Task 6 Andreas Gursky- Globalisation.

99 Cent,II, Diptychon.
© Andreas Gursky.

"For me, vision is an intelligent form of thought"


Andeas Gursky, Prospect:Photography in Contemporary Art, by Peter Welermai.


Gursky tackles globalisation within his imagery by sanctioning the imprint of the power of production and the money driven ideology of the capitalist mindset.


His images display detail and colour that has an aura that imposes a will on the viewer, leaving them lost in the scale of human production of material goods, or equally the production of wealth via the globalisation of the world and its societies especially those of the 'third world'.


Looking at Gursky's images, it becomes obvious that he is drawn to open spaces that contain a vast amount of detail and sense of scale that can match his finished print size.
His images are printed on a very large scale 2m by 3m. This large scale printing has the effect of overwhelming the viewer with information, leaving them overawed. 


The New York based critic Calvin Tomkins said that after viewing Gursky work that they,

Chicago Board of Trade, II.
© Andreas Gursky.

"Had the presence, the formal power, and in several cases the majestic aura of nineteenth-century landscape paintings, without losing any of their meticulously detailed immediacy as photographs. Their subject matter was the contemporary world, seen dispassionately and from a distance". 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andreas_Gursky 

Dubai World.
© Andreas Gursky.

His photographs could be seen as a warning, on how man is changing and exploiting the world and its finite resources, damaging them irrevocably in the process. Gursky has also concentrated his photography upon how we interact with our environment, shaping and changing it to our will. 


Even though this is a hotly debated subject, his images are so aesthetically perfect and beguiling, that when looking upon them, it's easy to forget the original intention was to warn us about the effects of globalisation or global warming. 

Task 8 Derby Format Festival -Head On, Bruce Gilden.

Bruce Gilden and the Documentary photograph. 

Head On, Derby Format Festival.
© Bruce Gilden.

Bruce Gilden was commissioned for the Derby Film Festival to document the people of Derby.

Gilden's technique is to roam the streets, looking for individuals that he considers to 

have a strong persona - people who stand out from the norm.

The individuals he picks, or you could say 'targets', are unique in that they have a distinctive look that could seen as idiosyncratic or unorthodox; perhaps they have the look of loneliness and poverty, or eccentricity and wealth.

The defining feature, and the success, that Gilden has in locating and documenting these characters could be very difficult to pin down for those less observant of the human condition. But it is Gilden's ability to notice the peculiar in the everyday street scene that makes him so impressive and remarkable.

His technique is to go unnoticed by his chosen subject: he either waits for the subject to pass as closely as possible to him or he'll wander by, keeping his camera concealed. As soon as the subject is close enough, he'll shoot, normally with a flash. The flash catches people by surprise, further extenuating their features and leading to less than flattering portraits. 

Gilden says 'I'm known for taking pictures very close, and the older I get, the closer I get'.  

Head On, Derby Film Festival.
© Bruce Gilden.

Looking at Gilden's imagery within the critical framework, there can little doubt that he intends to document the individual without their express consent or prior knowledge; there is something slightly voyeristic in this style of photography.

Gilden could be seen as a watcher or observer who separates himself from the norm of 'street life' to be able to observe it - to be the voyeur of the great mass that is humanity on the move, going places, dressed accordingly, looking 'normal'.

Gilden's has a mastery of voyeurism, an ability to spot the un-normal for us, 'the viewer', to gaze over and to ponder, the oddity, the unconventionality, the bizarre and the kookiness: that is his talent to document.

Task 7. Artists Statement.

Fading From Memory,2011.
© Stuart Leckenby.

Stuart Leckenby’s photographs display a connection to a generation which is politically disregarded and sometimes socially excluded.  He aims to raise awareness of these people by documenting them, involving the subjects he is photographing.

Modern Times, 2010.
© Stuart Leckenby.

His work relies on gaining the trust of the people involved and building a relationship that places both  subject and photographer on a level playing field. His documentary-style approach is carefully considered and watchful, displaying his eye for observation. His foremost intention is to honestly portray the subject and their environment.

His subjects show a connection to him via an extra- diabetic gaze, which entices the viewer to look at the subject, inviting him or her to be viewed. The capture of those moments, which are frequently unseen by the  society we live in, are displayed in a compelling yet gentle manner. 

Stuart attempts to disentangle the barriers which are posted onto the older generation, to educate and inspire us to take notice.

Opal Tea Dance, 2010.
© Stuart Leckenby.

Displaying the images in a gallery forces the viewer to notice not just one person, but many, which solicits the viewer to look beyond the social restraints applied by society and encourages a mutual respect for the subject and what he or she represents.   

His images apply indexical rhetoric which he uses in a persuasive manner, to convey a message to the viewer to notice another generation, in some regard a lost generation.

Repetitions Task 5

Bernd&Hilla Becher
 Cooling Towers.

The Becher intention was to document the industrial landscape of Europe and America. They wanted to photograph the water towers, mine shafts and silos of a disappearing and unappealing industrial past. 


The Becher approach was to record them within a strict code of rules. Photographing the structures as identically as possible using a large format 6x9 camera. Always with a flat grey sky and with a front and profile angle providing a clear objective image of each structure, the structure is always placed central in the frame and separated from its environment. Another thing worth noting is that the Becher always shot without a human being within the frame, humanising an image would alter the rawness of the structures and reduce the brutality of the industrial edifice.


This creates a coherent typology seeing all the structures documented in the same place within a book with multiple images on one page or as a collage with multiple images in a frame.

Bernd&Hilla Becher.
Blast Furnaces.

Once the images are set next to each other we begin to see how the Bechers have succeeded in creating and documenting the vast differences of industrial structures and yet they have ensured that this variety has come together to create the perfect typology of European industrial structures.

Bernd&Hilla Becher
Gas Storage Tanks.

These documentary images by the Bechers are representations of the reality. They cannot by described as simulacra because the Bechers went to such great lengths to ensure that they are a direct a copy as possible without the influence of the environment or from human interaction. 
These images are not a slight or unreal or a superficial likeness or a semblance 
of reality they are the real thing, documented as meticulously as possible.

The Rhetoric of the Image Task 4

Untitled (Cowboy), 1989
Richard Prince (American, born 1949)
Chromogenic print

Richard Prince's images were created for advertising, the main focus of his attention was the Marlboro Man cigarette advertising campaign. This very influential campaign became famous for its macho imagery of the all-American cowboy. These advertisements idolise the rugged nature of this all-American cowboy set against the roughed and untamed landscape of the American west.

Richard Prince
Untitled (Cowboys).
Ektacolor print.

Prince's technique was to take photographs of previous advertisements, inside the magazine or on billboards. He'd then set about reframing the Ad by cropping the image with the aim of creating a more ambiguous meaning. His aim was to get the viewer to reconsider what is real and what isn't. 
Prince obviously realised the power and influence of the advertising industry and in particular the macho idolised all-American man of the Marlboro campaign.


He hoped to to identify were the ad stopped and the man began, separating the perceived reality of the ad campaign of a unattainable ideal, of how smoking the Marlboro brand would make you tougher, more rugged just like the surrounding American west.


By re-shooting the advertisements he changes the intention of the ad's creators; within the act of re-shooting, he weakens their shameless and impossible ideology and equally importantly the power of the photography in which the ad was set. By removing the wide landscape of the ad he reduces its connotations of the great outdoors. 
He creates new meaning forcing the viewer to reconsider the original intention of the ad and all its connotations of personified machoism into something much more subtle, but just as powerful, he raises the question of just how powerful and remote are the dreams sold to us within these extremely influential campaigns. 

Voyeurism & Extra-Intra Diegetic Gaze. Task 3.

© Robert Maplethorpe.

                        
This photograph by Maplethorpe has a very strong and direct element of voyeurism.

The viewer is given direct access to an erotic and intimate sex act we are invited to stare, to gaze, we are free to watch...

Maplethorpe has ensured we can do this primarily through the framing of the photograph.
The woman's head is cropped off, we can only see the top of the mans head (though this is quite ambiguous because it could be a woman).
The woman is dressed in a basque, stockings and shoes. The clothing adds to the appeal of the photograph making it more pornographic and erotic. If the woman was naked this would change the meaning and the symbolism of the image from erotic and possibly pornographic to something more loving and meaningful.

The gaze of the viewer is made easier because, our stare, our curiosity, our gaze goes unmet and unchallenged. We are free to watch and look as long as we wish, we can look upon this photograph and its intimacy because there is no extra-diegetic gaze coming back from the performers to confront our invasion on there act of eroticism.
Our gaze is further strengthened because the couple are anonymous, we cannot see their faces, they in turn cannot see ours, there is no air of confrontation, no eye contact, no facial expressions to challenge those looking upon this act of love making.
This greatly strengthens the power the viewer over the viewed a constituent of panoptiscism a theory of developed by the French philosopher Michel Foucault.
We are free to look for as long as we wish, unnoticed and unchallenged.

Documentary Photography in Context. Task 2.

Freed had himself embedded with the New York Police. He felt that they'd been receiving a 'bad press'. They were, at the time, being blamed for all of society ills, held as scapegoats for everything from the Vietnam War to race relations and poverty (in New York). Freed took a sympathetic view, acknowledging that the Police were working class people too, just trying to do their job.

Freed's images were published in The Observer, The Sunday Times, Stern and the New York Times. His aim was to raise awareness of the difficulties/risks of the average New York Police Officer, together with the sort of dreadful sights they would encounter during their working day.

Leonard Freed, New York, 1972.

There can be no doubt that Freed considered his photography to be indexical, his images were taken almost as police forensic shots directly recording the evidence of the crime scene. It's possible that this image of a murder could be used in different context than Freed intended: not only could there be a betrayal of the victim within this image, but of Freed's original intentions. Freed had sympathies towards the civil rights movement so it could interpreted that the black victim within this image is a victim of racially motivated crime. The alternative view: that black people were responsible for most of the violent crime within New York at that time...

Ron Haviv, Panama, 1989.

Haviv is a co-founder of the Paris based VII photo agency. His aim, via photojournalism, is to make the people accountable for their crimes within his imagery. They can be condemned. He says  ''yes, the work does become a body of evidence". As evidence, it does need to remain in its original state, unaltered, real.  

The Worlds Top Photographers, Photojournalism, Andy Steel, Rotovision, P 54.

Haviv seems intent on creating a body of evidence that could be used in a prosecution to bring the persecutor to justice and, of course, justice to the victim. 

Haviv used the same publishing vehicle as Freed: the large multi national publishing houses. His audience is the same as Freed, though it should be noted that the modern 'audience' is likely to be much better informed and possibly more cynical: the digital age has added the ability to alter and doctor images for political or social purposes. It could therefore be said that to keep documentary photography indexical to maintain the integrity of an image, a photographer is pushed further into greater risk. Haviv has been close to losing his life several times.