PICBOD

Still reading a bit about the flap over the World Press Photo 2011 winner. I think this one is my favorite.

I believe it is a remarkable image. IF it causes the viewer to think "pietá" then that is ultimately positive as next thoughts may well include "Islam" - creating tension, or perhaps:

"martyr"
"sacrifice"
"persecuted"
or
"injustice"
"travesty"
or
"compassion"
"loss"
"mourning"
"mother/child"

or any of a million associations that each individual brings based on her own background and experiences.

And consider the woman's niqab: how can a body so covered be so expressive? What do we discover about their emotions in that moment? We see neither of their faces yet still their suffering is conveyed wholly through their posture. Isn't that a remarkable thing?

Fundamentalist Islam forbids photography, so I can't imagine offense from that quarter beyond a general objection to image making and idolatry. Has any secular group of Yemenis or reform-minded Muslims criticized this image on grounds of cultural insensitivity? Or are others complaining for them?

Looking back to past years' winners, I see that Controversy knows his way around the WPP headquarters. A cynical person might suggest that such controversy generates free publicity and that WPP has an incentive to provoke it, if possible.

A thought experiment: On holiday in New Orleans, an up-and-coming foreign photographer gets stuck in the city as a great hurricane approaches. After the storm, he sets out to document the devastation. He finds himself in a suburb of the city which before the storm was populated by the wretched and impoverished, and now has been utterly annihilated save for one surviving tree. Under the tree sits a man, shirtless, impassive - seemingly unmoved at the sight of all the destruction. The photographer snaps a photo and the photo wins a prize. The photographer is Japanese and a practicing Buddhist.

Does his photo:

suggest indifference to the plight of its subject?
demean American suffering via Buddhist iconography?
insult the Dalai Lama?
insult victims of last March's tsunami in Japan?
obstruct or obscure the effect of the storm and its implications for those who live there?

Discuss.

Creative Workshop 4: ‘The clothed body’ (Mk.2) 02/20/2012

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UPDATE - 2/27: I made some more pictures of the shirt, closer in and farther away as Jonathan suggested, paying particular attention to light and trying to convey the "feel" of the cotton. I was happy with the way some of these turned out, but they were quite different from my first set and I had to really think about how to incorporate them into the narrative.

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Here is my second take on task 4. I blather about it a bit here.

They might look better/bigger on Flickr.

The assignment: "Take a white shirt, it can be any form of white shirt. It can be a £1000 Prada white shirt or a £1 t-shirt, the emphasis is on pairing the process down to it’s ‘bare-bones’. Your direction then is to make a series of images using a white shirt and a body, exploring the relationship between the two and consider shape, form, texture and light. Consider the environmental context , what does that say about your shirt and subject? Does it reveal a fragility, a nervousness, a confidence, perhaps a dissonance?"

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Creative Workshop 4: ‘The Clothed Body’ 02/11/2012

UPDATE: 2/15/12 - Jonathan kindly offered some guidance below. Above is the diptych he made after lightening two of my original images.

I used this to check my monitor but it was only very slightly on the bright side. I guess I was just feeling gloomy when I did these the first time.

Am currently in the process of editing up this set with more images from the session plus I have a couple of shots in mind for this weekend. Please check back.

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Many thanks to my friend, Jeremy, for being my model.

The assignment: "Take a white shirt, it can be any form of white shirt. It can be a £1000 Prada white shirt or a £1 t-shirt, the emphasis is on pairing the process down to it’s ‘bare-bones’. Your direction then is to make a series of images using a white shirt and a body, exploring the relationship between the two and consider shape, form, texture and light. Consider the environmental context , what does that say about your shirt and subject? Does it reveal a fragility, a nervousness, a confidence, perhaps a dissonance?"

Another thing Grant Scott said 02/10/2012

during his #picbod talk which is still resonating in my head (I'm paraphrasing):

"If you want to work at [such and such magazine] you have to look a certain way; good watch, good shoes. Go to the right parties. Mingle. Schmooze. Getting work is 90% about other things and 10% about your photographs (but your photographs had still better be great)."

I think he could easily substitute the word "photograph" with almost any other job that people do and still be accurate.

I got lucky with a mannequin 02/09/2012

I walk past this god-awful thing every weekday. I spent 15 minutes shooting it this evening and got a couple of lucky shots.

Che figo! 02/09/2012

"I decided to be a photographer. And that process involved me getting some Hasselblad cameras together, and getting a scooter, a Vespa actually, in Bologna, in Italy. And then riding that Vespa from Bologna to Naples. On my own. And I had Edward Weston's Daybooks with me to read - that was my reading. And I pretty much taught myself photography through Edward Weston's Daybooks."

From a guest lecture given by Grant Scott

“Self-assigned” task: More balancing light 02/08/2012

I had a meeting with some colleagues and friends this week and I wanted more practice with balancing multiple light sources indoors. I was trying for as natural a look as I could get. There were three lamps and a chandelier in the room and I used the on-camera flash. I was mostly shooting wide open so the depth of field gets a little wonky here and there. Plus, a chandelier appears to grow out of someone's head. And they are also not the sharpest photos I've ever taken.

There are a couple others that I think will look better in black and white. I'm not sure what the theory says regarding what kind of images look better in black and white, but I'm going with my gut on this one. I'll try and edit them up and post them by Sunday.

Notes on the Graham Macindoe and Gary Schneider conversations 02/08/2012

I finally got a moment to watch these all the way through.

Macindoe: After his career was off and running, Graham Macindoe says he began to have difficulty finding time for personal projects due to all the commercial work he was getting. What eventually grew out of this tension was a series images of homemade "missing person" flyers, often shown on empty streets. Sometime concurrently or shortly afterward he fell into drug addiction in earnest and in a way became a missing person himself. His commercial gigs predictably dried up. Though strung-out and dissolute he continued working photographically making his drug use and newly squalid surroundings his subjects. Though harrowing, the images are undeniably strong and, as projects go, they don't get more personal than this one.

Macindoe himself says he occasionally used his photography to justify his habit, imagining how he would set up his shots and how and what drugs he would take to get the effects he wanted. I would say that those suffering from addiction will rationalize all day as long as it means they keep getting their drugs. I think it's an indication rather of a positive and creative impulse that he continued making images during this difficult time. It's not a great leap to think self-destructive behavior would extend to the ego, the self that imposes its vision through its art, and that cameras, lenses, film, sd cards, etc. would be liquidated for the junk they could buy. I'm glad he had an impluse to work while he was suffering. I feel better for having seen the images, I hope they give him solace and perspective and I'm glad he is feeling better.

Schneider: Finding old, undeveloped negatives at a flea market, Gary Schneider printed them and was struck by their detail and the gaze and comportment of the sitters who would have had to have held still for a fairly long exposure. His own portraiture has stretched this concept to a remarkable series where his subjects are made comfortable in a dark room and asked to hold still for 30 minute exposures while Schnieder illuminates portions of their face with a penlight. He hopes his subjects will change expression and even their state of mind and that the act of making the portrait will become an intimate ritual. By taking this extra time the sitter gains control of the final result, the image becomes a collaboration and moves away from a "decisive moment" mode of photography. Schneider has extended this collaborative ideal to the use of body-heat, sweat and oils on subject's hands to chemically alter unexposed film. The resulting hand prints are presented as a kind of signature.

His work is very much process-oriented and a knowledge of his process is needed to fully appreciate the result. Hearing him discuss his work provided a narrative which I don't believe I would have discovered had I just encountered these in a gallery or online. The long exposure heads are especially striking and to me seem to present an honest humanity, but also a louche and somewhat ridiculous aspect (in other words - an honest humanity).