Alex Cavendish - No Gods, No Masters
My project No Gods, No Masters focuses on protests, marches and demonstrations in London and how they evolve from simple, calm protests to more aggressive and radical forms of protest. The title No Gods, No Masters is actually an old anarchist slogan, originating in the early 20th century. I chose this title because my project includes a number of anarchists and the slogan is synonymous with the ideology.
In my project, I wanted to show how forms of protest and individual protesters evolve from calm and quiet to increasingly violent forms of demonstration. When viewed from left to right, the project starts with gentle forms of protest, such as holding a simple picket sign, often with a custom-made and perhaps humorous slogan. As the project moves on, the images shift from these at first calm demonstrations to protesters with more aggressive picket signs, some with images of dead children or an aggressive slogan aimed at a political party. Further on from this, more volatile forms of demonstration become visible: the use of smoke bombs and even more aggressive slogans, this time more radical and perhaps offensive to a group of people. Finally, the images evolve into photographs of anarchists, antifascists and members of a black bloc: those who dress themselves in black, throw flares and are the most violent protester. This is where the presentation and project ends, with those protesters that clash with police and are the opposite of gentle.
I wanted to create a project like this because photojournalism has always been the industry I want to build my career in and I felt the best way to start my career was to make a project using the practice of a photojournalist. The idea of recording protests came from me always wanting to do a project about demonstrations in London, but never finding a good enough theme to do so.
There are 66 images in total used in my project, all showing forms of protest in one way or another. Many of the images (62) are sized 20cmX15cm while the other four were printed 30cmX20cm. I printed most of them on the smaller size so that the larger four may stand out against the others. I have made the other four larger because I felt that when printing, these were the photographs that best defined the form of protest they represented, showing the evolution from mild protest to anarchy. My project will be exhibited in a cloud presentation, similar to how artist Wolfgang Tillmans exhibits his work. I felt that, with so many images, this would be an ideal way to present my work. On the wall, the images are spread out with a few centimetres between each other. Some images are grouped together. The images that are grouped together are of either the same protest or different protests that are about the same issue. I have made these small groupings because I wanted some order in the presentation and felt that it was a good idea to group some of the images. These small sets give another element to my project, giving some order and allowing the viewer to focus on a handful of images at once rather than an individual image.
The exhibition is presented along with a piece of audio that is made up of chants from a number of protests I attended over the course of my project. The piece of audio is 1m and 42s long, and it will be played on a loop from a speaker over the course of the exhibition. I wanted to use a speaker and not headphones as I felt that the speaker helps build an atmosphere when viewing my project and would help viewers feel more immersed. The issue with headphones is that they only allow a single viewer to really appreciate the project and would confine the viewer to stand in one spot and listen through the headphones, while the speaker can be heard wherever the viewer stands and allows multiple people to view the project. I chose to use chants over say individual speakers or people I interviewed at a protest because the chants allow the viewer to become more immersed in the project, while a single person would not have the same effect, they would be too quiet and would not give an idea of the scale and amount of people that attend a protest.
The work will be attached to the wall using only blutac. As I have not mounted the work nor have I used frames to display the images, I felt that I did not need to use any major or expensive ways to attach the work to the wall. The blutac cannot be seen and does a good enough job of keeping the work on the wall without the use of an expensive form of mounting. The images themselves have been printed on gloss, a paper that I have always preferred because of its ability to make colours stand out better than other papers, as well as me believing that images tend to look better on gloss. Red and blue is seen often in the images from my project, and the use of gloss paper helps these colours stand out. The images are displayed only in landscape as I shot most of my project in landscape and as such I wanted to include only the landscape images. I did not add portrait images because I did not have many and also if I did include any I feel that they would have looked out of place along with so many landscape images.
I shifted my focus after Major Project 1 to a broader and clearer project. Looking back, my previous idea was not as exciting as I hoped and when I was testing it out it felt as if I could do something better. I removed the idea of using text with my images and instead concentrated on recording more audio and finding more images to include in my project. By doing so, I believe I have created a much more interesting idea that shows both my ability as a photographer and a more engaging exhibition. I am rather pleased with how the project has turned out, believing that I have done a good job of capturing protests and presenting them in an effective way, and believe this idea is much better than the idea I had for MP1.
