44 posts tagged “photography”
To misquote a more insightful writer me, there are two kinds of artists: those who openly struggle with self-doubt and those who lie about it. It may be flippantly stated but that doesn't make it any less true. Unless you are terminally optimistic, or blessed with the kind of self-confidence reserved for the typical Oprah show expert, or you're on industrial strength Prozac, at some point in a long term creative project you're going to have to do battle with the black dog of self-doubt.
Why am I doing this?
Do I just suck, or do I really, really suck?
Am I just deluding myself and wasting everybody's time?
Why don't I just give up and see if there's anything good on TV?
Pieces of your work that you were happy with last week suddenly look second-rate and don't seem to measure up to your peers anymore. Picking up the camera seems more like work than pleasure and when you have a camera in your hands you can't find anything to shoot. When you do shoot something it never looks how you want it or everyone else seems to be able to do it better. You're in a slump. You're blocked. You're wrestling demons. You feel like you've lost your edge. You've lost your energy, your muse, your drive. Welcome to you're own artistic hell.
This self-doubt is painful but it is part of your artistic growth. You are not the same photographer that you were last year, last month or even last week and self-doubt can be a distressing side-effect of taking your art a little bit further. Your old work is not as bad as you think but this feeling may mean you're about to make a personal break-through.
Another consolation is that, although it feels like this pit of self-doubt is the loneliest place on the planet, every artist worth their salt has been through this before too … often more than once, but we have to get out of this place before we consider the horrible possibility of returning to it. So how do we break through and return to being productive? I say this without judgment but self-doubt is a very self-indulgent feeling. It results from being stuck in your own head. An artist must be self-aware, self-considered and reflective to work and grow but if you take it too far it can become self-destructive. To break on through you have to get out of your head; you should stop thinking and get back to doing.
This is easier said than done but there are things you can do to help your self achieve this, the most important of which is a change of environment. If you're stuck in a rut photographing the same things and places over and over, make the effort to try shooting somewhere or something else. If you have a home studio, leave it and your house and go for a walk. If you always shoot in your neighborhood drive somewhere else. If you always shoot in the day, shoot at night. If you shoot people, try landscapes. Change is a great distraction; you have to get out of your head to deal with what is going on in the here and now. You have to live in the moment and the moment is all a photographer has to work with.
But what if you can't make a literal change in your environment? What if you're committed to a studio project of there's some sort of protocol in your current project that you can't escape from? The best thing you could do is set up a side project and put your current work on hold for a period of time, but sometimes that's just not possible either. You can make changes to your environment that effect you but not your photography. For me that is often music. I usually work in quiet but if I become overly self-conscious working on something in a studio setting I find that if I crank up loud rock music it blows those thoughts out of my head – I begin to enjoy the music and forget about my block and start making pictures instinctively. I rarely walk around listening to my iPod but if I am blocked I will put in the earbuds and listen to music or podcasts while I'm walking around shooting and it does help me to forget about my funk.
It's good to be absolutely comfortable and instinctive with your goto camera and lens rig, however, if you need a distraction it can be of benefit to do something that makes you have to think about your equipment again. It can change your pace and rhythm enough to switch you focus from your block to the simple process of just making a picture. I will switch out photographic equipment; shoot with a compact point and shoot instead of a DSLR or use an old lens, or old camera I've half-forgotten how to use. If I can't do that I'll switch my lens into manual focus or use an exposure mode I don't normally use – anything I can do to stop me remembering how blocked I am and to get me thinking about just getting the camera to work and take a picture.
Beyond changing your shooting method there are other things you can do to restore your confidence about your work. You may be dissatisfied with the work you've been producing in the last few weeks but, if you go back far enough in your catalog you will find things that still make you proud or at least make you smile. If you spend a little time with your greatest hits it will help you focus on your strengths and what you want to pursue and achieve. This makes it the perfect time to make some new prints; do it right and mat, frame and hang them too. Make a Blurb book of a project you've already completed. Seeing your work in the flesh rather than in pixels adds instant gravitas to your pictures.
Take a look at your portfolio and switch out less satisfactory work with newer favorites. Create a DVD you can play on a TV when people ask to see your work. Put your portfolio photos in a easily accessible folder on your iPhone to show the curious. Create a new business card. Update your Flickr sets or your Lightroom albums – new themes and threads in your work may be emerging that you've been missing.
Beyond your own work get involved in the work of others. Seek out a mentor (admittedly that's easier said than done). Look at the new work of your peers or those you admire, and those doing the kind of work you wish you could produce. Critique other people's work on Flickr – you learn a lot through the process of critiquing others about what you already know, areas you are weaker, what you like and why. Watch documentaries and read biographies on photographers and other artists – they are not so different than you, just people trying to express themselves. Look through monographs and visit galleries but try not to see how you measure yourself against the work to see, rather find work that excites and inspires you to try to do something great.
Artistic blocks are part of the journey; if it were easy everyone would be doing it. Work through this without panicking and you will grow as an artist and produce better work as a result.
Good luck.
If this is your first year long picture-a-day project you might just have noticed that the task seemed to get much more difficult over the last few days. What's going on?
Remembering that project365 is a distance race not a sprint let's return to my favorite project365-as-a-marathon analogy. When you run a marathon there is so much preparation and effort in just getting to the start-line that, by the time you are warmed up and are hanging out in a that huge crowd waiting for the gun to fire it feels like a rock concert audience waiting for the band to come on – there is so much anticipation and nervous energy. When the race starts and that crowd first starts to jog and then gradually gains momentum you are running on pure adrenaline. For the first couple of miles you are at the heart of a huge crowd with spectators cheering the sight of thousands of people in motion, cameras capturing the event for local TV news and papers and you are just swept along, literally, in the moment. It can take a couple of miles for the pack to start to spread out and for you to find some space at which point the magnitude of what lies ahead can be daunting – you can go from feeling in the middle of the best party ever to feeling very alone in no time flat.
For the first mile or two you just run on the energy of the crowd but once that passes it's time to do the real work of the race; you're not really going to feel that camaraderie and adrenaline until the last couple of miles and, in this moment, the end of the race is a distant dream. It's time to find your space and your pace, to start listening to your body, tune out discomfort and concentrate on those things that will let you achieve your goals. Personally, I start to try to ignore the runners around me; if I get caught up in a group going to fast I will hit the wall – if I hang out with people going too slow I will get frustrated. I either look down at my feet and the ground for a mile or so or look over the heads of the other runners. I start to get a little chant, rhythm or song going in my head to run along to and I concentrate on form. At this point you are on your own.
Very similar things happen in the typical project365 group. January 1st the gun is fired and we're off! Many of us having been waiting for a long time for the project to begin and we're full of creative energy and good intentions. The first few days you can't wait to take and post your shots. You go to your project365 communities on Flickr and everyone is firing on all cylinders, posting amazing work and it's just too easy. Your fellow project365ers spend surplus energy commenting on tens of pictures everyday and participating in discussions and sub-projects; each image you post gets more views, comments and favorites than you are used to – perhaps a picture or two hits 'explore' – now we're motoring!
But, around day 20 you look around and the pack is spreading and thinning. A few participants have already fallen by the wayside, many are finding it hard to fit their picture-a-day into their busy lives. The free time of the holidays is gone – we're back to work with nothing interesting to shoot, certainly nothing explore-worthy. Your average views-per-image are half what they were last week so no one would notice if we just quit. What's the point of going on? It would be so easy to just stop; what are you going to do?
Like a marathon, it's time to do the work. You have to stop worrying about the others around you and get back to basics. Find a pace that works for you this means finding times that best work for you for making pictures and posting them. Make it as easy as possible for you to succeed – that means taking a camera everywhere so that there are no missed opportunities or excuses for not taking a shot. That means having a regular time for processing images and posting them – maybe over coffee when you first get up, during a coffee break at work or last thing before you go to bed, just make it a routine.
Pace means just plodding on forward one step at a time relentlessly. If you're running this race so your friends can see you, forget it. It's Sunday morning and they're all still in bed. Your fellow runners aren't really paying much attention to you, they have their own demons to wrestle with over the next 20-something miles. You have to run this race for you – to find out what you are capable of. Post your daily picture even if you are not totally happy with it, even if it is not half as good as the one you posted yesterday, or your buddy posted yesterday, even if it will get only 2 views and have no chance of hitting Explore. Just post picture after picture, relentlessly.
So get on pace, check your form, forget about the rest of the pack and do the work. You know you can make it to the end of this if you want to enough and you are relentless.
PS - Project 365 is not exactly the same as a New Year's resolution but they share a lot of the same characteristics. Ceratainly this post I read today seems to apply: Do You Make These 7 Mistakes When Trying to Keep Your New Year’s Resolution?
"So after the initial enthusiasm wanes it may not feel as that much fun anymore. It’s sort of enthusiasm backlash. This is the homeostasis kicking in within your mind (no matter if the goal/habit etc. is actually very positive for you). It’s a resistance to change to keep the system (you) stable. If you are simply aware of this being what it is - rather than a signal to give up - you can persevere, be patient and keep going more easily."
- "What do you shoot with?"
- "Are you Canon or Nikon?"
- "Have you tried the latest version of PS?"
- "What printer did you use to make these prints?"
- If you already have a camera that can make a good enough file stop reading magazines that are just trying to make you want to buy new equipment; instead visit a gallery or museum and get inspired. I have a decent camera but I refuse to buy into the idea that I need to buy something twice as expensive again to be taken seriously. There is no camera in the world that will make me a better photographer; I can only achieve that through applying myself to my work.
- Avoid conversations about gear; seak out conversations about art and artists.
- Spend as little time in PhotoShop as you can get away with. Avoid 'playing' with an image in PhotoShop. Instead look at the original file, previsualize what you would like the resulting file to look like, and work out the shortest route from one to the other.
- Stop studying lighting plans, HDR tutorials and ways to make your digital images look like they came out of a Lomo. Instead, study the history of photography, its movements, key players and iconic images.
- Don't be ashamed of shooting digital when everyone tells you that the 'real art' is made using film (or visa versa). It is a pissing match that has no point or end.
So you have enlisted in project365 - how hard can it be? All you have to do is pick up your camera once a day. How long does it take to make a picture? 1/125 of a second on average? That's only 1/10800000th of your day. This should be easy.
My wife and I recently took advantage of a required trip back to the UK to spend a few days in Paris. Aside from a dollar that sucked and the 100% smoking rate of Parisians the trip was wonderful and one of the highlights of our trip was the opportunity to see the Richard Avedon retrospective at the Jeu de Paume more than a year before it will arrive at SF MoMA.
It is difficult not to lump Richard Avedon in with other successful giants of modern portrait photography; Diane Arbus, Erving Penn, Annie Leibowitz (with whom he shares top billing this summer in Paris). They are the first wave of modern portrait photographers – the first to reject beauty for 'reality' which some critics condemn as 'cruel' photography. More on this later, however, the influence of these rock-stars of portrait photography is impossible to ignore and to pass up the opportunity to see this exhibit would have been spiteful.
Love him or hate him (and all these photographers have something of a polarizing effect on audiences and critics) you have to admit that Avedon's work is impactful especially in the flesh. He was one of the first photographers that pioneered the bigger-is-better philosophy to his prints and so you encounter many of his subjects in this exhibit larger than life size with every pore, blemish and hair high lit. A modest print of Warhol and the Factory crew that we had seen a couple of days before in the “Street and Studio” exhibit at the Tate Modern was interesting but seen 9 meters long its impact and implied gravitas was infinitely greater; I don't know if that makes it a better photo or not – that's a question for a more knowledgeable critic than I.
But I get a head of myself; the exhibit itself was laid out chronologically and is exhaustive. True, you've probably seen most of these pictures before in books and a few of them in other exhibits but you're unlikely to have seen this volume and depth of Avedon's oeuvre as exhibition prints before. In the Jeu de Paume the exhibition filled much of display space of two floors of the building with rooms devoted to specific periods starting with his earlier fashion work and progressing through celebrity portrait work to his common man opus, In the American West, and beyond. It took a good two hours to go through.
The lighting of the prints was top class, a standard I hope SF MoMA will live up to, as was the spacing and pacing. Most of the standard prints are presented in plain white gallery frames with white mats against white walls. Captions and commentary (both in French and English thankfully) are applied directly to the walls themselves as seems to be the modern custom. Overall the effect is conservative but it allows the prints to speak for themselves. The larger prints are displayed mounted on aluminum and they tower over the viewer, especially when you consider Avedon's penchant for cropping the head of his subjects close to the top and in the top 20% of the frame. Half of the larger prints are displayed against black walls as opposed to white – exquisitely lit they glow like black and white windows into another time and place.
Some think that Avedon is over-rated – a charge that seems to be leveled at anyone in the art photography field with a commercial background or achieving great commercial success, both blasphemies Avedon was guilty of. I'll concede that he wasn't the most innovative or intellectual of photographers but this did not lessen my enjoyment of this exhibit. I did not tire of his simple trick of isolating his subjects against the plainest of white backgrounds, of capturing excruciating detail and of printing in dramatic sizes. Once I got away from his celebrity subjects and to the hard working oil men, ranchers, homeless and manual laborers it was hard not to stare and wonder if you were looking deep into someone else's life and soul. Perhaps that isn't the heart and soul of his subjects but instead a grotesque world from the imagination of Avedon himself, it really didn't matter to me; I went away moved and inspired and I personally can ask no more of art.
The exhibit tours other venues in Europe before coming to San Francisco in the Fall of 2009. When it arrives I'm sure it will be a massive hit here as it is the kind of photography and blockbusting exhibit the West Coast loves. I look forward to seeing this exhibit again and, in the meantime, I feel privileged to have had the opportunity to see this preview in Paris.
Preface: I just wrote this piece for an art-photo-history course I'm taking and wanted to put it somewhere on the web - it's pretty long and involved so I won't be insulted if you don't read it all:
Love him or hate him, there is no denying the contribution to, and the influence on, the contemporary, fine-art photography world of the British photographer Martin Parr. A polarized opinion of Martin Parr and his work has followed him throughout his career, from his first exhibitions in the mid-1970's through to the present day. The breadth of this polarity is wide stretching from the working class, English layman who has encountered the the Parr controversy in the tabloids; through the educated middle class, whom Parr targets with much of his wit; through art patrons, gallery curators, and picture editors who cannot get enough of Parr's work; through Parr's influences and students even, and especially, through his contemporaries at Magnum where he is the agency's most controversial member and one if its most financially successful. It seems that in Parrworld1 there is little middle ground and to paraphrase reviewers of Parr's work, one is either a fan of his stunning and vivid imagery or one is a critic of his cruel and lurid work.
I myself am very middle class. One of the things I wanted to do as a photographer was to connect the subject matter which I was actually part of with the photography. Photographers tend to be attracted to things very different to where they are from .. they tend to like things very different from their own lifestyle, so one of the rules I try to engage with is to try to photograph things that I am part of. So all the things like consumerism, tourism and being middle class is something I've been very interested in.
Martin Parr2
The above quote applies well to Parr's most famous, color work and to his most recent projects which focus on consumerism, wealth and globalization which I will consider shortly but this is not where his photographic career started out. In the 1960's when Martin Parr was attending the equivalent of high school in Surrey, in the South of England, an area that is part of what is colloquially known as stock-broker belt, and in the 1970's when Parr attended the Manchester College of Art, there was a huge North / South divide in England. Residents of both sides of this unofficial dividing line were highly suspicious of each other. The caricatures were, and still are but to a lesser extent, that the North was uncultured and industrial, whereas the South was seen as wealthy and the predominant habitat of the middle classes. Growing up, Martin Parr, as he admits himself, could not have been more middle class; “I'm so middle class it's unbelievable. [...] My father was a civil servant. I was brought up in middle class Surrey. That's it – it's the perfect middle class pedigree.”3 Growing up Martin Parr did have a connection with the North of England through his grand parents, particularly his grandfather George Parr, living in Yorkshire. He took regular vacations in Yorkshire as a child but it was a romanticized view of the North that Parr experienced on these visits. His grandfather was an accomplished amateur photographers who introduced Parr to the magic of photography and the darkroom and took the family on day trips to local sites and landmarks. Parr saw a holiday Yorkshire idyll not the everyday reality that is his stock and trade.
Parr's childhood Northern adventures must have influenced his choice of college to attend as he escaped the boredom of the suburbs to the northern city of Manchester to go to art school. We know that his projects while in Manchester reflected his new 'exotic' environment. We see pictures of interiors that are much more working class than his upbringing. We know that he tried to locate the real Coronation Street4 to use as a photographic subject as if the popular television soap opera had a real-life alter-ego but it is Parr's graduation project, Home Sweet Home, that seems to be his first, deliberate use of photography as an ironic weapon. The project consisted of a free-standing, full-scale model of a working class sitting room. Kitsch furnishings and decorations were used as a backdrop to Parr's own black and white photography. The photographs were mounted in cheap frames of the day perhaps to remove them from the preciousness of art photography. It is a two pronged attack; on one level the sitting room setting can be seen as a criticism of popular tastes of the day – a theme that continues though most of Parr's work to the present day. On the other hand Home Sweet Home was a gauntlet slap in the face to many of Parr's teachers at Manchester Polytechnic who Parr felt were totally unaware of what was happening in the art photography field of the day. If Parr was looking for a strong reaction he got it as he managed to split the opinion of his faculty lecturers. Graduation projects are usually exhibited no further than graduation shows but Parr's notoriety ensured that Home Sweet Home got broader coverage at two further English galleries.
After graduation Parr and several of his peers from Manchester moved a little way out of the city and into a new kind of photography when they formed a loose, artistic community in a slightly run-down, rural village called Hebden Bridge. Although, or perhaps because, Hebden Bridge was in a state of neglect and decline it became a sort of semi-pastoral Eden for Parr and his cohorts. Moving away from the conceptual art photography of his student days Parr seems to fall more under the influence of the American FSA style than the beatnik photography of Robert Frank that Parr cites as his major influence as a student .5 Martin and his future wife, Susie Mitchell, zeroed in on a small, declining community based around the Methodist chapel of Crimsworth Dean as a subject for a social documentary project that resulted in some of the most powerful and intimate images of Parr's career. Mitchell seems to have acted as an agent who allowed Parr who was already used to working from a slightly stand-off or aloof perspective, emotionally closer access to their subjects. With Mitchell, Parr became embedded with the congregation of Crimsworth Dean; Mitchell taught Sunday school while Parr helped the church raise funds by holding slide-shows. The great images resulting from these four years demonstrate that the congregation must have been aware that they were the subject for Parr's photography and Mitchell's interviewees were certainly aware of her tape recorder but when the Parrs were outed by a chapel elder for having more artistic than spiritual ambitions for being involved in the parochial community it was painful for both sides. The photographer's usual line of there being unwritten consent between themselves and their subjects does not stand in this case. The photographs were powerful, unsentimental and comprehensive but Parr has never got emotionally that close to his subjects again. Perhaps it is the Crimsworth Dean controversy that defined Parr's modus operandi on future projects of stepping back and being removed from his subject. The experience may also be responsible for Martin's often repeated and quoted philosophy that all photography is exploitative. "My line is that photography by its nature is exploitative. [...] It's unavoidable, especially if you are earning money from it. You're basically earning money from other people's image. Most photographers would never admit that photography is exploitative; they try to hide it because of their humanistic ideals."6
After the Crimsworth Dean experience and a couple of years self-imposed exile in isolated Ireland, the Parrs returned to the North of England. During this time England had changed and was now firmly entrenched in the era of Thatcherism which had created a devolution of the English class-system and embraced new-money and consumerism. Parr's photography had also metamorphosed during this time. No longer was he concentrating on quaint, gentle, disappearing communities and rituals but his eye had turned to more contemporary subjects. Some argue that Parr's work became politicized at this time but Parr denied this claiming that he was still just photographing people going about their everyday lives but the emotion does seem more critical of his subjects however much Parr might deny it. The biggest visual change was the switch from a black and white, 35mm system to a medium format, vividly colorful approach that relied on a slightly wide point of view, consumer color film and a signature daylight, fill-flash technique. As previously, inspiration for this aesthetic came not from his peers in the UK but from the US and the colorful snapshot approach that was gaining momentum with William Eggleston, Stephen Shore and their ilk.
With his aesthetic and technical approach renewed, and his subjects being an emerging, rather than disappearing society the stars were aligned for Parr's most popular, critically acclaimed and denounced work. This productive era is prefaced by the works Point of Sale and One Day Trip which both focused on Britain's consumer society but it is the work The Last Resort which catapulted Parr into the spotlight. The Last Resort documents working class families at play in a run-down and dirty seaside town called New Brighton. The work shows naked babies and children with their parents playing and eating in an environment festooned with trash and grime. Junk food and overcrowding are a constant theme through the work. Although Parr denies that this work is neither political nor critical, critics were immediately divided about the work. Some saw it as an insightful portrayal of the times but others thought it a cynical and cruel condemnation of the working class. Of course, the critics themselves were mainly from the liberal, educated middle class and Parr contends that they were being overly defensive and precious towards his working class subjects. What is undeniable is that the publicity and controversy The Last Resort created provided Parr with the financial means and the critical following to follow his muse where it would take him and, almost in direct response to the defenders of the working class, Parr's muse took him back to the South of England and to the middle class who were most benefiting from Thatcher's government.
His next large work, The Cost of Living marks his move away from documenting the working class and can be seen as a direct criticism of middle class that is Parr's heritage. The Cost of Living is no more an affectionate work than The Last Resort and, in some ways can be described as more vicious. The working class holiday makers in The Last Resort are trapped by their surroundings and economic position but the middle class subjects of The Cost of Living and subsequent examinations of a consumer society such as Signs of the Time, From A to B and Small World have the freedom and money that provide more choices of how to live and the environments they create for themselves. In many ways these works are more damning criticisms of the middle class than earlier work was of the their working class equivalents, a point not lost on the critics who felt the bead of Parr's focus fall upon them. Parr is now accused of being aloof and a cynical, arbiter of good taste for the whole nation but criticism brings with it attention and with this attention Parr's career continued to grow.
He followed up these major works with a slight change in aesthetic. His color work had, up to this point, remained slightly wide angle and medium format. This approach changes slightly with Common Sense when he returned to 35mm. This is was not a return to his early, romantic black and white work but Parr adopts a macro lens and a ring flash; he gets in really close in on his subjects and the style backs away from identifiably documentary to a more abstract and conceptual approach not seen from Parr since his student projects. His subjects remain the same: junk food, traditions, tourism, the results of consumerism and globalization. If anything, the colors become even more saturated. The tight in approach renders differing subjects in a similar way and the juxtaposition of particular images on the page emphasize this; raw bacon looks the same as sunburned skin, pasty sausages look similar to a piece of spent chewing gum. Of course, the critics had something to say about this change in direction and they found it hard to recognize the documentary thread that had run through Parr's career. They also criticized what they saw as a less hard hitting style but if you look closely the work from this period is probably the most damning of western society that Parr has produced to date.
The art photography world is badly paid for most participants compared to worlds of fashion, commercial and documentary photography. Parr saw that his work overlapped into these genres and looked around for an agency to represent him. He was already a controversial associate member of the Magnum agency but be decide to seek full membership of what was seen as the world's top photo agency knowing that he was likely to be strongly resisted by the old guard. Magnum functions like a cooperative where membership is obtained dependent upon a vote cast by existing members.
If he was expecting a fight he was not disappointed. In an open letter to the Magnum membership Philip Jones Griffiths actively campaigned against allowing Parr to become a full member of Magnum, “It would be the embracing of a sworn enemy whose meteoric rise in Magnum was closely linked with the moral climate of Thatcher's rule [...] Let me state that I have great respect for him as the dedicated enemy of everything I believe in and, I trust, what Magnum still believes in.”7 The main criticism of Parr was that, whereas Magnum prided itself on romantic, humanistic approach to subjects outside of war zones at least, Parr, in his own words, “... was one of the first to break that humanist tradition that was so strong in the previous generation. They thought I was exploitative, cynical, even fascist. All kinds of words were used.”8 It is to Parr's credit that while certain old-school members of Magnum, although they denied it, made personal attacks against his person, Parr remained, as ever, aloof and removed from the battle. He had strong opinions that Magnum's approach and philosophy were outdated but he never resorted to personal attacks. It was a close call but the younger, more forward looking but less vocal members of Magnum recognized Parr's work as different to the traditional Magnum content but also saw that it was a diversity of vision that Magnum needed to remain relevant and by one vote, Parr was accept into the agency. Financially for Magnum this was a good thing as Parr has consistently been one of their top three best selling photographers since his admission.
Ironically, one of the other leading horses in Magnum sales is consistently Henri Cartier-Bresson who had a strong, visceral reaction against Parr's work when he experienced it. Bresson rebuked Parr in public when they met in 1995. In a letter that was made public HCB later apologized for his over-reaction but said that what upset him about Parr's work was “the philosophy of a man taking himself seriously, without humor, where rancor and scorn dominate, a nihilistic attitude symptomatic of society today.”9 As HCB had been one of Parr's teenage idols this must have been tough to read but, yet again, Parr kept his cool and held his ground; “I acknowledge there is a large gap between your celebration of life and my implied criticism of it [...] What I would query with you is 'Why shoot the messenger?'”10
To say that Martin Parr deliberately courted controversy is to demonize him as being manipulative and contriving. It seems more fair and honest to say that Parr does not shy away from a fight and that he constantly stays on message addressing the themes he sees as important. It is true that controversy has, to some extent, made Martin Parr the photographer he is today both in his aesthetic approach and his resulting professional standing and financial success.
The confrontation at Crimsworth Dean after the Parr's infiltrated the community and the way their subjects subsequently felt betrayed shaped the way Martin Parr approached his subjects from then on. Although he claims to be a part of the society he portrays, and he may be part of the same demographic as his subjects, his perspective is deliberately detached and unemotional. This can be construed as heartless and cynical if this is the way you are inclined to view Parr's work. If you are more sympathetic to his agenda it can be seen as simply honest and that Parr is simply the messenger reflecting our world, and our effect on it, back at us. Parr's unsparing view of both the working and middle class have galvanized opinions in both his critics and audience. His most famous fan was, allegedly, Margret Thatcher while his most vocal and famous critic was Bresson. Everyone seems to have a strong emotional response to the social documentary parts of Parr's body of work. Everyone who knows Parr's work has a strong opinion of it and perhaps this demonstrates Parr's importance both as an art photographer and as a social documentarian; he makes people think and examine themselves. Those strong enough to take this criticism seem to appreciate Parr's work while those who are more critical of him often acknowledge that they are also disillusioned with the direction of the modern world and Parr's work, therefore, makes something of a convenient scapegoat. In the end, Parr's persistence and faith in his own vision will be responsible for his legacy: “I have kept producing new work, new books; and I guess, in the end, people take that seriously. If you're around long enough, and you keep doing new work, and it keeps provoking an audience to dislike you, and, obviously, some people like it as well, people will notice what you do."11
I hope I have demonstrated how Martin Parr's career has been followed by strong, divergent opinions of both the artist and his work. Parr does not shy away from uncomfortable subjects or from criticism. Being a popularist his work has escaped gallery walls and art magazines on to the pages of high circulation magazines and billboards and his work often makes people think. Parr does not make pretty pictures in a traditional style but he reflects back the world and society most of his viewers are part of. It is a strong message that does not show us in the most favorable light. Strong, difficult, unflattering messages often elicit a strong emotional response in those addressed but Martin Parr has made it his mission to be that polarizing force and messenger.
Love him or hate him, I began this piece as a huge fan of Martin Parr. While doing the background reading I found some of what he says judgmental and difficult to stomach. I see Martin Parr as a hard task master but remain convinced of the importance of his work and see controversy as a side effect of the themes he addresses and the way he addresses those themes. Parr still makes me think about my place in the world and shows me, in the words of Oscar Wilde “It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors. Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex and vital.”12
Bibliography: Books
Miller, Russell: Magnum: Fifty Years at the Front Line of History: The Story of the Legendary Photo Agency - Grove Press; 1st Grove Press Pbk. Ed edition (October 1999 – Hardback published 1997)
Parr, Martin: Boring Postcards - Phaidon Press (September 30, 1999)
Parr, Martin: Last Resort: Photographs of New Brighton - Dewi Lewis Publishing; New Ed edition (February 1998)
Parr, Martin: Small World - Dewi Lewis Publishing; Rev Ed edition (November 1, 2007)
Parr, Martin: The Cost of Living - Aperture (January 1991)
Parr, Martin: Think of England - Phaidon Press Pbk. Ed edition (November 1, 2004)
Parr, Martin & Barker, Nicholas: From A to B - BBC Books (March 17, 1994)
Parr, Martin & Badger, Gerry: The Photobook: A History, Vol. 1 & 2 - Phaidon Press (December 1, 2004 & October 7, 2006)
Poynor, Rick: Obey the Giant: Life in the Image World - Birkhäuser Basel; 2nd ed. edition (October 24, 2007)
Williams, Val: Martin Parr - Phaidon Press (February 1, 2002)
Bibliography: Audio Interviews
Bibliography: Periodicals
The Financial Times, February 16, 2007: Lunch with the FT: Martin Parr by Peter Aspden
Bibliography: WWW References
Magnum Photos:
1Parrworld is the title of a major Martin Parr exhibition to open at the Haus der Kunst, Munich, May 2008.
2Martin Parr in interview at the fotopub festival, Thursday, October 7, 2004.
3Poynor, Rick: Obey the Giant: Life in the Image World – page 18
4Coronation Street is one of the longest running soap operas on UK television. It first aired in 1960 and still runs today. It is set in a fictional working class, street of terraced houses in Weatherfield, a fictional town in Greater Manchester.
5“The first book I bought was Robert Frank's The Americans. [...] I remember [...] looking at The Americans almost as if it were a dirty magazine, you know, as if it was something naughty.” - Williams, Val: Martin Parr - Phaidon Press (February 1, 2002) page 32.
6Martin Parr in interview at the Photopub Festival, October 7th, 2004
7Letter from Philip Jones Griffiths to the Magnum agency members – reported in Russell Miller: Magnum: Fifty Years at the Front Line of History – page 295
8The Financial Times, February 16, 2007: Lunch with the FT: Martin Parr
9Letter from HCB to 'other concerned people' about his reaction to Parr's work - reported in Russell Miller: Magnum: Fifty Years at the Front Line of History – page 297
10Letter from Parr to HCB reported in Russell Miller: Magnum: Fifty Years at the Front Line of History – page 297
11Martin Parr in interview at the Photopub Festival, October 7th, 2004
12Oscar Wilde from the preface of The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891)
It has been eight months since I posted anything to Vox. How funny then that the subject that inspires me to write again is the subject I last wrote about; inspiration or the lack of it and faith in your own work.
So, since we last chatted I completed my picture-a-day project for 2007 and started again for 2008. I made a new picture every day for a whole year and then some and I am proud of that. However, I am less proud of some of the individual shots than I am of the achievement of completing what I started. Let's face it, completing what you started is easy if you're stubborn enough but making each individual picture stand on its own is tough.
I was talking with a fellow photographer this weekend; a fellow ex-pat; probably someone who is somewhere about the same place as I think I am in my photographic development; someone I trust; someone who doesn't mince words. He asked me why I'd been contaminating my Flickr stream with so much crap recently. I was a little taken aback at first but then I knew what he was saying was true. I can try an justify what I'm doing by claiming that flickr is my equivalent of a Day Book, a journal of sorts - both the good and the bad - it's not a blog and certainly it's not a portfolio. That holds true to a point.
I am not in the flickr elite. I'm not even on the flickr B-list but I do have a few regulars who comment on my photos and I comment of theirs. It's a community of sorts to support each other through the project 365 death march. I do not use those comments to criticize their work and they, thankfully, return the favor. My wife knows that it is what I don't say in those comments I make that is most telling but I'm just like my friends their - I struggle enough just to make a post a picture most days so I don't want it scored on artistic merit. It's the one time I'm happy with a "nice capture", "good shot" kind of comment. And then I start believing my own press....
The truth is, my friend is right. I'm actually happy with my pictures about 1 day in 10. I know how to make something that will fool a layman most of the time but, if you really know about photography, and you look at my shots you can see I'm faking it. I can make something that looks artistic but that doesn't make it art. So why go on? I have to keep making pictures if I want to call myself a photographer. I have to go on for that 1 day in 10 when I think it's actually worth it. It's hard to make up of inspiration with persistence and hard work but I have to believe that it's worth trying.
I used to have absolute confidence in my own work to the point of arrogance. I miss that sureness but perhaps this self-doubt is something I just have to work through to get to that next, creative place. It is a hard slog but I am too stubborn to give up just because I feel like I'm producing crap. There's only two choices when you're stuck in a rut; bounce out or get entrenched and comfortable. I am working to avoid the latter.
I started a new photography class with an old teacher last week. Going into it I knew that he thinks digital is best suited to commercial work while film is the medium of art but I thought I'd be able to win him over. However, in the first lesson he tricked me somehow into promising to shoot at least one roll of 35mm and one medium format this week. 'No problem', I thought, 'I shot film for years. Going back can't be that hard can it?' It turns out it is that simple and that hard.
Digging my old Olympus gear out of the closet and dusting it off filled me with a wave of nostalgia. The OM cameras are beautiful pieces of machinery. The Zuiko lenses are, at once both compact and solid. My first shock to the system was how heavy all this stuff was. I put a couple of OM bodies and most of the Zuiko lens I owned into an old school, canvas, shoulder bag and set off. A block later I was back home dumping half of what I was carrying and puting it all into a modern backback. The tiny, dense, Zuiko prime lenses rattled around on the huge spaces the modern bag has for modern zoom lenses but at least I was getting some feeling back into my left shoulder.
In use, I kept forgetting that I had to wind on manually so I pressed the shutter many times only to wonder why nothing happened. More than once I looked at the back of many OM2 spot/program to review the last shot I had taken, only to be greeted by the TriX film box reminder. I'd forgotten how to focus manually so I was winding my lenses all over the place. The biggest change, however, was how aware I was that each shot had a financial implication so I was overly careful and ponderous. It took me 2 hours to shoot one roll of 36 exposures.
If I thought the 35mm SLR was slow I was in for a shock when I took the an old TLR out the next day. Loading, winding on, focusing, setting the exposure were all slow but framing took forever. Up and down are alright, but left and right bounced from a mirror get reversed. Try to manipulate an object, level and into a specific place in the frame was ponderous and frustrating, like the worse hand held video game you've ever played. I'm beginning to remember why I use to shoot this thing mounted on a 3-way tripod head 90% of the time; at least on the tripod you can deal with one axis at a time.
On the upside, there's something about an all metal, all manual camera that makes you fell like a real photographer. The shutters make the most wonderful noises. Feeling that each frame is precious slows me down from my more usual habit of taking 3 frames before I even think about what I'm doing. I'm excited about picking up my shots from the lab in a way I rarely am about putting a compact flash card in my computer. Of course, I could be in for a huge disappointment but at least I tried to do my assignment.
Nearly four years ago I started my photoblog at TheOtherMartinTaylor.com; for a few months before that I had used a fotolog.com to try out the visual blog concept before the Brazilian invasion. At that time there was a lively and vigorous community of photobloggers on the web. We met on line, we met in person; if you wanted to have a visual journal or project of some kind, the photoblog was the only game in town.
But shortly after I began, photobloggers started signing up for a new service called Flickr. I resisted for a while as I didn't know what I needed a Flickr account for as I already had a 'real photoblog'. Like most photobloggers I caved and got a Flickr account; at first I used it to house my b-list pictures and photos of events, dogs and cameras. It was quite some time later before I got sucked into the community aspect of Flickr and I finally understood flickr's real power.
A lot of that old photoblog community have given up their photoblogs and most of the rest of us soldier on in obscurity. Just about all of that old community are still on Flickr and probably taking more photos and interacting more than ever. So what happened to the photoblog? It's strength and weakness are that it is infinitely more flexible and technical than Flickr. Back in the day it required that you installed your own blog content management system on your own server. Then you had to learn some propriety markup language hybridized with HTML to create templates that defined the look and functionality of your photoblog.
Spam was/is also your own concern. When Google rank was largely a matter of who linked to you and from where sleazy search engine optimizers quickly realized the potential power of blog comments. It wasn't long before they have developed bots that searched out blogs running on specific software and tired to add comments to the blog linking back to some site selling porn, diet pills or the promise of a larger willie. Google has since changed the influence of blog links and the CMS software tries to help bloggers manage spam and yet I doubt I'm in the unique position of receiving thousands (no exaggeration) spam comments and spam attempts on my blog for every one ligitimate comment I get these days. Many photobloggers have surrender and just closed comments on their sites, but isn't a photoblog without comments just a gallery?
Another problem was that the community was dispersed. We all used to hit photoblogs.org at least every other day and comment on each others photoblogs and follow each others RSS feeds but Flick has all that built in one place. I still use my photoblog but less of the old photobloggers are out there; where once my RSS reader lit up with hundreds of new photoblog posts everyday, now it's down to a trickle. I get my photo community almost exclusively via Flickr who filter all the junk and allow me to follow friends, peers and heros effortlessly. If you're a photography enthusiast of any standard or experience and you don't have a Flickr account you're the exception rather than the rule these days.
So, what is to become of the photoblog if the community aspect has largely been replaced by Flickr? I still post things to Flickr that I wouldn't post to my photoblog. My photoblog is reserved for my better shots, but those images are usually available in my Flickr stream too. Yet, my photoblog is not a portfolio but is still a visual journal of some kind. I don't think I am unusual among photobloggers in using Flickr as my day book, my photoblog as a more exclusive subset of my on going pictures, and having a portfolio somewhere else altogether. Does this make the photoblog largely irrelevant? I would argue that the photoblog still has its place especially if you want creative control on how your images are displayed and/or you want to mix in other kinds of media (text, sound, video, flash widgets, etc.) One of the problems with Flickr is that you're always aware that you're inside Flickr. The look and feel is very distinctive and, although this does allow the images to speak for themselves to some extent, it does add a uniform conformity that can wear you down after a while. The community is huge and diverse but you can sucked into playing the popularity contest game. If you want your pictures to be seen, and what's the point of making pictures not to be seen, you have to get involved in some Flickr politics which can be time consuming - images rarely get to the front page of explore from a newbie, with few contacts, few tags on the picture and without the picture being in many groups - it does happen but very rarely no matter how good the image.
For now I won't shutter up my old photoblog but if I were starting afresh I don't know if I would take the time to create my own half-waylimbo between Flickr and a portfolio. The photoblog doesn't seem to have the same relevance as it once had, in fact it feels decidedly old school today. Photoblog stars have largely been superseded by Flickr Rock Stars. Modest daily photoblog stats can't really compete with the many thousands of views per image the Flickr elite can achieve. Does it matter? As long as we can still find quality, innovative, inspiring pictures and a community to go with them, probably not.
Most despised lens on the planet or what?
Does anyone have a good word for the kit lens that comes with the digital rebel? It is pretty hard to find anyone on the web willing to stand up for this bargain under-dog but let me throw my hat in the ring and say that I don't think it's as bad as everyone makes out.
True, it is light and insubstantial when you pick it up - I don't think there's more than an ounce of metal in it's make up and most of what's there is in the electronics. The lens' mount itself is even plastic which is often a bad sign. It is cheap and it feels cheap ($100 or free with your first DSLR). Being free makes it common and I think this is the 18-55mm lens' biggest problem. Just about everyone who has a Canon DSLR has, or has had, a copy of the 18-55mm kit lens. It's as common as muck. It carries no prestige what-so-ever. L-snobs consider it worthless; enthusiasts think it a badge of inadequates; even beginners see it only as a stop-gap until they can afford something decent and this last view may be the most accurate.
Just about every review I've read of the digital rebels has said something along the lines of, "nice camera let down by the cheap kit lens". It is repeated so often by reviewers and forum pundits that we start to believe its bad press without questioning it. This bad rap is so unanimous among such places as Amazon's comments that I wonder how many of these photographers have really tried this lens and how many just blindly believe and repeat the hype. It's too easy to just blame your equipment for your horrible pictures but take a minute to dig that old kit lens out of the back of your closet and give it another try.
I've already admitted that its build quality is lightweight and plastic but that can be an advantage - after the equally cheap, but much less maligned 50mm f1.8, the 18-55mm paired with a 400D makes for one of the lightest, most compact camera/lens DSLR combinations available. You give up a full time focusing ring, focus scale etc. but it is so cheap you don't have to worry about taking it anywhere - it's so light it will go in a jacket pocket and you will forget you're carrying it. It's range is not exotic but it is very useful (29-88mm in 35mm terms) which covers a large part of the range you need for walkabout, landscape, architectural and portrait photography.
As for image quality, I won't pretend that this is the sharpest lens Canon has ever produced but it is not as bad as some reviews would have you believe. Wide open it is soft, especially at the edges but if you learn to work with this lens' limitations it will reward you with decent images. Avoid shooting wide open so stop down to the middle of the lens' range whenever possible. If this means hiking up the ISO a bit higher than you are usually comfortable with, then just do it and deal with the noise later in post-processing. Use a lens hood whenever possible. If the thought of spending $25 on a propriety hood for a $100 lens makes you wince then just use a cheap generic rubber hood you have lying around from your old film equipment.
If you can afford the 17-40mm f4 L or the 17-85mm EF-S IS is in your budget then, by all means buy, and use, those better lenses. I'm not going to try to tell you that the 18-55mm kit lens is as good as either of those more expensive lenses but don't discount it as trash either. If you need something reasonably wide don't forget about your kit lens gathering dust. I wouldn't recommend the kit lens as your main or only lens in the long term but don't believe everything you read on the interweb - the kit lens is just not that awful.
Reviews
- Bob Atkins on Photonet - much of the time it can hold it's own against Canon's full frame coverage mid-range consumer lenses, especially in the center of the frame
- The Digital Picture
- The Luminous Landscape - Of course everyone wants to know what the image quality is like. In three words — not that great.
- Photozone - serious users looking for a good quality lens should save a little more and look elsewhere.
Pictures
