Submission …

“How presentation / installation of final work can affect / contribute to / detract from meaning should be considered”.

While probably good advice generally, this is a specific requirement of the assessment for this module.

I have reflected elsewhere on my use of ‘alternative processes’ as part of this project and came to the conclusion that my platinum prints did not,

“enhance, refine or reflect whatever quality of beauty might be found in the shape, arrangement or form of the subject. Rather they provide an ironic commentary on them; they are no more than ‘useless luxuries’ in [William] Morris’ terms.”

There was something about the process to recommend it but, as a form of presentation, the softness of the images that favour mass over line and the quality of being ‘handmade’ rather than ‘manufactured’, two words with the same meaning but very different connotations, result in these prints tending to disrupt the narrative that I want to construct through the presentation of this project.

Set alongside ‘traditional’ silver gelatin prints produced commercially on resin coated paper, the platinum images seem even more of a distraction. The ‘manufactured’ prints retain much more of the aesthetic that I intended. They are sharper, cleaner and closer to the tonal range that worked so well for John Myers (even if badly reproduced below);

The use of ‘alternative processes’ was a ‘first’ for me. The project was a ‘first’ for me in a number of other ways too – first ‘architectural’ project; first use of specialist, tilt-shift lens and MF camera; first ‘slow’ photography project etc. and so I want to record as much of the experience of the project as possible. Making a coherent, detailed record has been an important consideration in deciding how to present the work. 

My first thought was to produce a portfolio of prints or even to design, theoretically, an exhibition. I looked to see if I could emulate the Becher’s familiar style of bringing together ‘basic forms’ but I did not have the range of images to make this work – it was never a possibility, with less than 5 days shooting, in one place, that I could match the subtlety (and the 50 years of image making) that the Bechers’ presentational vocabulary rests on. My images are too specific to work in this way and their scope too limited.

This project was a ‘first’ for me in another important way; it was the first time that had I set with the intention of telling a particular story. Usually, I take what I find as my source and build the story from the images outwards. This time, I was looking for images to tell the story that I brought to them. In thinking about how to make a record of but also to present the work therefore, I wanted to use a more controlled narrative form than either a too easily re-arranged and disarranged portfolio or a meandering gallery stroll; a book became my preferred choice.

I discussed this with TC and we looked through around 50 possible images:

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He suggested that I think about using text with the images. I have to confess to a reluctance to use text with images. For me, the danger is that the photographs can end up becoming ‘illustrations’ rather than the carrier of the narrative; making too great a concession to the older of the two ‘inadequate descriptive systems’ (Martha Rosler, The Bowery in two inadequate descriptive systems, 1974-5). This is largely prejudice on my part as there are countless examples of creative work that confirm the opposite, from medieval manuscripts to visionary artists like William Blake, through to any number of succesful photographers, including Walker Evans, Jim Goldberg and Jeff Wolin, for example.

While Walker Evans kept his images clear of his captions and textual narrative, both Goldberg and Wolin movingly demonstrate how the direct addition of text to images, as well as exposing the limitations of the photograph, can add additional layers of meaning to direct our ‘reading’ of the image:

Jim Goldberg – from Rich and Poor (1985 and 2014):

Jeff Wolin – from Pigeon Hill Portraits: Then and Now (2017):

Conceptual artists such as Barbara Kruger have overlaid images with text to more directly challenge, contradict or subvert our reading of both the text and the image.

Barbara Kruger – from Love for sale (1996):

However, any biographical or even contextual detail could undermine my objective of constructing a narrative through the concrete forms of the buildings that are my subject. I wanted to keep the human, as exemplified in the lived experience of specific people out of the frame altogether. I wanted the images to stand in silence; still; face on and without any sense of activity or movement – to isolate the structures of labour that lie behind the practice of it. 

I then considered using text in ways that did not directly elaborate on the image, but which hinted at the ironic intent of the project. Firstly, I tried using unintelligible captions, such as extracts from Das Kapital, taken from a facsimile of the First Edition, or quotations from Lenin, in Russian. This technique, which has been used successfully by conceptualist Lewis Koch, for example, can induce a sense of the ‘strangeness’ of the images that is discomforting and can undermine any sense that the viewer knows what they are looking at. 

Lewis Koch – from Notes from the Stone-Paved Path – Meditations on North India (2003):

I tried a more obvious way of undermining the apparent content of the images by embedding them in propaganda posters from the Soviet Regime in Russia. I also used advertising material to point the contrast between the words and pictures. I found all of these attempts contrived, ‘gimmicky’ and far too obviously post hoc although this testifies more to my limits as a designer than it does to the principle of using text with images. I returned to the idea of letting the images stand, or fall, on their own terms.

Except that I wrote a short essay, to stand at the front of the book, by way of an introduction to the assumptions that lay behind it – and I’m not sure that even this was a good idea. The essay pushes the reading of the images in a particular direction – the one that I followed as I took the photographs. I can’t help thinking that if the images were strong enough, they would show where I was going without me having to say anything further and that others might find in them different and better directions to follow. I think that the essay is simplistic, broad brush and might appear naïve while the images tell a more detailed, nuanced and more complex story. I have captioned the images in the index but with the shortest, most laconic titles.

I have arranged the images in the book thematically with images of gates used as punctuation marks as themes transition and to emphasise the ‘closed for business’ motif which is explicitly referred to in the introductory essay and which has a very specific Marxist connotation. 

There may be further iterations in response to comments and if time allows. Or if I change my mind about the essay or saying anything more about these images at all …

N.B. Blurb no longer allow authors to embed previews of their books unless they commit to selling them. Nor is it possible to link to the preview URL.