The user's viewpoint

I chose some very different scenarios to demonstrate user's viewpoint. This is a fairly loosely defined exercise and I had some challenge with understanding what is being looked for; other blogs assisted but it seemed wise to interpret the exercise as I saw fit.

The first location is the hire depot of Edge Equipment Hire in Runcorn; specifically the warehouse section. I co-own this business although am passive as regards management of it.

Both of these shots were taken with f22 focal length, designed to capture a wide perspective of the warehouse.

This is a storage for the equipment waiting to go on hire so the user is concerned with several important operational matters:

• Layout of items so he can easily identify what he wants;
• Space to be able to move and transport the equipment and to work on equipment;
• Light to see the items clearly;
• Health and Safety so items can be stacked sensibly and in an orderly way

The images are taken from an eye level viewpoint as this is the natural way that the user will encounter the viewpoint. The first image works well to give the senses of space and orderliness, the second better meets the third and fourth requirements: light and health and safety.


The next scenario is as far from this as possible can be imagined.

Iona Abbey is a well known pilgrimage destination; I use a viewpoint of the cloisters for this exercise.  This image invites the viewer to be empathetic with the monks as they walk slowly in silent contemplation, and thus is taken at eye level with 28mm focal length. There is a sense of quiet contemplation in the uncluttered environs.

Lastly, and again in contrast, a view of the Olympic stadium in Stratford is included.

This is taken with a very wide angle - 10mm- as we are trying to get the sense of the scale of the vista that confronts the user. I chose this partly because it does include the crowd; in this image I think including many people is important because here we are trying to evoke excitement, anticipation, noise and action, responses that do not naturally flow from still images. The inclusion of someone else taking video adds to the feeling that the user is party to an exciting and fulfilling event. The viewpoint is sitting, exactly as the remainder of the crowd is.

I took this exercise to be about having a sense of empathy with the user; trying to convey the viewpoint and use that the user would make of his or her viewpoint. It is a little about photography in a functional sense and made me think about what the user is anticipating from the space that  he or she confronts.

The Photography as Contemporary Art`: chapters3-4

3 Deadpan

A prominent style of last twenty years has been deadpan shaped by the Bechers and their students, the most prominent of whom is Andreas Gursky. He uses large prints that are discrete, he does not produce series. Uses high vantage points as in Chicago, Board of Trade.

 A number of photographers have used photography to demonstrate scenes without people. I find these interesting because they challenge the viewer to consider what the elements in the image are for, how do they function for their users, DO they function for their users. The absence of people raises the last issue, and gives us no clues as to how the constructions impact on people's lives.

An example is Bridget Smith's Airport, Las Vegas where she deliberately takes casinos in the daytime, when they lack the glitzy bright light look of night.

"Deadpan photography often acts in [a] fact-stating modes; the personal politics of the photographers come into play in their selection of subject matter and their anticipation of the viewer's analysis of it, not in any explicit political statement through text or photographic style."

Lewis Baltz has worked with images of high tech laboratories.

Dan Holdsworth has specialised in in "liminal spaces" where our sense of place is dislocated.

Struth has taken many images of people in galleries, invoking a somewhat self conscious self appraisal for gallery goers of their own behaviour.

Others have used the approach in a more rural setting, eg Niewig's images of places close to home. She looks for examples of where nature may have interfered with the agricultural order of straight lines.

Clare Richardson has taken images of Romanian farming communities to show how the landscape remains unchanged. A similar approach to balancing the sublime and romantic capacity of landscape and a clear cut style of photography has been used also by Jasansky and Polak in Czech Landscapes.

Lastly, Cotton looks at deadpan in portraiture.

Ruff asked his subjects to remain expressionless. Others take expressionless images of people on the street - Sternfeld and Hanzlova, for example.

Dijkstra chooses particular moments or spaces to take unsentimental images, e.g. her images of three naked women after childbirth.

4 Something and Nothing

This chapter focusses on the object - "how non-human things can be made extraordinary by being photographed".

Well-known example is Fischli and  Weiss's Quiet Afternoon series, strange sculptures of every day things.

Less sure about Orzoca's Breath on Piano, an interesting idea but does it show much?

Like Wentworth's photographs of urban detritus being used for unconventional purposes, such as a car door being used to block access to a doorway (King's Cross).

Architectural images in this genre are typically of buildings that have outlived their useful lives, e.g. Hernandez's image Aliso Village of a skeleton hung form a ceiling of a presumably defunct room.

The images here aim to alter our perceptions of daily lives, perhaps to look at our environment with a broader mind, to (colloquially) think outside the box.

Tillmans works with a variety of subjects to explore the relationship of photography with its subjects. Suit  is an example.

Jeff Wall's image of a mop bucket (Diagonal Composition no 3) "...challenges us to consider why we are looking at this". This is an example of where the art stops for me, as in some of the images in chapter one, it is getting too close to taking the audience for granted.

Exploring function

In this exercise, we are to think about space and how it is intended that it is used and then translate this thought into an image.

Working schools provides opportunities to consider a variety of uses for rooms and spaces. I was especially interested to consider a space in Bristol Cathedral Choir School; one that, as far as I am aware, has no name, perhaps in consideration of the very general role it plays.

The space was the main entrance for the school but has now been superseded by another one. Immediately, then, one has to consider what an "ex lobby area" might be used for. I came up with the following:

• exit and entrance;
• information;
• storage;
• meeting;
• waiting room;
• display;
• learning 

Looking at how well the space succeeds in these:

Exit and entrance function is the most fundamental function of any internal space, the ex lobby area has five doors in all; well spaced out. It works.

It is a relatively easy win to provide information in any space - some props like display stands and material on walls  provides ample opportunity. The space in ex lobby is used rather formally and unimaginatively but the function is provided.

Storage is not provided in ex lobby to any degree.

Meetings are made possible by the provision of comfortable chairs but the lack of privacy and amount of passing human traffic mitigates against more than brief non private meetings.

Ex lobby is well suited to being a waiting room, though the unimaginative information and display do little to excite the curiosity of the visitor.

Display material is on view, albeit rather dated and somewhat of an afterthought, being a series of masks evidently made by a year 8 class that would probably prefer to forget them.

Learning is not really possible in this open, busy and rather eclectic space.

Having thought about the space, I decided to take a wide angle shot from a slight elevation:

I think this aspect does show the functions mentioned, but importantly the rather restricted nature of some of them. For example, the mask display is shown as restricted to the mantelpiece and the photographs of teachers and others on the left is very formal and unimaginative (and actually too many).

On a more positive note, the mannequins in the foreground are seen to be demonstrating the school uniform. There is a sense of comfort in the waiting area, and, perhaps most importantly, the central area is free form obstruction for ready ingress and egress.

I was not quite sure of how to tackle this exercise but am content that I achieved the process of considering the theoretical functionality of the space, and then demonstrating with an image.

Update 15 September

Getting back into the photography now after a break due to work commitment and the Olympics.

It will not be full on for a few weeks as the training for New York marathon takes precedence but finishing Chapter 2 and getting a good review for the assignment certainly provides a boost.

Have not been entirely idle anyway on the photogprahy front. Completed the post processing for Scotalnd photos on

https://picasaweb.google.com/100550359710941675762/ScotlandJuly2012?authkey=Gv1sRgCMvAtOu-5azPtgE. Very pleased with some of these; there are some really cracking photos, especially the black and whites and some of the composites. Took a lot of time to use Photomatix, Sivler Efex Pro, and Topaz for many of the pictures. Cannot do this for all (although ideally one would) because of time. It has been a reminder of the power of these tools, especially the sharpening power of Topaz, as note din my notes on the Assignment.

Have taken the image for first exercise of Chapter 3.
 

The Photograph as Contemporary Art: chapters1-2

Charlotte Cotton's book is intended as a survey of the field of Photography as Contemporary Art. She dividends the book into eight sections:

1.           Photographers who have devised strategies especially for the camera. Looks at the degree to which the focus has been preconceived by the photographer;

2.           Story telling in art photography;

3.           Deadpan;

4.           Something and Nothing - how the mundane has featured in art photography;

5.           Emotional and personal relationships;

6.           Documentary;

7.           Extending our pre existing knowledge of imagery;

8.           Physical and Material

Cotton then goes on to look at the origins of art photography, claiming it is in work of Eggleston, Shore, and the Bechers.

Chapter 1 If This is Art

The common theme in this chapter is artists who have had an idea, a concept, and manifested it with a series of photographs.

Examples are:

•             Sophie Calle following a man to Venice unbeknown to him and chronicling the events by photographs and notes, and eating food of a different colour each day for a week. Interesting for first part is how stalking someone you don't know would be viewed had a man followed a woman;

•             Kulik's animal pictures;

•             Orimoto's Bread Man sequence where photographer covers his face with loaves of bread;

•             Gillian Wearing asking people she did not know to write a sign about themselves and hold it up in front of camera - again one wonders whether a man could get away with this;

•             Deployed writing witticisms on images;

•             Davis,s series of images taken at night time of windows reflecting the neon signs of fast food joints.

And there are many more.

I find this sort of imagery difficult. I am not a big fan of contemporary art anyway. Much of it appears arrogant. It almost seems to scream to the audience : "This is not skilful but I dare you to say so." The "skill" is supposed to be in the drafting of the concept, in using the medium to say something subtly. But I find the message too obtuse to tease out in most cases. There is a sense in me that says we have things the wrong way round: it is as if the artist/photographer produces a work that is deliberately ambiguous and defies his or her audience to find the message. To me, the artist should be clear about what he or she is saying; enunciate it and let the viewer decide on whether the artist has succeeded. It is not a guessing game. Now sometimes this happens, but often it does not.

Secondly I am very unconvinced that some of these series say anything useful at all. Simply do not get the point of taking images of windows reflecting the Big Mac sign, for example. It seems as if the artist is almost trying too hard - trying to find a concept using the medium rather then using the medium of photography to demonstrate his or her point.  In order to  make a name for themselves, too many artist/photographers are simply inventing wacky topics with dubious intellectual value.

Chapter 2 Once upon a Time

This chapter is about storytelling in contemporary art photography. Some of the photographs make reference to fables and fairy tales.

Often described as tableau or tableau vivant photography as the pictorial narrative is concentrated in a single image.

One proponent is Jeff Wall. I like Passerby  on page 48,  clearly a staged photograph but the message of fear in the dark night is clear.

Some photographers use earlier works of art as an inspiration, e.g Tom Hunter's Thoughts of Life and Death.

One theme of tableau photography is to depict figures with back to camera so that character is unexplained. Good example is Hannah Starkey March 2002, of a woman sitting in an Oriental canteen.

There is a school too that uses children in mock ups of tales of fears and fantasies. Deborah Messa Polly's image Legs  is an example of using female characters in allegories of tales. Here she uses the legs of Goldilocks with the phallic tail of a pantomime lion. Van Lamsweerde and Matadin's Widow is a disturbing image of a girl in black appearing to be possessed but dressed immaculately.

Like Charlie White's Understanding Joshua, series of images in which Joshua is part alien puppet. Cotton makes point that this is a rare injection of humour into art.

Finally, Cotton turns to tableau photography that finds allegory and drama in physical and architectural space. Like Katherine Bosse's images of spaces designed for sexual play., e.g. Classroom p71.

Like too Cerca Paseo de Marti on p77 by Desiree Dolon. Depicts a Cuban classroom in which the empty chairs face impassioned political statements on the blackboard and a portrait of Fidelity Castro.

Got on much better with this chapter. Could see more readily what the photographers were seeking to achieve, much less the sense that subjects were being sought to fit the photography, more that the photography reflected ideas. Or perhaps just mellowing a little...