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.

Catch up

It's been a lean time for photographic exhibitions around this part of Dorset and East Devon for the past few of months but I've found one or two that could be very interesting.

The first one, on February 7th 2017, is a presentation about a Dorset photographer, Helen Muspratt (1907-2001).  Helen was born in India in 1907 and travelled to England to settle in Swanage, Dorset.  The family were frequently photographed by Constance Ellis in Guildford who inspired Helen to take up photography as a career. The artistic community in Purbeck, who included the retired head of the Glasgow School of Art, Fra Newbery encouraged Helen to study photography at the Regent’s Street Polytechnic.  She based herself mainly in Oxford and was well known for her portrait photography.

Triple self portrait, solarised c 1932 (Helen Muspratt)

This illustrated talk is given by her daughter, Jessica Sutcliffe who has just published a book about her mother's work - Face: Shape and Angle.

Review – The Guardian Art & Design website

Review – The Guardian

This image, featured in The Guardian art and design web page, looks like an innocent set of stairs until you read that these steps led down to the gas chambers in Auschwitz.  As Simon Norfolk writes, it looks like the stairs were more worn on the right hand side than the left as the right hand side was considered the down side.  I must admit to me that the left hand side is more worn and that would mean to me that more people travelled away from the chambers that walked towards them.

 

© Simon Norfolk/Michael Hoppen Gallery

This image is a good example of converging verticals with no other connotation until you read the attached article.  This turns the whole picture into one that gives a macabre meaning.  Simon mentions that Barthes talks about quote: the punctum: the crucial, often accidental, detail of a photograph that reveals something deeper.  I have always taken this to mean that there is something like a focal point to a picture but this image doesn’t actually have one but the way the light highlights on the stairs allows the eye to travel up the left hand side and down the right side.  Altogether an historic image but also one that is a record of the atrocities that man does to man.

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2016/sep/28/photography-and-meaning-in-the-digital-age-from-911-to-fake-crime-scenes

Jane Bown, A lifetime of looking, published by Guardian Books, 2015

Jane Bown, A lifetime of looking, published by Guardian Books, 2015

(C) Jane Bown

This book, published in 2015, shows an all round set of images by an exceptional photographer.  I had to wait over 6 weeks to get a copy from my local library and there was such a wait list that I was unable to renew it to make a better study of it.

I was very interested in her quote that ‘some people take pictures, I find them’.  Jane’s images are mainly formal and reserved that allows the viewer to identify with them.  Many times I’ve looked at images by ‘famous photographers’ that completely distort the person from what would show their real personality.  Jane says, in the book, that she’s a ‘one-shot photographer and always has been’.  In fact, taking portrait pictures you have to be ready to catch a quick change of facial image which can take place in a minute.  You might well have been waiting for that image throughout the sitting and there’s only one chance to grab it.

Jane was expected to change to colour pictures in the 1960s but never really enjoyed the change as printing all her own work, she felt that there was no control over coloured images than black and white.  During my level 1 work in Portraiture my tutor compared some of my work to that of Jane’s. When I explored her work I had to agree that it was in a similar genre.

I find her portraits of people especially fascinating when they are staring straight at the camera.  This makes for a very strong image and even with her image entitled ‘Teddy Bear Exhibition’ in 1979 she had the bears staring at the camera.  It can be very difficult to catch that exact moment that makes the image and Jane captures the moment time and again.  Even her own self-portrait had her looking straight at the camera holding her own favourite camera.

  

(C) Jane Bown

 I’ve found this collection of images very strong and can identify my own portrait style, be it a formal studio setting or reportage style on the streets is very similar to Jane’s.

  

 

Pauline Rook, Professional photographer - open studio

Pauline is a professionally qualified photographer, living and working in Somerset. She specializes in portraiture but is equally well known for her rural documentary work. She has won many professional awards as well as appeared on the BBC Countryfile. Pauline’s principle passion continues to be working in the rural community in which she lives and has spent a lot of time roaming the Blackdown Hills.  Her work is very similar to that of James Ravilious who spent many years from 1939-1999 photographing farms and farmers around Devon on behalf of Beaford Arts.

Here beow is Pauline on the last day of the Somerset Open Studios week.  She is holding up one of her portraits of a local farmer who had agreed for her to take his picture.  What scared her was that he took her into his kitchen and proceeded to lock the door after her.  It all turned out okay as he just wanted to stop his animals straying into the kitchen and unlocked the door when she had finished.

Pauline Rook in her temporary studio

 

 Both images are (c) Pauline Rook 

Pauline will be showing some of her rural documentary collection at the Open Studio event in Somerset until October 3rd.  There will be some of her recent pictures taken at the sale of White Vine Farm, recent flower studies and outside some of the canvases which made up the first show at the Museum of Somerset.

Two of a Kind; Sandrine Kerfante; published by Chronicle Books; 2016

Sandrine Kerfante was not the author of the images included in this interesting little book but rather has edited pictures from a myriad list of authors.

I was more that a little surprised to find on looking through the variety of images that they consisted of more than just pictures of twins, be they children, adults or elderly people.  These images have taken a variety of scenarios where there are two items, people, shadows, etc., and put them together in an engaging way.

Images featured even include two cinema signs and two benches in front of a porch by Gaetan Rossier, duplicated shadows by Ray Carofano and two swimmers diving into a pool side by side by Florence Douyrou.

Here are some examples of the images included in this book:

(c) Aaron Ruell

(c) Matthias Heiderich

Ariko Inaoka

There are plenty of images of twins in various poses but it was quite eye opening to see such a variety of subjects put together in one book.  It has given me inspiration to try to take this subject to another level rather than just the usual female twins pictures together.

Dorset Arts and Crafts Exhibition 2016

The Dorset Arts and Crafts Exhibition is held annually in Wareham at the Purbeck School, utilising the whole school building to allow enough room to show all the exhibits at their best.

The exhibition itself had various categories including photography, original art, quilting and many other crafts.   It even included woodworking and metal work.

The photography section was my main area of interest, even though I covered the whole side looking at some most stunning craftwork.  It looked like the whole of the Dorchester Camera Club had entered work, as there were many names that I recognised having had contact with them in the past.  The pictures were wide ranging including wildlife & nature, land or seascape, monochrome, creative and an open award.  The public were allowed to vote for their favourite image over all the categories and the winner was announced at the close of the whole exhibition.