#steve cordingley

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Sodom and Gomorrah: obsolete technologies, obsolete cities

All images ©Pieter Hugo 2010 from the series Permanent Error

In the series Permanent Error photographer Pieter Hugo explores an expansive dump in Ghana called Agbogbloshie. This area is used to literally deposit the obsolete and unwanted technologies of western consumption under the facade of being recycled to support developing and third world countries to bridge "the digital divide" but really creating new pastoral landscapes from which the poorest carve out a meager existence through melting down and extraction of metals found within the circuit boards and wires.

This wasteland, where people and cattle live on mountains of motherboards, monitors and discarded hard drives, is far removed from the benefits accorded by the unrelenting advances of technology.

Source: http://www.pieterhugo.com/

As documents they remind me of Agtet's old Paris as it was being transformed on the eve of the brave new world, Sander's Germanic farmers and country-folk around Cologne before the Nazis took root, the Brecher's (DeLillo's) 'barn' before it became famous (see last post!). I wonder not only what is around the corner for the Ghanaians who live in the area that they call Sodom and Gomorrah, but also the society and the system that creates it.

Where is western capitalism and consumption taking human culture? In this technological revolution that we live in the pace of change is so great that no one really understands how advances in technology will change global civilization and human culture - not only in a 100 years or even a generation, but within a generation or even the next decade. Cyberbetics, genetics, biotechologies - this is the brave new world, one in which human values, ethics and morals will be truly be put to the test on the world stage.

All of which leaves me with my own moral dilemma. Having plundered the contents of several obsolete computers, the contents themselves have now become obsolete as their use for the project is now complete. Do I take them to be re-cycled in the uncomfortable knowledge that approx. 75% will end up on a dump somewhere in Africa only to be photographed by Pieter Hugo and end up in some nice coffee table photography book, whilst simultaneously intoxicating the local water supply with heavy metals... or do I hoard the stuff away in the tardis like loft with the rest of the 'useful stuff'? May be I'll try free-cycle - sure there is some techno-geek out there who could solder all this stuff together to make a cybernetic hamster of something?.

Back to complexity and unintended consequences of human activity systems.

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Intertextuality NOT intersexuality

Browsing Gerry Badger's book 'The Genius of Photography' it seems The New Topographics eventually had a long lasting influence on photography, helping the medium become increasingly  accepted by the wider art world throughout the 1980 and 90's, helped by postmodernism's distaste for anything that smacked of elitist and the inherent 'intertextuality' of the photograph (Badger, 2007).

Being a total ignoramus I decided I'd better google intertextuality - but my research came back with some surprising results until I realised I had changed a 't' to an 's.

Based on the Wikipedia entry (so it must be sound) for intertextuality a good illustration of what it is might be this blog - it's  the continual re-shaping and transformation of a text's meaning by the writing of a new text by a different author that borrows from or references somebody else's text. Its a term that was coined by the Bulgarian-French philosopher (amongst other things) Julia Kristeva.

Photographs are images with there own language or text that can be read to generate meaning. Roland Barthes (a really clever bloke from yonks ago) reckons photographs have both the 'given meaning' or denotation (the what we see)  and the 'constructed' meaning or connotation (the immediate cultural meaning we create from what we see) (Bate, 2009). So if I got this right in my head, a photographs meaning will determined by the viewers 'cultural knowledge' and is therefore always historical - meaning the constructed meaning will change over time (Bate, 2009, p18).

Which is nice, but what has this got to do with intertextuality? Well I think it means that photographers are constantly re-working or re-shaping the ideas and meanings found in existing photographers (or artists generally) based on how they interpret the meaning of the work and their reading of the language of photography, which I guess is what the postmodernists found so appealing about the photographic medium.

All this stuff leads to Semiotics - the tremendously exciting study of signs. Anyhow, please do excuse me whilst I go and perform a self-lobotomy with a rusty screwdriver and a cabbage.

In text reference

Badger, G. (2007). The Genius of Photography. London: Quadrille

Bate, D. (2009) Photography: The Key Concepts. Oxford: Berg

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Untitled © steve cordingley 2012

Further ruminations on the Urban-Rural interface.

Now I've reflected on the two sets of test images from the last two blogs and got a bit of feedback, I think I'm going to ditch the idea of someone wearing a mask. The images in the first set seem a bit horror genre specific for the purpose of the project, too reminiscent of the Michael Myers character - which I guess is kind of relevant with the coming of Halloween, but not necessarily within keeping of the project brief.

I think the mask is put to better use in the second set, taking away the direct human reference and creating a more complex representation of urban culture in a technical, social media rich, age.

I'm still undecided of how much the rural landscape should feature in the images. I want to keep the emphasis on the technology and how it has the potential to break down urban/rural cliches and boundaries, redefining the concept of city. However I enjoy the additional layer the rural landscape generates with in the images as I think it picks up on street photography's role in creating and perpetuating ideals and myths of urban life-style, culture and landscape to the same degree as landscape photography has traditionally romanticizes the rural idyll.

I think the use of colour works well in some of the images and mirrors the predominate use of colour in contemporary photography as exemplified by the works of William Eggleston, Stephen Shore, Philip-Lorca diCorcia, Martin Parr, Nan Goldin and Jeff Wall amongst many others.

I intend to continue researching the development of street and documentary photography throughout the 20th century and beyond, and develop a better understanding of photographic theory. Applying this knowledge to my own work will I hope help shape further my thinking on the composition of the final images and help me keep the work in the context of the project brief.