Magnum Homework

At first I was ignorant I mistook Magnum as an agency/group of photographers who produced great photographs. After some research I learnt that agency was formed two years after the second world by Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, George Rodger and David "Chim" Seymour. These individuals who were apparently relieved to have survived the war and motivated by their curiosity to see what still existed. At this point I stopped skimming and decided I'd come back to the history after having a browse through pictures -Frankly, rewording the 'about Magnum' page bored me hugely.

After a look at Jonas Bendicksen's feature my ignorance began to drift as I developed an understanding for what Magnum really is.

Jonas Bendicksen, a Norwegian who's career started when he arrived by boat in a Russian port. Bendicksen then spent a further year in Russia following news stories around the former USSR.

The Former Russian Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. The superpower suppressed religion despite having an estimated total population of 293 million with 200 distinct ethnic groups. At the time, the third most populous nation after China!

I think Bendicksen and his career would have been thrown in right at the deep end in such a diverse and hostile environment. His work shows riots, poverty and the environmental injustice caused by Russian Government.

His work today is an extension from these same topics. Benndicken has been focused on Iceland's economic meltdown and the negative externalities of Government intervention. As the country struggles with economic booms and busts the Government's initiative aims to flatten this roller coaster turning to the country's plentiful supply of renewable energy.

I also looked at another photographer and his work; Paolo Pellegrin. This photographer is said to have an artistic eye for his shots and has the ability to incorporate distinct, diverse themes and subjects within his work. His feature on the magnum website, 'Shares slide on wall street' appealed to one of my personal interests and linked to my other AS subjects - economics.

Pellegrin showed behind the scenes at Wall Street and other New York economic land marks. Terrified professionals deal with what some analysts claim to be the worst economic climate for 26 years. He showed current affairs which we read and hear about everyday, but effectively in images.

This reiterated the point that with strong images a story can be told. It also told me that the story didn't necessarily need to be put in chronological order or directly told to the audience. Take pictures of what's there, manipulate them to the theme and then leave the rest to interpretation - the only way to measure success of a photographic essay?

After researching these two phototograhers I revisited the 'about magnum' page. The words suddenly meant something as I already knew myself that magnum is a cooperative of people. Photographers. Who's curiosity and opinions have lead to diverse and inspiring work.

Overdue Deadline

Up to this point I havn't been entirely sure exactly what I was going to do for my assessment, I knew what I was saying but was it good enough and could I present it?

Now I am confident. I have several peices of lightly manipulated work which fit to my theme. Multiple photo montages and lots of work which hasn't been manipulated and won't be since it is unnecessary to spoil the natural shots.

This term I haven't managed to work to the deadline. The fact that other class members haven't either is no excuse but does indicate that some of the factors contributing to this delay have been beyond our control.

For homework I have researched the magnum photo agency - more in another post. A very influential photographer was Jonas Bendiksen. Admittedly lots of my work was complete by the time I researched Jonas but his work overemphasized the fact it was possible to mix unedited work with manipulated work to tell a story.

Never the less the work is almost done. I need to complete my written work, print and mount my images and then I will be ready for assessment - only two weeks after the deadline!

Collected Shots

Whitstable was somewhat how I expected it. I expected to see more and be able to get a wider variety of shots. Used to shooting on the beach in the summer this cold, out of season town came somewhat as a surprise.

When we think about out of season holiday towns, typically we would think of closed Ice Cream Parlours, closed guest houses and a general absence of people as locals sit at home in front of the fire to escape until the 'emmits' return.

But that isn't exactly what I saw. This place is commutable from Central London, as I expected the rich kids in their fast cars did have a part to play in this out of season, and somewhat desolate town. Holiday homes, chain bars, weekend cottages and modern architecture was all built into the coastal line but why? How did this make the locals feel? How would I feel if I grew up in little Whistable and this happened? Would I get rich one day and suddenly take my flash sports car, park it by the beech so I could leisurely sit sipping champagne and eating oysters?

Whitstable

Tommorrow we will be vi sting Whitstable to take photos for our next assessment. One of my my aims for this project is to work to a brief, we need to develop a theme and portray that in our photographic essay.

So what's my theme? Well Whiststable appears to be a working class seaside town in North Kent. We're going there so I suspect it is an easy commute from London, I wouldn't be surprised if there are weekend homes and a few appealing bars and restaurants.

I might try to keep my theme simple. Maybe shoot natural forms along the coastal walks and see if it's possible to capture any shots of wildlife. We'll see when I get there.

Man Ray

Out of the photographers I have looked at in this project Man Ray's pin whole work inspired me the least.






From what I can see he appears to be somewhat of a surrealist, I havn't managed to link any of his work to mine.





Man Ray's pin hole work seems to be quite typical, the sort of basic shot which is being produced in our lessons. What was inspiring about the others photographers was their effort to change the norms of pin hole prints adding some demension to their work.





Man Ray appears to have an outstanding reputation for his fashion and portrait photography. He seems to be much more of an artist than just a photographer. He has produced work with much more meaning which I imagine would be quite expiring in other projects.



From my research I have found that Man Ray seems to be one of the most experimental photographers of the era. His work now considered historical would have been a whole new concept during his era. Man Ray did indeed distort and manipulate standard techniqes and stepped away from typical forwards portrait shots.
However with more photographers taking up Pin Hole photography much more recetnely I think that without investigation I was lead to belive Man Ray's work could be disregarded as historical and frankly somewhat borning.

Jeff Fletcher

Jeff Fletcher's work is evidently unique from the other artists I have been exploring.

The picture shown on the right from http://www.pinholeresource.com shows some of Fletcher's work. What's intresting is the way Flecther exibits his pin hole work. Here we can see that Flecther has used egg shells which have been wiped with a photo sensitive laquer in order to achieve prints on the inside of egg shells. Abstract alone I find the the way that Flectcher positions his work bag into an egg box and then exibits a black and white photograph much more intresting than a 2d print.

Justin Qinnell

Justin Quinnell creates very abstract images through his use of pin hole photography.

His ideas seem to be summed up by a statement he made "The Taj Mahal taken by a fat tourist with Diarrhoea and a point and shoot camera can be the flattest, dullest".

I like Justin's work it shows how pinhole photography can be exciting and different and he has used it to make typical boring photographs come to life with his abstract and different techniques. Example from http://www.pinholephotography.org/ shown left.

Wolf Howard

Wolf Howard seems to be a pin hole photography expert.

The work exibited on Howard's website seems to be somewhat selective and stick to a certain theme. He has exibited shots of older items, which look like artifacts of war time. I imagine this is because the old effect cast over pin hole shots matches best with objects associated with those times.

He said "There is something special about a pinhole camera. There is a beauty in its simplicity and rawness that technology has not been able to better.". I understand this statement, I like his work.

The photo pictured left, courtosey of www.stuckism.com shows a somewhat simple picture taken with a pin hole camera. I find the process of producing prints with a pinhole frustrating as I find it difficult to achieve good, clear shots like this one.

But I envy Howard as he has mastered the art of pin hole photography with his purpose-built and very effective 4" x 4"pinhole camera. He has produced great shots which are arguably more exciting & simple than digital or film shots and his simplicity has inspired me to believe that maybe the importantance behind pin hole photography is the quality of simplicity, not neccessarily the objects in it. Coversley, is it not possible to turn modern day objects into shots with with a much more dated theme using a pin hole camera?

First Pictures

I've taken a few shots with the pinhole camera I have made. Its interesting to see the results but frustrating as a perfectionist. At least with digital the variables are identifiable and there is lots of information and inspiration for taking good shots for presentation.

But with a pinhole not only must timing be considered, its difficult to work out exactley what is in shot. There's also design flaws like size of the pinhole which are bound to effect the print, like the size of the whole... surely if the whole is bigger a wider beam of light will hit the paper will this effect focus, cause blur or an over exposed effect? If I had a smaller whole wouldn't that mean that I had a smaller, sharper image? But that would mean less light in a time period, does that mean I'd have to expose the media for longer?

There is so much to explore and frankly I don't think I have enough time to explore it all. Some of the prints I have now are ok, they can be identified and matched to the featured objects. Therefore I am not going to spend lots of time exploring the effect of the pin hole size, logically its self explanatory: The whole needs to be the size of a pin pierce.

The variable when taking shots with the pin hole seems to be the exposure time and the amount of light in the shot. For my presentation I will take several shots which have had different expose times... I'll present in a chronological order. And to make sure the presentation shows an fairly tested experiment I will take the shots at the same time of the day in the same place. Then I should be able to conclude with an idea how long exposure should be to create good prints. I also hope to be able to use the information to take some more good shots of other objects.

Pin Hole Cameras

The concept of a pin hole camera looks relatively simple.

I've done a little research (picture left is from wikipedia) and in addition to what Mr. Davies said the simplest designs are the best. Its just important that pin hole cameras don't allow any light in.

I will simply use a piece of black card to make two boxes bids of the same size. I'll then put a hole in once of the faces and mount paper to the inside of the opposite lid. So whats pictured is the same as what's shown in the picture above.

I predict that the difficultly will be in mastering the exposure time. I also suspect that we will have to expose the paper for a fair amount of time.. 10 secs or so... I assume to stop blurring the objects in shot must be still.

Project 2: Drawing with Light

My interpretation of my target for this assessment means I am to use my journal more, planning & evaluating in detail.

My journal is a neat, clean, bound book. I am going to blog as much of my journal work as possible since I think it will be more effective annotating and planning for work in digital format. But when I print it for my physical journal it's going to look undoubtedly neater than my scruffy writing.

The first thing we are going to be doing is making a pin hole camera. I am going to do is make a pin whole camera.