An Independent Stu

dy Project

CAPTURED

An Independent Stu

dy Project

CAPTURED Emily Salshutz

Fall 2012London

Abo

ut

Other than perhaps the tube, I do not think that there is a more universal experience in London than actually photographing the city itself—we all understand what it is to take a picture, yet we all have different ways of photographing and have different aims.

A comprehensive study of London’s historical relationship with travel and photography would be an illusory attempt. It would be impossible to do the subject justice. Instead, think of this work as the kind of book you could buy on your way out of a museum. This is a mere representation of what it is like to experience photography in London from my own perspective.

This project is inspired, in part, by being a visitor of London. A Londoner does not have the same anxiety over capturing their city like the visitor, who only has a limited amount of time to spend in the city. As a visitor, I found that it was fruitless to take idyllic shots of the landmarks in London among the crowds, the buses and sometimes even, the weather. Instead of giving up, rather I used the bits and bobs that could be seen as distracters as additional subjects within my photographs. What became a theme was how I was taking photographs of other people taking photographs, what I will call here, accidental metaphotographs. The following project includes some of those initial shots, the accidental ones in which I meant to photograph a location, but ended up capturing so much more.

Metaphotography is the practice of taking pictures in a way that is self-referential to either the photographer or the object of the camera itself. At its most basic incarnation, a metaphotograph typically contains the photographer, a camera, or any photographer in general within a shot. The metaphotograph is an introspective approach to photography. Alike travel as an introspective experience, I hope that these photographs create a parallel between photography as being an introspective experience as well.

In addition to a reflection of what I captured and what other people capture through their cameras in London this project was also an opportunity to cover a larger historical scope. Included within these pages is an abbreviated historical narrative of metaphotography, starting from the camera’s early conception and its relation to the gun, to the 21st century in which a growing population uses smartphones to capture images and share through social networks.

Never has photography been as accessible and ubiquitous as it is today, making unique shots rare and even more meaningful. As a result most of my pictures featured in this book have been taken with a digital camera, but have also been processed through a photography application on a Smartphone, driving home the interconnectedness of past technology and that of today. I hope to represent throughout this work London as a city to be captured, one that entices the visitor and even the local to make a visual memory of their moments here.

In order to understand photography in London I used the streets for fieldwork, but visited three key gallery spaces in London as a point of inspiration and comparison to my work. What I wanted to study was how other artists in the past and those of today look back at photography, and not just the images, but also the actual process of taking a photograph. Photographers capture and manipulate images of all sorts, but many also question and test the boundaries of the medium. These photographers and exhibitions have also been included in this book as they illuminate new ways to look at photography while harkening back to photography’s historical past. These galleries also provide a counterpoint between photography in the gallery space and photography you can personally create on the streets in the same city.

I was not the first to take a picture in London, and I sure won’t be the last.

Some History Behind Photography: The First Photograph and MetaphotographyThe oldest photograph that survives today (although it must be viewed in specific lighting conditions) is one taken by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce in 1826 with a camera obscura. The picture depicts an image taken outside of a window in Niépce’s home in France. It took eight hours of exposure time to produce this single image. If you look closely you can see it is a landscape shot of the outdoors, with buildings and trees.

The difficulty with finding an early metaphotograph is that it took so long to expose early photographs. One could not spontaneously take a picture. The process had to be completely staged. For portraitures it was common to have props and clamps available, so that the subject could be propped up to minimize movement and thus blur.

The metaphotograph is not a new concept, as indicated by the image taken in 1893. It depicts a photographer taking a picture of a man who is propped up by a clamp. This picture is considered a satire, making fun of the already outdated mode of the proped pose in photography. While perhaps not the first metaphotograph it is an early example. Another later example is Dziga Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera (1929) that documents the cameraman, instead of the photographer, but in a similar self-aware and self-reflexive way.

1893

1826

The reason why metaphotography is appealing is that it messes with notions of photographic subjectivity. Within photography, “the viewing subject is by definition an outsider, not represented within the picture itself, and so physically and perceptually removed from what he or she observes” (Hess 287). A picture of oneself reflected in a mirror or window puts both the photographer and the subject in one image. A picture of someone taking a picture is even more fascinating; there are now two images at play. There is the image of the person taking a photograph, but there is also that image that the person taking the photograph has taken.

One can view metaphotography like portraiture or street photography, but what is important is the way the metaphotograph makes the viewer cognizant of the medium that makes the image possible. It is the nature of the framed image itself that makes this apparent, “the frame of the image or, more accurately perhaps, the aperture of the lens, provides a stable boundary. At no point is the viewer able to forget the act of filming. There is a constant interplay between that which is within the view of the frame and that which lies beyond it” (Nead 86). The metaphotograph makes this point literal with the actual presence of the camera.

In the context of London, a metaphotograph has many meanings. The impetus to capture is engrained in the fallibility of our memory, but also in the strength of visual images to convey. We can look back to these images, or show these images to other people, and thus the camera comes with us. The photograph also allows us to come to grips with the temporality of our location—we can’t stand near and look up at Big Ben for forever, we must move on.

The camera has been a source of fascination since its invention, but I think it is important to capture why people are taking photographs in a certain area, and how they fit into the rest of what is going on at that moment. A photograph is a moment, but the decision to take a photograph at a specific time is an even more fascinating moment.

The

Photographers'Gallery

The camera and the gun have a long history—stemming in part from the early Marey camera gun. Marey’s camera even looked like a gun, but shot images in sequential order in order to capture motion. The camera and the gun share similar terminology—one loads a camera with film like one loads a gun with bullets, as well as how we shoot a gun like we shoot film with a camera.

An interesting attraction made available at fairs and carnivals after World War I was the photographic shooting gallery. One would line up and be handed a gun. The goal was to shoot with the gun at the target, and hit the target. If the shot was successful the shooter would be handed an image of themselves taking the shot. This was done through the placement of the camera above the shooter—ready to go off if the bullet hit the target. This plays on what is described by the exhibit as, “the thrill of being one’s own executioner” (Chéroux 9-10).

This relationship between photographer and shooter is explored within The Photographers’ Gallery exhibition, Shoot! Existential Photography. For two pounds, visitors are able to view countless series, including images taken from photographic shooting galleries, a video installation in which you are surrounded on all four sides by videos of shooting guns, as well as the opportunity to take your own picture from a makeshift photographic shooting gallery.

Like the camera turned on the camera in metaphotography, the gun turned on the camera is another intriguing mode to explore photography. Two examples from the exhibition that are quite compelling is the work of Jean-François Lecourt and Rudolf Steiner.

Lecourt’s artwork involves quite literally destroying the camera to produce an image. For the exhibition his artwork consisted of a series of self-portraiture in which he literally shot into the camera with a real gun. The impact of the shell pushing through the camera produces enough light to leave an impression on the light sensitive film. This produces a fractured image that evokes morbidly, a mortal relationship between ourselves and photography. Steiner’s photo series in the exhibition was entitled “Pictures of me, shooting myself into a picture”. Similarly to Lecourt, Steiner shoots into a pinhole camera to create an image. That hole lets light into the camera onto a photosensitive surface that captures the surrounding image. Each image reflects a scene, but Steiner himself is visible in each shot, with his gun held up exactly where the visible bullet whole, now just negative space, pierced through the camera.

Both never press a button to capture these images, but rather pull the trigger. The gun becomes an intriguing analogy to the camera, both that can be seen as representations of our mortality, but both producing mere representations of a more intentional act. Photography as performance, rather than photography as image.

The mark of the shooter is apparent in these images. Throughout my images, my presence is not as explicitly there. The only way you know someone else was present is through the fact that there is an image at all.

Rudolf Steiner

Rudolf Steiner

Jean-François Lecourt

Jean-François Lecourt

The Street Photographer: Capturing the city and the people in London and Around the WorldWithout advancements in camera technology the street photographer would not have been possible. Early use of the camera was limited to professionals that had and could afford to purchase all of the equipment. The camera itself was heavy and needed to rest on tripods due to long exposure times. This limited the transport and thus range of what could be photographed.

The 1880s and 1890s brought new advances in technology, changing the camera forever, “new photographic plates were developedthat were easier and faster to handle; exposure times were shorter; and cameras became smaller and lighter and could be held in the hangs rather than needing to be supported on a tripod” (Nead 65). It becomes almost a no brainer than the first photographs were of landscapes or portraits where people had to pose as if their portraits were being painted. These were subjects that were not dynamic, but rather stayed in place.

With greater mobility the photographer could walk on the streets snapping images never recorded before, that were even of better quality than ever before.

Advancements were also made in terms of photography for the amateur. With Kodak’s slogan, “You press the button, we do the rest”, the average person could own a camera, use it with very little knowledge of light and chemicals, and send their images away to be developed. “Photography was no longer a specialist practice; it was easy to use; and it was popular and accessible. More people than ever before could take photographs, and new subjects had been opened up to the photographic apparatus” (Nead 70).

With the increase in photography within social space there was new meaning to everyday. Anything and everything could be captured so that, “small, handheld cameras made streets alive to the possibility of being seen without knowing” (Nead 69). None of my subjects posed for my pictures, but rather were enwrapped in their own photographic process. This idea of photography as secrecy, that “the nature of this technology, therefore, was that it should be operated surreptitiously” (Nead 72) isintegral to metaphotography on the street. Most subjects of street photography never see their image, and most have no clue it was ever taken.

Photography went from formal to instantaneous, and it has not slowed down in development since.

TATE MODERNThough The Tate Modern houses a vast collection of unique pieces, the William Klein and Daido Moriyama exhibition was perhaps my favorite part of the museum, and perhaps from my entire trip to London. Bringing together the work of Klein and Moriyama, the exhibition makes interesting parallels between the two artists’ careers. Both explored street photography extensively and certain motifs run through their works, like Klein’s pictures of signage in New York and Moriyama’s in Japan. What was the most intriguing was the tension the exhibition built in Klein and Moriyama’s growing restlessness with the photographic medium—showing ways in which both explored other mediums, like film and graphic design, and even messed around with their own photographs and contact sheets.

The street photographer is not always an intrusive presence as is often viewed. While the photographer actively engages in their surrounding, the capture of an image can be discrete and swift. For Klein, this was not the aim of his photography, “Klein wanted the viewer to be aware of his own presence at the scene, jammed in amongst the crowds, confronting his subjects and provoking a response” (“William Klein”). The exhibition itself confronts the visitor, with images of all sizes by the prolific photographer. Klein took pictures of signage and people’s faces, mostly in New York. For Klein, New York was a city full of kinetic energy to be captured, even in his fashion editorials.

In terms of the manipulation of photography, Klein’s series “Contacts” is of particular interest. As a highly prolific artist, Klein looked back at his old contact sheets for new inspiration in this series. The Tate exhibits these works in the latter portion of the exhibition consisting of large blown up portions of his past negatives covered with bright colored enamel paint. According to Klein this series was, “the possibility of inventing a new kind of art object by marrying organically, not arbitrarily, painting and photography” (“William Klein”). The impact made by these works is one of introspection, looking back at ones work, but in a highly graphic way.

Moriyama had a similar connection to the city stating, “I can’t photograph anything without the city” (“Daido Moriyama: In Pictures”). Moriyama’s work is often cited as inspired by artists like Klein and Warhol. While he is most known for his image of the stray dog, his series “Farewell Photography” from 1972 was an attempt to create work that was not bound by meaning, but rather by using the medium of photography to invoke sensations, if you could ever recreate that of the moment the shutter is pressed. The images are, “dominated by blurs, grains and scratches, or dissolve into an abstract mass of grey. Other images are re-photographed, as if to emphasize their physical status as photographs rather than as glimpses of the real world” (“Daido Moriyama”).

While there is something strange about capturing images of people unaware that their photograph is even being taken, there is something equally strange about exhibiting photographs in a gallery space. While each have their own energy, the kinetic space of the city is unmatched by the often stoic and stark environment of the gallery. Klein and Moriyama’s work was not only disseminated through exhibition, but through the photo-book as well. Like how both searched for ways to manipulate their medium, the photo-book provided another way for them to exhibit differently.

This book itself is an attempt on my part to bring together and discuss art, but more importantly, the experience of viewing and making art in the same city.

TATE MODERN

William Klein

William Klein

Daido Moriyama

Daido Moriyama

Putting the Past and the Present in Dialoguewith One Another: The Digitalization of thePhotographer and the “Mobile” Photographer Photography was transformed by its increased mobility that led to the rise of street photography and the amateur photographer. The Polaroid camera was such a hit because of its mechanics to both shoot and produce the image—it was like magic, but more importantly it was empowering for the photographer who did not know much about the specifics of photography, the light and shutter speeds, or the chemicals in the dark room.

My use of “mobile” photographer is quite tongue and cheek here, referring to the physical ability of the photographer to move within space, but also to the technology of cellular phones that has progressed the photographer even further. People in London, alike other cities, are using cell phone cameras to capture as much as they use digital and film cameras.

via flickr

Today, technology is pushing our engagement with images even further. We not only shoot pictures, but we can process and distribute our images by ourselves on our devices. The iPhone is incredibly instrumental in this shift, but other devices have contributed to such shift as well. To put this in perspective, more images uploaded to the photography sharing website Flickr are taken on an iPhone camera, compared to any other camera (Cruz and Meyer 11). It is hard to debate the intuitive nature of the iPhone, making even the most untrained photographer decent. The iPhone is even smaller than the typical camera, including point and shoot cameras making it, “a more fluid practice, a playful relationship with the possibilities of the programs that changes completely the creation process and make possible that anything, anytime, could become subject of photography” (Cruz and Meyer 12).

While our means and scope of subject is immense, there are still legal and social limitations on what we can capture. Photography of embassy buildings, airports, theaters and most importantly for this project, museums, is for the most part strictly prohibited. This does not mean that photographs of these spaces do not exist.

While travel is an introspective process, the experience also becomes one of capturing images to recall memories or to show loved ones that, yes in fact you traveled. Increasingly people say, “Pics or it didn’t happen” as the image becomes a signifier of having been traveled, as, “‘being there’ is an insistent desire and topos of the travel discourse” (Burns 35). The desire to capture ones experience can be linked to early scientific research, of observations and recordings, but today is mostly of performing the role of the tourist as, “a continual process of exercising representational practices as part of the tour” (Burns 28).

The photograph as part of a larger socio-technical-tourism network becomes an object that is even more important, as the photograph is not just of personal significance, but is an object to show off. The image can be tweaked on devices and then uploaded to a variety of places: posted as albums on Flickr or Facebook, posted as a single image on Instagram or Twitter, emailed to friends and family back home, or posted to a blog on Wordpress, Blogger, or Tumblr. The photograph makes an experience as something that is to be seen. The metaphotograph captures the individual acting on these desires.

The National

GalleryFor the gallery’s temporary exhibition, “Seduced by Art: Photography Past and Present”, the space was divided among several rooms playing upon different themes that are present in both painting and photography. Rooms dedicated to tableaux, portraiture, figure studies, still life and landscapes contained everything from paintings, photographs, digital videos, and reproductions that fit such themes. The exhibition was kept dark, with dramatic lighting to draw attention to the works.

Throughout my travels a metaphotograph in the way I have understood them in my own series was rarely spotted. The drive to push photography as a medium or to manipulate photography in a way that referred back to the medium itself was ever present though. A basic photograph containing the apparatus itself was rare. It was in this exhibition, upon almost leaving, that I spotted a large photograph containing the emotions I felt within the chaos of people at, say, Buckingham Palace during the changing of the guards.

The photograph was taken by Luc Delahaye entitled The 132nd Meeting of the Conference. It captures at eyelevel OPEC delegates and the blurs of frantic journalists that are normally just behind the scenes. It is a mass recording of a moment that was shared by the dozens in the room, but yet, is still captured through the perspective of one. Here the metaphotograph becomes a means for Delahaye to create a composite out of disparate moving bodies and perspectives, “it allows the picture to exist” (Kingsley 52). This scene represents a mass impetus to capture that is quite necessary for the journalists as it is their job. While most cameras in that room are aiming for the perfect shot of the OPEC delegates for their individual publication, Delahaye takes a step back to capture what the event is really about. The kinetic and overwhelming nature of the experience is lost on the journalists, alike how we search for a perfect shot of a landmark without people, when in reality, those people are part of ones touristic experience.

In the space of the exhibition each doorframe into a different room framed another image from afar. This created an interesting effect that reminded me of the metaphotograph, in that you yourself were able to look at art from afar as others look at that same work of art from nearby. Along with Delahaye’s work, another struck my interest in the way it captures the viewer, which I play with as well in my series from London.

Featured in the exhibit was National Gallery 1, a photograph taken by Thomas Struth from his series featuring images taken at museums and galleries. Each photograph captures a work of art from a reputable museum, but also includes the surrounding scene featuring where the art was exhibited and the visitors looking at the artwork itself. This makes his artwork a literal picture within a picture made completely from spontaneity. Struth’s inspiration comes from how, “he sees art works as having become ‘mere fetish objects, like athletes or celebrities’…However, Struth seeks to work against this tendency. Consequently he does not isolate paintings in his photographs. Rather he presents spectators contemplating and therefore actively engaging with images in gallery spaces” (Imogen Cornwall-Jones). Here the artworks become secondary to the people engaging with the artworks. In the context of my own series, it is not necessarily the monument or building that is of interest to me, but the person taking that picture. Struth’s image and my images hope to actively engage the viewer in such a way that they acknowledge themselves as viewers.

The exhibition makes a point that all great works of art are known through reproduction. While there is historical reproduction through painting, today the photograph is perhaps the most ubiquitous form of reproduction (though a retweet could be considered up there as well soon). In a way it is exciting that we can still take as many pictures as we want of the same subjects that people have seen before, but the new images are still exciting and have their own resonance. The National Gallery smartly puts painting and photography in conversation with each other, rejecting the concept of photography as mindless reproduction, “if photography were a mechanical method, then it would lack consciousness, excluding the subjectively and intellect required for a work of art” (Kingsley 17).

Luc Delahaye

Thomas Struth

A photographer was more than a camera operator; it was the idea that made the photograph-Hope Kingsley

For me, photography is not about an attempt to create a two-dimensional work of art, but by taking photo after photo, I come closer to truth and reality at the very intersection of the fragmentary nature of the world and my own personal sense of time -Daido Moriyama

Every change in film history implies a change in its address to the spectator, and each period constructs its spectator in a new way -Tom Gunning

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There is something strange about caging the city into an exhibition. The white walls and the extreme lighting is nothing like the actual experience of being on the streets, but I have to admit the work always looks darn good up there. What I think is more important, and something that I learned this semester, is that it is not enough to just stand on the street and snap a picture, just cause. There has to be something behind that desire to take a photograph, and for me that desire had everything to do with tourism and history. It is an awareness of history that makes photography what it is. The photograph of today would not have become something so important without everything that has come before, without the developments in technology or experimentation. Without the historical past of photography, I would certainly not have been able to produce the images I have, in the specific manner I have. I guess I would have to say that for me, photography in London became similar to how I now view tourism.

Appreciate the past, but wonder about the new possibilities.

Bolitho, Simon. Daido Moriyama. London: Tate Design, 2012. Print.

Bolitho, Simon. William Klein. London: Tate Design, 2012. Print.

Burns, Karen. "Topographies of Tourism: "Documentary" Photography and "The Stones of Venice"" Assemblage 32 (1997): 22-44. Print.

Chéroux, Clément, Florian Ebner, and François Hébel. Shoot!: La Photographie Existentielle = Fotografie Existentiell = Existential Photography. Arles: Les Rencontres D'Arles, 2010. Print.

Cornwall-Jones, Imogen. "Thomas Struth National Gallery I, London 1989." Tate, Sept. 2001. Web. 29 Dec. 2012.

Cruz, Edgar Gómez, and Eric T. Meyer. "Creation and Control in the Photographic Process: IPhones and the Emerging Fifth Moment of Photography." Photographies 5 (2012): 1-16. Print.

"Daido Moriyama: In Pictures." Interview. Tate. Tate Modern, n.d. Web. <http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/william-klein-daido-moriyama>.

Hess, Scott. "William Wordsworth and Photographic Subjectivity." Nineteenth-Century Literature 63.3 (2008): 283-320. Print.

Kingsley, Hope, and Christopher Riopelle. Seduced by Art: Photography Past and Present. London: National Gallery, 2012. Print.

Nead, Lynda. "Animating the Everyday: London on Camera circa 1900." Journal of British Studies 43.1 (2004): 65-90. Print

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