PA R A C H U T E # 3
WELCOME
We are now in our third year of Parachute, and it seems that the quality of work continues to develop here in scope, and in its discussion of context and culture of Photography. Each year gathering the material together and seeing it take shape in terms of the edit and design, I am always delighted to find how well the work seems to flow, not just the past year’s graduates but also the alumni, contributor’s and staff. Its not that the work is similar in terms of approach to aesthetic, subject or critical themes, what seems to run through all the work contained here on the BA (Hons) Contemporary Photography course is a desire to be as good as possible in all areas, to consider the subject of photography from the individual perspective, and to engage and communicate with the viewer. The show this year at the Chinese Arts Centre was certainly a high point for the course and all the students involved, much credit goes to them, thank you also to Liz Wewiora and Hannah Hartley for being so willing to engage with the students in all stages of the process to create such a distinctive show of degree level photography, also to Anna Taylor for her review. I would also like to thank Danny Treacy for his contribution this year, it is a pleasure to have his work as part of Parachute. Thanks also to Manchester Museum, the ‘Museums at Night’ event was another excellent experience for the students whose ability to engage with both the curators and the public shows how well prepared and capable they are to deal with such challenges. Finally, I wish to draw attention to the importance of funding of this project by Stockport College, which allows the vision and collaborative of Parachute to continue to develop and grow. Creating the opportunity for graduates, alumni and guest contributors to be closely involved in the project through collaboration with the BA (Hons) Graphic Arts & Design students who all share the same skill, ability, vision and commitment to producing an excellent outcome; which they have achieved, thank you and well done.
CREDITS Design by Phil Earnshaw Graphic Design Mentor: Radomir Mikulas Special thanks to: Paul Proctor, Greg Leach, Lucy Brown, Radomir Mikulas, Maciej, Constantin, Ang, Colette, Hayley, Samia and Joe Keith Savage at Stockport College Anna Bunney and Henry Mcghie at the Manchester Museum Helen Alderson at Stockport Homes Liz Weiwora at the Chinese Arts Centre Paul Hermann at Redeye All the contributors... Printed by Mortons
HAYLEY ANDREW Duplicity — hayley-m-andrew.com
GREG LEACH HUNTING IN THE DARK
The text below is an extract from the novel Hunting in the Dark by staff contributor Greg Leach, which is available to order from Amazon.co.uk, or from any good bookshop. £10-00 Sol Dearday has been a jobbing private investigator for most of his working life. At the age of forty-one, he realizes that this has been mere preparation for his main case: an investigation into himself, into how a single devastating event in childhood has shaped his adult life. A chance encounter takes him to a small town, in search of a father he has not spoken to in thirty years. In this section we find him unable to sleep during his first night at a local hotel, where he has earlier encountered the pompous proprietor, Mr Pettiman, and the sullen chambermaid, Hannah. In his restless state, Sol decides to reacquaint himself with a photograph from his distant past… He sits up and switches on the bedside light. The beam slices through his head. He hauls himself out of bed and staggers over to the chest of drawers, on which his holdall rests. Pulling open the zip of its side pocket, he takes out a tatty manila envelope. His hands are shaking. He wonders if this is a dream. Inside the envelope is a photograph that has not been viewed in a very long time. The existence of the photograph has always been the reason for the photograph’s existence – the having of it, not the looking at it. If he pulls it out, the people in the picture will be there, sharing an imaginary space in this imaginary hotel bedroom, telling him things he would rather not hear, taking him to places he would rather not go. And the face will be there. The face it took him years to erase will instantly reform, spawning a catalogue of other semblances that were never fully expunged. His fingers begin to slide into the paper pocket, which is resistant to the pressure, as if its contents were freshly enveloped. He tells himself he can turn this moment into reverie if needs be. Then something catches under the nail of his middle finger, charging the moment with certainty, moving it, undeniably, into the realm of the real. This is happening, he thinks. And of all things, he is moved to take care: he doesn’t want to tarnish the delicate picture surface, the ectoplasm of time itself. This object is precious after all. He pinches the leading edge between forefinger and thumb, then begins to pull, painstakingly. He shuts his eyes and sees his mother’s face in transformation, at the tipping-point between emotions. This is not a prevision, because his mother is not in the photograph, the photograph that is now lying across his trembling palm like a bird with a broken wing. It is a pitiful thing, faded and timeworn, as if having been assailed by nature for its effrontery: the trick of suspending a moment beyond its natural lifespan. Sol is relieved. Everything about its condition bespeaks the past, like a neglected antique. There is no entry beyond the patina of muted colours and degrading chemicals, rendering it impotent even before he has fully engaged with its contents, which in any case are veiled by corrosion, or sea mist, or something clouding his vision. It is the seaside. A view along a promenade, with a man and a boy standing side-by-side, both overdressed for the season, posing for the camera but slightly too far from it, their presence interrupting the linear perspective of railings that dominate the picture, cutting it in half diagonally. The subjects are insubstantial, spectral, uncomfortable in their sepia skins. And yet this is what they have in common; this is what binds them. They are alike because neither is quite able to be with the other; the daylight that separates them attests to an intangible bond. But it is not just the presence of the other that makes them uncomfortable, nor the scrutiny of the camera lens, but the scrutiny of the person behind the camera. The mother, the wife. Her presence in absence is overpowering. Sol shuts his eyes again and lets the picture settle into him. Like the injured bird it resembles, it is the beneficiary of rescue: the sole survivor of a ritual burning many years ago, when all the pictures of his father went up in smoke. Except this one, taken with his eight-year-old son on a family holiday somewhere on the south coast. He doesn’t know why he saved it from the flames, whether it had significance beyond any of its counterparts; certainly he had pictures that described his father in more detail. They, of course, were too confrontational, whereas this image functions on the level of evocation, blurring reality both literally and metaphorically. Nevertheless, the face of his father is there to be seen – the shape, the essence, from which more can be extrapolated, especially by those who knew that face well, by those who loved that face. Suddenly Sol remembers why this image. His mother. His mother was resistant to being photographed and never took pictures herself. Why she consented on this occasion he cannot recall. But how could he burn a picture captured by her, seen through her eye? He returns the photograph to its delicate sleeve. Now that it has been revealed, however, he knows it can never really be put away again. * Dawn remakes the world, cleansing it with crisp spring light. In sleep, Sol has undergone a similar process. As he wakes, his first sensation is that of buoyancy, of a burden having been lifted. His eyes snap open as if hungry for light. His view of the room is oblique, having toppled sideways from a seated position on the bed sometime in the night. One foot still rests on the floor. He struggles to straighten up, discovering that his mental and spiritual wellbeing does not extend to his body, which is replete with minor aches and pains, the focus of which is the dodgy knee. He massages it before attempting to stand, then staggers towards the bathroom, relishing the prospect of a long shower and a close shave. Despite taking his time he is the first down for breakfast, or so it seems from the pristine place settings of the dozen tables arrayed in front of him. He chooses a corner table on the far side of a room that has a pleasant aspect overall, retaining many of its original features. There is an open fireplace adorned with a vase of flowers – plastic, but quite classy. The tall walnut mantelpiece is decorated with geometric shapes distinctive of a particular style that Sol
recognizes but cannot name. The ornate French windows deserve a better outlook than the makeshift car park.
‘Morning… Mr Dearday, is it? Room 7?’
There is a table behind him with two jugs on it containing orange juice and milk, alongside a neat line of cereal packets. Sol considers helping himself, but before he can rise the door into the kitchen swings open and a woman appears, flicking over pages of a notebook as she approaches his table. His gaze lingers on her as she steers around a chair, a sinuous manoeuvre that does not disturb her deportment. She is around Sol’s age and well preserved. Can this be Mrs Pettiman, he wonders, the proprietor’s wife? If so, Pettiman can count himself lucky. Rather than being dowdy and browbeaten, as Sol expected, she has an air of confidence and self-possession. Even this early in the morning she is perfectly groomed, with hair that sweeps across her forehead in perpetual presentation of a face that retains much of its youthful delicacy. She is wearing a frilly red polka-dot apron that wouldn’t be out of place on a saucy seaside postcard.
‘I guess so. Though there isn’t much competition just now. Did you sleep well?’
As she looks up she catches Sol looking at her, but her expression gives nothing away. She tilts her head to one side and smiles, a smile that combines warmth with professional reserve. Closer proximity reveals a slight over-application of make-up. She takes a pen out her pocket and strikes a pose that asks some interesting questions.
‘Right on both counts. Am I the early bird?’ ‘I was very comfortable.’ ‘Good, I’m glad. Can I take your order for a cooked breakfast? We do all the usual, in any combination.’ ‘Er… just some scrambled egg, I think. And maybe a tomato. Plenty of toast, brown bread if possible.’ ‘Certainly. Tea or coffee?’ He cannot decide whether her eyes are blue or green. ‘Er… coffee, please.’ ‘O-kay.’ She tilts her head to one side, coyly. ‘Can I tempt you to a rasher of two of bacon? Bacon’s our speciality. We use a very good local supplier.’ ‘Well, in that case, how can I refuse?’ ‘Excellent.’ She taps her pad with the point of her pen conclusively, despite having written nothing down. ‘Help yourself to juice and cereals.’ ‘Thank you.’ She turns briskly and heads back to the kitchen. Sol wonders whether she is wondering whether he is watching her go. The exaggerated sway of her hips provides the answer. As he is pouring himself a glass of orange juice, an elderly couple enters the dining room in mid-conversation. The man is holding forth, his impatient tone bordering on hostility: ‘If we intervene, we’ll end up getting the blame. You know how it always…’ He trails off when he sees Sol, his testiness dissolving into forced conviviality. ‘…Morning,’ he says with a token smile. Sol nods perfunctorily. The woman ignores him, which is preferable to the man’s false cordiality. Sol returns to his table; the couple settles at theirs with an air of ownership, suggesting regular or long-term residency. Sol sips his juice through a silence broken only by the occasional rustling of the man’s newspaper, which he uses to screen himself from his surroundings, including his wife, who looks racked by a problem she cannot muster the strength to confront. By the time his breakfast arrives they have been joined by a nervy young man in a cheap business suit who looks like he’s on his first out-of-office assignment. To Sol’s disappointment, Hannah has taken over as waitress, performing her duties with her customary listlessness. He wonders whether he has undergone some sort of initial appraisal by the lady of the house, whose appearances are scarce and timed for maximum effect. At least he has something to look forward to now. The bacon, however, is nothing special. When Hannah comes to collect his dishes, he notices a welt on her right temple that she has tried to cover with make-up and hair that hangs even more limply than usual. She turns away sharply when she senses his eyes on her. Sol logs this for future reference. It brings a possible new complexion to her surliness.
Staff Contributor Illustration by Eleanor Mulhearn
AMBER LOMAS
Legacy — amberjennie.portfoliobox.me
Enigma — samianaamani@gmail.com
SAMIA NAAMANI Like a book, a photograph can transport the viewer to a place between reality and fiction, occupying neither and both at the same time. Despite being a construct, a fantasy has its own internal reality, which can be disrupted by inconsistencies and imperfections. But the desire to suspend disbelief is strong, founded perhaps in the child’s desire to make a toy come to life. The transition from reality to fantasy is one of great fluctuation; so how do we determine the precise point of transition, and how does this influence our understanding of what we are seeing?
ALEX KEEP
Bacteria are truly omnipresent organisms inhabiting every corner of human existence. Present in something as complex as our carefully controlled foodsystems, to the banal interiors of the everyday space, bacteria thrive in every condition. ‘Breed’ is an active sampling exercise, culminating in reactionary living image of growth change and metamorphosis.
Alumni — Breed – Specimen 1 — ajkeepphoto.com
ANGINEH NOWROOZI
Your neck of the woods — angineh.portfoliobox.me
Being in the limelight for its ‘terrorist culture’, Iran has been effectively written-off as somewhere to live, and would never be considered as a holiday destination. With all direct flights cancelled from anywhere in Europe, an atmosphere has been building against the country and its people. Such impressions are often too deep to remove or mask. Iran’s trials and triumphs have affected not only the world’s perception of the country, but also that of its own people. The family referred to in these pictures has become separated and alienated by events in Iran, and by their way of dealing with them, choosing carefully what responses and feelings they reveal to others. There are things we all have to do in life to survive, and choices we make to fit in.
ALEX LAWLER Autophyse — alexandra.lawler@me.com
In a city, nature is often forgotten and neglected, pushed to pre-sanctioned spaces such as parks and gardens. But we underestimate the persistence of nature, and have to either overlook or destroy the plants that encroach upon our urban environment. ‘Autophyse’ celebrates these plants, recording them using the pre-photographic process of Anthotypes. Photography has been intertwined with nature and scientific discovery since its inception. ‘Autophyse’ commemorates the quest for accurate recordings using photography, as well as the compulsion to collect and preserve. It combines the traditional archiving system of a museum with the modern, intangible digital archive. With thanks to Manchester Museum.
DANNY TREACY
“One of the distinctive characteristics of your work is your choice for the chromatic palette. From where does this choice stem?� Question asked by CM Brosteanu
This happens in two stages: Initially the clothing dictates the colour palette to a large degree rather than being governed by myself. I choose clothing based on the areas in which I find it, taking the clothing based on its being in a certain location rather than its aesthetic value as determined by myself. Next there comes the stage of construction of the bodysuits, this happens in a variety of ways, in certain cases I will construct one bodysuit from clothing gathered in one space, or as I term it, a fertile ground. This is not always possible nor desirable as in many cases I want one figure to be a condensing of many fertile grounds, this is acheivable in wearing a composite of clothing gathered from many spaces. In these cases there may be an awareness of the textures, pattern or colours of the clothing itself. I notice that the clothing may gravitiate towards each other once it’s colour for example has become of significance. One such example of this would be Them#19, whereby clothing that was fleshlike in colour was used in conjunction with parts of a shower curtain (it may seem odd as this is not clothing, however it is something that the naked body touches, brushes against, and so in this light is relevant, the shower curtain itself was gathered from an empty house that had been partially destroyed by groups of individuals engaging in various acts, arson, drug taking, vandalism, sex). The intention was to loosely reference a flayed, inverted body.
Guest Contributor Them#19 (courtesy of the Artist) dannytreacy.com
Machine Vision — teresa-beatty.co.uk
TERESA BEATTY Machine Vision is an interactive installation that challenges today’s obsession with surveillance in the UK. The number of surveillance and communications interceptions has skyrocketed in the past 30 years. According to a large-scale audit in 2011, an average of 1 in every 32 citizens is being watched at any given moment, a level of surveillance that is increasing with technological developments. Watching and being watched has become a defining feature of modern society. Much of this surveillance material goes unseen by human eyes, remaining as information — or knowledge — stored by machines, conferring a kind of omniscience to these inanimate objects. ‘Machine Vision’ explores this idea, adding a form of ‘interpretation’ inherent to the installation and its software, creating a ‘magic mirror’ — a blurred and uncanny double of reality, of you.
RICHARD HIGGINBOTTOM
Alumni — Kindling Tops — richardhigginbottom.com
Life tries. Death tries. The stone tries. Only the rain never tires.
THE SUM OF ALL PARTS How do we look at or use photographs? Personally and collectively, from globally accessible digital archives to personal family albums, how do we relate to photographs and how do they inform our understanding of the world around us-public and private, and creating memory, expectations or prejudices? What is the value of historical image or the lifespan of an image? The Sum of All Parts incorporates work by seventeen artists, each exploring the nature of still photography, in an exhibition that incorporates video, installation, sound, digital technologies and pre-photographic techniques.
Chinese Arts Centre 13 –16 June 2013 By Anna Taylor, Guest Contributor
A pair of headphones rests on a small coffee table. Sitting, I flick through a shoebox filled with found curled photographs and personal effects, to the sound of faint lilting laughter; voices carried on a breeze I cannot capture their source, or identify them with the items in front of me. This sound installation is part of ‘Untraceable’, by Jana Rahel Pfeiffer. On the wall are six framed found photographs representing six lives, casual snapshots in time, saturated in colour and light. These images are the remainder those publically seen in newsreels, marking a disappearance. The piece aches with a sense of loss, homage to the 2,500 people in the UK who statistically go missing a year and yet remain untraceable. Many works in the show test the limitations of the historical relationship between photography and truth, or our persistent underlying expectation around the capabilities of the medium to see and record reality. Here we see images of constructed dreamscapes and theoretical spaces, of a surveillance camera that hazily documents the movements of the crowd so that individuals and time blur, creating a kind of accurate misrepresentation, shot in partially real time. Colette Longden uses lenticular images to create a series of multi-dimensional, animated portraits, which move with the viewer almost like a hologram to create different views and angles of the same face. These are images that resist being frozen or reduced to the singular photographic expression of an individual; they alter with the position of the viewer, a distilling of lapsed time into a single image. The Sum of All Parts unpicks and challenges assumptions about the medium and its uses. It questions how we see the photograph and attribute meaning to what we find. It points to the responsibility of the viewer to look and look again. What is the importance of the origin of a photograph can it really be dislocated from its provenance and reframed, given a different story to that which it has witnessed? Can the image itself accumulate new meanings through its digital presentation or manipulation? ‘Your Neck of the Woods’, a montage by Angineh Nowroozi uses re-appropriated images to present the way in which damaging preconceptions about Iran have impacted on the life of one family. A personal accumulation of images such as polaroids, press images, tickets and family photographs are digitally reproduced and overwritten with the real thoughts and experiences of a family torn apart. Here the juxtaposition of images with handwritten narrative serves to broaden our understanding rather than reinforce existing ideas; a collision of the public and the personal. In this piece, truths emerge through the accumulation of reproduced images and text. It speaks of the loss of cultural identity, the loss of family and cultural cohesion. Yet what can be found in the accumulation of reproduced images and text, is a story that can be told; a reminder that in a time of image saturation and visual boredom, the medium is finding new ways through digital technologies and social media to impact changes so that stories of lost identities, voices which have remained absent can rise to the surface.
I put down the pile photographs, their deteriorating surfaces lifting, pick up my bag and wander through the gallery to the lingering hum of lost voices. At the other end of the gallery is Joseph Light’s ‘Lemniscate’ – a digital palimpsest, the large wall based screen appears to be eternally loading, so that the subject itself is never fully revealed before switching to another. Frustrating yet alluring, the image currently displayed appears as though a stumbling accidental landscape photograph, the lens pointed to the ground whilst walking so that what we see is a distorted, pixelated pattern of sodden grassy ground with a muddy track running through it. The work implies the potential for one image to be overwritten by another; of the fleeting it is intangible and incomplete, images caught in the process of being rendered, which may never fully come into being and which may shortly expire. There is an inconclusive sense of absence in each of these works, one referring to the absent subject, the other, to the fully realised image, and the potential for its deletion. Throughout the exhibition are interwoven notions of absence, expiration, traces, and enduring presence the preservation and re-appropriation of the photograph, granting order and access and new meaning. In the middle of the gallery sits a Victorian museum archive cabinet, its many shallow drawers lined with pressed foliage samples. In ‘Autophyse Copy by Nature’, Alexandra Lawler uses this pre-photographic technique to preserve the past, combining the traditional Museum archiving with a digital archive accessed on an iPad to create greater wider access and longevity to the cabinet’s contents. Several artists in the show take the book format as a means of preserving and ordering the past and of a tangible, personal encounter with the historical image and the ghost contained within it. Tucked into a corner, on a period household shelf sits an album, a framed photograph of a bespectacled man and a pair of white curators gloves. Within the frame is ‘Philip’, whose character remains ambiguous as the artist plays with the idea of the photograph as family ‘Legacy’. In her piece of the same name, artist Amber Lomas is compelled to preserve lost or unwanted black and white family photographs into an album format, with a text narrating a fabricated life story, playfully weaving the images together. As I slip on the gloves that have been worn by each viewer in turn, this playful construction is strangely moving no-one really knows the truths of a life that is spent, the historic family photograph serves to reinforce the understanding of the viewer, and questions our dependency on photography in the construction of memory.
STOCKPORT HOMES Images by: Rebecca Boyce Victoria Henstock Naomi Muldoon
During the period of the collaboration, the students worked with the tenants teaching photography and other skills. The results of these sessions were edited and designed in a specific newspaper which contained images taken by the tenants and the students, this created a dialogue about place and activity, about attitudes and values. The students have brought a different perspective – introducing another way of seeing and experiencing the community, leading to empowerment and an increase in a sense of value.
M A N C H E S T E R A F T E R
H O U R S:
L O S T
A N D
M U S E U M F O U N D.
M A Y
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Over the past three years, the Arts, Design and Media school at Stockport College has forged a reciprocal relationship with Manchester Museum, taking creative inspiration from its rich resources and producing visual material for display in the museum and beyond. The work included in this After Hours event by students, an alumnus and a member of staff from the BA Honours Contemporary Photography course was originally a response to the theme of biodiversity, but has since evolved along a variety of related themes. The collaboration continues to flourish, with some very exciting projects planned for the coming year.
ANDY WOOD
Since the beginning of the recession in 2008, society has had to deal with dramatic changes to our economy. The cutbacks in public spending have left thousands of people without work and many have had to deal with a decline in living standards. The businesses on the high street that once provided jobs and services across the country are now bare and abandoned, victims to the lack of support from the financial sector. However, the same cannot be said for those working at the pinnacle of our society, who are receiving large, unjustified bonuses whilst also making decisions that are damaging the country’s economy. This has resulted in a heightened sense of distrust between those at the top and bottom of society — a dysfunctional relationship that is divisive and damaging. The boarded up shops and closed down businesses are a tangible reflection of this lack of care and trust throughout society, prompting the question: Who will be the next victim in the demise of our high street?
Worlds Apart — andrew-wood.portfoliobox.me
JOE LIGHT
Lemniscate — josephlight.co.uk
HAYLEY ANDREW Magnum Book Making Masterclass – June ‘13
We are delighted to announce that a student from the BA (Hons) Contemporary Photography course was invited to join the Magnum Book Making Masterclass, an event organised by the global photography agency Magnum. Drawing on the initiative she created during a module on her course, Hayley Andrew secured a place at the event creating a book making workshop for photographers. This workshop is a prestigious event, and Hayley was employed to bring her knowledge of editing, design, book production and distribution to the workshop which ran over two day and then culminated in a symposium. Hayley was part of a team which included the following professionals: Stuart Smith, Gordon MacDonald (GOST publishing), Harry Hardie of Here Press, Philipp Ebling of Fishbar and Magnum photographers, David Alan Harvey and Susan Meiselas. The event was coordinated by Fiona Rodgers at Magnum. Richard Mulhearn, course leader for BA (Hons) Contemporary Photography said, ‘This is one of the successes of the course; that as result of encouraging professional collaboration whist on the programme, students learn what is required. They make mistakes, but these are what facilitate resilience and progression.’
MACIEJ GASZCZ
Transformations — maciejgaszcz@hotmail.co.uk
‘The simulacrum is never what hides the truth — it is truth that hides the fact that there is none. The simulacrum is true.’ Jean Baudrillard
In the time of an incessant circulation of information our perception is exposed to image saturated impulses, which disturb natural comprehension of the reality. As the receivers and the transmitters, we transform these impulses into visions of the unknown. Peculiar collages created during this process become our only true reference and in some way determine our trajectory. This project undertakes a visually experimental attempt to investigate a transformation of information. Material has been taken and transformed through a complex process of copying and registering. Changed, it is then reincorporated back to its original source to create something unreal. This project attempts to bring reflection to our perception and reality, which seems to be just another copy of its own representation.
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PHOTOGRAPHY MEMORY
By Paul Proctor Staff Contributor In 1940, after escaping Nazi Germany and then later occupied France, the Jewish writer and philosopher, Walter Benjamin wrote what was to be his last work prior to taking his own life in Spain. On the Concept of History (1940) is a series of short, numbered fragmentary essays. In one of them Benjamin chose to make an interpretation of a painting by Paul Klee titled Angelus Novus (1920) which Benjamin compared to the Angel of History. [The painting] shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage upon wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress. (Benjamin 1940) Benjamin’s interpretation of Klee’s painting depicts the Angel as looking to the past, he has his back turned to the future, but he cannot resist the inevitable and relentless force of time. In his essay, Benjamin may be making an analogy of the human condition, but he may as well be making an analogy of the photograph. All photographs are about the past. This is why they are so inextricably linked to memory. Prior to the invention of photography, photographic images were latent, that is, they were visible but unable to be fixed. When Daguerre finally solved the problem of fixing the photographic image on a small highly polished silver plate, it was quickly coined the ‘mirror with a memory’. It was a mirror which reflected as much of ourselves as it did of the world it captured. For the first time, a moment in time could be captured and preserved in perpetuity. And so since then, like the Angel, we are compelled to look back. In his book ‘Another Way of Telling’ (1989) John Berger reminds us that photographs arrest the flow of time in which the event photographed once existed. This notion that time flows is something that most of us experience and can relate to. The ancient Greek philosopher, Heraclitus, likens this flow to a river, telling us that no man ever steps into the same river twice. The photograph represents this step into the river; it does not impede the flow of time; time flows around it. This flow is what we call historical context and photographs are quotations taken out of this context. When a photograph is taken, the continuity of the flow of time is momentarily broken, ‘if the event is a public event, this continuity is history; if it is personal, the continuity which has been broken is a life story’ (Berger 1989). The photograph might also be seen as punctuation in time. In the book Camera Lucida (1989), Roland Barthes makes the distinction between photographs that entice and interest us in a removed sense, and those images which have specific elements that arrest our attention due to their personal significance. The latter he called the ‘punctum’. The ‘punctum’ according to Barthes, refers to the ‘element which rises from the scene, shoots out of it like an arrow, and pierces me’. For Barthes the punctum punctures, penetrates us, creating a lasting impression – like that of a deep wound. The everyday language we associate with using the camera reminds if its ability to create this wound, we aim, we point, we shoot. Some of the most powerful images of the twentieth century attest to this connection. One need only recall the famous photograph taken in 1968 by Eddie Adams of the general executing a Vietcong prisoner. The general shoots the prisoner and the camera shoots the general, what is most profound however, is what is captured; what we are witnessing is the prisoner’s last memory. In Greek mythology, it is the goddess, and mother of the muses, Mnemosyne who presides over memory and remembrance, her sister, Lesmosyne, presiding over forgetting. According to ancient myth, before the introduction of writing, it was the role of Mnemosyne to preserve the stories of history, through establishing and preserving the oral tradition. She ensured the ability to recall and recount. This is what today we might refer to as ‘living memory’. It is living memory which allows testimony; a living witness and
bearer of evidential memory. But what happens when there is no longer living memory upon which to rely? It is perhaps then that Photography becomes one of Mnemosyne’s most loyal attendants. For it is the photograph that is the closest thing to a memory made ‘real’; a visual manifestation of a point in time that will never again be repeated. In this sense the photograph is closely associated with death. It represents what we might call a ‘soft death’. That is, the image of a moment expired which is preserved for as long as the photograph remains. In his book, Forget Me Not: Photography and Remembrance, (2004) Geoffrey Batchen draws our attention to how the physicality of the framed photograph stands in for the absence of a loved one. To this extent the photograph extends beyond a traditional keepsake and assumes the status of a memorial to the dead; a tactile representation which gives weight, and therefore presence, to the deceased. In the same way the emotional investment found in the construction of the family album transcends a mere paper history of the family. As Batchen states, [we must] ‘add the intimacy of touch to the more distanced apprehension of looking. And when we touch an album and turn its pages, we put the photograph in motion’. What motivates us to photograph and be photographed is perhaps not the conscious desire to be remembered but our innate anxiety of being forgotten. Yet, we instinctively know that the camera is the ‘eye which records in order to forget’ (Berger, 1989) In the 1860s, the American poet and writer Oliver Wendell Holmes was one of photography’s most enthusiastic advocates. For Holmes, photography was nothing less than a means of triumphing over time, and, indeed, even over death itself. He wrote: ‘Those whom we love no longer leave us in dying, as they did of old... the unfading artificial retina which has looked upon them retains their impress... How these shadows last, and how their originals fade away!’ For most of its history, the photographic print has assumed the status of the physical embodiment of a memory. The latent image which exists inside the camera being perhaps a perfect metaphor for a memory formed in the mind of an individual. Once in the material world, in the form of a photograph, it enters the public sphere where it can be looked at, distributed and shared. But with this mobility and transferability comes a responsibility. The Victorians understood this and immediately recognised the fragile nature of the photograph likening it to memory itself. They recognised the capacity of the photograph to decay, to fade, and to disappear. For this reason, archives and inventories were created, albums invented and collections published; stored in purpose built institutions for future posterity. Across its developmental history, the number of photographs taken has been directly proportionate to the cost of the technology at the time. That means that until recently photographic memories were expensive; we had to think before taking a photograph. In recent years with the advent of inexpensive digital technology, we now take a photograph before we think. The economy of photography has changed. The photograph is now more likely to be a virtual collection of bits and bytes to be viewed on screen, the photographic print being largely consigned to the lower status of mere hard copy. Technological devices are now charged with the mundane job of diligently recording, storing and remembering. The internet has become the supreme purveyor of personal and collective memory. It has become analogous to the postmodern mind, that is, non-linear, open to interpretation, dislocated and essentially unstable. The advent of these new digital technologies has made us question the degree to which remembering is a necessary personal obligation. We are all born with the default capacity to forget; indeed some may argue that is it necessary to forget in order to move on. But delegating our responsibility to digital memory banks is inherently problematic. The issue today may not be how we remember, but remembering how we forget. Memory is the result of an activity; we must make a concerted effort to remember. If we do not, we risk losing our sense of the historical contexts in which we exist. This is why the Angel of History must look back. Not for a reluctance to address the present or the future, but for the fear of forgetting the past.
What’s Left is Unsaid — susietsang.co.uk
SUSIE TSANG
CM BROSTEANU Thresholds — brosteanu.com A collection of images that explores landscape and memory, space and time, and also investigates the universality of the liminal. Psychologists call liminal space a place where boundaries dissolve a little and we stand there, on the threshold, setting ourselves ready to move across the boundaries of what we are to be. Similar to the shore it is sometimes watery to swim or fish in and sometimes dry to walk on and discover shells. It is the poetic space that exists outside the physical, logical and rational but also owes its reality to them. The aim of the project is the investigation of these spaces with no fixed purpose in relation to the powerful blend of affects triggered by memory.
Terrain Vague — colettelongden.com
COLETTE LONGDEN
PATI POLUDNIAK
Using the photogram to produce a shadow is like creating images that have allowed us to see the world with a new vision. This process has refined the history of photography and the history of art itself. The emulsion on the photographic paper can only reveal a two dimensional image the shadow then receives the same stature as anything else. For this project I investigate my own shadow, the other person in me through camera-less photography. I saw this as an opportunity to express myself and reveal the other side to my character. A side which spends much time hidden away in the shadows, in normal life. I have chosen to work with my favored objects which are my own body before and during my pregnancy and the body of my baby son after his birth. The spiritual aspect appeared to be the core of light placed at the center of the figure and the opaque and transparent layering. The uniqueness of the prints and the process of the artwork are crucial to a philosophical and conceptual understanding of the work. A unique and unreproducible body of work has been made, increasing the importance of creating the shadow through camera-less photography that has more intimacy and feeling than a straight photograph. Alumni — Internal Shadow — patipoludniak@yahoo.com
RICHARD MULHEARN
Staff Contributor Obey — richardmulhearn.org
Your neck of the woods — Angineh Nowroozi
PARACHUTE BA (Hons) Contemporary Photography Programme Leader: Richard Mulhearn 0161 958 3446 Richard.Mulhearn@stockport.ac.uk stockport.ac.uk/content/ba-honours-contemporary-photography BA (Hons) Graphic Arts and Design Programme Leader: Lucy Brown 0161 958 3513 Lucy.Brown@stockport.ac.uk stockport.ac.uk/content/ba-hons-graphic-arts-design