Peter Marshall | >Re-PHOTO

Photographing with a Bicycle

The bicycle and photography were products of the same era and have many synergies. A few years ago, being interviewed by an amateur photographic magazine, I was surprised by the question “What is your favourite photo accessory?” but needed no time to think. Number one was my Brompton, with a good pair of comfortable walking shoes coming a close second. I can’t remember if either response made it to print, certainly they were not the kind of answers the reporter was looking for.

At the end of the nineteenth century, both bicycle and camera (thanks to the recently introduced dry plates and Mr Eastman’s Kodak film, and the introduction of the new ‘safety’ bicycle as an alternative to the ‘penny-farthing’) were popular crazes for the young and wealthy middle-class city-dwellers. In New York, as Alfred Steiglitz struggled to get his photographic crusade into top gear through the New York Camera Club, he took a tumble as its members put forward a motion to transform it into a bicycle club. (The motion was narrowly lost, but he took the hint.)

Both photography and cycling were relatively new and exciting and in keeping with the spirit of the times, offering new freedoms and an increasing ability to investigate a wider world. Some thirty years later, industrial workers, benefitting from shorter working hours, also took to their bikes and cycled out into the surrounding countryside, some of them with cameras. Bert Hardy was one, and began his career photographing cycle races. And many years later still, in my first conscious photographic project, I too got on my bicycle and cycled out to photograph a grove of ancient oaks.

Forty-five years later, the bicycle is still my favourite photographic transport, though I favour a folding model that can easily be taken on trains or even buses for longer distances. Unlike a car, you can stop and jump off when and where you like, and carry it up steps, over footbridges and ride or push it along footpaths.

Chafford Hundred (C) 2007, Peter Marshall
Chafford Hundred. 1/250 f8 70mm ISO 200 Nikon/Brompton!

This picture was taken in Essex, one of many last Thursday made possible by Brompton. The bike got me there and many other places, and it also, by standing on the crossbar, gave me the height necessary to shoot over the fence which stopped me falling to my death over the edge of a cliff. Its a part of a long-term study of the Thames Gateway area, one of the largest developments anywhere.

I’ve always envied the tall guys who can see (and photograph) over walls. Although taking thought can add nothing to my stature, taking the Brompton gives me an extra 20 inches or so (or, more precariously, with one foot on handlebars and the other on the saddle a full three feet.) Think of it as a stepladder with wheels.

Peter Marshall

Missing Persons 2: Oscar Gustave Rejlander

Rejlander, (1813-75), the son of an officer in the Swedish Army, had studied art in Rome and Paris before coming to England and trying to make a living as a painter. Once he saw a photograph, he realised tha this was the future, and in 1846 he opened a photographic studio in Wolverhampton.

As well as portraiture, his early work included a number of child portraits, some clearly erotic. He later married one of his child models, over 20 years his junior, who he had photographed since she was 14. Lewis Carroll was a collector of this early work and Rejlander, who became a leading expert, helped both him and Julia Margaret Cameron to set up as photographers. Rejlander’s later images of children living on the London streets in the 1860s attracted public attention to their condition.

Rejlander’s major contribution to photography was through his use of multiple exposures and combination printing. While other photographers may previously have used separate sky exposures largely to combat the lack of color sensitivity in all early photographic materials (being sensitive to blue light only, blue skies were over-exposed and lacking in tone if the exposure was made for the rest of the scene), he realised the potential of such methods for artistic purposes.

The best-known picture by Rejlander is his ‘The Two Ways of Life’, said to be put together from around 40 different exposures, painstakingly printed to give a virtually seamless image. It aimed to illustrate the choice between good and evil facing a young man at the start of life, a subject that gave considerable licence for posing models in various states of undress – so much so that when shown in Scotland, one half of the image was covered by a curtain. Read more about it.

Rather than include the image here, take a look at it on the George Eastman House website, where as well as this image you can go to the ‘thumbnails’ link and see their full collection of almost 70 images by Rejlander.

It would be a tricky feat to photograph such a scene today as a single exposure, needing a large studio with impressive resources of artificial lighting. In 1857 it was totally impossible. Using multiple exposures also helped in the tricky problem of finding models, with many playing different roles in the roughly 39 plate negatives he used.

At the time the image was highly controversial. Fortunately for Rejlander, Queen Victoria saw it and was amused, paying 10 guineas for a copy, which she gave to Albert, and he hung it on the wall of his study. With such royal approval, his reputation was made.

There was also a question of scale. At the time, all photographic printing processes were contact processes, producing images exactly the same size as the plate exposed in the camera. Most photos were small – ‘full plate’ size was 8.5×6.5 inches, and many cameras were half or quarter plate. By using a number of plates, Rejlander could make a larger print. The ‘Two Ways’ was 31×16 inches, bringing photography into the same order of scale as easel paintings.

Without doubt, photographs such as these had an influence on painting, and the work of pre-Raphaelites such as Millais often look peculiarly like these combination photographs. Photographs by Rejlander and others were indeed often used as source material, and combined together by painters to give similar results to those he obtained in the darkroom.

But his influence on other photographers was much stronger and more direct. Rejlander was a key figure in British photography in the nineteenth century, a pioneer in a number of respects, and has with considerable justification been called “The Father of Art Photography.”

Peter Marshall

Missing Persons 1 – A Whole Empire

The first missing person from ‘How We Are: Photographing Britain’ is not a person but a whole slice of our nation. Britain was the great imperial power of the nineteenth century, and the empire was in many ways the heart of the British nation. It, and in earlier years the trade in enslaved human beings which we’ve recently been remembering provided the wealth and the goods that made the nation work. Slavery in the British Empire was only ended a year or two before the invention of photography (and those freed people were often still working for the same masters under even harsher conditions.)

Much of the best British photography of the nineteenth century was made in India and to a lesser extent in other countries outside these islands. No history of British photography is complete without the fine work of photographers such as John Murray, Felice Beato, Robert & Harriet Tytler, Linnaeus Tripe, John Burke & William Baker and of course the incomparable Samuel Bourne who arguably in several respects took British photography to new heights.

Sameul Bourne, Darjeeling. Library of Congress LC-USZ62-76815
Samuel Bourne: Darjeeling, 1875/6

Of course, we should not stop there. India was a part Empire Britain and its citizens until independence in 1947 were British too. Another of the truly great nineteenth century photographers was Lala Deen Dayal who learnt his photography in the first engineering college set up in the British Empire.

Peter Marshall

The 3 ‘P’s

Let me introduce you to the 3 ‘P’s. They are what I feel makes any artistic project worthwhile, whether curating a photography show, making a body of work (including My London Dairy) or indeed, writing a column such as >Re:PHOTO.

Firstly and paramount, is that it should be personal. Something you feel strongly about, rather than perhaps something produced simply to meet a market or curry favour with a patron. Although of course many great works have also done those things.

Passion (C) 1997, Peter Marshall
Passion: Paris 1988 ©Peter Marshall 1988

Related, but not the same, is that it has to reflect a passion.

The final P, also related, is for point of view. It has to be there and it has to be non-trivial.

The 3 ‘P’s is of course a preciously contrived device to catch the attention. Earlier this year I wrote a rather more serious piece on the 3 ‘I’s of photojournalism (which, if memory serves, were integrity, inteligence and intention) and doubtless at some future date you will be treated to the 3 ‘W’s of Landscape photography. But the ‘P’s did reflect some of my thoughts on the current Tate Britain show.

In ‘How We Are: Photographing Britain’ curators Val Williams and Susan Bright certainly started off firing on all three ‘P’s but at some point appear to have been stymied. The Tate, perhaps wanting a rather different show, apparently brought in a review by the photographic great, good and celebs who covered the green with a great deal of balls, many of which had to be taken on board. “You can’t have a show without Bill Brandt” said some, fairly sensibly, but there were other rather wackier suggestions that also made the walls.

Quite a few reviews of the show have already appeared, of widely varying competence, though mostly favourable, although some writers do appear to have the mistaken impression that the show is come kind of history of photography in Britain. If you are reading this, you, like me, will probably have read all or most of them, and I’ve decided not to write at great length directly about the show.

Probably the best of those I’ve seen published was online at the Telegraph (may require free registration), by Richard Dorment, who puts the show exactly in its institutional context and then goes on to say: “this is not primarily a show about photography as an art form, or even about the history of British photography.”

Rather, as he goes on to say, it uses photographs to illustrate a social history by making use of them – and using them largely in contexts and ways that were not those of their authors. Reading the small booklet that accompanies the show you are certainly made aware of one aspect of this recontextualisation, when in the short section dealing with the period 1840-1900 they state “As the century progressed, women photographers were among the most skilled professionals in the UK” and in the following section, Into the Twentieth Century, “Women also continued to be a major force: making portraits, documentary photography and – as the Suffragette movement gathered pace – propaganda.” Personally I found material on the suffragettes (including images not taken by women) one of the more interesting aspects of the show, although perhaps evidence for the rest of these statements remains at best flimsy. But that women acheived as much as they did despite the social attitudes prevailing at the time is certainly worthy of celebration.

Dorment, like me, obviously found the show full of fascinations and he mentions some of them (I didn’t particularly share his enthusiasm fof the work of George Garland.) If you’ve not read this review (and who reads the Telegraph arts pages?) then do.

What I do intend to do, over the next week or two, is to make some posts on some of those missing from the Tate show, without whom any history of British photography is gapingly incomplete. ‘Missing Persons’ will hopefully do a little to fill that chasm.

Peter Marshall

Sorry Caron

Tonight I missed the opening in ‘the underpass’ near Edgware Road tube station, despite a personal invitation from Caron Geary, who I met in the pub after the private view of ‘How We Are’ at Tate Britain.

Caron (on the right in the picture) is a fast up and coming photographer, and one to watch. I first came across her name at the time of the graduate shows last year, and you can see some stuff on the Saatchi site. She’s even in the Daily Telegraph, though somewhat curiously for the Independent Photographers Award. (A gallery in Sussex, not the paper.) Clicking there on the previous button brings you to a picture by Richard Chivers, whose large landscapes impressed me at last year’s Free Range graduate show.

The Leica M8 did a reasonable job considering the terribly mixed up (but dim, dim…) lighting colour in the pub (that’s a pink or purple light on her shoulder), even without the IR cut filter which I keep meaning to get. Without it, Leica’s auto white balance is nothing like as good as Nikon’s, and I’m told the filter doesn’t help greatly. Of course, shooting raw this isn’t a great problem. The 35mm Summilux makes a pretty decent standard lens, and shooting wide open isn’t at all bad. More on the Leica later, also more on ‘How We Are: Photographing Britain’, after which I needed a drink.

I do suggest you go. Just repeat the mantra “this is not a history of photography in Britain” over and over as you walk round and enjoy what is on display for what it is.

Peter Marshall

May Merry

It was hard to believe I’d got there on a Travel Card. London, Zone 6. From the station I walked through the woods to the village green opposite the Blue Ball pub and into a different world. The May Pageant was headed by ponies with riders in fancy dress, followed by the May Queen in a very smart horse-drawn carriage and the church choir sitting in a trailer on hay bales pulled by Billy O’Hallorans tractor. The new May Queen and her entourage followed in Young’s Brewery horse-drawn dray, followed by brownies, beavers, schools, residents associations and more, including the Santa Fe Stagecoach and the Harley Davidson Club, and ending with the Surrey Police.

By the end of the afternoon things were getting edgy and the choirboys had a shootout. You can read more about the May Pageant on My London Diary

Peter Marshall

Wrenovated

Linda was on a sponsored walk for Christian Aid around City of London churches on Sunday, most of which told the same story. Burnt in the great fire, rebuilt by Wren, bombed by the Luftwaffe and rebuilt more or less as Wren had intended. Only one church had instead been rebuilt in a modern style, and the results were not encouraging. I’ve long felt we should have planning laws that insisted that old buildings should only be replaced if the architects can convince a suitably qualified panel of planners that the new building is in every way better, but Wren would certainly be a hard act to follow.

I went along to keep her company and took the Nikon. Here are two pictures of a favourite corner of London, taken within a few seconds of each other. This one used my 12-24mm at its widest setting:

It’s ok, but somehow didn’t get the feeling of an enclosed garden that I wanted. So out came my favourite lens, the 10.5 fisheye, and well, you know what that does. To the rescue came Image Trends Inc, and the Hemi-Fisheye filter I reviewed not long ago. I think it does the job better.

Peter Marshall

Magnum May

Yesterday I had an afternoon out in London with three friends, all photographers. It was very much arranged at the last minute, (is there another way?) and we agreed to meet up at the Photographers’ Gallery at 1pm.

So of course Paul and I had to phone Michael and John and re-arrange it for 1.30pm as sorting out a few things on Paul’s computer took longer than I’d expected (that kind of job always does.) We met Michael at 1.30 and wandered into the gallery to look at the current show. It didn’t take long.

The stuff on the walls didn’t really have much connection with photography, although there were photographs. Most of them singularly devoid of any interest, and nothing I’d put on any wall, least of all that of a gallery of photography. I’m sorry, but I think photography galleries should show photography. Not third-rate art that makes use of photographs.

On the stairs leading up to the print room there were some real photographs, pictures of explosions by Sarah Pickering that I mentioned on About Photography when she won a Jerwood Award for another series two years ago. It was good to see the actual prints, although I didn’t feel they added to the work, which is perhaps best suited to be a magazine feature.

The print room is always worth a visit, with some old favourites on show (not always the same old favourites though.) Yesterday these included one of my favourite Thurston Hopkins images (you can currently still read a long feature I wrote on him at About Photography) of a kid playing a Red Indian coming up out of a manhole, as well as a rather substandard print of one of my favourite Bert Hardy images. The dodging of the vital central point of the image was so dodgy it would have made my wastebin rather than the exorbitant sum at which it was priced.

John still hadn’t arrived, so we went to wait in the Porcupine on the corner. In the past I’ve often sat and talked in the upstairs ‘Theatre Bar’ there with photographers and others after events at the Photographers’ Gallery. Once he arrived, we soon rushed off for roast beef at one of my favourite London pubs, the Cheshire Cheese in Fleet Street (though Fleet Street is now only a pale shadow of its old self.)

Unfortunately we didn’t have time to linger – it’s a great place for getting to know interesting strangers – but had to rush off to see some real photos. May seems to be Magnum month, and our route took in Martin Parr at Rocket, Alex Soth at Host and Ian Berry in the Magnum Print Room.

The last major project by Parr that I’d see was Mexico, and I found the work at Rocket rather more satisfying. In A8, Scotland he seems to be back to making real pictures rather than throwing a book together ASAP. The small prints for Parking Spaces were perhaps less impressive, more like a set of work awaiting an editor. This editor would say it was a promising start, but he would like to see some more work, but he’s a hard taskmaster. Long ago I asked another distinguished Magnum member at a lecture at the Photographers’ Gallery how he knew when he had finished a project. His answer (in my words) was when he could find someone who would publish it. Sometimes I feel it is too easy for some people to get stuff published.

Funnily enough, Parking Spaces is exactly as I suggested, an opportunity to be an editor. Having written my note above, I turned to the gallery handout, where I find that you are invited to select a portfolio of 12 images – for a mere £2500 – or £4500 if you hang around too long. Given the current prices of photographs, this represents excellent value for 12 Martin Parr images, even if the are only 12″x15″, indeed it is only the same price as a single 20×24″ image from A8.

Actually I think 12 is about the right number from this set of images. If you decide to buy, there is just a small chance you might get the right 12, so it should perhaps be seen as a kind of lottery. Of course you might just get me to select the right 12 for a suitable fee. I’d accept the same fee as Martin.

Another short bus ride took us to Host, and Alex Soth’s Niagara. Some great pictures (and here the large print size seems justified) but a disappointing show because there really was not enough on the wall to tell the story. Apparently this was the photographer’s call, but I don’t feel he got it right. It isn’t a big space but there was room for more. They needn’t all have been big prints – even some contact prints would have made this from a few great pictures into a real exhibition.

If you don’t know where the Magnum print room is, make sure you take the exact address or phone number or you will probably never find it. One small plate among others by the side of an anonymous door into a large office block is its only notice. Although the Ian Berry show ends today, there are other shows there.

Many of Berry’s prints were old friends, but I have to admit that there were quite of few of these I had forgotten were by him. His is work that particularly well sums up a vanished England past, which now feels suprisingly ancient history despite the comparatively recent date of his images. Did we really look like that?

When his book ‘The English’ came out in 1978, I remember feeling what an old-fashioned view it seemed, almost as if he was still photographing his childhood in the North in the 1940s and early 50s (he was born in 1934.) We all filter our experience through our own ideas of what makes a photograph.

Peter Marshall

Paris Photo

Paris was full of photographs in November, and there were some great ones at Paris Photo. But there were things that were hard to take too. Large empty wastes of dollar-rich nothingness covering the walls of some galleries. Vintage prints pulled from some photographers waste-bins and awarded stupendous price-tags. I found it hard not to burst out laughing when a dealer came up to the person next to me and told her the price of one rather ordinary ’60s fashion print was 20,000 euros. A couple of years ago we would have though 200 rather steep, and 2000 definitely well over the top.

Still, all good news for investors, and for the minority of photographers who have a place on the gravy train. There were a few other photographers around, trying to talk to dealers, but this wasn’t the place for it. “Best if you e-mail us” they were politely brushed off.

The first day I had a panic attack of sorts as the place got more and more full of people, all there for the free opening party, and had to rush out and up from the bunker into the fresh air above. The next day things were better, less crowded, but still more a place for millionaires than photographers.

But fortunately, there was much more in Paris than Paris Photo.

Peter On Photography

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