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Education Under Attack

I spent 30 years of my life working full-time in education, teaching a wide range of subjects including science, chemistry, IT, computer networking and, of course, photography. It was hard work during term-time, particularly in the early years when I was a teacher and then a head of department in a very large secondary comprehensive, when 60+ hour weeks were normal for me during term times, with lesson preparation, planning, marking and administration taking up perhaps one and a half times as much time as the actual class contact – then around 24 hours a week. Anyone who thinks teachers have it easy – and who looks on it as a 9 to 4 job has never tried it, or not at this level.

Then – in the 1970s – the workload we had was at the high end for the profession, and others working in primary schools or grammar schools or even some smaller comprehensives did have an easier time, but those days are now long gone, with the National Curriculum and Ofsted making the kind of hours those of us at the sharper end had to put in back then universal.

Like many teachers, I went into the profession for idealistic reasons, though many of these were frustrated by the problems and pressures I met. Now the pressures are much greater, and driven by government interference and a spectacularly vindictive and doctrinaire inspection system that rewards blind compliance and attempts to stamp out initiative and individuality. Things started to get really bad in the 1990s, and I was glad to be able to resign at the end of that decade and take up photography and writing about photography.

Now things are even worse, with an education minister driven by hare-brained ideas from failing systems abroad and deaf to the advice of many educationalists in the UK. Education Minister Michael Gove seems to hate and mistrust teachers, and is setting out to increase workloads and destroy the collective agreements that have governed teachers’ pay and conditions. Add to that the raising of the pension age, with teachers in the future being expected to work until they are 68 and it is hardly surprising that teachers are very angry, both for themselves and over the future of state education. Much of that anger is against Gove, universally loathed across the profession.

I’d put the march through London from Malet St to Westminster into my diary a month or so earlier, and only checked on it again on the morning it was taking place. When I did so I found that the time I’d been given had changed, and that I had no chance of covering the start. I decided that if I caught the next train I could probably meet them in Whitehall, and that proved to be the case, though I had to run a couple of hundred yards to be opposite Downing St as the head of the march reached there.

A difficult angle – and rather a mess at right in the middle of the image

Catching the procession as it swung away from Parliament gets a better angle

As expected, some teachers reacted strongly as they passed the gates to the street, shouting towards the Prime Minister’s residence hidden away behind the gates guarded by armed police, and I took a few pictures, before hurrying along to the head of the march to photograph it going past the Houses of Parliament. It’s always good to get a few images with Big Ben in the background.

It’s tricky to get good images unless marchers stop and pose, as you have to work from a fairly oblique angle to include the protesters and parliament. Often the best opportunity is when marchers are some way along the front of the square, but marches like this that turn up away from parliament give a better opportunity on or just past that corner – as in the image above.

I kept with the head of the march as it came up to the Dept for Education a quarter mile or so further on. It doesn’t really stand out in pictures – and when people are just marching past it’s seldom possible to include it sensibly. But I knew that here was another location where the anger would emerge visibly. I’ve seen a few pictures from the rally published in newspapers and magazines, and I think mine show that anger more clearly.

There were far more on the march than the hall a couple of hundred yards further on would accommodate, and as it filled up, the march came to a halt, still stretching back a fairly tightly packed third of a mile by the time I left half an hour later. Estimates put the numbers in London at 15,000 and there were other marches and rallies across the country.

I made the mistake of trying to get to my next appointment by bus, but the teachers’ protest had completely disrupted the bus services and brought traffic in London to a complete standstill. When I finally found a bus that was running, it went a couple of stops before coming to a halt, with the driver advising us that if we could walk it would be faster. And it was, but not fast enough, as by the time I arrived the protest had finished and dispersed.

Gove, like many others inside and outside parliament, seems to think that teaching is easy and a cushy number. It probably was at the posh Scottish private school he got a scholarship to, and most of his colleagues in the cabinet went to Eton, where I’m sure the atmosphere is rather different to your average comprehensive. Eton is a very good school and I’m sure its staff are dedicated and talented (I was once urged by the head of department there I worked with as an examiner to apply for a vacant job.) If Gove would fund the state schools at a similar level they could do acheive wonders too. But I can only agree with conservative peer Lord Baker who recently said “Michael Gove had a tough upbringing and he believes if he did it, anybody in the country could do what he did: whether they’re orphans, whether they’re poor, whether they’re impoverished, they can all rise to the top. That is not actually true, and that is dominating the attitude of a key minister in government.”

More pictures of the march and angry teachers in Teachers March against Government Plans.

More About My Teaching Career – and how I managed to be a photographer too.

I began my second teaching post (the first had been a couple of terms filling in time before getting my teaching qualification) as a science teacher at one of the country’s largest comprehensives, and stuck it out for almost ten years, considerably longer than average for the school, getting promoted three times over the years.

Most weekdays I’d get up at 7am to get to work for 8.45am, teach until 4pm, with ten minutes for a cup of tea in the morning. If I was on lunch duty I’d eat a free school lunch as a part of the lunch break, otherwise I’d bring sandwiches so I could get on with marking and other jobs. When the ‘students’ left, I’d be clearing up and tidying and perhaps some more marking before leaving for home and dinner. This was the only relaxation during most days, and I’d often manage to listen a little to the radio while eating or washing up after the meal, but then it was time to get back to work again, usually until around midnight.

It was a tiring schedule, but it did make it possible for me to take the occasional day off at the weekend for photography – and of course there were the holidays – but after 10 years it had worn me down, and I took a drop in pay to move to a less demanding teaching post in further education. There with a similar amount of ‘contact hours’ I could put in a 40 hour week and get the job done. And by taking on some evening classes, I managed to arrange myself one or two free afternoons which I could devote to my personal photography through the year as well as during vacations.

But while in 1980 my new job had seemed reasonably relaxed, over the years it changed. The College amalgamated with another and later became a small part of an even larger unit. Paperwork – at first virtually non-existent – became to seem the management’s raison d’etre, and inspections increasingly important. Management which had been aimed at enabling staff changed to be about controlling and supervising them, and bullying bosses proliferated. As a trade union rep my job (unpaid and entirely in my own time) increased too, and where once relations had been amicable they became confrontational. Things improved slightly with the appointment of a new principal (but the golden handshake given to the previous for failure rankled.)

Teachers in the UK I think have to be at school on 195 days a year. With 52 weeks of 5 days the full working year is 260 days, so there are 65 days free – but probably I spent around another 10 on school work, writing new courses, leaving me with around 55. In industry in the UK my friends were getting 30-40 days leave per year (including Bank Holidays) so this was a significant advantage in pursuing my photography – making projects like that I took in Hull over several years possible. Moving to FE freed me up for a half day of work during the week and made a number of major projects in London possible.

In the late 70s and early 80s I did consider leaving teaching and going full-time in photography. But I had a family and needed a regular income to support them. Teaching was a way to do that and to continue with some photography. This was a relaxation from the teaching, and helped me keep at that. I wonder if I had been working all day as a photographer I would have wanted to do the same amount of personal photography as well. Many over the years have asked me how I could do both, and it was simple to answer – I just asked them how many hours they spent watching TV. I last lived in a place with a set in 1968.

Continue reading Education Under Attack

Jon Lewis & the Farmworker Movement

Last week the New York Times Lens Blog published a post A Civil Rights Photographer, and a Struggle, Are Remembered about the work by Jon Lewis with Cesar Chavez and his Farmworker movement in California in the mid 1960s. The text is by writer, professor and curator, Maurice Berger, who has also contributed a number of other posts related the the US Civil Rights movement.

The post comes as the book ‘Jon Lewis: Photographs of the California Grape Strike‘ by Richard Steven Street (ISBN 978-0-8032-3048-4) is published by the University of Nebraska press.

In January 1966, Lewis, a 28 year old former marine with a degree in journalism and photographer from California State University in San Jose, visited Delano in California, the centre of the grape workers strike led by César Chávez of the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA), intending to stay for a week before starting graduate school at California State University in San Francisco.

In the event he stayed for eight months, and also returned later in the summer, sleeping on the floor of the union HQ and living on the $5 a week striker’s wages. He managed to borrow $150 to set up and equip a laundry room as a darkroom with second hand equipment, photographing by day and processing at night, especially as the windowless darkroom got steamy with chemicals in the daytime during the summer, taking over 250 rolls of film. He photographed the picket lines, the confrontations, boycotts and the living conditions and in particular the historic 250 mile march of farm workers from Delano to the State Capitol in Sacramento to meet with the governor. This began with fewer than 75 marchers and a police attempt to stop it, but by the time it reached the capital there were thousands of marchers and supporters. The march brought the farm workers’ struggle on to the national headlines and led to a successful farmworker grape boycott.

Lewis was one of a small team of freelancers who documented the strike, all of whom became dedicated to the cause, and gave much of their work to the union to use for posters and publicity without charge. Unlike the photographers from the newspapers and magazines who came for a few days, they stuck at the job, and produced almost all of the best pictures – and Lewis was probably the best among them. Taking pictures was often dangerous, with police and company thugs often targeting them, but working from the inside they had the opportunity to create a unique record.

Lewis also recognised the input of Jim Holland, the man who made the circular red and black picket signs, as he wrote: ‘As props and framing devices they turned many an ordinary photograph into a stronger image.’ Many of us who photographed the ‘Stop the War’ protests in the UK have a similar reason to be grateful to David Gentleman.

As a part of the campaign, a secret ballot administered by the American Arbitration Association was held among the workers for the major corporation opposed to an agreement with the workers, giving them the choice of the newly united union led by Chavez, the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee AFL-CIO (UFWOC), the Teamsters Union or no union at all. This was won by the UFWOC, with only 12 of the 873 workers voting for no union representation, contradicting the employers claim that the workers did not want a union.

You can read more about the strike and see more of Lewis’s pictures in the Jon Lewis Photo Exhibit “1966: Cesar Chavez and his NFWA” by LeRoy Chatfield, part of a site which is a literary memorial to Don Edwards who was also active in the 1960s civil rights movement.

After taking these pictures and returning to college on the GI Bill, Lewis failed to get employment as a college teacher of photography and graphics and found work for 38 years in the printing industry. After retirement he had time to print some of those old negatives again and he gave many of the pictures to Chatfield (another who worked with the Farmworkers) to use on an extensive archive documenting the Farmworker Movement.

Lewis died in December 2009 and a year later, Chatfield, published his portrait and eight of his photographs in a tribute in his journal Syndic.

On the Farmworker site there is a statement by Lewis about his work (and an oral history interview), which ends with the sentence: It was a great privilege to have been able to photograph strong men and women standing. I’m proud to have stood with them.

Darkroom Nostalgia

Whether you are someone who has never made a print in a darkroom or one of us who paid our dues in that respect, you will almost certainly find the post Magnum and the Dying Art of Darkroom Printing by Sarah Coleman on her The Literate Lens blog of interest, in showing a little of how a master printer – in this case Pablo Inirio of Magnum in New York – thinks and works. And my thanks to Petapixel for commenting on and linking to her post.

What I find a little disturbing is not the post itself, but some of the comments that it has provoked, although Coleman did perhaps set them up when she wrote:

“Over the last fifteen years, almost every photographer I’ve interviewed has waxed poetic about that “magical” experience of seeing an image develop in chemicals for the first time. You have to wonder whether today’s young photographers will rhapsodize as much about the first time they color-calibrated their monitors.”

Digital has of course removed some of the mystique. No longer do we have the quasi-masonic initiation into the dark arts that used to be necessary, and digital comes without those smells (for which I say thank goodness, as taking some of that toxic chemistry out of our lives must be a good thing.) But I still feel there is something magical about pressing a button and then seeing a miniature image on the back of the camera, and even more being able to show it and zoom into it on a large screen on the computer. But colour-calibrating your monitor is perhaps equally exciting as measuring out 10ml of Rodinal or learning to keep the developer temperature constant at 20 degrees.

Coleman’s is an entirely false comparison. What was important in photography was the image; what still is important is the image, though now it appears in fractions of a second in an automatic way without all the fuss we used to have.

Digital printers still have to do all the kind of things that we did in the dark to get good prints, just that these are much simpler (and can be reversible) on the computer. In the darkroom Gene Smith used to get through a box of paper and a bottle of Scotch to make the final print, we can do it by viewing on those calibrated screens and save the Scotch for later. Though personally I’d prefer a decent glass of wine – or two.

While we still need to make all the kind of adjustments that Inirio records on his annotated images, in Lightroom the computer remembers them for us, saving us the need to draw the diagrams. We can also do them with ease more precisely than the best master darkroom printers, and once you have made the ‘perfect’ print (or the best you can make) then can repeat it at the click of a mouse.

That doesn’t mean you or I can be a good a printer as Initio. Printing has always been a matter of vision, of being able to see the potential in a negative. Without that you can dodge, burn and use all the other techniques in darkroom or digital and never produce a great print. Many great photographers have never managed to, and have collaborated with others to print their work better than they ever could (and despite what it asserts in the ‘Media Space’ show, Tony Ray-Jones was one of them – see here and here.) Perhaps a true problem of digital is that is has more or less dispensed with the talents of specialist printers – such as Inirio – because everyone thinks they can do it as well as the best.

Of course once you have the vision, it isn’t always easy to transmit that to the material. You have to learn (and make tests, tests, tests) to see how the materials react. In the digital world this is also much simpler, with much of the necessary information being stored in print profiles and curves etc.

The same is true of digital images. Our raw files (or even camera produced jpegs) are only starting points – if you like Ansel Adams’s musical analogy – the scores, and the digital files we send to clients or use on the web or to make prints are performances, some better than others.

Adams is the man I first learnt to print properly from, not in the flesh but in the revised 1968 version of his Basic Photo series, Volume 3 The Print (more recent versions perhaps somewhat dumbed down) and it was a good starting point on which to build. In my darkroom in the old days there were always two developer trays (later vertical ‘trays’ to save space, keep temperature constant and reduce developer oxidation) containing low and high contrast developers and prints were usually transferred from one to the other at an appropriate time for the contrast required – at least until I changed to using Multigrade papers. I had a few little tricks and nudges that I’d learnt talking to other printers or thought of myself, and I enjoyed making good prints, but I don’t regret that I never use the darkroom now. Because I know I can do better on the computer and making inkjet prints on baryta papers, though I could also get a lab to print the digital files on genuine silver halide paper. I’ll not go back to the ferri, the flashing, the Blu-tak, cut masks and all the rest of the wands that were a part of the magic – when needed.

I certainly have some regrets over cameras and lenses that I no longer use because they take images on film. The panoramic cameras, the Minolta CLE and Leica, the Konica Hexars and the Olympus OM4s were all better tools for what they did than anything digital yet produced. You can do more with the Nikon DSLRs, take pictures in much lower light and more, but they don’t have the same ease of use or responsiveness, though things are improving (and they will probably get there in a few years, just in time for cameras disappear for good.) But on the very few occasions I take film now, it doesn’t go into an enlarger, but into a scanner. It just wouldn’t occur to me to make darkroom prints.

Back in the days when I taught photography, I used to find the best way to get students to see the possibilities of making good black and white prints in the darkroom was to get them to use Photoshop. They could then quickly (and at zero cost) learn about getting the contrast and exposure correct, and go on to see the effect of dodging and burning. Years earlier, before we had computers in art departments, I’d taught lighting with the aid of video cameras, because you didn’t have to develop film to see the results.

But the idea that printing in black and white is a good way to learn about how to make good images in the digital age which some in education suggest is nonsense. It is at best a slow and inconvenient method to learn about making images. Digital is a far better medium for both teaching and learning about photography. Using film and darkrooms is essential for teaching about working with film and darkroom printing – full stop.

I’m not against craft skills, but think it is only generally worth teaching those that are relevant now. I think it’s great that a few people like to learn how to use the wet plate process, but despite arguably representing the pinnacle of photographic practice, I certainly wouldn’t want it to be an integral part of normal photographic courses. It’s time to let go of darkroom printing in education, just as we (I hope) no longer teach other outmoded processes. Except as history, and there is nothing wrong with that. We just need to be clear it is history, or that it’s a bit of fun, rather than something that all photographers could benefit from.

But you can see another view on (again a link from Petapixel) Long Live Film, which has a trailer from a film of that name, made by mail-order processor Indie Film Lab and Kodak both with a certain vested interest.

Nostalgia junkies who hanker after those colour and tonal distortions that were a signature of different film stocks will find that there are plenty of ways to reproduce these from your digital images. I’ve not tried any of the products from ‘Totally Rad’, not being a believer that clicking on a pre-set can give your pictures an ‘individual’ look, but they claim to have carried out an impressive amount of research to develop “the most faithful film emulation available” in their Replichrome. Personally I’ll save the $99 and concentrate on trying to get something individual in the viewfinder.

Moral Hazard

The Guardian at the end of last month published an interesting audio slideshow with Stephen McLaren talking about his five-year project documenting the City of London after the 2008 financial crisis, Moral Hazard.

McLaren is one of the most interesting to emerge in a new generation of ‘street photographers’, though the genre is perhaps largely meaninless, and I think it belittles his work to call him a street photographer, with so much that is now included under that title being puerile graphic observations.

What distinguishes Mclaren’s work – not that it lacks graphic interest, is an underlying seriousness of purpose. It is (as one photographer whose opinion I valued once said about my own work) “about something.” Behind the often amusing or even startling sights he records there is a an intelligence. These are not isolated aperçus but a project worked out over repeated visits to the streets of the City, building on each other.

As well as the images on the Guardian you can see more of McLaren’s work on his web site. I”d particularly recommend his ‘East End‘ and look forward to seeing more of his ‘Scotia Nova‘ and there are images in ‘Westcostism‘ that I love. But all of the projects are worth looking at.

Free Sinyakov

‘In Russia, Conflating Journalism and ‘Hooliganism’’, posted on the New York Times Lens blog is an article by Steven Lee Myers about photographer Denis Sinyakov, the Moscow-based freelance photographer who was arrested when Russian soldiers illegally seized the Greenpeace ship the Arctic Sunrise on the high seas on September 19. All of those on board, including Sinyakov and were initially charged with piracy. On 26 September a court in Murmansk ordered he be put in preventive detention for two months, according to Reporters Without Borders because ‘he “often travels abroad” and might try to elude the authorities’.

The Russian prosecutors have since reduced the charges against him and the other 29 arrested to hooliganism, which still carries a maximum sentence of 7 years, and they could be held in jail for up to 18 months before the case comes to court.

Reporters Without Borders comment:“

Sinyakov was arrested while working as a journalist and his detention constitutes an unacceptable violation of freedom of information,. By investigating this photographer and the Greenpeace activists he was accompanying on such an absurd accusation as piracy, the Russian Investigative Committee is criminalizing both journalists and environmental activism.

They report Sinyakov’s speech to the court:

“This ‘criminal activity’ is journalism and I will continue to practice it […] Greenpeace is an organization with a 40-year history and is well known for its activities. But I don’t work for it. I am a journalist. You can see my photos in the media in Russia and all over the world. All my equipment has been seized. My only weapon is my camera.”

Sinyakov worked as a photo editor and a staff photographer at Agence France-Presse (2004-2007) and at Reuters (2007- July 2012) when he went freelance to be able to concentrate more on the stories that interested him “on the environment, human rights, politics and the economy.” According to the NY Times post, the Russian news agency Lenta.ru have provided a letter for the court that he was accredited with them.

Those who can read Russian can read his ‘Entries from Jail‘ (Записи из СИЗО) on his web site. All of us can support Sinyakov and the rest of the Arctic 30 by sending a letter to our Russian embassy from the Greenpeace site. Protests are also being organised outside many of them, including one in London this evening.

Kieron Bryan, a British freelance videographer who previously worked at The Times, the Mirror and Current TV, leaving The Times in January to pursue freelance work, is also among the 30 arrested. He was employed by Greenpeace on a short-term contract to document the organisation’s work on Russian oil exploration in the Arctic Circle. The BBC reported today that his family are hoping to fly out shortly to visit him in prison.

Capa 100

It probably hasn’t escaped your attention that Robert Capa, or rather Endre Friedmann was born 100 years ago on October 22, 1913, as there have been a number of newspaper articles about him and this anniversary.

Apparently while at school in Budapest he gained the nickname cápa – Hungarian for ‘shark’, and he used this in a scam when having problems making a living in Paris in the mid-1930s. To charge more for his pictures he invented an entirely mythical ‘famous American photographer’ giving him de-accented form Capa as a surname because of its similarity to the name of US film director Frank Capra, whose 1934 film It Happened One Night had won five Oscars. Friedmann chose the first name ‘Robert’ because he thought it typically American (and he didn’t at the time know that ‘Bob’ was a shortened form of the same name.) He, by now calling himself André Friedmann, posed as the famous photographer’s ‘darkroom boy’, while his partner, photographer and picture editor Gerda Taro (born Gerta Pohorylle), became Robert Capa‘s agent, insisting on double the normal fees for the work of this famous photographer.

Friedmann was soon caught out, as Gerda tried to sell one of the editors who had been paying over the odds for Capa’s work some pictures that he had seen Friedmann taking. But Lucien Vogel of Vue was I think amused by the ingenuity as well as impressed by the quality of the images, and sent the two photographers to cover the Spanish Civil War, with Friedmann now adopting Capa as his own name.

I’ve just spent a fruitless half hour searching for my copy of a book on Capa produced long ago by the ICP (International Center of Photography) in New York, a body founded in 1974 by Robert Capa’s brother Cornell Capa to keep the work of his brother and other ‘concerned’ humanitarian documentary photographers alive, which has a number of Capa’s own stories in it, as well as probably the best selection of his pictures.

I’ve also been listening to a broadcast recently discovered and available on the ICP site that Capa made on a morning talk show ‘Hi! Jinx.’ in October 1947. It is the only known recording of his voice, for although Capa was known as a great story-teller, this was apparently his only appearance on radio and he was never interviewed for television. He came on radio to promote his autobiographical novel’ Slightly Out of Focus but much of his talk is about the trip he had just made to Russia for the forthcoming A Russian Journal, with his pictures and a text by his travelling companion John Steinbeck. Both books are available dirt cheap second-hand, presumably meaning they sold very well.

Autobiographical novel is a good description of ‘Slightly Out of Focus’, as Capa seems seldom to have let sticking the absolute facts spoil a good story and many grew considerably with the telling. The recording contradicts the description of his mode of speech by some friends as incomprehensible ‘Capanese’. In the interview, Capa, a considerable linguist who spoke Hungarian, German, French, Spanish, and English, shows himself to be clear and highly articulate in what ‘became his dominant written and spoken language’ by 1941, English.

It’s certainly interesting to hear Capa talk about his work, and in particular how he made the picture that made him famous, the 1936 ‘Falling Soldier’ . He says he had no idea what he had taken, holding his camera above his head and pressing the shutter, and only knew he had taken a great picture later. The ICP comments, ‘He says, “The prize picture is born in the imagination of the editors and the public who sees them.” It is the only public comment we have directly from him about this famous image.’

Those who are in Korea, Hungary, Italy, Japan, Mexico, France and of course New York can visit shows that are a part of the centenary celebrations, and earlier this year the Atlas Gallery in London put on a show of Capa’s work. Probably the best place to see his work on-line is at Magnum Photos.

American Modern

Talking on Skype with a friend today, he told me about a great show he saw recently in New York, American Modern: Hopper to O’Keeffe at MoMA until January 26, 2014.

Apart from having two of my favourite American painters in the title, the works in the show include photographs by some of my favourite American photographers, including Stieglitz and Evans and much else.

As it says on the MoMA page:

American Modern takes a fresh look at the Museum’s holdings of American art made between 1915 and 1950, and considers the cultural preoccupations of a rapidly changing American society in the first half of the 20th century. Including paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, and sculptures, American Modern brings together some of the Museum’s most celebrated masterworks, contextualizing them across mediums and amid lesser-seen but revelatory works by artists who expressed compelling emotional and visual tendencies of the time.

The selection of works depicts subjects as diverse as urban and rural landscapes, scenes of industry, still-life compositions, and portraiture, and is organized thematically, with visual connections trumping strict chronology. Artists represented include George Bellows, Stuart Davis, Edward Hopper, Georgia O’Keeffe, Charles Sheeler, Alfred Stieglitz, and Andrew Wyeth, among many others.

Well, personally I could well have done without Wyeth’s contribution; Christina’s World to me is retch-making kitsch, but my friend actually likes it. Had we been on Facebook I might have felt bound to unfriend him, but in the real world I’m a little more tolerant of the aesthetically misguided. But the web site that accompanies the show is also commendable, with images of 118 of the exhibits. You can also see them in several orders, of which I recommend by date, and you can scroll through the images in order with details and comments which you may chose to read or ignore.

Although there were many familiar images – that white fence, those peppers and more – there were also some that were new to me, and some even by artists I’d not heard of.

You can also download a generous sample PDF of the related publication American Modern: Hopper to O’Keeffe by Esther Adler and Kathy Curry, which includes the introduction as well as including some images not on the web site. It looks a very attractive volume, and one which gives due weight to photography, and finding it available at my favourite online book site for under £19 including p/p completely undermined my resolution that we just haven’t space at home for any more books.

Hustlers

I’m not a great fan of Philip-Lorca diCorcia, whose methods of working have always made me uneasy. Kind of substituting a movie set for real life, pictures that too often feel to me like a photographer saying look how clever I am at making powerful images. In the short clip about his ‘Hustlers’ on ASX, he talks about his favourite image, liking it because it shows something that was only their for perhaps 1/400s when his flash lit up the foreground, bouncing blue light from the guy’s shirt into a triangle on his cheek and elsewhere, something he only saw on the Polaroid before he made the picture. But although the way his work seems to undermine documentary worries me, I can’t deny that this is an interesting series with some fine pictures, and that series was, as a feature today on ‘Time Lightbox‘ points out, “a defiant response to (largely) right-wing bigotry targeting the First Amendment rights of homosexuals — specifically, those working in the arts.”

You can see much more about his work on the ASX page devoted to him. And I still feel uneasy, just as I also do about the work of Jeff Wall and others who seem to me to be more concerned about playing to the art market than telling stories about the world.

Only in England

Only in England: Photographs bv Tony Ray-Jones & Martin Parr
Media Space, Science Museum, London 21 Sept 2013 -16 March 2014
National Media Museum, Bradford, 22 March 2014-29 June 2014

Admission £8, Concessions £5

It’s taken me a while to get around to writing this review since I went to see the show a week ago, mainly because I’ve been away from home, and although I had a notebook as well as a real notebook with the ten sides of notes I took at the Science Museum, I didn’t have with me the three books and various magazines containing work by Tony Ray-Jones (TRJ) for reference.

First let me say that anyone with the slightest interest in photography who is going to be near London in the next 5 months should visit this show at least once – and give yourself a couple of hours to do so. It really is one of the most significant shows of photography here in the UK for some years. If you don’t already know the work of TRJ (see my Tony Ray-Jones Discovered Yet Again), then you are obviously very new to photography, and it will be a revelation, and if you do know his work, you probably will not need my urging to make you want to see a large number of vintage prints again, though I think you may probably learn little new about him. But for all who were not around in photography in the 1970s, the black and white work by Martin Parr may come as something of a surprise, and it was certainly good to see his pictures from ‘The Nonconformists‘ again.

Although the two photographers both concerned themselves with ‘the English’ their approaches were very different. TRJ’s view was essentially ironic and surreal, witty and superbly framed, very much about the image rather than the subject, while Parr’s was documentary, concerned and often reverential, even loving. Their very different visions overlap in a few of the pictures in this show, but it was only perhaps in other projects and his colour work in the early 1980s that Parr really developed a kind of amused detachment towards the subject that perhaps derived from TRJ. TRJ was perhaps more interested in general themes, rather as his friend, photographer John Benton-Harris, styles himself, a visual sociologist, while Parr concentrates on the individuals and there eccentricities, a very English obsession.

The wall text states that all of the images in the first section of the show – the work that TRJ himself selected for exhibition and publication – was actually printed by the photographer. I rather doubt this to be the case, having listened to some of those who knew him – and at least one who printed his work both before and after his tragically young demise. There are stories – some in the show – which suggest that he was a skilled printer, but this hardly fits some of what I’ve been told. His time in the USA will have introduced him to the rather different attitudes to photographic printing there compared to the generally unsophisticated methods taught in the UK at that time. For many of us, texts like the Ansel Adams Basic Photo series ‘The Print’ came as something of a revelation.

What I think is true is that TRJ had a very good idea of what he wanted his prints to look like, and probably suffered a great deal of frustration in trying to get them so. Although I’d defer to those closer to the photographer, my guess on looking at the Media Space show would be that around half were made by him. Those we can certainly be sure of are the five images from his 1969 ICA show from Martin Parr’s collection. It’s perhaps a pity that an effort was not made to locate more of the images from this show for the current exhibition – I would certainly have been willing to lend the one I own. I don’t know how closely the selection for the Media Space show follows the photographer’s own selections, either for that show or his book dummies, but clearly all those in this first section of the exhibition were images that the photographer himself had selected as successfully representing his intentions.

Comparing the five ICA show prints with both the other prints in the show from the same negative and with the printing of other photographs does indicate some subtle differences, but clearly most but not quite all have been made with similar intentions, if not by the photographer himself by others responsive to his requirements. But I think TRJ would have been even more pleased with the prints made for ‘The English‘ at the National Museum of Photography, Film and Television at Bradford in 2004, and the reproductions in the accompanying book by Russell Roberts, ‘Tony Ray-Jones’ (Chris Boot Ltd, 2004) which I think are the best published versions of most of his work. Unfortunately if you haven’t already got a copy this is now advertised on Amazon at over $5,000! Though diligent searching may find a rather cheaper copy.

The remaining prints in the show, both by Parr and those selected from TRJ’s contact prints by Parr, were larger pigment inkjet prints (or as the labels rather confusingly call them, pigment prints.) Parr’s own work may come as a surprise to those who missed the Camerawork show in 1981 or the various publications in magazines at that time about his work. I’ve always regarded The Nonconformists – along with other black and white projects including his ‘Beauty Spots‘, shown at the Photographers’ Gallery in London in the mid-70s, as some of his more interesting work. It is perhaps a little surprising to see The Non-Conformists chosen in preference to Beauty Spots for this show, as the latter work shows very much more clearly the influence on the younger photographer of the work of TRJ. Perhaps it was felt to be too clear and the comparison not always flattering!

But Parr’s work in The Non-Conformists, if perhaps closer to the traditional British social documentary tradition is still an impressive body of work, and well worth showing, with some fine portraiture as well as some of the better-known images such as the storm hitting the tables of a Leeds street party of the figures sitting on the terrace of Halifax Rugby League ground, covered with grass or the plate filling at the Mayor of Todmorden’s inaugural banquet. There is a strength of feeling, a humanity, about most of these images which seems absent in much of Parr’s later work.

There are pictures that I imagine TRJ would have appreciated – for example of a cow watching and being watched as the Congregation make their way to Crimsworth Dean Chapel Anniversary. And the buffet lunch at Steep Lane Baptist did remind me a little of TRJ’s very different Blackpool picnickers from 1967 surrounded by their paraphernalia but keeping very much apart on the front under an image of an idyllic couple entwined in a rural tableaux.

The inkjet printing and the relatively large scale of the prints I think enhances the work, bringing out more detail than I remember. Good injket prints like these can often allow greater subtlety than was possible in the darkroom days. And of course the pigment inks are generally far more stable than silver. Making silver gelatine prints has perhaps become more of an affectation than an aesthetic choice now.

For me the least satisfying and most problematic aspect of the show were the 50 ‘new’ pictures selected by Parr from the 2700 contact sheets in the TRJ archive (around 90,000 images.) As the wall text says “Parr did not attempt to reproduce Ray-Jones’s selection process but instead reconsidered the work with the benefit of over 40 years’ experience as a photographer, collector and curator.”

There are photographers and collections of work for which such a process is necessary or even possibly desirable, but I remain unconvinced that the relatively small opus of TRJ, which was very intensively studied by the photographer himself is one. What we can be sure of is that every image in this part of the show is one that the photographer himself considered and rejected. His standards were exacting – and these images did not live up to them. I felt there were perhaps half a dozen that perhaps added something to his reputation, but the majority told us what we already know and his contact sheets on display in the exhibition show. Like many photographers, he worked hard to get his pictures exactly as he wanted them – and that like the rest of us, even the best of photographers mainly fail. We should celebrate his many successes rather than dwell on the others.

As a further text tells us “The prints are larger than those made by Ray-Jones, reflecting Parr’s aesthetic preferences, while retaining the tonal range and detail that Ray-Jones sought in his own printing.” To give some figures, the TRJ prints are generally between around 8×6″ and 12×8″ and those made by Parr either 16×11 or 20″x13″ (though I didn’t have a ruler with me.) In terms of tonality, the new prints seemed very different to me from those by TRJ, much lighter and more open, and the attempt to match them seems to have been a fairly total failure.

The vintage prints in the show are small and intense, images that work well on a relatively intimate scale. Most of the ‘new’ work seems to me less interesting both because of its content – it lacks the incisiveness of the best images by TRJ – and also because of its presentation. This is an exercise that I feel reflects badly on him and also on what 40 years have taught Parr.

Even if what we are seeing is not the photographer’s best work, and perhaps rather poorly presented it still retains some interest if just as a larger version of a few frames of his contacts, though I did rather wonder if TRJ might at least be shifting uneasily in his grave. Like his earlier colour work which is also being published in a book, and the contact prints it may provide some insight into how he worked, but is not the work by which he felt he should be remembered.

So while this is a show not to be missed, with fine work by both Ray-Jones and Parr, it is not without its defects – and there are a few small clangers such as the reference to the photographer ‘Robert Kappa‘ and ‘the seasons‘ rather than ‘the season‘ (i.e. the ‘London ‘ season rather than the time of year) but it is great to see some of the fine collection of the National Media Museum on display in London as the first show in the Media Space. This aims to “showcase the National Photography Collection from the National Media Museum through a series of major exhibitions” and I look forward to seeing more. Though it would be better to have rather shorter shows and more of them than the almost six months of this show. For Londoners, Bradford was very much a move too far – it’s cheaper and quicker to get to Paris.

Hostile Environments

Petapixel has published My Experience Photographing on the Front Lines of the Syrian Civil War by Cengiz Yar Jr, (originally published by Japan Camera Hunter) which gives a very personal insight into what it is like to work in a such a dangerous situation. It makes me very sure that I don’t want to go there, however much I appreciate the work that he and other photographers are risking their lives to do, but I think others may be inspired to emulate him.

Last month the monthly meeting of NUJ London Photographers’ Branch had a presentation on Working in Hostile Environments, which unfortunately I was unable to attend, but have just been catching up by listening to the audio recording of the two talks and discussion. It isn’t a professional quality recording and comes with some very annoying noise during parts of the discussion, and of course the pictures by the two speakers are absent but it is still worth listening to if you are a photographer or have any interest in the kind of problems that photographers have and how they tackle them. Quite a lot would also apply to other journalists too, though in the nature of things photographers have to stick their necks out rather more. They can’t cover a war from a hotel bar as some writers have been known to do.

Guy Smallman talks with a great deal of personal experience as you will find if you listen, and you can see his pictures, particularly those from Afghanistan on Photoshelter. He starts with emphasising the importance of training for working in hostile environments (HET), which many responsible media outlets insist it and there is a useful list of training programmes on the page. Later he talks about his own training, after he had worked in various dangerous places, and that although he had felt he had little to learn, how wrong he found he had been.

Among other things, Smallman talks about protective equipment – including recommending what I think is a skate helmet from Halfords at £15.99, while later in the discussion another photographer suggests a Kevlar helmet as a better alternative. Later in the discussion there are some other suggestions from other photographers too. You don’t just need head protection in war zones or foreign riots, but at times in British protests – both against injuries from protesters and police. I’ve so far decided not to use a helmet – and have often had to walk away when things start getting nasty. It’s not a sensible approach, and I don’t commend it to anyone.

There are some vital tips scattered throughout the talk, and I learnt a few things. Perhaps I should give up wearing polyester for example. Listen and you will find out why, as well as why if you buy a gas mask for use against tear gas the first thing you should do is throw the filter away and buy a new one.

Something there is no alternative to for photographers and other journalists who work in hazardous conditions is the membership of an organisation like the NUJ, and he talks about the great support it gave him after he was injured by Swiss police, and the fight over a number of years which eventually ended in a considerable compensation payout. You can find information about joining the NUJ on-line.

After some questions and discussion with Guy, Laura El-Tantawy talks briefly about living and working in Egypt and the problems she faces. Her ‘In the Shadow of the Pyramids‘, a project documenting the everyday life of Egyptians which “continued through the Egyptian revolution and the violence prompted against the pro-democracy movement” is stunning work with an emotionally powerful view of people and events. You can see far more of her work on the web than she was able to show at the meeting.

The discussion with both speakers and the audience of photographers continues, occasionally rather losing the thread, but every now and again something of interest emerges, and it’s worth listening to the end. Perhaps like me you’ll find you have plenty of time to do so while looking at the photographs by the two speakers on the web.

Back to Cengiz, some may like his 10 reasons you should shoot film. I have one good reason not to – I’m just not cut out for masochism.