Tuesday 25 January 2011

pretty rubbish

I came across the incredible work of Stephen Gill in the photography magazine Foam. His collection 'Hackney Flowers' is composed of images he has taken and printed, then rephotographed having placed dried flowers, tape, twigs etc on them. 









Not such pretty rubbish

The photographer and activist Chris Jordan creates images that stand as a direct critique of mass consumption and waste.





A Dark Shadow

Tim Noble & Sue Webster.







Sahndi Schimmel Gold







Monday 24 January 2011

...Developments/..


A while ago I was trying to explain my rather nebulous project to a friend. As he probed what I was getting at he mentioned the word extraction -my mind whirred as it added another dimension to the idea forming in my head. the action of taking out something, esp. using effort or force. I’d been exploring the dynamic relationship between material object and immaterial meaning, how they construct one another, how altering the state or context of the object alters perception. Considering the concept of extraction made me think of the process, almost like a life-cycle, the manufactured object moves through, and the cycle of meaning that runs parallel. I wanted to look at how not only the physical substance was drawn out of the earth or out of other substances previously created, but how the meaning ascribed to them was also drawn out, extracted from a human bank of perception. 

The idea of extraction also got me thinking about how the camera extracts... that is it draws out both physical and immaterial substance; it extracts light, data and meaning from its subject, it extracts energy and creativity from its user, its product extracts attention and meaning from its viewer. I thought about how the camera extracts and relocates meaning; a car in a studio becomes an object of desire in a brochure, a tree on a hill becomes an artwork on a wall.

Considering the extensive role of the photograph as an agent in the process of consumption, maybe I could explore the themes and concerns i've been mulling over (object/meaning/transition/extraction)though the photograph; the image as both a physical object created through process and changing in state, yet also as an immaterial site of process and transition of meaning.


Edward Burtynsky




 "Nature transformed through industry is a predominant theme in my work. I set course to intersect with a contemporary view of the great ages of man; from stone, to minerals, oil, transportation, silicon, and so on. To make these ideas visible I search for subjects that are rich in detail and scale yet open in their meaning. Recycling yards, mine tailings, quarries and refineries are all places that are outside of our normal experience, yet we partake of their output on a daily basis.

 

These images are meant as metaphors to the dilemma of our modern existence; they search for a dialogue between attraction and repulsion, seduction and fear. We are drawn by desire - a chance at good living, yet we are consciously or unconsciously aware that the world is suffering for our success. Our dependence on nature to provide the materials for our consumption and our concern for the health of our planet sets us into an uneasy contradiction. For me, these images function as reflecting pools of our times."

Edward Burtynsky, on his collection ‘Exploring the Residual Landscape’. 
The images shown here are from his 2009 collection 'Oil'.

His work highlights the often forgotten cycle of consumption, and draws on similar interest to my own in the juxtaposition of the aesthetic and ideological attraction to manufactured items and their important societal role, against the ugliness and destruction their production creates and ignores. 
I want to challenge the ideas of desire, attraction and repulsion and
have been questioning material object, meaning and transition; how is the desired product
contained within the realm of
the attractive, but the its' 
creation and aftermath abject? 

Burtynsky highlights these contradictions through images of the ugly or ignored elements of production that are often strikingly beautiful. His images distance themselves from the societies, economies and cultures they serve, but as such they are anything but ignored. Instead, the absence of people and businesses that operate the process these images depict only serves to speak of them louder.  


‘Oil’ explicitly considers the impact of oil on the planet and society, linking the many fractions of its’ use; from drilling to urban sprawl to recycling. Like Burtynsky, I want to produce a set of images that connects such distant actions, objects and meanings, but with a more ironic tone, tactile sense and human focus. I want my images to bring the process of consumption into people’s lives, not off in a distant mine or skip, but to directly provoke by linking individual experience and action of one part of the process of object and meaning to the many other parts, in doing so highlighting the ironic vicissitude of seemingly fixed entities.    





Jessica Backhaus

Backhaus is another photographer whose work considers similar themes to my own. Her collection ‘What Still Remains’ captures individual items – often junk, waste or leftovers – as traces of what was before. These items are generally isolated from context and become a synecdoche for the instance – action, event and person - that has created them.


Backhaus’ images create a sense of time, evoking a sense of what has passed as she portrays each item as traces of a conscious human action; a crushed can or floating ball is not just any old junk but have been purposefully engaged with. That is not to say that the past action was aware of the trace, the beauty it left behind, in fact I feel the traces are salvaged – it is Backhaus’ camera that has found them otherwise uncovered from the past. As such the objects become the captured ghosts of memory, people existing, unknowing, in the bite marks of an apple or the print on a window. However, Backhaus’ images do not simply seek to celebrate the perpetrator, but present the objects as personal, intentional and beautiful instances in their own right.


It also strikes me how ‘all that remains’ is isolated and protected from the future, freezing past instance in present vessel in a vacuum of time. The moments these images present seem still where they shouldn’t be, as if stolen away from the decisive action and persistent movement that has created them.
Stunning in their simplicity, her images at first seem to create beauty in what’s been thrown away, left behind or overlooked – both literally and metaphorically. However, upon closer inspection we see that they do not focus on the moment of discarding, but on the moment of engagement.

 


Her work has really inspired my thinking about the connection of activity, experience, object and trace. I’ve never seen such ‘mundane’ items portray such a sense of purpose, and want to consider this in my work. 


When taking pictures of ‘junk’ do I want to linger on their moment of interaction but also offer a counter perspective that scathes these items; for they could also be seen not as unique traces or intention and experience but of mindlessness, waste, extraction – a lack of beautiful experience. Her photographs have also inspired me to consider how images can create a sense of timelessness, isolation and stillness, and whilst I’d like to explore this I’d also like to consider the opposite by creating a sense of immediacy, connecting these fractions as part of a whole.




I’m really keen to play with the idea of salvaging beauty and memory, yet carefully set it against the ugliness of forgetting or rejection, and although I feel these are themes somewhat more ethereal than those which I have focused, looking at Backhaus’ images have brought new and interesting perspective. 







 

Traces

I began taking images of things I came across that struck me as imprints of a past action that had left a mark, an impression, a trace. I wanted to use the camera to expose and delight in all the tiny traces of each choice or action we undertake - whether they are purposeful or accidental. The power of photographing is that it pays attention to things that are otherwise overlooked and records what would otherwise be forgotten.