Self in Photography

Yesterdays lecture was  strange and at times unsettling.  Mike Simmons spoke about his research and work on the subject of Self and Photography.   It was an examination of how photography can help people cope with grieving.  He found it to be especially effective with young children who had lost a parent.  Some of the art work produced by the children going through this process was especially moving.

He then went onto explore some of the tragedies in his own life.  The series of images he produced for the death of his mother were at one level very ordinary and yet when combined with the use of Lenticular technology became far more than this.  However, this was also their Achilles heal - what part did the technology play in the power and aesthetic value of the work?   He also used this technology when working with grieving family and friends of an 18 year old boy who had died on holiday.

Whilst these were interesting examples of work and an imaginative approach to making pieces of work they did raise disturbing questions - especially topical given the reality TV ending to the life of the tragic Jade Goody.   Just how far should public art intrude into private grief?  Should photographers act as some form of therapeutic arm to allow people deal with grief?  What is the boundary between private and public grief?  

In preparing the work that I have done for my project I have also discovered that the boundaries between private and public grief is changing.   Todays 'cloud' generation expect to explore much more of their lives on line.  They make friends, develop relationships and hatreds on line.  The cloud would appear to be part of their internal as well as external being.   Given this approach it comes as no surprise that I found very public outpourings with the cloud for the tragic deaths that caused the memorials I had recorded.   Ten years ago these outpourings would simply not have been there.

So where does this leave the work of Mike Simmons?  I am not sure.  On the one hand the openness he has used in the documentation and interpretation of personal grief is very refreshing.   On the other hand I still feel that there is a need to keep certain matters private.  I am aware that we all have different approaches to these matters but there is a point where the boundaries between art and therapeutic support merge and what you have left is dissolution and devaluation of both.   Ultimately there is no answer to this question and it needs to be a matter for the individual, and, with the 'cloud' generation, it may also be a generational thing.   However,  it does provide a thought provoking lecture.

Review of Practical Work in Progress (Group 1)

The rather formal nature of the title is what our second session at University is called tomorrow.   I am not sure what is required or who, for that matter, is in group 1.  I am not sure I was asleep at the time when this was mentioned.  I have emailed Mike Simmons for an explanation so no doubt I will feel somewhat embarrassed when the reply comes (I wish they would use Blackboard it would be so much easier!)

So just incase I am in Group 1 I have produced these three images/triptych to be going on with.  They are my latest thinking on the theme No Title/No Rules and represent three subject matters I am exploring at the matter: Self; Movement and Colour and Death.    Of the three the last is the most difficult - see previous posting.  However, I still feel it is an import aspect to examine when dealing with No Rules.   After all there are only two rules in life you are sure of Death and Taxes.

On a slightly lighter note I am still working with Flash but I have started to include artificial lighting as well.   I just love some of the bizarre colours you get.

Self

Movement and Colour

Death

Developing a theme

As I progress with the project No Title: No Rules I am starting to understand a little better what I mean.   Not only am I thinking about what it means to have no title but perhaps more importantly what it means to have no rules.   Rules are all about boundaries.   We hear it all the time: he stepped over a boundary; he crossed the line; I drew a line in the sand and so on.  Boundaries are an integral part of Rules.  So by exploring Rules I am also exploring boundaries.

This brings me back to last night.  The ultimate boundary is death.  This is one rule we cannot break.  One moment we are alive the next we are gone.   It is becoming clear as I work at the project and problem that this is going to become a dominant aspect.  We may create rules for ourself but there is only one rule we can never break.   When this rule is applied it effects not only the person who dies but also the many people left behind and who we had great impact on.

I suppose rules also are what make us human.  We have rules about all sorts of things.  We give these rule titles and these titles are then applied to things.  This is the way that civilisation  starts and then more rules are developed and so on  until a point is reached when the whole thing collapses in on itself.  Am I making sense yet?  I am not sure whether I am but it is an intriguing exercise to and make order out of the chaos or should say develop0 some rule and give it a title?  

Strange Day...some good and some...well

The day started so very well.   I spent the morning with David Manley, a colleague from my course.  We spent a great few hours setting up his printer and then playing around with cameras.  We also found time to put the world right.  As usual we felt better but no doubt it had little or effect on the way the world worked - no butterfly effect here!

After dark I decided to work on some more photographs for my project.   There are two floral memorials for deaths around the village that I have found very compelling images to capture.   I spent more than two hours working on the photographs and felt I had captured something interesting and well in keeping with the No Title/No Rules theme.

I then started to work on the files in my study and then read one of the notes left on the road sign of the scene of one of the fatal car crashes.   This had a deep effect on me as I read it.  I cannot see all the text but I will repeat some of what I could see here:

It's been a long year without you

The pain still lingers

Our heart ache for the person

As the pain gets harder

You light up our days with a smile

In my heart the pain is raw

No one can ever take you away.

Now I don't know who wrote those words, if they're lyrics to a song; a poem or what but they have had a profound effect on me.   It makes you question what you are doing and why.  This is someone's deep felt heartache that you are examining and I suppose to a degree manipulating.  It is also a tug at the heart to any parent - the raw pain on show can almost be tasted.

So will I continue the work?   I think the answer is yes - but now with greater humility.  This commemorates the death of a real person.  This is not some abstract that you can debate. I don't have the stomach to be unaffected anymore - my Weegee protection has gone and the sadness and hurt is felt all too easily.  A sad end to the day.

A Madonna Image

Jeffrey Silverthorne - 1972

I know this is going to sound deranged but this is one of the most moving portraits I have seen in such a long time.  I came across this in this weeks issue of British Journal of Photography.  There was an interview with the photographer Jeffrey Silverthorne and one of the photograph was this one.  The caption  reads '...Woman who died in her sleep 1972...' and that's it.   What the photograph is is the body of women who has just been sown up after a post mortum has taken place.

So why is it so moving?   Well for me the reason is the relaxed nature of her face.   She seems to be sleeping, a very warm and happy sleep.  She does not have a care in the world, her inner beauty radiating through.  Now this of course is ruddily interrupted when you look down and see the industrial sewing that has stitched her mortal remains back together.  Perhaps the most poignant yet brutal aspect of the way that the woman's right nipple has been cut in halt by the insertion and then sown back together.   Given all this violence to the body the woman still possess a beauty and stillness.   The main question is who placed her right arm up to her head?  Was the photographer or mortuary technicians?  Either way it just seems to extenuate the beauty of the women.  Is she just waking and stretching after the most refreshing sleep?

The only down side to the copy of the image I have appended to this is that the copy is not very good.   It lacks much of the delicate shades that the copy in the magazine has.  I just wonder what a good quality print would look like and how this might change the appreciation of the women.