Body of Work Assignment 2, Submission.

Assignment 2: The River

In producing this assignment I have taken account of the feedback from my tutor on assignment 1, My reflections on this (Blog Link), presenting possible work for assignment 2 to a group of level 3 students in the fortnightly 'hangout', their feedback and my reflections on this (Blog Link and also Blog Link)

Originally I had planned to base my work around either a local wood or the coast possibly inspired by the work of Eliot Porter, but my tutor felt that this was too much within my comfort zone and too scientific.  In view of this I decided to concentrate on the coexistence of nature and industry, the disused Lincolnshire Loop Railway line, now a cycling and walking route adjacent to the River Witham and I presented a possible set of images and contextual background to the Level 3 'Hangout' Group.  Feedback from this suggested that the work was too confused and that there were too many images with no clear narrative.  On reflection I felt that I was experimenting with too many themes and needed to narrow the work down considerably.  

My tutor mentioned that the scientific approach to photography uses the camera as an instrument to observe and measure the universe.  He quotes from Lars Von Trier who said 'The universe within yourself is much more interesting than the one around you.'  In working on this assignment I have been looking within my own universe at my personal memories and journey through life and have used both the river and Alfred, Lord Tennyson's poem The Brook to illustrate that.  Although this is a series of traditional landscapes taken individually, like Alec Soth, I feel that they should be looked at as a whole to tell a story; that of both myself and the river.  Unlike Soth's images in Sleeping by the Mississippi, I feel that mine are sequenced and have a clear narrative.

My body of work for Assignment 2 is about The River Witham.  It rises in the limestone hills of the Lincoln Edge close to the village of South Witham, flows north and then north east as a fast flowing, chalk stream to Lincoln, where it enters the Brayford Pool.  This is the end of the navigable part of the river and, since Roman times was a hive of industry with wharves, warehouses, mills, breweries and factories, including the nearby vast ironworks of Clayton and Shuttleworth.  The river leaves The Brayford by passing under the medieval High Bridge, the oldest bridge in the UK,  which still has buildings on it. (Nicholson pp 63, 68, 2006)  From Lincoln, after flowing through the Lincoln Gap, where it cuts through the soft limestone, it changes direction and flows first east and then south to Boston, where, after passing through the Great Sluice, it becomes tidal and flows out to sea into the Wash.

I grew up on the banks of the Witham; travelled to Lincoln, Boston and Kings Cross on steam hauled and, later, diesel trains, fished in it, collected train numbers by it, ran in cross-country races beside it and swam in it.  Inspired by the Lincolnshire poet laureate, Alfred, Lord Tennyson's poem, The Brook, I see the river as a metaphor for life; mine and the river's. Tennyson's lines from the poem 'men may come and ,men may go, but I go on for ever' are a particularly poignant reminder of the transience of human life, when compared to that of the river as it flows out to sea to continue its infinite life.  The other lines in the poem speak of the present physical life of the river: its source, its time as a fast flowing young river, its sedate middle age and, finally its old age as it enters the sea, eventually to be reincarnated as another river somewhere else.

Not only does the river have its own current life, it has been influenced by the hand of man for over 2000 years.  More prehistoric weapons and tools have been found in the Witham than any other UK river, apart from the Thames (The Collection, Lincoln). 2500 years ago the river may have been regarded as a sacred place by the people who lived here.  Perhaps the still, marshy pools with their reflections may have acted as mirrors to the heavens or as portals to the underworld.  These tools and weapons, many beautifully decorated, were not just thrown away, but deliberately placed there as offerings to the gods or for the leaders to demonstrate their wealth (The Collection, Lincoln).  Some of these treasures can be seen in the Collection in Lincoln, including the Fiskerton Log Boat, but the most famous is the Witham Shield made of iron, inlaid with bronze, now in the British Museum (although there is a replica in The Collection).

Following the iron age came the Romans who used the river for navigation and improved it from Lincoln to Boston.  Trading continued through the medieval period (Boyes and Russell pp 256-257, 1977) and canalization and drainage of the adjacent fens began in the 1700s culminating in the construction of the Great Sluice at Boston, below which it was tidal (Boyes and Russell p 261, 1977). The railways came in 1848, gradually taking over from river transport (Boyes and Russell p 266, 1977). The steam packet service between Lincoln and Boston took a tedious 6 hours, whereas the train took an hour and twenty minutes.  The Stamford Mercury referred to it as an 'Annihilation of Time and Space' (The Collection).  In their turn, though, the demise of the railways came in the 1960s as a result of the cuts made by Chair of British Rail, Dr Beeching.  Today, although Boston Docks still serves as a port, commercial traffic has ceased above the Great Sluice and the only traffic consists of pleasure boats.  The disused railway line between Lincoln and Boston is now used for leisure and forms the Water Rail Way for cycling and walking and is part of the Viking Way long distance footpath.

This assignment illustrates the journey of the river from source to sea. I have been fortunate in life and have had a happy childhood, successful career, marriage and family and now a contented retirement.  I think that the images in this assignment reflect that, being picturesque, traditionally composed and largely taken in favourable lighting conditions. 

Whilst photographing for this assignment I have researched photographers who have, themselves photographed rivers: Alec Soth's Sleeping by the Mississippi (2004), Jem Southam's The Red River(1982-1989) and Andreas Muller-Pohle's The Danube Project (2005-2006).  I have recorded my observations about these photographers in my blog under Reading and Research 17. 18 and 19.  I find that each of them has relevance to my work and have found inspiration from them,  more especially for how I intend to develop the project. 

In some ways, the summer has not been the ideal season to start this project as conditions have meant that it has always been easier to photograph in the picturesque.  That said, I think that, like many photographers, picturesque photography: favourable lighting with traditional composition, is ingrained into me, something I intend to address in later assignments, although for this assignment I feel that the style enhances the narrative documentary format of the project at this stage, which is what I wanted to portray.  My reading and research has led to an interest in a comparison of the picturesque, sublime and topographic, non-aesthetic photography.  I intend to develop this body of work by photographing the river over the winter and Spring and even choosing to go in inclement weather, looking for overcast and wintry conditions, especially with fog and mist.  I am interested in the prehistoric sacred history of the river and to that end intend to experiment with long exposure black and white images and Intentional Camera Movement in order to evoke some of the mystery of times long past and hidden and also to look for the reflections that inspired The Celts to make offerings of their weapons.  In the same way that Alec Soth and Jem Southam photographed their rivers without, in some instances, showing it, I would like to pursue the theme of a sacred river by photographing the abbey remains and earthworks that abound in the Witham Valley.  The other side of the coin is Andreas Muller-Pohle who actually photographed from within the river, an aspect I am considering pursuing.

Research into the work of painters depicting the Witham has also been useful and I have recorded this in my blog under Reading and Research 20.

The Brook; Alfred, Lord Tennyson

I come from haunts of coot and hern,
I make a sudden sally
And sparkle out among the fern,
To bicker down a valley.

By thirty hills I hurry down,
Or slip between the ridges,
By twenty thorpes, a little town,
And half a hundred bridges.

Till last by Philip's farm I flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on for ever.

I chatter over stony ways,
In little sharps and trebles,
I bubble into eddying bays,
I babble on the pebbles.

With many a curve my banks I fret
By many a field and fallow,
And many a fairy foreland set
With willow-weed and mallow.

I chatter, chatter, as I flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on for ever.

I wind about, and in and out,
With here a blossom sailing,
And here and there a lusty trout,
And here and there a grayling,

And here and there a foamy flake
Upon me, as I travel
With many a silvery waterbreak
Above the golden gravel,

And draw them all along, and flow
To join the brimming river
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on for ever.

I steal by lawns and grassy plots,
I slide by hazel covers;
I move the sweet forget-me-nots
That grow for happy lovers.

I slip, I slide, I gloom, I glance,
Among my skimming swallows;
I make the netted sunbeam dance
Against my sandy shallows.

I murmur under moon and stars
In brambly wildernesses;
I linger by my shingly bars;
I loiter round my cresses;

And out again I curve and flow
To join the brimming river,
For men may come and men may go,
But I go on for ever.

References and Bibliography

Alexander, J. (2015) Perspectives on Place, London, Bloomsbury

Bate, D. (2009) Photography, The Key Concepts, London, Bloomsbury

Boyes, J. & Russell, R. (1977) The Canals of Eastern England  London, David and Charles

British Waterways, Lincolnshire County Council and the Environment Agency information boards

Hunt, N. (2014) Walking the Woods and the Water, London, Nicholas Brealey Publishing

Leigh Fermor, P (1977) A Time of Gifts, London, John Murray

Leigh Fermor, P. (1986) Between the Woods and The Water, London, John Murray

Muller-Pohle, A. (2005/06) The Danube River Project [online] andreas mullerphole website.  Available from: http://www.muellerpohle.net/projects.html [Accessed 27.10.15]

Nicholson(2006) Nicholson Waterways Guide (Vol 6) London, Harper Collins

Sloth, A. (2004) Sleeping by the Mississipi [online] Alec Soth website Available from: http://alecsoth.com/photography/?page_id=14 [Accessed 27.10.15]

Southam, J. (1982-1989) The Red River [online] Landscape Stories website. Available from:

http://www.landscapestories.net/issue-12/ls_12-001-jem-southam-the-red-river?lang=en [Accessed 25.10.15]

Tennyson, A. The Brook

The Collection, Lincoln

Images

The river rises in the limestone village of South Witham.  Often in the summer it is dry.

By the time it reaches North Witham it has become a shallow stream.  I come from haunts of coot and hern, I make a sudden sally.

It soon chatters past Colsterworth and Woolsthorpe, home of Isaac Newton.

I chatter over stony ways in little sharps and trebles.

At Claypole by thirty hills I hurry down, or slip between the ridges, By twenty thorpes, a little town, And half a hundred bridges.

I bubble into eddying bays, I babble on the pebbles

'Till last by Philips's farm I flow, 

At last as the Witham enters Lincoln it is time to join the brimming river.

In Lincoln the river enters the Brayford Pool with its famous view of the city's magnificent cathedral.

Once a hive of industry with commercial boats, mills and warehouses, it is now home to leisure craft, restaurants, cinema and university.

As it leaves the Brayford, the river passes through the Glory Hole and under High Bridge, the oldest bridge in the UK that still has buildings on it.

Stamp End Lock, one of three on the navigable section of the river.  Here it says goodbye to the city.

 Once the city is behind, it becomes a larger, more lowland river. With many a curve my banks I fret, By many a field and fallow, And many a fairy foreland set, With willow-weed and mallow.

It is near here that Celts over 2000 years ago made offerings of swords, shields and boats, perhaps thinking that the reflections were a portal to another world. For men may come and men may go, But I go on for ever.

Bardney, the second of the river's locks to manage river traffic.

Bardney Bridge with sugar beat factory beyond.

The river from the bridge.

Once a large local employer, Bardney Sugar Beat Factory now stands empty and disused.

Black Horse Bend, in times past a favourite match fishing venue.  Now anglers prefer commercial ponds.  I wind about, and in and out, With here a blossom sailing, And here and there a lust trout, and here and there a grayling.

The Witham from the new Kirkstead Bridge with the disused station of Woodhall Junction and the Water Rail Way to the left.

My childhood haunt, where I used to spend much time fishing and swimming. And here and there a foamy flake, Upon me as I travel, With many a silvery waterbreak, Above the golden gravel.

Three ways to cross the river: the old ferryman's cottage, the original bridge, built in 1794 and the modern bridge behind.

Leisure craft are more likely to be found on the river now, rather than commercial traffic or anglers.  I steal by lawns and grassy plots, I slide by hazel covers; I move the sweet forget-me-nots, That grow for happy lovers.

The river reaches Chapel Hill and approaches Boston and the sea. I slip, I slide, I gloom, I glance, Among my skimming swallows; I make the netted sunbeams dance, Against my sandy shallows.

 Boston marina with the famous Boston Stump in the background.

 'The Stump', railway bridge and Grand Sluice.

The river and Grand Sluice from the top of 'The Stump'.  The Grand Sluice separates the tidal and non-tidal parts of the river.  Locks in the sluice still continue to allow boats to pass.

Fishing boats old and new rest on the mud at low tide in 'The Haven'.

The Port of Boston, still a commercial port, but past its former heyday.

A fishing boat passes down The Haven at sunrise.

Finally the Witham reaches the end of its 80 mile journey and flows out into The Wash at sunrise.  And out again I curve and flow, To join the brimming river, For men may come and men may go, But I go on for ever.........

Victor Burgin: Looking at Photographs

Victor Burgin is a British photographer, artist and writer who came to the fore as a conceptual artist in the late 1960s and was noted for being a political photographer of the left who liked to fuse words with images.  Looking at Photographs is the sixth chapter in his 1982 book Thinking Photography.

Main points and observations (in yellow).

• It is nearly impossible to pass a day without seeing a photograph.  Perhaps more true today than in 1982 especially in the era of smart phones with cameras.  More photographs are taken every day on phones than were taken in the first 100 years of photography.
• Photographs are used to sell, inform, record and delight.
• Previously it had been unusual to view photography in the light of art.  Really?  Is this so today.
• Photography tends to be placed between painting and film, but is different to either.
• Generally paintings and films are viewed voluntarily but photographs are thrust upon us and seen involuntarily.
• After the 1960s semiotic studies (study of signs) radically reorientated the theory of photography.
• A photograph is rarely seen without a caption or title. Interesting as I have used captions for my work in Assignment 2.
• Photographs are texts inscribed in terms of photographic discourse, but they need to be read in conjunction with previous texts (Knowledge?) that are taken for granted.
• These prior texts serve a role in the actual text but do not appear in it.  We use previously gained knowledge or information to help read an image but do it instantaneously and subconsciously.
• Treating the photography as an object/text, classic semiotics showed that the notion of the purely visual image is nothing but an Edenic fiction.  No photograph is just a visual image there is always a hidden implicit text to be read.
• The signifying system of photography, like that of a classical painting, depicts a scene and also the gaze of the spectator - an object and a viewing subject.
• A photograph has a point of view and also a frame.  Reference Stephen Shore.
• The frame organises the world into a coherence, which it actually lacks.
• Unlike puzzle photographs of the 'What is it?' type, with most photographs we see this decoding takes place instantaneously, unconsciously and naturally, but it DOES take place.
•  Jacques Lacan: between its sixth and eighteenth month, the infant, which experiences its body as fragmented, uncentred, projects its potential unity, in the form of an ideal self, upon other bodies and upon its own reflection in a mirror; at this stage the child does not distinguish between itself and others, it is the other.(separation will come later through the knowledge of sexual difference, opening up the world of language, the symbolic order) The idea of a unified body necessary to the concept of self-identity has been formed, but only through a rejection of reality (difference).(The mirror phase as formative of the function of the I 1968)  Jaques Lacan cropped up recently when discussing another student's work to which he has given the title 'Where nothing is real' referencing Lacan's work on The Real.
• There are four basic types of 'look' in a photograph: The look of the camera as it takes the photograph, the look of the viewer, the looks exchanged by people in the photograph and the look the subject may direct to the camera.
• Photographs are deployed so that we don't look at them too long.
• An average of 10 seconds was devoted by individuals when looking at any single painting in a gallery.  Really!!!  This is the average shot length in classic Hollywood cinema.
• When looking at a photograph the eye/I cannot move within it, it can only move across it to the points where it encounters the frame.  Reference Stephen Shore The Nature of Photographs p. 84.
• Good composition is a device to keep the eye within the frame.

I felt that this was an interesting chapter that reinforced quite a bit of what is in Stephen Shore's book The Nature of Photographs.  It also touches on work covered in the first part of the Contextual Studies part of the course.  Although interesting, I found it very wordy and I had to go over it several times to pick out the meaning.

Stephen Shore: The Nature of Photographs

In this book Stephen Shore looks at the different levels of looking at and reading photographs using both his own work and that of other photographers, both historical and contemporary.

Main points and observations (in yellow):-

• Asks the question 'What are the charachteristics of photographyu that establish how an image looks?'
• Explores how photographs function.
• A photograph can be explored on different levels:

1. The Physical level; a physical object: print (or digital image on a screen perhaps)
2. The Depictive level
3. The Mental level

The Physical Level

• The physical qualities of the print or monitor determine the visual qualities of the image.
• They are flat, static and bounded by edges, i.e. the frame
• The type of black and white emulsion determines the hue and tonal range of the print and the type of base texture.  This doesn't work for digital images on a screen unless they are digitally printed but does the same hold true then?  How can we compare digital printing paper with old style wet printing paper?
• Colour extends the photograph's palette.
• Colour is more like how we see.  It has added description because it shows the colour of a culture or an age.  The included example by Anne Turyn was taken in 1986 but the colours suggest the 1960s.  This can easily be done digitally now as I did with my second set of images for assignment 2.
• The tonal range of a black and white print is affected by the emulsion of the paper and the chemistry of the film and developers.  Digitally this can be altered in processing and printing software.
• As an object a photograph has its own life in the world.

The Depictive Level

• Photography is an analytical discipline
• A painter starts with a blank canvas and builds a picture.
• A photographer works the other way round, starting with a muddled world and selects a picture - vantage point, framing, decisive moment, selecting a plane of focus.
• A photograph depicts an aspect of the world.
• On the depictive level there are four ways in which the world in front of the camera is transformed into a flat image: flatness, frame, time and focus.
• They are the means by which photographers express their sense of the world.

Flatness

• A 2D image can be made to have an illusion of depth
• Some photographs are opaque - the viewer is stopped by the picture plane.  No apparent depth created by perspective. eg Thomas Struth page 45.
• Some are transparent - the viewer is drawn through the surface into the illusion of the image.  Perspective.  Thomas Struth p. 46/7
• The point of view affects the image significantly

Frame

• A photograph has edges, the world does not.
• The edges separate what is in the picture and what is not.  Can be altered post capture either under the enlarger or digitally.

Timing

• Timing can be short and freeze movement or lengthy and blur the image.
• The Decisive moment.  Planned or happy accident?  Now much easier with the ease of continuous shooting.  Was possible before with motor drives on film cameras, but expensive.

Focus

• Depth of field determines how an image looks.
• View cameras with bellows allow the plane of focus to be manipulated.  As do the latest tilt and shift lenses.
• The point of focus concentrates the viewer's attention.

The Mental Level

• When reading a photograph, our eyes do not refocus as the image is flat/2D.
• It is our mental focus that is shifting
• The mental level elaborates, refines and embellishes our perceptions of the depictive level.

John Bulmer, Ivor Innes and Agnieszka Szczurowska at The Hull International Photography Festival 2015

This was my second visit to The Hull International Photography festival as I wanted to see a couple of things I missed the first time round at the central library: John Bulmer's The North and an exhibition of Food Photography.

John Bulmer: The North
John Bulmer helped pioneer British photojournalism and his work for the Sunday Times in the 1960s and 1970s has been collected into a book entitled 'The North'.  The exhibition blurb tells us that Bulmer was a leader in colour photography in the 1960s and, in this, was far ahead of such photographers as William Eggleston and Martin Parr.  For this project he deliberately chose to photograph in winter or wet weather, something I am considering in order to further develop my body of work on the River Witham.
The work in this exhibition is a mix of colour and black and white images simply and uniformly displayed against white mounts and in narrow black frames.  It documents life in the north of England during the 60s and 70s.  There are some very familiar fashions, especially the platform shoes worn by one of the men.  They portray the 'gritty north' in the raw.  I like the fact that they are taken in wet and wintry weather as it enhances the feel of that grittiness, as does the fact that some of the black and white shots are very grainy - real grain not digitally enhanced grain or noise.
I particularly like the black and white image of a bent old lady in clogs and the small boy going to the toilet in the gutter of a cobbled street.  The women's beehive hairstyles and curlers are very evocative of the era.

Food Photography

Innes Photography
Innes Photography was created by Donald Innes in 1947 in Hessle, Hull.  Donald's son, Ivor joined the company in 1971 and the team are still working in the same building.  They specialise in food photography, focusing on packaging for major supermarkets, companies and household brands.
Some of their work features in the exhibition comprising large scale canvases of mouth watering foods and kitchen utensils.  One could be in an M&S food advert - excellent still life work.

Agnieszka Szczurowska
Agnieszka takes a different approach.  Her work is inspired by that of group f64, in particular Edward Weston's images of peppers and nautilus shells.  Her 'Westonian Series' stimulates the imagination in a new way by presenting food items unconventionally.  The subjects are simple, yet their presentation attempts to give them new life and new meaning.
The images are very rich black and white with no mount and in simple, narrow black frames.  I think this enhances the atmosphere and mystery of the photographs.  They have been photographed on a shiny surface so there is a faint but definite reflection of each subject as part of the image..  They are all fruits or vegetables but some of them could be anything from gnarled hands to rocks.  I really like the low key detail and the depth of field, especially in the garlic bulb has been well employed.  A clump of mushrooms has absolutely fantastic detail with a rich deep black background.  A gourd, or is it a fruit, could be a deep sea creature.
I thought these photographs were amazing, reminiscent not only of the work of Edward Weston, but also the still life images of Robert Mapplethorpe.  They have inspired me to experiment myself.

Possible Images for Assignment 2

My body of work for Assignment 2 is about The River Witham.  It rises in the limestone hills of the Lincoln Edge close to the village of South Witham, flows north and then north east as a fast flowing, chalk stream to Lincoln, where it enters the Brayford Pool and then  flows first east and then south to Boston, where after passing through the Great Sluice it becomes tidal and flows out to sea into the Wash.

I grew up on the banks of the Witham; travelled to Lincoln, Boston and Kings Cross on steam hauled and later diesel trains, fished in it, collected train numbers by it, ran in cross-country races beside it and swam in it.  Inspired by the Lincolnshire poet laureate, Alfred, Lord Tennyson's poem, The Brook, I see the river as a metaphor for life; mine and the river's. Tennyson's lines from the poem 'men may come and ,men may go, but I go on for ever' are a particularly poignant reminder of the transience of human life, when compared to that of the river as it flows out to sea to continue its infinite life.

I have edited 270 photographs down to 31 for this assignment but have produced them in two versions.  The first set are straight images, whereas the second I have used the 'aged photo' preset in Lightroom to give them an old feel as if I had just discovered them in my parents' attic.  The idea behind this is that this project alludes to my life and personal memory and I wonder if the aged photo look might evoke this idea.

Captions and references to The Brook are to be added later.

Set 1 straight images

Set 2: Aged Photos

sss

At the moment my inclination is to use the first set as what I am trying to achieve in this assignment is a set of photographs that speak of the river's journey and past history and also of my memory and journey through life, but in a narrative documentary style.  The second set, whist being appealing, I feel represents memory and the past but not the documentary current story of the life of the river.  Either way Tennyson's The Brook will be the linking theme.