Zemni Photography Blog

Tag: activism

  • Fay Godwin

    Fay Godwin (17 February 1931 – 27 May 2005) was a British photographer known for her black-and-white landscapes of the British countryside and coast. Official website British Library archive:  including approximately 11,000 exhibition prints, the entire contents of her studio, and correspondence with some of her subjects. Google images  detailed overview of her work from her books still to be done

    Landscape

      Rebecca the Lurcher (1973) The Oldest Road: An Exploration of the Ridgeway (1975), co-authored with J.R.L. Anderson—working mainly in the landscape tradition she aimed to communicate the sense of ecological crisis present in late 1970s and 1980s England. Remains of Elmet: A Pennine Sequence (1979, with Ted Hughes). Hughes called the 1994 Elmet the “definitive” edition. Godwin also said, in a 2001 interview, that this was the book she would like to be most remembered for. Land (1985, with John Fowles and designed by Ken Garland) described by The Guardian art critic Ian Jeffrey  the “book for which she will be most remembered”. What sets Land apart is the care that Fay gave to the combining and sequencing of its pictures. Working with contact prints on a board, she put together a picture of Britain as ancient terrain—stony, windswept and generally worn down by the elements….[a work] in the neo-romantic tradition…[that] gives an oddly desolate account of Britain, as if reporting on a long abandoned country.  A retrospective book, Landmarks, was published by Dewi Lewis in 2002. Glassworks & Secret Lives (1999) She also began taking close-ups of natural forms. A major exhibition of that work was toured by Warwick Arts Centre from 1995 to 1997  Glassworks & Secret Lives (ISBN 0953454517) is Godwin’s self-published  small book of that work  which was distributed from a small local bookshop in her adopted hometown of Hastings in East Sussex. Our Forbidden Land
     Portraiture
    Through her husband, Godwin was introduced to the London literary scene. She produced portraits of dozens of well-known writers, photographing almost every significant literary figure in 1970s and 1980s England, as well as numerous visiting foreign authors. Her subjects, typically photographed in the sitters’ own homes, included Kingsley Amis, Philip Larkin, Saul Bellow, Angela Carter, Margaret Drabble, Günter Grass, Ted Hughes, Clive James, Philip Larkin, Doris Lessing, Edna O’Brien, Anthony Powell, Salman Rushdie, Jean Rhys, and Tom Stoppard.
    Life
    1931 Born Berlin, Germany, father a British diplomat, mother an American artist, Stella MacLean. Educated at various schools all over the world. 1958 Settled down to live in London. 1961 married publisher Tony Godwin; the couple had two sons, Jeremy and Nicholas.   1966 Became interested in photography through photographing her young children. No training. “ My way into photography was through family snaps in the mid-1960s. I had no formal training, but after the snaps came portraits, reportage, and finally, through my love of walking, landscape photography, all in black and white. A Fellowship with the National Museum of Photography in Bradford led to urban landscape in colour, and very personal close-up work in colour has followed. ” —Fay Godwin, ca. 2000,   1975 Publication of first co-author book, The Oldest Road, with writer J.R.L. Anderson. Exhibitions from the series toured nationally. 1978 Recipient of major award from Arts Council of Great Britain to continue landscape work in British Isles, much of which is included in Land. 1984 Start of British Councils overseas tour of Landscape Photographs. 1985 Publication of Land. Major exhibition of Land at the Serpentine Gallery, London. 1986 South Bank Show their first full-length documentary to feature a photographer. 1986/7 Fellow at the National Museum of Photography, Film & Television, Bradford. 1987/90 President of the Ramblers’ Association, UK. Then life vice president. “long-running right-to-roam campaign was turned up to the full-strength pressure which ultimately resulted in the access provisions enshrined in the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000 and the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003.” 1990 Awarded Honorary Fellowship of the Royal Photographic Society. 1990 six week lecture and workshop tour of New Zealand. In the 1990s she was offered a Fellowship at the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television (now the National Media Museum) in Bradford, which pushed her work in the direction of colour and urban documentary.   Major retrospective at the Barbican Centre in London 2001, with accompanying publication, Landmarks. Honorary Doctotorate of Arts at De Montfort University, 2002. Godwin was less active in her final years; in a December 2004 interview for Practical Photography, she blamed “the NHS. They ruined my life by using some drugs with adverse affects that wrecked my heart. The result is that I haven’t the energy to walk very far.”   Died, May 2005 aged 74. No Man’s Land – Fay Godwin’s last interview, from ePHOTOzine.com   Fay Godwin is a familiar name in British landscape photography, celebrated for her critical approach to the landscape genre (see Part Three) and for being one of the most successful female photographers of the twentieth century. Like Pollard, Godwin had – albeit in a very different way – a strained relationship with the British landscape. Whilst she was clearly quite at home trekking around the more remote parts of the countryside (e.g. the Lake District, Forest of Dean), throughout the 1970s and 80s Godwin became increasingly concerned with the degree to which access to the land was becoming restricted. She allied herself with the Ramblers Association, becoming president in 1987. Fences, wire and cautionary signposts (some polite and others less so) are familiar motifs within Godwin’s photographs. Her image Stonehenge Summer Solstice (1988), in which the stones are obscured by barbed wire more typical of a military base than a heritage site, is a visual expression of the frustration she felt at being unable to gain access to the site to make a more considered set of images than a few snapshots (see Taylor, 1994, pp.276–83). Like John Davies and others, Godwin paid careful attention to light conditions and ordered her compositions along traditional, pictorial conventions, which is one of the reasons why her photographs have remained so appealing. This stealth tactic allows the viewer to be taken in by the aesthetics of the image; once the viewer is engaged, Godwin is able to pose more challenging questions about the landscape. Listen to Fay Godwin on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs in 2002. ———————————————

    !! to update with my own detailed thoughts on Land, The Edge of the Land and Our Forbidden Land as I critique my own work in Assignment 5.

    Publications

    Fay Godwin (17 February 1931 – 27 May 2005) was a British photographer known for her black-and-white landscapes of the British countryside and coast. Her approach was very intuitive and felt that images where she had thought too deeply about composition and meaning had less ‘visceral’ power as a response to what she was seeing.

    She was self-taught and her obsession with photography started with family photos and producing photo albums for neighbours. produced portraits and documentary work of factory workers. Much of the emotional charge of her images she attributes to difficulties in her personal life: traumatic marriage break-up, cancer and struggles to support her children that led her to throw herself into her work. She produced portraits of writers and also documentary work on factory workers. But it is for her landscape photography that she is best known.

    Justin Jones overview of her work in the context of her life and politics . Discusses many of her iconic photographs. And what he sees as some of the gender dimensions of her work – though I feel some of these distinctions may be a bit exaggerated and not sure how far Fay herself would see her work in this way.

    Landscape photography and activism

    She was a very vocal critic of the ‘picturesque’ and her photographs aim to capture landscapes as they really are with all their historical, social and political complexity.

    “I am wary of picturesque pictures. I get satiated with looking at postcards in local newsagents and at the picture books that are on sale, many of which don’t bear any relation to my own experience of the place… The problem for me about these picturesque pictures, which proliferate all over the place, is that they are a very soft warm blanket of sentiment, which covers everybody’s idea about the countryside… It idealises the country in a very unreal way.”
    (Fay Godwin 1986 South Bank Show Produced and directed by Hilary Chadwick, London Weekend Television quoted Alexander 2013 p84.)

    Comprehensive Melvin Bragg overview of her life and work from old TV programme. Discusses Godwin’s landscape photography in the context of conventions and innovation in landscape art and critique of ‘picturesque’. Includes many interviews with Fay herself on her responses to landscape and approaches to photography.

    She combined her landscape photography with environmental activism against the ravages of 1980s Thatcherism and as President of the Ramblers’ Association.

    https://youtu.be/XqwOpkOkuzE
    Mavis Nicholson interviews Fay Godwin on the ‘In with Mavis’ program from 1991. She talks a lot about her photography in the context of her environmental activism, particularly destruction of landscapes because of building of the Channel Tunnel.
    Selection of prints from the 25th anniversary of Fay Godwin’s seminal exhibition and book Land from the original exhibition. https://www.scienceandmediamuseum.org…
    Peter Cattrell worked as Fay Godwin’s printer. Interesting discussion of printing choices he made. And discussion of her last experiments placing objects on photographic plates as experiments. Also some interesting insights into her personality -as well as poignancy of her fragility, illnesses and death.
    • Rebecca the Lurcher. 1973
    • The Oldest Road: An Exploration of the Ridgeway. 1975. With J.R.L. Anderson.
    • Remains of Elmet. Rainbow Press, 1979. With poems by Ted Hughes.
      • Remains of Elmet. Faber and Faber, 1979. ISBN 9780571278763.
      • Elmet. Faber and Faber, 1994. With new additional poems and photographs.
      • Remains of Elmet. Faber and Faber, 2011. ISBN 9780571278763.
    • The Saxon Shore Way. Hutchinson (publisher), 1983. With Alan Sillitoe. ISBN 0091514606.
    • Land. Heinemann, 1985. With John Fowles. ISBN 0434303054.
    • !!Edge of the Land
    • Glassworks & Secret Lives. 1999. ISBN 0953454517.
    • Landmarks. Stockport: Dewi Lewis, 2002. ISBN 1-899235-73-6. With an introduced by Simon Armitage and an essay by Roger Taylor.

  • Dana Lixenberg

    My work is partly about the inevitable downside and consequences of capitalism which can result in a sense of alienation…actually I am part of it, and even people I photograph are part of this system and keep it going. I think [capitalism] has become a given because you can see how former and current communist countries are going the same way. I’m really aware of that, and want to face the realities and the downsides of that system that I find also attractive.

    I find that the [documentary] portraits and landscapes are really about slowing down, cutting out all the noise and really taking time to contemplate the world around me every time with new eyes. The plain and the everyday is often very exciting to me. It can reveal a lot about life. I’m really inspired by details and I am usually more inspired by non-dramatic settings. Some of my images may seem boring, where there is nothing obvious going on, but I like playing with that, being on the fringes of boring.

    While I have no expectation that I can influence social change or that I can ever make a concrete impact with the photographs, I do feel it’s kind of empowering to give the people you photograph a timeless presence in the larger world.

    Google images

     

    Interview for Mossless magazine

    Overview: http://www.thelastdaysofshishmaref.com/shishmaref3/cms/cms_module/index.php

    Film presentation:  http://www.thelastdaysofshishmaref.com/shishbook/shishbook_release-1.1.11/MainView.html 

    The Last Days of Shishmaref (2008) by Dana Lixenberg mixes landscape with formal portraits and still life to create a dynamic portrait of an Alaskan community that is under imminent threat from the sea due to the increasingly later freeze of the protective permafrost that encircles the island. The traditions of this community, mostly of Inuit origin, are just as much under threat as the precarious strip of land. The images in the book are informed with essays by geographers and environmentalists.

    Lixenberg’s trademark is a 4×5 camera and tripod. This gives an intensity of experience between the photographer and those she photographs that she feels is not there with other types of cameras. She enjoys illustrating contrast in her work and portraying people in pure form.

    Biography

    Dana Lixenberg (born in Amsterdam, The Netherlands,1964) lives and works in New York and Amsterdam. Lixenberg originally went to New York to become an au pair and then discovered photography at a night school class. She studied Photography at the London College of Printing in London (1984-1986) and at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in Amsterdam (1987-1989).

    Her breakthrough in the U.S. came in 1993, when she was awarded a project grant by the Fonds BKVB (The Netherlands Foundation for Visual Arts, Design and Architecture) for a series of portraits at the Imperial Courts Housing Project in Los Angeles,CA. She was soon getting commissions from a wide variety of magazines such as Vibe, The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, Newsweek and The Telegraph magazine amongst many others.

    Lixenberg continuously worked on long term personal projects, mostly focused on individuals and communities on the margins of society. Lixenberg has been the recipient of several project and publication grants in the Netherlands.

    • 1999 she was the subject of a documentary titled: Dana Lixenberg, thru dutch eyes 
    • 2005 she was featured in an episode of the documentary series ‘Hollands Zicht’ (Dutch Vision) both for Dutch television.
    • 2005 Jeffersonville, Indiana was awarded Best Dutch Book Design,
    • 2008 The Last Days of Shishmaref, was also awarded Best Dutch Book Design, 2008.

    Since 2008 Lixenberg has been revisiting the Imperial Courts Housing Project in Los Angeles for a follow up to the series from 1993. In spring 2015 Huis Marseille, Amsterdam will organize a large scale exhibition of Imperial Courts coinciding with the release of a publication.

    Other work

    Lixenberg photographs people from all social classes.

    I’ve never taken a different  approach between photographing celebrities and un-known individuals,  The fragility of life is experienced by all. ..When shooting people who have had a lot of media exposure I’m not interested in reinforcing their public image. I try to really see the person that’s in front of me, the way they are at that particular moment stripped from all the surrounding distractions like their entourage and to slowly bring them to a place where they don’t present a persona basically where they don’t try to hard. 

    In addition to ordinary people, Lixenberg has photographed a number of American celebrities, including Prince and Whitney Houston.

    Lixenberg is also a film director and directed the Dutch singer Anouk’s 2005 video ‘One Word’

     

  • Donovan Wylie

    Power and control are recurring themes within Wylie’s practice.

    The Maze (2004)

    [wpdevart_youtube]naoxP-iLvqU[/wpdevart_youtube]

    This documents the deconstruction of the notorious prison in Northern Ireland. The work is presented as a collection of three volumes, which begins with images from the centre of the prison and works outwards, as it is slowly demolished and returned to the landscape. Wylie  employs a straight, uniform technical strategy in this work which Wylie’s views are deliberately repetitive, and perpetuate the absence of individuality throughout the prison’s architecture. 

    See a sample of the work and essays from the book:
    http://www.belfastexposed.org/themedpackages/index.php?id=3&sid=110

    British Watchtowers (2007) and  Outposts (2011)

    These seem to retain more of the Bechers’ influence, with the aestheticisation of functional military installations. However, histories of earlier conflicts can be traced in both bodies of work. The system of observation posts across the hills of South Armagh in British Watchtowers dates back to Iron Age strategies for power and control. In Outposts, some of the sites of the NATO forward operating bases in Afghanistan date back to earlier conflicts.

    [wpdevart_youtube]VQekhfX73zE[/wpdevart_youtube]

     Interview with Paul Seawright

    [wpdevart_youtube]p9F7ISkEvM8[/wpdevart_youtube]

     

  • Peter Kennard

    Peter Kennard (born 17 February 1949) is a London born and based photomontage artist and Senior Research Reader in Photography, Art and the Public Domain at the Royal College of Art. Seeking to reflect his involvement in the anti-Vietnam War movement, he turned from painting to photomontage to better address his political views.He has often worked in collaboration with writers, photographers, filmmakers and artists such as Peter Reading, John Pilger and Jenny Matthews.

    He is best known for the images he created for the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) in the 1970s–80s. This includes “Haywain with Cruise Missiles“, a cut-and-paste photomontage of Constanble’s Haywain – a symbol of Britain’s rural idyll with American missiles used by CND to highlight the threat of installation of cruise missiles at air bases across the UK, such as Greenham Common.
    “ Photomontage may not be subtle but it is effective as a tactic when the aim is to make a point quickly and directly. We grasp immediately that Britain is under threat.” Liz Wells (2011, p.21 quoted Alexander 2013 p98)

    Because many of the left-wing organisations and publications he used to work with have disappeared, Kennard has turned to using exhibitions, books and the internet for his work.

    In “Dispatches from An Unofficial War Artist”, his 2000 autobiography, he writes about the possibilities of undertaking an aesthetic practice in relation to social change, and considers how his art has interacted with the politics of actual events.

     One of Kennard’s latest projects is 2011’s @earth, a story without words told in the language of photomontage. It takes the form of a small book priced at £9.99, published by the Tate Gallery, which Kennard believed was a reasonably cheap and accessible way of getting his message to young people outside the artworld. The book contains a variety of images from Kennard’s 40-year career and, as a result, attracts the criticism that its targets are too general. Kennard’s reply was that he wanted “to encourage people to think about their own situation and activate, but I’m not trying to tell them to do this or that. I’m just trying to show how I see the world at the moment.”

    The idea has expanded to a re-appropriation and re-distribution of his images through online platforms such as Tumblr, Facebook and Twitter. G8 Protest Posters is the latest of these projects that shares images “designed for protest”. Created in 2013 in reaction to the 39th G8 Summit in Enniskillen, Kennard has encouraged the public to “print, Tweet, Facebook, email and share these images as a sign of protest”. He sees online distribution sites as “a valuable addition to the dissident artists toolbox. G8 is a charade masquerading as a serious conference, my posters attempt to rip through the lies and point to the world as in fact it is.”

    He has also executed a number of guerrilla street installations and has said “if world leaders insist on assaulting our lives and livelihoods, let’s hit back by assaulting their eyes.”

    The first major retrospective of Kennard’s work will be held at the Imperial War Museum for one year from May 2015.

    Source: edited from Wikipedia

     

     

  • Patrick Shanahan

    Patrick Shanahan examines the transition from one post-industrial space into a new kind of industry in his series Paradeisos (2005), which explores the creation of the Eden Project in Cornwall. Commencing in 1998, Shanahan’s photographs document the transformation of a redundant china quarry into one of the UK’s most celebrated tourist attractions.

    See the work at: http://www.ffotogallery.org/patrick-shanahan-–-paradeisos

    And more Google images

    Flash-based website.

    Only work I could find on the web were ‘New Images’ seaside pictures that seem to question the seaside idyll – is this the same Patrick Shanahan photographer? But not as punchy as those of Martin Parr. Some a bit gimmicky with different angles. Need to look again

    Seaside images

  • Landscape as a Call to Action

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

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

    Exercise 3.4: A persuasive image