About Looking by John Berger

John Berger, About Looking (1980) London: Bloomsbury. ISBN: 978-0-7475-9957-9

Among my pile of books yet to read as part of my studies I had ‘About Looking’ by John Berger.  I have only recently been introduced to this author through my Context and Narrative Course, I read his book ‘Ways of Seeing’ and watched the accompanying BBC TV program on YouTube which I found very interesting. I then went onto read ‘Understanding a Photograph’, in preparation for my fourth assignment.  The recent sad news of John Berger’s death prompted me to read this book, ‘About Looking’.

This book is made up of a selection of essays, Berger wrote from the mid 1960’s up to the late 1970’s.

His first essay examines how man looks and sees himself; how he regards animals and his world around him and compares this to how other animals regards themselves, man and the world through their eyes.

His next essay looks at pictures by August Sander the famous farm hands going to a dance photo, Young Farmers (1914) and another image of a local musical band posing for their photograph and he discusses how their suits give away their status in society despite their smart attire.

Also included is an essay on the works of Paul Strand.  The rest of the book moves away from photography and looks at works by other artists from the 17th century such as Hals through to Artist’s such as Francis Bacon and Giacometti of the 20th century.

An interesting read, Berger had his own style of writing and if you have heard him speak you can almost hear his voice coming through the pages of the book.

He was clearly very passionate about art and I am sure a nice guy to have met.  I am sure all who were fortunate enough to have met him will miss him.

Julie Cockburn

Julie Cockburn

I learned of this artist through a fellow student  on Facebook.  Cockburn appears to specialize in ‘found photographs’ that she embellishes with embroidery, etc. often to disguise or obliterate the face / identity of the person in the picture.  She has exhibited and sells her picture for large sums http://thephotographersgallery.org.uk/juliecockburn.  Like the lady in the picture, I can say no more about this artist.

As artist we are a funny breed! I was recently told by an artist that most artists are Socialists and I often hear them talk about the evils of Capitalism and then I go and find that artist will find someone else’s old photos and scribble, scratch, embroider or simply add a title to alter their meaning and put them up for sale for large sums of money.  Seems to me without the evil Capitalist world we would be starving or more likely simply not doing art!

Salvador Dali was kicked out of the Surrealist movement for supporting Franco, perhaps his real crime was that he just couldn’t be hypercritical enough for his fellow contemporaries.

 

Working log for Assignment 4

“A picture is worth a thousand words”

My task for this assignment is to write a 1000 word essay on an image of my choosing.

I can choose anything I like a from famous art photograph to something from the family album but the image must have scope to make a rigorous and critical analysis.

If choosing a well-known photograph, take time to research it’s context – the intentions of the photographer, why it was taken, whether it’s part of a series, etc.  Add all this information into the essay in order to be able to draw a conclusion from my own interpretation of the facts.

If I choose to use a found photograph, a picture from my own collection, or perhaps one from an old family album, use it as an opportunity to find out something new.  Look directly at the photograph for information.  It may be interesting to compare and contrast memory with the information being seen anew ‘reading’ the picture so intensely.

You must use the facts as a means to draw my own conclusion about what the picture means to me.  I may wish to apply what I’ve learned in part 4 regarding translation, interpretation, connotation, signs, punctum, etc.  Be sure to get the definitions correct!

Follow though association and other images that relate to the discussion. directly or indirectly.  Look at the broader context of the image and it’s background and specific narrative as well as my own personnel interpretation of it and what thoughts it triggers for me.  Follow these associations in a thoughtful and formal way.  Enjoy the process!

The first task for this assignment was to decide upon the picture, I had just finished assignment 3 and I was holidaying in Spain where I could relax empty my head and ‘re-boot’.  After the first week I was able to think again and ideas began to come to me, I had taken my laptop with me so that I could use it with my camera and I began to search for ideas.  My first idea was of a photograph that I came across earlier this year taken in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp by an American photographer in 1944.  The image shows local Germans forced to tour the concentration camp and I was fascinated by the expressions each of these civilians made, some visibly shocked and ashamed others indignant and cold.  However, one night after a meal in the port we came home to the flat and put on the video and chose to watch Gone-with-the-Wind.  I hadn’t seen this movie in years and I was taken by the photography and some of the scenes that were so good.  I was particularly taken by the last image from part one.  Scarlet O’Hara has returned to Tara having escaped the siege of Atlanta only to find Tara pillaged by the invading Union army starving she eats a raw horse radish that she has dug from the soil with her bare hands.  At this point we see a transition in her from desperation to determination and the scene ends with her standing under a battle scared tree making an oath to god that no matter what she has to do she will never go hungry again.  This was a very powerful scene and a very powerful image provides a strong sense of foreboding for part two.

This was my first idea for an essay.  US Army photograph, 1944.

This image I photographed in the Spanish fruit and veg. market of Altea that neighbors my holiday home town of Calpe a year or so ago.  I saw this scene and discreetly pointed my point and shoot Canon camera and caught it right at the best moment.

This was the image that I was so taken with in the motion-picture and I was luck enough to find it on the web.

When I returned to England I emailed my Tutor my suggested options and asked for his opinion.  He replied the image from Gone-with-the-Wind.  I was pleased that he had suggested this image as by now this was my favorite option.

After carefully looking at this picture I highlighted the cloud formation to help with my essay.

I also looked at how this image is composed.

I then began to make a list of basic information to start the research process which I typed as a word documents. Preperation for assignment 4  I then began researching through websites and for additional ideas on essay writing I  read, Reading Photographs, Basics Creative Photography, by Richard Salkeld, published by Bloomsbury,  Understanding a Photograph by John Berger, published by Penguin,’One Way Street and other writings’ by Walter Benjamin, published by Penguin, the essay ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ 1975 by Rachel Rose.  The Bible and ‘Inferno’ by Dante Alighieri, published by The Folio Society.

As I researched I kept a record of the source on a word document that I could refer to again later.  Notes  Having accumulated my reference material I began to write my essay, at this point I was not concerned with the word count as I could cut away as necessary. Working Title I also included images in my basic work.   when I came up with a title for my essay I resaved the document under it’s new name and continued to work on it.  Draft-1-Its a Lilly! I then emailed my Tutor for advice on my word-count and he advised that I was allowed + or – 5-10%; so I made sure that when stripping away I had an idea of my safe envelope; so as not to take out anything unnecessarily Final Draft-Its a Lilly  I then edited down my list of reference material relevant to my final draft and added it Notes for draft .

Finally I checked with my Assignment criteria to make sure that I had understood and followed it.

I then read it to my wife and she pointed out that the only thing I had not mentioned was how the picture made me feel.  It was such an obvious observation but in my had not thought to mention it!  This is a good example of being too close to the work to be able point out the obvious.  this I easily rectified as the original attraction was the sense of foreboding and unease that this image conveyed.

The idea of the title for my work came through my research in to Technicolor and I watched several very good documentaries on YouTube that told the story of the development and use of technicolor which included an anecdotal story from an aging actor who played one on the Munchkins in Wizard of Oz who was puzzled why the always called out “It’s a Lilly!” at the end of a scene.

This time I only got one response from the Facebook OCA forum when I put out my request to critique my essay, but I took on board the comment that I should change the title for the last paragraph which I agreed with.  I decided to change it from ‘Conclusion’ to ‘So why the title’.  However, I also sent my work to a friend who I could rely on to give a good constructive critique and he came back with some suggestions to shorten a couple of sentences and punctuation corrections sending me his suggested amendments highlighted in red.   ShaunDraftEssay from this I made my final changes Amended Final Draft-Its a Lilly-1

 

 

Public Information, Desire, Disaster, Document.

Earlier in this course I was asked to research an essay from this book, I was fortunate enough to find a copy on Amazon as this book is currently out-of-print.  I have just fully read the book and found it useful for both future reference and current understanding of contemporary art as practiced by the current established photographic artists.  I say photographic artist but this includes artist who have used photography to inspire their work,  for example: Andy Warhol,.Gerhard Ritcher and Cady Noland.  This book documents a large exhibition project conducted in 1995 and the linking subjects are in the title: Public Information for example questioning the media in Stan Douglas’ exhibition, Desire as presented by Nan Goldin, Disaster as illustrated by Andy Warhol, Document as famously recorded by Robert Frank’s journey across America in the late 1950’s.  This book begins with a number of essays discussing the topics that these works touch.  The first is that of the title, Public Information, Desire, Disaster, Document by Gary Garrels; Wrong by Jim Lewis; Meditations on the Document by Sandra S Phillips; Desiring Machines (Notes on Commodity, Celebrity, and Death in the Early Work of Andy Warhol) by Christopher Phillips; Inside / Out by Abigail Solomon-Godeau; Leave Proof (Media and Public Information)  by Robert R Riley.  the rest of the book covers examples of the work presented by the artist for the project with a short introduction of the artist and the work.

The participating artist were: Robert Frank, Andy Warhol, Richard Richter,Edward Ruscha, John Baldessari, Dan Graham, Martha Rosler, Larry Clark, Jeff Wall, James Coleman, Chantel Akerman, Nan Goldin, Stan Douglas, Cady Noland, Felix Gonzalez-Torres.

Broomberg and Chanarin, ‘People in Trouble….Dots

http://www.choppedliver.info/people-in-trouble/

This is an interesting piece of work that is mentioned in my coarse material, Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin worked together on a project using found images archived in Belfast, Northern Ireland, documenting the troubles and lives of ordinary people taken by photojournalist and the public.  When Broomber and Chanarin examined this archive they found a number of photos with coloured Dot type stickers attached over some of the images, these had been marked for their suitability for publication.  The stickers had been randomly applied but inevitably covered an area of the picture.  Broomberg and Chanarin uncovered these areas and reproduced pictures of only the round area that had been hidden by the coloured Dot.  By displaying these images without the rest of the picture the meaning of the image changes and a new narrative is created.

On Photography, Susan Sontag

Susan Sontag, On Photography, (1979) London, Penguin, ISBN: 978-0-14-005397-5.

This book by Susan Sontag is a collection of essays discussing how photography has influenced the world since its invention and how it has played a part in the surrealist art movement in the 20th Century.

The book was first published in 1977 and although photography has moved on she spends a lot of time discussing how photography was first introduced accepted or not and how it came to be the most enduring and influential part of the surrealist movement.  She also looks at how photographs are used and how they can be re-used.

Topics and points to note:

• In teaching us a new visual code, photographs alter and enlarge out notion of what is worth looking at and what we have a right to observe.
• Photos are a grammar and even more importantly, an ethics of seeing.
• Photos give us the sense that we can hold the world in our hands.
• In photographs the image is also an object.
• As object they can be collected, bought & sold, cherished, thrown away, lost & found, etc, etc.
• Photographs furnish evidence, they appear to provide proof when something is in doubt.
• A photograph justifies, for example through use of surveillance and is a presumption of proof that something exists.
• Photography has become almost as widely practiced an amusement as sex and dancing – which means that like all mass art form, photography is not practiced by people as an art.  It is mainly a social rite, a defence against anxiety and a tool of power.
• Photographs can abet desire and emotions of morality.
• The industrialisation of photography permitted its rapid absorption into bureaucratic ways of running society…photographs became part of the general furniture of the environment – touchstones and confirmations of that reductive approach to reality which is considered realistic.  Photographs were enrolled in the service of important institutions of control, notably the family and the police, as symbolic object and as pieces of information….many important documents are not valid unless they have affixed to them, a photographic-token of the citizen’s face.