An artist’s website:
I have decided to be honest and tell you of the trouble I had in making up my mind to create this website; it has been (and continues to be) a real mental wrestling match. Actually, this decision has been taken away from me, in that we have had to create an artists website for our MA in Fine Art at Aberystwyth University. However, I am glad my hand has been forced because there is a large part of me that wants to tell people what it is I do (and ultimately I think that this is good for me) and because I think that this ‘struggle’ with creating a website actually lies at the heart of my work.
To make this clearer, I will expand my thoughts slightly on one of my projects. My Landscape Generator or ‘Belvederoscopic Generator’ project which was born out of the idea / notion that so much of our world has already been photographed; an idea that I started to think about a couple of years ago when undertaking my teacher training. At the time I was considering the evolution of technology, the exponential growth of technology and the trillions of photographs that are taken every year on earth (in relation to teaching photography). I had for a while realised that taking a unique photograph was becoming an increasingly large problem.
Teaching at Aberystwyth & the trouble with photography:
I remember finishing teaching on a beautiful day at Aberystwyth’s Old College; we had been talking that day about how award winning photographs such as those by photographer Phil Jones which won him the Urban Wildlife category of the 2012 British Wildlife Photography Awards and which had been taken very close to where we were standing, of the starlings that roost beneath the pier on Aberystwyth’s sea front. As if to fulfil a prophecy the starlings that evening were in fine form, at sunset they gathered in a perfectly clear sky to perform their ‘murmuration’, their dance above the town. The people of Aberystwyth are to some extent used to this sight as it occurs every year from autumn through into winter, but this proved to be such a spectacular sunset, such a clear sky and such a large and impressive murmuration that I saw many people stop what they were doing and head towards the sea front camera in hand (this included me).
On arriving at the scene, I was confronted with the normal quandaries of a photographer, do I have the right lens on (I had a massive 300mm f/2.8 Tamron on my camera, but this really meant that I was lacking in wide angle shots)? Am I standing in a good spot? Can I get a better angle? What are my camera settings? For a time I was captivated by the spectacle before me, but after about 20 minutes or so I had taken most of the shots of the starlings that I was going to manage with a 300mm lens. I began to wish that I had brought another lens or had a different, lighter camera (again this kind of wishing is common in photographers). I started looking about and realised that there was another spectacle behind me, in some ways just as impressive but one that I was ill equipped to capture: this was the growing ranks of people with cameras stopping to photograph the scene. There were certainly hundreds of people maybe more. I knew a lot of people had cameras these days and mobile phones have certainly added to this, but the amount of people with DSLR’s, Range finders, Bridge cameras, and there were people with quality lenses, tripods, cable releases and every kind of accessory under the sun; in short every kind of camera possible seemed to represented that day on Aberystwyth sea front.
Starling Murmuration Crosses The Sun at Aberystwyth
That image of people photographing starlings at Aberystwyth will be etched in my mind forever, as it was the moment that I felt personally, that something shifted in photography. That photography had moved from being a unique, specialist activity to being something much more ubiquitous, open to everyone and part of everyday life. Indeed Mary Warner Marien in her book ‘Photography: A Cultural History’ tells us that:
‘The stream of images is so intense that contemporary observers have honed skills that allow them to assess and reject swiftly much in the daily rush of images. Where a person in the 1840s might dwell lengthily on a single, carefully stored daguerreotype, someone these days might hurriedly review and delete numerous images from an e-mail, in expectation of many more equally valuable ones to follow soon.’1. (Marien, XIV Intro).
I considered the starling photographs taken on the beach that day in-light of Marien’s observation. How many people took similar photographs? How many of these photographs were shared on the internet? And how many are languishing on someone’s computer half forgotten about and in danger (should the computer break) of being lost forever? How many people really look at their photography these days? Do I look at my photography enough, in a truly critical light, or am I caught up in a kind of photographic arms race: trying to purchase the next, latest, best piece of photographic equipment and take the sharpest, best composed, most vibrant photographs (although they perhaps don’t have any soul)?
Unique Photographs:
At the start of MA in Fine Art I was considering these points, I was considering them when I read an article on blogging platform ‘Photography-life’ entitled ‘Searching for Unique Photographs’ by photographer Spencer Cox. https://photographylife.com/searching-for-unique-photographs/ In this article Cox makes some interesting points, he explores the idea of whether photographs can be unique, whether people are becoming bored by seeing the same image again and again, and what can be done about this, saying:
‘A lot of us have a desire to take unique photos; we want to do something that has never been done before. There is nothing wrong with thinking like this. But, if you are after unique photos (and I tend to include myself in this category), are you chasing something that is impossible?’2. (Cox, photographylife 14th Oct 2016)
He focuses mainly on landscape photography and talks us through a number of examples of getting ‘different images’, about getting ‘something new’ into the scene; and there is nothing wrong with his advice on this, but it was a comment at the end of the article that started me thinking and which eventually led to my current body of work:
‘Aside from the instances mentioned above [in the original article] there are still a few places in the world where you can capture things that have never been seen before. Maybe you are a macro photographer searching for a rarely-seen species of beetle. Or, you could be a landscape photographer hiking to the inner reaches of the Canadian Rockies. If you capture a subject that few people have seen before, your photo will certainly be unique.’ 3. (Cox, photographylife 14th Oct 2016).
This got me thinking and I latched on to a few words in the first sentence ‘few places in the world’; what if the photographs were not taken in this world? And here I got my idea of making model landscapes of other worlds (out there in the Universe) and photographing the models to give me by own unique photographs.
However, you might be asking what this has to do with why I was reluctant to create my own website? Well, I believe photography does not stop at simply taking a photograph but rather it continues on to how that photograph is seen by others. How do we share our photography? I truly believe that we should share our work and I am guilty as the next person in having continued a trend of no longer printing my photographs but rather leaving them on my computer. Perhaps does not matter if you an ardent user of social media, if all of your photographs end up on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram but then are we just falling into the trap that Marien mentions above of creating so much photography that we are constantly ignoring images and deleting them, that much of time is just spent cataloguing the information that is contained within images. Is this even photography? Have we forgotten how to look at photographs?
If you consider a website as being another method of sharing this photographic and artistic information, then you may see why I have been so (over) cautious in creating my own website. How long before I am sharing all my images in an endless stream of data? It may be starting right now! I will however try and be sympathetic to this problem. You see, part of me wishes to go back to the 1840’s, and create work that is singular, unique, and one of a kind, that you could sit and stare at for awhile and realise that there is no other image like it; to be amazed, to be shocked, but in a good way, in the same way as when you develop a darkroom image for the first time. It is probably arrogant to believe that this could be achieved in the modern world, were images can be copied at the drop of a hat; but this does not stop me wrestling with this problem in my artwork. As my tutor for the website, Chris Iliff said after discussing my landscape generator project, ‘it is as though you want to be a magician, to not share your ideas, so that we wonder how you are creating your work’. I have to admit that this is true and indeed I am influenced, by magicians, performers, magic lantern shows and the early cinema of the late 19th and early 20th century’s.
I hope then that in my art work you will see someone who is very much involved with modern digital technology but who treats it with caution (the kind of respect that you might treat a venomous snake with) whilst remaining greatly influenced by historical ideas.
Sources:
1: Marien, Mary Warner, Photography: A Cultural History, 3rd Edition, pub 2010 Laurence King Publishing Ltd.
2 & 3: Cox, Spencer, Photography Life, 14th October 2016, https://photographylife.com/searching-for-unique-photographs/
See More of Spencer Cox’s photography at:http://www.spencercoxphoto.com/