Tag Archives: typology

Exercise 1.3 – Off to one side a bit

1 Reply

 

places where people who were smoking outside buildings had been smoking – april 2017

 

As mentioned in my previous post, easily as many people declined to have their picture taken by me as agreed to be included in my smokers’ typology. After a while, I realised that I could always take a picture of where some of them had been standing, after they had gone. I tried to keep the focus slightly in front of the wall, where the smoker would have been and tried to make interesting compositions that would work with the others in a grid.

Here they are. I quite like the effect and probably would be more likely to have these printed, framed and hung on a wall somewhere than the ones that actually have people in them.

Exercise 1.3: A Typology of My Own

3 Replies

‘In response to Sander’s work, try to create a photographic portraiture typology which attempts to bring together a collection of types. Think carefully about how you wish to classify these images; don’t make the series too literal and obvious.’

– IaP Coursebook p.29

people smoking outside buildings – central london, april 2017

“Excuse me – for an art college project, I’m taking photographs of people smoking outside buildings; you’re smoking outside a building – can I take your photograph, please?

I said this, or some version of this more than a hundred times over the course of six or so lunchtimes back in April. Around forty people said yes and I ended up with around seventy-five pictures (usually two of each smoker: one of them with a cigarette near or in their mouth; the other with the cigarette well out of the way of their face) that I was happy enough with for them to go through to the next stage of the edit. Continue reading →

Exercise 1.2: Background as Context

Leave a reply

sean in the three judges, glasgow – may ’17

“Make a portrait of someone you know, paying very close attention to what is happening in the background of the shot. Be very particular about how you pose the subject and what you choose to include in the photograph. Ideally, the background should tell the viewer something about the subject being photographed.”
IaP Coursebook, p.26

I have mentioned Sean in my learning log twice before: he was one of the people who helped me generate my self-portrait in part three of  Context and Narrative and he made a cameo appearance as a ‘colleague’ in my discussion of Robert Adams’ Why People Photograph during The Art of Photography.

We both come from Orkney; our sons are in the same class at school; we shared a flat for a while. I have played in bands with him, played in the same Glasgow chess club. He is a rather good photographer and writes proper computer code for a living.  Continue reading →

August Sander and Typology

1 Reply

‘What did August Sander (1876-1964) tell his sitters before he took their pictures? And how did he say it so they all believed him in the same way? […] Did he simply say that  their photographs were going to be a recorded part of history? And did he refer to history in such a way that their vanity  and shyness dropped away, so that they looked into the lens , telling themselves, using a strange historical sense, “I looked like this”?’

– John Berger (1979)

 

The more I look at August Sander’s photographs of people in Germany at the start of the 20th century, the less certain I become of what exactly it is that I’m meant to be looking at. If – as Sander claimed – they form a cross-section of a society, it is not a society that I have personally experienced. 

All my examples are taken from the 1994 reissue of Face of Our Time. Sander died in April 1964, a month after I was born; time has moved on and if I wish to pick up on signifiers that would have been shared by Germans of Sander’s generation, Looking at his pictures, I must act as a historical detective, not as a member of that ‘Our’ in the title.

Continue reading →