Exhibition Visit, OCA Study Weekend. Brighton Biennial; Beyond Bias- Reshaping the Image

I had the great pleasure of attending the OCA Study Visit at the Brighton Biennial over the weekend of 15th - 16th October.  I found it a whirlwind of a weekend, intense, stimulating and full on with lots of fascinating discussions; by 2.30 on Sunday I was exhibitioned out.  The title of the Biennial was Beyond the Bias - Reshaping the Image and it focused on identity and image as influenced by the  photography.  The brochure informs us that the festival explored photography's role in defining and informing our understanding of subjects such as:gender and sexuality, the representation of the body, the politics of style, subcultures and the subversion of social and cultural norms.

Reimagine, University of Brighton Galleries.
This was a joint exhibition by British photographer Olivia Arthur and Indian photographer Bharat Sikka.  They have collaborated to work with the LGBTQ+ communities in Mumbai and Brighton to explore the presentation of self-image in relation to the body, gender, sexuality and fantasy.  Unfortunately we were not allowed to photograph in this gallery, but before we began Jesse asked us to consider it from three stand points:-

• how the images explore stereotypes
• how the differences and similarities of the two practitioners shape our view
• to consider the framing, hanging and curation of the images.

Olivia Arthur's work was in black and white.  They were a mix of very large prints in wood frames with no mount, with smaller images printed on aluminium. The framed images were in vertical format, whilst the dibonded prints were horizontal. Some were stuck directly onto the wall.  Bharat Sikka's images were large colour prints mounted on either PVC or aluminium  Captions gave very little information (just name and place) and gave no clue as to gender or sexuality leaving the viewer to make up their own mind or to ask questions of the images.  If we didn't know the context in many cases would we actually know that the sex/gender of these people were not as they appeared or in the case of couples would we know in some cases that they were not heterosexual couples.  I wondered whether they should be classified as portraits or documentary images, but then again there is a blurring of genres today and they could be both or neither.  My impressions were that these were people who were happy with their own sexuality, although, in the case of Bharat's images one or two of the subjects gave the appearance of being ill: Tony and Kelly.

I suppose if I am honest, although I have no experience of Mumbai, these images did fit with what we are told to expect of Brighton.  I had not visited before, though, and I have to say I found it a fascinating and vibrant city.

I thought that the exhibition was well curated and the pictures well-presented and hung.  Having the work of the two photographers separated worked; it might have been confusing to mix the colour and black and white.  I approved of the captioning as it allowed us to form our own opinions and to ask questions of the images.  I thought that the text slide show was a good idea.  It was interesting and added something and didn't detract from the show, providing, of course, that we looked at the images first.

Fashion Shows
This exhibition, created as a 'cabinet of curiosities' by British photographer Nigel Shafran.  The show comprised imagery from a range of eras and it was fascinating trying to age them.  On display were model cards and vintage beauty treatment manuals.  The agency advertising model cards showed a large number of pouting and smouldering looks and flyaway hair - what we expect of models.  These were stuck directly to the wall with no gaps between.  The models have all adopted a certain way of looking.  The wall-papering table for the paper folds was an intriguingly low tech display.

The Dandy Lion Project - University of Brighton Galleries, Edward Street.
This exhibition displayed over 150 images by more than 30 photographers.  It explored the Black Dandy phenomenon.  It highlights young black men in cityscapes, defying stereotypes of black male identity by a fusion of their Edwardian-era clothing with traditional black African flamboyance.  I was reminded of the way African tribal men get done up in all their finery for special occasions such as the Gerewol ceremony of the Wodaabe tribe in Saharan Niger who dress up to display in front young unmarried girls to try to win wives.

The images in the exhibition were largely in colour and mounted either on PVC or aluminium or straight onto the wall in vinyl strips like fellow student Stan Dickinson's in his SYP exhibition in Sheffield.  Some of the young men could have been models posing for a fashion magazine, others were more natural. Upstairs there was a mix of colour and black and white mounted on foam board (?) I felt that there was a great deal of humour in this show.  All of the subjects seemed to be really enjoying what they were doing - this is my identity and I am proud of it.  They all appeared super confident and the images suggested a positive outlook.

Brett Rogers - Desert Island Photos
I really enjoyed this interesting take on the BBC's Desert Island Discs.  It was just a pity that I found it hard to hear.  At the beginning we were all asked if we could hear, but then the speakers seemed to drop their voices as they were having a conversation with each other. Also they were sitting down at our level.  It would have been so much better had they been using microphones and on a raised platform.  This only slightly took away from the enjoyment, though.  Perhaps I should have taken my hearing aid. ;-)

Brett Rogers is Director of the Photographers Gallery in London and was being interviewed by Stephen Bull, course leader for photography at Brighton University.  She had chosen 8 photographs about which she spoke.  She said that all of the images had a personal or professional meaning to her.  Her selection of photographers was:-

• Far Godwin

Rogers has always admired Fay Godwin who came to photography late in life and was a personal friend.  She brought literature and poetry together with photography.  The only woman working in landscape at that time, she was determined to bring her own voice to the subject.  The image shown was taken at Pett Levels where she lived and where Rogers knew well.  She was in the Robert Adams tradition of campaigning photography.

• Madame Yevonde

She was an early pioneer of colour, a feminist and suffragette.  She examined the role of women in society.  She was radical in composition and lighting.

• Max Dupain

The image chosen from the work of  this Australian photographer  was the black and white The Sunbaker .  It is a poster from 1975 and is reminiscent of a Henry Moore sculpture.  It was suggested that the beach represents the space between nature and culture.

• Dianne Arbus

Brett Rogers showed a typical Dianne Arbus image of a disabled boy in a park.  She felt that it sums up Arbus's work.  Rogers feels that her work is something of a self-portrat and she could have chosen any of her images.

• David Goldblatt

The image chosen from the work of South African photographer David Goldblatt, known for his portrayal of South Africa during apartheid is one of white boy with his black nursemaid, The Father's Child with his Nursemaid. Rogers was interested in the power relationship in the image where the boy stands behind the seated figure of his nursemaid with his hands on her shoulders.  She finds the relationship unsettling.

• Karen Simmons

This is a colour photograph, reminiscent of a Dutch still-life of contraband food at JFK airport from a series America, Uncanny and Unfamiliar.

• Sally Mann

This is an image of her daughter smoking a (a fake) cigarette looking older than her years.  Her sister is beside her with back to the camera as is her brother further back on a pair of stilts.  This from a controversial series on her children which had Mann banned from the UK and the Photographers Gallery nearly shut down for displaying the work..  Although unsettling, Rogers feels that it is fantastic work and should be shown.  The suggestion is that the younger children are looking back to childhood while the girl of the main subject looks forward to adulthood.  This is a performance photograph with the children acting for the camera.

• Anonymous

The final photograph is by an unknown photographer and was acquired from a fleamarket.  It is of cross-dressing army personnel in a POW camp.

When asked which ONE image she would keep to take to her desert island Rogers was unequivocal in answering Fay Godwin as there were so many personal memories.

Fabrica - Kick Over the Statues.  Ewan Spencer
This show by Ewan Spencer, who graduated from the University of Brighton in 1997, was in the interesting space of a disused church in the centre of Brighton's Lanes.  It is a celebration of youth and music culture in the UK and from around the world.  His work is used in both the magazine and music industries and has been published in books.  The images in this exhibition were taken along the route of the Notting Hill Carnival and in Liverpool.  Instead of a gallery display of images this installation recreates the way in which photography is often encountered in a modern city with large format images posted onto custom built billboards.  There is also a video and music presentation.  Lighting is designed to look like streetlights.  The viewer is directed round a route through the billboards in the way we might walk through narrow streets.  I thought it worked well, although fellow students suggested I was showing my age when I had soon had enough of the music (?).  The way the work was presented reminded me of the way Paul Gaffney had displays his images of walking and was something I have in mind when it comes to exhibiting my own work.

The Regency House.
We had a fairish walk in the rain to reach this location, but it was worth it for the location alone; I could have brought the doors home with me.  There were three separate exhibitions here; two on the ground floor and one upstairs.

• DIY Dreams, Tom Heatley.

This exhibition explored the theme of home improvement by using a series of photographic installations and sculptures.  This celebrated something that we all do in our own homes and it showed great attention to detail.  It was very quirky and imaginative. and demonstrated yet another way to display photographic work.

• Architecture is the Art for the Ages, David Sterry

David Sterry is an architect as well as a photographer and this body of work is about buildings, their massing, the streets they are in and the spaces in between.  These were very large rich black and white prints in white box frames with floating mounts; yet another way of displaying work.  These images appealed to me.

• Selected Works, Sam Laughlin

The main body of this work - slow time - is a reflection on natural forms: flora, fauna, landscapes and the quiet processes that happen within them.  Sam says that the work is an attempt to reach an understanding, which though informed by ideas from geology and ecology, is open to interpretation.  He says that the title denotes both the nature of the subject and his approach to it: processes which take place slowly, and a slow way of looking at them.  Alongside this series was another - nests - which is a study of animal architecture and in this Sam collaborated with ecologist Prof. Nick Davies.

The black and white images were stuck straight onto the wall.  I was intrigued by this work with it's depiction of natural forms.  Sam says that he used basic film techniques and old equipment, one lens even having mould growing in it.  He bought all of the boards and lighting and installed and curated the work himself.  The one aspect I was not so sure about was that he had gone for a low contrast approach.

The nest images were all of the same species (reed warbler I suspect?) and all the same basic structure, yet all different in a similar way to Bernd and Hilla Becher's work.

My main reflection is that there was an awful lot to take in here and I wonder if it would have been more punchy with less work.  Sometimes less is more.

Day 2
Day 2 began with a group crit. which I have written about elsewhere.  After lunch we moved onto an exhibition in the Photofringe at the Phoenix Gallery where we saw the work of Dana Ariel.
Encountering Perforated Ground, Dana Ariel
This is a series of landscapes taken in Israel and Palestine that have been hand printed by Ariel herself.  There was a mix of formats, some having white frames and printed on semigloss.  These had a white border, but were not mounted.  The frames were shallow box frames.  Two very large vertical format images were printed on a very thin paper or tissue and hung simply from pins/magnets.  There was one very large panorama that had been printed on either aluminium or PVC.  There were no captions to these images which allows the viewer to form their own opinion and ideas as to the narrative, but there was also a slide show of text for the viewer to gain more information should they choose.  Most images were in colour, but there were one or two in black and white.

Ariel says that they were taken between 2014 -2016 and tell a story of political erasure and displacement.  She had repeatedly visited two villages on the border between Israel and Jordan and, although the villages do not appear in the photographs, the images are of the journey to get there.  I was struck that like my work they featured paths and tracks.  The land here is of edgelands, perforated ground and disputed territory.

Also featured in this exhibition was a book, Hannich Forest (erased), which I felt had particular reference to my work.   This 2016 book of etchings contains 17 prints which record the erasure process of a copper plate.  The book begins with an etching of a forest path disappearing into the distance like many of my current images.  On succeeding pages the image becomes first successively darker until almost totally black and then lighter again.  My expectation was that we would finish with the original image but, no, just a blank page, which left much open to conjecture.  I looked at this book with Clive soon after he had commented on my prints that I had taken for the crit.  We both commented on the similarity with my work and Clive suggested that I experiment with recreating the effect with one of my own images, even if just for my blog.

An excellent, stimulating, if tiring, weekend.  I had much to ponder on on the train journey home.