Wednesday 28 March 2012

Photography And Fish (Fingers)

'Mirroring the way in which Lux dresses her models and fixes them in front of a background of her own choice, we cloth these figures in our own fantasies, and superimpose our narratives of childhood onto the backdrop they provide.'  J L Fletcher (2005) Loretta Lux: Spellbound in Portfolio Magazine No 42, , pp 4-11

Loretta Lux is well-known for her 'uncanny' images of children; digitally-manipulated, with limbs and features stangely enlarged or elongated. The pictures are certainly intriguing, even if the reasons for their popularity may be potentially disturbing and disconcerting.

Take The Fish (2003).  It is a desolate and desperate image. Dirty walls and filthy floor tiles: the water in the stained and grimy bath-tub is a cold slate-grey. The child's lilac frock is also stained, on the collar and close to its hem.  Somnambulant, her eyes are closed; soft-skinned and puppy-fat, she holds her pose and her breath as well.




Loretta Lux, 2003, The Fish

The Buhl Foundation is home to collection of over 1000 photographs by seminal and little-known photographers. Ranging in date from 1840 to the present day, what unites this seemingly disparate array of images is the motif of the hand; Buhl's first purchase, made in 1993, was Alfred Stieglitz's photograph of Georgia O'Keefe entitled Hands with a Thimble (1920). Buhl's rationale for collecting is not so different from Dyer's approach to writing the history of photography.

In her catalogue essay accompanying an exhibition of Buhl's collection at the Guggenheim Museum, Jennifer Blessing cites Michel de Montaigne, who asks in An Apology for Raymond Sebond: '[A]nd what about our hands?' Montaigne then lists all that our hands express, including how they can 'lament; show sadness, grieve, despair, astonish, cry out, keep silent . . . '.

The cruelly-clawed and crippling tension in the hands of Diane Arbus' Child With a Toy Grenade is far more powerful than the grimace on the boy's face.


Diane Arbus, 1962,
Child With A Toy Grenade, Central Park, New York

The hand that holds the fish in Lux's image registers nothing of the pain and anxiety that we read into Arbus' photograph, but the potential trauma of childhood still signifies: in the motif of the fish. A fish out of water very quickly suffocates and dies.

Friday 23 March 2012

Photography And Fish - A Slow Market

From Things: A Spectrum of Photography, 1850-2001 (2004) London: Jonathan Cape


R T Crawshay, 1868, A Slow Market, Albumen-silver print from wet collodion negative

'Robert Crawshay was the fourth 'Iron King' of the Cyfarthfa Iron Works, Merthyr Tydfil.  In 1867 he became a member of the (Royal) Photographic Society.  A Slow Market was probably taken during spring 1868. It is beautifully made and carefully observed; the tear in the tablecloth echoes the open mouth of the nearest salmon. The photograph combines the popular genre motif of fisherfolk with a tradition of still life, and a Victorian predilection for dressing up. Beneath the shawls and skirts is Crawshay's daughter, Rose Harriette. She wrote in her diary (23 March 1868): "Papa came in with the ugliest, dirtiest, nastiest old straw bonnet that ever existed and a cap (thank goodness it was clean) for me to be photographed in as a fish woman which lasted till lunch time".'

Jane Fletcher, National Museum of Photography, Film & Television



Wednesday 21 March 2012

The Ongoing Moment Revisited - Photography And Fish

R T Crawshay, c.1870, Untitled

In 2005, Geoff Dyer's The Ongoing Moment (London: Little Brown) appeared on book stores' bookshelves in Britain.

The Observer described it as 'odd and illuminating' suggesting that, while it was less than rigorous, it 'may yet [take] its place among the classic works' on photography (16.10.2005).

Geoff Dyer's publisher describes it thus: 'With characteristic perversity . . . Dyer looks at the ways that canonical figures such as Alfred Stieglitz, Paul Strand, Walker Evans, Andre Kertesz, Dorothea Lange, Diane Arbus and William Eggleston have photographed the same things (benches, barber shops, signs, roads)'.

The result is a new, if eccentric and skewed, perspective on the history of the medium.  A history harnessed to the 'form of writing that Dyer has made his own: the non-fiction work of art'.

Around the same time, a curator of photographs approached me in his role as co-editor for a new series of photography books, interested to know if there were an angle on photography that I would care to write about.

I said, 'yes, photography and fish'.

But my passion for the poisson in the history of photography was received like a damp squib.

My suggestion was rejected.

Wednesday 14 March 2012

Some Jobs About Which The School Careers Officer Failed To Inform Me (2)

Para-psychology


The Edinburgh College of Para-Psychology is a 'non-denominational charity organisation' which aims - among other things - to 'provide a better understanding of life after death'.


In addition, it offers a 'Paranormal Investigations' service. Led by trained mediums, this service discreetly explores the possible cause behind 'strange events and unexplained noises' - from lights flickering to inanimate items moving independently of any identifiable form of intervention. (http://www.parapsychology.org.uk)


The most alarming thing about this website is that, when cutting and pasting quotations from it, the words remain invisible on the page until you 'preview' the blog; though the spirit of the words is there, the body of the text is not. Even more unsettling: any subsequent text remains unseen too, until published.


This means that I am currently writing this post 'blind'; relying on my touch-typing skills; an option I took at school because I was too poor at Physics to be entered for the 'O' Level examination in 1985. 


Now, I was going to say that I wish someone had told me I could have been a Para-psychologist. I am genuinely interested to know if there is life after death, though I really don't know what scares me most: the inevitability of mortality or the promise of eternity. But according to the Society for Psychical Research website, careers in Para-psychology are few and far between. For most, including those with a doctorate qualification in the discipline, research remains but a leisure-time pursuit.


Unless, perhaps, you belong to the Paranormal Investigations Squad. I, for one, am about to contact them . . .  

Monday 12 March 2012

Some Jobs About Which The School Careers Officer Failed To Inform Me





According to The Telegraph (All Fired Up: The Future of Pottery, 26.01.2011) Emma Bridgewater arrived in The Potteries (Stoke-on-Trent) in 1985.  Desperately seeking a manufacturer for her own pottery designs, she found the pottery industry on its knees: the consequence of 'bad 1970s-style management'. Though she managed, at that time, to find a manufacturer, that particular maker of pots went bankrupt in 1992. Bridgewater, in turn, bought the factory and, in doing so, secured the jobs of the 35 members of staff already employed there.  Bridgewater now enjoys international success with what David Nicholls, Design Editor of The Telegraph, calls her 'friendly, sponge-painted tableware designs'. Her 'signature piece' as Tiffany Daneff writes in Patterns of Success (see Saga website, 20.02.2012) remains the polka-dot mug, 600 of which 'leave the factory in Stoke-on-Trent every week'.  Apparently, every mug 'goes through 54 different hand-applied processes before it’s finally ready'.  


I neither know, nor care, what the other 53 processes are, but what about the person who gets to place the dots on the tableware? Reading between the lines of the Saga article, it helps if you're a local; the author claims that Bridgewater has saved for the nation - and the international dinner-set market - skills that would otherwise have been lost. I concur; dabbing a sponge on a piece of biscuit-fired earthenware doesn't sound as accomplished as some of the previous decorative endeavours enjoyed by The Potteries.  I'm thinking Wedgwood and John Flaxman. But, it's a continuation of a regional tradition. (It would seem all professions have experienced some form of dumbing down.)


I want that job. Five colours placed seven times on each mug - randomly (which means 'unique'). The mug-painter even gets to initial her work.  


What is 'Art' but an identifiable image by an identifiable person with an identifiable style?  I refer you to Michel Houellebecq's latest novel: The Map And The Territory ( 2011): 'the great painters of the past were considered such when they had developed a world view that was both coherent and innovative, which means that they always painted in the same way, using the same methods and operating procedures to transform the objects of the world into pictorial ones'. (19)


Dots have served the art world well, from Pointillism to Baldersari to Damian Hirst.


And, of course, Hoeullebecq and Bridgewater both owe something to Hirst. If the careers officer had told me about the possibility of painting polka dots for a profession, I could have been an artist.  





Sunday 11 March 2012

The Point of 0.6 (8)

eBay


So, finally her unorthodox views had held sway. The change had occurred since that carnival day. Within 24 hours they had all quit the fray. Cast off their masks, thrown those damned piccolos away.

And, the weather had turned; the sky was now blue. The blossom was out, and the daffodils, too. Little baa lambs frolicked on the hillsides nearby. (It would be months before they were turned into shepherd's pie.) Daylight took longer to turn into night. Her colleagues now embraced a sense of well-being, that all would come right.

But this change of heart, she knew for sure, was because they had reached the end of their tether; they cared no more. They were no longer prepared to fight the good fight. They sensed they could change nothing, try as they might. The might of the senior management team would always succeed. For managerial matters were driven by greed. (If managers can't get what they want they at least get what they need.) By acknowledging this, the workers were suddenly freed; from any obligation to compromise or please. They were sick of genuflecting, being brought to their knees. Not caring was starting to feel like a breeze.

At which point she suggested they all go 0.6. But for some this would result in a financial fix. They had mortgages to pay and cars to run. (These material concerns ensured life ceased to be fun.) So she suggested that rather than work, why not play? How better, she suggested, than to start selling on eBay?

It wasn't easy, it took quite a while, before they all got it and started to smile; at the thought that while they sat at their desks, instead of sorting emails they could dismantle the domestic nest, by auctioning on-line all the clutter they had accrued. She put it to them thus: 'you will feel re-newed. Re-newed and relieved to rid yourself of clutter.' (She ignored the guy in the corner who'd begun to dribble and splutter. He was evidently not worth saving, he was too full of dread, too scared to see his bank balance shift into the red.)

But the majority was game, the majority saw the light. Her colleagues regained their passion for their subject: their pleasure, the delight. They had looked into their souls and understood what they stood for. It wasn't Higher Education; that's not what they'd studied for. They had all turned to art because they believed they were creative. That they needed a visual medium to express themselves with. They needed 'Art' in order to negotiate how to live. Teaching was but a by-product, a generous impulse to give. But teaching had recently become about something other. They were now of the opinion, 'why should we bother?'

So, while senior management continued to plot and scheme, ensuring that all they did would serve only their team, the workers sat at their desks all day (and in doing so they ensured they would get full pay), but they no longer cared what the students had to say. They were too busy engaged in their own form of play; tracking the value of their belongings at auction on eBay.

'THE END'

Friday 9 March 2012

The Point of 0.6 (7)

Carnival


'Is this a new game?', she asked. Sincere. They were following her here and trailiing her there. Already, she'd told them as they accompanied her to the loo, 'this is only for women. It's not for you. You can't come in,' she had tried to explain. 'The little boys' room's left. Surely that's plain?' They'd waited outside, but had looked quite bereft.

At the end of the day they had walked her to her car. 'I can manage myself, it's really not far. I'm parked at the front and I've not much to carry.' As they stood by her vehicle: 'there's no need to tarry. Of course, there've been times when I forgot where I'm parked, but . . .'.  'Just get in and go home,' one of them had suddenly barked.

So, the day had been odd, right from the start. She had felt this the moment she'd walked in the office; they'd all turned to stare at her, faces set in a grimace. She had set a line early and slacked before work.  As a consequence, her hair was unbrushed and her trouser-legs muddy. She had no make-up on and her face was quite ruddy; from the effort, you see, of balancing on a tape. But it made her feel well. It was her new form of escape. To get off the wire, get her feet back on the ground, felt like a terrible breach, she now often found. 

She had set up her laptop and begun work on some task, but she'd noticed their faces were set in a mask. They all looked the same (and it wasn't that pretty). What was wrong with them, she wondered. It seemed such a pity. She feared they all took their jobs too seriously. But the profession was in crisis; the institution a ship of fools. To not see its absurdity was a form of insanity. She had long ceased to feel any real sense of sympathy. 

As she walked to the canteen, down the corridor and stairs, she began to get nervous; she was not unawares, that behind her the masks were now walking in line. An organised procession, they were marching in time, to the beat of her heart that now beat like a drum. They were blowing on pipes, all fingers and thumb. She considered it an omen of bad things to come. 

And, then she remembered, for Christians it was Lent. Perhaps that's what gave them this terrible bent? While she had been slacking perhaps they were lacking the things they'd enjoyed, like chocolate and wine. The things that enabled the full-time employed to believe they were fine? 

Then it suddenly dawned; the idea was spawned. A long time ago she had read Bakhtin on Rabelais; the socio-cultural imperative for grotesque revelry and play. The desire for freedom from hierarchies, replaced by community. A sense of embodied-ness, albeit collectively. The impulse to defy political order and law. Of course, she thought to herself, that's what all this is for.

They were feeling disempowered, completely oppressed. The masks were merely a strategy of the disillusioned and dispossessed. The carnival dress both concealed and made manifest all that they felt, all that was repressed. 

And, to be honest, she would have found it a hoot, but for the fact that she hated both piccolo and flute.









Saturday 3 March 2012

Thursday 1 March 2012

The Point of 0.6 (6)

Freitag: One Rabbit and a Washbag


'Thank God it's Friday', she said with a smile.  'Not today, I accept, but tomorrow: soon.  In a while (what a boon).  I have to say, I'm waiting, anticipating, somewhat salivating at the thought.'

'You're in a hurry to leave, I can tell,' he acknowledged.  He was still feeling extremely unwell. The shit was hitting the fan, and it took it out of a man. The chickens were coming home to roost. He'd already scoffed two Snickers bars and a Boost, but his blood sugar was still down. He was in a fix. Perhaps, like her, he should have gone 0.6. . .

'Well, you see, it's like this.  I'm experiencing something akin to bliss. I've begun to feel fine; I can turn on the line. The slack-wire, I mean. I walk like a queen - forwards and backwards - with my head held high and my pelvic bone fully centred. Of course, I couldn't have done it on my own.  I needed to be mentored. My innate disposition is somewhat slack; I tend to do better with someone on my back. But, by some incredible miracle, I've found a man who has reminded me of the things that I can do. It turns out he's pretty agile, too.'

'So, you'll be quitting us soon,' he said with a grimace. 'You'll be packing your bag.'

'I hope so,' she agreed.  'I feel I'm in need; in need of job satisfaction of sorts that this place can't give. Have you ever read Montaigne's extraordinary essays on how to live? It seems you have almost to die before you think to ask why; why am I here and how should i 'be'? I finally think I'm beginning to see.'

'See what?' he replied, no longer sounding snide. He was beginning to understand why babies cried; no words to speak about how they felt. No way to counter, except with screams of frustration, the arbitrary cards they were dealt.

'This might sound like I'm going off course, but I'm done with this place, even if they've managed to validate yet another bloody horse. It's all so base. It's all about profit, all about cash. It's all about money, honey; really, I do have to dash. This place makes me sick; everyone seems so terribly thick. I'm off to pack my bag, as you suggest. Take what I need and leave all the trash. I now have a lovely little number, a little wash-bag. It comes from Zurich - the company that made it is called Freitag. It has just enough room for toothpaste and toothbrush, tweezers and face cream. I wish you all well but I'm afraid it's auf wiedersehen; I'm orf to follow my dream.'