My Website

www.david-langham.co.uk

Autumn is Coming

 Haven't made a post in a while, as i have been too busy pretending to be busy.

 Since i last posted, i have visited spain, which was an experience. I shall post photographs and a diary in the coming weeks. I also start back at university next week. i was under the impression it was this week, and now i am bored as i want to use university equipment!

 Work to come up soon....

Isolated Landscapes get removed!

 Here is a recent news story which has some connection to my 'Isolated Landscapes' work. They now have connotations related to economy, as we can't afford to uphold our isolated landscapes.

Derby City Council said that by removing flowerbeds from its public roads and roundabouts, it will save £102,000 over the next two years.

Things I learnt at Hurricane Festival, Scheeßel, 21-23 June 2013 (PHOTOS TO COME SOON)

Foreign festivals are great if you’re unsocial

 Not speaking everyone elses language means you can be ignorant and feel fine about it! Dont want to speak to people today? You don’t have to. Because you cant say anything! Want to speak to people? your conversation starter is that you barely speak a word of the language! Win win.

There are no hipsters in Germany. Apart from me.

 We were the hipsters, gloating about how we’re at a foreign festival because its so much better than our festivals. Plus I spent the weekend walking around with a 35mm film camera, which added to the look. But everyone seemed to not give a fuck about fashion statements or fitting into some pre designated look. Everyone just dressed like normal people. And there were no loud attention seekers. Well, besides the drunk guys wetting themselves.

Rammstein will haunt me for life

 Rammstein are terrifying. huge men which dwarf the stage. A shit tonne of fireworks, pyros and smokes. And a lot of flamethrowers. Mounted to everything. The singer has such a low, powerful voice and when the crowd sings along, it really is quite intimidating. Especially when we have no idea what they’re singing. Not being able to contextualise the performance thru lyrics was especially vital, when the singer simulated sodomising the keyboard player whilst on a hydraulic platform.

Top that kiss, with your shitey fireworks.

Germans love simple and repetitive music.

 Bloc party are a shadow of the musical brilliance which they once displayed. And this was encapsulated in their “new song” which sounded like when my year 8 band wrote their first ever song. A constant riff throughout with not much change at all. But germans loved it. And later in the “discotent” the german pop punk music was predictable and, well, poppy. Even rammsteins music is pretty repeatative and simple.

Cigarettes are cool

 This was the first time I’d been abroad since I was about 14, so I was a lot more wary of things around me. I was surpised when at the aldi checkout, that amongst the sweets and chewing gums towards the counter, were also boxes of cigarettes and rizzla papers. Now this may not sound like a lot, but in England, you’re not even allowed to see cigarettes. If you walk into a supermarket here, you wouldn’t know they even exist. In germany, you could just pick them up.

 One of the festivals sponsors was actually a cigarette company. They had their own hut and bar, and several people walking around the site all day selling products. It was colourful and great! There was such a freedom about it. if you want to smoke yourself into an early grave, the media isn’t going to beat you down for it.

Tent safety isn’t an issue

 The policy with pitching tents was anywhere but the roads/lanes. Literally, anywhere. We had a small circle of tents in our travelling group. The open space in the center was small enough to only fit us sitting around. When we awoke on the first day, a huge group tent had appeared in the middle of it all. Later on that day, a man pitched his pretty much in my porch. Why not?

Nobody wanted it to end

 On the last night, an angry mob developed. Because queens of the stone age played a shorter set than any other headliners? Nah. Because the way to finish a festival is to destroy your own tent, swing off a gazebo and burn down the toilets whilst people hit tribal drums to no particular rhythm.

Germans have NO sense of humour

 What do you do with a dog with no legs? Take it around the corner.

Manners don’t exist

 Either im just really English, or germans have no sense of manners. Even walking thru crowds and brushing up against people im obliged to have a constant stream of “sorry, sorry, excuse me, sorry” most people will just pretend you don’t exist.

Trains are awesome

 Double decker trains which were quick, quiet, and on time. EFFICIENT.

But music is more awesome.

 Portishead, Sigur Ros, Arctic Monkeys and The National really impressed me this weekend. Bosnian Rainbows are going to be a force. And seeing Smashing Pumpkins is now off of my bucket list.

 

Home book

 This is a video of a blurb book I created for a project now known as "Home," created in 2010 and filmed two days ago! The original title was "This is Old Factory Town," as I believed it could be representative of many other towns similar to it. However, I have since decided that the title has too much responsibility, and it is now simply titled "Home."

This is Old Factory Town book, 2010 from David Langham on Vimeo.

Website

 I have my own website currently in the works! Keep your eyes open for details. I aim to launch it around August 13th (lucky 13).

Chris Anderson Interview

 Vice magazine is currently running a series of interviews with magnum photographers. Here are some exerpts from an interview done with magnum photographer chris Anderson, which I found very interesting and down to earth. The full interview can be found on the vice website, at http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/christopher-anderson-interview .

“Unlike most agencies, Magnum's members are selected by the other photographers on the agency, which, given they're the greatest photo agency in the world, means becoming a member is a pretty gruelling process”.  (Bayley,B. 2013)

 Magnum is more of a community of renowned photographers, rather than having some distinct aim. This is a healthy way of considering magnum, rather than struggling to understand how they work, and what they’re mission is.

 Here are two questions and answers which I have highlighted from the interview. The bold is spoken by Bruno Bayley, and the answer is by Christopher Anderson

RUSSIA. Novosibirsk. 2006 © Christopher Anderson/Magnum Photo

“Hello Christopher. You've vocally distanced yourself from "photojournalism" in the past. Why is that?”

“There are photojournalists in Magnum, but I don't see it as a photojournalist agency. It's more founded in documentary photography. If I were to use a term for myself, I feel I'd fit more closely in the bracket of documentary photography than photojournalism. The term "photojournalist" tends to be loaded with meaning: specifically that one reports the news. I don’t see that as my function. Even when I was photographing things that were news topics, like conflicts, my function was not that of a news reporter, my function was to comment on what I saw happen that day and to offer a subjective point of view. In my role I was commenting on what was happening, but also trying to communicate what it felt like to be there when it was happening.”

Wow, this guy is great, and so is the interview. He recognizes that his work isn’t photojournalistic, and he is see’s himself more of a documentary photographer, despite being quite subjective. The argument of objectivity vs subjectivity is quite large in documentary, but with my recent readings, it feels like can ever be objective.

KUWAIT. 2002. Soliders from the 2nd Brigade Combat Team 3rd Infantry Division take a snapshot of the battlefield during excercises in the Kuwaiti desert. © Christopher Anderson/Magnum Photo

“Have people ever reacted negatively to your work because you champion subjectivity in a field which many argue should be entirely objective?”
“Yeah, especially with the blogosphere there is a lot of criticism. I can't pay attention to all that; I don't mean that in an arrogant way, it's just a waste of my energy and time. My photographs are a reflection of the experience I have, I can't really be ashamed or embarrassed about the photograph that results from those experiences, any more than I could be uncomfortable about the experiences themselves.”

 The key thing is that he says his images are a result of an experience, and thats how they should be read. He’s not trying to profile some exotic culture, or dramatise a situation. He’s simple commenting on an experience. What a wonderful way of working, which has reignited my passion to create similar works!

 This interview has made me realise many things about the photographers of magnum, and their place in the documentary world. magnum is simply a community of like minded photographers, but not too like minded. They all have their own distinct ways of working, and their work showcases experiences of humanity. I shouldn’t worry about making works which are accurate and valid to a specific group of people, I should just go and experience the people and places, and my pictures should voice that experience.

References

• Bruno Bayley. (2013). The Way Chris Anderson See's The World Is Amazine. Available: http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/christopher-anderson-interview. Last accessed 28th March 2013.

pictures

Chris Anderson/Magnum Photos, (2006), RUSSIA. Novosibirsk. 2006 [ONLINE]. Available at: http://mediastore.magnumphotos.com/CoreXDoc/MAG/Media/TR2/7/0/d/8/NYC70198.jpg [Accessed 02 April 13].

Chris Anderson/Magnum Photos, (2002), KUWAIT. 2002. Soliders from the 2nd Brigade Combat Team 3rd Infantry Division take a snapshot of the battlefield during excercises in the Kuwaiti desert. [ONLINE]. Available at: http://mediastore3.magnumphotos.com/CoreXDoc/MAG/Media/TR2/5/3/5/f/NYC52276.jpg [Accessed 02 April 13]

Notes on Michelle Bogre: Photography as Activism

This was a great book which I wish I had read earlier on in my research. Even from the first chapter, I found many paragraphs useful to my study which summarised key ideas about documentary photography.

“It is important to define documentary for the purposes of this book. The definition of documentary photography in the twenty first century is complex, multilayered, and nuanced. It is both process and aesthetic and applies to a broad range of imagery, from traditional, straight reportage-type images to the manipulated faux documentary images that appear on gallery walls.” (pg2)

Documentary has an ever changing definition throughout its history.

“To some degree, all photography is documentary because all photographs document something. Each photograph is evidence of something that appeared in front of the camera.” (pg2)

Bogre then goes on to quote Walker Evans as I already have, about documentary having uses. Every image is a document of something.

Dust Storm, Cimarron County, OK, 1936. Arthur Rothstein

“Edward Steichen, when reviewing some photographs from the farm security administration’s (FSA) photography unit, wrote that the photographers produced a series of “...the most remarkable human documents that were ever rendered in pictures” because they were so direct that “they made many a citizen wince” leaving the viewer with a “feeling of a living experience” not soon forgotten.” (pg2)

The photographs Steichen was referring to had the power to elicit emotion from viewers. This leads on to the adoption of emotionally charged images to being popular, and photojournalism being quite popular as it gives viewers some emotional response. Although it may not be truly representative of the situation or scene.

“The quest for a definition of documentary continued. In 1938, the word made its way into the lexicon of photographic history when Beaumont Newhall identified documentary as a means, not an end – an approach to a photograph, not the photograph itself” (pg2)

Documentary photography is about the mean, then approach, the subject, the context. The photograph doesn’t have to have something exotic or dramatic, they just have to be relevant and accurate and displayed in the correct context. The image itself is almost irrelevant.

“Even with this expansive definition, traditional photography... has been under attack for more than a decade by postmodern photographic critics and theorists, most notably Martha Rosler and Allan Sekula. The general assertions that photographs are not simple records, that they are not evidence, and that they can’t be objective leads critics to challenge the very nature of documentary work.” (Pg3)

Bogre recognizes that there are many valid critics of the documentary genre.

“If, as critics claim, all photographs are suspect, contextual, complex layers of symbols and meanings laden with the photographers hidden agenda, then how can documentary be truthful and representational?” (pg3)

Similar to Tagg’s idea, that there are so many factors and varieties of bias that can be brought to creating and reading images, that a photograph can possibly never be true. There will always be some bias, even if it is ever so slight, and subconscious to the photographer/reader.

“Documentary photographers are still faithful to the notion of a truth, although maybe not the truth, and still pledge an allegiance to the idea that photographs can and should be rooted in the moment, not directed, not staged, and not manipulated.” (pg3)

“Documentary photography doesn’t ever “change” anything; rather it simply transfers information about a “group of powerless people” (the subjects; otherwise, they wouldn’t be photographed) to a much more powerful group (the elite gallery goers or viewers). “The expose, the compassion and outrages, of documentary fuelled by the dedication to reform has shaded over into combinations of exoticism, tourism, voyeurism, psychologism, and metaphysics, trophy hunting – and careerism.” (pg3)

Bogre summarises some of Roslers critical essays here. Rosler makes good points, but perhaps she is being a bit too critical. It seems like Rosler assumes that photographers make images of these downtrodden people because it boosts their own profile. She does make a good point that the photographers don’t seem to care about the people, and aren’t fighting for some great social change (a criticism Rosler had of Meiselas (Roth, P.2008)) but this isn’t always the case. (Meiselas then proved her wrong by making work that came through her strong bonds and compassion to Nicaraguans).  This is a good summary, and the notion of the transfer encapsulates the situation well.

“Only those born into or those from a culture or community can truly understand that culture or community, or so it goes; hence, only the insider has the right to photograph inside that culture. This specious argument ignores the reality that insider truth is not necessarily more accurate than outsider truth. Misrepresentation, intrusion, and exploitation are as likely to occur when an “insider photographs as when an “outsider” does.” (pg4)

The in/outsider argument is actually irrelevant, because there are the same pros/cons. The same mistakes can happen in reliability and accuracy of work.

Here is an example I have created:

• I go to Syria, and photograph the conflict that is currently occurring. I know about rebels and government from news, and find more stories by hanging out with one of the factions.

• Someone living under the government, who has lived their all their life, photographs the conflict. They are fighting what they perceive to be an evil government, and that government wants to kill them.

Although the Syrian can create images that are reasonably accurate and suitable because they are directly in contact with the situation, there is bias as they are on a side. I may not be on a side, and I can view the situation from the outside and appreciate more factors on the conflict, rather than having one vision (at least to start with). In reality, I do have a personal agenda towards the conflict. But if I was to document it accurately, I would have to ignore it.

“They function as a social lens and can be both a “mirror” and a “window”. A documentary photograph makes the random, accidently, and fragmentary details of everyday existence meaningful while preserving the actual details of the scene. It simultaneously hosts an internal dialogue (content, style, the transformation of reality not a two-dimensional representation) and an external dialogue that changes as the time changes. Today for example, we look at photographs differently than a nineteenth century viewer would.” Pg5

Documentary images can be a window into another culture, but can also be a reflection on ourselves as viewers, and photographers. It makes us consider our own position, our connection to what is being displayed. Or the images may be of our own culture, making it both window and mirror.

In a later chapter, named modern history, Bogre talks about the history of photojournalism and documentary work in modern times.

“Photography retained its activist status throughout the late 1930s and 1940s because the photograph had no competition. In world war 2, news organizations and publications geared up to cover the war, providing support and precious print space for the newer generation of photographers. For example, life magazine sent photographers to the frontlines and even ran a photo school to train army photographers.” Pg46

“Activist photography peaked again in the 1960’s and 1970s, the heyday of life and look magazines. Photographers imaged the great social movements, upheavals and issues (for example, civil rights, the Vietnam war, and drug addiction) in America, and then travelled to photograph the injustices and social inequities around the world, just as their Victorian counterparts did in the 1800’s.” Pg46

Iwo Jima, 1945 - W. Eugene Smith—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images

War is a great supplier of drama and photographers and thus media outlets could consume it. This could be a reason that people like Sekula and Rosler start to become critical, as they are surrounded by people who long to find conflicts and situations, so when a small situation crops up, photographers flood to an area, photograph, consume all the imagery the area has and head home looking for admiration and decoration. This is slightly touched on in my Meiselas post, as she stays in Nicaragua for quite a while after the worlds press have left.

“Photography’s power wanted somewhat in the 1950s and 1960s as television journalism supplemented the still photograph. Television news was more immediate; it’s moving image and sound intrigued viewers.” Pg46

  

The role of moving image in documentary/journalism is important. It can be more immersive, but I believe photography to have the power to dramatise stories more. If photographed at the right time, the decisive moment, the most banal scene can be elevated to one of much drama.

“Advocacy photography almost disappeared in the Reagan era as the limitations of print media forced magazines to close, television viewing increased, and the greed is good culture emerged. Americans did not want visual reminders of social inequities.” Pg46

 The consumerist cultures of capitalism lead to a decline in activist photography. People became more self interested, and unconcerned with the injustices around the world.

References

• Bogre, M (2012). Photography as Activism. Oxford: Elsevier. .

• Roth,P(2008The Uneasy Documentary Vision of Susan Meiselas, the nation, available at http://www.thenation.com/article/uneasy-documentary-vision-susan-meiselas last accessed 1st april 2013

Pictures 

Arthur Rothstein, (1936), Dust Storm, Cimarron County, OK, 1936 [ONLINE]. Available at: http://www.weru.ksu.edu/new_weru/multimedia/dustbowl/big/cimarron_ok.jpg [Accessed 02 April 13]

W. Eugene Smith—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images, (1945), Iwo Jima [ONLINE]. Available at: http://timelifeblog.files.wordpress.com/2012/01/ugc11388312.jpg?w=1024 [Accessed 02 April 13].

Notes on John Tagg: The Burden of Representation

Chapter 7: Contacts/worksheets: notes on photography, history, and representation 

 In this chapter, John Tagg talks about several issues in representation through photography. He starts off by discussing the importance of text in representation. He starts off the chapter with an analysis of a picture by Lewis Hine of a young couple in their living room, in 1936. They seem to be reasonably well off, sat in what is apparently their own living room with decorated furniture, dressed in casual clothing and reading the newspaper. This image is interesting because a lot of American imagery from this time, and especially year, is from the FSA and of apparently poor and struggling people in a time of depressihttps://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=1762388788136398997#editor/target=post;postID=6817054879194327046on (pg186). Perhaps an accompanying text or even a suitable caption would affirm what it is exactly that has been documented. Instead, it is only titled “young couple, 1936”

“a direct transcription of the real... encoding and decoding in photographs is the product of work by concrete historical individuals who are themselves reciprocally constituted as the subjects of ideology in the unfolding unfolding historical process. Moreover, this work takes place within specific social and institutional contexts. Photographs are not ideas. They are material items produced by a certain elaborate mode of production and distributed, circulated and consumed within a given set of social relations: images made meaningful and understood within the very relations of their production and sited within a wider ideological complex which must, in turn, be related to the practical and social problems which sustain and shape it” (pg188)

 A direct transcript of the real. That’s a nice notion. I could create a bank of small sentences like this that talk about photography’s ability to capture what is real.

 Tagg talks about Encoding and decoding of images often done by analysers of history, but states that these people exist and work in a context which has some bias in its own ideology. Im still not 100% on what this means. Perhaps people who analyse work bring some bias to a reading of an image, so we shouldn’t rely on their reading. Although everyone brings some bias to a reading in some form.

 He also mentions that the photograph is a material item; Produced mechanically, distributed physically, circulated and consumed by viewers for a purpose.Perhaps he could also be saying how an image exists in a variety of bias factors, and they all need to be understood at every level of the image to understand the image. Why it was taken, how it was taken, who it is off, who took the image, where is it presented, how is it presented; are all factors that need to be considered to truly understand what is being represented.

 “We are now in a position to displace the question about photographs privileged status as a guaranteed witness of the actuality of the objects or events it represents.... the power to bestow authority and privilege on photograph representations, is not given to other apparatuses within the same social formation – such as amateur photography or ‘art photography’ – and it is only partially held by photojournalism. Ask yourself, under what conditions would a photograph of the loch ness monster or a UFO become acceptable as a proof of their existence?  Not is they were ‘frontal and clear’, to use barthes term, that is, if they deployed the allegedly ‘natural’ rhetoric of documentary images.” (pg189)

 If photographs represent what is real, and we start to use photographs as evidence, how can we disregard certain imagery as being evidential? Why is amateur photography not apparently accurate as evidence? And he makes a very good point about images of UFO’s and the Loch Ness monster. This could be extended to the Bigfoot phenomenon, and even many other conspiracy theories which have imagery surrounding them (9/11 theories). There are a fair amount of images in the public realm depicting these items, but does that make them evidential? Are the things depicted even real? What do they depict? A monster, a shadow, a misinterpretation.

 For a tool which replicates reality, it can still be very inaccurate, and this is often informed by factors outside the frame.

References

• Tagg, J. (1988). Contacts/worksheets: notes on Photography, History, and Representation. In: The Burden of Representation. Hampshire: MacMillan Education LTD. pg 184-211.
• Pg 186 : “1936: severn years after the Wall Street Crash and a year before the ‘Roosevelt Depression’” John Tagg