Number 51 Spring 2013
Contemporary Photography
View from the Chair The AGM, 23 March, was aborted due to adverse weather conditions. A few were brave enough to face the elements but not sufficient to make a successful quorum. However, our speaker, Liz Hingley, arrived and proceeded to give us a most exuberant talk about her projects Under Gods and The Jones Family. The talk and Liz were very well received and we had a wonderful afternoon. I hope that she has a successful sojourn in China and that upon her return she will speak at one of our weekend events. The weekend event for this year has been arranged – A Wider View will be held at Reading College, 12-13 October 2013. Speakers who have accepted are Jem Southam HonFRPS, Daniel Meadows HonFRPS, Marketa Luskacova, Natasha Caruana, Dana Popa and Francis Hodgson. We will have a photographic book sales table by Claire de Rouen Books, Charing Cross Road, London, and we hope that attendees will bring their own images and photo books for discussion and feedback. The cost for RPS Contemporary Group members will be £70, including tea and coffee, plus lunch on Saturday. £25 secures a place and booking forms can be found on the RPS website. I would like to remind you all that we are still looking for someone to take over from Brian Steptoe as Treasurer. I am assured it will not take up a great deal of time. It would ease the pressure on Brian who is not only helping with the layout of the Journal but also helping me with any events we organise. Please give it some thought and see if you can become more involved in what is your group – The Contemporary Group. Best wishes to you all, Avril. Copyright notice © The copyright of photographs and text in this issue belongs to the author of the article of which they form part, unless otherwise indicated. If you wish to submit articles for the Journal, please send all copy and images on disc to: Patricia Ann Ruddle, 28 Malvern Avenue, York, YO26 5SG. patriciaruddle@btinternet.com Cover: El Primero de Mayo 2012 © Dulce Fontanillas Morales
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Text should be in Microsoft Word and images are preferred in TIFF format, 300 dpi, file size guideline 10-20Mb. Images are also acceptable as high quality JPEGs, file size guideline 3-6 Mb. For other formats, please contact the Editor. Large image files may be supplied on disc or by use of online large file transfer facilities. Unless requested, discs will not be returned. DEADLINE for the Summer 2013 edition is 30 June 2013.
Number 51 Spring 2013
Contemporary Photography View from the Chair
Avril Harris ARPS
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Editorial
Patricia Ann Ruddle ARPS
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El Primero de Mayo 2012
Dulce Fontanillas Morales
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Two Women Artists
Richard Sadler FRPS
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The Life of Stuff
Christopher Harland ARPS
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The Presence of Absence
Luke Smith
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An interview with Sophy Rickett
Rod Fry ARPS/Sophy Rickett
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The Poetry of Jane Routh
Selected by Anne Crabbe FRPS
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Backgrounding the Landscape
Peter Harvey ARPS
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Group Events
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Committee
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Café Rouge
Natasha Caruana
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Contemporary Group ethos - Photography that explores the photographer’s personal view of contemporary society, environment, art or culture, usually through a themed body of work.
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Editorial “I have a lust for storytelling.” Yaakov Israel talked about wanting to be a writer; after a novel and a few short stories, he realised that he wasn’t good enough. Eventually he discovered photography and how it better suited what he wanted to say. His main influences have been literature and film; he reads “obsessively”. He referenced several photographers, such as Robert Frank and Stephen Shore, but initially it was Jack Kerouac’s On the Road that prompted him to seek out the land of his birth – Israel. I heard Yaakov speak about his work during his exhibition at Impressions Gallery in February. What interested me was his explanation about purpose and style. He doesn’t consider himself a documentary photographer, rather more narrative-based on a documentary style. In the exhibition The Quest for the Man on the White Donkey he uses reality, but uses it to build his story. He sees himself as a “visual collector”. Photography isn’t about a quick response to what is happening. Yaakov tries to combine the accidental with the staged approach. “Bizarre encounters shaped my project” It was 40 in the desert near the Dead Sea. A mirage in the distance - he thought he was hallucinating as a figure came towards him out of the heat haze. A man on a donkey. Traditionally in Judaism, the Messiah will arrive riding on a white donkey. This man was an old Palestinian farmer – one of the paradoxes of Israeli society – you expect one thing and then get another. Yaakov made a portrait of the farmer on his donkey, reminiscent of the early ethnographic, anthropological photographers, as he disappeared under the black cloth on this 8x10 view camera. It was this serendipitous encounter that shaped the project. Originally, Yaakov was thinking about social, political and economic aspects of the land, not religious issues. However, the man on the donkey got him thinking about what he wanted his story to say. He realised how biblical stories not only exist in book and subtexts, but are connected to Judaism, Islam and Christianity. We might see “modern day materialisation of these stories now.” We as viewers have the opportunity to unravel the many layers that images may contain, such is the potential of storytelling. Photography that narrates doesn’t describe, or give us a definitive interpretation. Although we might discern what the photographer is telling us, we have the opportunity to make individual, personal interpretations based on our own life experiences. In turn, what we bring to the story can replace the reality of what occurred. Indeed, Yaakov concluded that these photographs aren’t really about Israel. “Actually, modern day Israel doesn’t appear in this body of work; it’s more about the fringes of society, history and myth.” 0
Best wishes, Patricia Quotes are from the Yaakov Israel’s Artist Talk, Impressions Gallery, 16 February 2013. A recording is now available at www.impressions-gallery.com. For more information see Yaakov’s website: www.yaakovisrael.com
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El Primero de Mayo 2012 Dulce Fontanillas Morales
More than 500,000 people participated in the annual May Day parade last year in Havana. Cuban neighbours, workers and students marched alongside supporters from other nations in the early hours of the morning. Thousands of banners, flags and posters were carried along the Plaza de la Revolución. I had the good fortune to take photographs with another photographer, Dulce Fontanillas Morales. Moreover, I had the privilege of obtaining her photographs for inclusion in the Spring Journal. When I looked through her results of what had to be the quickest parade on record – it was over in much less
than two hours – she told me what she wanted her images to say about the morning’s event. Her aim was to capture the mood of the morning, especially through the faces of the marchers, and those who showed their patriotism by shouldering enormous Cuban flags. Whether cheerful or spirited, or expressing a more earnest, intense character, I suggest that this small selection of Dulce’s photographs display an atmosphere of genuine support for the principles of the Cuban revolution. The Editor
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Two Women Artists Richard Sadler FRPS
Two women artists, Vicky Hodgson ARPS from the UK and Lisbeth Bang from Norway, in a true photojournalistic style, challenge the notion that men over 65 and women over 60 are inactive. They explored their ideas, particularly about women, in a joint exhibition that was commissioned by the Solihull Gallery, Birmingham last November. Vicky Hodgson has identified a number of women from 70 to 100 who are actively working and volunteering in the Solihull area. She photographed them at their place of work in a wide variety of occupations: in supermarkets, theatres, hospitals and courtrooms. All the subjects were pleased to be involved in and proud of the work which is important to them, and, as they saw it, important to society in general. Through her academic studies, Hodgson understands the power of photography to address reality in a way that no other medium can, especially in the case of photojournalism. This genre, due to the advent of digital recording, can be manipulated, but as with her fellow artist Lisbeth Bang, she has remained true to that original reality in front of the camera. Bang is also working on the same theme from a Norwegian point of view and has
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presented her work concerning women from 70 to 90 years old. In both countries there is concern that social welfare cannot support a society with its increasing ageing population. Many governments, due to economic mismanagement, suffer from having to reduce welfare finance. In Norway, high taxation and a more stable economy does help to solve some future concerns. In the UK, the media reports unfairly and very negatively on the aged population, especially in regard to women. There is a lack of positive media reporting in Norway as well. These projects by Hodgson and Bang try to redress these issues by showing that women in both countries can deal with the position in which they find themselves. Hodgson sets out to present her images ‘stylistically’ in a way championed by Sir Benjamin Stone, the Birmingham MP and Victorian photographer. She photographs women in their work places, as Stone did with his Parliamentary portraits and scenes, which also included descriptive notes.
Still Working by Vicky Hodgson ARPS
Mary is a volunteer at Solihull Hospital and when asked “why?�, she said that most people who come to hospital are worried and disgruntled at needing treatment. It is her job to take them to the various clinics for treatment
and reassure them and their visitors that this is the way forward. In her eighties, ready to listen and reassure, she is aware of the value and success of our National Health Service.
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Cynthia is Deputy Chair and Trustee on the board of Age UK in Solihull. She also sits on numerous sub-committees and has been involved in paid and unpaid voluntary services since 1974. In the 1980s she was working with a local housing association that provided accommodation
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for people with mental and learning disabilities. She was awarded the MBE, and Prince Charles, at the time, said, “ When are you going to give up?” Cynthia replied “Never!” Hodgson learned that when she photographed her, Cynthia was in her 90s.
Betty, in her mid-70s, is the treasurer and in charge of ticket sales for St. Augustine’s Music and Theatre Company. She also helps at rehearsals; her past theatre
experience is valued by this amateur company who work in the community.
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If you look twice you will see us by Lisbeth Bang
Norway has a high taxation rate, which funds a model welfare system. However, it also finds itself with an increasing elderly population to support, with an increase in pension funding and a need to provide homes and care personnel. A Norwegian can retire at 64 for a very basic state pension and can claim a full pension when 67 years old. Many people work until 70 for a further improved pension. Most of the professions encourage this because their experience is useful to those who follow them. The three photographs chosen by Lisbeth Bang from her series If you look twice you will see us demonstrate her aesthetic approach, stylistically on the documentary work of Cartier Bresson. Bresson was known for showing the activities of people and events as they happened, sequencing his images to show both an individual and collective story.
Both Vicky Hodgson’s and Lisbeth Bang’s photographs challenge an important current issue. Although an exhibition catalogue wasn’t produced, it is hoped that their work will travel to other venues. In any event, these several images remind us of the power of still photography over the moving image to understand such major contemporary issues in depth. www.vickyhodgson.com www.lisbethbang.com Editor’s note: Both artists have MAs in Photographic Studies, University of Westminster. Vicky Hodgson obtained Arts Council England funding for Still Working.
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Inger Heilliesen, 76, has retired, but now works as an unpaid volunteer along with other similar volunteers in order to maintain the public gardens in a residential area of Oslo.
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Bodil Lovdal, 96, works in the theatre group Cabaret Fossile as one of the actresses. The group consists of ten fully-retired people. They compose their own music; make their own costumes; write their plays and perform at, for example, senior centres, elderly residences and the churches who hire them. They are paid by the venues at which they perform.
Bjorg Ruud, 85, a former professional figure skater, now works as a mannequin and model.
The Life of Stuff Christopher Harland ARPS
We assemble things. We construct artifices to ‘civilise’ our lives and also we decorate our lives to make ourselves comfortable in our environment. But as soon as we have finished this process a new life begins: either through use, abandonment, decay, or simple accident, new possibilities emerge. Sometimes this happens immediately. “A phenomenon changes at the moment it is observed” or sometimes after the effects of time have left their impression. Nature will fight back and weave patterns where none were intended. Weather will sculpt new forms from precision materials. Sunlight will peel and fade one thing, illuminate another and create new life among the everyday stuff of life. These observations are not new. They are not all my own. From my early times as a schoolboy photographer, however, I did see things and photograph them long before I really knew what I was pursuing - simply because I was fascinated by the ‘hidden pictures’ in my surroundings - the life in stuff (much to the bemusement of my father who bought my camera, paid for the processing and anticipated lovely pictures!). Since then I have pursued many other interests in photography but this is the one I always come back to. I feel that my work is at its most effective when the image transcends the literal subject matter and I use the tools and processes of the medium in order to convey something which is of my own making. I sometimes feel I am capturing the invisible but I am not. Stuff is all around us and is constantly on view. Inspired by the work of the likes of Oliver Gagliani, Aaron Siskind and Edward Weston, I am enthralled by the thesis that “Everything in the world, whether it be a tree or a rock, a building or a chair, every object has a life of its own. It is a living thing”. Or perhaps, the wonderful paradox of unintended outcomes. The Life of Stuff ! Quotes are from a classic of photographic literature: The Daybooks of Edward Weston, edited by Nancy Newhall, Aperture, 1990.
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The Presence Of Absence Luke Smith
Memory is a way of holding onto the things you love, the things you are, and the things you never want to lose. Yet how soon we lose the impression of what ceases to be constantly before us. It is this Presence of Absence that becomes our past, which metamorphoses into a memory. It is our memory that rekindles the light of the past but can only make a mournful rustling in the dark. It becomes an internal rumour, the mind’s mirror of what remains when something happens and does not completely un-happen. Over time memories fade, drained empty of agony and laughter, evaporating time, burying the mind and becoming a window to one’s own past. For this project I wanted to depict the manipulation of space and time through psychologically motivated constructed images to develop a tension between what is Present and what is Absent. www.lukesmithphotography.com
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An interview with Sophy Rickett Rod Fry ARPS interviews Sophy Rickett: a visual artist, working with photography and video/sound installations RF. Who were your early influences if any, in art and photography that led you to do a BA in photography? SR. I didn’t really encounter the professional worlds of art and photography until I was studying an art foundation at the London College of Printing when I was about 19, so my interest in art and photography developed quite instinctively until then. Looking back, my main early interests were taken from the ideas I’d explored in English literature, especially ideas and techniques around dual narrative, and also in the notion of the estrangement effect, where a piece of theatre reveals the story of its own creation. RF. Your work has a minimalistic approach and seems to reference the likes of Barnett Newman and Mark Rothko, but still retains a photographic process at its heart. Did this style evolve later when you were at the Royal College of London (RCA)? SR. That visual style, and its emphasis on the plane of the image rather than the pictorial depth was also something I was instinctively drawn to a long time before the RCA, although it wasn’t until I was studying there that I found out the name of it, and the significance of it in art historical terms.(1) My more recent work, particularly To The River (2011), Auditorium (2007), and my current work-in-progress Objects in the Field seems to have a bit less emphasis on that, although it’s probably still there as an influence in the background. 1. Rickett refers to traditional Albertian monocular perspective.
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RF. Where do you get your ideas from? SR. My best projects have evolved slowly, and are made up of a whole series of small ideas, some of which I go with, while others get rejected. Somehow that works better than relying on one big ‘lightbulb’ moment. It’s as though I develop a project through tuning into the process and allowing it to lead the way, rather than trying to over determine outcomes from the start. I usually find that one idea leads to another. They don’t tend to happen in complete isolation, and what’s interesting then, is not the idea as such, but working out how it all fits together. RF. If photography can capture a moment in time, it seems to me that you have deliberately moved away from this precept in order to allow other themes into your work. Have you have created spaces for the viewer to place their own thoughts into your pictures? SR. I didn’t ever consciously reject the idea of photography as recording a moment in time – it’s just that I have never felt that my work connected to that way of thinking about it. When I was studying, I’d often feel exasperated or frustrated that I couldn’t find a connection with the prevailing ideas in photographic theory – now I realise my work connects to a different kind of history, and I’m less troubled by the feeling of not knowing exactly where I ‘fit’. RF. Do you see a project differently, when organising your work for a monograph or an exhibition? SR. Over the past year or so, I’ve been working as Artist Associate at the Institute of Astronomy, University of Cambridge. It started off as a three-month commission,
but at the end of that time, I felt that I’d hardly started, so they let me stay on longer. I looked through what I’d done the other day, and realised I’ve made about forty pictures. We had a meeting at the gallery about my next show – I’d always intended to print some of the work large scale, but hadn’t really confronted the fact that I’d have to edit it down hugely. So yes, I try to let the project evolve with as much integrity as possible, so that it has its own internal logic and then I have to think about things quite differently (and much more pragmatically) when I
start making the difficult editing decisions later, which are usually determined by other factors such as the size of the space or the design of the book. RF. Do like an open-ended brief or prefer to work to deadlines? SR. Open-ended, any day! Although I do have a tendency to procrastinate, so the threat of a deadline can help things along a bit! Fellowships are usually interesting, because while the brief tends to be quite open, the host Untitled (Nature Study) (2008) developed an on-going interest in moments around encounters between people and nature. A Barn Owl Sanctuary in Gloucestershire provided her initial inspiration.
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institution usually requires that the new work be made in that particular context, so within the open-endedness, there are some parameters to work within. I have just started work on a collaborative project with the artist Bettina Von Zwehl at the Birmingham City Archive where a period of research and development at the beginning gives us the opportunity to define our own brief, which has been really exciting and inspirational.
RF. I really like your choice of locations. They seem to be neutral to the point of being banal. Yet with your technique they take on a mystical feel. How long does it take you to find your locations? SR. In a sense, I’m always on the lookout for locations, so quite often, I stumble across a location by mistake and then return to it later to take the pictures. I went through a
To The River (2011) is a video installation with 12 channels of sound. Filmed during the spring equinox of 2010 on the bank of the River Severn, it depicts a small crowd of people gathered to wait for the Severn Bore to pass.
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phase a few years ago, photographing on a new motorway intersection on the way to Hastings – I discovered it while it was still under construction, so each time I returned, it would have changed and I wouldn’t recognise it, and it could take ages to find it again! The location in To The River was less arbitrary – but still it took a while to find the right point along the bank of the Severn to base ourselves for the filming.
RF. I had more questions to ask Sophy, for example, how she saw the contemporary art scene developing in relation to photography, but we had run out of time. Next time… More about her work can be found in essays and books published by, for example, Steidl, Photoworks and Frieze. Just Google her name.
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Objects in the Field is Rickett’s work-in-progress, based as Resident Artist at Cambridge University’s Institute of Astronomy.
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The Poetry of Jane Routh Selected by Anne Crabbe FRPS In her creative life, Jane Routh was first a photographer, then a photographer and poet and is now a poet, no longer making photographs in the physical way but imbuing her work with a photographer’s eye. She has said “I can see other similarities between poems and photographs: they need technical skill and invention; work can be reprinted/revised in a way not always possible in other media. There’s the same feeling of expansion when the rare perfect negative prints like a dream first time as when every word seems to fall naturally into place. But my struggles with a poem last longer.” (1) She has four published collections of poems: Circumnavigation, awarded the Poetry Business Competition, 2002 and short-listed for the Forward Prize; The Gift of Boats, which won the Academi Cardiff International Poetry Competition 2009; Waiting for H5Ni and Teach Yourself Mapmaking. Jane’s connection to the RPS Contemporary Group goes back to the 1990s when she was part of the Postal Portfolio Group. Her home is in the Forest of Bowland, Lancashire, where she cares for woodlands, both ancient and modern, and a flock of geese. It was the venue for one of the biennial Postal Portfolio weekends, and it has stayed in the collective memory of the group as amazing and unforgettable. 1. Jane Routh. magma: Magma Showcase. No. 35, Summer 2006. (online poetry magazine. Accessed 18 March 2013).
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Portrait I’d no intention of taking his picture, just a general view of the garden, everyone talking in groups the way they do at openings, backs to the walls, glass in hand except this wasn’t a show but they could have looked at the flower beds and veg in their lounge suits, pashminas and hats, high heels and fashionable mauve. Yet here he is in shirt sleeves, coming round the corner of the house. Fast. The only one not holding a glass, trousers slipped a little and folded over his shoes. Mouth tight: he’s thinking about something, worrying: you can see it’s urgent from the way he’s leaning forward as if to breast the winner’s tape. It’s him all right. He’d hate this picture.
From: Jane Routh. Circumnavigation. Huddersfield: Smith/Doorstop Books, 2002.
A Day’s Work World comes knocking. NO! easy as that, when it’s the darkroom door.
nothing but a hand, its gentle rocking of sheet film in a dish; stop, fix.
Not in the dark of endings, of night, of fear: this is the dark of beginnings
Here are the pleasures of precision: metol 8 grams, water at 40 degrees;
an orderly dark you know your way round in, scissors here, pencil there
here you believe in the idea of perfection approached with little rituals to slow the pulse.
a dark you’re as at home in as if you could see the notes you write.
A third print comes closest. There have been times I’ve tried a fifth.
Only water flows here; time’s stopped by a button on a clock with no hours
Beautiful, the deep wet blacks and silver highlights tailing towards invisible,
-then allowed little increments: seven-and-a-half minutes for film, three for paper;
the print never quite so heartfelt in the light. O world,
you know the ticks by heart. Stopped again. Silence.
all day turning without me. Back in your noisy brightness
It is possible not to think: it is possible to sit on a high stool at the sink
I stand in the garden like an amnesiac, unable to account for how it comes to be evening.
From: Jane Routh. The Gift of Boats. Huddersfield: Smith/Doorstop Books, 2010.
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Backgrounding the Landscape Peter Harvey ARPS
Whether we think about The Landscape, A Landscape or simply the unarticled word landscape, we enter a territory that encompasses such diverse discourses as art history, cultural geography, anthropology, ecology and politics. Our relationship with our lived-in landscapes and our viewed landscapes is a complex one which may mirror our ambivalence about land that becomes transformed into landscape that itself becomes transfigured into Art.(1) How to look at landscape, what to look at within the visual space available, are questions driving my visual exploration and recording of elements of Landscape. As with other media, a photographer has to contend with the historical burden of what has gone before, particularly as landscape photography is as old as photography itself “the most enduring activity in the history of the medium” (2) The genre’s historical trajectory in painting has been different: both Iain Biggs and John Ross note that landscape has been assumed to be an “... anachronistic genre, part of an old, privileged tradition ...” (3) or that it is “… seen now as being akin to flower arranging ...” (4) - although both argue strongly for its contemporary importance both visually, theoretically and politically. There is an inherent contradiction in any mediated representation of landscape. However a landscape is defined and delineated, the total sensory experience of ‘being in’ a space and the active selection and integration of visual elements that create a coherent internal image, cannot be reproduced in a two-dimensional form such as a photographic print. What such images can do is trigger personal memories of places where we have been, which re-create our experience: or, in the case of places unvisited, we can project ourselves into that imagined space on the
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basis of these same previous experiences. In that sense, photography, “...takes the viewer to places...” (5) but for many people, the image of a place precedes the lived, actual experience of place and shapes and conditions our perceptions of what a landscape ‘ought’ to be like.(6) Many artists, critics and writers argue that the concept of Landscape is a created, culturally contingent one. Gerry Badger goes so far as to state that for contemporary landscape photography “... In photographing place, we are never just photographing nature. We are always photographing culture ...” (7) Contemporary photographers are just as likely to include industrial wastelands as rural idylls, and clear evidence of human impact as bucolic, idealised farming scenes. Edward Burtynsky, for example, verges towards the sublime in his large-scale images of large-scale human inscription on the land left scarred by mining or the waste of a conspicuously consuming section of our world. A predominant theme in his work is “... nature transformed through industry ...” images of which “... are meant as metaphors for modern society...” (8) Stuart Franklin’s photographs of recent European landscapes set out to “... capture both beauty and menace at the same time ...” (9) It is difficult now to be a landscape photographer without referencing what we chose to call The Environment and become more than passive recorders of space and place. In the Backgrounding the Landscape series, images explore our ambivalence towards the countryside. On the one hand we enjoy and interact with it, on the other we leave unsightly traces of our presence. By employing a very low (often ground-level) point-of-view and a shallow depth of field, these images background the landscape at
the expense of the unnaturally bright colour of our detritus, deliberately exploiting the technology of the photographic process. Despite the resonances with tableau and staged images, all the photographs depict objects as found, in keeping with my preference for a documentary style of photography.
1. M. Andrews. Landscape and Western Art, Oxford University Press, 1999: p.3. 2. C. B. Schulz. Landscape Photography in R. Lenman (ed.). The Oxford Companion to the Photograph, Oxford University Press, 2005: p. 347. 3. I. Biggs. Contested – rethinking ‘landscape and nature’, LAND2 Texts, 1992 (www.land2.uwe.ac.uk accessed 27 March 2013). 4. J.Ross. Artist’s Statement at the exhibition Song of the Earth, Dean Clough Galleries, Halifax, September 2009. 5. G. Badger. The Genius of Photography, Quadrille, 2007: p.131. 6. In his introduction to the booklet Early prints of the Lake District, Kenneth Smith (1973) makes the observation that easily available prints of the Lake District were current well before stage coaches were able to travel over Shap Fell. 7. G. Badger. op cit: p. 154. 8. E. Burtynsky. Artist’s statement www. edwardburtynsky.com/ (accessed 27 March 2013). 9. S. Franklin. Footprint: our landscape in flux,Thames & Hudson, 2008: p. 7.
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Group Events May 20
Contemporary North West meeting. Days Inn, Charnock Richard Services, M6 between J27 and 28. Contact Ian Maxwell mail@ihmaxwell.com, tel 01524 770278.
Until June 9
Christopher Harland ARPS, The Life of Stuff exhibition at the Ropewalk Gallery, Barton-upon-Humber, North Lincolnshire DN18 5JT. Tel. 01652 660380 or see website www.the-ropewalk.co.uk.
June 8
Contemporary North East meeting, Strensall Village Hall 2pm. Event details will appear in the RPS website diary. Full details will be placed on the NE Group webpage www.rps.org/contemporary-north-east. Contact: Nigel Tooby, group organiser, on nigel@mogulimage.co.uk, tel: 07817 416286 .
June 16
Contemporary South West meeting at Dartington, Devon. Contact Rod Fry rod@rodfry.eclipse.co.uk or 01803 844721 for details.
June 22-29
Maria Falconer and Paul Hill. A Photography Workshop in the French Pyrenees. www.hillonphotography.co.uk/workshops.php
Sept 18
Distinctions Assessments. Contemporary ARPS and FRPS. Fenton House, Bath. Applicants and observers may attend the Associateship Assessments. Contact. Andy Moore at Fenton House tel 01225 325760
October 12-13
Contemporary Group weekend event. ‘A Wider View’. At Reading College. Kings Road, Reading. Details and booking form available on RPS website.www.rps.org/group/Contemporary. Our speakers are Dana Popa, Daniel Meadows HonFRPS, Jem Southam HonFRPS, Marketa Luskacova, Natasha Caruana and Francis Hodgson. Two hour slot available for attendees to display work. Photographic Book sales table by Claire de Rouen Books. Price £70 group members, £85 all others, £25 deposit to book a place. Contact avrilrharris@blueyonder.co.uk
October 20
Contemporary South West meeting at The Carnon Inn, Carnon Downs, nr Truro, Cornwall. Starting at 10.30am. Contact Rod Fry rod@rodfry.eclipse.co.uk or 01803 844721 for details.
Chair - Avril Harris ARPS avrilrharris@blueyonder.co.uk
Event organiser - Avril Harris ARPS avrilrharris@blueyonder.co.uk
Publicity officer - Rod Fry ARPS rod@rodfry.eclipse.co.uk
Deputy chair - Rod Fry ARPS rod@rodfry.eclipse.co.uk
Journal editor - Patricia Ruddle ARPS 28 Malvern Avenue, York. YO26 5SG patriciaruddle@btinternet.com
Committee members Steff Hutchinson ARPS info@steffhutchinson.co.uk Ian Maxwell mail@ihmaxwell.com Douglas May FRPS douglasjmay1@btinternet.com Richard Sadler FRPS sadler118@btinternet.com
Secretary - Bob Gates ARPS bob@robertgates.eu Treasurer - Brian Steptoe FRPS bsteptoe@compuserve.com Postal portfolio - Anne Crabbe FRPS info@annecrabbe.co.uk
Journal Editorial committee Patricia Ruddle, editor Anne Crabbe Brian Steptoe, design
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© Natasha Caruana. From the Series Married Men, Café Rouge 2008-9. Natasha is a speaker at the Contemporary Group weekend event “A Wider View” on 12-13 October 2013 at Reading College.
Price £5, where sold