Comments on Tutor Report Assignment #1

Although assignment #1 is really a place marker it does form part of the development story and is submitted as part of the work for assessment so deserves attention.  The key points that I gained in a somewhat lengthy first ‘formative feedback’ session were:

• The work should be reviewed for a ‘re-edit to provide a consistent theme informing the whole’.

The rationale for editing is because academic work should pose a question rather than simply be work which, ‘looks nice’.  To some extent this is precisely what this work is: it looks nice.  However underlying it is a story of life and struggle and an edit is in order.

I have therefor edited the series to provide a more consistent message of this struggle to survive in harsh conditions.

• Africa is harsh and so there is an element of sublime as death could be just around the corner.  Quiver tree image definitely communicates the sublime as it is growing in this really barren hillside
• Choosing a ‘Tree’ as a symbol is quite good but maybe need to say a bit more about why.

I feel that I have covered the concept of using a ‘tree as a symbol’ sufficiently in my introduction so won’t add any more.

• Add a paragraph on Typology – Thomas Ruff,
• Taryn Simon’s American Index of Hidden and Unfamiliar The strange components that make up America. 

http://tarynsimon.com/works/aihu/#1

• William Eggleston – New Topographics
• Jem Southam – Critical Prospect Theory.   I had a quick look at this and am not sure how he applied it to photography or where I can find more on his thinking – he spoke of it in a ‘masterclass’, good that you found a decent definition, which I think is applicable to your landscapes.

 

---

Gilpin

William Gilpin (1724 – 1804) defined his ideas of the picturesque in his Essay on Prints as  ‘that kind of beauty which is agreeable in a picture’. This was based largely on his knowledge of landscape painting. 

In 1782, Gilpin published Observations on the River Wye and several parts of South Wales, etc. relative chiefly to Picturesque Beauty; made in the summer of the year 1770 (London 1782). (Wikipedia)

Accessibility of travel in the 1780s and 1790s resulted in increased domestic tourism in Britain and this coincided with Gilpin’s ideas of picturesque and his publications which were aimed at the tourists intent on sketching and discussing what they saw in terms of landscape painting.

This ties in with Rosalind Krauss’ (Krauss,1986) discussion of Landscape the picturesque as per Gilpin.  The concept of the Landscape is that it complies with a defined set of rules and in effect matches a predefined concept of a landscape.  In her argument this is therefore a copy of a previous image or picture.

Gilpin at the beginning of the section on ‘Ross to Monmouth’ starts as follows:

HAVING thus analysed the Wye, and considered separately its constituent parts; the steepness of its banks, its mazy course, the grounds, woods , and rocks , which are its native ornaments; and the buildings , which still further adorn its natural beauties; we shall now take a view of some of those pleasing scenes which result from the combination of all these picturesque materials. (Gilpin)

This again reinforces the ideas of the combination of materials that make the picturesque

Although regularly quoted, Gilpin’s comments about Tintern Abbey further reinforce his ideas about the picturesque.

Though the parts are beautiful, the whole is ill-shaped. No ruins of the tower are left, which might give form and contrast to the buttresses and walls. Instead of this a number of gable ends hurt the eye with their regularity, and disgust it by the vulgarity of their shape. A mallet judiciously used (but who durst use it?) might be of service in fracturing some of them; particularly those of the cross isles, which are both disagreeable in themselves, and confound, the perspective. (Gilpin)

Returning to Krauss (ibid) she lists the definitions of the picturesque from Johnson’s Dictionary:

The 1801 Supplement to Johnson’s Dictionary gives six definitions for the term picturesque, the six of them moving in a kind of figure eight around the question of the landscape as originary to the experience of itself.  According to the Dictionary the picturesque is: 1) what pleases the eye; 2) remarkable for singularity; 3) striking the imagination with the force of paintings; 4) to be expressed in painting; 5) affording a good subject for a landscape; 6) proper to take a landscape from.

With this we are brought back to the idea of a picturesque, complying with the ideas that it would be suitable for a landscape painting.

 

---

Typology

I have written quite extensively about this in Exercise 2.3 and also previously in my DPP course so won’t repeat that here.

See:

Exercise 2.3:  https://dougsocalandscapeblog.wordpress.com/2017/12/14/exercise-2-3-typologies/ 

DPP course:  New Topographics Document from DPP – 15 May 2015

It has also been discussed during Photography reading group Hangouts and L3 Hangouts so quite well covered.

The New Topographics is covered in

• Exercise 2.6 and 2.3
• My writeup of Badger ‘ The Genius of Photography’

 

---

Thomas Ruff (b 1958)

The article discusses how Ruff has manipulated images taken by Tripe of monuments in India and Burma in the 1850s.  Although they are a loose ‘typology’ they present a more artistic element too.

The exhibition, says Ruff, is not just a celebration of beautiful images. It is “about the history, the different processes, techniques and technology of photography”. It also makes a polemical point about photography as an art form. “Most people reduce photography to somebody clicking at something,” he tells me. “They are not really interested in history or technique.”

Whitechapel Gallery – Thomas Ruff  Photographs 1979 – 2017

Although Ruff’s work is far wider in extent than the portraits for which he became famous, these represent a typical typology.  They are passport-style portraits, reproduced on a huge scale and revealing every surface detail of their subjects.  However, it is in video associated with this exhibition that I find the most compelling comments (Thomas Ruff In Conversation with Iwona Blazwick. 2017)

• He makes photographs about photography

• The photographs are autobiographical: ‘If I see something that upsets me or, the other way round makes me laugh, and I cannot get it out of my mind I start looking for images for it and in a way, this kind of summarises what I encountered over the last 38 years.

• Works in series because: ‘I think that with one photograph you cannot explain the whole world you have to make more photographs’. 

• It’s a person who creates these images and this person is of course a political person.

He produced his Portraits between 1981 and 1985.  These were passport like images of people between 25 and 35 years old and as such form a very specific typology of these people.   They are conceptually linked to police observation methods in Germany in the 1970s. 

Installation view at the Whitechapel Gallery, Thomas Ruff: Photographs 1979 – 2017, Gallery 1, 27 September 2017 – 21 January 2018. Photo: Stephen White

The former students of the Bechers continued their teachers’ coolly detached systematic approach to photographing subjects.  Ruff made a series of portraits where the head and shoulders of each sitter were framed as if for a passport photograph.  Presented on a large scale on gallery walls, a great deal of physical detail can be discerned in the images, but nothing of the subjects’ personalities appears to be expressed, going against the conventional idea of portraiture (Cotton 2004: 105–106; see also Chapter 6 cited in Bull, 2010).

There is of course plenty more to research on Ruff but it is the typology that is important for this Assignment

 

---

Taryn Simon – An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar

In An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar (2007), Simon compiles an inventory of what lies hidden and out-of-view within the borders of the United States.  She examines a culture through the documentation of subjects from domains including: science, government, medicine, entertainment, nature, security, and religion.  Confronting the divide between those with and without the privilege of access, Simon’s collection reflects and reveals that which is integral to America’s foundation, mythology, and daily functioning.

This series of images are made at locations not normally accessible to the general public and so links to the concept of privilege.  The work does not present as a typology although it does with the type of ‘series’ work of Ruff.  Simon has identified something that worries her and set about finding images that show that.  Privilege is created not only through the right of access but through status, colour  etc.  It is something that will recur further in my work.

Playboy, Braille Edition. Playboy Enterprises, Inc. New York, New York

Bibliography

A Vision of Britain through Time: Gilpin At:  http://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/travellers/Gilpin_Wye/4  (Accessed on 16^th April 2019)

Aspden P.  (12 October, 2018)  Financial Times.  Thomas Ruff on image manipulation and why ‘photography is not stupid’  At: https://www.ft.com/content/b43197fa-c7ee-11e8-86e6-19f5b7134d1c  (Accessed on 16 April 2019)

Bull, S.  (2010) Photography  London, Routledge

Krauss R. E. (1986) The Originality of the Avante-Garde and Other Modernist Myths, MIT Press, London

Simon, Taryn.  An American Index of the Hidden and Unfamiliar (2007)  At:  http://tarynsimon.com/works/aihu/#13  (Accessed on 16 April 2019)

Thomas Ruff In Conversation with Iwona Blazwick. (2017) [user-generated content online] Creat. Whitechapel Gallery (13 Nov 2017)At:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=196&v=uq9_XwYUr3Y  (Accessed on 16 April 2019)

Whitechapel Gallery (2017).  Thomas Ruff  Photographs 1979 – 2017, At:  https://www.whitechapelgallery.org/exhibitions/thomas-ruff/  (Accessed on 16 April 2019)

Wikipedia.  Thomas Ruff.  At:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Ruff  (Accessed on 16 April 2019) 

Wikipedia. At:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Gilpin_(priest)  (Accessed on 16 April 2019)