Joseph Horton UWE MA @joseph-hortonma - Tumblr Blog

notes 9/12/19

When you travel through the book you come across the road here and there in different forms, whether it be in the background or seen metaphorically as paths and lines in the ground. The road is the theme of the book but it is not about the journey or about travelling along it in but in reflection to it as an object. A social and political object that brings wealth and modernity but also cuts through the landscape, interjecting cultural associations surrounding the rural environment.

The documentary images are divided between images taken along the road. These images are taken during the morning, when there are no cars. It is empty and feels uncomfortable in the environment.

The book also see’s small incidental images of found sculpture, mostly taken during over cast days.

The ‘aren’t they are they’ image-word relationship

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about how and why I take photographs and what they do that the written word can’t. When brought together, the relationship between the two sparks such collisions of interest that it seems best to leave it alone. However, in this modern photographic world where we consume images like sedatives I find it is easy to lose track of our relationship with these paper thin words; surely the photograph must supersede the use of written language by now?

When describing an environment or landscape in a traditional sense the image word relationship is a necessity…is it not? A blend of photojournalism and ‘documentary’ styles both factually outlined by text and illustrated via photographs. But once removed, photography can be seen as the alt individual it always wanted to be; not propped up by pre-existing narratives but one harbouring a linguistic development that promotes the photograph’s form and content much more like painting or sculpture. Removing long drawn out wording from which we structure the viewer’s interpretation and instead assuming that the viewer will bring his or her own emotional baggage to the work. Throwing meaning at it full of angst and understanding the images ambiguous and abstract capabilities; and what Magritte has been saying all along: ‘Ceci n'est pas une pipe’!

Maybe we return to the written word maybe in attempt to contextualise and focus photography, bring it rigidity and structure, but why? it doesn’t bring much satisfaction to know that this photograph of chair is in reality a chair however ‘sharp’ it is. Joseph Kosuth proved that with his work One and Three Chairs. During these decades of photographic understanding we appear to ebb and flow through the five stages of grief; lingering at the loss of true photographic representation. Passing through denial before moving onto anger, bargaining, depression and finally acceptance; a development of our grief for true mechanical representation and acceptance of the power of ambiguity.

It is not that we are at odds with the written word but that the photograph has more to offer than being illustrative eye candy. Learning to put faith into its narration powers seems a radical step when confronted with it. However, photography is an artistic chameleon; with its interpretation almost entirely contextual the image is free to embody an elasticity which other art forms can only lust over and it has the written word to thank for it. For both of them share this elasticity as their fundamental connection but by giving the photograph growing space, we can finally come to terms with its evolution and its absurdity.

*Thinking about the role of the staged v upstaged / figurative v literal

How can everyday scenes be displayed in a way which subverts their initial understanding

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Note: 17.8.19

I realized I had no intention of documenting the transitition from urban to rural and acting out its visual representation via its social construct. What I was interested in was looking at the connection to the area and this was formed by my attraction to space and solitude, how I felt lost. So the work has become more of a reaction to that, seeking out scenes in the world which represent this feeling. It does not serve to create a factual depiction but allows for ambiguity and layering to move away from a preconceived or pre-held narrative. As it is more interesting to me to make work at this time which does not serve photography’s traditional role of illustrator.

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Revisiting Sutton Hoo, Britain’s Mythical Ship Burial - https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/letter-from-the-uk/revisiting-sutton-hoo-britains-mythical-ship-burial

“In early August, I took a train to Melton and walked the last mile or so to Sutton Hoo. In British politics, the summer of 2019 feels like another prelude to conflict with our European neighbors. Since he became Prime Minister, in late July, Boris Johnson has steered the country toward leaving the European Union, without a deal, at the end of October. In Brussels, officials acknowledge that this is now the “central scenario.” There is talk of negotiations, but no one believes there is much point now. Nostalgia for 1939 and Britain’s privations, and ultimate victory, in the Second World War are rivets in the world view of the most ardent Brexiteers. In 2014, Johnson wrote a biography of Winston Churchill, which repeatedly cast Anglo-Saxon liberalism as fundamentally at odds with the bureaucratic, centralizing impulse of the Third Reich, or, as Johnson had it, “an infernal Nazi EU.” On Downing Street, Johnson has set up a “war cabinet,” which he chairs himself, to deliver Brexit regardless of the consequences for the population or the economy. There is a nationalizing myth of Britain’s long history as an island—that it has made us more free and more resilient—when the facts in the ground invariably argue the opposite: that we have always been attached, dependent, part foreign.”

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What sort of landscape do you find when you travel 65 miles?

One of the interesting things about this project is its inability to confined to a certain image. At the start my pool of interest was to develop on the interests I had in the elasticity of the word rural but now having been out in the world I cannot overlook the interlinking elements of how our countryside is formed. It is a web of rural, non-rural, urban, suburban sectors all of which have boundaries which blur into each other. Who we are and how we think these places look still remain and are easily found but if you look closer at their makeup and the surrounding spaces you get a sense of the messy truth which builds this picture. Together, these social structures represent modern man in nature, in rurality. They can help us to understand the fluidity of these borders between us (the urban) and them (the rural) and enable us to confront the constructs that enforce them. The identity politics and socio-economic problems faced by people living outside of urban centres can be increased by their distance from our view. Through the navigation of a road which separates a traditionally industrial area with a remote and rural area, it was possible to view the rapid transitions made in modern rural Britain. The importance of focusing on such areas lie in their resistance to change and as such their connection to tradition and history. They present a timeline and enable comparison with modern societal events such as urbanisation through housing and transport along-side slower, more intimate rituals and cultural practices which are connected to the land. Over 90% of the UK is rural and much of our pictorial image is built from our idyllic landscapes. But away from the chocolate box landscape there is more to its identity.

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Quote; Stephen Shore

“In the same way, there is more to the American culture than these big events of the Viet Nam War and the reactions to the War, and to the Watergate hearings that were going on in that period of time. There is more to the country than all that. And I was interested in the small events of life.”

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Note 11/08/19

It may be that instead of looking at the totality of rural sites it is more helpful to focus on those areas which don’t fall into the traditional bracket. These areas of land which have been forgotten by town planners and councils. Spaces of natural flora and fauna which are left to grow wild and are used be people in transit. The influence for these areas come from the discovery of paths which connect areas of south wales estates. They are forgotten and wild and are closed off from the suburban worlds around them, governed via a set of rules which are esoteric by nature.

Spaces like these allow the narrative of the work to move forward away from the nostalgia of history and British politics. It shows a current a relatable relationship with nature and its function.

Thinking about these spaces also helps to infuse the idea of how spaces create solitude, the spaces outside of our everyday, they are known only to the occupier and the use is built through interaction.

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“The bucolic west is no longer a benign horizon in which to measure the imagination and fantasy of pioneer aspirations”

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Amarillo, Texas, August, 1973 "I think it was simply the time was right for color photography. It was about the same time that William Eggleston, Luigi Ghirri, and Joel Meyerowitz began to use color." The Apparent Is the Bridge to the Real By Rong Jiang, ICP, New York, June 4, 2007 RJ

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‘A compilation of five interconnected projects, Dark Rooms moves in cycles: birth and death, acquiring and discarding, the banality of routine.’

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July - Late evening light - Julians 40th

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Colour correction on original scans, working with hand C-types as a base start point

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Dianna and Alan - June 2019

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Cholera graveyard - June 2019

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Pond - June 2019

I would find it hard to describe my current obsession with green, as it came out of nowhere, hidden dormant, created by previous observations. It was never a favourite as a child, when asked what colours to paint my bedroom (I must have been around 10) I decided to go for red and blue with a yellow ceiling... a drastic U-turn after being denied all black. But looking at this image the colour is all you really see and its sickening, its like a wave of bio-luminous goo putty. Its intensity even spreads to the plant life which dared enter, consuming it in a drastic attempt to prevent the infection of anything other than green participating in its reality. There’s only one other person who could relate to this colour madness and that's Eiffel 65s’ affliction to blue, R.I.P.

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Joseph Horton UWE MA