Topic 3: Photographic Fictions

​Subjective Realities? FORUM & WEBINAR

Forum Task:
​Susan Sontag (1977) makes the observation:
"In deciding how a picture should look, in preferring one exposure to another, photographers are always imposing standards on their subjects" (Sontag, 1977: 6)
Post to the forum below:

• The work of one practitioner / a visual reference point that interests you
• Research this in depth. How has this informed your own practice (technically, aesthetically, critically, contextually, etc)?
• Include some of your own images / contact sheets to demonstrate how you have translated the specific (and identified) aspects that have informed you
• Give feedback / comment on at least three other posts

My response:
I am interested in the work of Ori Gersht as his career his work is concerned with the relationships between history, memory, and landscape, which resonates with my own recent ideas and work for my research project. This photograph from the ‘Liquidation’ (2005) series adopts a poetic, metaphorical approach to exploring the difficulties of visually representing conflict and violent events experienced by his family living in Poland during the German occupation in WW2. 
 Gersht’s compositions often reference the landscapes of German Romanticism, with the work of Caspar David Friedrich being particularly pertinent to this series. Gersht achieves a painterly fluidity through long-exposures, sometimes taken while moving, and often overexposes his film images to achieve a liquefied effect. In doing this, he muddles the landscape’s legibility and the photographs faithfulness to reality. Although his work is rooted deeply in his family history, the images themselves call into question the ability of photography and human memory to reflect our histories accurately.

I have been exploring my own past through walks or derives in my surrounding area. I am reminded of Barthes words of every photograph being a chilling reminder of human mortality and have tried to capture this feeling of time passing and the memory of ‘having been there’ in the style of Gersht using movement and long exposure. The green tinge of Gersht’s image has given an ethereal, almost twilight aesthetic to his image, probably through using tungsten film in daylight, whereas I have used an infrared filter to help with the long exposure I needed and to give a colder, wintery feel to reflect the feeling of mortality in my photograph.

In your tutor webinar you are asked to consider the way(s) you 'make' or 'construct' photographs and identify and evaluate the visual choices you have made.
You will reflect on your peers' interpretations of your work and consider how you might adapt your photographic practice (visually / technically / conceptually) in response.

Prepare for your Webinar

• Are there any aspects of the Making Photographs sessions that have influenced your own photographic practice?

I feel my own practice has gradually evolved through the 3 weeks of Making Photographs as I have become more aware of how a photograph is seen, and the concept of time. Barthes words of every photograph being a chilling reminder of human mortality and the memory of ‘having been there’ has influenced some of the thinking of my practice.
 

• Why is this?

This has been through watching Stephen Shore’s How to see a photograph and reading John Szarkowski’s The photographer’s eye. I also came across the work of Ori Gersht during Topic 2 – Is it real and the work of Sonja Braas during Topic 3 – Photographic fictions. I am also mindful of the words of Patricia Townsend that when you create a new body of work you embark on a personal journey, which in turn will reflect some aspect of your inner world.
 

• How has it impacted on your practice? How / In what ways have you developed as a result?

This has helped me to develop the ‘voice’ I had been lacking and to find the ‘why?’ I had been seeking.  This has led me to explore more with the ‘unseen’ and long exposure.
 

• Consider the edit / development of your photographic practice to date - how have you photographed the same subject matter in different ways (eg show and reflect on specific images / contact sheets etc)?

Recent work has mainly focussed on exploring infrared and long exposures (sometimes combined). The infrared images are reminiscent of a winter landscape and an ethereal look of ‘another world’ as you are seeing a spectrum of light in the image normally unseen to the human eye. When combined with a longer exposure this adds the concept of time to the image and introduces memories of place and time rather than the distraction of the subject of the image.

​I have also been exploring focus stacking to get a real sense of depth to an image, which was inspired by the work of Edward Burtynsky who also adopts this technique. The idea is still of time and memory, but to make the images more immersive. It is hard to achieve this when viewed on screen, but I feel would look better as a large print.

• Reflect on how the meaning might change given the different visual choices you have made in 'constructing' your work.

I feel my own ‘inner landscape’ more in the infrared/ long exposure images as this shows what I am feeling rather than seeing. The stacked images are more about sharing my sense of place with the viewer.

• How do you aim for your practice to be received / interpreted in light of this?

I think both styles of photography would be received in different ways. The long exposure/ infrared are more abstract and impressionistic and could be viewed as fine art images on their own with no apparent message leaving the viewer to form their own conclusion and meaning, whereas the stacked images would (hopefully) give the viewer a sense of place they could immerse themselves into and allow them to share what I could see (maybe feel?) when the image was taken.

​Reflection Guidance

• Consider the intent of your own practice. How do you articulate this? What strategies do you use to communicate your intended meaning? How do you want your viewer to respond?

I have started using movement more in my images to give the feeling of time and memory.

• Think about the fictional / constructed nature of your own photographic practice: identify the ways in which you do / might 'construct' the world.

My ‘world’, the countryside where I live, has shown more of a fictional/ constructed nature using infrared, long exposure and movement. Stephen Shore said that when the world is photographed it is changed in
four ways, in terms of flatness, frame, time and focus. ‘They define the picture’s depictive content and structure. They form the basis of a photograph’s visual grammar’. I have attempted to show more of a reality feel to my landscape photographs by using focus stacking to add more depth to the images.

• Identify any approaches / practices / practitioners that specifically resonated with you. Do any of these ‘constructed’ approaches give you ideas to develop your own practice?

Ori Gersht has been the inspiration behind my images of movement to show time and memory, but I have also looked at the focus stacking techniques employed by Edward Burtansky and am interested in the layering techniques of both Idris Khan and Stephanie Jung, and the constructed landscapes of Sonja Braas.

• Evaluate the development of your own photographic practice to date

I feel I am starting to get my ‘inner landscape’ across in my long exposure/ infrared images, showing the feeling of time, memory and possibly mortality. I have experimented with exposure times and rates of movement, along with different tonality of light within scenes to get the best projection of my feelings within the image. This has been further enhanced in post-production in Lightroom.

• Reflect on the peer / tutor feedback you have received on your current / future practice

In today’s webinar I received very positive feedback from one of my fellow students who really liked my long exposure/ infrared images. Paul, my tutor, has also told me to make sure I am clear on what I want to achieve in this module, which has made me reflect that I have been so keen to explore different techniques that I am in danger of losing direction if I am not careful. I need to keep reminding myself of the ‘Why?’!
In our 10/10 session with fellow students, I have received good feedback again, with ‘other worldly’ and ‘horror’ both being mentioned as to how my images have been decoded by them. I am pleased with this response as I do not expect the viewer to share my code but would rather the images invoked their own memories and thoughts.
 
Moving forwards:
What are your action points? Where are you going next?
 
I will now work at refining my long exposure/ infrared images and build a series ready for my next 10/10 meeting. I also intend to start printing out photos to put up and ‘live with’ to start planning sequencing and editing.
As secondary projects I will continue exploring focus stacking and start to create constructed landscapes in Photoshop.

Photos from week 3: