Exercise

Find a street that particularly interests you – it may be local or further afield. Shoot 30 colour images and 30 black and white images in a street photography style.

In your learning log, comment on the differences between the two formats.

What difference does colour make? Which set do you prefer and why?

For this exercise, I wander around taking shot in central Pattaya with the intention of then converting them to black and white in post-production. I believe that this is the best way to evaluate the difference between black and white and colour.

I think I should first state that I am a black and white fanboy – think it comes from my day at night school in the mid 90’s where 90% of my work was in black & white shot on Ilford fp4 or hp5 and processed myself in the darkroom and that when I was growing it was photojournalism and sport photography that brought me into photography and this was mainly seen in newspapers that were in those days  exclusively black and white.

Colour Set

Colour adds another dimension to a flat image that a photograph is it and bring a scene to life, the colours can add details and the colour palette of an image can age an image.

Black and White Set

Black and White is more about the shape and the form in an image its graphical representation. Colours is no longer important but this is replaced by the tones and shades within the image. Black and white can appear timeless at first appearance.

Which of these sets to I like the most it is hard to pin down, the straight-out-of-camera feel of the colour images is rather flat and uninteresting, even more so that the effect I was looking for as the overall colour palette of some of the images is quite monotonic and even a simple conversion to black and white does not change this flatness.

The night images when in both Colour and Black & White stand out more from their peers as the light envelopes the subject and illuminates and it is at times like this where it would be sad to convert to B&W (unless there was horrendous colour noise you needed to conceal).

THe post production is key to the presentation of images and no more so is that in the choice of B&W or colour – assuming we are shooting digital where the decision can be taken in the post. A photographer has to make the choice why is he presenting his pictures in Black and White, this something that I learnt in Expressing your vision, Black and white has an artic connotation we cannot simply slip in the Camera club mentality of converting a dull photograph to B&W to impress our peer with a gritty image.

Quite simply what I an trying to say is that B&W and Colour need to be considered so that when they are present they are the right tools for the job they are doing Remember this :

A 13mm spanner will tighten a 10mm nut & bolt but not as well as 10mm spanner!

Below is a gallery of 3 of the images that I have taken the time to post-process as black and white and colour.

These illustrate that there are pro & cons to the depiction of the 3 images in the 2 formats. I have indicated my personal preference in the captions.

Exercise

Instead of using double exposures or printing from double negatives we now have the technology available to us to make these changes in post-production, allowing for quite astonishing results.

Use digital software such as Photoshop to create a composite image which visually appears to be a documentary photograph but which could never actually be.

For this exercise I wanted to put together something simple but eye-catching, I was looking back over some old images and I found a Black & White image of the Utah state capital building and then i started thing how Icould use it for this exercise. This it hit me – Supermoon. Over the last few years, we have been seeming inundated with “once a lifetime” to occasions where the moon will be so close to the earth it will appear huge in the night sky. These once in a lifetime occasions appear to happen every 18 months – we must have short life expectancies these days – and i have been failed to be impressed by any of them. So now is the time to set the record straight and tell the world what I think a supermoon looks like.

The image is simply a composite if my image – which whist shot is daylight was converted to B&W with a red filter effect to darken the sky and layers with an image of the moon taken from the internet. The Moon was cut and masked. Using a white paintbrush the mask was removed as appropriate to reveal the building and create some shading and the bottom the moon to give a feeling of shaddow.

While the idea maybe simplistic it succeed in one this my friends who live behind the Utah State Capital Building did a double take when they first saw it … so it fooled a local, if only briefly.

Exercise

Does digital photography change how we see photography as truth? Consider both sides of the argument and make some notes.

Photography has not been seen as truth for many years. Anyone with any interest in the history of photography (or was a child in 70’s when the Cottingley Fairies mystery was exposed) is aware that photographers have manipulating images since the very beginning, this list from Fourandsix, who specialises in image forensics illustrates this point.

However, the general public was unaware of what could be achieved through darkroom manipulation, as are many pure digital photographers today (as I have discussed in another post) which lead to the old adage ‘the camera never lies”. Photographic images were seen as an accurate facsimile of what was in front of a photographer, as opposed to the artist brush which could wielded as the artist pleased.

The advent of digital camera to the whole has brought the use of photographic editing software to the forefront of everyone’s mind – “Photoshop” has become a verb and hardly a day goes by without the cry that image has been/ must have been “photoshopped”. It perhaps the biggest cliché of modern photography that everything has been “photoshopped” but as I have discussed in my earlier post the use of Photoshop doesn’t mean we are altering reality

The questioning around the how genuine an image is because of a suspicion of Photoshop has just really triggered many people to question is something staged or not. We expect that wildlife photography, photojournalism and sports photography to be an accurate depiction of what happened, but we have all always harboured thoughts that did the photographer pay for the shot with the refugees, was the animal inticed with food extra. I have been told by a friend who was photographer work famine-torn Africa in the 1980’s that their client was desperate for a picture of an open grave – so he and a colleague dug one themselves have fruitlessly searched.

Digital photography has undoubtedly made photographic fraud easier, as it something almost any can have good at on their home computers but it has made anymore prevalent than it already was.

Is summary Digital photography has changed how we view truth in photography, not because digital photography is intrinsically dishonest but by bringing the knowledge of how it can happen to the forefront of the publics mind.

One thing that gets me very annoyed are people who say “I never edit my images”; “I only ever shoot straight out of camera”; “I don’t believe in photoshop/Lightroom etc”.

These people are in my opinion limiting their photography when I came to photography in the early 1980’s in was all film and a lot of that was film black and white and when you take the time to learn about darkroom techniques you are able to really get the best out of an image.

As the article on the PetaPixel blog shows photographers went to great length in the darkroom to achieve the best result – they did simply get the finished print and drop off at the chemist and be happy with the results of the commercial printing process – which then would have been the equivalent of using the straight out of camera JPEG.

Lightroom/Photoshop etc are powerful tools that can do many such as airbrush models skin, build composite images, fundamentally change colour in an image or even completely remove an item. I agree that some of these tools push the boundries of I guess grass roots photography, but they need not been. If we use it like a digital darkroom.

Darkroom techniques, as you can see from the PetaPixel article show, were dodging (hold exposure back) and burn (increasing exposure) in certain areas of a print to make the best use of the dynamic range that particularly Black and white print film (usually  +/- 4 stops) could produce.Similar techniques were used when printing colour negatives and when making prints from colour reversal film (slides) although these were less forgiving on exposure latitude.

There we also darkroom techniques to play with the colour of images and contrasts pushing or pulling the processing of black & white film i.e. rating the film and a higher ISO and adjust developing time to effect contrast and grain. Cross processing of film i.e. developing colour reversal film with colour negative chemistry – his again increased contrast and gave surreal colours.

None of these techniques are “cheats”, that is they are not getting away from the skill of the photographer “to get it right in camera” no amount of photoshop and make a bad photograph good (although I have come across many photographers who is snap away and rely on Photoshop) they just simply enhance as photographers have been doing for generations.

References

Zheng, M. (2013). Marked Up Photographs Show How Iconic Prints Were Edited in the Darkroom. [online] PetaPixel. Available at: https://petapixel.com/2013/09/12/marked-photographs-show-iconic-prints-edited-darkroom/ [Accessed 29 Jan. 2018].

Exercise

Look at some more images from Sarah Pickering’s series, Public Order on her website.

• How do Pickering’s images make you feel?

• Is Public Order an effective use of documentary or is it misleading?

Sarah Pickering’s series ‘Public Order’ contains a number of images of empty streets. However, something is wrong, not only are there no people, there is no rubbish everything is pristine. This gives are a strange sense of uneasiness.

Initially, I imagined that the images were taken with ND500 filter to give a very long exposure time to remove the people – have dome similar myself to shots of empty motorways. But one the litter was missing I thought has it all be cloned away in Photoshop but the images are fair too pristine for that level of cloning It is here that you get the Disneyland before opening feeling, something that is so real but so false at the same time. Later in the series, there is an image that that show behind the façade; showing that its just a façade – frontages that don’t have buildings behind them.

Without knowing the context of the set of images it hard to understand from the images what Pickering is trying to address is TV set or a Training area, is for promotional value? Once it clear that this is the training area for police and more specifically where they train for riots that it comes together.

Pickering has photographed the street forensically, but tellingly without a mock riot, in place (the police were disappointed she didn’t). It allow the viewer to ask questions such is society on such an edge that our law enforcement have to prepared to such an extent. Pickering say that the police where very help in letting her take the shots but when you consider her feeling at the time of the shoot, that was very much anti-establishment or more specifically anti-patriarchal society, this feel contradictory To me knowing that about the artist I wonder if mocking their preparation – Toy town for toy soldiers!

With the work of Paul Seawright I saw in the work the artist reflecting on the brutal and unnecessary nature of Sectarian Murder; with Pickering I believed she was mocking society and law enforcement, but with  further reading I can see she [revealing] our predilection to deflect fear by trying to anticipate and plan for it—and our tendency to create a story to help us process it. In on that note, I think it is effective as a documentary and it following all the rules that Seawright used when we set to produce art documentary. It is not Photojournalism.

References

Mocp.org. (2010). Sarah Pickering: Incident Control | Museum of Contemporary Photography. [online] Available at: http://www.mocp.org/exhibitions/2010/04/sarah_pickering.php [Accessed 27 Jan. 2018].

Vimeo. (2010). Sarah Pickering on Public Order & Explosion series: Excerpt. [online] Available at: https://vimeo.com/11931505 [Accessed 27 Jan. 2018].

Pickering, S. (2003). Sarah Pickering. [online] Sarahpickering.co.uk. Available at: http://www.sarahpickering.co.uk/Works/Pulic-Order/workpg-01.html [Accessed 27 Jan. 2018].

Research Point

The course notes have asked us to look at Paul Seawright’s Sectarian Murder a series of images taken in the late 1980’s that revisit sites of sectarian murders during the Troubles in Northern Ireland.

Catalyst: Paul Seawright from Imperial War Museums on Vimeo.

How does this work challenge the boundaries between documentary and art?

The images in Seawright’s work are each a landscape of the location of a sectarian murder during the Northern Ireland Troubles – and each is captioned with newspaper caption from the time of the murder, with any reference to the religion of the victim removed.

In 1988, when these pictures we taken, the troubles were still at their height, with sectarian murders happening on all to frequent basis. However, this body of work is a differing more reflective viewpoint than pure photojournalism.

The murders, in this case, had happened over 15 years previously so Seawright is not just recordings what had happened, they are more akin to David Campany’s concept of “late photography” as Campany says in Safety in Numbness ‘not so much the trace of an event as the trace of the trace of an event.’ (2003). In my opinion feel that once an event such as a murder has happened in a location a trace of that event will always remain even it just because you are told it happened.

Seawright says that work that is very close to the reality of an even is nothing more than photojournalism. To turn Photojournalism into art is giving the viewer a story that develops in front of them, encapsulating the distance and mystery within the image so that the meaning of the picture grows. As opposed to a magazine image which has a much more obvious narrative as it has to deliver in 15 seconds, art does have to deliver this quickly.

With Sectarian Murder, Seawright is providing the viewer with a clear context for the image and allowing the narrative to reveal its self slowly, like peeling an onion. He is providing this complex layering by giving us an image of the location of the murder in a still akin to a Fine Art landscape and far removed from a journalist image. Even when you compare this with the Joel Meyerowitz consider shots of Ground Zero, these very far removed.

The images are all dark and moody, there is a feeling of remoteness to them and given what we know from the caption that happened there they give an initial feeling of uneasy / uncomfortableness to the viewer. And this one of the many layers it provides to me were I feel an empathy for the victim in that it feels a lonely place to die. Sectarian murders were by there nature one side against the other to provoke fear, however, as the context does not show the religion of the victim it is just drawing us to the inhumanity of the act – who every views these can only feel compassion.

What is the core of his argument? Do you agree with him?

As discussed Seawright main argument is that art should give up it secrets slowly in contrast to something like photojournalism which as 15 seconds to make it point heard. He is trying produce work that is not too direct nor too ambiguous. And of close assessment of Sectarian Murder, I believe he is right.

For many people art is about beauty, something that you hang on your wall, but this is just a superficial way of looking at it. Art is another way to tell a story, order your feelings on a subject it should be a talking point. Something to provoke thought and arts that unveils its self slowly provides that.

If we define a piece of documentary photography as art, does this change its meaning?

No. We have discussed the magazine journalistic photograph gives up it meaning quickly and deliberate art projects like Sectarian Murders do so slowly. However, just because the meaning is given up quickly, doesn’t mean it cannot be art nor does it make that meaning change if it art. However, when it placed in a to art environment will be discussed and analysed differently so that the obvious mean maybe question overlooked by someone looking for a deeper meaning.

Bibilography

Seawright, P. (2018). Sectarian Murder. [online] Paul Seawright. Available at: http://www.paulseawright.com/sectarian/ [Accessed 27 Jan. 2018].

Vimeo. (2014). Catalyst: Paul Seawright. [online] Available at: https://vimeo.com/76940827 [Accessed 27 Jan. 2018].

Campany, D. (2003). Safety in Numbness: Some remarks on the problems of ‘Late Photography’ – David Campany. [online] David Campany. Available at: http://davidcampany.com/safety-in-numbness/ [Accessed 22 Jan. 2018].

Maciej Dakowicz is a photojournalist who has reported from all around the world and is now a member of the inPublic street photographers collective but it his study of Cardiff after dark that he is most famous.

After Dark is different to traditional street photography, not relying on the traditional shapes and shadows and surrealism to be more of an extended photo essay on the binge drinking culture of the UK and as said by Sean O’Hagan in the Guardian [you] could even view it as a snapshot of what has gone wrong with Britain since deference and good manners gave way to lack of respect and vulgarity (2012). Especially after the Daily Mail spectacularly miss understood it in an article in 2011, but Dakowicz is not mocking is subjects but inviting the viewer to consider what drives them to this strange compulsion to drink with friends until they can’t remember what they have done (Howarth and McLaren, 2011).

Dakowicz drew on his own experiences for this project as a student in Cardiff over 5 years and this evident in his images – sharing a compassion not just being voyeuristic.

References

O’Hagan, S. (2012). Cardiff After Dark by Maciej Dakowicz. [online] The Guardian. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2012/sep/30/cardiff-after-dark-maciej-dakowicz [Accessed 27 Jan. 2018].

Hardman, R. (2011). The shaming images that turned Britain into a laughing stock. [online] Mail Online. Available at: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2040260/Maciej-Dakowicz-Cardiff-After-Dark-binge-drinking-images-turned-Britain-laughing-stock.html [Accessed 27 Jan. 2018].

in-public.com. (2016). Maciej Dakowicz. [online] Available at: https://in-public.com/photographers/maciej-dakowicz/ [Accessed 27 Jan. 2018].

Howarth, S. and McLaren, S. (2011). Street photography now. London: Thames & Hudson.

Do some research into contemporary street photography. Helen Levitt, Joel Meyerowitz, Paul Graham, Joel Sternfeld and Martin Parr are some good names to start with, but you may be able to find further examples for yourself.

What difference does colour make to a genre that traditionally was predominantly black and white?

Can you spot the shift away from the influence of surrealism (as in Cartier-Bresson’s work)?

How is irony used to comment on British-ness or American values?

Make notes in your learning log.

Street photography was traditionally in Black and White and with the exception of Joel Meyerowitz, who produced street photographs in colour from the late 1960’s, most street photographers, including  William Klein, Lee Friedlander, Robert Frank and Gary Winogrand did all their work in black and white until the mid/late 1970’s. In fact, in the street photography, world colour at that time was frowned on. Why would the be?

At this time Colour would have been technically more difficult as the best film, Kodachrome, was only available in ISO25 & 64. Obviously, this was way behind black and white, which could be pushed to ISO 1600/3200 which resulted in the signature contrast and grain of the genre.  Those of us who have used colour slide film know it is notoriously unforgiving on exposure and therefore in those days being able to achieve a perfect shot in the frenetic world of the street, as Joel Meyerowitz was doing would have taken great skill and practice.

Until Stephen Shore’s landscapes,  ‘Uncommon Places’ in the 70’s there was little acceptance of colour in the art photography world, colour photography was only for fashion, advertising and travel. Shore wanted to show the reality of the landscape, as opposed to Ansel Adams who wanted to show its beauty.

WHAT DIFFERENCE DOES COLOUR MAKE?

Robert Frank said ‘Black and white are the colours of photography’.  However, this view changed as the use of colour film grew – the public liked the reality that colour brought, Black and White seemed dated to them, most film and TV by the 60’s was in colour, especially in the USA. Only Joel Meyerowitz was leading the colour revolution, shooting the New York streets in colour since 1962

Colour introduces complexity, by adding different colours, shades, and hues (which can make or break your photo) (Kim, n.d.).

The main difference I see between Black and White and colour is that colour introduces reality and transform the banal into art. Whereas Black and White is all about the shapes and the form with the frame. As Eric Kin says Colour introduces a complexity to street photography due to how it can dominate a scene – it is much hard to nail a colour street photograph than Black & White.

CAN YOU SPOT THE SHIFT AWAY FROM THE INFLUENCE OF SURREALISM (AS IN CARTIER-BRESSON’S WORK)?

In Photography: A Critical Introduction Liz Well says that while Surrealism is the attempt to replicate the world of dreams this an oversimplification of real intent and was also a challenge to the existing art establishment. (2015)

Cartier-Bresson was a contemporary of many surrealist and much of his work stands out as having surrealist overtones. As can be said of many of the traditional black and white street photographers with their use of juxtaposition, overlapping, floating bodies etc (Kim n.d.). And while as a movement surrealism in art said to be from 1924 – 1966 you can see within Cartier-Bresson’s work moved away from it from World War 2 onwards and also it less prevalent with the introduction of colour by Joel Meyerowitz in the 1960’s.

However, it has never completely gone away while there is banality and reality in modern Street photography there is still reliance of juxtaposition many other traits of surrealism.

HOW IS IRONY USED TO COMMENT ON BRITISH-NESS OR AMERICAN VALUES?

Dr Biljana Scott in ‘Picturing Irony: the subversive power of photography’ states that there is two kinds of irony that can be encountered in photography: Word-Based and more subtle Echoic Mention.

Word-based is fairly obvious it involves the juxtaposing or a billboard or some other form of text with the other elements of the photograph. As in this image below by Dorethea Lange:

© Dorothea Lange

These men clearly are unable to afford the train they are perhaps unsuccessful hitchhikers and the billboard seemly sarcastic in its statement.

Echoic Mention is much more subtle and involves the ‘mention’ rather than the outright ‘use’. She uses the below image by Robert Doisneau to illustrate:

© Robert Doisneau

And describes is thus:

[…] an arrogant looking man in hat, tie and pinstripe suit, cigarette in mouth, dog at his heals, stands in front of a shop. Judging from the awning, the shop is called ‘Merode’, but because the man’s head obscures the letter ‘O’ from the name on the shop front, the remaining letters spell out ‘merde’ (‘shit’ in French). Doisneau uses this coincidence in order to pass an ironical judgment on the man: he may think he’s hot, but we see him in another light, and unbeknown to him, he has been labelled as such. In the terms of echoic mention theory, the man’s body language is a genuine statement about himself (use). This same body language is signalled as a pose (mention) by the photographer, whose critical (echoic) attitude is reflected in the text of the shop name. (Scott n.d)

This type of irony is seen in the work of Martin Parr in how he captures English is not necessarily juxtaposed again something physical, but against their normal British reserve – for example his “last resort” series.

© Martin Parr

Bibliography

Scott, B. (n.d.). PICTURING IRONY: the subversive power of photography. [online] Diplomacy.biscott.co.uk. Available at: http://diplomacy.biscott.co.uk/publications/PICTURING IRONY.pdf [Accessed 25 Jan. 2018].

Gruyaert, H. (2015). Banality Can Be Beautiful – Photographs by Harry Gruyaert | LensCulture. [online] LensCulture. Available at: https://www.lensculture.com/articles/harry-gruyaert-banality-can-be-beautiful [Accessed 25 Jan. 2018].

Kim, E. (n.d.). How to Shoot Color Street Photography. [online] ERIC KIM. Available at: http://erickimphotography.com/blog/color-street-photography/ [Accessed 25 Jan. 2018].

Open Walls (2016). STREET PHOTOGRAPHY ∙ FROM EARLY MODERNITY TO STREET ART. [online] Open Walls Gallery. Available at: https://openwallsgallery.com/street-art-photography/ [Accessed 25 Jan. 2018].

Kim, E. (n.d.). Surrealism in Street Photography. [online] ERIC KIM. Available at: http://erickimphotography.com/blog/2017/12/24/surrealism-in-street-photography/ [Accessed 25 Jan. 2018].

The Art Story. (n.d.). Surrealism Movement, Artists and Major Works. [online] Available at: http://www.theartstory.org/movement-surrealism.htm [Accessed 25 Jan. 2018].

Cartier-Bresson, H. (n.d.). Magnum Photos Photographer Portfolio. [online] Magnum Photos. Available at: https://pro.magnumphotos.com/C.aspx?VP3=CMS3&VF=MAGO31_10_VForm&ERID=24KL53ZMYN [Accessed 25 Jan. 2018].

Gross, T. (2018). Todd Gross. [online] in-public.com. Available at: https://in-public.com/photographers/todd-gross/ [Accessed 25 Jan. 2018].

Parr, M. (n.d.). Martin Parr. [online] Martinparr.com. Available at: https://www.martinparr.com/ [Accessed 25 Jan. 2018].

Born: New York 31 Aug 1913 – 29 March 2009

Was an early street photography who started shooting black and white in 40’s and 50’s and moved to colour in the 60’s through to the 80’s. In fact, she was like Joel Meyerowitz and early adopter of colour thanks to a Guggenheim grant, but most of these images were lost on a burglary.

Her pictures are mostly decisive moment and the colour give a real sense of place and draw the viewer into that time. Her Black and white images are very tradition candid of kids playing in contrast to her colour images they seem sombre but is that because of the lack of warmth and colour.

Reference

Levitt, H. (n.d.). Helen Levitt: New York Streets 1938 to 1990s – Photographs by Helen Levitt | LensCulture. [online] LensCulture. Available at: https://www.lensculture.com/articles/helen-levitt-helen-levitt-new-york-streets-1938-to-1990s [Accessed 25 Jan. 2018].

Born: UK 23 May 1952 –

All of Parrs recent work seems to be in colour.  He takes very ordinary scenes of ordinary people doing ordinary things, often on holiday where it possible while they are relaxing to catch unguarded moments and these unguarded moments are juxtaposed again ideas more than physical things. He produces a body of work that while candid and street like it contain posed elements he comes both to like Meyerowitz record and evoke a period of time and place.

The subjects that he shoots and the position of classic activities and awkward situations he instantly conveys something that is hard to define Britishness.

References

Parr, M. (n.d.). Martin Parr. [online] Martinparr.com. Available at: https://www.martinparr.com/ [Accessed 25 Jan. 2018].

YouTube. (2018). The World According To Martin Parr. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdebH1Q1ros [Accessed 25 Jan. 2018].

YouTube. (2018). The World According To Martin Parr. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdebH1Q1ros [Accessed 25 Jan. 2018].