Category Archives: Surroundings

31.03.19 > Annotation #1 On using buildings as art-motif to awaken social conscience to societal injustice

As a basis for deepening the contextualisation of my photographic practice and extending the theoretical underpinning of my body of photographic work I’ve written an annotated reference of one of my previous essays. My emerging work-in-progress and evolving final major project on spatial representation in the digital age stem from, and are informed by, this essay.

Sutherland, G. (2017) Can images of buildings as art-motif awaken social conscience as a counterpoint to societal judgment? Final Degree Essay Submission for Bachelor of Arts (Hons) in Photography, Interactive Design Institute – University of Hertfordshire, May 2017

Starting from historical enquiry into the role of architectural and urban photography in social reform and public conscience, the essay (in 6758 words) explores how social documentary, architectural and fine-art photography use buildings as art-motif to awaken social conscience to societal injustice.

The difference between the meaning of architecture and its cultural interpretation through the photographic medium is identified and the multiplicity of interpretation posited. An inherent societal pressure in architecture is examined, in particular through its propagation of cultural stereotypes and influence on collective memory.

The role of photography in social reform, questions on compassion fatigue and the resulting elevation of the genre to fine art photography in the 1930s are presented and mapped through to the end of the twentieth century at which time it is identified that the visual and photographic arts have ceased to consider art photography and documentary photography as having separate lines of development.

The path from Thomas Annan’s social reform photography, through Eugène Atget’s oeuvre, Walker Evans’ exhibition of Victorian houses, the Becher’s approach to evacuation of subjectivity, Thomas Struth’s objective depiction of cityscapes, through Marchand and Meffre’s depictions of ruin in the eraly 21^st Century are explored through secondary sources, amongst which Arnold, Colomina, Haran, James, and Sliwinski.

The sources referenced place architecture and infrastructure within the context of theoretical and cultural considerations. Examples include the duality of messaging in Danny Lyon’s ’80 and 82 Beekman Street’ (Fig.1) and the mask of objectivity in the work of the Bechers (Fig.2).

Fig. 1 Danny Lyon, 1967. Beekman Street subbasement. [1967 negative, 2007 Gelatin Silver Print]

In the former, the image both awakens social conscience to cultural aspects regarding the loss of local neighbourhoods, but it can be argued that it also, ironically, stigmatizes the subjects, mainly labourers from the very neighbourhoods being demolished. The latter, as declared by the authors of the visual text, appear as images detached from any social or political message, until viewed through the lens of anthropomorphisation of their subject matter, in which case they reveal themselves as a statement of social egalitarianism within the depolitisisation of German society in the 1950s and 1960s.

Fig. 4 Bernd and Hilla Becher, 1959 – 1973. Framework houses. [21 Gelatin Silver Prints. Each 16 1/4 x 12″ (41.2 x 30.5 cm)]

The essay incorporates Sliwinski’s considerations of tension between the capacity of photography to ‘numb’ the spectator into non-action or futility, and its ability to awaken social conscience by instilling a response. This is considered together with Colomina’s thesis on public space constituting a place solely to be photographed in, a space objectified for consumption as photographic image has become the means of experiencing and consuming architecture, together with the social judgment and societal conditioning that is carried within mass media.

The essay posits that, as perhaps for all photographs, but particularly in the case of images of buildings and societal infrastructure, their interpretation is found on a continuum between visual fact and metaphor.

It is this continuum of interpretation that allows images of buildings as art-motif to act at once to awaken social conscience on societal injustice, as much as to propagate it through reinforcement of message. This closing argument supports the case for a broader visual literacy.

[499 words]

25.02.19 > In a way that is eternal

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Cherry Blossom, its transient beauty embodied in the Japanese aesthetic, is correspondingly an important symbol in the country (The Art of Japan, 2017).

In the aftermath of the 2011 earthquake, tsunami, and resulting nuclear disaster in Fukushima, photographer Omori Katsumi travelled north from his residence in Urayasu towards the affected region. With his own residence in greater Tokyo not unaffected, although in the centre of the city the impact was felt to a much lesser extent, Omori felt driven – by a sense of compassion or complicity – to visit the disaster zone (The Japan Society, 2011; Fritsch 2018: 190). Along his route to Fukushima he documented the blossoming of the cherry trees.

Fig. 1 Katsumi Omori, 2011, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo [59cm x 39.5cm Chromogenic Print]

Indeed, although Omori’s home itself did not sustain much damage, the area where he lives is constructed on artificial land and some buildings were heavily impacted by the earthquake. As more information slowly became available, not even knowing exactly what he wanted to see, Omori states that he found himself wanting to go to Fukushima to witness the situation with his own eyes. Feeling that straight photography was not the way to approach this topic, he introduced a random, unrelated element (a translucent pink toy), emphasizing in this manner how we always look at things through something else, that is, through a position or a perspective (Fritsch: 189).

Omori’s documentary approach is as much frank and informal – and could be considered to emerge from new topographics – as it is subjective, opening a poetic dialogue that invites interpretation. That these images are in portrait format, in opposition to the convention for landscape photography, represents – according to Omori – ‘assertion’ in his documentary practice, with the inclusion of “some halation implying something people cannot actually see but probably exists: such as anxiety, possibly radiation or even wishes for the future” (The Japan Society, 2011).

In interviews on this series Omori regularly confirms his intention to photograph something that is invisible.

Fig. 2 Katsumi Omori, 2011, Iwaki-shi, Fukushima [59cm x 39.5cm Chromogenic Print]

“After the accident of the Fukushima nuclear plants we faced the difficulty to see, to see the world. You know, radioactivity, we couldn’t see that, so when I went to Fukushima I decided to put something, aahh [indicates ‘between the’ with gesticulation] camera and the real world” – Katsumi Omori (Opezzo 2014).

Within his photographic practice, the freezing of time is one particular element of the medium that interests Omori (Fritsch 2018: 189).

Reflecting this interest in time, and prior to the series Everything happens for the first time, Omori’s 2007 photobook Cherryblossoms had already emanated from his fascination with the symbolically fleeting nature of the blossom. Asking the viewer to consider memory in another way, for that photobook he adopted the use of tungsten film to render the blossom in a bluish tint (Shashasha 2019). However, in Everything happens for the first time, Omori proposes a new approach to the documentary of an unfolding nuclear disaster and its invisible threat.

To critically investigate the interlinked visible and invisible, the series denies transparency (What is the subject matter? What is the meaning?) through the images unconventional form and depictions of the banal quotidian in modern day Japan.

In his critical analysis, Taro Nettleton, assistant professor of art history at the Temple University Japan Campus, considers that “through their opacity Omori’s images disrupt the call to nationalism and endurance, which the Japanese government has made its official response to the disasters”. As such he places Omori’s series as an ethico-political study into societal perspectives and positioning in Japan, otherwise a study into the state projected framework of protection, control, care and normalcy within Japan’s governing system after the Fukushima disaster (Nettleton 2018: 22-23).

Minami Soma-shi, Fukushima, Katsumi Omori 3

Fig. 3 Katsumi Omori, 2011, Minami Soma-shi, Fukushima [59cm x 39.5cm Chromogenic Print]

Omori‘s work, coming from a photographer who is receptive to the invisible, could further be considered as being in resonance with the popular Japanese fascination with the ethereal. His project is marked by an ambivalence “that engages with the lack of transparency in TEPCO’s [Tokyo Electric Power Company], the state’s and the media’s treatment of the nuclear disaster” (idem).

By wearing this mask of opacity, Omori’s series directly challenges the opacity of the ruling hegemony, by reminding the viewer that when we look at the world we always look at it through multi-foiled filters. Those filters may be placed over our eyes by our own government.

Omori’s fascination with the freezing of the annual regenerative power of nature, which takes place on the human scale represented by the Cherry Blossoms in Everything happens for the first time, becomes overtly more intense through the tension arising from comparison with generational timescales of the half-life of radioactive material such as the isotopes of iodine-131, cesium-134 and cesium-137 released in the Fukushima disaster. This juxtaposition is strengthened by the aesthetic beauty of the soft-pink haletic effect created by an otherwise ‘innocent’ translucent toy. On a personal level for the photographer, the hazy images appear to resonate with Omori’s own memory of the first days following the disaster, where he recalls how his “neighbourhood was covered with dust, turning everything a hazy white” and how he could barely hang on to the sensation that his body belonged to him (Omori n.d.).

In Everything happens for the first time the end result is a poignant dialogue on mankind’s futile attempts to control, and exploit, the power of nature, an effort evident in the Japanese cultural psyche, in particular in the second half of the 20^th century and the first decades of the 21^st, combined with an ethico-political statement on the approach of the state at the time of the Fukushima disaster.

Sources

Fritsch, L. (2018) Ravens & Red Lipstick: Japanese Photography since 1945. London: Thames & Hudson. ISBN 978-0-500-29287-7

Nettleton, T. (2018) Photographing the Invisible: Katsumi Omori’s Everything happens for the first time, Afterimage, vol. 45, no. 4, pp. 22-25.

Omori, K. (n.d.) Everything Happens for the First Time (Subete wa hajimete okoru). [Online] Available at https://www.lensculture.com/articles/katsumi-omori-everything-happens-for-the-first-time [Accessed 26 November 2018]

Opezzo, I. (2014) Paris Photo Interviews for La Stampa. [Online] Available at http://ireneopezzo.com/paris-photo-interviews/ [Accessed 2 February 2019]

Shashasha (2019) Cherryblossoms. [Online] Available at https://www.shashasha.co/en/book/cherryblossoms [Accessed 4 February 2019]

The Japan Society (2011) Everything happens for the first time Katsumi Omori. [Online] Available at https://www.japansociety.org.uk/20062/everything-happens-for-the-first-time-katsumi-omori/ [Accessed 2 February 2019]

14.02.19 > Becoming Other

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As I work towards a photography project that invites dialogue on the datasphere as an alternative space of existence, I plan to travel to Tokyo to explore the visualization of digital connectivity in one of the most densely constructed and populated megacities on the planet. My starting point is to tentatively explore Japanese culture, art and photography, and how they have been informed both domestically and by external cultures.

Japan and its culture remain an intrigue for Western Society. In the first of a three part series addressing art and aesthetics in Japanese culture (The Art of Japanese Life: Nature, 2017) the embodiment of the religious beliefs of Shintoism and Buddhism within the Japanese aesthetic are explored by art historian, and fellow at Gonville & Caius College Cambridge, Dr. James Fox (University of Cambridge, 2019).

Reflecting on the role of nature within these two religions, Fox considers that every aspect of life in Japan is driven by aesthetics. Even if Shintoism itself has not produced a legacy of art such as that emanating from the Christian religions of the West, the essence of the religion is so firmly embedded in the Japanese aesthetic that it pervades Japanese art.

The world of Shintoism is inhabited by the Kami, spirits – both good and bad – that live in everything organic and inorganic, or as Fox states, “for Shinto, the world is endlessly animated by the divine” (The Art of Japanese Life: Nature, 2017).

This concept of eternal existence is extended in Buddhism by the belief in incarnation whether as the living or inanimate, and parallels with these ancient religions can be found in contemporary philosophical studies, such as in Felix Guattari’s unfinished concept of ecosophy which would allow for a rethinking of the nature of being. A dissolution of self by becoming-other is at the heart of Guattarian (and Deleuzian) ecosophy, in opposition to an expansion of self through identification (Tinnel 2012: 359).

Just as the Japanese accept that life pervades everything, in whatever form, it is at today’s juncture of the ecological crisis and the pervasiveness of digital media associated with the information age, that a Guattarian thinking could point towards alternative domains or “transversal eco-humanities, which would be rhizomatically rooted in autopoiesis and becoming-other” (idem: 357), but “without assigning humans, nature or culture a fixed role or place in the production of subjectivity” (idem: 362). In questioning this, is Tinnel’s extension of the unfinished theory of ecosophy suggesting the possibility of existence in other form? Digital form? And how could such alternative digital spaces be visualized when we look at them through the filter of the human condition? Further, if we enter a digital space which exists only in the information age, do we become less human?

This bridge between religion and philosophy within the context of ecosophical – as opposed to ecocritical – thinking is at the heart of my visual exploration of otherness. The dominant physical infrastructure and prevalent, but juxtaposing, digital connectivity in Japan offer an avenue for photographic exploration of otherness outside of the Western media filter.

Returning then to the Japanese aesthetic, an exploration of the universal divine animation in Japanese photography would have to take as its starting point the development of the Japanese aesthetic, in particular the Japanese culture of visualization. With ‘The Splashed Ink Landscape’ (1495), Sesshū Tōyō expressed an abstraction of nature some 300-400 years before the advent of abstraction of landscape art in the west, whilst consideration of the Japanese reading of art from right to left will reveal to the uninitiated western eye insights into the semiotics of the imagery. In reading Hokusai’s The Great Wave off Kanugawa from right to left (Fig. 1, also know as Under the Wave off Kanagawa, Rijksmuseum n.d.), the western interpretation of the immensity of nature’s energy is revealed in Japanese culture as the immensity of life’s challenges (The Art of Japanese Life: Nature, 2017).

Fig. 1 Katsushika Hokusai, 1829-1833. Under the Wave off Kanagawa [25.4 cm x 37.5 cm, colour woodcut print on paper] (Rijksmuseum, Acquisition 1956)

This reverence for the immensity of nature in the Japanese aesthetic is balanced by a cultural fascination for the fleeting. The cherry blossom, Prunus Cerelatta, is an example of this. The national, and now global, celebration of this delicately petalled tree flower disguises the cultural melancholy that the most beautiful things dazzle for such a short time, the human condition amongst them. As Fox states, the cherry blossom is to the Japanese “a reminder that our lives also are painfully brief” (idem). The brevity of the cherry blossom offers an interesting parallel to the potential brevity of a life in the datasphere.

It is the duality of this Japanese fascination with the fleeting, combined with a cultural drive to control nature, the outcome of which is no better represented than in the Fukushima disaster, that makes consideration of otherness through a Japanese perspective central to my work on visualizing other forms of existence in the information age.

In his consideration of the art of Japanese life Fox reflects that “in Japan nature is ignored at one’s peril” (The Art of Japanese Life: Nature, 2017). That we should ignore our own ‘nature’ through dissolution of the human condition to a digital existence is surely perilous and worthy of dialogue, visual dialogue included.

Sources

Rijksmuseum (n.d.) Under the Wave off Kanagawa. [Online]: http://hdl.handle.net/10934/RM0001.COLLECT.45735. Available at https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/collection/RP-P-1956-733 [Accessed 9 February 2019]

The Art of Japanese Life: Nature (2017) BBC World, 19 January 2019. 10:10 CET. Part 1 of a series produced and directed by Ben Harding. BBC Studios, Pacific Quay Productions, Scotland.

Tinnell, J. C. (2012), Transversalising the Ecological Turn: Four Components of Félix Guattari’s Ecosophical Perspective, Edinburgh University Press, Deleuze Studies, 6.3 (2012): 357-388

University of Cambridge (2019) People: Dr James Fox MA (Cantab), MPhil, PhD. [Online] Available at https://www.hoart.cam.ac.uk/people/jf283@cam.ac.uk [Accessed 31 January 2019]

07.02.19 > I Am Here

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In photographic intent I endeavor to reach an embodiment of otherness.

In purpose, I try – more often than not failing – to convey no message, only asking for consideration of different perspectives on the societal themes I explore. It starts with the viewer listening to the dialogue in the image, a simple invitation to join in. My images are boundaries between different points of view. They are visualizations that accommodate differing information spaces, each of these spaces a different existence. Visually I try to speak of ‘grace’, through a gaze of acceptance that strives to free itself from judgment, power and exploitation. But neither my thoughts nor my images are ever free of these burdens. The mask of acceptance that I wear creates an acknowledgment of difference. An apparent objectivity exists only in the presence of its companion subjectivity.

Fig. 1 Gordon Sutherland, 2018, Untitled Work in Progress. [Unpublished Digital Infra-red Photograph IR 590]

There’s no hiding from the fact, my images are grounded in the Dusseldorf School of Bernd and Hilla Becher. In approach and construction they are documentary photographs, a form of preservation photography. Everything that can be seen was there, even if my interpretation of ‘the instant’ is in itself a question: how long is an instant?

In the above image of More London (Foster & Partners) – from an unpublished mini series realized over one morning in summer 2018 – my intent was to visualise the dialogue between nature and the built environment in the context of global capitalism (Fig.1). The subject matter, perspective and compositional elements of the image release it from the power struggle between nature and capitalist development, although the overall series has a more dystopian, linear narrative on exploitation of resources in a non-circular economy. This image emerges, naturally, at the mid-point of the narrative.

I work at the crossover between architectural photography, social documentary and fine-art photography exploring buildings and infrastructure as an art-motif for awakening social conscience. My approach is influenced by many photographers, however the two most influential are James Welling, in particular his use of colour theory in the series Glass House, and Hélène Binet, from her embodiment of religious – arguably masonic – and cosmic motifs and references in her photographic oeuvre. The resonance of these works on my personal, indoctrinated world views emerges throughout my photographic practice, much of which is highly autobiographical.

Fig. 2 Gordon Sutherland, 2018, Untitled Work in Progress, 2018 [Unpublished Digital Infra-red Photograph IR 590]

In an unpublished mini series of images taken over one afternoon in the National Theatre, London, my intent was to ask the viewer to question the intent of the – in this case brutalist – architecture. By considering the interplay between the weight of the construction material and the diffusion of light into ‘spaces’ encumbered by inertia I ultimately explore greater themes: how theatrical work can pose questions around prevailing cultural norms. In this image at the entrance to the theatre, ‘lightness’ and ‘heaviness’ are given equal space within the image, the concrete pillar almost floating between the two (Fig.2). For the viewer who is interested, both in the architecture itself and in its photographic representation, there emerges an intentional dialogue on the role of theatre in balancing the forces at play within a cultural hegemony. The series is conceived as a linear narrative, in the tradition of architectural photography traceable from the current day to Frederick H. Evans body of work in the late 19^th Century.

Fig. 3 Gordon Sutherland, 2018, Agora Simone Veil & the Willy Brandt Building, European Parliament Complex, Brussels. [Unpublished Digital Blended Spectra Photograph]

In the unpublished series this time I’m voting I carried out a photographic enquiry of the interplay between architecture, surveillance and technology in the public space of the European Parliament Complex in Brussels, Belgium. The series informs my final major project with working title ‘The Digital Divide’ which interrogates the human condition in face of the information age, in particular the concept of digital existence within smart cities. The image of the central square of the European Parliament Complex in Brussels (Fig.3) explores the power play between institutions, media, surveillance and the individual. The objective stance belies the photographic intent of the image which depicts the possibility of a dystopian future in which people constitute controlled and surveyed media in the public space. As such the image veers towards monologue than dialogue and, as the rest of the series, is a departure from my normal photographic practice.

Fig. 4 Gordon Sutherland, 2017, Braigh Craobhach [75 x 50 cm (30 x 20 in.) fine-art giclée inkjet pigment print] (Private Collection, Athens)

From the series Another Path (Sutherland 2017) the image Braigh Craobhach (Fig.4) is distinctly representative of my photographic intent. Using acrylic filters and photographic gels in the naturally occurring colours of the Inner Hebrides in Scotland, combined with long exposure photography, I aimed to deconstruct the processes of encroachment in the villages of the Highland clearances. The series has a linear narrative which develops according to the extent of the encroachment.

GS07 IRR-2018-009-1080 Knightswood Flats

Fig. 5 Gordon Sutherland, 2018, Knightswood Flats, Glasgow [60 x 90 cm (23.6 x 35.4 in.) fine-art giclée inkjet pigment print] (Private Collection, Brussels)

From the series Looking for Daylight (Sutherland 2018) the image Knightswood Flats, Glasgow (Fig.5), is typical of my photographic intent as an invitation to dialogue. In this case a discussion into the relationship between people, the built environment, modern day infrastructure, and the natural environment. The objective stance in the image belies the message given by the compositional elements and their relative placing within the image. The series Looking for Daylight can be read either as a linear narrative depicting the history of architecture in Glasgow, or seen in their post modern non-linear narrative they constitute photographic plates to illustrate the science fiction novel Lanark: A Life in Four Books by Alasdair Gray, and the two cities of Glasgow and Unthank in which it is set.

The photographic journey to here has been a development of self-expression coupled with a conviction for dialogue and acceptance without judgment. My most recent project, this time I’m voting, constituted a visible departure from that intent, with less subtle messaging. At any rate, the cultural and personal context cannot be entirely separated unless the photographer is a machine – and even that is open to debate. The image, or the photographer, remains a burden. The one does not escape the other.

The exploration of my visual voice continues through extension of Guattarian philosophy at today’s confluence of the environmental crisis and the information age. By exploring critical contextual theory and contemporary visual culture I am preparing for the next stage in informing my degree major project through exploration of surveillance and data flows in digitally connected cultures.

This exploration emerges ahead of a photography project this coming summer in Tokyo as part of the Surfaces and Strategies module.

For this reason my starting point for exploration of context and visual culture is art and religion in Japan, building on the perspectives and photographic practice already explored from my very own, personal western perspective.

Sources:

Sutherland, G. (2017) Another Path. [Online] Available at http://www.irrationalangle.com/another-path/ [Accessed 7 February 2019]

Sutherland, G. (2018) Looking for Daylight. [Online] Available at http://www.irrationalangle.com/looking-for-daylight/ [Accessed 7 February 2019]

18.10.18 > We’re all in it

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Fig. 1 Herbert List, 1937. Santorin 1937. [36.3 x 26.0 cm (14 5/16 x 10 1/4 in.), Gelatin Silver Print]

We’re all in it, We’re all in it and we, We’re all in it and we close our eyes

It enfolds, The salt, the spray, the gorgeous undertow, Always, always, always the sea, Brilliantine mortality

Close our eyes, Close our eyes, We’re all in it and we close our eyes

from

Coastguard (British Sea Power 2013)

By 1936 Herbert List had been forced to leave Germany due to the political situation (Bieger-Thielemann 2001: 396) and in the greater cultural context of 1937 fascism was taking its hold across much of the European continent. The cultural context of the time constitutes the backdrop for exploration of List’s image on many levels, whether in terms of the European continent in the greater world, in terms of impending unsettled times, or in personal terms for the photographer.

Two worlds are revealed, the goldfish bowl and the sea, otherwise the microcosm and the macrocosm. The apparent freedom experienced by the viewer contrasts with restricted environment of the fish, the large fish in the small bowl commands its small world, the still waters in the bowl are a counterpoint to the choppy seas.

From a formal analysis the viewers response is found in the play between the symmetry and asymmetry, the straight lines of the wall and the curved lines of the bowl, the smoothness and the roughness, the hardness and softness, the light and dark, that permeate the image.

The fragility of the goldfish’s small world, and the play between the apparent safety of the bowl versus the dangers of freedom in the larger world, provide a sublime tension in an otherwise culturally approachable image.

Sources

Bieger-Thielemann, M. (2001) Herbert List in 20^th Century Photography – Museum Ludwig Cologne. Cologne: Taschen. ISBN-3-8228-5867-6.

BRITISH SEA POWER, 2013. Coastguard. In: From the sea to the land beyond [Vinyl]. RTTRDLP679. Rough Trade Records.

The Metropolitan Museum (2018) Goldfish Bowl, Santorini, Greece. http://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/265321 [Accessed 16 October 2018]

Gordon Sutherland – Photography Research Journal

Critical Theory and Photographic Practice

Category Archives: Surroundings

31.03.19 > Annotation #1 On using buildings as art-motif to awaken social conscience to societal injustice

25.02.19 > In a way that is eternal

14.02.19 > Becoming Other

07.02.19 > I Am Here

18.10.18 > We’re all in it