Author Archives: Michael Marten

About Michael Marten

photographer, academic

Modernités plurielles de 1905 à 1970

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I have neglected this site for some time now, in substantial part because of an impending move out of Edinburgh and to a village in the west of Scotland (in three weeks’ time - yikes! It’s probably best not to think about it too much and to write a blog posting about an exhibition instead… oh, look at what I’ve managed to do here!). There is much to say, however: I have two nearly completed (and long overdue) windfarm chapters to publish - which will now come out after the move, I suspect! - and there have been some interesting (to me…) developments and photographs that have emerged in recent times that need some considered attention. But today I want to briefly discuss something that has caused me great excitement on an artistic and intellectual level.

Paris

We are just back from a few days in Paris - a long-planned trip that happened to come at a very good time in relation to the move, offering us refreshment and time to reflect. I took a fair bit of reading with me, and we spent time in cafés and restaurants, in our apartment in the 19th arrondisement (via Airbnb for the first time, which worked well), and wandered through the city a bit. We also went to two excellent exhibitions, the first of which is temporary and well-worth going to if you’re in or near Paris in the next months: a detailed examination of Erwin Blumenfeld’s work at the Jeu de Paume, the French national gallery devoted to mechanically- and electronically-reproduced imagery, especially photography, video, cinema etc. I may come back to write about this at some point in the near future, if my head isn’t too full with thoughts about packing boxes and the like. The second gallery visit we made was to the Centre Pompidou, and specifically to the fifth floor, entitled Modernités plurielles de 1905 à 1970, and I want to offer some brief reflections on that, related to my own field of history, historicisation and postcolonial theory (don’t be put off…!). The Centre Pompidou is the world’s largest modern art collection, and even on the basis of this one brief visit, I feel the thinking underpinning the exhibits is way ahead of other large galleries that I have visited.

History and modernity

Seen at the airport, Paris

Seen at the airport, Paris

For some time now, more progressive academic historians have deconstructed the very idea of modernity. To generalise somewhat, up until even just a decade or two ago, traditional Western historians tended towards a particular view of the world, that saw modernity as something that the ‘West’ (often undefined, but understood to be Europe, North America, Australasia, and so on, and perhaps, post-Cold War, the more ‘European’ of the former Soviet bloc countries) had ‘achieved’ and others were in the process of achieving. However, this linear form of history bears no relation to the reality as understood by most of the world. Modernity is not a fixed point, but something that is created continually - this might even be one of the few times I find myself agreeing with an institution of neoliberal finance… (this snapped on my mobile telephone at the airport on a moving walkway!).

The consequence of such an understanding is that it is not appropriate to speak about modernity in the singular - if many people in many contexts are creating modernity, then we need to think about multiple modernities. This is something that is gradually making inroads into even the more conservative fields of historical study, such as mission history (the focus of much of my research); I hope I have managed to play at least a small part in rethinking that over the years, disrupting and questioning fixed historiographies and paradigms of modernity. A key issue in such reassessments is the understanding that colonial history, traditionally portrayed as something that involved the bringing of modernity from the imperial centre (Britain, France etc.) to the colonial periphery (everywhere else!) actually involved a two-way traffic - colonial possessions transformed the imperial centres at least as much as they were transformed. A significant branch of postcolonial theory is about uncovering precisely these transformations, and the idea of ‘global history’ is an integral part of this (see C.A. Bayly’s magisterial The Birth of the Modern World, 1780-1914 or the CLIOH World project and (free downloadable!) books such as World and Global History - Research and Teaching that a friend of mine, Seija Jalagin, has been involved in editing).

However, I have not really encountered this kind of thinking in contemporary art exhibitions. Artists are often shown as solitary creatives, and we often think of them or idealise them as such, even if we think we know better. We marvel at the inventiveness of Pablo Picasso, the nuance in Henri Matisse’s work, the delicate interplay of light and colour that Vincent Van Gogh searched for, Wassily Kandinsky’s move to abstraction with painting becoming almost as a form of music - and so on. Some exhibitions will show some of the influences upon these great men (more about men in a moment!), but these are slim and marginal. For example, I recall visiting a gallery a few years ago (I think it was London’s Tate Modern) that pointed to some of the African influences on Picasso, highlighting masks and other items that Picasso clearly referenced in some of his work (art historians even talk about his ‘African period’).

Subverting the idea of the solitary artist

A PhD student that I have had the privilege of supervising in recent years, Rajalakshmi Nadadur Kannan, has recently completed and successfully defended her thesis, and her work has helped me to rethink copyright in quite radical ways (en passant, I note that this is one of the most rewarding aspects of PhD supervision - having your understanding of an issue radically subverted by a student’s work).

She wrote about Karnatic music (generally known as classical Indian music) and the problems with copyrighting it in the contemporary context. Using Marx, postcolonial theory and understandings of authorship deriving from Benjamin and others, she shows why copyright is problematic in this context. To simplify considerably (I hope she won’t mind this rather brutal summary!), there are two key problems with identifying ownership of this music: (a) it is understood as being divinely inspired and so how can something that originates with the divine, however that is understood, be copyrighted? and (b) the tunes are passed down orally from teacher to pupil, and in turn embellished and elaborated upon according to certain criteria, which makes identifying a single creator difficult. Copyright as a system of ownership linked to a particular individualised understanding of capitalist modernity is difficult to implement in a context that does not subscribe to such principles of individualised modernity.

I would argue that it does not really matter whether we subscribe to the same ideas about divine inspiration of artistic work as Karnatic musicians (theoretically) do, but many of us would recognise that there is some form of internal and/or external inspiration underpinning creative work. Furthermore, I think most also understand the idea of a wider tradition and community that impacts upon artistic endeavour and the creation of a unique artistic expression, giving such expression a context and a framing (though the arguments around these claims are not something I want to develop to any great extent here).

Modernités plurielles?

However, Western art exhibitions that I have visited have only ever tangentially recognised this. There is the example of Picasso mentioned above, but the portrayal of influence tends to see the incorporation of ‘primitive’ colonial art into the ‘modern’ art of the European. This is in part a question of the situatedness of the artist and a poor historicisation of their context: for instance, whilst Matisse introduced Picasso to African art, his first transformative encounter with such art was apparently in the context of an ethnographic museum, not an art gallery.

Now, however, we should be seeing and understanding these relationships quite differently, and this is something that the Centre Pompidou has managed to do, and as far as I can tell, do spectacularly well. The gallery - a permanent albeit constantly changing gallery - presents itself under the title ‘Modernités plurielles de 1905 à 1970′ (Plural Modernities from 1905 to 1970), even in the title recognising that there are multiple forms of modernity being created in similar times across the globe, and the art on display reflects this. Not only do we find French, American, Russian etc. art intermingled by theme, we are shown similar patterns from around the world. From the very beginning of the gallery, global art is included, and whilst many of the traditional descriptions of movements remain (Expressionism, Totemism etc.) these are given a global context. For example, Magic Realism is related to Latin American realist movements, whilst artists from the Middle East and North Africa who developed conceptual art in ways that reflected and expanded upon European conceptual art find their place alongside more well-known (in European circles) artists and their works. A section on French architecture and the creation of colonial cities in North Africa demonstrated the ways in which Arab art influenced French architects, even though they thought they were simply building cities for Europeans in Algeria and other colonial possessions (this process is something that I have written about at length in other contexts). Above all, the global context is seen not as a colonial background for the development of European art, but rather, the global exchanges and connections that many artists were a part of are highlighted in constructive and stimulating forms, creating a fascinating discourse between artistic purity and hybridity. It is worth noting that in many contexts, the global artists’ names are not known and appear simply as ‘anonymous’ - a stark and painful reminder of the European colonial legacy that dehumanised huge parts of the world in the drive to economic and political domination.

“The techniques of European art can be as useful to us in painting as in sculpture or architecture, provided we avoid the danger of stripping ourselves of our own art and personality.” (Leandro M’Bomio, Paris, a quotation on one of the gallery walls)

Another effect of the globalised understanding of art in the Centre Pompidou is the diminution of the traditional emphasis on ‘great men’ of art. They are not displaced, but the inclusion of women from Europe and from around the globe sets them into a wider context. Not only do we find, for example, Sonia Delauney (and it has seemed to me that she is portrayed mostly in relation to her husband, rather than recognised as a great artist in her own right) and Frida Kahlo, but also many other global women, including the wonderful Behjat Sadr (a personal favourite). The global vision on offer here brings not only the whole world to an understanding of art, but that whole world also goes some considerable way to restoring the place of women in art history (nonetheless, only about 50 of the 400 artists on display are women - though a number of the ‘anonymous’ artworks may also be by women, of course).

Some closing thoughts

So is this a postcolonial exhibition? I think it could certainly be seen in that way. It is truly liberating to see an exhibition that reflects a global perspective on art, that sees and understands movements and connections in all kinds of interesting ways, and that thereby offers a far more holistic understanding of art than we might already know. I was not completely convinced by all the connections being made, but I am in no way qualified to judge art history in this kind of global way (in fact, I suspect relatively few people really are, but I’m not even qualified to appreciate Western art history fully!).

The fact that the Pompidou has attempted something so radically different in the context of a permanent exhibition is noteworthy and highly stimulating. Doing so draws attention to the ways in which global traditions have emerged, and privileges understandings of art that include artists that are usually marginalised - women, and men and women from the global context. We may not agree with the exact portrayal on offer, but as the curators themselves say, the exhibits are constantly changing, suggesting that they are themselves not completely satisfied with the portrayal on offer, constantly seeking to highlight and emphasise different aspects of the global narrative of modernity in art. As Nadadur Kannan does in her thesis on Karnatic music, offering this kind of complex narrative of art history subverts the role of the ‘lone artist’ and offers a rich understanding of the significance of relationships and dependencies, whilst allowing for individual creativity - however we understand that - its rightful place in the artistic process.

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It is worth reading the Centre Pompidou’s own brief description of the gallery, available here (click the top right language options to see it in English). Alain Seban and Catherine Grenier offer particularly interesting and helpful comments, I think. The press kit (Fr/En) for the exhibition (a 35 page PDF) offers a more detailed introduction to the exhibition.

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Normal views and wide views

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Many photographers lust after new cameras and lenses. Indeed, many spend more time lusting after new equipment than they do consummating - err… working on the relationship they have with the cameras and lenses they already own.

For my large format camera I have one lens. It is a 180mm lens, and that roughly corresponds to a ‘normal lens’, i.e. one that has about the same perspective as the human eye, or, in 35mm terms, it is about the same as a 50mm lens. It’s a very fine lens, but there are times when I want a lens with a wider view (say, 90mm), and another with a telephoto view, such as a 300mm. It is simply(!) finances that preclude me from buying these lenses, I lust after them all the same…

So what to do when trying to make an image that would benefit from a wider view? In July I made a series of photographs on a very foggy morning at Glen More on the Isle of Mull. I was trying to photograph the glen near the edge of a lochan in the valley, whilst showing something of the scale of the valley - but the 180mm lens only covered about half of the valley. So one of my studies involved a triple exposure, moving the camera round a little at a time to include one side of the valley, the bottom of the valley, and the other side. The ground glass of the large format camera includes grids and markers for various purposes, so it was relatively easy to measure this out. I think the resulting image manages to communicate something of my view of the scene that morning:

Glen More, Isle of Mull (Ilford FP4+, triple exposure)

Glen More, Isle of Mull (Ilford FP4+, triple exposure)

The use of a 90mm lens would have enabled me to capture the entire breadth of the glen, but the image would have been different: is it important that the image doesn’t ‘look like’ the glen did? For me this communicates what I saw, even though the hills are not really this precise shape. I would still like to have a wider lens, but my lusting after such a lens has lessened somewhat since seeing the interesting and rather pleasing result that can be achieved with just the 180mm lens that I already have - in this context it was perfectly possible to communicate the image in my head using the equipment I already had.

 

Sunsets and clichés

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I’ve just had two weeks on the Isle of Mull, an island that I know pretty well from many years of visiting and time living on the neighbouring island of Iona, and I love the light on these islands: fragile and delicate. Scotland’s east cost (or at least, Edinburgh, Fife, East Lothian, that I all know well) has quite a different quality of light: beautiful in its own way, but harsher and more demanding on the eyes. I can sit and watch the light changing in these islands at all times of the day, and it fascinates me.

On our second evening on Mull, the sunset was spectacular. Almost involuntarily, I took my mobile telephone outside the cottage we were staying in and made an image. I confess to a slight tinge of self-disgust immediately afterwards! I’m sure I’m not alone in having a number of horrifically over-colourful sunsets in my early archives, but sunsets are generally regarded as the photographic cliché par excellence… more of which at the end of this page. However, I then I began to wonder if this couldn’t be turned into something more positive, and thought I should explore sunsets a little more, within certain basic parameters:

  1. all images would be just ‘snapshots’ from the garden in front of the house or the beach at the bottom of the track from the house;
  2. I would use just the camera in my mobile telephone (an iPhone 4) and use it handheld (no tripod etc.);
  3. whilst I would use no post-processing on the computer, I would allow myself to use something better than the basic camera app that comes with the iPhone: 645 Pro Mk II.

645 Pro Mk II is available on Apple’s app store, and is an app I’d recommend to anyone fed up with the limitations of the camera app Apple supply (it works on various Apple devices, not just the iPhone). 645 Pro is modelled on a classical film medium format camera system, and allows the user to choose different ‘film backs’ based on a variety of popular colour and black-and-white films. It also allows the use of a single filter, and different crop sizes, including, square, 4×3, 6×7, 6×17 and more. It has locks for white balance, exposure and focus, and a number of other useful features. So I was using a certain degree of ‘in-camera’ processing, but at the price of the app (£2.49 at the moment), this is eminently affordable to anyone who can afford the luxury of an iPhone.

So on to the images. I’ve noted the different camera settings for each one, as given by the 645 Pro app. All are at ISO80 and the fixed aperture of f2.8, and added a short explanatory comment after each image, including the time it was taken. The point of these images is to try and capture something about sunsets away from clichés simply because they are pretty boring after a while. Maybe other ways of seeing sunsets can help to recapture something of the richness many of us see in such settings?

8. July 2013

Seven Sunsets, Mull (1/230s, 6x6, KII film back)

Seven Sunsets, Mull (1/230s, 6×6, KII film back)

22:13 This is the first image that led me to think about ways of imagining other ways of photographing sunsets. The sun is just about visible - interesting to compare this with the 10.7. image.

9. July 2013

Seven Sunsets, Mull (1/7500s, 6x7+, H5 film back, 25% red filter)

Seven Sunsets, Mull (1/7500s, 6×7+, H5 film back, 25% red filter)

19:09 An attempt to capture early evening tones: the shapes of the land against the water are much more pronounced here than in any of the colour images, and I like the feeling of wildness that the clouds create.

10. July 2013

Seven Sunsets, Mull (1/480s, 6x7+, V50 film back)

Seven Sunsets, Mull (1/480s, 6×7+, V50 film back)

22:00 The sun has already disappeared (compare it to the image from a couple of days ago), but this is still a fairly standard kind of sunset image.

11. July 2013

Seven Sunsets, Mull (1/17s, 6x7, K25 film back)

Seven Sunsets, Mull (1/17s, 6×7, K25 film back)

22:22 Almost all the reds and oranges have disappeared, but the clouds are still lit up by the sun, forming interesting patterns.

13. July 2013

Seven Sunsets, Mull (1/15s, 6x17, V50 film back)

Seven Sunsets, Mull (1/15s, 6×17, V50 film back)

22:49 Staying with a clouds theme, I panned across the sky to blur the clouds, smudging any detail there might be; the darker ambient light brought with it slower shutter speeds enabling panning to have an effect.

14. July 2013

Seven Sunsets, Mull (1/20s, 6x4.5, P41 film back)

Seven Sunsets, Mull (1/20s, 6×4.5, P41 film back)

21:58 No sun, but lovely cloud patterns in the fading light. This image is more evocative to me than the first one: I clearly don’t need to see a setting sun to be awed by the end of the day’s light.

18. July 2013

Seven Sunsets, Mull (1/310s, 6x17, V50 film back)

Seven Sunsets, Mull (1/310s, 6×17, V50 film back)

21:53 Many sunset images use landscape panoramic formats, which epitomise the sunset cliché for me - whereas this feels more like a ‘slice’ from something else, enabling a focus on one particular aspect of the sunset.

Seven Sunsets, Mull (1/100s, 6x6, V50 film back)

Seven Sunsets, Mull (1/100s, 6×6, V50 film back)

21:57 Looking away from the setting sun, interesting things are happening with light patterns.

Seven Sunsets, Mull (1/15s, 6x12, V50 film back)

Seven Sunsets, Mull (1/15s, 6×12, V50 film back)

22:47 A different ‘slice’ of the skies, with the rich blues of later evening being given their due.

19. July 2013

Seven Sunsets, Mull (1/5000s, 6x4.5, H5 film back)

Seven Sunsets, Mull (1/5000s, 6×4.5, H5 film back)

20:53 In colour this is absolutely horrible, but the black-and-white version highlights the shapes and tones of the land, water, the tree, and the reflections of the sun on the water in a way that enables me to appreciate the beauty of the surroundings far more.

Seven Sunsets, Mull (1/320s, 6x12, V50 film back)

Seven Sunsets, Mull (1/320s, 6×12, V50 film back)

21:26 A way of using lens flare and pattern to produce what is effectively almost a monochrome image, albeit one in red-and-white rather than black-and-white. Despite the deliberately blown-out highlights, I again like the silhouettes of shapes that are the main feature here.

Seven Sunsets, Mull (1/320s, 6x12, V50 film back)

Seven Sunsets, Mull (1/320s, 6×12, V50 film back)

21:27 A bit of a cliché, and I didn’t get it quite straight (oops!) but the kitchen window and the patterns on the white walls offer a slightly different way of seeing the sunset.

Seven Sunsets, Mull (1/290s, 6x17, V50 film back)

Seven Sunsets, Mull (1/290s, 6×17, V50 film back)

21:55 At the end of my time on Mull, I thought I’d try one more ‘standard’ sunset image. Perhaps it’s possible to appreciate landscape panoramas of sunsets after all, if it’s possible to also re-imagine ways of interpreting and seeing sunsets as described in the images above?

However, although the sunset on 19. July was beautiful, I have to say that I still don’t like this last image very much, even after exploring other ways of seeing the sunsets. Perhaps there is no escaping the over-riding sense of boring cliché when ‘snapping’ a sunset in this kind of way? Certainly, it’s less interesting to me than, for example, the black-and-white images, or the vertical ‘slices’, or the panned clouds… all of which are also sunsets, though not of the ‘picture postcard’ kind. With this little exercise, I can prove to myself that for me, at least, the standard sunset image is pretty much irredeemable. Perhaps this is because it purports to capture something of the wonder of the light that we see, but by the very nature of it being a still photograph, it cannot do that properly. For me, sunsets live in the changing of light, not in a capture of a fraction of a second that simply shows multiple colours and cloud shapes. A sunset is moving, changing, developing over time - after all, we say ‘the sun is setting‘ and that is a verb construction - I don’t see how this kind of still photography can capture that adequately.

I’m also ambivalent about whether cine film/video could do this any better, since I probably wouldn’t want to watch a video of a sunset for an hour or two - all that breadth and space compressed into one small screen? No thanks! I think many film-makers know this, given how frequently sunsets are speeded up, whether in feature films or wildlife documentaries or dramas. It is far better to sit and watch a sunset unfold and simply enjoy it without a camera. If you miss today’s, there’ll be another one along tomorrow…

This is why I am going to do my best to resist any future temptation there might be to go out and photograph anything like the first and last images here. If other opportunities arise to make more interesting images, with a bit more time and reflection and engagement than the snapshots between the first and last images here allow, then I’ll maybe risk it. ;)

Further reading…

In the middle of my time on Mull, without knowing that I was photographing sunsets, Rob Hudson tweeted me a link to an article by Annebella Pollen about sunset clichés that I read upon returning home (poor internet connection on Mull!) - I’d highly recommend reading this article after seeing these images, as she addresses other interesting aspects of sunset photographs.

Intentional Film Movement

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No, the Intentional Film Movement is not a radical revolutionary brigade, forcing all digital camera users to move to film…! It’s just my play on words in relation to the current trend for ‘intentional camera movement’ (I think ICM - a bit like HDR - is interesting the first few times you see it and then it just gets tedious, mostly because it’s rarely done well, and is often done just for the sake of being able to do it, with little underlying narrative).

Anyway, rant over. Holidays at home are wonderful: I have been tidying up this week, and came across 19 rolls of film (14 rolls of 35mm and 5 rolls of 120) that I had had developed but then never really looked at. I knew there were some portraits in amongst them that I was somewhat concerned at having lost, but also some experimental images.

Un-Intentional Film Movement - a typical 'accident'

Un-Intentional Film Movement - a typical ‘accident’

My old Rolleiflex, with six decades behind it, works really well. Except for those times it doesn’t. In particular, the film transport mechanism can be a bit dodgy: the film doesn’t always quite engage the way it should, and then the winding mechanism fails: it becomes possible to wind through the whole film without making a single image, as it doesn’t ‘lock’ for each exposure, even though the shutter can be cocked. That has resulted in some rather strange double (triple?!) exposures, in part covering the bottom or top of an image, but I found that when the film fails to engage properly (and in the meantime I can tell when this happens with the first winding of the film to get to the first frame), it also becomes possible to wind the film on whilst having the shutter open. Some of the ‘problem’ images I was getting were like this one here (oops - some of my wife’s family at a celebration last year!).

Intentional Film Movement

Intentional Film Movement

However, this also offers some interesting opportunities. Rather than being annoyed about the film mechanism, I began to experiment, whilst also still making ‘proper’ images in between the experiments (after all, this can easily be done, if you guess how far to wind the film on - does cock the shutter, it just doesn’t move the film on evenly). I tend to used Ilford FP4+ in this camera, which has such a wide latitude that exposure doesn’t really matter - and that makes it ideal for things such as this. I began to try doing two or three things simultaneously to create new images:

  1. using a small aperture, open the shutter
  2. turn the film crank whilst the shutter is open
  3. at the same time, also move the camera.

I was using a tripod (I find that easiest with the Rolleiflex - I struggle to keep the image even vaguely straight without a tripod, and so if it’s important to keep straight, then I need a tripod!), but even doing the first two of these three actions requires a degree of coordination that I struggle with - and moving the camera at the same time becomes much harder! However, the images do then become more interesting.

I tried several experiments with these techniques, using several films, all of them in this pile of unexamined films that I found this week.

Only having seen the negatives, I have been aware of the effect I was generating, and did see how moving the camera also played a role (I didn’t do so for the first roll, and, of course, just ended up with a blur). So here are some of the attempts that have resulted in more interesting shapes.

Intentional Film Movement

Intentional Film Movement

This one, which has a floaty lightness to it, is perhaps my favourite of this group of photographs - it involved a longer exposure, a smaller aperture, and slow consistent movement of the film (I think the darker line is when I stopped winding consistently). I was actually seeking to make a portrait of a friend, but I’ll not give her name here - suffice it to say that the subsequent images of her worked really rather well, even if this one doesn’t actually look anything like her!

Intentional Film Movement - a landscape

Intentional Film Movement - a landscape

I think this last image is interesting for a different reason. I intended to create a ‘cloud’, but this worked exceptionally well: what I am including here is not just the image on the film, but the jagged edge where it has been cut, and the straight line from the scanner’s film-tray. It may be quite hard to see on smaller devices (and perhaps I should have processed this a little more to bring out this contrast - all of these are simply straight from the scanner with no adjustments of any kind), but on a larger screen, I can quite clearly see a night landscape here. The jagged edge is a curved hill, and the lighter areas further up the image are (strange-looking) clouds. Of course, it is not just landscapes that can represent more abstract concepts - abstract concepts can also represent landscapes!

There is a pleasant mix here of images. Creating them involves an element of randomness, but I have tried to create certain kinds of shapes and patterns too, even if I don’t see if they’ve worked until the film has been developed.

Do I think this is going to be something I do more of? Probably not, unless there is a motif that I think might be made more interesting with this technique - AND I happen to have the Rolleiflex with me AND the film hasn’t loaded properly! The one thing I can’t predict is when the Rollleiflex will work properly and when it won’t, so there is a further element of randomness in these kinds of images - most of the time I don’t know when I might (have the opportunity to) create more!

Short reflections on photographic ‘projects’

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In my Wind power opening, I said this was not to be a ‘project’, but that I understood it as being something more akin to a ‘book’. Rob Hudson picked up on that in his comment and asked why I did not want to use the term ‘project’.

For me, this is really very simple. It is, as Rob suggests, something to do with nuance of language, though perhaps not necessarily in the way he meant it. For me, it is about a way of thinking about what I am doing. Let me take a step back from the wind farms…

When I was engaged in working on the What Lies Beneath series from autumn 2011-autumn 2012, I treated it as a coherent body of work that started with a particular image and ended with another. I had made photographs before this that could, from the point of view of the subject matter (water and what is beneath the surface of the water), be included in the series, but they were not made with the intention of exploring the issues that the series was seeking to explore, and so it did not feel ‘right’ to include these images. I was trying to use the creation of photographs to explore a particular theme. In that sense, What Lies Beneath was a project, something limited in scope and intent.

Perhaps it is helpful to think about this in another way. Although I have not completed any kind of photography degree (though I’d love to do so!), it seems to me that ‘projects’ are almost a clichéd part of such programmes of study. The term points to the time-limited and carefully circumscribed nature of what is being done, with the aim of eliciting a certain kind of response or engagement, particularly one that can be assessed in some way (I recognise this pattern from my own work as an academic in a different field!). That is fine for certain contexts, such as university work that needs to be assessed, or something like What Lies Beneath, or another mini-project of three images called Love Me As I Am that I am intending to create soon about a personal story - but it is not the right term or context for all collections of images.

So with Wind power, I am looking at something much more expansive. I have already used images going back several years in the first ‘chapters’ - and I have a number of even older images that I want to use, some from about 20 years ago. Although I had obviously not thought about working on a photographic exploration of wind farms 20 years ago, I was photographing wind turbines 20 years ago, and so these machines have clearly been a source of fascination for me for a considerable time.

That is why thinking about a ‘book’ makes more sense to me for the wind farm subject. Writing a book involves drawing in all kinds of material from all places and times, in order to communicate (what will hopefully be!) a coherent narrative: a narrative that is meant to address a particular concern or theme. In a novel or a poem, for example, this might be about addressing elemental issues around the human condition, expressed through the lives and experiences of characters. In an academic context, we might find similar themes, addressed in terms of reflections upon other texts (understood as broadly as possible). In auto-biographical contexts, the author reflects upon their own life and seeks to offer some insight that might be of interest to the reader. And so on - in all cases, authors draw on a vast range of sources and nothing is really out of bounds. In my own academic work, on European missionaries in the 19th and 20th century Middle East, I have drawn upon sources such as letters, committee minutes, and diaries, and anything and everything that seemed appropriate beyond that: other academic studies (of course), but also poems, novels, hymns, photographs, drawings, film footage, interviews with descendants…

And that is how I envisage Wind power going: I want to draw on all kinds of sources, whether these be ‘historical’ photographs that I have taken, scientific data - which I will hopefully get at least broadly right, drawing on friends like Mike Colechin for help (he’s an engineer when not out playing with a camera!) - literary texts, interviews and more. No doubt there will be sources that I cannot envisage or imagine at this stage: that happens in my academic work, and I see no reason why it should not happen here.

All of that is so much broader than a ‘project’ - in fact, it’s more like a… book!

Crichton Castle valley, 4x5" Fuji Provia 100F, 180mm

Crichton Castle valley, 4×5″ Fuji Provia 100F, 180mm

P.S. And here there is a little bit more water, and stones under the water… but it is clearly not a part of What Lies Beneath! ;) No, it’s just a rather pretty image I made when out with Mike Colechin in April, with nicely muted spring colours that the Fuji Provia 100F has captured rather well (I’ve made no adjustments to the scan). This is one of the images I was referring to a few days ago in a tweet, expressing delight at the wonders of large format photography.

Wild landscapes and Wind power

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A ‘Twitter friend‘ of mine, Tom Wilkinson, recently wrote a very interesting blog posting that I want to recommend if you haven’t already seen it: Land of Confusion. He asks questions about the ways we construct the idea of the natural landscape:

Centuries of land-shaping activities such as clearing forests for farming and the building of infrastructure have left the landscape far removed from its original pre-human form. Is the ‘natural landscape’ these days just another manufactured environment, built upon layers of already commodified space?

Questions about wildness and natural landscapes are occupying my mind quite a bit just now, not least since I have (finally!) started putting the first chapters of my Wind power exploration on line. Part of this series, of course, will be about exploring the concepts of ‘wild land’ and what that means, and I don’t really want to discuss that at length just now since it will come up in forthcoming chapters.

I have been prompted to think about this now by seeing reports today from the John Muir Trust and the Scotsman. What I find particularly interesting here is this idea of ‘threat’ from wind farms: altering the landscape is treated as something new, as if human beings have not constantly altered and changed the landscape, even if that means leaving it unaltered (National Parks etc.) - that’s a form of human intervention and change too! And in any case, climate change is bringing about more changes in the landscape than we can possibly imagine.

I wonder if a more constructive way of engaging with this is to reflect on what changes are desirable, and what are not. I think much of this might have to do with size, as Rob Hudson suggested in his comment on my first Wind power chapter.

Iona North End, looking across to Mull, August 2012 (Fuji Velvia 50)

Iona North End, looking across to Mull, August 2012 (Fuji Velvia 50)

Perhaps the fence - designed to keep sheep in, and low enough for me to jump over - and the disused lobster nets are small enough not to diminish the calm beauty of the early morning scene here? Would the scene be less beautiful if there were tall wind turbines on the hills on Mull?

I don’t really have definitive answers to these questions, but I’m also wary of those who claim that there are definitive answers…

Syd Krochmalny and Simon Yuill: visual cultures in Argentina and Scotland

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On Thursday I attended an event organised by my colleagues, Sarah Wilson and Scott Hames. Syd Krochmalny and Simon Yuill addressed the topic of visual cultures in Scotland and Argentina.

Sarah Wilson introducing the seminar, and Syd Krochmalny

Sarah Wilson introducing the seminar, and Syd Krochmalny

Syd is a sociologist and artist based in Argentina; he mostly works on video installations addressing social issues. In Argentina it is very unusual to work in both art and sociology. Simon Yuill is an artist and writer based in Scotland, who has been heavily involved in The Strickland Distribution and Variant magazine. I thought it might be of interest to publish my notes on their two presentations - I make no guarantees regarding absolute accuracy, but I hope to have recorded some key elements of their talks.

Argentina

Syd gave a presentation entitled The Crisis of Success: Visual Arts in Argentina 2001-2011, describing a move from an art utopia to a market utopia. There are three distinct periods in a chronological account of this period: 1) a social crisis related to the financial crisis of 1997-2003, that came to a head in 2001; 2) an expansion of the art world from 2003-2007, in part as economic recovery happened; 3) from 2005, however, there was a severe fragmentation of the art world. Although the current situation is often seen as beginning with the 2001 economic crisis, the root of this crisis in turn lies in the implementation of neoliberal policies from 1975 onwards that led to the total collapse of the economy in 2001.

Social relationships during the 2001 crisis became critically important. Different forms of art appeared; so, for example, street art that critiqued the social order played a key role in helping a better understanding of what was happening in the country. This was an artist-led movement, and the artists - through mutual recognition and cooperation - were the ones who legitimated their work, indeed, the creativity of their work in itself legitimated what they were doing. This meant there was no need, no call for, no desire for, external and/or institutional legitimation. This is not to say that there were no problems in this period (for example, there were many long debates about the distinction between art and politics, between creativity and social action), but it was a tremendously creative time for a wide range of artists who produced all kinds of interesting visual work that helped to change the way people understood their situation.

Syd Krochmalny (with Sarah Wilson)

Syd Krochmalny (with Sarah Wilson)

As the economy improved (2003-2007), a more formal art market and parallel institutions began to develop. These appeared to increase artists’ opportunities to create. Galleries rapidly made international connections to the global art world and consequently began to direct work to make it ‘fit’ into what was perceived to be an international artistic community, culminating in a 2011 pavilion being bought by the Argentinian government at the Viennese Biennale. However, as artists began to participate in the global art market, it was noticeable that they began to fall into line with the market-led art institutions. Disagreements emerged over how to react to the marketisation: is this art or political action? is it ‘inside’ or ‘outside’? is the creator an artist or a social agent? what has primacy: a love of art or professionalisation? are people (still) working for themselves? Many artists felt themselves to be caught up in a series of contradictions, and struggled to reconcile these divergent positions.

These changes in the Argentinian art world, brought about directly by the commodification of an artistic practice - street art - that had emerged in a context of social action, did not just impact upon the artists of the time, but also impacted upon the new generation of artists. This new generation, however, do not feel the same contradictions about their work as their elders. In part this comes because their work integrates social and political issues from the beginning: in their understanding, activism itself can be a commodity, with artists working with disadvantaged groups in favelas (urban shanty towns), for example. Furthermore, many of the younger artists come from upper and upper-middle class backgrounds whose parents already have some kind of established connection to the art world, perhaps as gallery owners, art editors etc. This essentially makes this younger group of artists an ‘aristocracy’ utilising privileged family connections to further their work. A lack of social movement is the result, heralding a less equal society. Syd termed this ‘social closure’, pointing to the success of the art world in the post-economic crisis period: “The simultaneous qualitative and quantitive growth of institutions, of the market and in the number of artists has produced a ‘social closure’” - of course, this also mirrors wider stratification of society.

Therefore, although there might appear to be a vibrant new art scene that has emerged in recent years, Argentinian art, Syd argued, is actually facing a ‘crisis of success’ as a result of the commodification of what had previously been a means of critiquing neoliberalism. The problem now, he argued, is that neoliberalism appears in many instances to have taken over the critical nature of art, and thereby neutered the critical edge.

Scotland

Simon noted that Scotland has not, of course, had to cope with the same kinds of crises as Argentina. But other crises in the art world have emerged, also centred around neoliberal marketisation. For example, the very idea of there being ‘creative industries‘ is inherently problematic as a means of valorising artists’ work. There is a contradiction in this statement: it appears to be something outside the ‘art world’, but is valorised within it. This leads to ‘organisation isomorphism’, a term that originated with analyses of the co-operative movement. It describes the ways in which the egalitarian and horizontal nature of co-ops began to change to meet the needs of external actors, resulting in hierarchies and more vertical structures (chief executives, spokespeople etc.). Regardless of how an organisation conceives of itself, it is forced to change in order to interact with external agencies. In the art world, this is especially manifested in artist-led groups’ relationships to funders, and there is clear evidence that artist-led groups begin to mirror the structures desired by funders. These market-driven imperatives also then impact upon the priorities of the groups concerned and even the areas deemed appropriate to work in. Jennifer Wolch’s work on ‘the shadow state’ discusses precisely this issue: she shows how governments co-opt critical and liberatory movements, thereby maintaining control over them.

Simon Yuill

Simon Yuill

Simon pointed to two key ways, amongst others, in which this manifested itself:

  • there is a general issue about the access to resources: artist-led groups need funding, and they often need space in which to work.
  • there are also constraints imposed upon artistic expression through the market or the state. Such constraints are often structural (how to organise in order to suit funders, for example, becoming charitable bodies etc.) or situational (relating to opportunities and threats) or operational (when regulatory norms determine a group’s behaviour).

Elaborating on these a little more, Simon pointed to some examples:

  • artist-led groups might, for instance, want to make use of collective spaces, but the allocation or continued use of these can be problematic. Long-standing arrangements that might exist (use of unwanted buildings for nominal rents etc.) are subject to sudden and unpredictable change. In Glasgow the city council has a long history of offering artist-led groups cheap rent for buildings they did not use but wanted to keep. However, in 2010 the council created a private property management company and many of these buildings were transferred to it. Two key things have now changed: high rents are being threatened (from a ‘peppercorn’ £1 to a ‘market-rate’ of £700 in one example that Simon gave), and new leases have been issued that include liability for maintaining the buildings, meaning much of the risk in using the buildings is being transferred to the artists. Evictions have become a real possibility.
  • the (former) Scottish Arts Council created a funding scheme to enable artists to be given opportunities to sell art commercially (using galleries and so on). This does not account for artists who may want or need to create art that is not for selling but that might have a different rationale behind it. The marketisation and commodification of art is a long way from the original raison d’être of some of these artist-led groups.
  • a key threat to artist-led groups is the constant worry about the possibility of funding that has been granted then being withdrawn (Simon’s Variant magazine is an example of this). Creative Scotland (the successor to the Arts Council), has been heavily criticised for cancelling a flexible funding scheme that enabled longer-term planning, as it could be used to cover a groups’ core costs. Now Creative Scotland focus only on project funding - and yet core costs still exist, of course. Furthermore, as this is all project-led, the funding is more easily withdrawn. Perhaps most seriously, project-led funding means that every single project needs to be vetted by Creative Scotland, resulting in hierarchical, top-down directing of what artists are doing.

In the wider context there is a suggestion that all of these funding and creative elements are part of an ‘art world ecology’. This kind of language suggests complex, self-sustaining, self-regulating structures - but it fails to recognise that ecology tends towards collapse as much as towards sustenance. This becomes visible in the hierarchy of art schools, through to artist-collectives, small galleries, and then larger (even national) galleries. The ‘industry’ of art managers, curators, funders and so on all play a part in the isomorphism of artistic creation.

In Scotland we have seen the emergence of a reactionary discourse that claims to protect, but actually reins in, artistic practice. The result is that artist-run practice can be seen as a kind of medieval guild system that includes a revival of a bourgeois structure, including hierarchisation and the construction of privileged networks. An increasing emphasis on philanthropy is a marker of this phenomenon. Subversion is claimed as if art is inherently subversive, without actually showing or declaring how this might be the case. The result is the establishment of an order, a bourgeoisie.

Of course, an artist-run space is not inherently subversive. It is more complex than that: subversion needs to be regained, not by invoking creativity per se, but by placing the artist as a worker, albeit a precarious worker (see the recent discussion around the widespread emergence of a ‘precariat’). In so far as possible, removing the effects of organisational isomorphism has the potential to enable the re-emergence of a more subversive art.

Concluding comments

In a week when the Tory Minister for Culture, Media and Sport, Maria Miller, displayed breathtaking levels of ignorance and philistinism in discussing the place of the arts in society (see Tiffany Jenkins’ comment from a Scottish perspective on Miller’s speech), the presentations by Syd Krochmalny and Simon Yuill offered clear analyses of the malign influence of neoliberalism on artistic cultures. The discussion that ensued picked up a number of these themes, but I think it perhaps best to end with a memorable line from Syd that seemed to me to encompass a key point of what both he and Simon were describing:

“Art is the possibility to create, all the time, the definition of art.”

Edinburgh’s Bedroom Tax protests

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I went on the Edinburgh protest against the ConDem government’s iniquitous Bedroom Tax today. I was struck by the creativity of some of the banners and placards, and especially by the mood of the people taking part: there was real anger, and a sense that concentrated resistance to the ConDem government is emerging across many sectors of society. Of course, Scotland didn’t vote for this government - the 2010 Westminster election in Scotland resulted in 1 Tory MP and 11 Liberal Democrats (Labour won 41, and the SNP 6 seats) - and this is one of the factors encouraging the independence movement, as you can see in some of the photos. Several people noted that just as the Bedroom Tax is being introduced, the Deputy PM is taking a wee holiday in a house with 20 bedrooms. Anyway, here are some images from today that I wanted to share:

Photograms at the Alt-Photo Festival

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I had a wonderful time at the Alt-Photo exhibition in the Edinburgh Botanic Gardens yesterday - not only seeing work by Alastair Cook, Alex Boyd, Lucy Telford and others (it is always a delight to see actual prints, rather than just images on a computer screen) - but also having the opportunity to create photograms, something I had never done before. The process of creating a photogram is very simple, but offer great potential to create unusual and conceptually-stimulating images. Kenny Bean, the organiser of the Alt-Photo Festival, led the workshop. Here are my five efforts…

First photogram - layers of leaves

First photogram - layers of leaves

Photograms are a form of camera-less photography: light-sensitive paper has objects placed over it to prevent or change the amount of light that can reach it, and the paper is then subjected to a light, and put through standard developer baths, and washed and dried. And that is all there is to it!

Second photogram - an image of halves

Second photogram - an image of halves

Kenny had 5″x7″ wooden frames for us, with a clear sheet of plastic over the top, and a collection of all kinds of interesting leaves and plants - this was all taking place in the Botanics! - that we could place onto the plastic, along with scissors to manipulate and cut the leaves as we wanted - as you can see, for the second image above I cut half the needles off each little piece. Having arranged the image, the frame was taken through to the darkroom, photographic paper inserted under the plastic, and this was then exposed under an enlarger light. All the images here were exposed for between 6 and 20 seconds. Then the paper goes into the developer (60s), stop bath (10s), fixer (60s), and then washed in a tub of water and left to dry. The key issue here is the length of time that the enlarger is on for: too short and insufficient light gets through the leaves and there is no detail of leaf veins etc., but too long, and it burns through.

Kenny told us that each time we went into or out of the darkroom we were to whistle a tune so that we’d avoid running into people who might be going in the other direction. I can’t whistle, but after the delight of making the first two images and beginning to appreciate the possibilities here, I was cheerfully singing to myself anyway. The song going through my head at this time was Karine Polwart’s Hole in the heart (from her Scribbled in Chalk album), that I’d been listening to in the morning:

This resulted in an obvious kind of image:

Third photogram - Karine Polwart, "Hole in the heart"

Third photogram - Karine Polwart, “Hole in the heart”

I wanted to try something with more fragile leaves, since the first and third exposures had not shown the veins in the leaves in the way I had hoped for (I had guessed the exposures incorrectly):

Fourth photogram - delicate leaves

Fourth photogram - delicate leaves

My fifth image was intended to be a representation of a simple bunch of flowers, trying out something with the fine needles to see if I could use them as I wanted for my final image, which would be a bit more intricate:

Fifth photogram - a bunch of flowers

Fifth photogram - a bunch of flowers

That worked just the way I wanted - but I didn’t manage to actually create my final image because I ran out of time. This means I have a great excuse to get do more with photograms at some point!

Why is this process so wonderful? I had great fun, but after an hour practising in a workshop I don’t think I’m really qualified to answer this question. However, I am really struck by the fact that the process is so simple, and therefore it doesn’t get in the way of creativity. It is sort of obvious to use leaves to create images, and a quick online search turns up lots of photograms a bit like my fourth image here. That’s lovely, but just like the ‘arty’ Lensbaby blurs of flowers, a bit boring after one has seen the first few. The challenge with this process is very obviously in the pre-visualisation of something new, something that speaks of a wider concern or interpretative need, something that other photographic processes can’t achieve, for whatever reason. If you want to look at some rather amazing examples of what I mean, take some time for Lucy Telford’s photograms: she is creating really thought-provoking and emotional images (in colour too - apparently that’s even more difficult!).

Finally, if you haven’t previously been to the Alt-Photo Festival, make sure you go (if not this year, then next…). All the developer and paper used were provided by those lovely people at Ilford - now I’m off to look up their website and think about what I might need to order!

PS the promised blog posting on the privatisation of modernity in contemporary photography really is coming, once it’s been completed and shortened a bit…!

A pet hate: “I want to be a better photographer”

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I briefly want to make an observation about a kind of ‘pet hate’ of mine (or at least, it’s rapidly developing into one!). When photographers say things such as, ‘I want to be a better photographer’, or, ‘I want to make better photos’ (actually, it’s usually ‘take’ and not ‘make’…) - this is a nonsense. I don’t think it’s possible to choose to be a better photographer, one becomes better by learning more - and that is something that so often seems to get lost.
There, that’s that out of my system!
Also: I’m working on a blog posting on the privatisation of modernity in photography… nice light stuff! ;)

Nervousness and questions of interpretation

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I should be finishing the first page on wind farms (or working on a lecture for tomorrow!), but I wanted to share some reflections that I have found I can articulate quite clearly at the moment…

There are good reasons not to publish photographs. Some are very good reasons - the best reason of all probably being that the photograph in question is rubbish! Rubbish? Is that too harsh? How about “does not correspond to the pre-visualisation”?! (By the way, Alan Ross has just written an interesting post about Ansel Adams’ first moment of real pre-visualisation, if you’ve not come across this story before.) Of course, some are just rubbish! ;)

However, many are not. Many might even be rather good: they are technically fine, they are reasonably well composed, and the exposure is sufficiently on target for it to be usable. And yet… and yet…

The safety of darkness (Loch Leven, December 2012)

The safety of darkness (Loch Leven, December 2012)

… I don’t then click that “Export” button in Lightroom - the first step in moving an image onto my website and making it available to others to see. It’s not that I worry about what people will think of it: there are a select group of friends, particularly on Twitter, whose opinion I greatly value, but I wouldn’t not publish something just because I thought someone might not like it, nor would I publish something just because I thought someone might like it! Those who know me personally will know that I’m not really that bothered by what it is that others think in this kind of context.

The welcoming warmth of the cold (Loch Leven, December 2012)

The welcoming warmth of the cold (Loch Leven, December 2012)

No, the problem - if problem it is - is that I am not happy to share the image. My finger metaphorically (and sometimes literally) hangs over Lightroom’s “Export” button, and I study the image once more. And thoughts appear, almost as involuntary spasms in my brain: “it’s just another hillside”, “haven’t I photographed XYZ frequently enough?”, “what do I think I’m really adding to the world with this?” - and so on. Whilst some of these stop me, none of them necessarily do so. But there is another thought that does. So I don’t then click that button - and then nothing appears for others to see. Others being people like you, reading this. What is that thought? Before I come to that, it’s worth taking a step back.

The problem - if problem it is - is simply that in the meantime I know I have sufficient technical ability to be able to produce a certain kind of image and for it to come out reasonably well. I have many technical skills still to learn and don’t deny that, but I have come a long way from relying on the ‘auto’ setting! Now I’m wanting to inject more into the image, more than compositional ability, exposure, and so on. Now I seek to impart meaning through it.

First flight (Loch Leven, December 2012)

First flight (Loch Leven, December 2012)

However, the problem - if problem it is - is that this meaning is not just down to me. Yesterday, the wonderful Deborah Parkin released this photograph, which I interpreted as the child (Deborah’s daughter, Fleur) being content and self-assured; Lucy Telford, another talented photographer, said that it “Captures that self-contained feeling - poignant - signs of growing up, going inside oneself, inevitable but somehow sad.” Deborah responded to us both, noting that we saw the image differently, but with some commonalities. It is stating the obvious, but so much of the interpretation of an image is down to the viewer. Sometimes this chimes with the intentions of the photographer (for example, I understand from their interaction on Twitter and the comment she left that Rob Hudson’s interpretation of Lucy’s recent new image corresponds closely to her initial vision), but sometimes it does not. And what makes me far more nervous than someone misinterpreting an image, is someone interpreting it correctly.

The great escape into freedom (Loch Leven, December 2012)

The great escape into freedom (Loch Leven, December 2012)

The problem - if problem it is - centres around how I deal with that. On the one hand, as I said, I am rather stubborn and that means I don’t worry about what other people think of what I do, but there is another side to that. I am aware that I see some things differently to others. In Assynt in autumn 2011 Bruce Percy looked at images I had made in one of the workshop’s critique sessions, and said something like, “ah yes, you see differently” - not as a judgement, just as a comment. What I see, and what I want others to see, varies, of course. All the images in this posting come from a morning last December, spent on the shore of Loch Leven, watching the sun come up - except that I wasn’t that bothered about seeing the sun itself, of course - and they communicate something for me. Should I give them titles that simply say “Loch Leven, 2012″, or should I give them titles that point to my mood at the time? Obviously, I have done the latter, but it takes effort. I was reflecting on a particularly difficult autumn teaching semester at the university - difficult not because of the students, of course, but because of management, and I was wanting to reflect on those experiences. Whether they communicate the same thing for you as they did for me, I don’t know. Do I want to explain what they do for me beyond what I have done here? No, I do not. But do I want to share these images in case you work it out? Of that, I’m not always sure.

The last dark refuge (Loch Leven, December 2012)

The last dark refuge (Loch Leven, December 2012)

Despite what some may think, I’m a fairly reticent kind of person and do not like to give much away. Clicking that “Export” button in Lightroom is the first step not only to others being able to critique an image (“it’s just another hillside!” being an entirely fair response!), but more importantly, it gives others - that’s you - something of me. You get to see something of me, and I’m nervous about showing that, giving something of myself away. I’ve described a related issue in connection to photographing a model (the first image on this page), but my photography is also giving something of me. What you see might not be what I think I am showing, but… it might be. The danger - if danger it is! - is that you see what it is that I am seeing, as happened in the Lucy/Rob example given above, and that makes me nervous. My stubbornness means I don’t mind what people think of my images (good/bad/indifferent) because - as I don’t yet tire of saying - I am making photographs for myself, nobody else. They explore things for me, they explain and dissect and reassemble thoughts, they reveal hidden depths to me, and make me reflect on who I am and what I am doing. And now I’m supposed to share that with others, with you? Are you surprised I’m nervous about doing so, that I often can’t quite make my finger click that “Export” button?

Resignation, followed by return (Loch Leven, December 2012)

Resignation, followed by return (Loch Leven, December 2012)

And yet - getting over that and sharing images, sharing myself, is also a privilege. So thank you for taking the time to read this posting, to look at the images, to think about them. Now, I had better click “Publish” before I change my mind and delete this posting…

This is exciting…

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… though probably mostly to me!

On 5. January this year my wife and I were in Strathpeffer, and in the morning we went to the nearby Rogie Falls. I decided to go back there in the afternoon on my own and try to capture a scene I had noticed in the morning. A bit of a miscalculation in terms of timing (err… yes, I know, Scottish winter…!) meant that it was rather late in the day to do this, but I was keen to persevere, so I set up the Chamonix looking down into a little gorge. I started setting up at about 14:45, had a composition I was vaguely satisfied with at 15:15 bearing in mind the decreasing light levels, and took a series of light readings. I was mortified to find that any reasonable chance of a decent exposure would necessitate at least 30 minutes by the time I included the film’s reciprocity failure. ‘Never mind,’ I thought, ‘FP4 has plenty of latitude!’ and went for it. By 15:45, I could barely see anything in the woods around me. So I decided that another 15 minutes would do no harm, meaning the exposure was 45 minutes long. It then also started raining which was a good motivator to move on, and I could only pack up and find all my bits and pieces by getting out the head-torch (one of the most useful things to have in a camera bag!).

I finally managed to get the film to the lab and picked it up today. The resulting negative is slightly under-exposed (another 5-10 minutes would no doubt have helped), but it is perfectly usable with some relatively minor adjustments to levels and curves:

Rogie Falls, Chamonix, Fujinon 180mm, Ilford FP4, f22, 45 minutes

Rogie Falls, Chamonix, Fujinon 180mm, Ilford FP4, f22, 45 minutes

My first reaction to the image is two-fold. I think it does represent the balance between tremendous chaos and small signs of order that I felt in the woods: all these twisty branches contrasting with the clear white trunks and branches. I like the way the whiteness of the tree trunks directs my eyes - I can remember seeing this and wanting to achieve precisely that. And yet I am not completely happy with the composition: the gorge with the fallen-down tree feels a bit lost as the trees on the left dominate the foreground. I could crop the image to exclude the large tree on the left, but then the other smaller trees seem a bit irrelevant and the white trunks almost seems less prominent - perhaps the large tree is not so much a dominant tree as a counterweight to the thin white lines?

In any case: this is all very exciting for me, because it is the very first large format image I have taken completely on my own, AND I managed to use tilt and movements successfully in achieving reasonable focus across the frame. I wanted it to be a technically decent image, and it does enough of that for me to be confident to continue what I’m doing, even if it is not (yet?) that emotionally engaging for me. It may have taken me half-an-hour to set up, it may have been too late in the day to use a sensible exposure time, and it may not be perfectly composed - but I am very happy!

A wee thought on using different equipment

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My family think that I have too much camera ‘stuff’ (I don’t dare ask them too often!) - and it doesn’t help if I say things like ‘but XYZ has so much more than I do…!’ Of course, I think I have appropriate amounts of ‘stuff’ for what I want to do…

But sometimes, I realise that there are certain pieces of equipment that I have but don’t use as much as I might (don’t tell the family!). This morning I was out with my neighbour, Mabel Forsyth, wandering around Newhailes Estate in the snow. I had my Nikon digital camera with me. At times, it snowed whilst we were there, as this shows:

Snow at Newhailes Estate, Musselburgh

Snow at Newhailes Estate, Musselburgh

As we were returning to the car, the trees by the path caught our attention. I thought I’d try something a bit different, and got the Lensbaby out. I’ve had this lens for a while, but I am weary of all the contrived flower shots - it’s art, don’t you know?! - that so many people use Lensbaby optics for (I caricature, but not by much), and that puts me off getting it out too often. I should not be swayed by that, I know. This is the Lensbaby image from this morning that I like most:

The (Lensbaby) snow storm

The (Lensbaby) snow storm

Processing has been minor: small changes to tones and curves, and other than that it has been cropped to a more pleasing 4×5 ratio, and turned clockwise by 90 degrees. As will be obvious from the first image, we were not in a snow storm (the snow was rather gentle!), but for me this second rather more abstract image communicates something more about the dynamic of snow coming down than the first one, and I rather like it.

So now I can prove to my family that some of that ‘stuff’ can be used to create nice abstract images… ;)

———-

PS My favourite image from this morning’s excursion is this one, that I put up on my other site earlier today:

Newhailes Estate, Musselburgh

Newhailes Estate, Musselburgh

Wind power

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I am realising that the rather depressed tone of my last posting represented the end of a period of feeling somewhat demoralised about what I was doing, and not, as I thought at the time, a statement about being in the middle of such a period. What helped me realise this were primarily the helpful comments to that posting, and several conversations on Twitter - social media can be a wonderful thing!

A few days after that posting we went to Strathpeffer for a weekend (weekends away are a very rare and precious occurrence, given my wife’s work!). This is several hours drive from our home in Edinburgh.

Travel is often productive thinking time for me, and on this journey north an idea began to form. This idea then encountered various stimuli over the weekend, including a conversation on Sunday morning with Iain Sarjeant and Iona Finlayson that touched on some key issues about what ‘home’ was, what and where it could be, and related topics. As we were driving south after that, these ideas became much clearer to me, and I am now able to articulate them in an early form: I want to pursue a detailed photographic essay examining wind farms in Scotland.

What’s so special about wind farms?

If you follow the news in Scotland, you will be aware that wind farms are a very controversial issue, with proponents and opponents disagreeing about whether to support their construction or not. It seems that much heat and little light is generated in these debates. Perhaps, through some photography and writing, I can contribute a little to some light?

My journey north and then south again meant seeing a fair number of wind farms on the hills. Just down the road from Strathpeffer it was possible to see a number of windmills on the hillsides. There are wind farms fairly close to Edinburgh. There are plans for more all over the country: last summer on the Isle of Lewis we heard of plans to build a wind farm in the centre of the island. And the windmills themselves elicit strong reactions. I began making some images last weekend, and tweeted about this:

Kath Hudson responded with a visceral comment:

When I said that I had encountered smaller ones in Germany that were still intimidating but nonetheless impressive, Kath wrote back to say: ‘They really did give me that creepy shiver down the spine feeling. They are just unnatural and WRONG. Too big, too alien… ‘

I think many people will relate to Kath’s reactions, but, whilst important, the key issue for me is only partly about aesthetics and emotional reactions of this kind. On another level: it is undeniable that wind farms alter the appearance of the landscape, but so do nuclear power stations (see Bruce Percy’s study of Torness on the A1), or the dirty coal-fired power station at Cockenzie, just down the coast from me and almost always in view, it seems, when I’m on the beach:

Cockenzie power station from Portobello beach

Cockenzie power station from Portobello beach

The thing is… my leftie, green and social instincts all say “nuclear/coal etc. bad, wind/solar etc. good”… and yet, and yet… I do get the point behind some of the wind farm objections. So what I plan to do in this essay is explore some of the related issues around wind farms and reflect on different ways of understanding and interpreting them. If the only perspective, the only quilting point we use, is the idea of despoiling wild land, then opposition to wind farms becomes almost automatic. If, however, we use alternative quilting points, alternative starting points, then we might find our response to wind farms becomes more nuanced. For example, a slightly different perspective that comes to mind is a fairly common one: what about the alternatives - nuclear, coal, but also hydro, solar etc.? However, I am also interested in the question of power, understood in different ways: wind farms generate electrical power, but are also statements of power (over the landscape, in their construction, ownership and so on). How, for example, do these two forms of power relate to one another? Using that question as a quilting point leads to a series of other related questions and quilting points, such as:

  • windmills versus wind farms - why does Germany often have individual windmills, whereas here we seem to go for large wind farms?
  • what do wind farms say about my understanding of my home - how do I envisage and help to create the kind of home I want Scotland to be, for me, for those around me?
  • it is often argued that wind farms are put in places that are ‘wild’, but what do ‘wild’, ‘wildness’ and ‘wilderness’ mean in contemporary Scotland?
  • what is the meaning of ‘green’ in this context - ‘green’ landscape, and ‘green’ environmentally-friendly? I might also add that I recently joined the Green Party…
  • local democracy - who gets to decide on the construction of wind farms?
  • if, as many campaigns seem to argue, ‘there’s a place for wind farms, but it’s not here’ - what and where is their place?
  • land ownership - how does the ownership of particular areas impact upon the construction of wind farms, especially considering much of Scotland’s land is owned by people with no significant connection to it?
  • social justice - in what ways do wind farms impact upon employment, housing and so on?

These latter issues also play directly into the current social, political, civic and ideological context around the question of independence: the 2014 referendum in Scotland will decide whether Scotland continues as part of the union of England and Scotland or becomes an independent country once more. Independence in this context means, for me at least, that Scotland will be free to govern itself without undue interference from Westminster (and in framing the question like this, it will be clear that I am now firmly on the ‘yes’ side!). Over the years I have sincerely sought to understand and reflect upon the ‘no’ argument, a position I almost ‘naturally’ come from, but, with Joyce McMillan, I see a paucity of any kind of positive vision for the future in the ‘no’ campaign, something that the ‘yes’ campaign inspires and addresses in a multitude of ways, sometimes naively, mostly realistically. Decisions about land, home, planning, social justice and all these other issues that make up the kind of society we want to be are issues that play directly into the referendum. How would we think these things through if we could look at them afresh, as a ‘yes’ vote has the potential to allow, whereas a ‘no’ vote is likely to continue with the same rotten system we have now? Using wind farms as a quilting point perhaps has the potential, as the 2014 referendum approaches, to offer interesting insights along the way - at least for me! ;)

There will be many more issues that can be addressed, and I’m sure I’ll discover new quilting points and new perspectives as I go. For some of these issues, I can imagine the kinds of photographs and texts I might create, and for others I have no idea how I might address them photographically, or in any other way! And yet this not-knowing is very exciting. There is no end point, just exploration: I just want to see where all this takes me. Of one thing I can be sure: there will be blog postings about this, and also gallery pages.

As an aside: my new large format camera seems ideally suited for certain elements of this effort: there are certainly going to be elements of architectural photography, and so utilising the view camera’s movements to photograph windmills makes sense. In other contexts, I may find my smaller cameras more suitable.

I’m aware that there are many others who have pursued this kind of project in the past (for example, Rob Hudson recently sent me a link to Francis Hodgson’s piece in the FT on Richard Misrach), but perhaps there is still something new to be explored here, in my context, in my home?

Not a review of the year…

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Of all the constructions we create in the world, I sometimes think that time is the ultimate construction. Such breaks as exist are created by us, whether this be 1/125 of a second, or the end and beginning of a year. These segments are imbued with meaning only if we give them meaning, and in that context I grow very weary of reviews of the year (the only one I’ve read that is really worth reading is this one, by Deborah Parkin). So that’s not what this short posting is.

Scarista Bay

Scarista Bay

Instead, I want to show briefly where I am: this photograph from the Isle of Harris describes my photographic mood at the moment: a wide, apparently empty desert, with minor undulations and seemingly no points of interest (Michael Jackson clearly shows us that no beach is really empty). The mountains in the distance, to which I am more naturally drawn, seem a long way off, but I think I am perhaps also beginning to see much more in the emptiness of the sands and find new ways of expressing myself in such contexts. The move towards large-format photography is, for me, a part of that, and something that I look forward to developing in the coming months.

Vee

Vee, crossing a dark field

At times this is simply about not being alone. In recent months especially, I have felt as if I am walking in the dark with little light, and no idea where I’m going, resulting in much frustration. Often that is quite ok, but at times it can also be rather depressing. But I want to acknowledge all the people who have played a role in keeping me going by engaging in conversation and argument, thereby enabling me to keep going even if there’s not a lot of light. It seems invidious to name people, but… Rob, Lucy, James, Alastair (x2!), Deborah, Alex, Matt, Antonio, Mark, Mabel, Duncan, Mike, Marc, Tom and many more - thank you for the inspiration and motivation to continue exploring different aspects of creativity. A lengthy Twitter conversation with some of these lovely people last night reminded me of how much I value the kind of discussion that enables thinking to be clarified - even if I’m walking in the dark!

In that sense then, happy new year to all…