The Unreasonable Apple 

Presentation at the first MoMA Photography Forum, February 2010

This month I read a review in a leading US Art Magazine of a Jeff Wall survey book, praising how he had distinguished himself from previous art photography by:

 “Carefully constructing his pictures as provocative often open ended vignettes, instead of just snapping his surroundings”

Anyone who cares about photography‘s unique and astonishing qualities as a medium should be insulted by such remarks, especially here in 2010, in this country, in this city, which has embraced photography like no other.

Now this was maybe just an unthinking review, but what it does illustrate is how there remains a sizeable part of the art world that simply does not get photography. They get artists who use photography to illustrate their ideas, installations, performances and concepts, who 'deploy' the medium as one of a range of artistic strategies to complete their work.  But photography for and of itself -photographs taken from the world as it is– are misunderstood as a collection of random observations and lucky moments, muddled up with photojournalism, or tarred with a semi-derogatory ‘documentary’ tag.  

This is tremendously sad, for if we look back, the simple truth is that the majority of the great photographic works of art in the 20th century operate in precisely this territory: from Walker Evans to Robert Frank, Diane Arbus to Garry Winogrand, from Stephen Shore traveling across America in Uncommon Places; Robert Adams navigating the freshly minted suburbs of Denver in The New West, or William Eggleston spiraling towards Jimmy Carter’s hometown in Election Eve, nobody would seriously propose that these sincere photographic artists were merely “snapping their surroundings”.

So what is the issue? The broader art world has no problems with the work of Jeff Wall, or Cindy Sherman or Thomas Demand partly because the creative process in the work is clear and plain to see, and it can be easily articulated what the artist did: Thomas Demand constructs his elaborate sculptural creations over many weeks before photographing them; Cindy Sherman develops, acts and performs in her self-portraits.  In each case the handiwork of the artist is readily apparent: something was synthesized, staged, constructed or performed.  The dealer can explain this to the client, the curator to the public, the art writer to their readers, etc. The problem is that whilst you can discuss what Jeff Wall did in an elaborately staged street tableaux, how do you explain what Garry Winogrand did on a real New York street when he ‘just’ took the picture? Or for that matter what Stephen Shore created with his deadpan image of a crossroads in El Paso? Anyone with an ounce of sensitivity knows they did something there, and something quite remarkable at that, but... what? How do we articulate this uniquely photographic creative act, and express what it amounts to in terms such that the art world, highly attuned to synthetic creation -the making of something by the artist- can appreciate serious photography that engages with the world as it is?

Now, please do not get me wrong, I admire the work of Cindy Sherman and Jeff Wall and Thomas Demand - I have zero problems with it, and it is emphatically not an either/or situation. Nor should you misunderstand in the other direction: I am not arguing for some return to photographic fundamentalism of reportage Leica 35mm black & white work or whatever - far from it, for we are clearly in a 'Post Documentary' photographic world now. Both of these disclaimers not withstanding, I have to say that the position of ‘straight’ photography in the art world reminds me of the parable of an isolated community who grew up eating potatoes all their life, and when presented with an apple, though it unreasonable and useless, because it didn’t taste like a potato.

Am I ‘Tilting at Windmills’ here?  Perhaps so, but as with the great Don – Cervantes that is – it is to make a point, earnestly, yet with good humor.  The point is certainly not the art world versus the photography world, because it is not apples or potatoes, anymore than it is sculpture or painting. The point is that we need the smart, erudite and eloquent people in the art world, the clever curators and writers, those who do get it, to take the time to speak seriously about the nature of such photography, and articulate something of its dazzlingly unique qualities, to help the greater art world, and the public itself understand the nature of the creative act when you dance with life itself - when you form a meaningless world into photographs, then form those photographs into a meaningful world.  

Thankfully, as the glass clears, it has become apparent just what an incredible achievement Robert Frank or Garry Winogrand or Diane Arbus or Robert Adams accomplished back in the 50’s, 60’s or 70’s, and for that we must be grateful.  For the great exhibitions at the Met, the Whitney, the Guggenheim, and of course MoMA itself; for the books, the catalogues, the enlightened essays: I thank you.  But... what of those who work today with equal commitment and sincerity, using straight photography in the cacophonous present?  I will not name names here, but for these serious photographers the fog of time still obfuscates their efforts, and the blindness j’accuse some of the art world of suffering from, narrows their options. It means their work will almost never be considered for major exhibitions like Documenta, or placed alongside other artists in a Biennale, or found for sale in high level contemporary galleries and art fairs. This does not just deprive the public of the work, and the work of its place, it denies these artists the self-confidence that enables them to grow, to feel appreciation and affirmation, not to mention some modest financial reward allowing them to continue to work. It is also, most importantly, seeing the world of visual art in narrow terms. It is seeing the apple as unreasonable.

So, what is it we are discussing here - how do we describe the nature of this photographic creativity? My modest skills are insufficient for such things, but let me make an opening offer: perhaps we can agree that through force of vision these artists strive to pierce the opaque threshold of the now, to express something of the thus and so of life at the point they recognised it. They struggle through photography to define these moments and bring them forward in time to us, to the here and now, so that with the clarity of hindsight, we may glimpse something of what it was they perceived. Perhaps here we have stumbled upon a partial, but nonetheless astonishing description of the creative act at the heart of serious photography: nothing less than the measuring and folding of the cloth of time itself.

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Ebb Tide 

Afterword to new edition of ‘A1-The Great North Road’

Memory is its own master. Perfect recall sadly does not exist, and as we wind back through the years, our recollections become increasingly unreliable, with inconvenient facts erased, replaced or reordered. Random details come to the fore, while others recede on the ebb tide of time.  But, accepting of all this, what would our lives amount to if we do not at least try?

I was 24 when I started the A1 work, though I had been a photographer, of sorts, for a few years already. An unemployed one, yes, but equally one who didn't want employment of the traditional kind. Or the photographic kind - I never understood those who wanted to be commercial photographers and take their direction from others. For me the struggle to create art from the world as-it-is was the highest calling of the medium, and where one should toil. Maybe that is naïve or innocent, but things come of such youthful attributes - innocence minimises cynicism, naivety precludes conditioning. So, with my limited skills and modest knowledge of photographic history, I sought out some tableaux to work with, principally for itself, for what it was, but also to test myself against, to express devotion to the medium. Politically, the late 1970s and early 1980s in the UK was the time of Margaret Thatcher, the right wing Conservative Party leader, who was engaged in an economic war with the workers unions. She forced through the privatisation of public housing and state industries like coal or steel, and set about dismantling and selling off everything not nailed down. Punk had burned so brightly, then flamed out. Anarchy had not come to the UK.  It was clear the country was being pushed toward a new paradigm, rightfully or not, so a journey across its length, repeated many times, felt valid and timely.

The A1's route was perfect as it was one of the foremost 'A-road' arteries of the nation: the Great North Road was designated number 1, the A1, which connected London, the nation's capital, with the north, its industrial base, and on across the border to finish in Scotland. At the time I travelled it ran from the Bank of England in London's financial 'City' to the main Post Office in Edinburgh, Scotland's capital. It had been re-routed many times from its original form, with by-passes and A1(M) motorway upgrades, but retained echoes of key points from its historic past: coaching inns, the Comet Roundabout, Toll Bar restaurants, and Scotch Corner were among the many way-markers that remain to this day.

The A1 granted the freedom to photograph whatever and wherever - portraits, interiors, still life, landscapes, truck stops, transport bed-and-breakfasts, sunsets and grey skies, the wind moving hedgerows or rain smeared forecourts - all and everything could be embraced along the way.  My journeys were many, and mostly made in a Morris Mini Traveller car - the wooden back estate version - which you could just about sleep in when necessary, as it often was. The car belonged to my partner's grandmother and was kindly loaned, whenever needed. It got me up and down the road, surrounded by large haulage trucks, a tiny vehicle often in dreadful weather with minimal visibility, but protected by guardian angels, and the armour of youth.

I was working in colour, which was radical for the UK at that time, dominated as it was by black and white photography, and the entrenched hierarchy around that. Many who regarded A1's images could not see beyond the use of colour, could not see the love and empathy for a changing country, or for photography itself. For them, the colour negated any other concerns, but time took care of such blinkered viewpoints.

As I traveled up and down the road, the question of when and where to photograph was left open to chance, to random encounter, though certain determinations were consciously made: not to photograph as though this was an American Road Trip, not to take images from a moving car window, not to use any stylizations like blur or filters. And positively, to embrace the grey skies - such as the Yorkshire windsock, the flooded fields, the Little Chef, or Highgate's old Methodist Church. Britain is not blessed with blue skies and daily sunshine, yet the soft light has its unique qualities and tonality that one should respect. The famous English weather and it's rain cycle, created the land we pass through, the green fields, soft hills, streams and verdant hedgerows - and to some degree shaped the lives we live, away from the elements for the most part.

The book is sequenced as a journey northwards, with the first image right beside the Bank of England, where on a crowded pavement, a lady pushes through in her blue coat and scarf, the political colours of Margaret Thatcher's Conservative Party. Then: some divine intervention, as the financial executive's matching blue tie flips over his arm, reaching towards her blue coat. Un-posed, un-staged, direct from life - clearly, as we begin our journey, we have the benediction of the gods.

From London we travel up through the counties of Hertfordshire, Cambridgeshire and Bedfordshire, where we meet Tony, who cleared café tables, with his crossword apron and huge smile; the transport café staff in Sandy or Grantham (hometown of Margaret Thatcher!) who were friendly and generous with their time and willing to be photographed by a 25yr old with a big wooden camera; the lorry drivers of the Midlands, beside their trucks, or in muddy parking lots, patient and accepting, even while 'on-the-clock'. Magical moments arrive: fields on fire, Hopper like glowing service stations, red poppies bursting through green crops, but then, so do interminable days of rain and featureless grey skies. Life without shadows.

The A1's asphalt ribbon appears rarely - as glimpses beside hedgerows in Bedfordshire, or a foreground to North Sea views in Scotland, but most clearly by the Ferrybridge Power Station, with its cooling towers venting steam over the coal wagons on the bridge. Demolished in the 1990s, it sits resolutely here with the Jet and Esso petrol stations and a tarpaulin wrapped lorry ploughing North, all markers of another era. Time took care not only of the A1's mail coaches and ancient inns - giant power stations can be made to disappear too!

Finally up to the North, the by-pass sadly taking us around Newcastle-upon-Tyne, to the 'Services' rest-stops, where a young couple on a day trip asked to be photographed together, with their bleached blond hair, and love-bites ('hickeys') on their necks. Then across the border into Scotland, along a beautiful quiet stretch by the North Sea, to where the road finishes, in the heart of Edinburgh, and an old car showroom with illuminated signs promoting Humber and Singer cars, English marques long since demised.

There is of course much more to these lives, images, locations than might appear, and so many unanswered questions - was the young Geordie man just out of the army? Is the lady at the bus stop 'working'? What happened to the hotel that the sign in the Burning Fields advertises? And of course, where are these drivers, waitress, and day trippers today? It never occurred to me that the work was a marriage of the 'British documentary tradition' with  'New Colour', as a critic pointed out later, but you don't always know what you are doing, while you are doing it. Still don't - that is where the adventure lays for any artist.

These photographs, now four decades old, seem clearly stained with a sentiment for the country, or at least the country-of-my-mind. Then again, aren't they all countries of our minds? Isn't that the issue here? The lands we 'live in', their meaning and narratives are mostly a web we spin, stories we tell ourselves of history, identity, heritage, 'character' - these are the cloth in which we wrap ourselves, to explain or justify entrenched attitudes and political viewpoints. The history of those times, of punk and privatisation, are now as much a part of the Great North Road's legacy as Highwaymen, or Romans, or defunct British car brands. Maybe this is how it had to be, though I prefer the fractal nature of chance, and its roiling path, to any notion of inevitability.

I live in New York City now, so likely there's a wistfulness for Britain that stains my recollections. Or maybe it's simply the wistfulness of age that comes to us all. I'm sure much was missed along the way, but you cannot be an intimate local for the length of an entire country. I also swore I would live in beautiful Edinburgh one day, though that has yet to happen. "Never go back" my father often used to say. He was guarding himself against disappointment, of things being lesser than he recalled, guarding against the pain of broken memories. Yet, these pebbles from 40 years ago do not sting - they have love and empathy, they have gentleness in their clear eyed vision. It is strange to see history arriving and taking away your children, but that is how it must be.

New York City, May 2020.

Book: A1- The Great North Road

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Photography is Easy, Photography is Difficult

 Yale MFA Photography Graduation, 2009

It’s so easy it's ridiculous. It’s so easy that I can’t even begin – I just don’t know where to start. After all, it’s just looking at things. We all do that. It’s simply a way of recording what you see – point the camera at it, and press a button. How hard is that? And what's more, in this digital age, its free - it doesn't even cost you the price of film. It’s so simple and basic, it's laughable. 

It’s so difficult because it’s everywhere, every place, all the time, even right now. It's the view of this pen in my hand as I write this, it's an image of you reading now. Drift your consciousness up and out of this text and see: it's right there, across the room - there... and there. Then it’s gone.  You didn’t photograph it, because you didn’t think it was worth it. And now it’s too late, that moment has evaporated. But another one has arrived, instantly. Now. Because life is flowing through and around us, rushing onwards and outwards, in every direction.  

But if it's everywhere and all the time, and so easy to make, then what’s of value? which pictures matter? Is it the hard won photograph, knowing, controlled, previsualised?  Yes. Or are those contrived, dry and belabored?  Sometimes. Is it the offhand snapshot made on a whim. For sure. Or is that just a lucky observation, some random moment caught by chance? Maybe. Is it an intuitive expression of liquid intelligence? Exactly. Or the distillation of years of looking seeing thinking photography. Definitely.

"Life’s single lesson: that there is more accident to it than a man can admit to in a lifetime, and stay sane"  

Thomas Pynchon, V.

Ok, so how do I make sense of that never ending flow, the fog that covers life here and now. How do I see through that, how do I cross that boundary?  Do I walk down the street and make pictures of strangers, do I make a drama-tableaux with my friends, do I only photograph my beloved, my family, myself? Or maybe I should just photograph the land, the rocks and trees – they don't move or complain or push back. The old houses?  The new houses? Do I go to a war zone on the other side of the world, or just to the corner store, or not leave my room at all?

Yes and yes and yes. That's the choice you are spoiled for, just don't let it stop you. Be aware of it, but don't get stuck – relax, it’s everything and everywhere. You will find it, and it will find you, just start, somehow, anyhow, but: start. 

Okay, but shouldn’t I have a clear coherent theme, surely I have to know what I’m doing first? That would be nice, but I doubt Robert Frank knew what it all meant when he started, or for that matter Cindy Sherman or Robert Mapplethorpe or Atget or...  so you shouldn’t expect it. The more preplanned it is the less room for surprise, for the world to talk back, for the idea to find itself, allowing ambivalence and ambiguity to seep in, and sometimes those are more important than certainty and clarity. The work often says more than the artist intended.

But my photography doesn't always fit into neat, coherent series, so maybe I need to roll freeform around this world, unfettered, able to photograph whatever and whenever: the sky, my feet, the coffee in my cup, the flowers I just noticed, my friends and lovers, and, because it's all my life, surely it will make sense?  Perhaps. Sometimes that works, sometimes it’s indulgent, but really it’s your choice, because you are also free to not make 'sense'.

"so finally even this story is absurd, which is an important part of the point, if any, since that it should have none whatsoever seems part of the point too"

Malcolm Lowry, Ghostkeeper.

Ok, so I need time to think about this. To allow myself that freedom for a short time. A couple of years. Maybe I won't find my answer, but I will be around others who understand this question, who have reached a similar point. Maybe I’ll start on the wrong road, or for the wrong reasons – because I liked cameras, because I thought photography was an easy option, but if I’m forced to try, then perhaps I’ll stumble on some little thing, that makes a piece of sense to me, or simply just feels right. If I concentrate on that, then maybe it grows, and in its modest ineffable way, begins to matter. Like photographing Arab-Americans in the USA as human beings with lives and hopes, families and feelings, straight, gay, young, old, with all the humanity that Hollywood never grants them. Or the black community of New Haven, doing inexplicable joyous, ridiculous theatrical-charades that explode my preconceptions into a thousand pieces. Or funny-disturbing-sad echoes of a snapshot of my old boyfriend. Or the anonymous suburban landscape of upstate in a way that defies the spectacular images we're addicted to. Or... how we women use our bodies to display who we believe we should be. Or...

"A Novel? No, I don't have the endurance any more. To write a novel, you have to be like Atlas, holding up the whole world on your shoulders, and supporting it there for months and years, while its affairs work themselves out..."  

J. M. Coetzee, Diary of a Bad Year.

And hopefully I will carry on, and develop it, because it is worthwhile. Carry on because it matters when other things don't seem to matter so much: the money job, the editorial assignment, the fashion shoot. Then one day it will be complete enough to believe it is finished. Made. Existing. Done. And in its own way: a contribution, and all that effort and frustration and time and money will fall away. It was worth it, because it is something real, that didn't exist before you made it exist: a sentient work of art and power and sensitivity, that speaks of this world and your fellow human beings place within it. Isn't that beautiful?

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