The Camera: Event, Diarybook, Personification, Performance?

I see the act of photographing as an event - much as a painter, spend the time and energy to take a chair, an easel, paint and paraphernalia to a specific location with an idea in their minds of what they will paint. For me I might have an idea in my mind of a vast scene, or even just one small detail. But getting to that place, the transporting of the camera, the set up of the camera, the use of all the tiny implements, a shutter cable, a loupe, the framing, is much like a painters vocation. Of course this has been noted since photography's emergence, as history has recorded and written about by many respected authors (for me Batchen has been my study) that the way early photographers worked, was much like painters.

The photographic work is just personified by the final picture, the end result, but the total work is so much more, it is that journey, that effort and burden of the use of such a camera, and I am talking specifically about largeformat cameras here, but could be applied to any camera, if you shoot with this mindset. That final image is just the flavour, just the impression, of that whole process of shooting. for me to photograph a flower for example, the 'work' for that picture, is not the flower, yes you can see a picture of a flower, but if you just see a flower you are missing everything that lead up to that flower being on a wall being looked at, at the moment it is looked at.

The Treachery of Images - René Magritte 

This is not a pipe, it is a painting of a pipe; this is a pipe with some painted words explaining what it is not; or it is some oil paint on a canvas that happens to look like a pipe; or it is a dialogue, not a painting at all?

My friend, a painter, a fantastic artist remarked to me that he saw photography as weak because all photography is just about time, he sees it as a problem. I think saying photography is only about time is much same as saying painting is only about paint on a surface. Of course it is true, photography is about about time, its always about time, but dismissing it because it is always about time is short sighted. It is of course so much more than 'merely' about time, but to counterpoint that, the idea that photography is about time is one of the key things that makes it so interesting. In support of my statement that painting is about paint on a surface, it is of course about paint, which is not a weakness, it is a huge strength, the skill and time time spent to put the paint on the surface, when one could record a scene in many other less time consuming mediums, is deliberately what it is about. Its not the only thing in a painting, but its a huge part of the reading of a painting.

I like photography because I can use it as a diary. A diary this is a way in which I can write in without my words getting jumbled in my mind as I try and hopelessly fail to write something down accurately before my thought has gone or changed from something irretrievable to something else equally as irretrievable.The problem with this is as although photography has a photographic memory, it also distorts things through cultural appropriation and context. So I try to take pictures, not necessarily visually bland, as a creative I always subconsciously as well as consciously look for something aesthetically pleasing in each frame. But they are almost blank messages in themselves, just basic one liners, they do not need to be read as singular images each with its own set of codes and meanings. They each have barely one reading, that overall can add up to a flavour, like each ingredient, and each herb in a good bolognese.

Lastly, I love photography because each frame is a performance, as its useful as a diary I often find myself taking self portraits. The beautiful long exposures blue me out, I know what I look like, I don't need a photograph of me, I take enough selfies on my phone. It shows my activities, sometimes directly, sometimes more indirectly. But photography is not just a performance in front of the camera, but behind it. As a camera operator I feel like a roadie on a touring music show, putting up the same light, the same stage, the same effects every time in a new place. Its like that setting up a camera each time in each new location, a little performance in itself  näytellä

Cultivation of flowers vs people
I think the reason I take pictures of flowers, especially flowers and plants in plant pots, is because I have always been interested in this idea of 'cultivated wilderness' I even did a photographic project specifically about this (to me) strange quality of gardens and parks called Tame Nature. It wasn't a particularly deep piece of work, but it reached a logical conclusion and I like it, it helped me learn some technical things too. But the flowers are nice small chunks of something that has been cultivated and looked at and altered to reach a particular idea of aesthetic beauty. And those ones I took pictures of must have worked on some level because I found them aesthetically pleasing. I find people beautiful too, but I wonder why I don't photograph people often. I regularly photograph my friends in my social life, to the point that I felt I needed to make a piece of work about that too called I and its nickname was Circle, which was three self portraits made up with hundreds of tiny pictures of my friends. But I don't ever take pictures of people with my current practice. I saw Richard Learoyds positive photographs at V&A, really he is using a somewhat similar technique as me and his photographs of people (as well as his still life's) were absolutely stunning. My first ever photograph with a 10x8 camera with this process was actually two of my friends working, ignoring me while I was fucking about with this absurd Victorian mechanism. But currently I never photograph people, why is this? I think it is simply because I am not particularly good at directing people to photograph. Thinking about their body posture and subtle angle of head and the wait their hair and clothes fall. It doesn't come naturally in practice at all. I am great at taking off the cuff snapshot, sudden moment photographs of something or someone that catches my eye, perhaps this is why shooting event photography has helped pay the bills at various times in the last 4 years. But shooting snapshots of people is not what this project is about, so it seems unnatural to include them.

I still have lots of work to do creating concise images, but I feel through reflecting and thinking about things I am getting closer to my goal.

Ideas for presentation:
Geoffrey Batchen on 'the birth of photography'
- early photographers - Henry Fox Talbot, Neipce, Daguerre
Rene Magritte - abstract paintings
Cultural appropriation and context
"message without a code"
Long exposures
- Hiroshi Sugimoto, Michael Weseley
Richard Learoyd
- mirroring of images, people, directing, framing, mistakes and luck

MA Photography - Time - Tutorial with Aaron Schuman

I had my tutorial with Aaron Schuman of Seesaw magazine. I showed him my 5x4 test images, my journal, scans from the photos that I shot on the Mamiya 7 and the prints that I had made from those negative.
He seemed to like my updated idea of making a journal and having photographs that go with it. But we spoke about what the frame work could be. As in, could it be a day, a month, a week, an hour, a year? in the life of me. What would be interesting to other people about that? He suggested a weekend as it is a length of time that people are familiar with, like a convention that people are aware of. People go to work for 5 days then have a two day break. I like this idea, and I think it works well with my own line of work where I often go to work on the weekend, going away on the Friday evening to then come back on Sunday, unlike the majority of people working their 5 day week and having a weekend break.
However I'm not sure this works for me personally, its hard to put my finger on why. I think it is because a lot of the photographs happen in the week, a lot of the story happens in the week days. I think when I have so many pictures and I start to editing them down, that is where the sequence and the concept will come out. For now I will try and photograph every little thing, all the small overlooked things in my day. The writing on my hand to remember things, the arrangement of papers on the desk, the ripped hole in my trousers, the random assortment of pens near my workspace, the view of the seats infront of my eyes as I sit on the train for the 1000th minute.

My notes from the tutorial:

How can I turn my project into something for the viewer?
Procrastinating is almost when I'm deliberately wasting my own time - rather than when time is wasted by something not under my control.
In my journal I am not really describing what I am thinking in these moments, just a small narrative of what is happening. in that moment - why is someone else going to be interested?
How can I make my thoughts more visible?
Somehow communicate the frustration of losing time and translate visually the feeling of frustration of wasting it

AS on procrastinating all day - "no matter how much time you're given, you're going to waste it"
"It could be that what you think is wasted time is actually just you living your life"
He said to me if I had one month with no responsibilities what would I do? In that moment I thought maybe I would just stay looking at facebook or watching tv or looking at funny pictures.

How would I make a story of losing time in a sequence? The time of the piece of work. Is it 1 day, 1 month, 1 hour 1 year? what could it be?
To tell a story I need to find that structure.
Perhaps I need to catalog all of that stuff of what I could be doing if I wasn't 'trapped by time'
I need to get the viewer into my own head.
The weekend as a time for the piece - its supposed to be a time off, its relatable - i could collect everything, pictures of everything, all the little things.
The documentation of me wasting time - could it be a work of fiction, presented as fact?

He suggested I look at Michael Schmelling - the week of no computer.

MA Photography - Time - Authorship seminar by Joanna Lowry

Handwriting, an element of touch, a photograph of handwriting is as good as a portrait. It is as a metonymy for that portrait. The signature, when you first make a signature is when you become a person.
Handwriting, like photography are descriptive marks of a person, by a person, of a thing. Photography has created an apparatus to mark the desire of sexuality and death.
Photography leaves a trace of the image, writing leaves a trace of the author. The surface has been disrupted.

Roland Barthes - Studium and Punctum
Studium - all the messages clearly visible in a picture. transforms reality without making the world shudder.
Punctum - the punctum cant be something chose by the photographer, it always has to be an accident. Holding the world in front of us in place and blinds us from it. The punctum isn't in the photograph, it is in the individual viewers engagement with the photograph.
Photography is about pulling back the curtain to see things for what they really are.

MA Photography - Time - More small moments

I shot these with Kodak Tri-X iso 400 film, in the developing process I pushed it to iso 800 as I had shot it at 800. I think if i was looking for real nice prints I would be disappointed. However some of these have a huge amount of grain, but I really like this overall look to these pictures, I cant wait to print them. I think it would be great actually if some had some more grain or had a bad focus or something. I love the mistakes of double exposures and the tear in one of the frames. I look forwards to finishing my next roll of film with this process for this project.

MA Photography - Time - Tutorial/presentation with MA course

I presented my initial images on the 5x4 camera with the colour paper and explained how it wasn't quite working, and so I had started the diary journal and started shooting with a more portable camera.

They suggested many things for me to research:
Henri leFebure, Michel de Certeau - the everyday
Ben Highmore - boredom, non productive time
Sinkle, Eugienie - boredom and relationships to photography
Concepts in Modern Art, Reaction Press, Whitechapel, Steven Johnson, the everyday - on amazon
Sophie Calle - diary
Jim Goldberg, deutsche borse
Henry Fox Talbot, Lord Byrons handwriting.

We spoke about in the longterm, the same locations photographed over and over will create a sense of dejavu. To make things that are usually unrecorded a part of the world. To know the subject about which I'm doing. To find a way perhaps of bringing my other processes in.

MA Photography - Time - First prints

I made these prints in the darkroom from my negatives, they are on 10x8 Ilford black and white paper. These are just test prints on resin based paper, but I envision printing my project in this manner at the end of it.

I will do this because I like the tactile feel of the paper. I am thinking of binding them together in a book form. I think by the end of this project i will have several hundred photographs on film shot specifically for this project, and the art will be in the edit, I imagine i will still want to have prints of many of the photographs and having these smaller size 10x8s fits with that theme of having many pictures. The book form perhaps will mirror the physical diary in a book form that I am making.

MA Photography - Time - Wasting time

Wasting time on facebook