Honest Photography: how to photograph with a free mind

Part 1. Kosuke Okahara on photographing with a free mind

“If there’s a pure form of documentary photography, the picture should not be influenced by any preexisting visions.”

Having been working on a story about the impact of drugs on local community in various parts of Columbia for 13 years, Kosuke Okahara became able to predict the kind of scenes that he would see even though he was in different towns, and in the way he would frame the images.

“It’s like I was trying to see what I’ve seen already… it’s almost like I’m copying myself…”

“I asked myself – am I documenting or am I just taking pictures of the situation that I kind of wanted to see… ” he quoted. 

A former aspiring Olympic skier whom became a W. Eugene Smith Fellowship recipient, Japanese photographer Kosuke Okahara shared his struggle with the philosophical dilemma he had with documentary photography, and his journey to finding his ways through making the work The Blue Affair. 

© Kosuke Okahara, from the photobook ‘The Blue Affair’; Source @ Kosuke Okahara Website

The Blue Affair is a a work with photographs taken in Koza, the heart of Okinawa, which gave Okahara the refreshing sense of being a photographer with a beginner’s mind again. The repeated visits without a specific purpose in producing a story somehow led to the people, the conversations, the happenings he encountered from this place infiltrating his dreams — as if these were symbolic gestures in nudging him to return, and at the same time, to relight his inner flame and re-experience again the joy of just pure photography.   

“… being more conscious takes one away from the purpose while getting ride of the purpose is the only way to get closer to the intent. In that sense, documentary is like a tragedy of fate. Achieving by losing – like a Shakepearean play.” —extract from the afterword written by Tatsuya Ishikawa, of the photo book The Blue Affair by Kosuke Okahara. 

Are we really creating images from a fresh eye every time we shoot, or are we already building on from pre-existing images of what to be seen? How can we be more aware when the way we photograph becomes purposeful rather than being open and honest with what is there to be seen? And how can we remove ourselves from the position of already knowing and begin again with a beginner’s mind? These are the questions to ponder, and with the blue affair, Okahara has shown us that it is possible.

Going through The Blue Affair book gave me chills. It’s the kind of book that gives you a visual journey in a way that you are drawn in as if you were present with the photographer, experiencing what he was experiencing at the same time. That’s the kind of work I aspire to work towards, because the work that one would remember the most, are the ones that are felt.

His recommended Photobook:  Rasen Kaigan by Leiko Shiga

Please check out his work:

Website: https://www.kosukeokahara.com / IG: @kosukeokahara

To be continued… Part 2. Teju Cole on embracing chance in a confined time

Constanza Valderrama

Recent graduate, Constanza Valderrama is a Chilean artist based in London. Her artistic practice involves exploring photography medium as an object, experimenting and using a multiplicity of materials and techniques to create and print her images.

Her graduation pieces include a series called Horizon Tautology, which is a collection of eight photographic pieces of the same image done with a multiplicity of materials and techniques. The image is a landscape that represents the place where her parents grew up and where they still live. This landscape has also been the background for lots of her memories.

Whereas the repetition of the same image speaks of the recurring act of remembering this place, the different plastic solutions translate autobiographic situations, emotions and sensations that have shaped this memory over time.

This collection is visually linked by the horizon line, articulating a final organic composition containing a multiplicity of shapes, textures, colours and thickness. Altogether, these ten pieces suggest that particular ways of remembering form the general puzzle of memory.

© Constanza Valderrama, from the series ‘Horizon Tautology’; Source @ RCA

Covid-19

Artworks and photography work about the pandemic has been flooding the social media or amongst the art fields, none of which gives me a new sense of inspiration like the one I find with Antoine d’Agata. He used a thermal imaging camera and is drawn to it as it reduces the human subjects in his images to a heat source, an essence of humanity, stripped of cultural specificity.

The artwork themselves are very captivating. And the use of this technology makes perfect sense for capturing humanity in this cold war.

Reference: https://www.magnumphotos.com/newsroom/im-starting-to-feel-the-pain-antoine-agata-covid-19-coronavirus/?utm_source=Audience&utm_campaign=147805841a-FIELD_NOTES_2306_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_237144cbf5-147805841a-7253576&mc_cid=147805841a&mc_eid=ee72b89131

© Antoine d’Agata, from the article ‘I’m Starting to Feel the Pain’; Source @ Magnum Photos

Inspirations from Tom Sachs

When you are looking for what you want to do for your career, the key success is to do what you love to do. The most important things in life are free. You know you are on the right track when you feel it. it’s important to do what’s really fun for you. Just get so good at it that people pay you for it.

The other thing is really important, whatever you do, even if something that doesn’t seem like a life passion, is to do it 100%.

 

How to define your own internal standards:

1. authenticity – that is by building an extreme degree of detail and depth, the experience becomes real. This also demands endurance – 2 years is only an interest, 5 years is a hobby, and 20 years you start to begin a sense of mastery.
2. intuition – the secret is to understand and accept yourself so you can have the courage to make just the right / wrong decision. Don’t take no for an answer, say yes and show them how. Art is a discipline for showing restraints and dedication to the work. Do the work in front of you then improvise. Creativity is not a leading strategy.
3. transparency – be honest and transparent with your methods and intentions. Understand and exploit your own superpowers.

Our Songs from the Forest – Uma Bista

Another big highlight from the 15th Edition of Angkor photo festival was the solo exhibition “Our Songs from the Forest” by Nepali photographer Uma Bista. The work talks about the religious myths of women menstruation and how that still have an impact on the 21st century even though criminalisation was made.

17-year-old Nita Mijar from Mangalsen Municipality-10, Jupu has just finished her Grade 10 exams. She is responsible for a lot of work at home, in the kitchen and the fields. Her parents work and live in India while Nita, her grandmother and her younger brother live at home. Her older brother lives in Birgunj and is studying to be an engineer. Nita does not want to go the cattle shed. But if she does not go to the cattle shed for a month or two, her family and the villagers start asking questions like “Why aren’t you menstruating? What has happened? Did you have physical relations with some man? Are you pregnant?” These questions keep her going to the cattle shed. She enjoys going to the forest for walks and goes with her friends whenever she’s free. In the forest, she pours her sorrows out in songs.

© Uma Bista, from the series ‘Our Songs from the Forest’ ; Source @ Lensculture

Into the hills of Achham, women are considered impure during menstruation and are banished to cattle shed for 7 whole days every month. They are required to remain isolated from their family, and are forbidden from entering homes, kitchens, schools, and temples. They are deemed to be untouchable as it is believed that the gods would be in rage if they are to break the rules of Chhaupadi. In this belief system, it is thought that if a menstruating woman touches a tree, it will never again bear fruit; if she consumes milk, the cow will not give any more milk. They are responsible for the possible ills that might befall the family – especially with male family members e.g. accidents, deaths, illnesses, poor harvest, failures in exams etc.

Even though Chhaupadi has been criminalised and in 2017, Nepal passed a law punishing people who force women into exile during menstruating with up to three months in jail or a fine of 3,000 Nepalese rupees. However, in the five months since the new law went into effect (in August 2018), no cases have been filed against those enforcing the practice. The fear of change still runs deep and every year women and girls die from performing Chhaupadi.

Uma’s photographs take us to the young girls from Achham, into the forests around Oligaun, where they are free to sing, dance and laugh. These soft tendered portraits of the girls show their release and relief of oppression from Chhaupadi, and also a sense of power within them that they own. At the same time, there are doubts with how the future beholds for them, sharing their struggles in how to push the boundaries.

The exhibition in Angkor was held by the Riverside, which is the perfect outdoor location for this particular series. Sari, an everyday clothing for girls in Nepal and is sometimes used as a pad for mensuration, are hung onto trees symbolising a sense of freedom for these girls. They are free to flow with the wind as it blows. The work is either hung onto trees or on canvas nailed to bamboo sticks, reiterating the concepts behind the series – rural village, forest, freedom. Catch the exhibition before it ends on 18th December 2019!

© Michelle Chan, series ‘Our Songs from the Forest’ by Uma Bista at 15th Edition Angkor Photo Festival 2019

 

Joseph Cornell

Heard from another artist about Joseph Cornell, and his famous work of shadow boxes somehow resonate with me. Maybe it’s the idea and theme of voyage and wanderlust. And the idea of collecting and using found objects to make art.

“He was a kind of magician, turning everyday objects into mysterious treasures. By collecting and carefully juxtaposing found objects in small, glass-front boxes, Cornell created visual poems in which surface, form, texture, and light play together. Using things we can see, Cornell made boxes about things we cannot see: ideas, memories, fantasies, and dreams.”

Throughout Cornell’s life, he has never left America but his wanderings around streets of Americas brought him objects and ephemera that allows him to travel within his own imaginations, through the centuries of history, the continents of the globe and even the celestial realm. His work is filled with a yearning for distant places and times.

Source @ Royal Academy of Arts

Podcast about Cornell and Surrealism: https://audioboom.com/posts/3550962-joseph-cornell-surrealism-and-time

References: https://www.josephcornellbox.com/

Simon Wan

「由其是攝影媒介，因為是關於影像，一開始更加要放底影像，尋找你想做的事/你想說的事。」

「攝影只是一個工具用來表達你想做的或你想說的，最重要的是你想說什麼。」

「如果你只想著影相，你只會是一個相機佬。相機佬和攝影師是有分別的。攝影師運用相片來表達他想說的事。」

“Especially within the photography medium, because it is about images, we must first forget about images, and think deeply about what you want to do and what you want to say.”

“Photography is just a tool for expressing what you want to say, the main thing lies with – what you want to say.”

“There is a difference between being a cameraman and being a photographer. A cameraman thinks about images alone, whereas a photographer uses images to express what they want to say.”

Photography as narratives, and how social media is shaping it?

Recently I’ve read some articles that I felt somehow are linked together – one was talking about photography as a narrative medium, what position exactly does it stand? One was about photographs getting censored in IG, and how the platform works is now questionable as technology and the line of ethics blurs, the final one is about how social media shapes our identity.

Why I think they are closely linked because since the development of social media e.g. FB and IG, the use and function of photography has widen and is constantly tied in with our everyday life. Anyone who knows how to use a phone can easily snap a photo to represent something about him/her and post it on social media. Narrating our own stories is easier than ever. It is cheap, fast and skill-less. While this is happening, yes – artists and crafters can easily share works to the world wide public, and art doesn’t have to be something prestige anymore, but some worries about the code of ethics and whether e.g. nude photographs is same as porn. Plus the recent news about images of a murdered victim has been posted on social media, how are we using photography and social media? Should there be some sort of policy? But if one company uses its powers to decree which art can be shown and which art can’t, then art isn’t free. What solutions can there be?

Especially now with teens who are born in the Internet era, they are the cyborgs of constantly documenting their life experiences with images. How are they using photography and social media? How is this culture shaping their identity?

Slant – Aaron Schuman

 

Aaron Schuman is an American artists based in the UK. I came across his work because I love books from MACK and his new book “Slant” caught my eye. Only then when I started studying about his work that his previous work “Folk” was listed as one of the best photobooks in 2016 by Alec Soth, and that he has also been a curator and educator for years. Well his “Folk” work I will need to spend another morning looking into and studying, but what “Slant” interested me is that it features the little police reports from a small town in Amherst, Massachusetts and they are just hilariously ridiculous. These succinct and “extraordinarily anticlimactic” accounts of crimes, suspicious activities, events and non-events newspaper cutting from 2014-2018 are cleverly diptych with photographs made around the same town. The photographs are poetically matched with the text showing a “slanted” way fo rhyme, drawing this inspiration from Emily Dickinson’s “Tell all truth but tell it slant”.

Each of the image pairing was carefully made with many layers and meaning, providing a third space for the viewer to imagine and create possibilities. Quoting from what Aaron says at an interview from photocaptionist, he explained thoroughly how 2 images have been carefully thought out with different added layers:

“in the case of the fig tattoo photograph that you mention, there are many layers. Firstly, I should explain that I grew up in Northampton, Massachusetts – eight miles from Amherst – which is the home of Smith College… … it’s Program for the Study of Women and Gender continues to be one of the most important and prominent within academia, and attracts feminist scholars from around the world. Furthermore, Northampton is often referred to as ‘the lesbian capital of America’, as its population includes the most lesbian couples per capita of any city in the United States… …. it is considered one of the most liberal, left-leaning, ‘open-minded’, ‘alternative’ or ‘countercultural’ communities in America.

What I find fascinating about that particular ‘Police Report’ – ‘A man reported that he was uncomfortable with a protester standing at the intersection of Amity and South Pleasant streets with a sign stating “kill feminism”.’ – is the protest itself, and the fact that today, within Trump’s America, such an ultra-conservative sentiment has become a part of public landscape, even within the most progressive of places. But I’m also interested in the fact that the police were contacted because the protest was deemed threatening; that within this extremely liberal environment, someone’s public expression and protest via ‘free speech’, albeit of their very conservative beliefs, was deemed aggressive and provocative to warrant police attention, and met with such a conservative response. Also, the fact that it was a man who reported that he was ‘uncomfortable’ with this particular act of ‘protest’ is rather intriguing. And furthermore, there’s the irony of the street names – ‘Amity’ and ‘Pleasant’ – which imply certain, very American aspirations on the part of the original town planners, but which are somewhat undercut by the activities described as occurring on those streets today. So the text is already incredibly loaded in so many ways.

Then, there’s the story behind the photograph… … I knew that the fig had all kinds of symbolic meanings, Biblical and otherwise – the Tree of Life, the Tree of Knowledge, Adam and Eve sewing fig leaves together to cover themselves during The Fall, the fruits own sensual and sexual suggestiveness, and so on – so after the tour was over, I went over and asked her if I could photograph her arm. She guardedly said yes, and afterwards I asked her, “Why a fig?” – “Its kind of embarrassing”, she said, “It a reference to The Bell Jar. You know, Sylvia Plath?”

I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn’t quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet”. Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar, 1963

…the photograph of the giant foot … … In the collection, I actually have multiple Reports from over the last three years in which the police were contacted because someone asked to photograph the ‘victim’s’ feet (as you say, it could be a prolific local foot-fetishist, or more likely several undergraduate art students trying to fulfil some brief given to them by one of the surrounding colleges) … … I passed this bizarre foot sculpture on the outskirts of Amherst – it was in the parking lot of a local ‘winery’ (something to do with squashing grapes with bare feet, I guess, as the area is certainly not known for its wine production) – and it was just too good to be true.

The whole spin of the work “initially, in 2014, I simply found these newspaper ‘Police Reports’ quaint and hilarious. But today, in 2017, I actually find them both unexpectedly poignant and painfully disturbing; they seem to reveal certain worrying undercurrents in America, psychological or otherwise, that point to a particular loss, at least in terms of being in touch with reality.”

The work itself is layered, complexed and highly informative with different insights coming together after each read. Attractive and simple at first, but hidden with deep meanings with metaphors relating to politics, media and psychology. I personally find this book is a jewel.

Reference:

https://photocaptionist.com/ism/slant-interview-aaron-schuman/

https://www.aaronschuman.com/slantpages/slant01.html

La Vertigine – Federico Clavarino

Italian photographer Federico takes poetic and free-form images for his work La Vertigine, which means Vertigo in English. Vertigo means – a sensation of whirling and loss of balance, associated particularly with looking down from a great height, or caused by disease affecting the inner ear or the vestibular nerve; giddiness.

The poetic photographs connects one and other, somehow spinning your head from here to there, in a soothing and free way. There’s this sensation of freedom and openness, leading the viewer to imagine what’s not there. The tightly cropped images allow a lot of free associations when combined together in a book. It creates a tension between what is shown in the image, and what could be outside. Clavarino is drawn to shadows, hands, and the spaces in between things, he said “There is a very active frame in all of the pictures. It’s more about that than the actual things I photographed.”

References:

http://federicoclavarino.com

https://www.bjp-online.com/2018/12/la-vertigine-by-federico-clavarino/

http://federicoclavarino.com/assets/la_vertigine/La%20Vertigine%20PDF%20150.pdf