Contemporary Japanese photography

 

Untitled - Daido Moriyama

Despite many of our cameras coming from Japan Western photographers do not often explore the photographs made there. I think it is well worth it as the cultural differences, the social history and the intentions of some photographic practice in Japan make it a place from which we can inform our practice.

                                                                Sans Titre - Nobuyoshi Araki

The two symbols used to represent photography (shashin) in Japanese first related to art. Sha means to copy and shin truth. So the word originally applied to the realism in Western Art. As a ban in imports and exports was in place in Japan during the Edo period (which ended in 1868) it was difficult to find a camera in Japan. Sometime after that date the word was applied to photographs and has stuck. So photography was viewed as making a true image.

                                                            from - Seascapes - Hiroshi Sigumoto

During the early twentieth century Japanese photography was mainly concerned with developing documentary styles which somewhat mirrored the concept of recording true images and influenced by photojournalism in the USA. Some surrealism began to creep in with European influences as well. 

from Illuminance - Rinko Kawachi

This development stopped during the second world war. After that photography in Japan turned to a different sensitivity completely and started to record and explore the aftermath of Nagasaki and Hiroshima alongside the upheavals in cultural norms, greater Western influence and the rapid development of industry and selling to world markets, including leading camera brands from Canon and Nikon to Fujifilm and Sigma. Street photography grew in prominence during this time. This new style was called sunappu shotto  or snapshot and was rough and ready, sometimes out of focus or blurred.

Untitled - Naoya Hatakey

In Japanese photography 1968 has become known as Year Zero. One of the most important events during this time was the establishment of a photography magazine, Provoke, which although it only lasted for three issues, provided a new focus for what photography might achieve as well as a showcase for the existing work of the time. The magazine spurred an exhibition of photographs in Tokyo, where photo galleries had been slow to develop, called 100 Years: A History of Photographic Expression by the Japanese. It indirectly led to the 1974 MOMA exhibition New Japanese Photography in New York, thus bringing the changes to an international audience

Untitled (long exposure series) - Tokihiro Sato

By the 1990's women had grown to be a prominement influence in photography and their concerns tended to be very different to those of the men who had proceded them.  Concerned with their social standing, changing role and self image women brought a new and different aesthetic to imagery. Gradually, with this influence, photographers became more sensitive to surroundings, feelings and emotion as well as social issues.

Composition of Air - Gen Aihara

Japan has always had a strong feeling for artistic expression and gradually the minimalism showing in haiku and the social lessons from Hokusai prints or the minutiae which focussed the development of netsuki found there way into photography. It is now finding it's feet on the world stage after a slow start....

Untitled from Liquid Dreams 2 - Mika Ninagawa

There are plenty of places to explore this topic further and here are a couple of links to help get you started :-

https://time.com/4035308/japanese-photography/

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2013/06/27/arts/what-provoked-japans-contemporary-photography/

Autumn Colours - an alternative approach

 

Autumn colours are everywhere at present and photographers will travel miles for a killer picture. New England in The Fall is on many a photographer's bucket list. But in the days of a pandemic and limited travel we may have to look closer to home. 

I am lucky in living near the edge of the Wolds as they start to reach out north from the banks of the Humber. The trails which lead through Welton, Brantingham and South Cave before running up towards Market Weighton through the Drewton Estate are heavily wooded and a delight to walk through in October and early November. So I set myself a challenge to walk up Brantingham Dale Road and cut off through the woodland path to South Cave and create some less than usual photographs of autumn colours yesterday. I limited myself to an hour as part of the challenge and as the weather was very variable. I also made a decison to take standard photographs, such as that above, but also to use both multiple exposure and intentional camera movement (ICM) to gain some more abstract records of my walk.

Anyone using these techniques will know that there is a degree of luck involved although you can reduce that by really thinking about the colours you are wanting in the frame, the exposure times you are allowing and the number of frames you are stacking. The greater the number of frames the more critical the exposure time and this usually needs a bit of tweaking as you see the results. I started with a stack of four frames eventually reducing this to two. The less frames you stack the more definition you may get in the picture (see the next frame below). My exposure times varied from half a second when I decided to use ICM to 1/160 when I took single frame, standard pictures.

As I always shoot in RAW I post-process in Lightroom and the images nearly all benefitted from some manipulation of the texture and colour to deepen the tones and vibrancy. Sometimes that was quickly achieved by using the overall saturation and vibrancy tools but others I achieved through working on the hue, saturation and luminance of individual colours.

Whether or not you like this type of photograph it is always interesting to see the results. The pictures here are a selection from the 129 pictures I took in the hour available. The time in post production is probably twice that of the walk at least! Comments on blogs are always welcomed whether they are constructive criticism or questions raised so do leave a comment if you wish and I will always respond.

RIP - Chris Killip

 

Photograph by Kent Rodzwicz

A British photographer died last week at the age of 74. He was Chris Killip and had been suffering from cancer. I was sad to hear this as he was a formative influence for me, even though my style is nothing like his. His gritty black and white pictures of working class life in the North-East of England and of the community in Skinningrove on the high North Yorkshire coast taught me a lot about how life was at the time and what to look for in a picture. Of course he photographed more than that, including portraiture as well as in Ireland, but these were the pictures which stuck with me.

Born in the Isle of Man in 1946 he worked as an assistant to commercial photographers in London during the 1960's and early 70's, having some early success and attracting funding for his work through the Arts Council in the form of a commission to photograph the market towns of Huddersfield and Bury St Edmunds in England for the exhibition “Two Views—Two Cities” at Huddersfield City Art Gallery and Bury St. Edmunds Art Gallery. In 1975, he was awarded a two-year fellowship through which he would photograph England’s northeast. Killip also directed Side Gallery in Newcastle-upon-Tyne where he lived from 1977 to 1979. He said of the people in his pictures "They are at the tough end of things, the people in my photographs. It’s about the struggle for work, being out of work, fighting for work." He had never taken a photograph before he became a photographer at 17, inspired by a Cartier-Bresson photo he saw in Paris Match magazine.

These were the days before digital photography and most of his work was taken on a large format 5x4 camera - a big piece of kit to carry round that made him very visible. Probably his best known work was a series of photographs taken between 1973 and 1985 and published under the title In Flagrante and showing the impact of the deindustrialisation on people as it happened. Killip himself said of the book "History is what's written, my photographs are what happened". Martin Parr, a contemporary and friend of Killip, has said that he was "without a doubt one of the key players in postwar British photography.”

Despite Creative Camera Magazine recognising the importance of his work and giving his work an entire issue in 1977 Killip failed to gain the recognisition he deserved on Britain and moved to the United States where he was the Professor of Visual and Environmental Studies at Harvard University for 26 years. His major retrospective took place in the Folkwang Museum in Essen in 2012. 2018 however saw the publication of four books of earlier photographs in the UK. Some recognition at last. These are now difficult to obtain and expensive if you do find them...

It was his pictures of Skinningrove and Seacoal Beach which first drew my attention to his work as I had visited Skinningrove during the early 60's during a holiday in Staithes and later returned when I moved to the Humberside area in the early 1990's. There was not much there apart from terraces of houses and a beach. Seacoal was further north which, in the 60's still had coal on it that people collected and sold. It seemed to me that he had caught the whole spirit of these places which were desperate, forgotten and yet spirited and defiant and with a massive sense of community.

RIP Chris Killick and thanks for the unwritten history.

Shirin Neshat -

 

Shirin Neshat is an Iranian visual artist best known for her work in photography, video, and film (such as her 1999 film Rapture),which explore the relationship between women and the religious and cultural value systems of Islam. Born into the small and conservative town of Quazvin in 1957 she had little connection to the art world until attending University of California at Berkeley for her final year of high school. There she discovered Western artists and was drawn to women like Frida Kahlo, Eva Hesse and Judy Chicago. She applied for, and was accepted onto, the Graduate Art Course at Berkeley but while there the Iranian Revolution robbed her of her immigration status and could not return to Iran. She moved to New York and started work in Storefront for Art and Architecture with her then husband. The ten years she spent there she attributes her art education to.

She eventually received US citizenship and felt confident enough to return to Iran and visit her family, an experience which was significant in how she saw the world, herself and the role of women in Islam. Much of her work started at this point as she explored the culture and relationships she experienced. She often uses writing as a part of the photograph to explore her themes.

She has said that she hopes the viewers of her work “take away with them not some heavy political statement, but something that really touches them on the most emotional level.” While her early photographs were overtly political, her film narratives tend to be more abstract, focusing around themes of gender, identity, and society. Her Women of Allah series, created in the mid-1990s, introduced themes of the discrepancies of public and private identities in both Iranian and Western cultures. The split-screened video Turbulent (1998) won Neshat the First International Prize at the Venice Biennale in 1999. The artist currently lives and works in New York. Her works are included in the collections of the Tate Gallery in London, The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, among others.

For me her work is rewarding because it relies heavily on metaphor. The diffierences shown in the public and private attitudes to men and wormen, to exposure and concealment and the delicate line and balance that many people have to  follow in their lives to survive, something we can easily forget in Western culture, whether politically or personally.

You can find out more about Shirin's work here :- 

https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-shirin-neshat-path-art-school-outcast-contemporary-art-icon

Here her TED Talk here:- 

https://www.ted.com/talks/shirin_neshat_art_in_exile?language=en 

or watch her 17 minute film Roja here :-

https://www.theartnewspaper.com/video/shirin-neshat-roja-exclusive 

A new international photography magazine - FRAMES

 

We live in a digital age. In fact, photography has undergone a dramatic transformation in the last few decades.The overwhelming majority of photographs now are captured digitally. Additionally, we use our computers and mobile phones to consume photographs most of the time.

But… how about paper?  Enter FRAMES.

Friday, September 18th 2020 marks quite a special day on the contemporary photography publishing scene. My good photography friend Tomasz Trzebiatowski, is launching a quarterly printed photography magazine. Yes, printed. On paper. And it is looking wonderful.

What is pretty unique about this publication is that FRAMES Magazine embraces all possible photography genres and formats. Each quarterly edition will feature the work of photographers using digital and analogue cameras, mobile phones, even pinhole cameras.

“Excellent photography belongs on paper” - is Tomasz’ motto. The common denominator connecting all the images being printed in FRAMES is simply their visual quality and inspiring, thought-provoking character.

The magazine itself is looks gorgeous. In essence, it is a top-notch, quarterly photography book, printed the wonderful 140gsm uncoated Edixion Challenger offset paper manufactured using 100% ECF pulp. Each edition consists of 108 pages (!).

In the first edition you can see the work of such acclaimed artists as Michael Kenna and Phil Penman as well as some great photography by emerging photographers such as Robert Atwater, Olga Karlovac, Yalim Vural, and Curtis Salonick. What’s more, the first issue also includes two in-depth exclusive interviews with Magda Keaney (Senior Curator, Photographs, National Portrait Gallery in London) and Richard Tsong-Taatarii (photojournalist for the Minneapolis Star Tribune).

But that is not all. When you become a FRAMES subscriber, you automatically get access to the entire suite of their digital offerings: FRAMES Digital companions, online Photography Masterclasses and the insider FRAMES Photo Community. It seems like FRAMES is set to become an impressive blend of printed and digital photography assets through the creation of a passionate international photography community with the magazine and its additional digital components as its hub.

You can become the member of FRAMES today for a monthly fee of $14 USD, (Just under £11 a month). This is an early bird offer which you can access through the link at the end of the blog. 

Your membership will secure you annual access to 4 printed editions of FRAMES Magazine, 8 editions of FRAMES Digital Companions, 4 Photography Masterclasses and the private community and forums. This is exceptional value and allows you the opportunity to help build the community too. It is also a comparatively cheap method of collecting some excellent work with print being the best method of collection these days.

If you would like to start your FRAMES Magazine collection from its very first issue, ensure you become a FRAMES member by October 15th 2020. I am acting as the representative of FRAMES in the North of England and you can follow this link to check out their wonderful site and subscribe today. Using this link ensures you will receive the best deal available: http//:joinframes.com/nigel 

My Influences - Cig Harvey

Cig Harvey

Back in July I wrote a review for a book (her third monograph) called "You an Orchestra You a Bomb" by Cig Harvey and said a little about her. This time she has a whole blog to herself. 

I first came across Cig's work online when I discovered some of her early work around the time of her second monograph "Gardening at Night" although by then she had already shown work a number of times in both solo and group shows starting in 2000. I was impressed with her monotone work although most of her pictures are in colour and in fact colour is immensely important to her. Her work often shows edges, hints, and segments;  small pieces which allowed you to wonder and it was this storytelling element of her work that I found attractive. She herself has said that she is influenced by magic realism and has attracted comments comparing her work to that of Rene Magritte.

Looking further I found a long interview with her which was a talk recorded at The School for Visual Arts in New York. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUG-JYvcMwk ). At over an hour it will tell you as much as you need to know up until 2014 when it was recorded. It is never boring and shows many of her early pictures as she discusses motivation rather than technique.

Cig is English and was born in Devon in 1973 but later travelled abroad, working in different countries before settling in the USA where she still lives in Rockport in Maine.

Her first monograph "You Look at me Like an Emergency" was published in 2012 and all her books are now collectors pieces, partly because they are produced in limited numbers by a specialist company in Rockport where she lives. 

She has received many awards and recognition for her work in the intervening years. In 2018 she was named the 2018 Prix Virginia Laureate, an international photography prize awarded to one woman each year. Her recent work has been largely centred on family and firends with some echoes of Sally Mann. Where she will go next is less certain I feel but she is certainly a photographer to watch for me. 

Here is her website to browse https://www.cigharvey.com/ 

Why black and white photographs are still relevant

 

In the history of photography the use of colour is relatively recent. Although the process for chemically recording colour was proposed by Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell in 1855 and the first colour photograph produced six years later for a lecture by Maxwell (by the photographer Thomas Sutton), it was not until the 1970's that colour film began to sell in industrial quantities. It had been more widely available since the 1930's but the colour was not great and the film was expensive and difficult to develop without the right facilities.

This means that when we scan photographic history most of the pictures we see are in black and white. Perhaps that begs the question is monochrome still relevant in these days of far more reliable colour films and digital cameras which can create great colour reproduction in comparison to early colour film? I'd argue that it is, as much as anything because it is available and can serve a purpose.  There are several reasons you might consider using mono in a photograph.

1)   Due to the history of photography black and white photographs appear more timeless. Removing colour makes it more difficult to date a photograph.

2)   A lack of colour exaggerates the drama of shadows and light immediately and photographs with dramatic lighting can draw the attention of the viewer more quickly.

3)   Fine art photography often uses black and white to distance the viewer from the reality of the subject. Because we see the world in colour the viewer has to stop and work out what they are seeing. This makes the viewer pause and look more closely, however briefly, at the picture. As Joel Sternfeld said, "Black and White is abstract; colour is not. Looking at a black and white photograph you are already looking at a strange world."

4)   Many photographers would say that portraiture is more stark and exacting in black and white and that removing the colour allows an audience to see the face and eyes without distraction. As photographer Ted Grant once said, "When you photograph people in colour you photograph their clothes. When you photograph them in black and white you photograph their souls."

So it is a good rule of thumb when deciding whether to convert a picture to mono (given that all digital camers will shoot a file in colour even if it gives you the option to adjust the settings for black and white) to consider the light, form and texture of the picture. And don't forget to shoot in RAW if using the mono settings on your camera as the retention of the colour information in the file allows for considerable leeway in post processing...

Images with a wide range of tonal values tend to be better for black and white photographs and images are usually most successful when the tones contain both the blackest of blacks and the whitest of whites with a range of grays in between. 

The photograph below was taken as a challenge to make an image in which almost everything in it is white. This means that the only way to distinguish the content of the photograph is by shade and tone. You can decide for yourself whether that works. As the model had dark hair I even sourced a blonde wig to get as white as possible...