Still Life: Top Tips #2

When photographing dried catnip as a substitute for 'skunk' in a still life picture always, make sure that the cat is in another room...

Plant Pots Stolen In Manchester Garden Centre Heist... Only kidding it's the work of Diana Scherer...

 

I bet you've already seen the series 'Nature Studies' by Diana Scherer on the cover of  the recent copy of HOTSHOE (they dropped the 'International' bit of the title a while back I think they realised it sounded a bit wanky)

If you've not seen them have a look. This work was a long time in the planning. Over six months to catch that 'decisive moment' the moment when the plants are at their peak of flowery loveliness. A six month plus decisive moment that's interesting. Plant still life's that's an artistic tradition that takes a bit of thought to come up with something new. Scherer has taken European still life (she lives in Holland after all) eighteenth & nineteenth century specimen illustration and the art of Japanese Ikebana mixed them together and come up with something which I thought was proper fresh. A bit like the plants in the pictures. see what I did there?

Still Life: Top Tips #1

 

When photographing bottles of Blue WKD you will notice that the stuff is not actually as blue as you would think. So pour contents of bottle down the sink (it will clean your pipes) and then refill bottle with blue mouth wash. Bobs yer uncle proper blue Blue WKD..... More top still life tips to follow.

Death of The Chain stores?

Church Street Records Manchester 2009

I'm sorry for the staff, all them aging muso's still waiting for their break (a bit like me and photography) but come on! I can remember when we all hated HMV, VIRGIN and OUR PRICE for closing down all the little independent record shops. Did the telly do a vox pops when the above shop closed ?

 Perhaps with the demise of CURRY'S, BLOCKBUSTER'S and JESSOP'S It's the start of something exciting. Perhaps the business model of the chainstore is in it's death throws ? Perhaps the small independent trader will return and all our fucking high streets will stop looking the same......

Jet Set.

If like me you love to fly around the world and go to the biggest shows and drink the very fizziest Cava, THIS may be of use. I'll meet you by the Holland's pie stall at Art Basel....

Barry W Hughes

Read about this photo HERE

 To get my year of the 'still life' underway I kick off with THIS series by Barry W Hughes. Barry is a photographer, writer and founding Father of the always excellent SUPERMASSIVEBLACKHOLE web mag. I said I was going to spend the year looking at the most interesting still life photography I can find and I think these piccies are a good place to start.....

2013 Is The Year of The still Life. (at least it is for me)

So it just goes to show how full of shit I am and how you should never believe anything you read on a blog. After everything I said in the last post I am intending on spending the next year or so making that most over explored of artistic genre the still life.
It's been a stalwart of photography since the beginning I still think there's some mileage in it and I want to give it a go. I've dabbled before back in 2008 with 25 weapons . Still Life is used to deal with the big issues like mortality. Can it also be used to explore the more mundane like having tea at your Nan's?
I shall be looking at such questions as well as looking at other folk who work with still life over the coming months and posting it here suggestions on who to look at appreciated.
So far I've made two pictures I'm happy with, and above is the little stage thingy I've built to photograph the still life's on.
Mark's Still life Shopping list : Flowers, vases, bits of posh rug, black backgrounds, chalices, skulls, lemons, moths, etc etc.....

A response to Harvey Benge's Question "Documentary Photography- is It DEAD?

Harvey Benge on Sunday posted the question Is Documentary Photography DEAD? It's a question I've heard before floating around the blogs and in magazines, not as much as I've heard the question Is film DEAD? but still a fair few times. Thing is this is a far more interesting and important question than the film V digi thing, so I thought I'd have a bit of a think about it.

Myself I've always had an odd relationship to the documentary tradition even though I consider myself as a documentary photographer. I was lucky enough to have studied on a great course back in the late 90's called DOCUMENTARY & FINE ART PHOTOGRAPHY, I loved it. It was a small course run at Stockport college for LIVERPOOL JOHN MOORES UNI. Even then on that course we were steering clear of Salgado and giving Richard Billingham big love.  Tim Page was out, Simon Norfolk's more considered and reflective approach to documenting war was in.

 I've used a picture of Ray's a laugh as my example instead of The Ballard of Sexual Dependency as Harvey did. I can at least relate to working class life even if it is so dysfunctional. New York gay clubbing scene may as well be Mars. Richard became a saint on my course and early photographic education. He was authentic. He shot colour badly with crap throw away camera's the camera phones of their day. The photographs he made had a truthfulness that I think has been central to their appeal. They were originally made as records and sketches for paintings. They were not made to sell as a story or book, that came later. The blurriness harsh flash, and sometimes off kilter framing comes from limitations of equipment and technical ability of the photographer not for reasons of current stylistic fashion or saleability. We believed in "Ray's a laugh" as a truthful document and Billingham as a reliable author in part because of his originality and ability as an artist to make sense and order out of this set of chaotic images.

As Harvey says Nan Golding has recently stated regarding The Ballad of Sexual Dependency. "I am terrified that everything I believe about photography, about this work, is over because of the computer and easy manipulation of images it facilitates. This work was always about reality, the hard truth, and there was never any artifice. I have always believed that my photographs capture a moment that is real, without setting anything up...

Now, it is so distressing: no one any longer believes that a photograph is real. Almost every time I give a talk or teach, I ask this question about truth and photography. If all but four or five in an audience of two hundred artistic people don’t believe that photographs are true, then what does that say about the rest of the world? So this eliminates the larger reason for having done this book — not for me, but if nobody believes it as having happened …what is the point? The belief that a photograph can be True has become obsolete."

I think Nan's worrying unduly and doing the viewing public a dis-service. Viewers ain't thick. We are all increasingly image savvy, fuck knows we see enough of them. We believe a set of photographs from the 80's  like "The Ballard of Sexual Dependency" or a set from the early 90's "Ray's a laugh" because they look like authentic and truthful photographs from the period should look, and that's not looking like imitations of things that had gone before. Nan Golding didn't set out to replicate Diane Arbus and Richard Billingham didn't set out to replicate the look of Paul Graham or Martin Parr.
We don't believe photographs anymore not because of computers or manipulation but because of photographers conservatism and desire for commercial and perceived artistic success.

So to answer the original question is Documentary photography DEAD? my answer would be no. Much current work using traditional documentary styles that constantly rehash and repackage should die, in fact it should be taken outside and shot.
 As long as artists use photographs to document the world using original and authentic means and continue to push the definition of what a document can mean and start new and as yet unimagined documentary traditions of their own  we will continue to use forms of photographs to try and make sense and record.

Now that's the most I've wrote here in a long time I'm going to lie down......

New Cliches of Photography #31

 

Making pictures about the cliched object of the sun in amateur photography. Oh the irony! 

A Review of The David Shrigley Show at Manchester's Cornerhouse.

Back posting in the new year. New year, New work, New approaches, fuck it I may even change my profile picture........

Christmas Killip.

Last post of the year goes to Manchester based photie artist Ed Watts and his irreverent take on the work of one of this years Deutsche Borse Prize nominees Chris Killip. MERRY CHRISTMAS KILLIP can be seen HERE .

New Cliches of Photography #30

Burka babes......

Daniel Gordon

I first came across the work of Daniel Gordon when I was looking on Google for stuff by Douglas Gordon. It was a happy search engine hiccup. Appropriation. Taking images again often from online and turning them into 3D then the camera is needed to turn them back into 2D. That's the interesting thing for me, the camera is still as much an integral part of the process. Why do I like that ? is it because I love the art and craft of fine photography?  Is it because  perhaps his work can be seen to be exploring ideas such as photography's roll in the modern image savvy world  when digital imaging can take on the job of representation? Do I like his work because it is perhaps a 'kick back' at slick perfect picture making, a bit 'make do and mend' like knitting and baking. Is it because he is the Kirstie Allsop of photography?
The reason I love the work of Daniel Gordon is all of the above but mainly because he makes nuddy women out of old magazines.

Fourteen Nineteen.

People sometimes send me in submissions. I don't get as many as I did back in the photo blogging heyday which I think was a couple of weeks in 2009 but I still get some. I got one the other day from a third year student who manged somehow to use an email address I couldn't reply to. They also sent me nothing to look at and when I searched online they had no website.
That is how not to get yourself out there or how to operate in 2012. Photographers Alex F Webb and Lewis Chaplin  are frighteningly pro-active. They are two halves of the online gallery Fourteen Nineteen which they say of "we attempt to provide a sincere, engaging platform for interacting with the next generation of torchbearers for contemporary photography."  They also find time to study (Alex is still a student) they publish indie photo books counting Ryan McGinley amongst their fans and set up exhibitions. No wonder the young pups got no time to brush his hair. 

I'm tired just writing about them.

Cats.

“My wife Yoko first brought Chiro home from Kasukabe when she was just a four month old kitten.”
– Nobuyoshi Araki, Itoshi No Chiro (Chiro, My Love), 1990

Oh no I hear you scream bloody cats on the web. Get used to it, there may be a few more around here over the next couple of weeks. I love cats me. Dogs are OK but they can be prone to eat their own shit. Cats don't even like to look at theirs.
 Araki loved his cat so I'm in good company. Thought I'd make some cat work, so I've been looking at cats in Art as well as all that 'Cats in sinks' Internet shite .
 THIS series by Araki is a good place to start. It's as good as animal photography gets. "Never work with animals or kids" they say. Animals because it's hard, kids because it's Britain and you would probably get nonced off but that's a post for another day.

Anyway more cat stuff coming up. I'm just a smitten kitten me.

Andy Adams.

I may be wrong and he may eat babies but in the few dealings I've had with Andy Adams from amongst other things FLAK PHOTO he has always come over as a nice bloke. Nice bloke and dedicated and forward thinking photography bod. So it was great to listen to him on THIS talking about how photography may live on the web in the future and how that is effecting photo aesthetics. Clever stuff and a few nice tunes while you listen.

Large False Ones.

I have spent the last couple of days making a couple of giant false fingernails. It's a dirty job but someone has to do it...

Deutsche Borse 2013

Image Christina de Middel

Deutsche Borse 2013 shortlist is out. Chris Killip, Broomberg & Chanarin, Christina de Middel and fuck me Manchester's own Mishka Henner! I'm so chuffed for him, well deserved. It's a funny line up this year though. Mishka and Broomberg & Chanarin I get but I've never heard of Christina de Middel before although having spent sometime looking at her website I do like her series that she's been nominated for 'Afronauts'.  I can see some people thinking  white folk taking funky African pictures again and to be honest looking at the rest of her stuff I bet she can't believe her fucking luck, but fair play to her.

Chris killip? The old camera club chaps and clampits such as wee Sean O'Hagen are all shouting for him and as I've made clear for me he's taken one of the all time great portraits but jeez that was 30 years ago.

Jonathan Lewis

Jonathan Lewis is a facebook friend. I've not posted up his work here because of that. Oh no other way round. Fact is I really like his work and that's why I wanted to be his facebook friend. LIKE LIKE, LIKE. HERE for more.