – your photography – and also maybe aspects of your life
beyond or outside of this:
“…we all more or less take the same photographs…But we don’t learn that at school and our parents don’t tell us, so there must be some kind of unspoken or unconscious code, of how we want to depict our lives, or our societies and this is not very well researched. We all contribute to that, there is not much originality and that’s also true for most of the photography we find in the art world. You find the same repetitive patterns there, they are just more consciously elaborated.”
Joachim Schmid in CASPER, 2013 quoted Coursse material.
“While the intent of photographing a sunset maybe to capture something ephemeral or to assert an individual subjective point of view – the result is quite the opposite – through the technology of our common camera we experience the power of millions of synoptic views, all shared the same way, at the same moment. To claim individual authorship while photographing a sunset is to disengage from this collective practise and therefore negate a large part of why capturing a sunset is so irresistible in the first place.”
Penelope Umbrico in ALEXANDER, 2015: 61
Place from Sunrise to Sunset – the differences between us (geography and life) and the similarities.
Concept – take pictures of the sunrise and sunset on a particular day this week, plus three during middle of the day (say 11am, 1pm, 4pm). Your shots could be from the same location (front door step) or varied. The result could be a visual time line of participants / group, or layering the photos into a collage or similar.
I would like to collaborate with people interested in collectively developing a series of alternative ‘essence of autumn’ images that are less stereotypical and more creative and meaningful for the 21st century than the ones we normally see.
In Europe this month is now technically in autumn. But in UK there is abnormally warm weather over much of the country. What I see in my garden and walks by the river ranges from remnants of bright green to dull fading greens of dying grass, grey whites and browns of dried seed heads and white purple-veined convolvulus flowers spreading in dark green hedge shadows. The occasional yellow flowerhead, faded red poppy and blue cornflower. There are only occasional splashes of the traditional autumn oranges and reds of turning leaves that I assume will at some point in the near future burst to fill the conventionally picturesque autumn scene, Though actually what I see are mostly terminally shrivelled rusty browns of diseased horse chestnut trees. I am anticipating later the melancholy end-of-year dark browns and purples of decaying wet leaves, punctuated with white grey mushrooms and fungus.
I apologise for the late night lyricism. But I have many questions, for example:
These are only my initial late night thoughts. Other people may have very different conceptions and questions to shape the discussion. On a practical manageability level in the timeframe, photographs could be existing photographs, new images through the window of the street or garden, a walk around where you live or further afield, objects brought home, something more abstract etc etc etc etc.
I proposed my original idea because it was very relevant for my landscape documentary work – raising issues about ‘photographic truth’:
My idea got 2 likes, but no direct requests to collaborate.
So I chose Keith Mason’s idea because it would enable me to ask similar conceptual and practical questions about sunrise and sunset. One of my main priorities at this stage of the course was to go back to basics to improve my photography technique. Before then getting back to more familiar territory of visual communication through experimenting with different digital styles, narrative construction and book design.
Communications and organisation on Teams proved a bit difficult because of a combination of technical learning curve, lack of clear guidelines on exactly what to do (eg how to form a ‘group’, and differing time schedules of other work. All likely to be issues at the beginning of in other new collaborative processes, but made especially difficult because of the very short timeline to make decisions. Initially a third person asked to join our group, but left because they wanted to get on immediately and Keith was busy. So Keith and I made a group of 2 people and had a chat on Teams.
I also needed to start immediately – partly because I wanted to work when the weather forecast was sunny and therefore more conventionally ‘sunrise/sunset’ than the rest of the grey and rainy week.
I woke up just before it got light and rushed down the road to catch the sun, but then it was difficult to know with the clouds exactly when sunrise started and ended. Then similarly with the cloudy sunset, I just stayed till I got too cold. But waiting around for a sunset that never really happened was a good excuse to just hang around, looking as if I had purpose, but enabling ‘participant observation’ ie eavesdrop on all sorts of random conversations, watching how people enjoyed their evening and get greater spontaneous understanding of how people felt about the location and the time of day.
I don’t think I got any stunning images. I was still getting to grips with a new camera, so the project was really good to experiment with settings in very different lighting conditions. The sunrise also is the time along the river when it is crowded with joggers and rowers with their accompanying minders on bikes. So it was also good practice in making instant decisions on how to balance the shutter speed, aperture and ISO to get different effects. Then thinking how I can ‘improve’ through minimal processing in Lightroom.
Shot on Canon R5 with 28 – 105mm Zoom with autofocus and image stabiliser
The sunrise and sunset images were shot at 1250 – 1600 ISO at -1EV in order to expose for sunlight highlights and get enough shutter speed to get reasonably sharp movement. Tripod would have not achieved this. These images were pretty noisy so I used Lightroom Denoise AI. Is there any way I can get better sunrise and sunset shots? Am I missing something obvious?
In order to develop the book we worked on Teams, which proved pretty smooth to combine text chat and video calls to both pc and iPhone.
We each sent an initial selection of images. I did an initial design mock-up, we then reviewed our selection of images to make a narrative.
I think this was probably easier because there were only two of us. It might well be much more complex with more people.
Another documentary project I did a lot of work on before COVID, intending to use for this module was on the tin mining industry in Penwith. Dating back to Roman times at least, tin mining has historically been one of the main sources of employment – as romanticised in the Poldark series. The mines have all closed over the last decade because of trends in the international markets for tin, causing a lot of poverty and unemployment in the mining communities. A number of local and international artists have worked with mining communities, giving presentations of their work at Tate St Ives. Many of the mines are currently run as tourist attractions – capitalising on t6he Poldark effect. I have so far visited three of the mines: Geevor, a private min and Levant and Botallack owned by National Trust. Although currently closed, there are discussions on how the substantial deposits of lithium can be exploited without significant environmental pollution – rather than exporting that problem to other countries to fulfil the rapidly rising demand for lithium batteries.
In terms of my own work, I took many photographs that are presented here. And have a lot of documentary notes from various talks about the industry. Some of the photos of Geevor I used as the basis for linocuts in Printmaking 1. And there is significant potential for doing printmaking in different print media for cards and other outputs for the tourist market. The tour guiders are also very friendly and there is potential to develop Photobooks eg as the basis on which I could apply for a National Trust photographer permit to do commercial work on other properties in the UK. I should also ask for permission from the (friendly) community/privately-owned Geevor mine.
We have booked a week in a holiday cottage in St Just for last week of September. I am planning to use this to do some psycho-geographic walks in St Just itself, as well as along the mining coast path. This will enable me to create a more interesting documentary photobook without needing permission from National Trust. I am hoping to revisit again in 2022 to also get some interviews and feedback from local people.
The images would be very effective as linocut and/or drypoint cards and I plan to also try that.
But possibly this would be an exploratory project for future possibilities, aiming to produce mostly a portfolio of striking documentary black and white prints for my own website. Together with my insights on psycho-geography walking. There are also other local artists working with mining communities on work about the area, I would also want to link with them and make sure I was doing something complementary rather than duplicating. And something that would contribute to the local area.
Dunwich is the iconic lost city ‘Atlantis of Suffolk’.
In the Roman period the shoreline was at least 2,000 metres further out.
In the early Middle Ages the town was one of the largest in England, and its outer walls stood nearly two miles beyond the present shoreline. It was a key economic and religious centre for the whole area as far as the Fens, including Aldeburgh.
Since then coastal erosion, and particularly several huge storms in the late 1200s and early 1300s.
The town’s slow death began in 1286 when a three-day storm which started on New Year’s Eve wrecked much of the settlement and blocked the river mouth.
Further storms silted up what had been an international port, destroying the town’s prosperity, and the erosion of the coastline was remorseless.
As recently as 1736 All Saints was a handsome church with a tall tower: By 1912 only the ruined tower remained teetering on the edge of the cliff,
Now nothing remains on dry land of the old town except the old Greyfriars Priory and a solitary gravestone survive of the old town and the cliff view of the sea that submerged the town shown in the Feature image above..
Replaced by large houses and tourism. And National Trust.
This is the location project I have worked on least so far. Visits from April onwards when campsite opens – a very convenient location for much needed family breaks away from Cambridge. Linked to Aldeburgh and Sizewell.
The main focus of this project will be a semi-documentary video looking at mixes of past, present and future time, combining my photographs and video with You Tube audio mix of enthusiastic ghost hunters, Sizewell radiation leak monitors and people just there for the bracing walk along the beach. Drawing on:
I have many more photographs. Further visits 2022, including the museum, will probably identify further issues of interest. Possibly a draft textured history from the priory and leper chapel along the lines of ‘Moot Tales’ from Aldeburgh and/or draft work about the wood to link with Bramblefield and Hagg Wood.
Ghost hunter videos. And hunters for Sizewell radiation.
Alan Scovell.
I have been photographing along the River Cam since 2009 for various amateur photography courses and projects. Some of these are colour film and transparency images, most are low resolution digital images on a compact camera or early DSLR.
The River Cam is part of a longer term body of environmental and social documentary work in different media about ‘Cam Edgelands’ that is central to my practice going forward. The river is just down the road from my house and an area where in normal times I walk nearly everyday for exercise.
The A14 road bridge is one of a number of bridges across the river. On one side the bridge underpass dissects two areas of land that are used by travellers and migrant workers living on a Traveller site relegated to the margins of Cambridge. There is a well-established traveller community that has been there for very many years. Living on one side of the bridge, they use fields on the other side to keep their horses, using the underpass as a transit between the two. Before Brexit they were joined by migrant workers – particularly men – from Eastern Europe. It is unclear how much of the graffiti, litter and broken glass is created by either of these communities, and how much by other walkers passing under the bridge. Graffiti is certainly not confined to this bridge, but is evident in a range of styles also under the other bridges along the river.
The river itself is part of the University rowing Bumps course, and used by town rowers and also leisure boats.
Stephen Gill Birds taking off, Trail Cam footage.
Snails and slugs
SloMo light?
Solarplate and Cyanotype
Moving Image
Trailcam??
The word ‘safari’ means journey in Swahili from the Arabic root ‘safar’ travel. It was used by colonial powers in Africa to refer to game hunts. This meaning is now being changed by African governments and tour companies to refer more to eco-travel to photograph national parks, and also to African tourism more generally. This shift does not however remove either political concerns, or the colonial overtones.
There are intensely conflicting interests between large private companies and/or governments and local people about the use of national parks as a generation of revenue. Although some national parks are managed in the interests of local people as well as animals, farmers living in or on the boundaries of the parks often have their livelihoods and crops decimated by incursions of animals – particularly where the areas are not large enough for the animal populations and/or where poaching and illegal logging and other types of exploitation by large vested interests are also involved.
Moreover the tourists are generally from rich nations eager to find a ‘lost wilderness’ where animals are free in a way that would not be permitted at home as for example in opposition to reintroduction of wolves and bears in Western Europe. For these tourists the people are often secondary. Aiming to ‘shoot’ photos (Sontag) and capture as many memories of the exotic as possible to take home. Leading to ossification of ‘quaint’ cultural traditions. eg pygmies etc. The focus is on difference rather than human similarities. It is also far from clear that the foreign appreciation of ‘wilderness’ corresponds to local perceptions of ‘beautiful landscape’ or indeed the types of landscapes encouraged by global commodity companies or development agencies where the focus is more on efficient and in some cases sustainable agricultural practices.
This review is an attempt to work through implications for my own work. I travel a lot for work, but unlike professional photographers I am employed to do a job training people in local communities in participatory methodologies. As such I do have privileged access to the views and issues facing local people and people in the organisations working with them. But, like a tourist, I have fleeting opportunities to do more contextual landscape or environmental work. The questions that really interest me in order to make the best of the opportunities I have is:
In deciding how to portray particular landscape/s key considerations are:
Underlying all these considerations must also be a consideration of:
This review considers what can be learned from professional photographers, African and non-African and my own experience from this course in an attempt to move beyond ‘travel photography’ to ways of photographing journeys that can discover and communicate more about the places and people ‘outside the window’. It reviews a number of different types of image series taken on journeys before, during and since Assignment 2. These include:
– taken before Assignment 2 and the closest to common understandings of ‘safari’ though taken as we travelled along the main road rather than paying to go through the national park itself.
taken from the car as I returned from rural areas back to the capital city through Looking at how far this type of photography can say something about African urban life – compared to eg Paul Seawright’s Invisible Cities.
See: http://www.zemniimages.com/Photography/Documentary/Indonesia
where I alternated my approach between ‘subjective’ framing and automatic ‘objective’ clicking the shutter at intervals of 3 seconds as I moved through urban areas to see the different effects this gave.
Semendo to Bataraja: Series 1
Semendo to Baturaja: Series 4
Semendo to Baturaja selected images from random series
Semendo to Baturaja considered images
Journeys to communities in Rwanda and Tanzania (3-5 series) I was with both local NGO staff and/or local drivers and had more opportunity to stop, get out and consider ‘shots’ and also to travel off the normal tourist routes and see things more from the local perspective. Including one journey with local people to select what they considered the best photo spot for a picture for a calendar they had asked me to produce. And one journey where I focused on the contrast between my transport and they way local people travelled. One other journey for Gesture and Meaning Assignment 1 I used manual focus to speed up the camera reaction time.
TASK
Write a project proposal for the self-directed project that you’ll submit as Assignment Five. Don’t write more than 500 words. The purpose of this document is to formulate and communicate your ideas to your tutor, for
them to approve and provide comments, suggestions and any other feedback.
The project proposal is not a binding contract. It is quite acceptable for it to evolve and perhaps shift direction; this is part of the creative process. However, you may find it helpful to think of the document as a real-life professional application for funding, or for permission to photograph at a restricted location.
See Designing a project brief for guidelines
The project brief: What, where, how and why am I photographing this subject?
My main aim is to look at different ways of selecting and editing the same sets of images for different purposes: eg documentary, expressive and tourist and how different impressions can be given through different design of books and on-line slideshows. I will explore the use of black and white and what effects this has on interpretation of the images.
I am proposing to use images from my forthcoming 3 week work trip to Ethiopia (November) to take further issues in documentary travel photography raised in Assignment 4. My work is to look at the horticulture value chain, and how the incomes of women in particular can be increased. My work involves training farmers and union/cooperative members and I will be staying most of the time in one community (but I do not yet know what accommodation will be like). As part of this I should be able to negotiate some time specifically for photography to support my work.
Influences and research
I will research further on African photographers (including Michael Tsegaye and make enquiries from colleagues about other Ethiopian photographers). I will also research different Black and White styles eg some photobooks I have from Lithuania and Marcus Bleasdale.
Likely treatment: How will you photograph this subject? What special techniques or equipment will you use? Do you need any further training? Do you need or have you got a ‘plan B’ in case something doesn’t work?
The treatment will depend very much on what I manage to do – I will have to be flexible. But my ideas will develop and evolve as part of my professional work. I do not currently have a visual idea of the context, and there is no means of getting this in advance. But I see it as including photographs of:
Before I go I will practise using on-camera fill-flash. But most photos will be taken in natural light with my existing equipment (including tripod).
If in the end I cannot take the photographs I want here because of other work priorities, then plan B is to use one or more sets of existing photos taken earlier this year (eg Kyrgyzstan and/or Ivory Coast and/or Tanzania) and/or photographs from a trip to Nigeria in January (though this is not so long in the community, I have a long road journey that is likely to be interesting).
Any of this will provide adequate material to look at issues in Book Design and Web slideshows. And to think through further my ideas on journeys and documentary from the previous Assignment.
Potential outcome
I am planning to self-publish the book (for my own use at least – possibly for the development agencies I am working with) on Blurb and have been experimenting already – based on work for my Visual Communications Book Design course.
I will also add a Slideshow to my Zemni website – possibly with several different slideshows for different purposes.
As part of this I will also tidy up the whole travel and documentary section of my website.
• Budget/resources: What will you need to spend, or what other resources will you require to complete the work? How will you access these?
No extra resources needed except to pay for Blurb.
• Estimated schedule: Identify the different phases of this work and set realistic deadlines to achieve them by. It is often helpful to do this by identifying the final deadline and working backwards.
Taking photos in November.
Completion by end first week of January – or end of February after I get back from a separate trip to Nigeria.
This review looks at challenges and potential ways forward in photographing journeys -issues I became interested in Assignment 2 but were left pending. It looks at ways I might approach ‘journeys’ in Africa and Asia, compared to the way I photograph journeys in UK – supposedly my ‘own’ society’. It briefly considers issues of ‘colonial gaze’ and travel photography. But it is more concerned with wider issues of tensions between subjectivity and objectivity in landscape photography, and the implications for an ‘enlightened’ and relatively informed approach to photographing journeys as a process of exploration and discovery, then selection and interpretation – inevitably raising political questions about what I am photographing and why. It makes substantial use of my own photographs of journeys taken before and during my work on this course, placing these in the context of other African and Asian photographers as well as Western photographers who have depicted similar landscapes both as studied ‘documentary landscapes’ and as journeys/journey narratives. This review is partly a way of taking stock of the photographs I have and how they can be made more meaningful through selection, processing and narrative sequencing. Partly a way of comparing my images to those of professional photographers who have dealt with similar types of images.
It raises continuing issues to consider in my practice going forward in relation to any documentary photography: what am I trying to say, to whom, and why? The answers will vary depending on the types of journey in question – requiring careful thought about techniques that can be used in any one physical setting (light conditions, speed of travel, distance from subjects etc) and also the selection and sequencing of images as a narrative. In Assignment 5 I will experiment with different types of narrative that can be constructed from the same sets of images.
Rwanda: Gisenyi to Muhanga (May 2013) These were taken as one of the exercises for Gesture and Meaning Assignment 1 Documentary as an experiment in manual focusing. I used a zoom lens setting the ISO at 400-640 and aperture mostly at f/6.3 to get a reasonable depth of field. However from time to time I varied this when speed or distance made images too blurry. I found this technique interesting, and some of the blurry images quite atmospheric in their ‘rapid glimpse’ effect of people going past. But – partly because of my eyesight – I find manual focus difficult, and the approach rather too hit and miss.
Kenya: Thika to Nairobi airport (January 2015) Here I used a similar approach as for Cote d’Ivoire. I was struck by the interesting names of shops and hotels. The light was much brighter so I fixed the aperture at f/10 to give greater depth of field. However this proved too slow for many of the images, making them blurred. In this case (unlike Rwanda) I find it annoying. I think because the subjects are further away. I think this could be edited down and the photos themselves edited into a series focusing on shop signs only.
Cote d’Ivoire: Zaranou to Abidjan (August 2015) Photographs were taken frequently as soon as I saw ‘interesting’ images – mostly people, but also as I noticed more and more patterns I started to collect images of the innumerable billboards of women’s cosmetics and electronics – as well as rubbish and bad housing. They were taken at ISO400 with a 28mm wideangle fixed lens. In the town I fixed the aperture at its widest: f/1.8 to allow maximum shutter speed for the dull rainy season light – together with the fast car. Meaning that I had to be quick to focus exactly where I wanted for each image. I find quite a few of these images quite evocative in the contrast between sharp and blurred areas. This maintains the feeling of travelling, whilst still giving some focus. I could exploit this more with practice to create more deliberate meaning.
Indonesia : Sumatra (April 2016) The Portfolio images were taken in the conventional way – selecting the ‘picturesque’ while travelling or on travel stops while my Indonesian photographer friend also took photos. The Journey images experimented by taking photos at regular intervals while going through villages and urban areas – counting 10 between each press of the shutter and pointing in the same direction – giving a much more automatic random sequence. These are probably more ‘representative’ overall and did give some interesting images. It is interesting how many of the images have no people in – they were all in the fields at this time of day. Also the numbers of satellite dishes. On balance though I think that the approach in the Cote d’Ivoire sequence is more effective.
Kyrgyzstan (May 2016) This is my most recent series – reverting back to the method from Cote d’Ivoire but with an aperture setting of f/3.2. I maintained as much sharpness in all the images as possible – despite the unpredictable bumps in the road), often through shooting forward through the windscreen (atmospherically cracked). But I exaggerated the feeling of journey through including the window frame and cracks, as well as the driver in some of the images.
On the whole I find Kyrgyzstan the most successful of the series – along with Cote d’Ivoire. This is partly because of the subject matter itself. But also because keeping the aperture setting constant I can focus on the image. But in both taking and selecting the images I need to think carefully about what it is I am trying to say – I am not a neutral observer and it is important not to perpetuate stereotypes.
