Reading

As I have started a new blog to record my work on Digital Photographic Processing, I will document future reading in that blog.  I am not specifically reading around each course, but have put in place a program of reading that will cover all aspects of photography.  I will however, complete my commentary on Photography: A critical Introduction in this blog

Photography: A Critical Introduction - 4. The subject as object

This book becomes harder going the longer I read it, I usually experience the opposite.  Each chapter has such a different feel and approach that I am not finding a sense of a central thread, other than a very strong socio-political slant to the topics.  This chapter deals with the human body as a subject for photography, covering a controversial subject from a number of distinct and in fact quite thought provoking angles.  The most interesting element is early in the chapter, dealing with the attempt to use photography to typify people by their outward appearance, in a visual parallel to the terrifying psuedo-science of phrenology.  The use of photographic images in this manner is terribly reminiscent of the Nazi's attempt to group humans beings into classes by race or culture. I have noted that German photography contains several examples of this practice of creating typography's, the Bechers being a classic example, but in this context it is the work of August Sander that interests me.

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browsing in a second hand bookshop, I found this little volume on sale for 4 Euros and immediately grabbed it.  each image is a portrait of someone (or a group) belonging to a specific profession or social class.  At first the fact that these images were created in Germany in the inter-war years is quite disturbing, however, his work was suppressed by the regime.  The book provides the anti-thesis of what the phrenologists were trying to do, this is an honest (well as much as a photograph can be) record of the people who lived in Germany at this time and is like looking into a time machine.  The book is also tinged with great sadness, it is impossible to look at these people without thinking about what confronted them, especially the pictures of student revolutionaries and Marxists who would have ended in the camps.

I digress, however, when reading chapter 4, this book immediately came to mind.  The remainder of the chapter deals with the politics of the body and its use in pornography for the gratification of men (me I guess), the use of photographic images in science, ending in a discussion of the photography of birth and death.  This final element was very interesting, the use of photography to capture and celebrate birth is now almost compulsory, images of new babies are all over Facebook.  However, how often do we see photography of death, other than in the context of social documentary or photo-journalism.  In Victorian times, photography was frequently used to record the face of the dead, much as death masks used to be moulded directly from dead peoples faces.  The most disturbing image is that of a dead infant taken in the modern era (1992) that at first glance would be a cute child sleeping, only the caption reveals that the child is no longer alive.

Reading

Continuing my ongoing interest in both critical theory and the history of photography, the next book I tackled was one taken from the reading list for the course, "Between the Eyes: Essays on Photography and Politics" by David Levi Strauss.

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Compared to the last two books, Sontag and Berger, this was relatively disappointing.  The first few essays, particularly those covering Land mines and Rwanda, were both moving and informative about how photographers approach such difficult and tragic situations.  The discussion of how photographer Alfred Jaar dealt with what he had seen and captured on film related how it took years before he could present the images and the special way he handled the challenge of such difficult work.  The text dealt with the power of the image "The Eyes of Gutete Emerita", which simply showed her eyes each in its own frame reflecting the horror of what she had witnessed without actually showing it.

The discussion of the lives and deaths of two dedicated documentary photographers, Richard Cross and John Hoagland, dealt with the difference between photographers who engage fully with their subject versus those who arrive grab some images in a couple of days and then get out again.  However, both Cross and Hoagland paid with their lives for their commitment, photography can be a dangerous business; as McCullin pointed out in his biography, text journalists can write their stories from anywhere, a conflict photographer has to be in the action to capture their story.

However, after these essays the others were not at the same level, frequently reviewing work by photographers I am not familiar with, but less effectively than say "Crisis of the Real" by Andy Grundberg.  Worth reading and thought provoking in places, but not as good as other books I have read recently.

Reading

Been a while since I last made a post here, due to heading home to the UK last weekend.  However, the fact that I would be spending around 12 hours either waiting in airports, flying or sitting on buses meant that I had plenty of time to read a couple of books that have been on my list for some time.

The first book was purchased when I started the AoP course a year ago and then sat on my shelf glaring at me, having been put back there after reading a couple of paragraphs and thinking, "what have I got my self into".  In fact on a second attempt I found Susan Sontag's "On Photography" to be very readable (although I still have no idea what Plato's Cave is!).  Her style is easy going and well paced, although it does need a degree of concentration to work through.  As with all books of this nature a single read is not enough and this volume needs more careful study, however, I do find myself gradually building a more critical understanding of the values and motivations of photographers.

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A few take aways from reading the book, at least those that stuck with me, are:

1. The debate about the truth of a photograph and the degree to which a photograph reveals the subject or the photographers vision of that subject
2. That photography creates beauty.  Her view is that photographs are rarely deliberately ugly, even if the subject is the artist will frame and manage the composition in such a way to derive beauty from the object.  The Becher's study of industrial objects is a great example of this.
3. Photographs have become a substitute for experience, even when people visit places of great interest there view is frequently through a viewfinder or LCD screen.  Once the photo is taken they move on not taking the time to truly appreciate the scene for what it is.
4. The observation that photography liberated rather than threatened painted art by removing the need for painted art to be used as a recording medium.  Photography could provide the mundane portraits and dull landscapes freeing artists.  However, if I was a jobbing artist making a living from commissioned portraits I would have seen this very differently, or gone out and invested in a camera.
5. Photography concerns itself with people on the edges of society, deemed to be interesting: the poor, the very rich, the odd or the disadvantaged - her commentary on Diane Arbus studied this in detail.  I think perhaps it is not simply an obsession of photographers, but also of the viewer in what we find interesting and ultimately remember as the great images.

The other book thrown into my bag, was John Berger's "Ways of Seeing".  This was a far shorter book, but more difficult to understand, particularly the purely visual essays, I guess my visual vocabulary is still very weak.

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This volume had less to say about photography, being primarily concerned with traditional oil painting and how we experience it, however, photography was still a major thread within the text.  Again, here are my most immediate thoughts on what I read

1. The observation that almost all "great" paintings are actually statements of wealth, look at me, look at my wife and children, look at my possessions, look at my home and land!  Paintings were commissioned objects, paid for by the wealthy to record their status permanently for themselves and family to admire and for other to envy.
2. This contrasted with the fact that almost all artists who espoused such work lived and died in poverty and that such paintings are far fewer in number.  
3. He points out that photography has completely transformed how we experience great art, by detaching the image from its context within a building and reducing the artists personal style and presence.   Before photographs, to see a painting you had to travel to it and observe it in situ, now anyone can purchase a book or pull up a web browser.
4. He also draws a strong parallel in one essay between classical paintings and the structure and form of photographs used as advertising images.  Whilst the content is very similar, and the goal shares a common thread, wealth and envy, there is a key distinction.  Paintings convey existing wealth with the intent that the viewer should envy the subject.  Advertising images, on the other hand, say that you the viewer can be envied, but only if you purchase the product advertised.  Although this used the images of the 70's when the essay was first published, this is still very true, although I think modern advertising depends less upon classical forms.

Two quite different books, but both complementary and thought provoking.  I have just added "Camera Lucida" by Roland Barthes to my book shelf, next on my list, although I suspect this will be more challenging to read and understand!  I have also recently added many photo books by artists that interest me, I plan to start reviewing and recording my thoughts on these over the coming weeks.

Photography: A Critical Introduction - 3. How Sweet it is to Scan

This chapter had a distinctly different feel to the others, less academic, more historical, but carrying far more opinion.  A central thread was the female as casual photographer versus the man as enthusiastic technically orientated amateur photographer.  I caste my mind back to when I was growing up and as far as I can remember my mother never picked up a camera until quite recently.  My dad and grand dad monopolized the cameras our family ever used, indeed my mother or grandmother would probably only take a picture if there was a need for either man in the family to be in the shot.  Today this is very different, photography appears to have lost gender specificity, I am as likely to see a modern DSLR in the hands of either sex.  Taking photographs of the children seems to be a male passion rather than female.

In any case this chapter deals with the use of cameras in the domestic setting and traces the way that camera manufacturers (Kodak) have exploited this rapidly expanding market from the very start.  The idea introduced here of the family album becoming a crucial historic record accords with my own sentiments over the way that history is reprocessed for our consumption.  Most people must now think that history began with the invention of the movie camera and that world war 2 is pretty much all of history.  A family album provides snapshots of social history, although a carefully groomed version.  The chapter artfully covers the growth of photography through the creation of family albums, although again predominantly from a feminist viewpoint.  This though is true to my experience, fathers take photo's, but once printed they are of little interest, it's mothers who paste them into albums and make sure that these gems of family history retain their context.

The central tenet from a theoretical stance is that family photographs are read in very different ways depending upon the context of the viewer and the date of the viewing.  A family member retains context and understands the content within the frame in a completely personal way, whilst a stranger will read the photo in context of the basic content and their own experience of life.  Also clear, is that family imagery paints a very happy view of life, we all smile, we rarely photograph calamity or pain, the camera comes out at Birthdays not Funerals.  I presume that this mirrors our own memory of life, we enhance the good times and repress the bad times.  Christmas will always be that wonderful day when as a 7 year we got exactly what we wanted and TV was left to our own choice, we push to the back of our minds the queezy hungover days of our early twenties, when Christmas had just become an excuse to consume too much alcohol.  This is why photographs such as those of Nan Goldin and Richard Billingham seem so disturbing to me; they mirrored the ugly realities of family life in their photography.

Photography: A Critical Introduction - 2. Surveyors and Surveyed

The second chapter, written by Derrick Price is more accessible, although at times does descend into a historical list of dates and photographers, again good reference, but making the book harder to read.  This chapter, however, deals with subjects close to my current interests discussing the use of the camera as a documentary tool.

As photography started in the 19th century it was viewed first and foremost as a means of accurately describing reality and thus in effect is by definition a documentary tool, although that term had not yet been coined.  In the early days it was not possible to reproduce photographs for mass publications, the newspapers of the time used etchings.  What I find fascinating is that many etchings based upon photographs were specifically labeled as such, this being believed to add an air of veracity and authority to the picture.

One of the key debates in photography, discussed in Chapter 1of the book, is the question of reality, does a photograph picture the real.  The Victorians took a distinctly scientific view, the camera was an instrument that could only record the reality of the scene in front of it.  However, very early on in its history documentary photography was misused, and by no less a luminary than Dr. Bernado who used photographs as a kind of before and after advertisement to show the benefits of his program.  Although well meaning and charitable his use of the same child at the same time, either dirty or hastily scrubbed up, undermined the truthfulness of photographs and asked questions that continue today.

Although this is clearly incorrect, the selective choice of scene, or moment is just as misleading unless very carefully placed in context. A photograph is defined as much by what is left out of the frame as by what is included.

The chapter deals quite extensively with the use of the camera as a social tool and as a record of the human condition.  In particular there is a discussion of the work of Jacob Riis in highlighting the brutal poverty of slum dwellers in New York at the end of the 19th century.  Although this highlighted their plight and worked to alleviate those conditions, I was struck by the seeming lack of empathy for the subjects.  I think Riis was very well intended, but still distanced himself from those photographed.  This is very much part of the almost voyeuristic nature of much photography, we want to sympathize with the plight of the poor, but from a distance.  This is described in the text as an obsession with the "OTHER".

During my past year of photography I have noticed that this is a recurring theme, professional photography focuses its lens on the edges of society, either the very poor or the very rich.  Photographing the rest of society seems to be left to the mass of amateurs.  I know that this is not strictly true, as Stephen Shore and William Eggleston demonstrate with many images of middle class America, but is definitely an ongoing process.  The book highlights the fact that in the 1880's a few dedicated photographers were penetrating the slums and highlighting poverty, whilst at the same time armies of middle class amateur photographers were shooting everything in sight.  I was very much amused to note that in 1880 photographers were defined as a public nuisance and needed a permit to work - nothing changes.

Colonialism and the use of the camera to depict far away places and far away peoples is also discussed.  Here the camera is almost a tool of oppression, the frequent images of half naked "savages" reinforced the self declared superiority of the western colonial powers, a process that is possibly still going on today, as travel photography is so frequently looking for quaint colorful picturesque locals to illustrate guide books.

War and how it is photographed has interested me from the start of the course, particularly that of Don McCullin. The practice of photojournalism is in an ongoing crisis, due to the ubiquity of television news and the progressive decline of printed news media.  The book makes a point that this is now shifting the emphasis in imagery from a record of what is happening now to more considered images of the effects of war and the impact upon the civilian population. The images produced are increasingly seen as art and are more likely to find their way into a gallery or book, than into a newspaper.

The chapter closes out on the emergence of the of colour photography and the use of the documentary style in the US and Britain, starting with Frank and going through to Martin Parr.  The choice of subject and even the order in which the images are presented has as much to do with the received understanding of the work as the so called reality being represented.

To close this quick commentary, I take away the following statement, paraphrased from the book:

Documentary photography is not a look or style, it is a context, practice, and the way the photographs are used.  Context is everything.

Photography: A Critical Introduction - 1. Thinking about Photography

The book starts with a chapter written by the editor Liz Wells and Derrick Price, covering the broad gamut of the history of photographic thought, theory and to some extent how it is practiced.  The study is clearly upon the image and not the photographer.  It is not practical to summarize the whole chapter, which is in a sense a summary of multiple other works, rather I will extract some key learning points and present them as a list.

As photography started in the middle of the 19th century it was hailed as bringing a new objectivity, photographs were an accurate record of reality.  However, this meant that it was very much viewed as a science and not as an art - photographers were seen as operators not artists.  Baudelaire commented: "if photography is allowed to deputize for art in some of art's activities, it will not be long before it has supplanted or corrupted art altogether" (1859).  How wrong he was!

However, photographers responded in two distinct ways, which I think are still prevalent amongst much vernacular photography today:

1. The Pictorialists attempted to reproduce a painterly style, copying the aesthetic of painted work, even resorting to blurring the image or using printing techniques that added an artistic look.  I consider this to still persist today in the ongoing obsession with sunsets and long exposures of water adding that "dreamy" look to sea shores
2. The Straight photographers specifically sought out to create accurate records of what they saw before them, continued in much modern American photography.

The emphasis that photography document and then conveys facts persisted for quite some time.  One of the first to really dispute this was Walter Benjamin, who stated in the 1930's that a photograph must be viewed within the sociopolitical circumstances in which it is viewed.  In other words a photograph will be interpreted in the context of the times in which it is exhibited.  Interestingly at this stage there still seemed to be limited discussion of the act of photographing and the influence of the photographer within the photograph.

The book then moved onto modernism, one of the ism's I am struggling to understand and place in the context of other ism's.  Here photography was seen as bringing facts to the attention of the politicians of the age.  Also its very technological way of capturing images, aligned to the ongoing obsession with progress and mechanization.  Post-modernism has to be understood in response to modernism, given that I am struggling with the latter the former is even more difficult to understand.  The text at this stage seems to assume an understanding of both and as such loses its claim to be "introductory".

My take on the postmodern (and this will need to be reviewed later) is that it does away with any claim of authenticity and requires that the photographic image can only be read in relation to all other contemporary influences. 

Stepping into a description of theory the book postulates that there are two basic debates in theory of photography:

1. The relationship of a photograph to reality
2. How a photograph is read

Photography is seen to be particularly vulnerable to divergent views as it is at the cusp of science, social science and art.  I can relate strongly to this as it is this very fact of bringing together the science of image capture, with the social elements of what is contained within the image, and its presentation as art that has led me to being on this course of study.

The chapter from this point on presents a history of theoretical ideas and the development of writing on the history itself of photography - good source material, but very difficult to summarize.  Rather I want to comment on two theoretical concepts that appeal to me:

1. Semiotics - the science of signs.  The idea that we can codify the meaning of a photograph using signs, which are the conceptualization of media within logical systems.  Although I cannot admit to fully understanding this, it is the further idea that the semiotics of the picture, must be combined with that of the viewer, a concept from psychoanalysis that appeals.  In other words no matter how the meaning of a photograph is logically decoded, the reading must also take account of the sociology of the reader.
2. The division of the content of a photograph by Roland Barthes into the Studium and Punctum.  The Studium refers to the general look and feel of the images, whilst the Punctum is an occasional piece of content that immediately arrests out attention.  A "good: photograph must exhibit both and perhaps explains why some photographs jump out of the page, whilst others whilst aesthetically pleasing are banal in appearance.

Neither of these concepts actually explain why we like or dislike an image, but they do start to built a reference model to understand what builds up like or dislike.

The chapter also includes a very good case study of the "Migrant Mother" by Dorothea Lange and cleverly points out the many meanings of this photograph and how it relates to the reality of the time it was photographed, all is not quite as it seems!

Reading

I have recently finished reading, "Crisis of the Real" by Andy Grundberg.

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This book compiles a series of essays written in the late 80's questioning the nature of photography in the postmodern world.  The treatment as a series of short articles each discussing a specific genre or photographer makes this an excellent reference to place a photographers work in context of others and versus the debates of the day.  Most of the photographers are from the usual pantheon of American artists, the author was a journalist for the New York Times, and the articles tend to relate to exhibitions taking place at the time.  The lack of photographs illustrating the text can be a problem, but is easily remedied via the web or by reference to other books.

The principal thread of the book is an ongoing discussion of how photographs come to be seen as art and where a given photographer contributes or not.  What fascinated me in the earlier parts of the book was the first real criticism I have seen of Ansel Adams.  In the introductory books on photography Adams tends to be eulogized, here he is praised, but also criticized for his presentation of a perfect natural world that in fact does not exist.  This is an element of the discussion of whether a photograph has any claim to represent reality or whether it is simply a reflection of the artists personal view of reality.  In this context he contrasts the work of the two Adams's, Ansel and Robert, both of whom image very similar natural landscapes, but from dramatically different viewpoints.  Ansel's vision is of a wilderness untouched by man, Robert presents the wilderness as it is now, full of people often inspired to be there by Ansel's work in the first place.  Both are accurate renditions of scenes, neither tell the truth.

This comparison is at the heart of my understanding of this text.  Grundberg moves from the modernist tradition led by Stieglitz, through other artists such as Weston, Minor White, Nagy, Riis, Adams towards more contemporary artists such as Friedlander, Cindy Sherman, Winogrand, and Sternfeld.  In each case he asks the question, is this art and how does it relate to contemporary thinking (well late 80's). He also covers the crisis induced by television on documentary photography and how what was once seen as cutting edge news reporting is increasingly being consumed on gallery walls rather than newspaper pages.

This is not an easy book to read and some chapters I chose to skim with an intent to return as I learn more about the issues discussed, however, this is an excellent critical overview of American photography and how the art world sees photographic imagery.

I have now turned to a more introductory text, "Photography, a Critical Introduction" edited, by Liz Wells, hopefully to make more sense out of what I have read in Grundbergs book and also Charlotte Cotton's "The Photograph as Contemporary Art".

Finally I am also gradually expanding my collection of photo books by artists that I particularly admire.  On the recommendation of my tutor I have taken a look at Andreas Gursky's work and obtained the following

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Gursky interests me in two ways.  First of all his approach is very structural, recent images have strong symmetry and strong colour, secondly as a German and a graduate of the Dusseldorf School, living in Munich I have better access to his work and that of others from the same school.  Although I am currently working on  Assignment 3, my thoughts are turning towards Assignment 4.  As part of that assignment I would be interested to capture some images in a similar vein to Gursky's work

Reading

Following on from "train Your Gaze" I decided to tackle a book with a general overview of Art  Photography - "the photograph as contemporary art" by Charlotte Cotton

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I purchased this a book around a year ago, prior to starting AoP and it has been sitting on my bookshelf staring at me since (next to Susan Sontag's "On Photography).  I finally plucked up the courage and the interest to delve into the book.  I have become increasingly curious as to what is Art and how does a photograph become Art.  My opinion is very much that Art is whatever an artist chooses to label as such and an artist is defined simply by naming themselves thus, in other words art is in the eye of the beholder.

What Charlotte Cotton's book achieves is to provide an overview of what is currently viewed by the art world as constituting photographic art.  She covers a huge number of artists, each chapter providing an overview of a specific genre.  Some I already knew, many were new to me.  I find this book more useful as a reference to who is doing what rather than an explanation as to why!  It did not really answer my question and in fact posed more questions than answers - although I take this as a personal reaction to the material, someone else might have a very different view.

I find reviewing books such as this very difficult, in a sense to me it is what it is.  However, from the content I find myself drawn to the deadpan aesthetic of capturing the world as it is, but in the act of capture and framing changing it. This feeds into the course I am currently studying and assignment 3, buildings in use.  

To that end I have two other books that I value very greatly, but which are only of interest to someone living in or planning to visit Munich.  The first is a photographic study of Munich's architecture 

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Written in German, but also providing English translations of major sections, this is both a useful reference and an inspiring guide to Munich's buildings.  Every time I open it I find something new and an inspiration to simply go and look at locations I had never considered.  My recent blog entry:

Photo Shoot: Munich Ubahn

was inspired by this volume.  On a more accessible scale is the following:

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This small volume provides a photographic guide to 35 of Munich's more interesting locations organized by the best time of day to visit and take photographs.  The treatment is mostly the major tourist locations, but all offer fascinating image possibilities.  It is only in German, but is pretty straightforward to follow without reading German.  Highly recommended for a long weekend in the city.

Reading

As well as spending a great deal of time with camera in hand recently I have tried to catch up with some reading.  I have just completed "Train your Gaze" by Roswell Angier, part of the courses recommended reading.  I can also recommend the book, it is a thought provoking overview of many aspects of portrait photography.  My main gripe is that I held of reading this until after doing the first assignment, I can really recommend that anyone attending this course should read the book before picking up a camera.

In particular the book introduces several very interesting exercises to develop skills and ideas of portraiture and what it means in the context of modern art.  I must admit, however, that many of the exercises would need a subject with great patience and tolerance as several need hours with a model doing very little to work.

Another stroke of luck recently was finding a copy of "Brassai Paris" for 10 Euro in a museum book shop, 

I wish all photo books were so well priced, especially one as well produced as this.  This contains some superb street as well as more formally posed photography showing the people and city of Paris in the 30's and 50's. 

Recent Reading

Recently I watched the BBC series, "The Genius of Photography", an excellent potted history of the different movements and debates in the history of photography.  The series takes a very "art" driven view, with limited discussion of technology and technique, an ideal companion to the OCA courses.  Although clearly not totally comprehensive the DVD's yielded much food for thought and exposed me to  number of historic and contemporary artists.  The latter part of the series looked at Street Photography and the work of photographers such as Stephen Shore, Robert Frank, and Martin Parr.

The deadpan style of Parr and Shore intrigue and excite me, but I need time to think about their work and place it in the context of my own interests.  Of immediate interest, however, were the on screen interviews with Joel Meyerowitz, and these inspired me to obtain a copy of "Joel Meyerowitz" by Colin Westerbeck.  I was first exposed to a photograph by Meyerowitz in "The Photograph" by Graham Clarke, the textbook for my first course the Art of Photography.  My reaction then was a lack of understanding of how to even look at this image of a busy New York Street packed with colour, shadow and multiple people (Broadway and West 46th Street, New York, 1976).  Now when I look at the image I find I am looking at it differently, enjoying the complex layering and the splash of colour - this is also helped by the far superior reproduction (in the textbook much of the photo was black due to poor printing, losing much of the detail of the image).  The photograph in question is #42 in the book below.

Meyerowitz's work attracts me because it is suffused with a gentle sense of humour and whilst many photographs are quite personal they rarely appear to be intrusive, as perhaps Winogrand can be.  The use of colour is also appealing and unusual for the time most of the photographs were made.  In the 60's and 70's the prevailing view was still that art photography was Black & White, which seems strange to me now.  How can anyone state so emphatically what is and is not art?  He still uses much B&W in the images in the book, the reason seeming to be that B&W provided control over the capture to final print process whilst colour required use of a 3rd party lab.  The B&W images , however, seemed rather flat to me especially in contrast to the vivid saturation of the colour images.  My preference in B&W is more for the stark contrast that WeeGee created with his flash or that Avedon achieves even with natural light.

His move to use of 8x10 view cameras for later colour work to ensure quality and detail was also an interesting move for someone who is ostensibly a street photographer.  What is remarkable is that many of the 8x10 prints still retain the feel of street photography, capture of what is found rather than looked for.  Both the choice of B&W or colour with a view finder camera were made for reasons of quality and control.  This leads me to wonder where Digital Colour sits in modern art photography, it offers great control and potential for experimentation, however, the 35mm or smaller framing will never deliver the quality that an 8x10 negative can achieve.  I do not even want to consider what an 8x10 Digital back would cost even if it could be made! 

The key impression I have from his work is the observation of the world around him and his ability to see and capture the odd little episodes in everyday life.

Don McCullin

As well as reading technical and "how to" books I have also spent some time recently reading Don McCullins autobiography, "Unreasonable Behaviour".  I have always been impressed by his imagery of conflict and suffering.  He has a gift to bring out the real horror of war, although this is at great personal risk.  The autobiography, reveals the compulsive risk taking that seems to be part of the DNA of war photographers.  He points out quite forcefully in the text that print journalists can stay behind the lines and interview the combatants, but photo journalists can only create a great photo by being at the point of action and taking the same risks as the soldiers.

My own nervousness at taking photographs of people without asking their permission, for Chapter 2 of the course, is put into brutal perspective by the risks he and his colleagues have taken.  One of the most striking aspects of his work is with respect to the Vietnam war and the degree of pain in the faces of the GI's and the Vietcong during this conflict.  I do not see much of this in modern reporting of conflicts such as the Iraq or Afghan wars, I suspect that photo journalists have far less freedom in pursuing subjects or access to the conflict.

I was inspired enough to invest in a number of his photo books:

The first, simply titled "Don McCullin" is a retrospective of much of his career and spans from his first days photographing street gangs in 1950's London through to quite recent landscape work.  The cover image is the most iconic, the eyes of this Vietnam era shell shocked Marine bore into the soul of the viewer.  This single image captures much of the sheer terror of modern warfare.

I also obtained "Don McCullin in England", a gentler although no less powerful series of photographs of England taken during the past 50 years.

It is an interesting journey around the country and contrasts images of the Beatles with the awful poverty of Northern England even in the 1980's.  His style is very stark, the images are all black and white and typically dark, as if deliberately underexposed.  This darkness gives the photographs a brooding atmosphere, these are not pictures of happy beautiful people.  

Whilst I have no wish (or hope) to be able to take images similar to his war photography, the photographs in the "In England" book are a good example of social documentary and I may return to Don's work later in my course when encountering these subjects.

Recent Reading

During the first section of People and Place, People Aware, I have read and referred to a number of books to help me to build knowledge and skills.  First of all I wanted to ensure that my work station, camera and printer were all properly calibrated and in sync with each other.  The recommended course book, "The Essential Color Manual for Photographers", by Chris Rutter was a good if slightly basic introduction to the process, emphasizing the need for correct calibration and suggesting various techniques to modify colour.

Following the advice contained in the book I have calibrated my primary monitor, an HP LP3065 (2560x1600)  using a Spyder 3 Elite.  My printer is an HP Photosmart Pro B8190 which has its owncalibration system.  The paper I use, HP Advanced photo Paper is properly supported by this printer with colour profiles within the printer driver. I have then added camera calibration to my system with the use of an Xrite Color Checker Passport.  This is a simple target containing multiple colour panels and grey panels.  This  comes with software that integrates into Adobe Lightroom.  A the start of a shoot I take a first picture of the target to serve as a reference and then once my photos are loaded into Lightroom I export the reference shot to the Xrite plugin which then enables me to create a calibration that can be copied to the other images.  This should mean that all 3 key steps in my workflow have consistent colour calibration, from capture, through editing and eventually to output.  At present I am working in the sRGB and have yet to find a need to move to Adobe RGB.

As much of my work recently has used basic studio lighting I also needed a guide to lighting to understand proper lighting placement, especially when using 4 lights.  The recommended text book was a good start, "Light Science and Magic" by Fil Hunter, Steven Biver, and Paul Fuqua.

This an excellent guide to lighting, but is very comprehensive, it contains solutions for virtually every lighting problem I could think of.  I view this book as an excellent reference to be used when addressing a specific problem, however, it is not light reading.

Another excellent book that I already had on my shelf is "Exposure and Lighting For Digital photographers Only" by Michael Meadhra and Charlotte Lowrie.

This covers all forms of lighting from natural to artificial.  It has an excellent section on lighting the human face and was my introduction to lighting.  It also has a very good explanation of different lighting equipment.

Finally I found "The Portrait" by Glenn Rand and Tim Meyer, really useful for understanding portraiture in general.

This book contains a well thought out history of the genre and gradually builds an understanding of the techniques of lighting and especially posing.  The other books look at creating a photographic portrait from the perspective of the photographer, this book also provides the view from the perspective of the subject.

Each of these books has valuable information in them and together form a good reference set, if I had to choose one of them it would be "The Portrait" as it brings the whole subject together, but at the expense of only considering the challenge of creating a persons image.