Peter Marshall | >Re-PHOTO

Kash, Afghanistan and the Threat to Journalists

11 Carlton House Terrace is an impressive Nash building from around 1830, designed as a scenic backdrop to St James Park and grand enough to have been home for two prime ministers, Lord Stanley and William Gladstone as well as William Crockford and the Guiness family. Inside it has an impressive double staircase and some formidable public rooms. The Foreign Press Association has been here since 1946, and in 2006 Gabriele ‘Kash’ Torsello was awarded the FPA’s Premier Award, the ‘Dialogue of Cultures’. After his release (see below), Kash was at a low ebb, and this recognition of his work was important in giving him the will to continue with his Afghan project. The interior of the building is hung with large banner prints of some of his powerfully empathetic images, in the first of a series of exhibitions to be announced shortly at the venue. Kash’s show is the launch of a larger exhibition in southern Italy, where as ‘Staramasce’ 30 huge photographs will be hung throughout the summer, one in each of 30 public squares in Lecce province, together with an exhibition of all 30 in the Lamarque Museum.

The balconies of Carlton House terrace overlook The Mall

It was a beautiful evening, an unforgettable venue and there was good Italian wine and very likeable Afghan-style food, and I met and talked with many interesting people – including most of those in the panel of speakers, half of which is shown below.

I first met Kash at an NUJ party last year, unmissable with his beard, dark clothing, warm and intense manner and a battered film Nikon, and talked to him about his work in Kashmir. A few days later, the book he promised to send me, his ‘The Heart of Kashmir’ (2003) arrived; I was impressed and published a short note on him and his work on About.com in July 2006. Heart seemed a very appropriate word, for this was work full of passion by a man whose heart was very much into his photography and his closeness to the people he lived with and photographed. As well as the pictures, its short texts gave a very real insight into the problems of working in such situations.

It came as a shock to read last October of his kidnap in Afghanistan. More so because he was someone who lived among and worked for the people, and worshipped with them as a fellow Muslim. I was pleased to be a small part of the worldwide campaign for his release, both through About Photography and also with links to the note I’d written previously from other sites, including the NUJ.

And of course we were delighted with the news of his release after being held for 23 days. But it’s important to remember that he was only one of many journalists and photographers who has suffered, and many die recording events around the world. According to Reporters Without Borders, one of several organisations that keeps such grim records, 84 journalists were killed in 2006, and halfway through 2007 over 50 journalists and media assistants have been killed, and 130 imprisoned.

Half the panel
From Left: Farid Popal (Afghan Embassy), Leila Blacking (ICRC) Gabrlele Torsello, Nazenin Ansari (FPA President), Abdullah Annas (ex Arab Mujahidden)

The panel of speakers included Leila Blacking of the ICRC, which had the same day released its press release, ‘Afghanistan: Insecurity spreads amid escalating conflict’ giving a bleak view of the situation there. The Red Cross’s view was largely dismissed by Farid Popal of the Afghan Embassy, and an equally complacent view came from the US Embassy representative.

Reporting here from Afghanistan is limited – despite the determined and hazardous efforts of many of our colleagues, including Kash and a number of his friends also at the opening. The ICRC views are based on their 20 years continuous working in the country and note the deteriorating military situation and the problems this creates for development work and the increased need for emergency assistance. Almost two and a half thousand people were detained by Afghan authorities last year in connection with the armed conflict over the past year, and there is a general lack of security in the south of the country leading thousands to abandon their homes in both rural and urban areas.

Blacking spoke impressively and responded openly to questions from the floor as well as in private conversations later. Listening to the diplomats, both very likable men, it was impossible not to remember Sir Henry Wooton’s comment (made in Latin almost 400 years ago) that “an ambassador was an honest man, sent to lie abroad for the good of his country.” Unlike English, Latin allows no ambiguity about the meaning of the phrase.

I also thought about events of the nineteenth century, and the great images brought back by Baker and Burke as they travelled with the British Army, whose opinion of the campagn there is encapsulated in rhyming slang. To Kipling the Khyber Pass might have been “a sword cut through the mountains“, but the troops saw it differently. Perhaps after some 200 years, ‘The Great Game’ is now coming towards its end game.

Journalists are coming under increasing pressure, and both Afghan and US responses where chilling, with the clear implication that those who went into certain areas were just asking for trouble – and deserved what they got. Why, asked the guy from the US, only slightly more circumspectly, won’t journalists go and write nice success stories from the places in Afghanistan where we would like them to go?

We were joined on the neighbouring balcony by people from the ICA.

How We Are: Twentieth Century Blues

Coming back finally to the current Tate Britain show, ‘How We Are’, the first section ‘First Moves’, dealing with the nineteenth century is certainly the most comprehensive and inclusive of all six chronological sections of the exhibition.

Around 120 photographers are listed for the remaining five sections, and they include some fine photographers (as well as some whose inclusion is hard to justify on any grounds.) My own selection of a similar number of photographers would perhaps have included rather under half of those chosen. It was certainly good to see a fair number of those whose work I think deserves to be better known – for example Norah Smyth and Edwin Smith in their very different genres, and obviously pleasing to see a number of photographers I know or have know with work on the wall, as well as to find some of those books on my shelves are now museum pieces. Some people – such as Bill Brandt – could not of course be omitted (although I’m assured that it was initially planned to do so.) Others, quite frankly had little relevance even to the particular view that the curators were presenting, perhaps representing strongly argued cases by some of those called in to review the plans.

In part the titles given to the different eras both indicate and dictate the omission of many fine photographers. ‘Into the Twentieth Century’ may seems pretty vague for the period 1900-1918, but appears to be a pretext for ignoring almost all of the pictorial photography and news photography of the era. As this was the first age in which cheap methods of mass reproduction led to photographically based newspapers, I would have expected more emphasis on how these new media used photography, rather than the rather specialised examples in the show. The photography of the Suffragette movement, with Christina Broom (Christina Livingstone, (1863-1939), Britain’s first woman press freelance photographer) and Norah Smyth, is a highlight of this section, reflecting the curatorial interest perhaps more in that movement than in their photography, which for both was considerably wider than the visitor to this show might conclude. Both of them are also featured in Mike Seaborne’s Photographers’ London: 1839-1994, which, despite its obvious metropolitan bias, succeeds in offering a considerably wider view of this era and others covered by the show.

By defining the period 1918-1945 as ‘New Freedoms in Photography’, the curators again choose particular work from the era rather than cover it more generally. Despite the title, there is perhaps less emphasis on photojournalism that might be expected from the era that saw the growth of the photographically illustrated magazines such as Liliput, Weekly Illustrated and Picture Post.

Again, it seems to me impossible to consider the period 1945-69 adequately as a whole under the title ‘The New Britain’; for most of us it changed radically at some point between the fifties and the sixties.

Equally it seems hard to argue that the seventies and eighties were dominated by ‘The Urge to Document’ or indeed that since then we have been making ‘Reflections on a Strange Country’. These are strange generalisations indeed, and the choices (and missing persons) they lead to make the show unrepresentative.

That isn’t to say that there is not a great deal of work of interest in this show. British photography does have a great deal to offer, and the story of British photography shown here is at time enthralling. But different curators would have made different choices of photographers and images, telling at least an equally valid view of photographing Britain.

So here are just a few names from the 70 or so who would have been on my personal list for 1900-1990 but are missing, in vaguely chronological order. Where I’ve written about them elsewhere and remember I’ll give a link.

Horace Nicholls, John H Avery, George Davison Reid, Emil Otto Hoppe, Felix H Man, Margaret Monck, Cyril Arapoff, Kurt Hutton, Thurston Hopkins, Henry Grant, John French, Eric de Mare, Raymond Moore, John Blakemore, Philip Jones Griffiths, Don McCullin, Ian Berry, John Benton-Harris, Jo Spence…

Among the foreign visitors who perhaps have a greater claim to be included than most of those actually present are Izis Bidermanas, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Frank and Sylvester Jacobs.

The final selection deals with contemporary work, and selection in this area is always going to be a lottery. The 20 or so photographers whose work appears in this section are an almost random cross-section from the several hundred whose work I find of some interest at the present time.

Although there is much to see, How We Are is a show that disappoints, as a missed opportunity. How long will it be after this before Tate Britain once again tries to tell the story of photography in Britain?

Missing Persons: First Moves

The ‘Missing Persons’ series has provided me with a little amusement although I think the point is basically serious – publicity from Tate Britain suggests that How We Are: Photographing Britain is “The unique story of British photography” when it is just one of many possible stories about British photography.

To adequately tell the story of British photography would need a larger space and a larger budget than the Tate provided. (Budget problems may also explain the rather unusual choice of images for some photographers.) As well as the particular viewpoint of the curators, these factors also helped to shape the show that we see.

This first section, entitled ‘First Moves’, and dealing with the nineteenth century is certainly the most comprehensive and inclusive of all six of the chronological sections of the exhibition. As a history it lacks some major figures, but also fails almost completely to deal with the technical, aesthetic, political and even largely the social changes that helped to change the nature of photography in Britain over the sixty years concerned.

There are of course many others apart from those already mentioned in ‘Missing Persons’ who might well be included in a proper overview of British nineteenth century photography, far too many to devote a whole feature to each one of them. So here are just a few more from the nineteenth century who I would have expected to see in any show claiming it was the story of British photography.

One of the best of the daguerreotypists was Antoine Claudet, and Calvert Richard Jones and John Dillwyn Llewelyn produced some fine work with the calotype and later wet plate process. It is hard to believe that there were no portraits by Lady Clemintina Haywarden in the show (perhaps by some error they left her out of the credits?), but she is not on the list. David Wilkie Wynfield was another of those to whom Julia Margaret Cameron turned for advice, and on who she perhaps based her approach.

A man very much after my own tastes, Henry Dixon produced some splendid records of London streets, showing both the buildings and the people. He also took some early candid street pictures, using a camera obscured by tarpaulin on the back of a cart.

Of course there are so many other interesting photographers of the period who I’ve not mentioned who are an important part of the early history of photographing Britain. What we do get – and is certainly of some interest – is a number of relatively anonymous works by rather ordinary photographers, including the work of commercial studios (some good, some bad) and others.

Viewed on its own, and for what it is – a kind of cross section of Victorian photography, seasoned with a number of choice tidbits from some of the finest photographers of the era – this section has much to recommend it. The coverage of some of the later eras – as I’ll show in later posts – is much less complete and more biased.

Peter Marshall

1989

Like 1984, but 5 years later. George Orwell wrote his famous book when the date was some 40 years in the future, but I photographed 1989 at the time and wrote about it badly around 17 years later.

Of course there is no real connection with Orwell (though I do have friends who live in his former house in the North-East.) 1989 is just a kind of account of my wanderings in north-east London on a few days in that year, both in straightforward images and rather convoluted text. What is on line is merely chapter one of this fictional work, which has amused some. It does have certain literary influences, but I can blame nothing on Orwell.

It’s perhaps best just to see it as 20 images of the city and not try to read the rather small text. I put this selection of images and the texts together for another web site, which seems to have folded shortly after these went live, though doubtless just by coincidence. On that site the images appeared in reverse order, but I’m not sure it made a great deal of difference.

In some cases the text does reflect at least some of the thoughts that went through the photographer’s mind as he stood in front of the scene and took the picture. Other parts came long after the event.

Peter Marshall

Leica Blues (or Purples)

I’ve delayed writing anything about the Leica M8 until now largely because I don’t yet feel I know enough about it yet. I started using one in April, but for various reasons haven’t taken a great deal – only a thousand or two shots.

Part of the reason for this was that I was still waiting to send off for my two free filters until I decided which sizes I wanted. Which lenses was I going to use with this camera from the ten or so M fitting lenses of various age and manufacture? When I finally got round to ordering them, Leica had made some of the decisions for me, as several of my older Leitz lenses take filters in sizes not on offer. Even some formerly popular sizes such as 40.5mm are not on the official list.

My favourite 35mm f1.4 for example would be a fine fast standard lens. Some versions of it don’t even focus beyond 3 meters on the M8, but mine fits fine and runs to infinity. But the lens has no filter thread. A cut-out lens hood holds a Leitz Series 7 unmounted filter. My lens hood is now incredibly battered, adding a certain street cred with the impression of having been through Kosovo or ‘Nam, but it isn’t easy to find filters to fit, and the severely crushed cut-out hood on its front has a nasty habit of falling off at awkward moments. More importantly, as Irakly Shanidze says in his excellent Leica M8. How is it for professional use? (in several ways the best and most balanced article I’ve seen about the camera,) just try going to your dealer and asking for a B+W 486 IR-Cut Series 7 filter.

Actually, a 49mm slim B+W 486 filter in black mount supposedly will fit in place of a Series 7, but you’ll need a particularly friendly dealer to order even one of these. Alternatively, I’m told if you contact Leitz, they may offer to make you a filter for the purpose. The B+W filters are a little stronger than the Leitz versions, but that isn’t likely to be a problem in practical use. (Heliopan also make some IR cut filters that differ slightly from the Leitz specifications, though none that will fit in place of the Series 7.)

IR cut filters have a problem with lenses with an angle of view greater than 60 degrees, as they give a cyan cast with more oblique rays, thus increasing towards the corner of the lens. The latest M8 firmware corrects for this by recognising the focal length of the lens from the 6 bit coding and applying a suitable correction. This is fine for coded lenses, but what if your lenses are not coded?

Some older lenses can be 6 bit coded, but not the older pre-ASPH 35mm f1.4. You can try the do-it-yourself method with a black permanent marker – although I’m assured it works, so far I’ve not met any success. Perhaps I’m using the wrong type of black pen?

However, painting on the coding dots is only half the solution, as the camera apparently only takes notice of these if the correct viewfinder frame is automatically selected. This rules out lenses such as my 28mm Minolta f2.8 produced for the Minolta CLE, the best 28mm design of its era, as this selects the 35mm finder frame. I’m told it can be engineered to select the correct frame, but I’m loath to take a file to mine.

However, although the IR problem can’t be solved in software, the filter-induced variable cyan cast should be possible to correct. It would be good to see a Photoshop plugin with a ‘focal length’ slider for this purpose, as with uncoded lenses it cannot be recorded in the EXIF data.

Leica users worldwide have been screaming at Leitz to allow user selection of focal lengths for non-coded lenses as at least a partial solution, but that isn’t the Leica way, which demands perfection, even where this creates extensive pain. Even those with Leica’s own latest lenses such as the wide Tri-Elmar have spent some time waiting on Leitz to come up with the correct filter.

Truly the situation is an unholy mess, and one that severely blots Leitz’s copybook. Their engineers apparently recognised the problem in the camera design stage, but seem to have simply hoped nobody would notice. What should have been announced as a novel and superior solution – along with a plentiful supply of filters for all current lenses and a wider program to deal with the many already owned by Leica users – was allowed to leak out, appearing as incomptence and even deceit.

This is a shame, as the Leica M8 is a great camera, for all our various niggles. It delivers superbly detailed 10 megapixel files from the finest range of standard and wideangle lenses available (including some great lenses from Cosina/Voigtlander and Zeiss.) Its simplicity is a strength – the menus are all simple and straightforward, perhaps the only digital camera you don’t need a manual to use. If as I did, you loved working with rangefinder cameras when using film, you would love an M8.

Peter Marshall

The ‘I’ Word

Archival Ink Prints

One of several things that impressed me at Photo-London last week was the number of inkjet prints on display, mainly in colour, but also some black and white, including what I thought was technically one of the best prints, if not the best, in the show (I don’t much like the subject matter, so perhaps won’t mention the photographer.)

Even more impressive was that none of the wall-labels for these prints mentioned the ‘I’ word. I*kj*t is certainly a taboo word so far as dealers are concerned. Instead there were various circumlocutions, varying from the entirely misleading ‘carbon print’ to things that were more essays than media descriptions, such as “printed with pigment based inks on archival cotton paper.” At least the term giclée seems largely to have gone out of fashion, though not entirely absent. It was probably never too popular in France, where I’m told the word, meaning ‘spurted’, has unsavoury slang associations.

Of course many inkjet prints are of poor quality and fugitive in nature, particularly in the early years of inkjet printing. The same problems beset photography in its early years, with salt prints and albumen prints often disappearing almost before your very eyes – and many watercolours also have fading problems. The rise of the photographic gallery in the 1970s and 80s more or less coincided with the so-called ‘new color’ photography, and many of those early C-types are now more a study in browns than colour images (although some at least of the dye transfer prints from the era retain their stunning quality – and there were some fine examples by Eggleston in particular at Photo-London.)

Dealers are also reluctant to use the term inkjet because everyone has an inkjet printer at home, just as many don’t like the term photograph, because the whole world takes and makes photos. Calling them ‘silver gelatin prints’ or even ‘color coupler prints’ associates them with the long and distinguished heritage of print-making rather than that common upstart photography.

Most of the descriptions of inkjet prints currently in use would surely fail under the Trade Descriptions Act as misleading. Carbon prints are something quite different, dating from the nineteenth century, which produced some of the richest and most lustrous images in existence (as well as many that were atrocious.) Of course many of those did not use carbon as pigment.

Archival is also a term lacking in definition. In terms of paper, cotton is a fine material for long-lasting papers, but probably the best lignin-free alpha-cellulose materials are probably its equal. All papers, including 100% cotton materials, may also contain optical brighteners (OBAs) whose fading will make papers yellow with age, and may also be coated with ink-receptive materials whose archival properties in such situations are undetermined.

Inks too are complex materials. Early inkjets all used soluble dyes, chosen with little thought as to their light stability, and prints faded fast. But there are dyes that are stable, that can most likely match the stability of the pigment inks we use. Not that pigments are always particularly stable, and carbon itself isn’t without problems. Of course even inks sold as carbon based inksets for black and white printing have turned out also to contain metallic pigments and often dyes as well (and there is good reason for their presence.) Inks also contain other materials which may too contribute to their fading.

It perhaps isn’t surprising that Stephen Livick, a photographer who seriously studied the problems of making long-lasting inkjet prints and published his personal test results received “serious litigious threats” which eventually forced him to remove his test information from the website. You can still read some of his conclusions, including the fact that certain coatings, particularly Clearstar’s Clearshield, applied after printing will greatly increase print longevity.

Of course, however prints are made, it is largely storage and display conditions that will determine the rate of their deterioration. Most prints would do pretty well if kept in an inert atmosphere at low temperature and controlled humidity – even silver negatives will keep for a considerable age under these conditions. Mounting on acid-free or impermeable supports (and of course any adhesive material used), framing under glass etc all will affect the rate of fade.

Although inkjet printing covers a wide range of materials (and some differences in method) I think we need a commonly agreed simple term intended to describe such prints rather than the current attempts at obfuscation. I don’t like the term archival, but it is hard to think of a better word, so I think we are stuck with it. Otherwise I think it best to keep the description as short and simple as possible. So I propose the term:

Archival ink print.

It is short, avoids the ‘I’ word (and the ‘P’ word), makes it clear that the image is an ink image, while avoiding much confusion. Of course many photographers will want to give a more detailed description of their working practices, perhaps as a part of a ‘Certificate of Authenticity’ which may also include advice on storage or display (such as “should be displayed framed behind glass out of direct sunlight.”)

This is a subject that has been discussed in various on-line forums over the years, and I’ve taken part in those often heated debates. My views as I’ve thought (and learnt) more about the problem have changed. So for me at least, this is a new suggestion. Your views are welcome.

Peter Marshall

Water, Water Everywhere.

From the beginning, photographers have always had a thing about water. Of course it’s inherited from painting, as a quick walk around almost any art gallery, at least of work before the twentieth century, will soon confirm. Walking around art galleries is always useful exercise for photographers, and in London we are peculiarly blessed with both the National Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery adjoining Trafalgar Square where I’m often photographing events, and Tate Britain a short and pleasant walk from Parliament Square, where I’ll drop in and say hello to Brian Haw even if there is no other demo taking place. These galleries are also handy places to dry out when you’ve got soaked photographing in the rain.

In the first decade or two of photography, exposures were long, and one of the great challenges was to photograph waves. I wrote recently on ways to photograph water, and mentioned the success of John Dillwyn Llewelyn in an image of waves breaking on the Welsh coast in the early 1850s.

Water was essential to the wet-plate process that he used, where the photographic plate had to be coated and made sensitive to light on the spot, then exposed and developed before it dried to form a hard, impermeable skin. Of course water remained essential to photographic processing until the advent of digital, but we didn’t need to do the business on the spot. Even now, large quantities of water are needed for the manufacture of digital cameras, computers and the other equipment we need. Truly water is essential for life!

Few photographers, even the most cynical of us, are not occasionally seduced by the reflections of our subject in a smooth pool or broken by ripples, even though we know such things have already been done to death (and there is much evidence of this demise on Flickr and elsewhere.)

I’m trying hard to remember which the photographer was when asked for his definition of photography replied “never anything shot on a beach” or words to similar effect. I don’t think it was me, though I have a certain sympathy with the sentiment. As in the same way I used to call for a moratorium on the sale of colour film in the “Fall”, so aptly named by Americans. O Kodachrome, O tempora, o mores!

So when I agreed to take a walk with Linda and Samuel along some of London’s canal system last Saturday, did I stick to my principles and leave the camera at home? Of course not. From Mile End, we walked not to Paradise, but Willesden Junction by way of Kensal Green.

Grand Union Canal (Paddington Branch) at Kensal Green, steady rain.
(C) 2007, Peter Marshall

Water, at least towards the end of our journey was certainly everywhere, with an intense fine rain falling constantly as we walked the last few miles, although for once I managed to keep most of it out of my Nikon. Perhaps the canal looks at its best in rain?

More pictures from the walk in My London Diary, May 2007

Peter Marshall

Summer Photography

Certainly the most satifying of the various photographic shows currently in London is the Summer Photography Exhibition at Bernard Quaritch Ltd on the edge of Golden Square in Soho. It gains from being a relatively small show, concentrating on photographers who have photographed within a particular community or urban area. The show continues until 29th June, 2007 and is open Mondays to Fridays, 9.30-5.30.

Quaritch is an antiquarian bookseller, established in 1847 by Bernard Quaritch, who on his death in 1899 was described, according to The Times, as “the greatest bookseller who ever lived.” Their premises in Golden Square, where they moved in 1970, have something of the air of a gentlemen’s club and the walls are lined with bookcases of old and rare volumes.

Before going into the downstairs gallery, we lingered around a glass case with some examples of the work of Thomas Annan, including a couple of fine large published volumes of his work, the superb carbon prints published in 1878/9 and the photogravures published in 1900 by his son, Robert Craig Annan, which included 12 of his prints along with 38 taken by his father. The photogravures are also splendid prints.

Downstairs in the gallery is a rare treat, 5 salt prints from the calotype images that Hill and Adamson made at the fishing village of Newhaven on the edge of Edinburgh, not a great walk from their Calton Hill studios. These prints are still powerful images 160 years later, and I was particularly struck by the image of the three fishermen. The different poses they have adopted to attempt to remain still for the lengthy exposure required express powerfully their varied characters. It remains a far more powerful portrait than anything I saw in Photo-London, and reminds me strongly of some of the best images of August Sander, taken some 80 or 90 years later. The five fishwives grouped around some of their baskets is also one of their more interesting images.

The five Thomas Annan prints in the show are glowing examples of his work on the closes of Glasgow in 1868-71 (printed in 1877.) Carbon prints are perhaps capable of a quality unequalled by any other photographing printing process, and these are good examples.

John Thomson’s Street Life in London, with text by Adolphe Smith is represented in the show by six Woodburytype prints. These are carbon prints produced in a printing press from a lead relief plate, created under high pressure from a gelatin relief image made in a similar manner to a carbon print, contact printing a dichromate sensitised gelatin coated sheet under the negative using a powerful UV source.

Street Life in London was one of the truly pioneering works of documentary, and the nicely produced Quaritch catalogue for the show (Catalogue 1351) lists copies both of this work and ‘Street Incidents’, published a few years later to get rid of unsold sheets of prints from ‘Street Life.’

Although Henry Dixon along with Alfred and John Bool produced many fine images recording London around the 1870s and 1880s, their work was perhaps the least striking in the show. Compared to the Annan images, the prints shown lacked depth, and both the viewpoints and the choice of times when the streets were largely deserted make their work of less interest.

By contrast, Roger Mayne’s images from North Kensington, Notting Hill and Paddington in the 1950s are entirely about incident. I was particularly taken with his view of children and teenagers on the doorsteps of St Stephen’s Gardens. Times have changed, not only in the dress and behaviour of children, but also in public attitudes to photographers and being photographed; it would be a brave photographer who tried to take similar pictures on the streets of London today.

Again by contrast, Mike Seaborne’s ‘Facades‘ are deliberately empty of people. Taken from across the street with a square format Rolleiflex camera, they create a systematic visual catalogue of shopfronts surviving (in some cases only just) from an earlier age. Taken in 2004-6, these colour images (some of which are on the Urban Landscapes site I started with Mike) are powerfully evocative, the remains of an older world still with us, often in contrast with ugly 2000s street furniture.

Also included in the show is a single print of New York by Berenice Abbott, a beautiful riot of washing in the yard of New York’s first model tenements, built in 1882 and photographed by here in 1936.

Peter Marshall

Photo London: Fish out of Water

It was I suppose apt that I felt like a fish out of water as I wandered around Photo-London on the opening day yesterday. Its new venue, the old Billingsgate fish market, seems an excellent choice, airy and open, completely unlike the underground tomb in which Paris Photo is held.

What made me feel out of place and uneasy was in the main the work on the walls. Photo-London is supposedly dedicated to contemporary photography, meaning from the 1970s on, although a little earlier work did creep in, so I’d expected to see contemporary work. What I hadn’t been prepared for was the almost complete dominance of the show by large empty photographs. Of course shows like Photo-London are dealer shows, and the dealers follow the money, and big money is largely corporate money with vast office walls to fill.

Although the work in corporations may actually get done in open plan offices and cubicles often with virtually no walls at all, reception areas are designed to impress by scale, and 20×16 prints look rather small on a 30 foot high wall. As Photo-London showed, there is plenty of photographic choice for such spaces, from garish to minimal, to suit your company profile.

Of course not all big photographs are bad photographs, but in general I don’t think a large scale fits the medium well. Its most powerful statements have an intimacy that works better on a moderate scale, perhaps best of all in the pages of the photographic book.

Of course there was work that stood out for me, though relatively little. I’ll go back to the show (it runs until Sunday) and look at some again. Much of what attracted me was however familiar, for example – a fine set of work by Don McCullin as well as pictures by Chris Killip, John Benton-Harris and Ian Berry, all showing “How We Are”, (although three of these four are unaccountably missing on the walls of the Tate show) – but there was also work new to me (at least in actual print form) which I found exciting and hope to write more on later – so long as I can find images on the web. Along with much that confirmed my exisiting predjudices.

Portraiture in particular seems very much in a rut. Use flat lighting, stand your subject or subjects central, looking deadpan at the camera, photograph in medium or large-format colour and you seem to be guaranteed gallery space. Around ten years back this seemed fresh and new (at least to those who had never seen the work of August Sander, who did it so much better, if in black and white.)

Photo London opening
John Benton-Harris (2nd from left) with friends at the opening.

As openings go, its a rather dreary and disappointing event, with small cliques in the different gallery spaces and its hard to meet new people or have a real party. At least at Billingsgate you could go and sit outside by the Thames, although it was a chill evening on the north bank, even though the sun shone on the buildings on the other bank.

Peter Marshall

Missing Persons 5: James Craig Annan

Another important figure from the 1890s omitted from ‘How We Are: Photographing Britain was the second son of photographer Thomas Annan (whose work was included.) James Craig Annan joined the family fine-printing firm when he was 19 in 1883, and went with his father to Austria to the studio of Karl Klic to learn his novel photogravure process for the reproduction of photographs, for which they bought the sole UK rights.

The firm specialised in the reproduction of works of art, and in the early 1890s, James applied his skills to making carbon prints and photogravures from the negatives of calotype pioneers David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson. The Annan family had known Hill, and had moved from Glasgow to live in his Calton Hill studio in Edinburgh for the last year of Hill’s life.

At the same time, James decided to become a photographer, and his first show, on the company premises in Glasgow in 1892 made a great impression. His landscape work from Holland inspired Alfred Steiglitz, who went to a similar area of the coast and made a his own, in some ways similar image. Soon he was a member of the ‘Linked Ring’ and his work was shown to critical acclaim in London, New York, Paris and Russia, and later in many other cities in Europe, America and India.

James Craig Annan was included with Hill and Evans in a 1906 show at Alfred Steiglitz’s ‘291’ gallery in New York, as well as in the great show Stieglitz organised in Buffalo in 1910 which in some ways marked the end of the Pictorialist movement (and the Linked Ring dissolved in the same year.) Steiglitz published eight of his images from a trip to Spain in 1913 in ‘Camera Work’ the following year. This more or less marked the end of James’s photographic career, and he apparently took few photographs after this time. He retired from the family firm around 1940 and died in 1946, his photographs largely forgotten.

I’ve never fully appreciated the work of Annan, probably because of his use of photogravure as a printing method. I can testify from limited personal experience that this is an extremely tricky method. I made one print, largely to see exactly how it was done and never wanted to repeat the experience. It is a process that requires (and allows) great control. Although I can appreciate the photography of Annan, I find the prints themselves have too pictorial an aesthetic for my more ascetic taste.

There are many photogravures by other photographers that I admire, but his work has always left me with an uneasy feeling of compromise between the photographic and the pictorial, which to some extent characterizes almost all the art photography of this era.

Peter Marshall