Working images of Debora, exploring different lighting techniques for my project.
I shot a selection of interior and exterior portraits, working with different crops, different angles and a mixture of ambient, mixed and hard flash lighting to establish what works best for my project. It’s something I’m still not completely set on as a lot of these options aren’t necessarily right or wrong, but rather convey a different emotion and intent to the viewer. I have to get more feedback on them and think a lot to figure out what I want to wind up within the final sequence. On my next shoot in Bulgaria, I’ll definitely focus more on portraits and favour a slower workflow with a selection of images with different lighting to choose from.
Last week I came back from my first trip to Bulgaria for my FMP. I went around the rural bits of the northwestern part of the country with a few friends of mine, with the explicit intent of shooting for my project. These are just some of the images I shot while there and they’ve been quickly scanned and edited as I was in a rush to submit, however they’ve been very useful and I’m more than happy with the result of this first trip.
My mindset going in was mostly that this first trip is primarily there to establish a preliminary sequence and workflow and to get acclimated to what working in that environment would be like. This part of the country is very very poor and relatively remote, with its residents seldom getting visitors and mostly keeping to themselves and living off their own produce. Going from the hustle and bustle of London to the intense serenity and emptiness of these villages was thus incredibly surreal and jarring, their silence only broken by the guard dogs barking at anyone they see walking down the beaten paths.
I actually found shooting there really really pleasant, even though the weather was far from perfect and all three of us were absolutely freezing in the fog for the majority of the time. My primary focus was on producing the environmental component of the work and having just enough portraits to put a sequence together so that I can be better informed when I next visit. I’m very happy with a lot of the images that I shot, however, I feel like a few things are missing - I’d like to shoot more cropped in details of the environments that provide a more intimate look into the daily reality of living there. As much as I love my straight architecturally-inspired images, I think building a sequence entirely out of them and portraits would be too simple, and missing a little bit of flavour if that makes sense.
In terms of portraits, I shot a few, mostly focusing on talking to the people in the area as I encountered them, instead of asking them to pose or bring me into their spaces. This was partially due to nervousness, partially due to most of them being uncomfortable with the prospect. I’ll double down on my research in terms of portraiture specifically to hopefully come up with a means of representing the region’s population that I found both visually and conceptually appealing as I believe the portraits I’ve shot to be a little on the dry side. That being said the experiences were rather lovely, with some of my sitters never having had their photograph taken in colour before and being very accommodating and excited by the prospect after my concept was explained to them.
Overall now that I have some images that have the potential of winding up on the wall at Brick Lane, I’m excited to keep working on the project with renewed energy and passion!
A highlight of the Paris Photo trip this year for me was Offprint and Polycopies, particularly as I had set myself the goal of substantially expanding my photobook collection and sparing little expense in that regard when embarking on the journey. I’ve compiled all of my purchases, relevant to my project or not, in this post, in order of acquisition...
My first purchase was one I made more out of sheer necessity than genuine personal affect or punctum. Paris Mon Amour is one of those photobooks that I felt I have to own, due to my intimate relationship with Paname. It consists of a collection of mostly street photographs of the city throughout the ages and I believe presents it in a compelling and honest manner, if a bit romanticised. It’s not really the type of photography or photobook I’m interested in, however, I felt like it would be about the nicest souvenir I could buy and for £10 I couldn’t resist it.
Next up I snagged a copy of Dian Hanson’s “Ren Hang”, which was one of the biggest releases of the year. Walking into the Taschen booth at the Grand Palais I had only heard about it and seen the cover and didn’t quite know what to expect, but looking through it I knew I absolutely had to have it. The work definitely isn’t to anyone’s taste, as I quickly realised upon going through it with a couple of non-photographer friends of mine, however, their reactions only went to show the impressive capacity to which the work generates affect in anyone that views it.
It really shook up my perception of what a portrait is and what it “has to be” and made me think a lot about all the walls that society and a greater art establishment has built up around me as a photographer. It inspired me to step out of my comfort zone and think about my work purely on its own merits as something I want to create, not on how well it fits into the presently established canon.
Moving onto Polycopies, I picked up a copy of Marta Thisner’s “Drunk In Love”. There were a lot of publishers at that book fair that I had never heard of, a lot of whom had a bunch of interesting work on offer that I would have loved to pick up, but at that point, I was feeling my budget thinning thus I had to be selective.
I’m not sure if this book got to me to the extent it did purely due to the emotional state I was in at the time, but I remember looking through the images and finding them deeply relevant and effective in their representation of love in a post-internet world. By the time I made it to the end and read the poem found therein I was entirely convinced.
That same day I went to OffPrint and met up with Aron Morel and Chris Shaw in the middle of the crowd. We chatted for a while about publishing and the antics that took place around the convention in the preceding days, before I snagged a copy of “I am not I” by Boris Mikhailov - a book I’ve wanted to get my hands on since the first time I encountered it in the second year. It’s a series of self-portraits that are better seen than described in words and explores the private lives of people under communism in eastern Europe in a really intimate and somewhat humorous manner. It’s something I’ve wondered about my entire life, being something that a lot of my family members lived through that I had only read about. In a sense, I suppose that’s why I’m exploring the aftermath of that period in my current project.
My final pickup from Offprint was a little case bound photobook by Christian Tunge, called “Triple Helix” - it’s a short black and white work printed on metallic paper, using some silver ink that includes images of razor wire. It reminded me a lot of modernist formalism, which is one of my favourite periods within photography and I simply couldn’t resist it. It’s the sort of niche work that hardly anyone around me understood but made me fall in love with it and it made me think about the relationship between how wide the net is cast towards the audience with a given photographic project vs how deeply it has the potential to cut. In a way, it stands directly opposite works like the aforementioned “Paris Mon Amour”.
My last purchase was a large format photobook called “Punk, From Chaos to Couture” by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It’s a massive juxtaposition of haute couture and images of various punk icons that inspired the respective pieces. I really loved the photography, a lot of the clothes and the actual design of the book, particularly the typography, thus I bought it mostly on its purely aesthetic merits.
https://frogleaping.squarespace.com/reels
Finally I’m inserting this flip-through video of a book I encountered that unfortunately wasn’t on sale at the fair but I’m planning to grab a copy of asap. It’s called Frog Leaping by Mitch Alland and shows a selection of his work produced in Thailand. While the work itself is lovely, the reason I was so interested in this book is that the binding absolutely blew my mind like no other photobook ever has. It includes these stunning, deeply intricate gatefolds, with images interpolated on every possible side in incredibly creative ways. It’s one of those expensive photobooks that’s honestly worth its price just in the ridiculous amount of skill and effort that went into its design. I highly encourage you to take a look at the video above, and assure you the experience is even more impressive in person - it had me grinning and majorly piqued my impostor syndrome.
...is probably my favourite photobook of the year. I was gifted it for my birthday a few months ago after following the photographer's practice on Instagram and quickly realising it's a piece I find very visually appealing. I think its subject matter, while geographically very far detached from my project, is deeply relatable to the feelings of a significant part of Bulgarian society, mine included, towards the state of the country.
It consists of two major parts - naturally, one is the sequence of images, depicting scenes from derelict and empty parts of the Mojave desert, juxtaposed with a poem that follows the format of "Were it not for..." followed by a short phrase, relating to a potential cause of the scene depicted alongside it.
It’s a comparatively large body of work that takes a multitude of different representational approaches in its visual strategy, showing a mixture of details and wider environmental images, some of which are shot in a similar matter to the approach I’m taking on for “Exemplary Home”.
It really made me think a lot about creative sequencing, rhythm and the relationship between text and image, and the selective absence of either one of those components.
Google Drive is a free way to keep your files backed up and easy to reach from any phone, tablet, or computer. Start with 15GB of Google storage – free.
Google Drive is a free way to keep your files backed up and easy to reach from any phone, tablet, or computer. Start with 15GB of Google storage – free.
Google Drive is a free way to keep your files backed up and easy to reach from any phone, tablet, or computer. Start with 15GB of Google storage – free.
Google Drive is a free way to keep your files backed up and easy to reach from any phone, tablet, or computer. Start with 15GB of Google storage – free.
Google Drive is a free way to keep your files backed up and easy to reach from any phone, tablet, or computer. Start with 15GB of Google storage – free.
Yesterday I went to the lunchtime talk with Tom Hunter and I found it rather inspiring, particularly in relation to this project.
His approach to photography as something simultaneously staged and documentary is a similar one to the one I plan to undertake for the portraiture within FMP2. He talked about how the tools we use shape our mindset when working, which particularly resonated with me as a turning point in my project so far has been the switch from a Mamiya 7 to an RB67, mounted on a tripod. Working more slowly and meticulously to carefully stage a shot not only proves a more appropriate method for a documentary workflow but also allows the photographer to step away from the camera, changing the relationship between them, the apparatus and the subject.
Another thing that resonated with me was his approach to representation. Obviously, with his subject matter, there was already a certain narrative being propagated in the media that he could stand against, which isn’t really the case with mine, however I think it’s important to go into the encounters I’m about to have being mindful of how I’d like to present my subjects. It’s far too easy for me to fall into the trap of being there just to document or to fit them into a narrative, instead of looking for a meaningful connection and seeking to elevate, which is not only the more dignified way of presenting my subjects, but I think it would also make for a more visually appealing project, which is key to its commercial success. Another takeaway from the talk was definitely that highly visual and aesthetically inclined work doesn’t have to be void of meaning or correlate to a positive subject matter.
Sequencing/sizing tests for submission (please refer to the captions of each photo for clarification, listed below). You’ll find some of these in my submission, along with a comparison between a digital/c type print (probably of the same color portrait seen here in the penultimate image)
1.Trying to establish a prospective sequence for the project, just working with black and white A4 photocopies to conserve paper/money etc. Idea was for the sequence to go: exterior, interior, portrait.
2.Here I tried another sequence of Landscape, exterior, portrait (this could be interior or exterior, I was limited to the images I've shot so far, so some are placeholders)
3.Same sequence, replacing the portrait with an interior one
4.Sequence of: wide exterior, exterior, portrait (ideally this would have been taken in a flat in that building, but again, placeholders where necessary)
5.Exterior, empty interior, portrait - this might be something to think about, so I'll start shooting interiors without their occupiers for future shoots as well.
6.Sizing test - black and white images are A4, others are A3 and A2 respectively. I concluded that A4 would definitely be too small, so final sequence will probably consist of 20x24 and 12x16in prints
7.Testing dynamics via sizing - I think one of the ways to bring a flow to the sequence would be to work across different sized prints, most likely 20x24/12x16in
Working images from my trip to small towns in the general Cambridge area + a couple of environmental portraits. I’m quite happy with these, however, I’m not sure this is the approach I’ll take towards portraiture for FMP 2. As effective as this straight documentary aesthetic is, I gravitate more to the intimate, semi-candid approach for the subject matter I’ll be dealing with. The landscape shots I think are spot on, however they’ve never been my pressing concern as I have quite a bit more experience and have already largely established an aesthetic in that field
Last week I took a daytrip to Southend to shoot around and continue thinking about a visual strategy for my final major project. I found getting away from London really helped, partially due to the new and unfamiliar locale, partially due to the environment in the town being quite a bit more similar to what I want to document for my project in Bulgaria. Where this differed from my previous shoots was the choice of camera being much heavier than the Mamiya 7 and thus requiring a tripod. I actually think I prefer that method of shooting for this type of project, but I’ll try a few other systems and see where I land - namely my Pentacon 6 and the 4x5 Linhof...
I’m available for on-demand print commissions for all of my analogue work. If you’d like to commission a print in 10x8, inquire via email to make sure it’s available and you’ll be redirected here to place an order.
Final update on Life Behind Bars before going to print
So throughout the last week, I’ve been working on the final draft of the book in InDesign and I’ve just now sent over the files to the printer for a final quote and check before sending the all clear. I’ve decided to print 10 copies on 140gsm uncoated paper with 170gsm covers, the initial run to act as press copies to be sent to multiple bike stores/book shops and key influencers, as I plan to crowdfund a full release of this publication in the near future. All that’s left now is to bind them and produce the inserts for each one. For the binding I’m planning to use a sewing machine to stitch the spine in pink thread, matching the title colour; the insert is going to be a custom laminated spoke card, which will hopefully be seen spinning around on London messengers’ wheels not too long from now. All in all, with the project almost concluded, I’m really happy with where it’s ended up, and am particularly excited to send it out into the community...
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