What to do when it doesn't rain

Another beautiful day - not what I wanted so what to do?   Well its catch up time.   I have a weeks worth of photographs to process and work on so that is what I have been doing.   The subjects range from wonderings in a woodland to the recoding of roadworks at night.

One thing I have noticed is that I am making more large panorama photographs.   I know this is strange but seeing the two Crewdson's photographs at the recent Photocinima might have something to do with this.   Well thinking about it I am not sure whether this is true.  What is true is that I am thinking about buying rolls of paper for my printer so that i can print off large scale prints longer than A3+.   Mind you I think about a lot of things and rarely follow them up.  We'll have to see what happens.

Photocinema Photography Exhibition - Derby

What an interesting morning.   Both my wife and I had lots to talk about after visiting Photocinema.  It was thought provoking.  However, whether this is what the organizers wanted is another matter.   The exhibitions I viewed were:

Derby Museum and Art Gallery

Once - Wim Wanders

The exhibition is descibed as '...the director's photographic journey around the world part travel diary, photo album and photo essay...'.  The first thing to say is that I am aware of Wander's cinemagraphic work so I came cold to this series.   It is broken down into a number of different selections with a descriptive text that always started with Once...   I am not sure whether these were supposed to be poems but they left me cold.   As for the images they were really snapshots of his life.   So we saw him traveling around the world and with other well known movie directors.  For me the most interesting was the series through the Australian outback.  Although, the series of photographs from Soviet Russia were fascinating.   These recorded a refusnik protest next to the Kremlin.  I was not aware that such protests were tolerated in Russia at that time.

Locations - Steve Harries & Mel Bies

A road movie in every sense of the word.  This was a series of photographs that documented locations for famous movies of the 1970's.   One wall of the exhibition is taken over to a large map of the USA with their road trip route picked out.  There were then red tap indicating where each location was and a series stills from the respective movies.  The photographs themselves were quite ordinary.  However, taken as whole the exhibition worked as a documentary of the respective locations.  This is probably because I knew the movies and so had some reference to work from.   As individual photographs I found the Utah desert scene the most enjoyable.  This was from the film Plant of the Apes.  Here we see a large barren desert vista with a large lake in the foreground.  The image is barren apart from some large industrial complex in the fare distance that could almost be part of the movie.   This, of course, does raise the obvious question.  Why was this included as Plant of the Apes was made in the late 1960's.

Spaghetti Westerns - Aaron Schuman

This was a series of photographs that document the fading sets of the Spaghetti westerns of the 1960's.  I have to say this left me cold - much as the movies did.

Quad Gallery

Photocinema Exhibition.

This is an eclectic selection of photographs '...From film still to still film the theme for Photocinema...'  So the introduction for this exhibition starts and this is as good a description for the photographs and images on display.   There are too many artists featured in this exhibition so I will deal with those that I am aware of.  

Gregory Crewdson:

We have three large prints from Crewdson each following his usual style of ambiguity and narrative.   They do provoke a lot of  interest at initial viewing.  There just is so much information within each image.   Then you move beyond the initial impact and start to realise that the work is really just a documentation of many technicians skills that Crewdson has employed to produce the the photograph.   In the end the narrative within the image becomes meaningless.  Perhaps a better exponent of this type of image is making is Jeff Wall.

David Lynch

On the opposite wall to Crewdson is a series of photographs selected by David Lynch.  Whether this position is on purpose is deliberate or not is not made clear.   Lynch is well documented as a key influence on the work of Crewdson.  It is unclear what the photographs are trying to say - even the guide is somewhat unclear on this '...is it a homage to Alice in Wonderland?  Or a poisoned valentine to Hollywood?...'

Cindy Sherman

I always have problems with Sherman's work and this one image is no exception '..Her work examines archetypical images of women, by casting herself in the central tole of every picture...'  The reason why I mention this one image is because I am interested in self portraiture at the moment and it is fascinating to see how Sherman approaches this.  It is also worth noting that again she is an influences on Crewdson.

So what were my overall impression of the exhibitions?  In short confusing.  Many of the images were individually unimpressive but taken as a whole did have an impact.   They made me think as I walked away from the exhibitions.  So perhaps it wasn't as disappointing as I initially felt.  Indeed as we walked away from the exhibitions my wife and I spent a significant amount of time discussing the works on display.  So in that sense it was worthwhile.   This, however, does need to placed against ambiguity felt whilst viewing much of the work.

Crewdson Returns

I have started to include Gregory Crewdson into my final essay.   It is interesting how your views on images change over time.   By viewing Link's work through Crewdson's prism this does start to throw up new understanding or perhaps more confusion?   Only time will say.

Crewdson is no more

The creative process strikes.  Gregory Crewdson is no more!   Actually what it means is that as a result of the feedback I have reconsidered the essay and decided to concentrate on Winston Link.   As soon as I did this the essay started to take a much better shape and I have been able to make better use of the space available. 

More Crewdson Nonsense

Fireflies - Gregory Crewdson

The more I look at Crewdson's work the more I find I love and hate it in almost equal measure.  The hate comes from his corporate work of the last decade.  I just find Twilight and Dream House so depressing and yet so fascinating.   Love him or loath him you have got to accept that he insists on the highest production values for his images.   Note that I don't say for the images he makes because that would simply not be a correct statement.   I have spent sometime thinking about how to describe Crewdson and I think the best way to do this is 'an artist'.   I really do have difficulty seeing him as a photographer.   However, it can equally be argued that this is the point of his work - to be ambiguous and so his input and role are ambiguous.

And then I see the wonderful images contained in Fireflies and again I have to start to question my assessment of Crewdson.  These are a series of images of fireflies Crewdson tried to capture in the summer of 1996.   They are simple black and white images taken at dusk of the patterns left by the fire flies as they fly across the summer vegetation.   They are marvelous.  They look like fairies dancing in the warm summer evening.   Entrancing.   Gone are the obsession with precision and instead we have a more free flowing image of nothing more than white blobs.   They are the better for this.    I have been reading about David Shepherd's attempt to capture the last days of steam in Britain.   He claims that his beautiful oil sketches capture the atmosphere of the time in a way that photographs can't.  I am not sure this is entirely true but it does indicate what Crewdson's later images lack - atmosphere.

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Gregory Crewdson

What can I say?   I am on the trail of this photographer - if that is what he is now - and the more I look the less I like.   I thought about this in the shower this morning, the place I always think about things, and the latest idea I have about Crewdson is that he somehow symbolizes big business America.   The analogy that I am currently working on is that of George Lucas and the latest Star wars movies ( Episodes I - III) .    Here you have visually stunning imagery and digital excellence with no real heart or substance.   You find the imagery breath taking at first glance and then realise that there is no soul or story other than a weak attempt to stitch a story together that enables another magnificent set piece of digital cinematography to explode on the screen.   In the end this becomes the only reason to watch the movie and really this is just not enough.

The same can be said for Crewdson.   His images are breathtaking in their application and technique.  However, once you scratch the surface you realise that there is nothing there at all.  The soul has been bleached away by corporate approach to photography.   perhaps the best way to look at this is that in his later works Crewdson not only had director's of photography and camera operators.   It no doubt was his vision but this remoteness to the process meant that ultimately the soul is missing.

I really wonder what I will think tomorrow?  It is a fascinating exercise to examine an artists ( I no longer think of Crewsdon as a photographer) and try and work out why his work does not do it for you.   A Ho....now off to lectures.

Gregory Crewdson - I'm not sure

Gregory Crewdson, Untitled from the series 'Twilight', 2001, © Gregory Crewdson

As part of the MA course I am taking I am examining the work of Crewdson.  In many ways his work is fascinating - the use of high production value cinematography techniques to produce ambiguous images is challenging and at the same thought provoking.   The images are almost a dreamlike world, perhaps a nightmare of frozen moments taken out of their normal reality and placed before you for you to dissect.   This, of course, is where my problems start with Crewdson.  Firstly, there is his method of production.  He does not actually take the photograph but rather directs the whole process.    This leads to the question - is he a photographer?   I am still grappling with that one and have no firm answer yet.   If he was producing a movie then he would be a director/producer but not the cinematographer.  Does this mean he cannot be the photographer?   I do wish I had answer to that.  Still this is the beauty of thinking about images and trying to work out what they say to you.

The second point which really is the more important of the two points is this - do I like the photographs?   At one level it is hard not to admire the images produced.   They are works of great craft and precision.   They are produced by a whole team of technicians coming together in way that is a marvel of organisation and creative endeavor.   But this is also where the images, for me, tend to die.   They are beautiful in their creation but remain too much of a pastiche of other works.  Perhaps the best way is to compare Crewdson's work with Edward Hopper, a painter he openly admits as one of his main inspirations.  Hopper's world is a dark and less well defined one when compared to Crewdson's clinical preparation.  The mood of Hopper's work is ambiguous in a way that Crewdson's is blatant.   Perhaps this is the difference between a painting and a photograph.  A photograph always implies a clinical record of events, even as in the case of Crewdson, the events are a pure fantasy - the product of the marvelous control he has over the creative process.   The photograph always implies it records the truth.  After all ' the camera never lies'.   Any photographer knows that this is not true and the only truth that a camera records is that that photographer wishes it to do, no more no less.

I guess the only way to end this ramble is to say that I am still not sure about Crewdson.   However, the journey to find out is what the course is all about.   Here endth the rant.

I have been lost today

Campus Centre

Arrghh!   The internet crashed today.  Having spent a wonderful hour checking the network it would seem that the problem was in 'the cloud' rather than on the local network.  To think one time I thought it was really interesting to know about http or TCP/IP - thankfully no more and now all I have to worry about is when the system crashes.

The good thing about this was that it gave me time to look over some of the books I've recently bought.  I have to say I am humbled when I look at the photography in the Wildlife Photographer of the year. Now interestingly I started to compare the photographs of a snow leopard and Gregory Crewdson -both elaborate setups and yet recording a beautiful creature the other ...well I am not sure yet whether I really like Crewdson's work. ( I know this is almost a heretical comment from someone studying photography but the artificiality leaves me cold - well that is the case at the moment and things may change! Watch this space)

Emma, one of my fellow students has circulated a set of mug shots of all my fellow students.   Interesting to see how each persons sees them self.