OCA Study Day - Tate Modern

I've had to cut back on taking part in the OCA study days as it costs so much in time and money to travel up to London.  The journey takes approximately 3 hours and costs approximately £40-50.  Also there are too few photography based workshops to make it worthwhile.

The one visit that interests me greatly on April 22nd at the Tate Modern in London is that of The Radical Eye: Modernist Photography from the Sir Elton John Collection.  It costs £10 to take part but looks like it could be very interesting.  

I've already put my name down and paid the booking fee.  Let's hope the weather co-operates and railway workers don't decide to hold a strike that day.

OCA study day - Exeter, Jem Southam

Yesterday I travelled to Exeter public library to join a group of OCA students from the south and south west to listen to Jem Southam, a leading British photographer and lecturer at Plymouth University.

Jem discussing one of Fox Talbot's first images

Jem's main area of work seemed to stem from randomly taken images as and when an image struck him.  He started his talk with how he felt that art had transformed into photography through the work of Henry Fox Talbot and how he might have chosen to create an image of the famous Lacock Abbey window.

Jem felt it was unnecessary to travel miles away from home to record areas when he could find just as interesting areas to photograph around his home.  He showed a portfolio of work recording the changes that had taken place from the view from his kitchen window over a period of 20 years.  He outlined the changes he and his wife had instigated over the years and why they had made various changes.  Southam had also put together a body of work called 'Red River' based in Cornwall about the environmental destruction that had occurred when parts of the mining industry had used a river as part of the mining process, thus turning the river red and killing any form of life.

Jem showed parts of his work where he had recorded landslips on both the southern coast in England and parts of the Normandy coast where landslips occurred as frequently as in the chalk cliffs of England.  He found the colours and patterns of the cliff faces interesting to record.

One of his major works was that of recording the development of a local dew pond entitled "Ditching Beacon, Dew Pond where he spent several years recording the changes made by local people to 'improve' a small pond in the middle of a village.

All in all, it was fascinating to see Jem's work and how he managed to put together various portfolios from such simple starting points.  I find it interesting to accept that it isn't necessary to travel away from home to build bodies of work when you would know your surrounding area much better than one you had never travelled to before.

Thanks to Amano Sam

OCA Study Day: Science Museum 'Drawn by Light' Exhibition

OCA Study Day – Drawn by Light, Science Museum, 6^th December 2014

What an interesting session at the Science Museum recently with tutor Wendy McMurdo, her interpretations of some of the image groupings were very astute. It was a shame that the group was too big and that might well have put new study day students off. Normally a study group is only half the size and it's much more informal. Still, I really enjoyed it.

The images themselves, supplied from the collection of Royal Photographic Society (RPS) range from the real beginnings of image creation in the 1830s when metal plates were used with bitumen washed with acid to leave an negative image to Fox Talbot’s print from a paper negative.  Also included were examples of daguerreotype images which were produced around the 1840s which were simple images unable to be reproduced.

Here's Wendy below, with second tutor Rob Bloomfield on right hand side, talking about a couple of images in the second gallery. (I took this picture before we were told 'no photography please' ). Wendy has written up on the WeAreOCA website about the visit and you can read her thoughts on the visit here.

The RPS was founded in 1853 when like-minded photographers such as Roger Fenton got together to create the Photographic Society which later became the Royal Photographic Society.  In the second gallery there is an exhibition of pictures like they would have been seen in the early exhibitions of the Society.  This wall of 40 pictures was hung haphazardly just as it would have been in the 1850s.  It was overwhelming to see so many pictures crammed together and difficult to take in all at once.  It would take the most part of a whole morning to give them the respect they deserved.

The curator of the exhibition had put together unusual groupings of pictures and, for example, I was unaware that Don McCullin created still life pictures as well as being a war reporter.  His style of dark, brooding images carried over into the still life picture hung beside one of his better-known pictures of refuges and war situations.

I had seen a few of the images on display before but it was fascinating to hear Wendy discuss the various aspects of each picture/grouping/background.  It was also good to meet other students who were travelling on the same long road to a degree in photography or creative arts.  One or two I had met before and one woman I had often read on the OCA forum but never contacted.  I suddenly realised who she was and we were able to connect in person rather than over the impersonal Internet.

I also went round the ‘Make Life Worth Living’ exhibition, by Nick Hedges for Shelter taken in the 1960s.  He photographed slum housing in major cities such as Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, Bradford and London, documenting the

distressing conditions faced by more than three million people.

I also took the opportunity to use my camera on the walk back along Exhibition Road to the South Kensington underground station.  The winter wonderland skate park, at that Natural History Museum, was in full swing and I found lots of opportunities to complete the Exercise 1.7: Getting the Parr ‘feel’.  Great fun!


Comments from other study day participants on Facebook were:

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  Fazel Ali My first study visit, and I did enjoy it. I really wanted to go back in again and study the pictures again but had other duties that day! Should've looked through the booklet whilst inside as it gave some explanation about reasons for groupings etc. Perhaps food for thought for next time.

  7 December at 21:22 · Like
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  Chris Lee I very much agree that it was a new insight into photographers, the history and their work. I was very disappointed that we weren't split into two more manageable groups, considering the OCA had put on two tutors. I found I couldn't contribute to the sit down afterwards as there were too many students.

  8 December at 08:14 · Like
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  Sarah-Jane Field This was an excellent study visit. I really enjoyed it and the tutors were great.

  8 December at 08:36 · Like
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  Catherine Banks Looks like a missed a good one, although I did go to the talk by Johanna Ward which was so illuminating. Good as well to know there was a large group (in one way) as it means there was lots of interest in what was on offer. Have you sent comment direct to OCA? The idea of two groups is a good one.

  22 hrs · Like
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  Claire Borlase I did enjoy it very much. What was the name of the male tutor?

  22 hrs · Like
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  Gareth Dent It was Rob Bloomfield http://www.oca.ac.uk/profile/robert-bloomfield
  

  
  

  
  

  

  
  

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V&A Museum - Disobedient objects

I'm up early this morning as I'm catching the 7.30 am train from Axminster to Waterloo (a journey of approximately 3 hours) to join an OCA study at the V&A museum in London to look at the "Disobedient Objects exhibition with tutor Christian. Any spelling mistakes are due to the early hour I need to get up.  More later.


23rd November 2014

I travelled up to London by train on Friday 21st and found the train became very crowded the nearer we got to London.  In the end people were having to stand as it was so full.

The group was met by the tutor Christian Lloyd who introduced himself and the group to each other.  There were seven or eight of us from a wide range of places, from Cornwall to north London to Austria, but all women which I have never had before.

We agreed to spend approximately an hour in what was quite a small exhibition near the front door of the museum and then repair to the cafe to eat, drink and discuss how we felt about the exhibition as a whole and what had impacted on us as individuals.

The entrance to the exhibition was lined with copies of books which had featured conflict and prejudice such as 'To Kill a Mocking Bird by Harper Lee and The Happy Prince by Oscar Wilde and other such stories.  (See image below).

The whole point of the exhibition was to highlight conflicts that had taken place both in the pas and at the present time.  The exhibits showed ways that people had done their best to thwart authority and cause disruption and political change.  These ways ranged from simple embroidered panels with hidden messages, plastic bottle masks to avoid the worst of tear gas grenades, to a death mask of a political prisoner made immediately after he had been put to death then paraded around towns under political tyranny including, would you believe, Manchester.

The death mask can be seen above the windscreen

One of the things that stayed in my mind was that of an Edwardian tea cup and saucer used to show how the emancipation of women was involved them from the lowliest up to high society families.  I know the cup and saucer is only small in this picture but it came to mean so much to so many of the population.  Even today women and girls are still fighting prejudice in all walks of life.

One of the funniest things was to see our tutor, Christian, learning to crochet balaclavas to use as a disguise when part of a demonstration.  Even he admitted it was bizarre.

Christian learning to crochet, image courtesy of Mirjam Bollag Dondi

I have been retired since 2009 but during my working life I have met prejudice especially as I have worked in mainly man orientated environments.  You are always between 'a rock and a hard place' as if you protest at the way women are treated in the work place, you're a trouble maker and if you let misogynist attitudes prevail then you are making life harder for both yourself and those women who follow on behind you.  Personally, I have never been a woman who can let prejudice go and will take any miscreant to task to make it a better more equal place for everyone.

Prior to my retirement I worked in further education for 10 years teaching IT and Communications.  I was very saddened to hear the attitudes of some of the girls in my classes (aged mainly between 16-25) and how they said they couldn't be bothered to vote.  I can only hope, even when I explained about the hard fought battle by our ancestors to get us the vote, that later in life they will exercise  their democratic right and use their vote whatever their persuasion. 

it was a very thought provoking exhibition, one that still lingers with me.  In the foyer of the exhibition was a map showing where there is still conflict around the world and it was quite an eye opener to see that there were so many areas still unable to resolve conflict in their countries.