Still searching for the elephant

I was doing a lot of thinking over the weekend to find a suitable project for the elephant project: a project that combines an interesting topic (i.e. for me) with the learning experience that I am looking for (to hone and push further my visual aesthetics).

I ended up looking into autism. This is a topic that interests me a lot but which I have dismissed as doing for my main project for various reasons. I found out so far that there is a school for autistic children in the Elephant area (Tim Jewel Unit for Children with Autism) and a privately run play club for autistic children. The main task will now be to get access and get a family interested that is affected by autism to work with me for a few weeks. Not an easy talks given the sensitivity in this country about photographing children. But I will try to get access.

I was also looking at Eugene Richards’ work on autism over the weekend (which is on the VII website). It is almost intimidating how masterly Richards has done this project. I just love his work! I love the way he has approached the subject, his visual aesthetics he has used (he has also shot the project in colour, which I like a lot) and the sensitivity and empathy for his subjects that emanates from his images. He is just remarkable and one of the greatest photojournalist of all time for me.

I had some other, more wacky ideas for the elephant project as well. For example, one could install a pinhole camera with an ultra long exposure time (say weeks or months) on the top of the media block at the school and get images that truly document the long-term changes in the Elephant area.

Or one could define the ‘street’ as the ultimate community of the Elephant area and do a project on street photography. I noticed for example that on Friday afternoon the whole area was engulfed in beautiful light.

One other idea I had was to collect photographs from residents of the Heygate Estate and use these photographs to speak for the community instead of taking images ourselves. That way one could also tie in the Heygate community into our project which on a meta level reinforces the ‘community’ idea.

Walk around Heygate

This photograph nicely sums up my feelings today after having wandered around the Heygate Estate with Claudia and Jackie for half a day. We were trying to find an angle into a community, which we could then photograph and develop our stories from. We spoke to some of the residents (all very camera shy) and tried to speak to the housing association and scribbled down some notes on opening times of churches, gyms, surgeries, an enterprise start-up organisation and some other organisations. This day left me utterly confused and clueless as to what I should photograph with respect to the elephant project. I am not so sure anymore that it was a good idea to change plans and try to do a community based project. Have to do some serious thinking over the weekend.

Well, at least we had a nice lunch at the Heygate café…

Change of plans

I left the tutorial with Paul quite pleased today in relation to the feedback I got on my term one assignment. But he did not want me to photograph the London Park Hotel with a large format camera as my elephant project assignment. He suggested that I push myself further in terms of my visual aesthetics of the Leica reportage style, also as a training ground for my major project. (We also discussed my major project ideas, which I will discuss in a later blog.) He suggested that I work with a community/family based in the elephant area and further develop my style and visual voice.

I am sure that he is right and I take his advice but that also means that I have to find a family, community or the like that let’s me achieve that. Quite a U-turn from what I had in mind. Not an easy task. And it also means stepping out of my comfort zone again.

Well, I wanted to be pushed and challenged. Tomorrow I am meeting with Claudia and Jackie and we will knock on a few doors around the Elephant area…

Raison d’être

Today, Paul gave us a very interesting and thought provoking lecture on the ethics of photojournalism. Not so much on the ethics on how to behave ethically as a photojournalist, more on why we are doing what we are doing as photojournalists or documentary photographers. What is the raison d’être of what hoards of previous and active photojournalists are doing? This essentially touches on why am I aspiring to become a documentary photographer? What is my very personal motivation? What drives me to become a documentary photographer? I actually had given this topic a lot of thought before and thought about my motives long and hard before embarking on this course, so I think I have an answer to this question.

But allow me a short digression. At the outset it is interesting to note that a photojournalist/ documentary photographer is in an apparent need to justify her or his existence. Why is that the case? Nobody asks an investment banker why she/he is doing what she/he is doing. At least I was hardly asked this question. People assume it is for the money and the thrill, or for the ego, or for all three of these reasons. And people accept this without penetrating too much. And people assume that people clean floors, stock food in shelves, build cars in factories, or prepare tax returns to make a living and don’t question the motives either of those carrying out these professions. I don’t have the final answer to this question but I assume that since photography is essentially a voyeuristic activity and an activity that often intrudes in other people’s lives, that people would want to know the motives of those photographing.

And obviously there are plenty of altruistic reasons put forward by the likes of James Nachtwey, Sebastiao Salgado or Marcus Bleasdale of why they are photographing wars, famines and exploited miners: to record and document situations that they want to have changed or at the very least brought to the attention of a broader public. They are advocates and they take sides and they essentially want to effect change. There is also the motive of creating evidence and bearing witness to a situation or abuse, with the hope to be able to prosecute and hold accountable those who commit war crimes and genocide – at least post the fact.

I have probably a much simpler reason of why I would like to become a documentary photographer: photography is a medium or a tool for me to explore the world. It is about learning, personal growth and an excuse to participate in situations and to gain access to situations/people’s lives I would otherwise have no access to. Or at least have no reason to want to participate in other people’s lives. At the end of the day, it is about getting a better understanding of this increasingly complex world. And – as surprising as it may sound for you - in that, I am not too far off the motivation that attracted me to my previous job as an investment banker.

Photographing Joao

Yesterday I was photographing a friend of mine, Joao. He needed some portraits for an application for a role in a movie. Here is what I got out of him:

Heygate Estate

Well, today was ‘research day’ into the elephant project. And what better way to do research than a good walk around the area? After having cycled around the Elephant & Castle area for a while, I honed in on the Heygate Estate and climbed up all the way to floor 11. I even had a chance to talk to two residents. They have been given two years’ notice to move out. Naturally they are worried about finding accommodation, which is as cheap as the one they are living in at the moment, however run down the estate is. They confirmed that about half of the estate is already empty and that a few crack factories have moved in as a result.

















At one end of the estate is the United Reformed Church (New Kent Road), which I assume will have to move to new premises as well once the estate will be demolished. Well, today was a start to understand the social fabric of the area. I still would like to focus my project on the London Park Hotel, if I can get access.

A million little pieces

I found this image at Euston Square yesterday and it seems metaphorically to sum up the current state of my life:

A million little pieces

The Young Man came to the Old Man seeking counsel.
I broke something, Old Man.
How badly is it broken?
It’s in a million little pieces.
I’m afraid I cannot help you.
Why?
There is nothing you can do.
Why?
It can’t be fixed.
Why?
It is broken beyond repair. It’s in a million little pieces.

(Adapted from 'A million little pieces' by James Frey)

Return of communism...

No, this is not Berlin! These images have been taken today in London, in fact in the space of a few minutes. What is going on? Is communism staging a revival in London?

Start of Term 2

Well, the new term (term 2) has now in full swing. And our major project this term will be for all of us students to document the urban redevelopment project which is underway at Elephant & Castle where the college is based. Essentially, the regeneration project aims to dismantle the Heygate housing estate, as well as the Elephant & Castle shopping centre.

LCC aims to document this project on a long-term basis and our class will be the third generation of photojournalists and documentary photographers to archive and photograph this urban regeneration project. The overriding theme this year is ‘community’.

After I have seen that a hotel (London Park Hotel) will be included in the project, my initial thoughts were to photograph the abandoned hotel. After all I have spent a good part of my life in hotels. And hotels are about ‘communities’ and communities leave some sort of traces behind. And this community is vanishing since the hotel will be demolished quite soon. After my last project, which was a more people-based reportage project I would also like to undertake a project that is devoid of people. I would also like to use a larger format (a medium format or even large format camera) for this project to get the extra quality and detail necessary for such a project. At the end of the day, this is also about experimenting and learning.

The more I think about this and structure my thoughts, the more I am getting excited about this project. I will do some more in-depth research this weekend and have a good walk around the area to come up with a more cogent project proposal.

Happy Birthday, Ben

Abney Cemetery Park

London showed the promise of summer today. It was a beautiful, sunny day, so I jumped on my bicycle and explored the East of London.











I rode along the Hackney canal and somehow ended up at Abney Park cemetery, a seemingly abandoned cemetery in the midst of Hackney. Most of the graves are from the 1930s and I couldn’t find any grave later than the 1970s. This cemetery is a real treasure island for a documentary photographer. I definitely have to return with a proper camera.

VII Seminar (part 2)

What I expected – or hoped for – the second day of the VII seminar was equally stimulating and exciting, culminating in a very moving slideshow by James Nachtwey at the end of the seminar. Nachtwey’s presentation was actually held before, here is the link.

My main take-away today – apart from having seen really inspiring work from great photographers – was the emergence of multimedia as the de rigueur for presenting still images. What was somewhat comforting for me is the fact that all of these fine photographers (which I consider to be the bellwethers of the photojournalism industry) were still experimenting with the right format. While some of them ‘just’ added a (more or less suitable) music track to their slideshow, others were more daring such as Eugene Richards filming his contact sheets and adding voice-overs or Christopher Morris filming a short clip about Bush. Seeing this, I did not feel as backward for dabbling in my own multimedia efforts. But as I said really inspiring in many, many ways. My head is spinning and I am exhausted.

VII Seminar in London

Back in London, after more than a month away… Felt familiar and strange at the same time. Well, from Monday, my second term commences…

More importantly, I went to the VII seminar today, which takes place here in London over two days. It is more or less a showcase for the work of the VII photographers with some discussions with panellists thrown in. The VII agency consists of some of the finest photojournalists around and in that alone makes for a truly inspiring two days seminar.

John Morris as the guest speaker held the opening speech and made some pretty unequivocal comments about the lack of justification of Bush’s war on terror, differentiating it only in scale with terrorism itself, suggesting that Iraq should be returned to its rightful owners – the Iraqi people. John made also clear that he is neither pro-Palestinian nor pro-Israeli but a conscientious opponent of war per se. He commented on the general failure of photojournalism to prevent wars, attributing it to the fact that while most photojournalist cover wars, they fail to document the aftermath properly.

In fact, the two most discussed and commented on topics were the power of - or lack thereof – images as change agents and the (regretful) state of the photojournalism industry and the dearth of (paid for) outlets for photojournalistic work. Ron Haviv made some interesting comments on the first subject, suggesting that while images might not have the power to change the plight of people and stop wars immediately, they create visual evidence for transgressions and crimes and can serve to hold people accountable.

Aidan Sullivan of Getty Images made some interesting comments on the topic of the ‘value’ of the image in saying that the visual image, in all of its forms, has never been so important or relevant in our society and culture, arguably replacing the written word as the primary vehicle of communication. The question today is one of delivery: traditional print media are drying out and new forms such as the internet, podcasts, billboards, etc. emerge.

Finally one of my favourite photographers, Eugene Richards, presented some of his old and new work, some of which – surprisingly for him – is in colour. I look forward to his book on his colour work on abandoned houses, which will come out next year. The preview he has given us today was startling. And, of course, I look very much forward to another day of inspiring presentations when the seminar continues tomorrow.

Untitled

Einsamkeit

It is close to Good Friday and I will be off for the Easter weekend. This is one of my favourite poems by Rainer Maria Rilke. Somehow I find it appropriate to post it today.

Einsamkeit

Die Einsamkeit ist wie ein Regen.
Sie steigt vom Meer den Abenden entgegen;
Von Ebenen, die fern sind und entlegen,
geht sie zum Himmel, der sie immer hat.
Und erst vom Himmel fällt sie auf die Stadt.

Regnet hernieder in den Zwitterstunden,
wenn sich nach Morgen wenden alle Gassen
und wenn die Leiber, welche nichts gefunden,
enttäuscht und traurig von einander lassen;
und wenn die Menschen, die einander hassen,
in einem Bett zusammen schlafen müssen:

dann geht die Einsamkeit mit den Flüssen…


(Rainer Maria Rilke aus dem Buch der Bilder 1. Buch, 2. Teil)

The photographer as propagandist

Finally, after four to five days of intensive editing of images and sound, I have managed to complete the final slideshow of the story about Peter and Frans. Here is the link.

I have learned to use a software tool called ‘Soundslides’ to put this slideshow together. Really a neat and easy to use tool - and inexpensive too. It essentially creates a flash file from your slideshow, which then can then be embedded on a website.

But coming back to the story itself. I think that the story is a very positive story and I have experienced it as such. I am convinced that Peter and Frans will become two committed and loving parents and I really admire their courage to become parents. And that is exactly what I wanted the story to show and tell. In that sense, I am a propagandist and using photography – or a multimedia piece for that matter – as an educational piece. This brings me back to a lecture we had last term with Tom Hunter who bluntly stated that all his photography is ‘propaganda’, i.e. he takes a stance and point of view in his stories.

And in a small way I have succeeded already. Johanna, the seven-year-old daughter of surrogate mother Elizabeth has presented some of the images I have taken during the course of this project and shown them at her school in Akron to educate her fellow pupils what a surrogate mother does. I was really moved when I learned about this.