08.03.20 > The heart of the matter (on spatial and temporal representation in sculpture)

Foreword

In 2019 during my visit to the exhibition ‘Framed Landscapes: European Photography Commissions 1984-2019’ at the Fundación ICO in Madrid, I picked up a copy of the essay ‘Not to occupy a place, but to create space’, by museum director and curator Kasper König (König 2005).

Although this is an essay on sculpture, I could feel it resonating with my thoughts on how to visualize non-physical space – the subject matter I’ve been contemplating throughout my Master’s degree – as well as how I might approach my elusive and constantly evolving Final Major Project.

The Framed Landscapes exhibition was pivotal in revealing that my project could be something more than its photographic representation, its photographic existence. While writing this entry in my Critical Research Journal I’m still not sure what that ‘something more’ is.

One of the projects on display in the exhibition, the photographic commission Schlieren: Spatial Transformation in a Suburban Municipality in Switzerland (Fig.1) by Meret Wandeler and Ulrich Görlich, is a collaborative study of transformation in one specific community over nine years (Wandeler 2019). Indeed, Wandeler’s serial projects are characterized by the fact that the research constitutes the project, and not the photographs per se (Sutherland 2019).

Fig. 1. Meret Wandeler/Ulrich Görlich, 2005, Elmar Mauch (Rephotography) 2007, Christian Schwager (Rephotography) 2009–2017, Example of overviews from ‘Long-Term Photographic Observation of Schlieren 2005-2020’ (Wandeler 2019)

This month, in search of the heart of my project and answers to my questions about space, I took König’s essay from my bookshelf.

Not to occupy a place, but to create space

Whilst reading König’s essay ‘Not to occupy a place, but to create space’ – which reflects on the 1977, 1987, 1997 and 2007 (at that time still to be realised) editions of the Münster Sculpture Project – I found myself wondering about the concept of space as a three-dimensional volume.

Or rather, I started wondering about our apparent preoccupation with space as something which exists in three dimensions.

Indeed, Tate defines sculpture as an art term for “three-dimensional art made by one of four basic processes: carving, modelling, casting, constructing” (Tate n.d.).

Yet ‘space’ doesn’t necessarily have a physical dimension, such as in ‘head-space’ or ‘cyberpsace’, whilst in photography it is represented on a two-dimensional surface.

The question arises, if space doesn’t necessarily have a dimension, what is actually being represented in a photograph?

The Münster Sculpture Project is a city art project including outdoor installations, – mainly, but not exclusively – temporary, spread across the city’s public spaces.

In exploring the art works, König indirectly reveals that each of the artists identifies an elementary, or fundamental, characteristic of the place and then creates a space which represents that.

On Untitled (Fig.2), Donald Judd’s work for Münster, König reveals that the place offered Judd the opportunity to realise an idea that he’d been considering for a while.

Fig. 2 Donald Judd, 1976/77, Untitled, Lake Aa meadows below Mühlenhof open-air museum, Münster, 51°56’59.3″N 7°36’04.8″E. [Outer ring: height 0.9 m, width 0.6 m, diameter 15 m, Inner ring: height rising from 0.9 m to 2.1 m, width 0.6 m, diameter 13.5 m, Concrete sculpture] (Public collection of Stadt Münster) Photo: LWL-Museum für Kunst und Kultur / Hubertus Huvermann

“It’s quite simple. You have the water level, and you have the lie of the land, and you have two rings, an inner and an outer ring. The inner ring is in line with the water level and the outer ring is in line with the sloping ground.” Kasper König (König 2005: 10)

In her text on Untitled, Sophia Trollmann notes that in 1964, when commenting on approaches to volume, Judd stated “Three dimensions are real space. […] Actual space is intrinsically more powerful and specific than paint on a flat surface” (Kerber 1977, in Trollmann n.d.).

Judd in general sought an unmediated experience of his works, supporting a new American art which rejected the significance of representational space over real space, and – his works being intended as a physical experience on a human scale – “their potential interpretation does not extend beyond the object itself; they are not symbols for something else.”. The viewer creates the relationship with the artwork, and in this case, with the topography itself (Trollmann n.d.).

In Untitled, we see the fundamental element represented by the sculpture is the topography. Through the sculpture the place becomes a space, and with viewer interaction it again becomes a place.

Considering Dan Graham’s Octagon for Munster (Fig. 3), Ronja Primke calls it “an allusion to the tradition of the so-called pleasure pavilion that since the baroque had become a standard feature of any laid-out park or palace grounds as a venue for social gatherings and festivities” (Primke n.d.). König also reflects on the theoretical implications of the pavilion as a place of public art, extending his considerations to “the park as the oldest democratic form which we have of public architecture” (König 2005: 10).

Fig. 3 Dan Graham, 1987, Oktogon für Münster [Octagon for Münster], Temporary installation in the avenue of the southern part of Schlossgarten, Münster, and various locations thereafter during 1988, 1997/98, 2007 and 2017. [Height 240 cm, diameter 365 cm, Octagonal pavilion with two-way mirrored glass, metal and wood] (Collection of LWL-Museum für Kunst und Kultur, Münster) Photo from 2017 installation: LWL-Museum für Kunst und Kultur / Hanna Neandar

Viewed through the lens of Foucault’s theory of control, the park -as a gift of freedom from the authorities – appears to becomes a mask. I wonder if the reflective octagon is not intended, through its reflections, to deconstruct the artificial nature of the park and reveals the park’s true nature? A demasking of place by revealing its fundamental essence of being an artificial construct.

On Michael Asher’s Trailer in Various Locations (Fig. 4), König considers it “a metaphor for mobility, and for understanding the relationships, social relationships, within a city.” (König 2005: 10).

Fig. 4 Michael Asher, 1977, Trailer in Changing Locations, Temporary installation in various locations over 19 weeks, Münster, and on three occasions thereafter during 1987, 1997 and 2007. [rented white caravan; weekly printed handout with descriptive text, maps, nineteen locations; documentary photographs of the caravan’s placement; and viewer search or happenstance] ((Collection of LWL-Museum für Kunst und Kultur, Münster) Photo from 2007 installation: LWL-Museum für Kunst und Kultur / Roman Mensing

But it is more than a sculpture, it is an experience, and a dialogue on art, ownership, re-conceptualisation, and responsibility. Asher placed the caravan in various sites around the city. The location was changed weekly, starting from the city centre, radiating out to the suburbs and rural places, before returning to the city centre at the end of the exhibition. The installation, maintenance, and photographic documentation of the work was placed on the city’s Skulptur Projekte. The work “consists of a number of essential components. It was made up of the white caravan; the printed handout produced each week with the descriptive text, maps, nineteen locations; the documentary photographs that show the caravan’s placement within the surrounding cityscape and, of course, the viewer’s search for or happenstance stumbling upon it” (Skulptur Projekte Archive n.d.).

The sculpture was not the caravan itself, but the multi-dimensional and multi-faceted dynamic experience of the participants. A dynamic, temporary sculpture spread over a city.

Over a period of four decades the work evolved – much as the long term spatial transformation project of Schlieren (Wandeler 2019; Fig. 1) – always with the same model of rented caravan and the same locations, although the city backdrop was changing and during some weeks of the later installations the caravan had to be stored temporarily as the sites were no longer accessible.

Asher’s work was progressive in many ways, including the concept of displacing the labour for installation and photographic documentation of the project and its successive editions onto the institution that owned the work.

Expanded Ecologies: Perspectives in a Time of Emergency

My thoughts on spatial representation have evolved after reading König’s essay, and after following other avenues of research on the Münster Skulptur Projekte. I wondered how I could explore the concepts of place and space within a recurring theme of my work which is ecocritical analysis.

I revisited the essays, in-situ works, and ephemeral actions of the exhibition ‘Expanded Ecologies: Perspectives in a Time of Emergency’ (Vitali 2009). The exhibition hadn’t been on my radar at that time, but being underpinned by ecocritical considerations I’d acquired the catalogue in 2017 for future reference.

As Anna Kafetsi, Director of the Greek National Museum of Contemporary Art points out in her foreword, it is in new inter-human and subjective relationships of the individual with private and public space, groups and communities, the body and time, that philosopher-psychoanalyst Félix Guattari sought the content of his three ecologies: the environmental, the social, and the mental. Kafetsi reflects that “public space and the environment, in broad terms – in which diverse potential definitions and realities meet and intersect, such as the local, natural, urban and social environment, the global community and cyberspace, nature and culture – inspire, mobilise, provide creative opportunities …” (Kafetsi 2009).

Daphne Vitali, curator of the exhibition, notes that what is needed is a “new approach, one that considers man as part of the ecosystem, rather than treating man and nature as two concepts (Vitali 2009: 25).

For simplicity, I term this eco-egalitarianism, alternatively in the context of Guattari’s philosophy it can be considered as a perspective which embodies the concept of otherness.

“Ecological Thinking is not simply thinking about ‘the environment’ […]. It is a revised mode of engagement with knowledge, subjectivity, politics, ethics, science, citizenship, and agency that pervades and reconfigures theory and practice”

(Code 2006, in Vitali 2009:25)

Guattari’s ecosophy moves beyond the binary consideration of nature and humankind into a multifoiled consideration of physical and mental interconnectedness, where one embodies the other. To exploit nature or others, becomes self-exploitation.

It’s in this context that I identify with the artists in this exhibition who “have not created works ‘for’ the environment but, rather, works which encourage us to think over the social, political and cultural condition”. The installations do not preach, nor berate the destruction of the environment, rather they ask us “to think about the relationship of the urban and natural environment; the individual, nature and society; nature and technology; architecture and ecology” (Vitali 2009: 28).

Modern Illusion (Fig. 5), a sculptural installation by Giorgos Gyparakis, comments on the illusionistic experience of nature in cities. Nature is introduced in the urban landscape in an attempt to heal the city, but this is treating the ailment, not dealing with its underlying cause.

Fig. 5 Giorgos Gyparakis, 2009, Modern Illusion, Temporary installation in the grounds of the Athens Conservatory from June 12^th until October 4^th, 2009. [Sculptural installation] Photo from installation / EMST (2009)

I found it interesting that the catalogue contains digital representations of the artworks, which provided a non-dimensional spatial representation (as code) and two-dimensional digital representation on the printed page. The question arises as to which is the original artwork and which is the copy? And whether, or not, one is more ‘valid’ than the other?

I first came across Gyparakis’ work (Fig. 5) in 2017 as a digital representation accompanied by text. I was unaware if there was actually ever an installation, or only the digital concept for one. Now experiencing the installation through photographic representation in 2020, for me the original artwork remains the digital one. I find this an interesting thought within the context of expanded ecologies, which also include the reality of cyberspace and digital representation.

Modern Illusion was first and foremost an idea, a concept, then a code, then a digital spatial representation on screen and print, then an installation, then a photograph. A sculpture in multiple dimensions.

On the fundamental, or elementary characteristic of the place where it is installed, in Modern Illusion we see cohabitation of buildings and nature in the dense urban environment of Athens, but it is an uncomfortable symbiosis. Not an egalitarian one.

A Submissive Acknowledgement of Powerlessness

Revisting Expanded Ecologies: Perspectives in a Time of Emergency led me to explore recent work of Andreas Angelidakis, who works at the intersection of art and architecture.

In his exhibition ‘A Submissive Acknowledgement of Powerlessness’ which took place in Athens in the summer of 2019, Angelidakis continued to explore architecture as surfaces and volumes which emerge from the external forces that shape our built environment. Reflecting on the graffiti splattered buildings of downtown Athens, Angelidakis appears to be asking if nowadays the only way for a building to have something meaningful to say is to have a layer of text on it (The Breeder 2019).

“As graffiti covers weak modernist buildings shaped by petty profit margins and corrupt governance, they become reactionary, political, buildings with a voice”

(The Breeder 2019)

In the seating piece from the series ‘Domestic Ruins’, the forms are recognizable as deconstructed elements of modernist and post-modernist buildings (Fig. 6). Clear vinyl reveals the sofa padding and the surface is given a voice with the repeated statement “Ignoring Conceptual Contradictions”.

Fig. 6 Andreas Angelidakis, 2019, Seating piece from the series of ‘Domestic Ruins’, Gallery installation at The Breeder, Athens, from 30 May until August 31, 2019 [Installation, Clear vinyl and foam padding]

Angelidakis explores fundamentals of the generic place that inspired him, the environmental impact of a construction sector based purely on short term profit, and the anti-establishment voices that rise to the surface to remind us of “the futility of our financial, environmental and social practices” (idem).

Ultimately, the question also arises, if by sitting on them in a gallery we also declare our complicity?

The heart of the matter

In responding to my question “if space doesn’t necessarily have a dimension, what is actually being represented in a photograph?” I’ve been guided by my consideration of three-dimensional space through the recognizable and tangible volumes of sculpture.

To the three-dimensions of sculpture, I would immediately add a fourth dimension, which is that of time. In particular temporary or moving installations allow the viewer to experience the concept of time. Each viewer also adds another dimension to the works, so they become multi-dimensional.

In each of the sculptures that I explored, the artists have identified a fundamental, or fundamentals, of the place and created a sculptural space in which the viewer can experience those fundamentals.

As such it seems that the artwork is a conceptual space which, with the viewer’s sentient interaction, becomes a new place.

In my use of photography and the recurrent motifs of cityscapes, buildings and infrastructure, it appears that I use spatial representation to create spaces within which the viewer creates and inhabits a new place.

Further, looking at my work through the lens of Guattari’s three ecologies, I realise that my Final Major Project is neither a series of photographs, nor a book, it is the creation of new places through viewer interaction with the images and myself, the photographer.

These new places are constructed from the fundamentals of my project’s theme, as embedded in the photographs.

Sources

EMST (2009) Installation shots from the exhibition Expanded Ecologies: Perspectives in a Time of Emergency. Available at http://fixit-emst.blogspot.com/2009/08/expanded-ecologies.html [Accessed 3 March 2020]

Kafetsi, A (2009) Foreword. In: D. Vitali (ed.) Expanded Ecologies: Perspectives in a Time of Emergency. Athens: National Museum of Contemporary Art. ISBN 978-9-60834-939-0

König, K. (2005) Not to occupy a place, but to create space. Proceedings of the synonymous Conference (22 February 2005). Fundación ICO. ISBN 978-84-934684-3-9

Primke, R. (n.d.) Oktogon für Münster [Octagon for Münster]. Available at https://www.skulptur-projekte-archiv.de/en-us/1987/projects/50/ [Accessed 3 March 2020]

Trollmann, S. (n.d.) Donald Judd, Untitled, 1976/77, 51°56’59.3″N 7°36’04.8″E. Available at https://www.kunsthallemuenster.de/en/collection/donald-judd-ohne-titel-197677-5156593n-736048e/ [Accessed 3 March 2020]

Skulptur Projekte Archive (n.d.) Michael Asher: Trailer in Various Locations. Available at https://www.skulptur-projekte-archiv.de/en-us/2007/projects/91/ [Accessed 3 March 2020]

Sutherland, G. (2019) On the search for new dimensions. Critical Research Journal blog post. Available at https://gordonsutherland.home.blog/2019/09/29/29-09-19-on-the-search-for-new-dimensions/ [Accessed 7 March 2020]

Tate (n.d.) Art Term: Sculpture. Available at https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/s/sculpture [Accessed 7 March 2020]

The Breeder (2019) Andreas Angelidakis: A Submissive Acknowledgement of Powerlessness (May 30, 2019 – August 31, 2019. Available at http://thebreedersystem.com/activity/andreas-angelidakis-a-submissive-acknowledgment-of-powerlessness-at-the-breeder/ [Accessed 3 March 2020]

Wandeler, M. (2019) Schlieren: Spatial Transformation in a Suburban Municipality in Switzerland. In: F. Giertsberg (ed.) Framed Landscapes: European Photography Commissions 1984-2019. Exhibition Catalogue, Museo ICO, 6 June to 8 September 2019. Madrid: Fundación ICO. ISBN 978-84-936568-9-8

Vitali, D. (2009) Expanded Ecologies. In: D. Vitali (ed.) Expanded Ecologies: Perspectives in a Time of Emergency. Athens: National Museum of Contemporary Art. ISBN 978-9-60834-939-0

02.02.20 > About Structures and Colors (Candida Höfer at Galeria Helga de Alvear, Madrid, 28.11.2019 – 08.02.2020)

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On the photographic archive of Candida Höfer

In considering the physical and emotional response which Höfer’s work incites it appears that the question to be posed is not so much “What has Candida Höfer photographed in terms of interiors of famous and lesser-known archives, theatres and reading rooms?” as “Why has she photographed them?”.

In spite of, or due to, the lack of human presence in her photographs of interiors, Höfer appears to be framing a very human condition.

Knowledge is power. Power to control society. The collection and preservation of knowledge in the archive is the historical preservation of the ideological status-quo. Are Höfer’s images of the interiors of libraries, institutions, and civic buildings a visual archive of that power (Fig.1)?

Fig. 1 Candida Höfer, 2017. Rossiskaya Gosudarstvennaya Biblioteka Moskwa II. [180 x 212,5cm, Chromogenic print, Edition of 6]

In his critical analysis classifying Walker Evans photographs of Victorian architecture, lecturer on American visual culture Barnaby Haran suggests that Evans’ images are a masked social commentary hidden behind a standardized approach based on archival photography. He places Evans’ work within Foucault’s theories on knowledge and power. Therein the archive is an inherent part of social regulation and Haran posits that Evans used standardization of a way of looking to engage with the concept of social regulation (Haran 2010: 198).

Applying this lens to Candida Höfer’s oeuvre of images of the bastions of culture could reveal insights into her visual texts.

Artistic performance, spatially represented by the theatre, is the counterpoint to that status-quo, challenging it and extending its boundaries even from within the ideology’s own architectural representation (Fig. 2).

Fig. 2 Candida Höfer, 2017. Bolshoi Teatr Moskwa II. [70.9 x 102.8 in., 180 x 261,3 cm, Chromogenic print, Edition of 6]

Höfer’s images of interiors is all the more interesting because architecture (or at least it’s celebration) is often communicated in media as the external, public façade, although it is equivalently – if not more so – the interior of buildings which embodies culture. Not least because we spend almost all our time inside of buildings and not outside.

Höfer’s early work looked at the visual cultural changes which migrant workers from Turkey were bringing to Germany, from which exploration she arrived at the impact of the built environment on people. Public and semi-public spaces became her photographic subjects, be it waiting rooms at railway stations or opera houses, iconic architecture or the city milieu. Through this work “she also realized that paradoxically the impacts of architecture are most intensely present when people are not in the image” (Galerie Zander n.d.).

Höfer’s detached photographs investigate not only forms and structures of spaces, but minute details, creating personal portraits of these spaces (idem). These personal portraits would appear to respond to and challenge the question why such an “anti-personal aesthetic has become so dominant in international art photography at the turn of the twenty first century” (Soutter 2018: 37).

In fact, these images take time to discover, and “when seen live, rather than in reproduction, the sharpness and detail almost boggle the mind” (idem: 45). I can vouch for this.

The question arises whether or not Höfer’s objectivity is a mask?

The viewer is given a sense of having maximum control over the space, with no sense of distortion. A cool light permeates the images producing an identifiable clinical style and as a body of work they “form an archive of power and privilege” (idem: 45).

Critical analysis of her body of work is offered little insight from the photographer herself.

“There is no explicit, voluntary choice on the spot or in the lab according to the historical context of the space, … I assume it is the space as space that drives such decisions.” Candida Höfer (Kennicott 2011).

Probed on the motifs in her images of interior spaces and her “psychology of social architecture” by art writer Elena Cué, the photographer responds “I am primarily interested in visual relationships within each singular space and the layers of use visible in that space. If over time my aggregated work contributes to broader insights, then that happens so to speak behind my back”. And when asked about the absence of people making them appear even more present, she reveals that this came out of a necessity “to avoid bothering people while I am working” which ultimately became a lesson about presence through absence (Cué 2016).

As with Bernd and Hilla Becher, the interpretation of the work seems to be handed to the reader of the visual text, which is left vulnerable to appropriation. This vulnerability is also a mask, as Höfer’s disembodied approach does not readily permit personal projection into the space (Fig. 3).

Fig. 3 Candida Höfer, 2010. George Peabody Library Baltimore. [71 1/2 × 77 3/8 × 1 3/4 in, 181.6 × 196.5 × 4.4 cm, Chromogenic print] (National Gallery ofArt, Washington, D.C., Collection of Robert E. Meyerhoff and Rheda Becker)

Furthermore, “the images allow us to contemplate privilege, but they also aspire to belong to it, to go on the walls of spaces just as loaded as those portrayed” (Soutter 2018: 46). In such light, are the images then loaded with hypocrisy, or, alternatively, are they challenging the art world which revers them?

In her discourse on ‘Objectivity and seriousness’, whilst discussing Höfer’s work and the question of criticality, Lucy Soutter raises many questions, not least of which “is whether to represent something as objectively as possible is any more likely to produce a critical image than a celebratory one?” and in responding to her own question, reflects that many western readings consider Höfer’s images as “critical allegories about culture” (idem: 47).

Other interpretations consider them more celebratory. In his Washington Post review of a 2011 exhibition of Höfer’s work at the Baltimore Museum of Art, Philip Kennicott considers that “Höfer’s large-format photographs, with their deeply saturated color and extraordinary detail, have become a curious way to brand buildings, give them status, make them “celebrities.” There is something boosterish in using Höfer, whose work resists magazine-style loveliness, for cultural cachet, as if she can do for buildings what Andy Warhol did for celebrities.” (Kennicott 2011).

It could be countered that Warhol, after Abbott, was looking for the new heroes (Sutherland 2019) and anyway, who knows if Höfer is looking for heroes, or villains, or is just simply looking?

Kennicott comments on the disquieting uncanniness of the images which are “as haunting as they are stunning but also very chilly” and asks if through this ambiguity the photographer is “trying to idealize cultural institutions or reveal them as dead space or archaeological remains”? In conclusion, he considers that the images “want to say more, even if their urge to speak leads to ambiguous statements” and that there is a “sharper edge to these images, a hostility almost, that is bracing” (Kennicott 2011).

Patience Graybill in her study of Höfer’s library images (a subset of her ‘portraits of archival spaces’) posits that the photographer uses both “photography’s documentary attributes in historical archives or scientific studies” and “the medium’s more subjective aspects to make fictional, narrative images illustrate abstract or social concepts through their concrete subjects.” (Graybill 2007: 40). She considers that the recurrent subject of archival spaces inherently aligns Höfer’s work to cultural memory, or the collective negotiation around preservation of cultural inheritance, within the “arsenals of memory” of Western civilization (idem: 43).

Nevertheless, seen individually without knowledge of Höfer’s own photographic archive, Graybill suggests that the images “have only limited ability to postulate on the social significance of modern archival spaces”, partly because Höfer’s emphasis on specificity does not allow an individual image to generically represent all archives. Paradoxically, it is this specificity, or attention to detail, which leaves “viewers to puzzle out Höfer’s ambiguous pictures for their symbolic gestures and subtle implications”. It is, however, within the context of her body of work, that single images reach their potential “to reflect on the practical and symbolic functions of archival spaces in modern societies”. (idem: 45).

In consideration of Höfer’s body of work for the archives of women artists research and exhibitions, Pauline Gueland remarks on the photographer’s style being hallmarked “by a head-on treatment of an uninhabited architectural space” with the vanishing point dead centre of the image and often enhanced by a mirror effect from ceiling to floor. The question arises from any critical overview whether or not an entire oeuvre can be stamped with a singular hallmark, given that a body of work develops over decades, and cultures, artists and technologies change over time. Nevertheless, Gueland clearly identifies that in this “rigorous archival work, each photograph can only really be understood by its belonging to a much larger corpus.” (Gueland 2013).

As Lucy Soutter points out, critics often argue that Höfer’s “spaces do not invite us to project our own bodies into them but rather to contemplate them in the abstract (Soutter 2018: 46). Indeed, not all of the oeuvre takes this stance, as Patience Graybill remarks on the photograph Anna Amalia Bibliothek Weimar II, 2004 wherein Höfer “adopts a reverent sort of low-camera position” (Fig. 4). Here the viewer can enter into the image and feel the “the weight of cultural history” whilst gaining insight into a social inheritance propagated from the eighteenth century (Graybill 2007: 48).

herzogin anna amalia bibliotek Weimar 2 2004

Fig. 4 Candida Höfer, 2004. Herzogin Anna Amalia Library, Weimar II [87 2/5 × 70 9/10 in, 222 × 180 cm, Chromogenic print, Edition of 6]

This image (Fig.4), as well as more intimate ones of personal study spaces within libraries, or archives, can indeed be approached, in contrast to the often cited large volume of works wherein the viewer feels suspended in mid-air, disembodied, or uninvited to enter the image (Fig. 3).

As many critics point out, it is only once considered within this body of work, or in dialogue with other images -such as in the Galeria Helga de Alvear exhibition About Structures and Colors which has just eight photographs – that the individual images become intrinsically and forevermore imbued with their hidden social commentary.

In this way Hofer’s diligently constructed personal archive, put together over decades, reveals itself as a mask for an absentee visual text. I can’t help but wonder if this is not, ultimately, one of the underlying principles of all objective photography? Is it that the objective photograph is a mask for a serious study of a cultural theme, which can only be revealed by considering together images from within the body of work?

On About Structures and Colors

I visited the exhibition early on Saturday 1 February 2020. Most Madrilenians would have been recovering from their Friday evening out or getting ready for shopping in the busy city centre. This left the Galeria Helga de Alvear perfectly empty for me to immerse myself in, what can only be described as, the sumptuous scale and detail of Höfer’s large format prints.

Fig. 5 Interior of the Galeria Helga de Alvear (01.02.20) – First room looking through to second room

In About Structures and Colors, between images from Moscow and Paris, Höfer “reflects on the representation of national culture and architectural will through elements such as light, structure and color as well as the idea of beauty itself” (Galeria Helga de Alvear 2019).

The white walls are punctuated by four basic ‘colors’ – red, white, blue and gold/yellow. A nod to national identity and power structures represented in the images of civic spaces of 19^th and 20^th Century Moscow and Paris.

In the first room (Fig.5), immediate thoughts turn to humanity, to knowledge, performance and creativity. There’s no knowledge without people, no ideas, no reading in these empty libraries and no performance without stage players and audience (Fig. 6).

What does it mean to be human if you are absent? If all other humans are absent?

Fig. 6 About Structures and Colors, Exhibition Layout, Entry in my Final Major Project Workbook (01.02.20)

A darker question doesn’t immediately arise, but could it be that this is the room of the old heroes? Or indeed, were they ‘villains’, these heroes of the bourgeois?

A second room only hints at more social concerns, where absent people are accommodated in places that are machines for living in. Two images of Le Corbusier’s Salvation Army Refuge in Paris (1929) are placed vis-à-vis, all the while flanking a view of the Moscow skyline, the only trace of the outdoors in the exhibition.

Fig. 7 Interior of the Galeria Helga de Alvear (01.02.20) – Second room

Eventually the Moscow skyline, at first seemingly misplaced, would make sense.

Höfer is allowing her archive to enter into a dialogue that we are invited to listen to. Which in some ways appears ironic, because she never gave them the words to speak.

And in this manner, with the artist curating an exhibition of individual works from her oeuvre, we get to hear unspoken words.

References

Cué, E (2016) Interview with Candida Höfer. Available at https://www.alejandradeargos.com/index.php/en/all-articles/21-guests-with-art/511-interview-with-candida-hoefer [Accessed 2 February 2020]

Galeria Helga de Alvear (2019) Candida Hofer: About Structures and Colors (28.11.2019 – 08.02.2020). Available at http://helgadealvear.com/en/exhibitions/about-structures-and-colors/ [Accessed 2 February 2020]

Galerie Zander (n.d.) Candida Höfer: About the Artist. Available at https://www.galeriezander.com/en/artist/candida_hoefer/information [Accessed 2 February 2020]

Graybill, P (2007) Archiving the Collection: The Aesthetics of Space and Public Cultural Collections in Candida Höfer’s Photography. MoveableType, Vol.3, ‘From Memory to Event’, UCLPress, pp.40-70

Gueland, P (2013) Archive of Women Artists Research and Exhibitions: Candida Höfer. Translated from French by Simon Pleasance. Available at https://awarewomenartists.com/en/artiste/candida-hofer/ [Accessed 2 February 2020]

Haran, B. (2010) Homeless Houses: Classifying Walker Evans’s Photographs of Victorian Architecture. Oxford Art Journal, 33(2) June 2010, pp.189-210

Kennicott, P. (2011) Review: ‘Candida Höfer: Interior Worlds’. Available at https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/review-candida-Höfer-interior-worlds/2011/11/16/gIQAzMDRSN_story.html [Accessed 1 February 2020]

Soutter, L. (2018) Why Art Photography? Second edition. Abingdon: Taylor and Francis. ISBN 978-1-13828263-6

Sutherland, G. (2019) Looking for the new heroes (Berenice Abbott: Portraits of Modernity, PHotoESPAÑA 2019). Available at https://gordonsutherland.home.blog/tag/abbott/ [Accessed 2 February 2020]

08.12.19 > Current Thinking & Sustainable Prospects

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Current Thinking is a study of the prevalent underlying structures and spatial constructs on the human concept of space revealed through the results of algorithmic thinking.

The images which the algorithm reveals are a visual surface of algorithmic thought at a given point in space and time.

In my recent photographic study Current Thinking (November 2019) I used twelve Google search queries on the concept of space, before scraping a series of images from the streamed videos which appeared in the search results.

I used analogue photography to pull the images from the datasphere into tactile reality, revealing not only the underlying pixilation which documents the digital DNA of the image, but also my photographic intent which was to explore how search algorithms view the human concept of space.

In parallel, I also used a body mounted digital camera with a wide-angle lens to scrape images from the streaming videos, exploring in this way the human-machine collaboration and the power of photographic apparatus to alter interpretation.

This secondary image allows the viewer to question the intent of, and hence to deconstruct, the primary image.

The pixelated and slightly out of focus images push the viewer to focus on the underlying structure of the image and give insight into the meaning of the spaces within the imagery and the human interaction with the stage created by that physical space.

As a work in progress, Current Thinking is a research approach to visualisation, where the images are the result of the research process, and informs my final research project with working title The Digital Divide.

24.11.2019 > Human Agency and the Power to Dream

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As part of the Sustainable Prospects module of the Master of Arts, I’m collaborating with a group of fellow MA students on a ‘live brief’ for a company that develops unique design, information and wayfinding solutions to integrate people, movement and places.

Our collaboration on the Sustainable Prospects ‘live brief’ culminated in a pitch to our client on 20 November.

Fig.1 James Welling, 2016. ‘1538’, from the series Choreographs

My final contribution in the last stages of that collaborative effort was to inform our ideas through research into colour theory (Fig.1) and produce a conceptual image which visually expresses what it means to be human: that is, the capacity to think, decide, act, and to dream.

“Collecting images of work that you admire and keeping them in plain sight (on a pinboard, in a scrapbook, or even on your computer desktop) can be incredibly useful for boosting your own creativity.” [Fordham 2015: 86].

Collaboratively, we’d used this approach not to copy the work of other photographers, but to understand where artists are located in the development path of photographic thought, both technically and critically, or within different schools of photographic thought, so that our own collaborative work could contribute to that development.

How elements of other photographers work are emulated or incorporated into our own work is a valid artistic statement when applied in our own creative manner.

To produce my own visual contribution, I expanded a previous exploration of the concept of social capital by mining my back catalogue (photographic archive).

Fig. 2. Gordon Sutherland, 2019. Unpublished Photographic Sketch, archival blend from the series Market Values (2016)

Using two images from my 2016 series ‘Market Values’, I strove to express that agency in a smart city is not simply about having access to smart technology, but also about the use of that technology to choose and co-create the city that we want to live in (Fig. 2).

Rather than wayfinding, to get from one point to another, as a team we’ve considered these decisions in the context of human questions. What do I need to get done today? How do I want to enjoy myself? How can I be the co-creator off the city I live in? And when I want to get away from it all for a while, what do I dream of, and how do I get there before returning home again?

To anchor the visual storytelling in the future we’ve chosen to steer away from the trend of micro-storytelling around portraiture of individuals in their urban environment today. We suggest to move beyond that trend of ‘everydayness’ into an unknown space: the urban space that people dream of.

To do this we avoid introducing the viewer to individuals; preferring to allow the viewer to enter the image. They can imagine agency they posses in a place where they interact with others and also meet themselves.

Sources

Egeland, V. (2018) James Welling on his photo ‘1538’. Available at https://www.documentjournal.com/2018/06/james-welling-on-his-photo-1538/ [Accessed 10 November 2019]

Fordham, D. (2015) What they didn’t teach you in photo school: what you actually need to know to succeed in the industry. London: Octopus Publishing. ISBN 978-1-78157269-6

04.11.19 > Collaboration Works

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Fig.1 Christoper ‘Buzz’ Mathews, 2019. Test image for Sustainable Prospects ‘Live Brief’ Collaboration

During this module I’ve focused on practicing sustainable photographic collaboration through the ‘live brief’ project. In previous modules I’ve worked closely with my tutors and participated in the weekly webinars with fellow students. For this module, I’ve opted to participate in weekly meetings with the collaborative team working on the live brief.

Since our first meeting in early October this teamwork has been, in reality, a kind of weekly group tutorial. A genuine team spirit emerged (as we formed, stormed, normed, and performed) and we managed to keep each other going through the tough times. There was always one of us on the up, which kept the team motivated.

This type of collaboration is what photographic collaborative practice is really about, and why my personal approach to long-term collaborative business relationships prefers the use of LinkedIn as one of my digital communication channels. Together with my portfolio website and twitter account, these social media channels embody my principle of long-term partnerships and exchange on professional photography and the socio-political issues which drive me to create photographic images.

“The photo industry runs on word of mouth, so you must strive constantly to develop an excellent reputation” [Fordham 2015: 32]

It’s therefore necessary to treat every job as the pitching opportunity to get the next one, and every collaboration as a professional one.

Here I present my contribution to the team effort which culminated in a presentation of our preliminary thoughts about the ‘live brief’ to our module leader and course coordinator on 1st November.

We’d been discussing colour segregation as a means of visualizing agency in the cityscape.

But how does such an image and collaborative effort across time zones evolve? It evolves both structurally and organically.

During our discussions Amy had suggested using 35mm run through a medium format camera as a technique and Buzz had scouted locations and registered a number of test images (Fig. 1).

I then used one of the images taken by Buzz to explore the application of colour theory in the development of the digitalized images. The concept of colour segmentation was intended to express individualism, agency and inclusivity in modern society through the use of the seven colours of the rainbow.

Fig.2 Christoper ‘Buzz’ Mathews and Gordon Sutherland, 2019. Test Application of Colour Segmentation for the Sustainable Prospects ‘Live Brief’ Collaboration #1

As an alternative creative approach – again picking up on an idea suggested by Amy that we could emulate line drawings – I developed an offset image, with a view to accentuating the outline of the individuals and an architect’s sketch like rendering of the urban landscape [Fig. 3].

Fig.3 Christoper ‘Buzz’ Mathews and Gordon Sutherland, 2019. Test Application of Colour Segmentation for the Sustainable Prospects ‘Live Brief’ Collaboration #2

The concept would not make the final cut of our pitch to the client, as other ideas were emerging, and overall we agreed that the images with the film sprockets would become repetitive: elements of the client brief were emerging and the images would be used to accompany a series of essays on agency in a smart city future, and we agreed that while interesting, we needed to follow another approach.

Since the book would act both as a reference document for the client’s business sector, as well as providing visibility, helping to establish our client’s position at the forefront of wayfinding in the urban environment we wanted to explore further the concept of agency in the SMART city.

That meant we would need to communicate the essence of what it means to be human: that is, the capacity to think, decide, act, and to dream.

Sources

Fordham, D. (2015) What they didn’t teach you in photo school: what you actually need to know to succeed in the industry. London: Octopus Publishing. ISBN 978-1-78157269-6

07.10.19 > Visualising Agency through the Photographic Medium

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As part of the Sustainable Prospects module, I’m collaborating with a group of fellow MA students on a ‘live brief’ for a company that develops design, information, and wayfinding solutions to integrate people, movement and places. Their main clients are city administrations and large campuses such as universities, arenas and festivals.

We are responding to the company’s brief “What does agency look like in the context of a smart city future?”

Initial discussions within our small collaborative team of four photographers [Amy Eilertsen / Christopher “Buzz” Matthews / Marco Montalto / Gordon Sutherland] provided insight into a possible vocabulary for defining or describing agency.

I chose to collaborate on this pitch because it can also directly inform the development of my research project work which explores the concept of digital space in smart cities, which started by exploring the portals in society through which we enter the datasphere and is intended to lead to documentation, representation, and probing of life in a smart city. GS

In particular, Marco – with his background in social sciences – was instrumental in seeding our early discussions with underpinning words such as intentionality, automatism, willfulness, awareness, to name just a few.

From this collaborative discussion, we concluded that advancements in information technology are expected to become prevalent in smart cities, in particular artificial intelligence, which turned our discussions towards concepts of freedom and control. Our conclusion? Whereas artificial intelligence is developed as a benefit for humankind, it is a double-edged sword.

With these discussions in mind, my personal contribution revolved around two aspects of visual language: firstly, how other forms of visualization, such as infra-red photography, can be use to represent one or other side of that sword and, secondly, how a word cloud could help us to define a starting point for a mutually agreed concept of agency for us to work with. From the concept of a word cloud, I proposed that each of us research 5-6 images which – taken from our own understanding of the photographic language which we individually speak – we personally consider as an expression of agency.

The following images and annotation describe my contribution to that group discussion.

Fig. 1 Carlos Ayesta & Guillaume Bression (2011-2016). From the series ‘Bad Dreams?’

One of the challenges of finding a visual vocabulary for agency, or indeed anything which cannot be seen or felt, is to make the invisible become visible.

In their series Bad Dreams? (Fig. 1) Carlos Ayesta & Guillaume Bression asked how they could “depict something not seen or felt” [Thessaloniki Museum of Photography 2018: 124].

“Instead of adopting a documentary approach to this project, we decided to stage the photographs using plastic bubbles and cellophane wrap to reveal the ‘invisible’. Here, fiction reveals reality, not vice-versa.” Carlos Ayesta & Guillaume Bression (idem)

With this project, Ayesta & Bression are asking former occupants of Fukushima to come face to face with the invisible barriers that prevent them from returning home, and for whom “the affected communities, countryside and forest are actually divided between those now accessible and those to which entry remains prohibited (idem).

Abstractly, however, this has connotations for agency and wayfinding, regarding where and how you are guided to where you may go, or away from areas where you cannot go.

“Considering the invisible digital blocks and nudges that could direct human flow and shape decision making processes, and hence shape human agency in the smart city, I imagined physical representation of wayfinding through installations. This concept emerged as a natural parallel to the imaginary digital cloud I had introduced for my series ‘The Broken Places’ (Sutherland 2019).” GS

Fig. 2 Photographer uncited. Date unknown.

Contemporary street photographer Eric Kim manages to stir emotions and cause debate around both his photography and his commercial success. Kim is prolific, vocal and visible. An online search for ‘eric kim photographer’ will produce a mixture of comparisons with Gilden and Parr, accompanied by vocal rants and raves about Kim’s work and his success (Quillinan n.d.).

Kim uses social media and open source information to communicate his vision of photography and lifestyle, as well as delivering workshops at academic establishments or in global locations [Kim 2019a]. In terms of sustainable prospects, Kim makes a living from photography by commercializing a niche [Kim 2019b].

However, his work and writings are not purely commercial, but also topical, as well as philosophical.

In his article on photography and artificial intelligence he reflects on the future of humanity (Kim 2018) and what could otherwise be called a “comingled evolutionary path” (Prabhackar 2017) between humans and machines, as the distinction between humans and machines becomes imperceptible.

Kim explains that his interest lies in “how we can use computer vision (how computers see images, objects, and the real world) to augment (increase) our own human vision- to see the world more vividly, and to ultimately make better photos.” (Kim 2018). Within his post he considers the idea of image segmentation technology (Fig. 2) as one of the ways in which computers see.

In considering image segmentation, I imagined what the application of colour theory could means in terms of human agency. The breakdown of the spectrum of colour as a visual marker of individualism, collectivism, collaboration, support, ecology, health, spectatorship, participation, to name a few of the inclusive elements that can be imagined as benefits of a future smart city lifestyle. GS

Fig. 3. Annie Tritt – The New York Times. 2012. Shotspotter Headquarters, California

Photographer Annie Tritt established herself through photojournalism, today focusing more on portraiture in entertainment and arts, corporate portraiture, as well as social and personal projects, such as ‘Transcending Self’ which explores transgender and gender expansive youth.

Tritt’s clients have included Billboard, Hollywood Reporter, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Paper, INC, Fortune, Backstage, London Guardian, London Telegraph, Fader, M Le Magazine du Monde, Wired Italy, Der Spiegel, Stern, Interscope Records, Sony Records (Tritt n.d.).

The photographer, author and publishing executive Rick Smolan orchestrated over 100 photographers and researchers to collate the images for “The Human Face of Big Data”, a book which uses photography to visualize how “life is changing in a world filled with a never-ending stream of data”. Smolan has remarked that “big data will have a bigger effect on humanity than the Internet” since data allows for anticipation and problem solving through knowledge about the world (Sloan 2012).

One of Tritt’s images for The New York Times, depicting a monitoring station for the Shotspotter system, is included in Smolan’s book (Fig. 3). Shotspotter uses acoustic sensors located around neighborhoods to record the blasts of gunshots. The system triangulates the sounds, pinpointing the sources of the blasts on a map, thus helping authorities to rapidly locate crime scenes. Using the information from the sensors, high-speed telecoms and number crunching, the staff at the company’s headquarters can remotely pinpoint the shots to a precise location in seconds, so that “instead of police arriving on the scene a half-hour later, they can be there in under two or three minutes”. (ITBusiness 2013).

Tritt’s image (Fig. 3) is representative of how authorities in highly digitally connected societies can use data flows to adapt public services and infrastructure to the dynamics of city life: it is a photo-documentary approach to raising questions around human agency and the role and responsiveness of city administrations and public authorities.

Tom Drahos

Fig. 4. Tom Drahos (1986). From the series ‘Paris suburbs, peri-urban spaces of the Paris region’

Photographic commissions in the form of preservation photography visually document an epoch. In a country characterized by innovation and industrial development, indeed a country which is one of the multiple birthplaces of photography, the French Délégation à l’Aménagement du territoire et à l’Action régionale (the Inter-ministerial Town and Country Planning and Regional Action Delegation) dispatched 29 photographers of different photographic slants into the field to “document the French landscape of the 1980s” (Bibliothèque nationale de France n.d.).

Commonly known as The DATAR Photographic Mission, it was a descendent of the great photography missions such as the 1851 Heliographic Mission and the 1935-1942 Farm Security Administration’s portrayal of the Great Depression (idem).

In representing the cityscapes of the Paris suburbs, Czech photographer Tom Drahos presented an alternative vision of these urban landscapes, “anchored in time, but free floating in space” (idem). His concept of framing space, but not the compositional image itself, reveals an exploded landscape that refers at once to the multi-foiled individual experiences of the urban landscape, as it does to the co-existent societal perspectives. Each of these perspectives holding its own truth. GS

This concept of co-existence of viewpoints and experience resonates closely with the dynamic promised by technology in smart cities, touching again on the key words identified such as individualism, collectivism, awareness and conscious decision making.

Fig. 5 Tommy Vohs. Date unknown. From the series ‘In Transit’

“I took to iphoneography like batter on a fish stick…a cohesive relationship only made stronger over time. It was natural and free flowing and came at a time in my life when I needed a distraction” Tommy Vohs (Carter 2012)

Vohs is a railroad careerist turned mobile photographer and has exhibited extensively in Canada where she resides (Idem). Vohs maintains her career on the railroads as well as exhibiting and selling her limited edition prints which are characterized by layers and saturated colours. Her images have been awarded in the field of mobile, iphotography and iPhoneart (Vohs n.d.).

I discovered the work of Tommy Vohs through Smart Cities Dive, part of Industry Dive (Industry Dive n.d.), a private sector business journalism platform that helps decision-makers stay ahead in competitive industries to spark innovation and growth in industry. GS

Smart Cities Dive researches visual material to “find photos that fit our content, reflect the human content of our work, and are dynamic, colorful, interactive, transformational, local, natural, and realistic, too” (SMARTCITIESDIVE n.d.).

As a business provider, Smart Cities Dive Managing Editor (formerly TheCityFix) identified the innovation in Vohs work and how it met their vision in terms of communicating the spirit of integrated mobility, a key component of smart city developments, with the likes of multi-modal integration of mass transport, cycling and walking. The use of Vohs’ work in editorial context is an example of corporate culture using art as a business media content.

“Vohs’s photography exemplifies this necessity for shared streets that cater to the needs of road users across diverse modes of transport. With an emphasis on public transport, Vohs’s work often features double exposures that juxtapose everyday scenes of urban mobility with bold color schemes.” Smart Cities Dive Managing Editor (idem)

The images presented in this post are taken from a series of images I put forward to inform our collaborative group work whilst we explored our individual ideas on the visual ‘definition’ of agency in the smart city of the future.

Each of them is representative of perspectives as seen by different practitioners, whether those working on commercial street photography, photo-documentary, art photography or commissioned preservation photography. These photographs represent the editorial use of photographic image from the perspective of research into social sciences and humanities or commercial business interests. As such, they represent aspects of the sustainable prospects of the individual practitioners.

In parallel, the images were selected to directly inform the development of my research project work exploring the concept of digital space in smart cities, which started by exploring the portals in society through which the population enters the datasphere, and is intended to lead to documentation, representation, and probing of life in a smart city.

Sources

Carter, J. (2012) A Day in the Life of Tommy Vohs – An Intriguing, Liberating and Inspiring Mobile Photographer. Available at https://theappwhisperer.com/2012/11/a-day-in-the-life-of-tommy-vohs-an-intriguing-liberating-and-inspiring-mobile-photographer/ [Accessed 6 October 2019]

EMBARQ Network https://www.smartcitiesdive.com/ex/sustainablecitiescollective/friday-fun-photographer-captures-spirit-integrated-transport/219991/

Industry Dive (n.d.) About Industry Drive. Available at https://www.industrydive.com/about/ [Accessed 6 October 2019]

ITBusiness (2013) 11 amazing images show ‘The Human Face of Big Data’. Available at https://www.itbusiness.ca/slideshows/11-amazing-images-show-the-human-face-of-big-data [Accessed 6 October 2019]

Kim, E. (2018) Brave New World of Photography and AI. Available at https://erickimphotography.com/blog/2018/09/24/brave-new-world-of-photography-and-ai/ [Accessed 6 October 2019]

Kim, E. (2019a) Eric Kim Workshops. Available at https://erickimphotography.com/blog/workshops/ [Accessed 6 October 2019]

Kim, E. (2019b) Photography Entrepreneurship Tips and Ideas. Available at https://erickimphotography.com/blog/2019/07/16/photography-entrepreneurship-tips-and-ideas/ [Accessed 6 October 2019]

Prabhakar, A. (2017) The merging of humans and machines is happening now. Available at https://www.wired.co.uk/article/darpa-arati-prabhakar-humans-machines [Accessed 6 October 2019]

Quillinan, B. (n.d.) Is Eric Kim full of sh*t? Available at https://onedgestreet.com/is-eric-kim-full-of-sht/ [Accessed 6 October 2019]

SMARTCITIESDIVE (n.d.) Photographer Captures Spirit of Integrated Transport. Available at https://www.smartcitiesdive.com/ex/sustainablecitiescollective/friday-fun-photographer-captures-spirit-integrated-transport/219991/ [Accessed 6 October 2019]

Sutherland, G. (2019) Beyond the broken places. Available at https://gordonsutherland.home.blog/2019/06/05/05-06-19-beyond-the-broken-places/ [Accessed 6 October 2019]

Sloan, P. (2012) Big data gets its own book: ‘The Human Face of Big Data’. Available at https://www.cnet.com/news/big-data-gets-its-own-book-the-human-face-of-big-data/ [Accessed 6 October 2019]

Thessaloniki Museum of Photography (2018). Capitalist Realism: Future Perfect, 28/09/2018 – 27/01/2019 (Curated by Penelope Petsini). Thessaloniki: University of Macedonia Press. ISBN-978-618-5196-35-6

Tritt, A. (n.d.) Website of photographer Annie Tritt. Available at (http://www.annietritt.com/ [Accessed 6 October 2019]

29.09.19 > On the search for new dimensions

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I continue to take forward my study of spatial representation through photography, in particular the study of digital space. I’m planning to pick up more of the cinematographic, gaming and manga influences I’ve come across through my previous projects, such as ‘The Space Between’. I’m once again thinking of looking into ‘in-game’ photography as a depiction of space in the datasphere.

I plan to revise the proposal for my Final Research Project, and consider expanding my work from its current exploration of data flows in connected urban environments to an exploration, through non-anthropocentric photography, of how systems with intelligent algorithms ‘view’ the real world.

For these two avenues of exploration I’m thinking – at this stage of my research – of connecting with communities in the gaming world on the one hand, and to deepen my research into practical operations of smart city systems on the other.

Currently my final research project – The Digital Divide (Working Title) – is conceived as an exploration of human life in a digitally controlled environment, in a ‘Smart City’, for want of a better terminology, through the use of spatial representation:

The Digital Divide (Working Title) is a visual investigation of ideas, concepts, and critical theory surrounding the nature of digital space and human interaction with it. The project starts by exploring the portals in society through which we enter the datasphere and leads to documentation, representation, and probing of life in a smart city (Sutherland 2018).

In looking for new ‘dimensions’, I’m exploring research-based photography to identify methods that could inform my own approach.

Below two examples of photographers whose research approach can relate to my own project.

Artist and photographer Meret Wandeler focuses her photographic research on the transformations of urban fabric in suburban areas. Long-term photographic observation is a key approach in her practice, as is the collaborative nature of projects (Wandeler 2019a). Her serial projects are characterized by the fact that the research constitutes the final body of work.

The ‘Long-Term Photographic Observation of Schlieren 2005-2020’ is an example of visual research into the ongoing processes of transformation in one specific community, located in this case in the Zurich Metropolitan Area.

Through urban transformation, initially evolving from a farming village to an industrial zone in the post-war period, Schlieren ended the 20^th Century as a ‘non-place’, as globalization led to the abandonment of its industrial sites (Wandeler 2019b: 366).

Wandeler, in collaboration with Ulrich Görlich, sought to document the impact of a holistic urban redevelopment in the early 21^st Century, with the pressure on land use and environmental degradation in Switzerland being high on the political agenda (idem: 368).

The project, centred around the method of rephotography (with the rephotography by Elmar Mauch and Christian Schwager), was the first photographic research project at a Swiss Art Academy in the emerging field of artistic research which became established in Europe at the turn of the millennium, mainly in Scandinavia, the United Kingdom and Switzerland (idem: 370).

Considering work of another artist, Melanie Manchot’s research-driven, lens-based artwork employs photography, video, film and sound. Manchot has stated that “Cameras, whether still or moving, are crucial devices shaping the construction of the work” and more importantly “are an organizing principle, an apparatus that becomes part of a set of relations I wish to create” (Parafin 2016).

Manchot’s methodology is built on the processes of exchange, contribution and collaboration. She often involves social groups, or communities, to create serial portraits at the boundaries of documentary and fine-art. The works constitute a discourse on the individual and social self (idem).

In ‘Tracer’ – a single channel projection and 3 channel installation, 19’45” in stereo sound – Manchot depicted the movements of parkourists as they sought out the opportunities and limits offered by constructed space to produce specific forms of physical interaction. As Manchot explains on her website

“The film draws attention to how human agency may act upon built environments and questions the authority inherent to architectural form” (Manchot 2019).

Fig. 2. Melanie Manchot, 2013, Still from Tracer (Manchot n.d.)

Tracer was funded by the Great North Run Moving Image Commission as part of the event’s culture programme and saw Manchot working “with a group of local parkour runners to re-imagine the architecture and spaces along the route” (Great North Run Culture 2013).

Long, slow sequences and overseeing viewpoints in the video serve as a reminder to the viewer of surveillance in public space, as well as our individual and collective role as voyeur on society. Stereo soundscapes offer alternative views into the physicality of parkouring as the impacts of human bodies on constructed space are revealed (Manchot 2013).

Sources

Great North Run Culture (2013) Melanie Manchot: Tracer. Available at http://greatnorthrunculture.org/aboutcommission198a.html?commid=63 [Accessed 29 September 2019]

Manchot, M. (2013) Tracer, 2013 – Trailer. [Video] Available at https://vimeo.com/220456235 [Accessed 29 September 2019]

Manchot, M. (n.d.) Tracer, Video Installation, HD, 19’43”. Available at http://www.melaniemanchot.net/category/tracer/ [Accessed 29 September 2019]

Parafin (2016) Artists – Melanie Manchot. Available at http://www.parafin.co.uk/artists–melanie-manchot.html [Accessed 29 September 2019]

Sutherland, G. (2018) PHO701 Research Project Proposal. Submitted for the MA Photography Module Positions and Practice, Falmouth University, December 2018

Wandeler, M. (2019a) Meret Wandeler. Available at https://www.meretwandeler.net/ [Accessed 29 September 2019]

Wandeler, M. (2019b) Schlieren: Spatial Transformation in a Suburban Municipality in Switzerland. In Framed Landscapes: European Photography Commissions 1984-2019. Exhibition Catalogue, Museo ICO, 6 June to 8 September 2019). Madrid: Fundación ICO.

23.08.19 > Joining the dots to reveal the photographer

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In looking for a way forward for my art photography I need to step outside of my comfort zone, deconstruct myself, and understand – and explain – how I arrive at my visual artistic expression. How do I start from a theme, a concept, then move through exploration of subject matter, techniques and perspectives (further still explore my response to life), so as to arrive at the final emergent artwork: aka my artistic strategy.

My artwork unfolds into its photographic self on a support – a surface – whether that be the printed image hanging in a gallery, in a photobook, on advertising billboards, as a presentation during an artist talk or workshop, shown as a poster, as a projection, on digital screens, or as holograms: aka my chosen artistic surface.

In The Surfaces and Strategies of my Photographic Practice (August 2019) I attempt to explain and critically analyse how my photography fits together.

23.07.19 > The Tokyo Diaries

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Time for smart phone images to have their say. With a little help from my diary, some poetic license on the order of curation, and plenty of rain

# just_images

#no_critical_theory

Arrival, Skyliner to Ueno Station. Sunday 30 June 2019, Tokyo.

Arrival, First Impression. Sunday 30 June 2019, Asakusa, Tokyo.

Detail from the Surfaces & Strategies Workbook, Ueno, Tokyo.

Transparent Plastic Umbrella on a Typical Day. Sunday 7 July 2019, Asakusa, Tokyo.

Another Umbrella on a Typical Day. Sunday 21 July 2019, Ueno/Asakusa, Tokyo.

More or Less the Whole Story. Saturday 23 July 2019, Ueno, Tokyo

Forever seeking out ‘the space between’. Tuesday 9 July 2019, Yanaka, Tokyo.

Endless movement. Friday 5 July 2019, Shibuya, Tokyo.

Leaving Tokyo, Leaving Myself. Monday 22 July 2019, Ueno, Tokyo.

Forever seeking out ‘the space between’ #2. Sunday 21 July 2019, Asakusa, Tokyo.

Departure, Skyliner to Narita Airport, Tuesday 23 July 2019, Ueno, Tokyo.

Even though there are other colours of umbrella to be seen, for me Tokyo in the rainy season will be forever the city of transparent plastic umbrellas.

22.07.19 > Becoming camera and the unfolding image

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During my stay in Tokyo in July, I started to explore the concept and meaning of becoming camera, allowing my shoulder mounted camera to record my search for each unfolding image.

The experience has taken me on a new journey, as I start to wonder how the camera itself sees humanity, and how intelligent machines view the world.

The images below mainly unfolded from my direct artistic intervention, the final one from a collaboration between my shoulder and the camera, as we approached each other.

Photographer becomes camera, and camera becomes photographer.

Fig 1: Electric Town, Akihabara, Tokyo (Scouting image in the visible spectrum)

Fig. 1 is my scouting image for the blended spectra image below (Fig. 2) which questions the space between nature and the cityscape in which trees appear unnatural. As I took the image, my body mounted camera recorded the scene.

As I searched Tokyo’s back streets in quest of ‘the space between’, I remained transfixed by the fact that none of the buildings in the city actually touch each other, and allowed the my mounted camera record the quest of the photographer’s curiosity.

Whilst towards the end of my stay, I started to collaborate with the body mounted camera and we registered images together (Fig. 4), as I became camera, and the camera became photographer during my photographic pilgrimage to find Naoya Hatekeyama’s River Series.

Fig. 5: Four Cameras & one Notebook, Monday 22 July 2019, Shibuya, Tokyo

Gordon Sutherland – Photography Research Journal

Critical Theory and Photographic Practice

08.03.20 > The heart of the matter (on spatial and temporal representation in sculpture)

02.02.20 > About Structures and Colors (Candida Höfer at Galeria Helga de Alvear, Madrid, 28.11.2019 – 08.02.2020)

08.12.19 > Current Thinking & Sustainable Prospects

24.11.2019 > Human Agency and the Power to Dream

07.10.19 > Visualising Agency through the Photographic Medium

29.09.19 > On the search for new dimensions

23.08.19 > Joining the dots to reveal the photographer

23.07.19 > The Tokyo Diaries

22.07.19 > Becoming camera and the unfolding image