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Exhibition - 19 - 22nd November - why so short a time?
Saturday, 14 November 2009
Lessons in developing a photographer’s compassionate eye – No 1 Eugene Richards
Recently the global Campaign for Compassion launched it’s Charter.
From the early days of photography great photographers have been re-presenting our world with a compassionate eye.
PHOTO: Eugene Richards
Fred—just returned from prison—cries as he greets former girlfriend Rose. Eugene Richards included this photo in his 1987 book, Below the Line: Living Poor in America, which is out of print. (Source)
What a stunning photograph!
What is the punctum in this photograph? Do we travel from the white of the woman’s eye to his tears, the set of his mouth. His eyes that have seen so much and are looking into – what?
Eugene Richards discusses his approach to photography;
GENERAL QUESTIONS
Do (great) photographs make a difference? Do they change things? If so – how?
Are photographs just a great distraction?
In the UK a TV play so aroused concern that the major charity SHELTER was created? Does photography work in a similar or different way?
Do they change us – for the better?
How might photographs play a part in a global appeal such as the Charter for Compassion?
The Campaign for Compassion and the photographer’s compassionate eye both center on the beating heart of being human in the world with others and recognizing our oneness.
Thursday, 12 November 2009
How strong is your sense of compassion - 'Charter for Compassion' is launched - check it out now!
Karen Armstrong
Archbishop Desmond Tutu
Sheikh Ali Gomaa
H.M. Queen Noor of Jordan
His Holiness the Dalai Lama
Dr. Abdul Sattar Edhi
Prof. Candido Mendes
Mohsen Kadivar
Paul Simon
Rev. Dr. Joan Brown Campbell
Shaykh Abdallah Bin Bayyah
Pierre Omidyar
Meg Ryan
Rabbi David Saperstein
Vusi Mahlasela
Rev. Peter Storey
Prince Nikolaos of Greece and Denmark
These international people and 7,000 + ordinary folk have signed up so far - to find out more and add your voice click on -
charterforcompassion.org
Do your photographs help self-understanding or understanding of the world?
How do we read this photograph of the artist Alision Lapper with her son Parys? Do Roland Barthes’ ideas help?
I am keeping a page as a list of responses to the seminal book Camera Lucida by Roland Barthes. I will post additions as separate posts. Questions that are motivating this include;
What is the spirit of photography?
What can we learn from Camera Lucida – in our reading and taking of photographs?
Do your photographs help you understand your self and your life more?
What is the relationship between photographic and mystical experience?
Here is a short introduction to the ideas behind the book from WikiPedia;
Camera Lucida (in French, La Chambre claire) is a short book published in 1980 by the French literary critic Roland Barthes. It is simultaneously an inquiry into the nature and essence of photography and a eulogy to Barthes’s late mother. The book investigates the effects of photography on the spectator (as distinct from the photographer, and also from the object photographed, which Barthes calls the “spectrum”).
In a deeply personal discussion of the lasting emotional effect of certain photographs, Barthes considers photography as asymbolic, irreducible to the codes of language or culture, acting on the body as much as on the mind. The book develops the twin concepts of studium and punctum:studium denoting the cultural, linguistic, and political interpretation of a photograph, punctum denoting the wounding, personally touching detail which establishes a direct relationship with the object or person within it. (WikiPedia article)
11th Nov 2009 – This is the first post on inspirations from Camera Lucida
1 The Barthes book is much more than the pair of concepts ’studium and punctum’ – but their importance cannot be ignored. They give us a powerful, basic model with which to think about our responses in reading a photograph.
We have an overload of images everyday. To most we are more or less indifferent – they have no point, because they have no ‘punctum’ – punctum for Barthes denotes the wounding, personally touching detail that establishes for us a direct relationship with the object or person within it.
To be moved by any work of art requires a degree of sensibility. Sensibility, the developed consciousness of the reader, is vital in the reading of a photograph or any work of art. Most photographs deemed great are point-less for many.
2 The studium and punctum are special ways of referring to a) the apparent/evident context of a photograph and b) the emotional charge that (some) photographs have for us. The punctum is a text, or sub-text, within the con-text of the whole.
The emotional charge is not just ‘in’ the photograph. Sometimes there is a specific object that is clearly vital, sometimes not. The punctum as an identifiable object can vary from person to person. (Some of Barthes’ points are more those of a gay man). And subsequent readings can shift what we see as being the punctum-object.
This photograph was instrumental in Barthes’ developing the punctum-studium mode – see HERE for an interesting discussion of Koen Wessing’s photograph and of its importance to Barthes.
I asked my wife what was the punctum for her – she said the rifle, and the nun looking in the direction of the rifle. For me it is unquestionable the fact that the first nun is walking on regardless.
However with or without the punctum as an easily identifiable element in the construction of the photograph the punctum is wounding only to the sensibilty that can be wounded.
Cartier-Bresson spoke of the alignment of eye, heart, eye and camera in the seeing and taking of a photograph. The same is necessary for the reading of a photograph to provide you with an aesthetic experience. Photographs that are mere representations or illustrations or documents rarely provide the transcendent experience that I call aesthetic.
For this writer the aesthetic is an experience identical to mystical experience. The photograph takes you. It takes you out of the boundaries of self. You are dissolved for a time into the timeless. There is no object and you as separate subject – only a unitive experience.
Perhaps the intensity is proportionate to the extent that head, heart and eye are attuned in experiencing the photograph? Although, of course, great works of art are shattering.
3 The focus of meaning of Camera Lucida in English tends toward ‘mechanical device’. 
Is there a confusion between camera obscura and camera lucida in the title of Barthes’ book? More likely
What if we literally translate La Chambre claire as clear room or room of clarity. Not just at the level of physical reality but as an inner space for experiencing (particularly) those photographs that lead to a greater understanding of our selves or of our world? To see more clearly, to gain in-sight.
Didn’t Picasso say something to the effect that he paints in order to see? As ‘the clear room’ or ‘room of clarity’ photography becomes the means by which we can see clearly, gain insight into the world and into ourselves.
Here I’m suggesting that the experience of reading a photograph is of two kinds. The first provides merely information about subjects that might or might not be one of our interests.
The second kind of experience, requires two elements. First there is sufficient sensibility. Secondly in the photograph there will be some element that acts like a terminal or lightning rod and causes not just high impact but deep and potentially transformative experience. The second kind of experience can ‘move the internal furniture around’ – and possibly extend the sensibility, at the centre of which is compassion. Both sensibility and a lightning-rod element in the photograph are necessary.
In the photograph of Alison Lapper is the punctum or is it the child’s hand, Alison’s foot, the kiss, the missing arm, the boy’s eyes that might be said to be staring into his future…… One of those or something else is the lightning rod – if we have the compassion and the sensibility.
The statue of Alison is called Alison Lapper pregnant, but it is we who are pregnant – the issue is whether we as a society can deliver ourselves of the next higher level of consciousness.
If you don’t know of Alison’s story and the great and good public debate it generated just Google her name.
There is one good article HERE
-0-Tuesday, 10 November 2009
Scottish Parliament: to debate trial of Baha'is
S3M-05083 Christopher Harvie (Mid Scotland and Fife) (Scottish National Party): Imprisonment of Baha'i Leaders in Iran— That the Parliament condemns the continued imprisonment in Iran of Baha'i leaders Fariba Kamalabadi, Jamaloddin Khanjani, Afif Naemi, Saeid Rezaie, Mahvash Sabet, Behrouz Tavakkoli, and Vahid Tizfahm, six of whom were arrested on 14 May 2008 and one detained since 5 March 2008, reportedly because of their Baha'i faith, and later charged with insulting religious sanctities, propaganda against the Islamic Republic, spying for Israel and spreading corruption on earth, the latter two charges carrying the death penalty; deplores that their trial has been postponed three times since their arrest, most recently on 18 October 2009 without a new date being set, and that internationally recognised protocols with regard to proper legal representation do not appear to have been followed nor any evidence brought forward to support the allegations, and urges the government in Tehran to facilitate the immediate release of the imprisoned Baha'i leaders and all co-religionists currently detained solely on the grounds of their religious beliefs and to end its active persecution and discrimination of adherents to the Baha'i faith, in accordance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which it ratified in 1975.
Supported by: Stewart Maxwell, Mike Pringle, Gil Paterson, Brian Adam, Dr Bill Wilson, Robin Harper, Ken Macintosh, John Wilson, Bill Kidd
Lodged on Thursday, October 29, 2009; Current
Shoulder Clips - Videos by Robert Genn -=- The Painter's Keys
"The Nude as Landscape" came about in a normal studio session.
The painting was conceived as a figure study, in acrylic on canvas, but as the work proceeded the landscape-like contours of the human body suggested a broader landscape. The female figure became surrounded in air as well as light, and a new idea was born. This "second-generation" thinking happens when normal orders of procedure are reversed, causing new angles to be discovered. Read Aspects of order
Several days ago in the Queen Charlotte Islands I was
faced with a particularly flat day. Overcast and grey, it wasn't even foreboding. Not much was wrong with the small canvas I painted down on the beach, but during the windup strokes I realized it needed something more. Changing the light is a painter's prerogative. Remembering the sunset of the previous evening--and the rain squalls passing through it--I thought, "Why not?" Read On
Sara and I were guided above Lake O'Hara to a remote ridge known
to the "Opabin Shale-Splitters." This was where MacDonald and his friends painted in the summers of 1924 to 1930. We could well see the appeal. Patterns of rock and snow in all directions. Light. Shadow. Atmosphere. Dramatic mountains all around. Lots of places to sit. Read On
I needed to get out of the studio. We jumped in the car and
disappeared into the local forest. I set up and made a little painting while Michelle set up and made a little movie. " Forest Spirit " is another of those Shoulder Clips that we have shown you before , but this one is in real time, a bit languorous and laid back. For her first flick, I think she caught the feeling. It takes six minutes. Read On
Videos: Looking south from Hale Ke Kai and Surf over lava at Hale Ke Kai.
A painter needs to think of the orderly processing of areas.As much as possible one should work from large areas to small, more or less setting up to hold these areas with negative areas. While doing this, keep in mind some elements of a painting cannot be handled this way, and must be painted topically. The artist should give a few minutes of thought before diving in. The idea is to decide on the approximate order in which the various elements are to be processed. Read On
Robert Genn provides a wide range of support services for artists.
These are interesting over-the-shoulder videos of him working.
Interesting even if you prefer other forms of art.
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