Christmas Trees. The Borders. Very Cold. Marcus Doyle
Well I seemed to have spent another year doing whatever I wanted managing to survive as an artist. Every year it gets a little more difficult, but somehow I find a way. I guess some might say its all to do with my love for photography, and yes, that plays a big part, but mainly its from being able to adapt although this has not been through choice. All the galleries I once knew in the UK are now dust with comissions few and far between. But my Christmas message this year is not to dwell on the negatives of this difficult and changing industry, but to encourage all those at the start, middway or on the verge of collapse to remember why you got into photography in the first place (because its all you wanted to do and nothing else mattered).
Of course I know this message will make no difference (I feel depressed just writing it.!) but at least I tried.
I was very saddened to hear that Lynne Cohen had passed away last May of this year.
I first met Lynne after a lecture she done at the Royal College of art in London. She was full of energy and a lot of fun, not to mention a big influence for me early on when I started using a large format camera. Her large scale prints were sublime and I often wondered how such a small little lady managed to work with a large 10/8" Deardoff Camera.
We had always kept in touch via email over the years and it was great to liaise with a photographer of such talent whom I considered to also be a good friend.
When Lynne became ill she told me; "Being sick is not the worst thing, the worst thing is not being able to make photographs." For this to happen to someone so passionate was very sad indeed. But the Lynne I will remember will be the happy little woman with the big camera.
11.12.14
Things like this just wind me up, but Johnathan Jones has made my day for writing this..
The $6.5m canyon: it's the most expensive photograph ever – but it's like a hackneyed poster in a posh hotel
Peter Lik’s hollow, cliched and tasteless black and white shot of an
Arizona canyon isn’t art – and proves that photography never will be
‘Beauty is cheap if you point a camera at a grand phenomenon of nature’ … Phantom. Photograph: Peter Lik
Photography
is not an art. It is a technology. We have no excuse to ignore this
obvious fact in the age of digital cameras, when the most beguiling
high-definition images and effects are available to millions. My iPad
can take panoramic views that are gorgeous to look at. Does that make me
an artist? No, it just makes my tablet one hell of a device.
The news that landscape photographer Peter Lik
has sold his picture Phantom for $6.5m (£4.1m), setting a new record
for the most expensive photograph of all time, will be widely taken as
proof to the contrary. In our world where money talks, the absurd
inflated price that has been paid by some fool for this “fine art
photograph” will be hailed as proof that photography has arrived as art.
Yet a closer look at Phantom reveals exactly the opposite. This
record-setting picture typifies everything that goes wrong when
photographers think they are artists. It is derivative, sentimental in
its studied romanticism, and consequently in very poor taste. It looks
like a posh poster you might find framed in a pretentious hotel room.
Phantom is a black-and-white shot taken in Antelope Canyon, Arizona.
The fact that it is in black and white should give us pause. Today,
this deliberate use of an outmoded style can only be nostalgic and
affected, an “arty” special effect. We’ve all got that option in our
photography software. Yeah, my pics of the Parthenon this summer looked
really awesome in monochrome.
Lik’s photograph is of course beautiful in a slick way, but beauty is
cheap if you point a camera at a grand phenomenon of nature. The
monochrome detailing of the canyon is sculptural enough, and a shaft of
sunlight penetrating its depths becomes the phantom of the title. Yet,
in fact, this downward stream of light is simply a natural aspect of
Antelope Canyon. Look it up online and you will find a vast range of photographs that all show the same feature.
They are all just as striking as Phantom. The photographer has added
nothing of any value to what was there already. Google is full of “great” pictures of this awe-inspiring natural feature.
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Someone has been very foolish with their money, mistaking the picturesque for high art.
As a colour picture without any arty claims, this would be a valuable
record of nature. Instead, it claims to be more than that; it aspires
to be “art”. It is this ostentatious artfulness that pushes it into the
realm of the false. For the artistic ambition of this picture is so very
derivative from paintings that were created more than a century ago.
Just like the very first “art” photographers in the Victorian age, Lik
apes the classics in order to seem classic.
Phantom aims for the sublime, that sense of awe in front of nature
that was described by Edmund Burke in the 18th century and taken to
lavish heights by painters in the 19th. American painters especially,
such as Frederic Edwin Church and Albert Bierstadt,
used a heightened romantic style to express the grandeur and amazement
of the American landscape. Later, Georgia O’Keeffe added a surreal
dreaminess to the west’s iconography. Film-makers, above all John Ford,
were influenced by the American landscape painters when they put the west on screen.
Phantom comes along in the wake of all these representations of the
American landscape in art – and lazily emulates them. It is a cliche:
easy on the eye, easy on the brain, hackneyed and third-hand.
If this is the most valuable “fine art photograph” in history, God
help fine art photography. For this hollow and overblown creation
exposes the illusion that lures us all, when we’re having a good day
with a good camera – the fantasy that taking a picture is the same thing
as making a work of art.
10.12.14
Some people might think I have returned to my old black and white days when sillotted trees were all the norm. Just a simple mechanical camera, a single lens, and a roll of film. But alas no, I made this 'Kenna' style image last week out of the window of a moving car using my phone.
Although I still have a hard time getting around the fact that images like the one are possible using a phone, it shouldn't really matter whether it was a phone, or a 30k camera, because we all know its how you see the image that counts. I just hope no one wants to buy a large print...
Sooner or later I always come back to Night Photography. In fact it was night photography that got me started in photography at the tender age of twelve. Most would consider it a bit strange to see a twelve year old boy walking round in the cold northern night with a camera, but there you go.
Last week I had a small evening gig with a handful of students around the Old Street area of London and was reminded how straight forward shooting at night actually is.
The two images represented here were made quite recently, but still shot in the same way I have always worked, F8 and a bit of counting. I was particularly pleased with the white car image, especially when you consider it was made with only moonlight as a main light source and even then there was a moon eclipse during the exposure (about an hour give or take).
25.11.14
Whilst chatting with a fine fellow photographer in my home town the other day I was reminded of how very often the best work is made when a photographer knows an area inside and out. This is especially true In tthe landscape when a certain quality of light can change everything. One only needs to look at bodies of work where photographers have revisited an area may times in days, weeks, months and even years. (I realise this is too big a subject to tackle on a train with an iPhone so I shall move on and get to my point..)
As with many in depth chats with photographers the conversation soon came round to camera kit. As a photographer still using film the same questions always crop up in terms of quality, convince, cost etc. and then it suddenly dawned on me that despite the leaps and bound in photographic technology it cannot change the foundation of a photograph; light, subject, composition, exposure. Keep this in mind and how you get to the final image becomes irrelivant..
14.11.14
An early morning stroll before breakfast in King City. CA 2014
10.11.14
Click here to view American Colour Gallery. Millennium Images
are pleased to present a gallery of images focusing on American Colour
taken from our extensive library. The gallery includes images from a number
of our most prominent contributors including Michael Ormerod, Kent Baker,
Lydia Panas, Marcus Doyle and Luke Hayes. The introductory text by Neil
Campbell, Professor of American Studies at the university of Derby, U.K
offers an insightful look at the historical significance of American colour
photography. Jean Baudrillard
wrote ‘I was here in my imagination long before I actually came
here’ (America 1986: 72) and as we look at these images of the USA
one is struck endlessly by a similar sensation of dreamy recognition; of
half-remembered movies, Edward Hopper paintings, country songs, and Beat
novels. Yet this dreamscape is counter-posed by a critical regionalist
consciousness that scrutinizes the imagined place and interrupts the
dreaming with an awakening sense of other, more complex forces of history
and culture co-existing within the frame. If this work is
photocinematic, then what we have are film stills fragmented out of the
flow of the total movie and supplemented by visual interruptions that
challenge comfortable notions of mythic completion and closure.
A solitary
teenager stands on the edge of the road, about to cross, but paused for a
moment, blowing a bubble with her gum. This is a suspended moment,
captured in the intense, dreamy blue colour that saturates the image with
the girl picked out in sharp focus fully absorbed by her
‘childish’ action whilst the ‘adult’ world of fast
food outlets and truck-stops is distanced and blurred in the
background. Her glasses in hand, her vision is focused only on the
moment, detached and separated from the world to come, as if she is in her
own ‘bubble’ too, on the threshold of the world she is crossing
into. The intensity of colour and the quotidian details of the
everyday that recur in these photographs re-state America as an uncanny
hybrid of dream and loss, innocence and experience, past and present
captured and colliding in the extraordinary framing of time and
motion.
I was sent this link while on the road in the States. Its a great selection and turned out to be a great bit of inspiration..
Book covers, in particular novels, are one of the few outlets for fine art photography.
I thought this one worked particularly well.
The Fake Ghost Town. Somewhere on route 66. Marcus Doyle
The ghost towns of America are fascinating places and of course great for photography (and often photographed to death). But there is something very odd when someone goes out of there way to create a fake ghost town.
Upon entering the place (early Sunday morning, no one around), nothing felt quite right. In fact it was most eerie. The strange thing was that I just wasn't compelled to make any photographs. Everything just looked odd and out of place.
Sometimes its nice to throw caution to the wind and just photograph something because you like the look of it and nothing more.
I thought this place on the Californian /Nevada border near Beatty would make a great film location. Maybe a horror, or some kind of road trip stop off.
Good to see my old home town coming up with the goodies. Sadly I cannot make this one.
2.11.14
Motel Room. King City. CA 2014 Marcus Doyle
I was reminded recently how much a photograph can trigger a memory and remind us of a place in our past. Of course this is something I studied in depth during my time with the masters in photography prison camp. But as we all know a photograph can also make us want to be in a particular place. We see a warm inviting lamp and perhaps a cosy room with a nice flowery duvet, but the reality is often very different. As it happens this particular room (above) was cockroach infested, a little damp, and a little smelly. But for the equivalent of fifteen pounds a night, what do you expect.
Seedy American motel rooms are certainly one of those things that look a lot better than they actually are..
With an update to my ever growing website (here), and the beginning of my Virtual Water project series (here), there is of plenty new work to see.
I will be releasing the VW images over the next month or so with added information about the project.
The image above is one of my favorites from the trip. On this particular occasion I was fortunate to have the place to myself, however this did mean I had to position the camera, open the shutter, and then drive around a little. Those pinnacles are further away than they look.!
This particular trip never crossed the border of California, but still had an array of interests with some places I had never heard of and others I had frequented in the past like the Buck Shot cafe (see left and below).
29.9.14
A special thank you to my film sponsor who came through for me once again for my upcoming project.
There was a time when the digital verses film debate (boring I know) was all the rage. But these days people don't even ask anymore and just assume film has gone forever. Well it hasn't and every time I scan an image shot on film my faith in the medium is restored, especially when that image was made in the dead of night. In terms of highlight and shadow control, long (very long) exposure, battery life (no batteries with my camera) and all the rest of it, film still has its place. People just don't know it.
In order to obtain my bursary I was invited to the RPS awards event, a swaray of photographers and industry linked folk along with some new friends and old enemies. It was a pleasant evening, and a humbling experience to share the same stage with some of the very best photographers.
I was a little disappointed that the queen wasn't there as promised, but you can't have everything.
Several years ago I began a project called 108, (the walkable distance along the border between East and West) a series of photographs looking at the border between Scotland and England.
This project was started before there was any public talk of Scotland wanting to become independent, however, having a Scottish mother and an English father, there was always talk of these things in the house I grew up. I say talk, but it more my fathers shouty opinion that a huge wall be built between the two, and my mother's cursing threats of going back home to live with my Auntie Morag in peace.
With these things in mind I was always fascinated with the border, so much so, my first ever photograph was made looking over a motorway bridge in the dead of night with the city lights of England in the distance, a familiar scene after countless trips back and forth as a child to see my Grandparents.
After working on the series for about twelve months I hit a bit of a brick wall and the images failed to inspire me further. I put this down to the fact that there really wasn't a lot going on. It was one of those projects that sounds great, but offers little in the visual sense. And so the project was shelved for a few years.
Once I heard about the possibility of the Scotties gaining independence, my first thought was that my fathers wishes might now come true and a huge wall would be built, complete with gargoyles and those holes for pouring out hot oil on the enemy below. However, after my visions of death on the borderline I thought now might be a good time to return to the 108 project, hopefully with more vigor, and more importantly a higher purpose. And so I set out once more and completed the project in November of 2013.
I must be honest and say that this project just really got on my nerves when I was shooting it as I just felt nothing for the images at the time. But now with all this talk of change I have to admit to being rather fond of the old 108 series.
And so now I would urge you to look at these images and think of me walking the border in a bad mood, especially now that there is an overwhelming number of photographic projects based around the border in the run up to September 18th, and most of them are pretty dull...
I would never confess to being in anyway envious of my wifes achievements over the years, after all we began our photographic journey together. She made images of people, I made images of everything else. Of course there were times when conflict would ensue after spotting something quirky on a road trip like a Tree made of shoes or a dusty old shed in the desert, but those moments were rare and long ago.
I noticed about a year ago that the tables were turning when I heard the words;
"I think I would like to do an exhibition, or maybe a book project, or both!"
And so in a time when I seemed to be on some kind of unintended sabbatical opportunists for my better half, in what I considered to be my domain, started to take shape.
The exhibition process is the same for any photographer; The idea, The negotiation, The images, The edit, The prints, The panic and feelings that your show is going to be crap, The Opening, The relief, The debt. OK, I could of left The Debt bit out, but you get my drift.
Its been interesting seeing things from a different perspective, but its not been without its 'Tree made of shoes' moments.
Conceived by David Guerrini-Nazoa, the Festival is run entirely
with the help of passionate volunteers as a non-profit organization, on a
budget mostly dependent on sponsorship and donations; a Crowd Funding
Campaign will be launched today in support of the Festival. Partners in
collaboration with the Festival include, amongst others, in the UK
Fujifilm and Silverprint, from Europe Lomography and Impossible Project,
and Pro8mm from the USA.
London Analogue Festival 2014: spearheading the Analogue Resurgence in the heart of London
A three-day festival celebrating analogue film, photography and sound art
Friday, 12th – Sunday 14th September 2014
- See more at: http://www.rps.org/news/2014/august/london-analogue-festival-2014#sthash.dWPT1VZl.dpuf
