Susan Derges

I first came across Susan Derges work in Jesse Alexander's book Perspectives on Place.  I find her photographs both beautiful and fascinating.  She began her career by studying as a painter at the Chelsea College of Art and Design and then moved on to the Slade.  She later changed her medium to photography and began to experiment with cameraless techniques as she became frustrated with the fact that the camera seemed to separate the viewer from the subject.  She was always interested in abstract work and cameraless photography enabled her to pursue this, especially allowing her to connect with the natural world.  Much of her work recently has concentrated on working at night and she has combined traditional with cameraless styles, often placing her photographic paper under water and exposing it to handheld flash light.  Although viewers can distinguish what they are looking at in her images they also have a distinct abstract background.

On her website Susan Derges has transcribed an interview with David Chandler, Director of Photoworks with whom she has worked closely over the years.  In she describes her River Taw and Moon series of images as reflecting the human body as they are long and thin.  The River Taw images were made in the river at night whereas the Moon series was created in the darkroom by combining conventional  photographs of the moon taken by Derges withdirect prints of branches and water that had been vibrated by sound waves.  Her aim was to make visible the relationships between the moon, water, living matter and the human observer.  In Natural Magic she examined the 'creative' approach to science through alchemy.  She worked at the Oxford University Museum of the History of Science exploring their collections using the four elements of earth, water, fire and air.  She wanted to capture the spirit of early Renaissance experimentation.  I the River Taw and Eden work she was concerned with the ephemeral, transient nature of the world we think of as solid and predetermined.

I find all of her work fascinating, but I particularly enjoy the ethereal nature of her Moons series. They remind me of a favourite childhood Poem by Alfred Noyes: The Highwayman.

The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees.

The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas.

The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,

And the highwayman came riding -

Riding - Riding -

The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn door.

http://www.susanderges.com/

http://www.inglebygallery.com/artists/susan-derges/

http://www.rsa.ox.ac.uk/research/detail/susan-derges-natural-magic

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/171940

Chloe Dewe Matthews

I first came across the work of Chloe Dewe Matthews when she was recommended to me by a fellow student.  It was felt that the style of her landscape work, especially in the series Shot at Dawn, resembled what I was trying to achieve.  The concept behind this body of work, however, is far removed from mine except in one instance: the way the land holds a memory of past events.  I have gained inspiration from Simon Schama's Landscape and Memory for my work.  Every landscape represents a story through time, including the layered history of human activity and contact with nature described by Simon Schama in Landscape and Memory.  My body of work is based on walking which enables me to meditate on the memories and myths of past ages that the land and people hold as Simon Schama describes.  In Dewe Matthews's work she visits sites where soldiers were shot at dawn for desertion, 100 years ago during World War I.  In Sean O'Hagan's (2014) article for the Guardian he writes that " This ordinary-looking landscape is imbued with a melancholic power because of what happened there on a cold February morning in 1916. It is the place where Private James Crozier was executed."  In this series of photographs Dewe Matthews photographs many of the sites where around 1000 soldiers were shot for desertion, all 100 years later and all taken at dawn.  A hugely poignant and melancholic project.  Many of the images reflect this being taken during the winter at dawn when the light is often quiet and subdued.  In her interview with O'Hagan (2014) she alludes to her reluctance to take the series as she had no personal connection to it, but decoded that it was the opposite of war photography where the photographer bears witness to the events being recorded.  Here the photographer records the land which witnessed the events.  She felt that it was a case of having to find a new language or way of seeing.  She tells of one man she met who was born not long after an execution had happened in a yard on his family's farm.  He reports that the event lingered in the local imagination, and cast a shadow over the land and the family for years afterwards.

Fig 1

Other work tends to social documentary and includes series devoted to exploring how people worship on a Sunday, the plight of the indigenous population in Xinjiang, China (China's Wild West), A project documenting the area of the almost dried up inland Aral Sea (Aral: A Dammed Sea), A series on banger racing (Banger Boys of Britain), Hasidic Jews on holiday in Aberystwyth (Hasidic Holiday),  Curiosities, as it title says, Not Waving but Drowning - a project on sea swimming which appears as if she is in the water with the swimmer much like Andreas Muller-Pohle did in his Danube Project.

Photographers Talking.  Choe Dewe Matthews on Documentary Photography

I had heard about Chloe Dewe Mathews, looked at her work and done some research and originally posted this blog before I came across the excellent OCA production Photographers Talking featuring her talking about her work.  I found it both illuminating and enjoyable and reinforced what I had found in my earlier research.  It would be good to see other talks of this nature.  I was especially interested to hear how her world trip came about and how she selected the projects she worked on.  Below are the main highlights I picked out from her talk.

·         She talks of a slow way of photojournalism

·         As a 19 year old student she felt that she was quite inward looking and didn't have anything to say about the world.  She felt that it took 10 years to become the creative person who made the decisions.

·         Initially she worked in fine art as a sculptor and then moved into film, before becoming a photographer's assistant.

·         She felt that Documentary photography gave her a way of looking outwards and engaging with the world.  She wanted to make work that sparked interest.

·         her first project was Hasidic Jews on Holiday while still working as an assistant.  She wanted to respond to what she was seeing (family holidays) without making them seem strange or exotic.  She spent a couple of summers on the project offering images as in incentive for being photographed.

·         The next project was Banger Boys of Britain.  She discovered banger racing almost by accident and then visited races all over the south of England, enjoying the colour, light and noise.  She was entranced by the sculptural beauty of the cars

·         As she was not getting published she decided to invest £1000 putting on her own exhibition in an old car workshop.  No editors/publishers turned up, but she sold 3 images at £350 and so broke even and felt some resolution

·         She decided to on a long trip to look for projects and so flew to China and hitch hiked home over 10 months,  She wanted to slow down and look for 'different' material.  Using medium format with only 140 films also help her to slow down.  She practised editing before shooting to avoid the machine gun approach. 

·         While she was away Hasidic Jewish Holiday was published by the Sunday Times.

·         The main bodies of work to emerge from the trip were China's Wild West, Caspian and Aral: A Dammed Sea.

·         In Caspian Sea she was inspired by the landscape, colours, people and the oil industry.  She was looking for something different and was inspired by the new mausoleums in graveyards being built with the wealth from oil.  Also by the use of oil baths in a sanatorium as a health cure.  Mentioned by Marco Polo.

·         Once home the Sunday Times published the Caspian Sea work and then followed new commissions and a BJP award.  A second exhibition was funded.  Although it is good to have more work published, a gallery exhibition is a more immersive experience.  A fellowship at Harvard and a residency at St John's College, Oxford followed.

·         Shot at Dawn.  Commissioned by Oxford.  At first knew very little of WWI so a good challenge.  On fact finding trip came across the fact of soldiers shot at dawn for desertion/cowardice.  Shocked by her own lack of knowledge and also by how the facts had been covered up until fairly recently.

·         She was interested in the idea that we project onto landscapes, giving the landscape a memory.  Ref. Simon Schama.

·         There were different outcomes for the project: book, exhibitions, dedicated website, Guardian article and online site.

·         Her latest commission if from the Tate about African churches in Southwark: Sunday Service.  Interested in the shift in the visual landscape on a Sunday when the congregation are all out in their finery.

·         Again she is interested in the layering of the history of the place.  All of the churches were once industrial buildings.  There has been a shift: industrial space has  is now being used for religious space.  This work led to a Tate exhibition.

I find the way Chloe Dewe Matthews is interested in the layering of history and the way that landscape has memory in Sunday Service and Shot at Dawn fascinating.  I have used this concept in my own work, but wonder how I could do so more.  One way that inspires me is photographing the old WWII airfields that proliferate in Lincolnshire as they are now and linking this back to their war time use.  Both in my contextual studies  and my body of work I am interested in Wilderness and any form in which it still exists in Lincolnshire, thinking particularly of the Edgelands wilderness of Paul Farlely and Michael Symmons Roberts.

O'Hagan, S. (2014) Chloe Dewe Matthews's Shot at Dawn: a moving photographic memorial [online] The Guardian Available from: http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/jun/29/chloe-dewe-mathews-shot-at-dawn-moving-photographic-memorial-first-world-war [Accessed 21.3.16]

Open College of the Arts (2016) Photographers Talking.  Chloe Dewe Matthews on Documentary Photography. [online] Available from: http://www.oca-student.com/comment/81285#comment-81285 [Accessed 24.3.16]

Fig 1.  Dewe Matthews, C. (2013) Private James Crozier. 07:05/27.2.1916. Le Domaine des Cordeliers, Mailly-Maillet, Picardie [photograph] [online image] Available from: http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/jun/29/chloe-dewe-mathews-shot-at-dawn-moving-photographic-memorial-first-world-war [Accessed 21.3.16]

Bill Viola at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park

After visiting Martin Parr's exhibition at the Hepworth last Saturday it was but a short drive to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park where I was able to take in Bill Viola's video installations.

Bill Viola is an artist specializing in sound and video techniques.  There is sound in these installations, but no words or music. The exhibition which is shown in the Underground and Chapel Galleries is the biggest in the UK for 10 years, and premiers a new piece of work The Trial.  In this video, twin screens show a young couple naked from the waist up.  They suffer having a selection of different liquids deluged over them: oily and viscous, bloody (at least in colour and texture), milky and finally clear water.  Viola refers to these as 'five stages of awakening through a series of violent transformations'.  Neither person was told what was going to happen so their shock and eventual relief when it was over were real.

The above and other installations deal with birth, death and the spiritual passage from one to the other; fire and water also feature in them.

I was fascinated by The Veiling which was created in 1995 and was the earliest piece shown, being much more low-tech than the other, more sophisticated videos.  Nine sheets of muslin-like cloth are hung across a room with a projector at each end beaming nocturnal images of a man and woman. One from each projector.  The man and woman never coexist in the same video frame, only when their images intermingles in the fabric.  Intriguingly changing views are seen from the ends and different points along the sides.  It takes a while to understand what is happening.

A fascinating if, at times, difficult to understand exhibition.  Although I am  unsure if we are not just supposed to enjoy the visual spectacle rather than understand it, or perhaps it can be enjoyed on two levels.

Compton, N. (2015) Elemental Artistry: Bill Viola Unleashes a New Show at Yorkshire Sculpture Park [online] Wallpaper. Available from: http://www.wallpaper.com/art/bill-viola-unveils-new-show-the-trial-at-yorkshire-sculpture-gallery [Accessed 8.3.16]

The Rhubarb Triangle and Other Stories. Martin Parr Exhibition, The Hepworth Gallery, Wakefield.

Last Saturday it was my pleasure to visit the Hepworth Gallery, Wakefield to see the Martin Parr retrospective exhibition including his latest body of work, The Rhubarb Triangle.  I went along out of a sense of duty, never previously being a fan of his work.  However, I enjoyed it immensely.  I found the Rhubarb Triangle series fascinating and his earlier work I discovered to be incredibly observant and to have a wicked sense of humour.  Of his series on the middle classes from the 1980s a friend that I was with remarked, "Why did they let him photograph them; didn't they realise he was laughing at them!".  Having just read the paper by Eugenie Shinkle, Boredom Repition, Inertia: Contemporary Photography and the Aesthetics of the Banal in which she writes " Banality and the Banal show up frequently in accounts of the work of Thomas Ruff, Martin Parr, Richard Billingham and others;....", I was fascinated to see how observantly Martin Parr records the banality of everyday life.  It was eye-opening to overhear such comments as "I remember that...." or "We used to do that..." or we used to go ....".  These images evoke many memories in people and point out to them the humour and irony to be seen in society.  Photography in the exhibition was encouraged; I'm not sure whether this was at the behest of the gallery or Parr, himself, but I think he would have been amused at my capturing a shot of a group of girls taking a 'selfie' in front of one display next to a shot of Parr's of a man taking a 'selfie' of himself.

The exhibition begins with an ongoing series of work called Autoportrait in which a wide range of photographers have photographed Parr himself, often dressed in costumes provided by the photographer or in front of a backdrop.  These images trace the progress of technology from the days of film to the digital age and also reflect how a country wishes tourist to look at it.

At the centre of the exhibition is the new body of work, The Rhubarb Triangle.  This series is the culmination of two years work from 2014 - 2016 and resulted from a commission to document all aspects of the industry in the famous 'Triangle' between Wakefield, Morley and Rothwell in West Yorkshire, which is famous for producing early forced rhubarb.  The is often freezing, backbreaking work, but rhubarb from the area has now secured special food status.    The often very large scale prints record all aspects of the process, the buildings and most importantly the growers and pickers. As Ed Cumming (2016) said in his Guardian review, "Rhubarb may be the title, but the pickers are the stars!".  I was interested to note that the images in both this and the next section of the exhibition were often very large, printed on an oyster-type paper and just pinned to the wall, albeit with special pins.

The second part of the exhibition was entitled Work and Leisure and featured photographs taken between 1986 and 2015.  They are divided into the two groups of the title.  The first includes shots of people working to produce the goods required by the wealthy of the world.  The second group is of pictures of leisure and consumption.  They present the different ways that people choose to spend their time and money.

 Also in this part of the exhibition was part of the series Common Sense taken between 1995 and 1999.  There are 350 images altogether taken all over the world.  Although they have been regarded as kitsch, Parr feels that they document the incredibly significant and dominant shift in modern life to a culture obsessed with consumerism.  The pictures are designed to be displayed in a grid, but not necessarily all 350 at once, as here.

The Last Resort series was taken between 1983-1985 when Parr and his wife lived in Wallasey near Liverpool.  When he took these photographs he was noted for his shift from black and white to colour.  They feature  holidaymakers in the resort of New Brighton.  The work was criticised at the time for being unsympathetic to the working classes at their most exposed.  Parr felt that it was a 'political body of work' and anti-thatcherism in nature.

The earliest work represented is a series of black and white images taken between 1975 and 1980 of Non-Conformist Chapels in West Yorkshire and their congregations.  He was recording an almost lost era where people lived and worked in isolation with few modern comforts.

Whist we were at the Hepworth we visited the excellent print fair in the nearby Calder converted mill space featuring over 40 noted print makers.  The building itself was particularly photogenic.

Cumming, E. (2016) Mysteries of the Rhubarb Triangle, Revealed by Martin Parr. [online] Guardian.  Available from: http://www.theguardian.com/global/2016/jan/31/mysteries-of-the-rhubarb-triangle [Accessed 07/03/2016]

Landskipping: Painters, Ploughmen and Places - Anna Pavord

Landskipping: Painters, Ploughmen and Places - Anna Pavord

I thoroughly enjoyed this book.  Whilst being very useful and informative, it is an easy and pleasurable read; as the Daily Telegraph says 'Written by a scholar, reads like a thriller.  Pavord writes for the independent and has done since its launch in 1986.  She writes and presents programmes for BBC Radio 3 and 4 and has served on the Gardens Panel for the National Trust.  The book is a celebration of landscape and explores our relationship with it through the ages.  As well as describing her personal experiences of and response to the land she has divided the book into three main sections: Prospects and Painters, Prospects and the Plough and Prospects and Places. 

In the first section she examines how painters and artists have responded to the land over the years.  She covers some familiar ground with her discussions of the Picturesque and Sublime and their representation with particular reference to such as William Gilpin and Claude Lorraine with his 'Claude Glass' and Edmund Burke.  She also looks at how poets and writers related to the land, especially William Wordsworth.  Like many, she is critical of Gilpin and refers to his comment that 'Nature requires a helping hand' which he gave in his paintings where the view was often altered to fit his stringent rules for the picturesque.  On the Claude Glass she says that a view didn't exist until it had been mediated (by looking at it through the glass with the viewer's back to the scene).  The Claude Glass she says 'corrected' the landscape.  She is critical of 'landscape tourism', not just from Gilpin's day but from today with our 'brown signs' and viewpoints marked on maps.  She argues that we are still being told what view to look at and how to look at it.  Even a large proportion of photographers plant their tripods in the marks of those who have gone before.  I was interested when she feels that 'of all the places in our shrinking islands that can still deliver that sense of the sublime that Burke wrote about, for me is Wester Ross' and, further, 'For the sublime, you need go no further than the Applecross Peninsular and look west to the five planes of alternating darkness and light  towards the Cuillin Mountains of Skye'.  A view I have both enjoyed and photographed.

In the second part of her book she moves her attention from recorders of the landscape to those who have worked in and shaped it.  She describes how, ever since the Neolithic, man has shaped, changed and altered the land, making it it a place in which to live and feed himself.  She argues that it is a fallacy that our landscape is an entirely natural phenomenon and that even as far back as Domesday, only 20% of the country was covered in wild wood.  It did not look as it does today, but nor was it natural.  She writes about the government's Board of Agriculture set up in 1794 and those who reported back to it such as Arthur Young who published his commentaries on the state of agricultural England at the same time that William Gilpin was touring the River Wye.  She writes of William Cobbett who also reported to the Board and liked to travel slowly.  He said that 'Speed diminishes the gifts that a Journey can give you...' and 'I want to slow down the whole process, stay in touch with moving over the landscape'.  This is my view entirely and part of my inspiration for walking home from Lincoln Cathedral via the Witham Valley Abbeys.

In the final part of the book she writes about what landscape means to her and describes Dorset where she lives now and returns to her childhood landscape, where the book began: the area of South Wales near the Sugar Loaf.  She describes her walks and bemoans the plethora of brown tourists signs and notice boards arguing that 'There seems to be rather little that we are allowed to discover now, without some notice board looming up and telling us how to look, how to decode.  Interpretation of this kind is death to a natural landscape'.  Again she promotes walking as a way to discover the land '....for these messages to be heard you need to be on foot, not hurtling round the Tess (of the D'Urbervilles) trail notching off landmarks in your car'.  I was interested when she point out the OED definition of landscape: a view or prospect of natural scenery.  Natural seems to exclude any man altered land - is this not landscape too?  I liked one of her concluding remarks that 'Time is stitched into a landscape, but time is measured by different kinds of clock: geologic, historical, seasonal and diurnal'.  A fact which neatly reinforces my inspiration for experimenting with ICMs.