Parachute

Welcome to the first edition of Parachute. The publication provides a unique opportunity for the graduates, staff and external partners of the BA (Hons) Photography programme at Stockport College to come together to share their work, views and thoughts on photog-raphy. Parachute aims to contribute to the discourse of photography in the UK and encourage the spirit of collaboration which is shared between the various stakeholders in photography education. The photography staff at Stockport College continues to promote this activity.

In the first of what we hope will be many editions of Parachute, we feature the work of some of our graduates who are now practicing writers and photographers and taking their first steps in the arts industry. What I hope emerges is the diversity of individual interests and approaches. What connects them, however,

Thanks to: Henry McGhie at the Manchester Museum, Ying at the Chinese Arts Centre, Lucy Brown, James Corazzo, Paul Brownless

Special thanks to: The Manchester Museum, Chinese Art Centre

Design by: Radomir Mikulas www.czechoslovakgrafikdesign.tumblr.com

Course details: www.stockport.ac.uk/content/ ba-honours-photography

Contact: [email protected]

INTRODUCTION

CREDITS

is a true appreciation of developing a coherent critical underpinning which is based upon a clear conceptual framework, something which Greg Leach expands upon in his text. I hope you agree that the work on show in this edition demonstrates the extraordinary power of the photographic image to commu-nicate complex ideas using a visual language which we all instinctively understand.

Finally, Parachute features our partners. We thank them as they continue to keep us grounded and focused on the challenges that commercial, social and arts–based organisations face. These collaborations lie at the heart of the BA (Hons) Photography course at Stockport College; we believe that, in the current economic climate, there has never been a better time to forge links with such organisations. We hope that you will be inspired to join us.

Paul Proctor Assistant Dean – Arts, Design & Media [email protected] 0161 958 3501

One of the most interesting aspects of dev-eloping exhibitions is the activities that are developed around them. There is a strong element of serendipity in this; whether this is because when developing large projects you see connections in everything or not, I’m not sure. Our link with Stockport College certainly feels to have come as a result of one of these chance meetings.

The whole thing began when Eleanor Mulhearn approached the museum around twelve months ago, to look at ways that Stockport College students could engage with heritage institutions. This initial discussion generated a range of possibilities: projects related to the ‘Living Worlds’ exhibition we were developing at the time, working with collections and with curatorial staff. I met with the final year BA Photography students to set them the task of working up their own responses to the themes of the gallery. This is a really nice way to work as it gives something for students to work with (or against)—but ultimately what they do is up to them, and is arguably also about them.

THE MANCHESTER MUSEUMI really enjoy working in this way as it helps us to expand our thinking on topics, as students challenge us to think about our own views and positions. This is one of the most interesting and dynamic things about university museums, as students force us to keep on our toes and to challenge ourselves. Apart from this collabora-tion, we had someone from the Commercial Photography Foundation Degree document the process of development of the gallery itself. Anyone who has worked on large projects will know that this rarely happens as everyone is too busy actually ‘doing it’, which can be very frustrating when you come to talk about the process of what you have done.

We have done some work with the foundation degree in TV Production, funded by HLF, which has produced fantastic results. Students have produced short films about people and their relationships with nature, inspired by rare and unusual objects from the museum’s collection. These films will be made accessible in the museum and the accompanying smart phone app (‘Living Worlds’, free for i–phone, i–pad, Android smartphone and tablet). This last year has seen some really exciting developments for us through the partnership with the College and this work continues to be very important for us. Long may it continue!

Henry McGhie Head of Collections and Curator of Zoology The Manchester Museum The University of Manchester

Karen Hewitt“To photograph is to appropriate the thing photographed. Just as the camera is a sublimation of the gun, to photograph someone is a sublimated murder.” Susan Sontag, On Photography. In an instant, the camera and the gun stop things dead. Ellipsis 1 explores the analogy between the camera and the gun through a combination of performance and representation; it also subverts the photographic image in order to explode the conventions of reportage and documentary photography. The work is born out of destruction. Each layered print is rendered unique by its shotgun punctures, highlighting the collision between the random and the controlled. The brutal rupture of the photograph’s normally pristine and continuous surface draws attention to the material presence and specific-ity of the photograph itself. The image becomes both subject and object, a three dimensional photographic sculpture.

07824 440787 [email protected]

ELLIPSIS 1

Photographs are penetrable materials with equally penetrable images encoded in their surface. In order to see what a photograph is of, we must first suppress our consciousness of what the photograph is in material terms. The very thing becomes the subject and object, blurring boundaries between reality and representation.

The history and nature of photography allows the viewer to think about objects, both as its subject matter and the physical photograph itself. The history of photography has embraced experimental approaches which have included negative prints, x–rays, direct contacting printing of objects placed on photographic plates, solarizartion, double exposures and composite pictures made by darkroom masking and photomontages. These processes contribute to the debate concerning the question of what photography is. How the object is represented in the image, the object itself and ultimately how we understand it.

By stitching, cutting, piercing and punching contemporary photographers have tested the materiality of their medium and explored the ambiguous space between 2 and 3 dimensions. As a result, their work goes beyond the photographed surface. By manipulating the surface area, the photographic plane reveals its texture and tactile quality, thus exploring photography as an object. In ‘Overpainted Photographs’ Gerhard Richter creates a tension between the texture of paint and seemingly traditional tourist photographs of Italy. By using the same image but different overpainting for each, a different analysis of each under-lying image is created, drawing the eye to different points in the image depending on the changes of the overpaint.

THE PHOTOGRAPHIC OBJECTWolfgang Tillmans’ series ‘Lighter’ is of flat planes of Pantone colour on photographic paper. The paper hangs on the wall, folded and creased, corners and edges askew. Tillmans questions what constitutes a photograph: can a photograph be a colour? Can colour be sculptural? As with most photographic objects, they evade definition on a flat surface, seeing the physical work is intrinsic to their purpose. With a real axe pinning a photograph of itself to the wall, Darren Harvey–Regan’s The Halt, sees hybridization of the conventions of photography and sculpture by entwining image and object. The work challenges the viewer to distinguish where representation ends and photography begins.

Similarly, there is the suggestion of violence in the work Ellipsis 1. Willful damage imposed on the print characterizes the work and creates a visual narrative. The reduced image of the deer becomes a signifier for all hunted animals. The destruction of an image is usually an unhappy event, a precious moment forever lost or spoilt. But this violent act, while seemingly perverse, acts as a prompt to open up the image to new possibilities allowing us to read it in other ways. The accompanying film sequence shows the performative nature of the work. Shot on film and printed in darkroom, every print is unique and can’t be replicated. The marks of shot are an uncontrollable collision of accident and intent.

Pointing the viewer to both subjects and interpretations by inference rather than by direct assertion emerges as an act of ellipsis in a work expressing a particular interest in image, language and allegory.

Karen Hewitt

Katie Peach“Every photograph is a certificate of presence.” Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida. In Absentia is a documentary project about the Manchester Museum and the people who work in it. The images function as portraits, although the human form is not present. The museum stores, preserves and displays many treasured objects. The permanence of this collection, which spans centuries, highlights the transient nature of the staff tasked to oversee it; for all their contributions to its upkeep and development, they are essentially custodians of an invaluable legacy. These ‘portraits’, which have been made in both personal and communal areas, illustrate the inevitable disappearance of those currently occupying the chairs, which will one day be filled by new personnel…


IN ABSENTIA

Lucy RogersBased on an ongoing interest in narrative and theatricality, Familiar Places focuses on memory, recognition and precognition. It explores the idea that the mind is always in search of what lies beyond the visible and the known. A physical space can transport us mentally, particularly one that is inhabited by the ‘ghosts’ of our past, or even our future. In such environ- ments the tangible world becomes liminal, inviting us into a space of imagination, memory and dream.


FAMILIAR PLACES

Alex KeepEverything is but mere clusters of atoms, explains atomist theory; matter is never created nor destroyed, it simply exists. Photo Synthesis contemplates notions of matter, existence and time. It depicts the lifecycle of a plant in a series of overlapping stages that simulate cell division. Trapped within a biosphere, each plant becomes a miniature ecosystem that is distorted by its entrapment, its human cultivation. Collectively, they are both beneficiaries and victims of a greenhouse effect. But is nature strong enough to keep adapting to this manipulation?


PHOTO SYNTHESIS

Richard HigginbottomThe word vivarium, when translated from its Latin origin, means ‘place of life’. These glass structures are used to contain live animals or plants in an attempt to simulate a natural environment. The species within can be observed for the purpose of study or research, allowing the outsider to peer into a world that is normally inaccessible. The non–specialist viewer becomes a ‘voyeur’ of the space, drawn into the tradi- tions of anthropomorphic storytelling in order to make sense of an alien world. This notion can be applied to the work here, which explores the underlying impact of nature on our psyche, a place where nature operates paradoxically as both haven and threat. The viewer is invited to engage in an inter- pretative process fuelled by the imagination.

07530 182933 [email protected] www.richardhigginbottom.com

VIVARIUM

Joanne QuinnHesterna Cena is a vision of nature as we rarely see it. It appears to depict a microscopic, bacterial world that is both beautiful and potentially threatening. In fact, these im-ages are creative evocations of that hidden world, intended to challenge the viewer’s perceptions of truth and authority as represented by institutions such as museums. Why do we trust what we see in such places? Is authenticity conferred purely through context and signification?


HESTERNA CENA

Petra StridfeldtWANT represents society as a collective identity, one shaped by our roles as consumers. Balanced against a backdrop of environmental concerns, these images comment on how, in a consumer society, we can easily become defined by our possessions. In their manufacture, these possessions draw on the planet’s finite resources. Influenced by Surrealism and Dadaist absurd-ity, these comically monstrous portraits violate reason, adopting the conventions of clinical objectivity whilst being diametrically opposite in their intention and effect. It is easy to see them as grotesques, but aren’t we all depicted here?

07771 991753 [email protected] www.stridfeldt.co.uk

WANT

I understand that the work was initially geared towards addressing global warming issues but later expanded into incorporating a dialogue of mass consumption and the effect that this has on the world…Yes, that’s true, the initial idea for the project was to create installations in the natural environment to show how the effects of over–consumption increase global warming, but as the humans’ behavior of denial became more interesting I decided to incorporate people in the images instead. Each image means to represent three key ideas: over–consumption, humans’ denial and my concern about the way in which the planet is developing.

Do you think that the fact that you are producing, what could be seen as ‘beautiful’ images could detract the attention of the viewer from understanding deeper issues related to over consumption and global warming.I don’t believe so as they may look ‘beautiful’ but at the same time they have a grotesque look to them. My aim when working on these portraits was to let the viewer to be thrown between a sort of admiration and guilt and conversely, allowing people to make their own interpretations on the work.

So do you think that by utilizing ‘beauty’ as a strategy the viewer can become indulged and grasp a clear understanding of the concept or concepts behind the work?My intention was not really to lecture the viewers about the environmental concerns as this method of scaremon-gering has been done endless times and as a result, people don’t seem to take much notice any longer. The intention of creating these portraits is to catch the viewers’ attention with its ‘beauty’ long enough to awake a curiosity about the subject matter.

The cleanness and neutrality of each photograph is another interesting feature that adds on to your work. They are very pleasing to look at but at the same time they have a very eerie feeling. Images such as the face wrapped up by a bag or the bandaged face metaphor-ically symbolize how we have been obstructed and distracted from observing reality and as a result we become very impulsive to over consuming goods etc. Can you explain a little more about the aesthetics behind the image production?I believe that the aesthetic approach of my project is very much influenced by my Scandinavian background where cleanness and neutrality are very apparent. Additionally, space, minimalism and light are also important compo-nents in my work. The covered faces are metaphor for humans’ denial, the way we choose not to see how our own laziness affects the planet. The portrait does not show individuals; instead it means to represent people who use consumption to generate a short moment of happiness for the expenses of the planet’s health.

So your strategy is to represent a self-portrait of us human beings?Yes, I believe that we all are depicted in them. I think by using a wittiness to represent the human stupidity I’m playing with the idea of bringing food for thought without being too negative.

Have you got any plans for continuing to produce more images based on this body of work? Or are you planning to produce a new series addressing new issues?Both really as I have a few more ideas for these portraits but also new ideas to show this subject matter which I intend to develop further.

Questions by Centrepoint Collective www.centrepointcollective.blogspot.com

INTERVIEW WITH PETRA STRIDFELDT

NEW WORK SECTION

Chris EcclestoneI have no real agenda, I just like making pictures. I am interested in how by putting a frame around even the simplest of facts, you change those facts. And I believe that a photograph should be more beautiful or interesting than the thing photographed. For me, the meanest and most common-place of subjects often offer up the most through photography. As a wiser man than me once said:

“This seems to me to be the most profound challenge—to try to say something interesting about the experience of the everyday that we all have, or feel we all have regard-less of specifics.”

07920 559050 [email protected] www.whynotbesilent.tumblr.com

Richard MulhearnIn discussion about an image digitally constructed ‘The Flooded Grave’, Jeff Wall uses the term ‘an imaginary ontology’. Wall was using this term to propose that the digital process opens up a different meaning, a change in the relationship between the photographic image and its origin. That by making an image from the imagination as something that occurs in reality, fundamentally changes the reading of the image. How this is changed is at the heart of my current work. “What I see has been here, in this place which extends between infinity and the subject (oper-ator or spectator); it has been here, and yet immediately separated; it has been absolutely, irrefutably present, and yet already deferred.” (Barthes)

The deferment has always been part of the process of making a photograph; the act of photography slices away fractions of the world into images (it has been here), and this has always been part of the amazement surrounding the photograph. So why is the digital composite different? The contingent unmediated moment is the issue. The link between being there in front of the object, or at that moment, and by ‘taking’ the photograph, you are removing the moment from the world, as a result making what John Szarkowski calls a ‘discreet parcel of time’. If, however the only place the ‘event’ takes place is in the image, a ‘reality’ is construct-ed, not taken, in the act of making a composite image, a ‘reality’ is made away from the world. By historical (and contemporary) definitions, this is not photography, it is an image made of photographs, an act of the individual’s imagination rather than an event (observed, or created) from the ‘real’ world, there is an image, but there is no parcel of time. In both images two separate indices are digitally composited, to form an apparent single moment.

[email protected] 958 3501

MELODRAMA SERIES

Let’s face it, critical theory is an acquired taste. In my experience as a lecturer, many students of photography regard engaging with it as marginally preferable to root–canal work. If semiotics is the topic of the day, dental surgery probably gets the nod (or at least that’s the excuse they use for their absence). This antipathy is based on the misconception that critical theory represents the flipside of creativity; that it involves the comprehension of arcane concepts that are intra- ctable and self–serving—a cerebral activity that seems far removed from their burgeoning interest in taking photographs. What perhaps they have yet to appreciate is that it is the mystery at the heart of the medium that has excited them in the first place, and that, rather than analyzing photography in dryly academic terms, photographic critical theory is in thrall to that mystery and can therefore be a source of inspiration, a ‘playground of ideas’. When approached with this kind of intellectual and spiritual buoyancy, it can even be fun—a claim that surely cannot be made of a visit to the dentist.

Freedom to explore is an important part of having fun. This applies to critical theory partly because it offers no definitive answers to the ontological questions that are central to the photographic discourse. You have to accept this in order to begin to make sense of it, a process that involves as much subjective interpretation as objective understand-ing. If you can cross the Rubicon of skeptical resistance, a thrilling new world opens up, a kaleidoscopic landscape festooned with perpetually regenerating ideas, a veritable panacea of intellectual stimulation…

Okay, I got a bit carried away there. No apology for that, because perhaps what critical theory needs is a bit more getting carried away. It is worth noting that the two seminal works on the subject (Susan Sontag’s On Photography and Roland Barthes’ Camera Lucida) both have very distinctive (though admittedly not baroque!) authorial voices; Camera Lucida in particular takes a position on photography that is heavily informed by unresolved—possibly even pathological— maternal mourning. Theory does not have to be devoid of emotion. Emotion only undermines an argument when it is used for purely rhetorical effect, as a means to bypass rationality.

The ultimate judge of critical theory is not whether it’s ‘true’, in any absolute sense, but whether it’s interesting. This is hardly surprising considering that the most intriguing ideas operate in the penumbra of concrete ‘truth’, lying just beyond our threshold of recognition and ready assimilation, thereby extending it slightly. Philosophical concepts are inspiring when they plot a new trajectory from the known, often functioning through a counterintuitive inversion process whereby received wisdom is turned on its head—a ‘trick’ that enables Jean Baudrillard to say things like: ‘I don’t want to concern myself with photographs; I want photographs to concern themselves with me.’ Critical theory is therefore a dialogue that is constantly reshaping our understanding through a process of accretion, refutation and innovation. Barthes, in pursuing photography’s noeme—it’s essence—was doing so in the spirit of non-empirical theorization, which is predicated

on the existence of alternate theories. In trying to explain photography, we have to accept that we are trying to hit a target that is not only moving, but probable does not exist at all. It is like shooting shadows in a barrel. If you can deal with the irresolution, this can be very liberating.

A huge amount of this ongoing debate attends to the medium’s (arguably unique) relationship with ‘reality’, a word that requires quotation marks to assign it meaning, according to Vladimir Nabokov. We can have no notion of objective reality (if indeed it exists at all) because all human experience is mediated through the brain via the senses, a system that both enables and constrains our ability to grapple intellectually with such esoteric issues. The only way round this is to take ‘reality’ as meaning ‘human reality’, which still allows plenty of wriggle-room. Photographs engage and mystify us because they occupy a singular space in relation to this process of cognition, of ‘data processing’. They are spatial and temporal discontinuities. Their reconstitution of the world is paradoxically absolute and infinitesimal. Inasmuch, they are ‘magic windows’ on to a world that is both familiar and unrecognizable, there and gone. It is these dualities that place photography in a state of existential flux. Given their defining stillness, then, photographs are surprisingly restless and elusive. David Green—enlarging on another of Barthes’ notions— has postulated photography as a hybrid tense, representing a past that exists in the perpetual present. Even when a ‘photograph’ is a composite of numerous photographic elements, those elements are never fully divested of their indexical relationship with ‘reality’, or, more precisely, with the object that constitutes the image’s referent. It’s surprising how much distortion is required for a photographic depiction to lose its causal relationship with the object that enabled its making in the first place. It is perhaps only in the realm of advanced digital imaging that this relationship can be severed completely, a process perhaps better described as ‘digital engineering’.

So that’s all perfectly clear, then. Or not. What’s happened here is that I’ve lost my academic discipline (again), allowing my thoughts to spin off course, to find their own circuitous route to a non–existent destination. This is not a crime. Some of my favourite writers embrace this kind of free association, eschewing linear logic in favour of a series of mental hops, skips and jumps. Sometimes this throws up pearls of wisdom, other times it delivers duds; sometimes the dud is the mother and father of genius. The point is that it operates more like the creative imagination, which seeks out the interesting spaces between things, the unlikely intersections where the world looks different without becoming somewhere else.

HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE CRITICAL THEORY

“In trying to explain photography, we have to accept that we are trying to hit a target that is not only moving, but probable does not exist at all.”

An untrammeled canter through some photography–related ideas

A confession at this juncture: I teach photography but have stopped taking photographs. Have I become creatively stultified by critical theory? No, I simply found another equally gratifying form of expression. I do, however, think about taking photographs; or rather, I relive the act of taking photographs that were made twenty years ago. On one level, this is faintly tragic. On another level, it’s a fascinating out–of–body experience that has over time accrued a kind of preternatural mystique, for me if no one else. The images themselves function as catalysts to this re–experiencing, propelling me back to the moment of their making. As a photographer I mostly traded in the moment, the fleeting and serendipitous co–ordination of people and objects before the camera—a process of frame, flatten and suspend in perpetuity. I do not so much see these pictures now as feel them. Some of them foster in me an extreme (and completely ludicrous) sense of grandiosity and omnipotence. I become, in microcosm, a god aligning the planets in an arrangement that pleases me—a hubris that is amplified by the passage of time. The more down–to–earth relived experience is not located in the split–second of exposure, but in the period leading up to this moment, the heady mixture of acuity and instinct that enabled the world to arrange itself for my eye, my camera. As a result of having lost this messianic power, I find these pictures unbelievable in every sense of the word. I am, as must be cringingly obvious by now, deeply impressed with my erstwhile self; impressed, certainly, but not envious or nostalgic, interestingly. I should probably point out, in the interests of balance, that some people find these pictures quite dull.

So that’s my past life behind the camera. As to being in front of it, I have always been intrigued by the discomfort that this engenders in many people, including myself. It’s a reaction that again speaks to the conundrum of our relationship with the medium. My contention is that seeing ourselves depicted in a snapshot disrupts the solipsistic continuum (or should that be delusion) that carries us through life. As individuals, we operate in a limbo of engagement and observation, a delicate balance that is disturbed by alternative perspectives. Outrageously, a photograph can place us in the world in a way that suggests we are not the centre of it. By positioning us in a wider context, it is cruelly subordinating. In this sense, the snapshot can be personally undermining—both literally and metaphorically belittling.

Paradoxically, however, photography is also used to affirm or bolster everyday life, albeit misguidedly. One compelling theory has it that we are, like a dying star, in the middle of a slow ‘cultural implosion’ in which notions of reality and fiction are collapsing into each other, making issues of veracity archaic and irrelevant.

‘Reality television’ is often cited as evidence of this drift, and we have long–since embraced the oxymoronic overtones of ‘virtual reality’. In this light–swallowing new world, any residual understanding of photography as a ‘purveyor of truth’ will be extinguished, leaving digital imaging to concoct its blancmange– like factoids. But we are not quite there yet, and there are signs of collective psychic disquiet at this inexorable shift, a disquiet that is compounded by our suspicion that a great deal of what we experience in our everyday lives is somehow second–hand or even illusory. This malaise is founded on a state of dependency: we are inured to life as series of designed activities. Every excursion we go on—from retail parks to country parks—is mapped out for us, codified for our consumption, a codification that has ‘freedom–of–choice’ built into it, albeit tightly circumscribed. On the upside, this makes the experience easy and unthreatening; on the downside, it creates homogeneity and a lingering sense of unease at life as simulacrum. And yet despite this reliance on the surreptitious manipulations of the public and commercial spaces we inhabit, a small part of us recognizes this socio–cultural treadmill for what it is, resulting in a kind of existential insecurity, a need to reaffirm that we are still ‘here’, still connected to something ‘real’. This is one explanation for our addiction to myriad forms of communication, from phones to Facebook.

So what part does photography play in all this? Fascinatingly, it functions on both sides of the equation, a fact that attests to the medium’s diversity of use in our culture. It forms part of the fabric of many of the locations we flock to or pass through in search of diversion, and as such is central to the spectacle of consumer society; it sells us the dream. But, in a very different form, it can also provide a salve to our murmurings of discontent. This is not a new idea. Back in the 1970s, Susan Sontag wrote: “Needing to have reality confirmed and experience enhanced by photography is an aesthetic consumerism to which everyone is now addicted.” The digital snapshot, with its shoot–and–view immediacy, has brought a new dimension to the way we compensate for our tenuous grip on reality. Hence, urban revelers are constantly taking mobile–phone pictures of them-selves to verify the good time they are having—a succession of dodgy and disposable certifications, destined either for Facebook or oblivion. Hence, people—no, I don’t mean people, I mean me—hence I find myself on family outings and holidays trying to take pictures that illustrate what a splendid time was had by all; sometimes I wonder whether the choice of activities is partly driven by this enterprise, this quest for authentication. Who these pictures are for, I’m not entirely sure. I guess it does prove that I’m still taking photographs after all, just not ones that pose interesting or challenging questions. Fortunately, I’ve found other ways to express those, one of which is through theory and the intellectual plate–spinning that it involves. Ironically, then, I’m still using the medium to visit a host of exciting and colourful places. These are more accessible than you might think. So why not join me…?

“My contention is that seeing ourselves depicted in a snapshot disrupts the solipsistic continuum (or should that be delusion) that carries us through life.”

Greg Leach [email protected] 0161 958 3501

Parachute is a collaboration between the BA (Hons) Photographyand BA (Hons) Graphic Design students at Stockport College.

Further information about our courses is availableat the following addresses:

www.stockport.ac.uk/art-and-designwww.stockport.ac.uk/content/ba-honours-photographywww.stockport.ac.uk/content/pathway-graphic-design

If you would like to speak to us regarding course content,the application process, or ideas regarding collaborationplease contact:

[email protected]@stockport.ac.uk0161 958 3501

Parachute

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