Zemni Photography Blog

Photography projects, inspiration and research by Linda Mayoux

Simon Roberts

Tag: identity

  • Simon Roberts

  • Ingrid Pollard

    Website

    Through her practice, Guyanese-born artist Ingrid Pollard addresses her feelings towards the rural countryside as a non-white British subject, articulating her profound sense of being an outsider to these spaces. In some of her projects, Pollard hand tints black-and-white prints. This strategy has a dual purpose: firstly, it is a play on the idea of ‘colour’ in terms of race; and secondly, the use of this antiquated process immediately refers to nostalgic, romanticised ideals of the British landscape.

    In Miss Pollard’s Party (1993), Pollard parodies the tourist postcard, placing her own hand-tinted images on a template depicting ‘Wordsworth Heritage’.

    In Pastoral Interlude (1987) Pollard juxtaposes photographs of figures in the landscape (some of which are herself) with more subversive captions, such as: “It’s as if the Black experience is only lived within an urban environment. I thought I liked the Lake District; where I wandered lonely as a Black face in a sea of white. A visit to the countryside is always accompanied by a feeling of unease; dread.”

    Ingrid Pollard is unusual in that her practice addresses not only her sense of identity as a nonwhite British subject in the UK, but also her experience in relation to the countryside. What Pollard’s work also shows is that the concept of ‘environment’ in relation to the influence of a sense of place transcends geographical concerns alone. Whether a more deep-seated dichotomy exists between the interests of those from or living in the countryside and those in the towns is also a question that extends beyond UK borders.

    Listen to Ingrid Pollard talking about her work and landscape

    Source: Alexander p123

  • Nadav Kander

    Kander’s website (flash based)

    Nadav Kander (born December 1, 1961) is a London-based photographer, artist and director, known for his portraiture and landscapes.

    Kander was born in Tel Aviv, Israel. His father flew Boeing 707s for El-Al but lost his eye and was unable to continue flying. His parents decided to start again in South Africa and moved to Johannesburg in 1963. Kander began taking pictures when he was 13 on a Pentax camera. He states the pictures that he took then and until he was 17, although unaccomplished, have the same sense of quiet and unease that is part of his work today. After being drafted into the South African Air Force, Kander worked in a darkroom printing aerial photographs. It was there he became certain he wanted to be a Photographer. He moved to London in 1986, where he still resides with his wife Nicole and their three children.

     Yangtze – The Long River (2010)

    Kander is best known for his Yangtze – The Long River series, for which he earned the Prix Pictet Prize. See images

    [wpdevart_youtube]QHZ5VhYveKg[/wpdevart_youtube]

    Kander uses the course of the Yangtze as a strategy to travel through the hugely diverse topography and geography of China. Kander made several voyages along the course of China’s Yangtze River, travelling upstream from mouth to source over a period of three years.

    The actual river features prominently. Using the river as a metaphor the journey begins at the coastal estuary, where thousands of ships leave and enter each day, and moves past renowned suicide bridges, coal mines and the largest dam in the world – the Three Gorges Dam. Further inland we encounter Chongqing – the fastest-growing urban centre on the planet. Kander never photographed further than twenty miles from the river itself. In the shadow of epic construction projects we see workers, fishermen, swimmers and a man washing his motorbike in the river. Dense architecture gives way to mountains in the upper reaches towards the river’s Tibetan source – a sparsely populated area where the stream is mostly broken ice and just ankle deep. The photographs are dominated by immense architectural structures where humans are shown as small in their environment. Figures are dwarfed by landscapes of half completed bridges and colossal Western-style apartment blocks that are rapidly replacing traditional Chinese low-rise buildings and houseboats.

    In Kander’s images, we are also confronted with a terrifying reality: this time it is not the feral landscape that startles us, but the bleak facts about man’s unstoppability. Kander manages to communicate a sense of its epic scale, and also the environmental impact the habitations along its banks are having upon the climate more generally. His murky, smog-filled scenes are unashamedly value-laden – to show how Kander feels China is losing its roots.

    His 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.

    Other works

    In 2010- 2012 Kander photographed a series of nudes – Bodies. 6 Women. 1 Man – in his London studio. Coated in white marble dust and set against the void of the photographer’s studio the subjects serve as a study of the human condition.

    Rooted in an interest in the ‘aesthetics of destruction’ Kander’s most recent project Dust explores the vestiges of the Cold War through the radioactive ruins of secret cities on the border between Kazakhstan and Russia. Will Self has said These images do not make beautiful what is not, they ask of us that we repurpose ourselves to accept a new order of both the beautiful and the real.

    On 18 January 2009 Kander had 52 full colour portraits published in one issue of The New York Times Magazine. These portraits were of the people surrounding US President Barack Obama, from Joe Biden (Vice President) toEugene Kang (Special Assistant to The President). This is the largest portfolio of work by the same photographer The New York Times Magazine has showcased in one single issue.[3]

    In July 2012 Kander exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery in London with a series of portraits celebrating London’s hosting of the 2012 Summer Olympics. In 2014 Nadav was among the 18 photographers chosen to be a part of Constructing Worlds: Photography and Architecture in the Modern Age, an exhibition at the Barbican Centre in London, and toured, which explored the ability of architectural photography to reveal wider truths about our society.

    Kander is a Trustee of the The Lowry. He is represented by Flowers Gallery – London, M97 Gallery – Shanghai, Blindspot Gallery – Hong Kong and Camera Work Photographie – Berlin.

    Publications

  • 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

  • Identity

    As a photographer of people, you need to get to grips with the idea of identity and social constructions of identity. How you portray people will have ethical and moral implications. And you’ll need to create images that convey a particular truth or message, depending on the brief in hand.

    What am I to who? The discovery of self and the search for identity

    An important strand in feminist art is the idea of selfhood – the individual who is lost within the objectifying image.

    • Do images of us represent what we are?
    • Or do we see them in a postmodern sense where they represent who we think we are and what we know about ourselves in a way
      that allows us to analyse and learn about ourselves, growing and shaping our perspective on self even further?

    When we talk about our identity, we usually mean one of two identities:

    • social identity – mother, Scottish, student
    • personal identity – goals, passions, dreams, achievements, style, etc. Personal identity encompasses body image which is very relevant to disorders such as bulimia or anorexia.

    These two short papers on self and identity give further perspective on this issue. The second link, in particular, examines the nature of self-identity through roles and its interaction with social identity formulated through group attachment or membership.
    http://wat2146.ucr.edu/Papers/02a.pdf
    http://wat2146.ucr.edu/papers/00a.pdf

    Female photographers may choose to investigate the classic female roles of wife, mother and daughter and the expectations associated with these roles. For women there is a great deal of visual pressure through the use of manipulated images of women in fashion and PR situations. Women compare themselves unfavourably with the ‘false’ images they see, for example in the marketing of beauty products. A recent BBC website poll found that only 2% of UK women see themselves as beautiful.

    Men also have dilemmas in terms of identity. Are they boys or men, fathers, husbands or sons? Are they role models or wasters? Writers or Romeos? Again, crucial components of identity that deliver self-worth and self-esteem. Think about men who over-train at the gym or use steroids to change their body shape. (Go on the internet and look for Howard Schatz and Beverly Ornstein’s photographs of Olympic athletes, for example.) These are all issues that have been explored in contemporary fine art photography.

    Issues of identity are fertile ground for photographic investigation. Richard Billingham explored the effect that his father’s alcohol dependency and the consequent impact on his personality
    had on family life.

    Cindy Sherman has investigated a range of roles in her work – executive/employee, equal/object.

    Self Portrait

    We can examine ourselves through the art of self-portrait and looking at how we wish to be seen – how we wish to define ourselves and how we are seen by others and how they would define

    us. You could base a project on your own identity, asking ‘How am I perceived and is the treatment I receive in life, the interactions I like or dislike, related to the way people perceive me?’ There is also a lot of potential for project work in gender roles, society’s perceptions and expectations, and acceptance (or not) of different sexualities.We can also just use ‘things’ that we feel represent us, items that have the properties that we hold dear as signs of honesty or virtue, humour or fate. These images can be combined to form allegorical images of our personas.

    • How we are perceived is important to some people; for others, it’s not an issue worth considering. For most of us, though, people’s perception of us is important at certain times or places in our lives, for example if you’re looking for work or trying to sell something. Even then, you can’t assume that prospective employers or buyers have the same values as you do.
    • Are the things that you hold dear evident in the way you are seen or do you put on a ‘mask’?
    • Are the things you are perceived to hold dear just an illusion?
    • Does your dress code say you are ‘one of us’? What is meant by ‘us’ in a particular context? ‘Us’ is usually the group making the judgment, those who consider themselves able to make judgments on our behalf. Judgments may be based on all sorts of factors – race, nationality, colour, religion or speaking with a southern accent. (Scottish accents come across as more trustworthy according to advertising research.)