On the Beat

I took a great number of sunset and sunrise photographs around the turn of the year: a Christmas Eve walk produced a surprisingly colourful sunset, and two different sunrises just into the New Year were similarly beautiful. Then there was also the Hoover Building - a third January sunrise.

A friend asked why I was suddenly taking so many sunsets and sunrises; basically, it is because I can: they are more accessible at this time of year. For much of the year, to be honest, I can't be arsed with sunrise - you simply have to get up too early.

Also, though, there were some beautiful skies: the low winter sun passing through misty winter mornings produces some beautiful shades.

These photos have been on flickr for a while, and links were posted on Facebook, but I wanted to set them up here, too - these sets, curated, look a little different.

They'll follow in the next three posts...

We went to see “Exposed” at Tate Modern recently, an exhibition of photographs and videos exploring photography’s relationships with voyeurism and surveillance. I found it a strange exhibition, lacking in cohesion: few of the photographs seemed worthy of exhibiting, and those were from early in the development of photography. Given the large numbers of photographers and photographs which could have been included, the omissions seemed critical.

Photography is necessarily voyeuristic. Looking through a camera – particularly older cameras – is like looking through a window. Since photography was invented, it has been used to capture candid scenes, with or without the subjects knowledge or involvement.

In “Rear Window”, Hitchcock probably said more about the relationship between photography, the photographer and their subjects than this show did: the desire to frame the world, to record others’ behaviour; to catch an image. (And, in “Rear Window”, a criminal.) And of course, in the movie, the audience are themselves acting as voyeurs.

And so was the audience at this show. A surprising number of people looking at the pictures on the wall had cameras strung around their necks, as if they were about to contribute to it. One exhibit incorporated an image of the viewers watching it (superimposed on an archive photographs of a lynch mob in the southern USA).

This show did raise serious issues: the extent to which the viewer is complicit in the photographer’s action; whether a photographer is responsible for what they see, and whether a subject’s willingness to participate removes the photographer’s responsibility; when does a photograph become one of the people instead of the environment; are there things which shouldn’t be photographed? And so on, and on.

It is of course an interesting subject. But, for me, the issues weren’t fully explored, and were weakened by the frankly poor quality of the pictures themselves. Artistically, they were lacklustre: the images didn’t have the power, as photographs, to convey the complex ideas the curators were projecting onto them. There were more interesting pictures by the photographers – why the particular images were chosen by the curator wasn’t clear.

The more modern works left me cold: too knowing, perhaps too conceptual. There was a very entertaining video of an artist’s dialogue with a surveillance camera (he held up signs asking questions; the camera nodded or shook its “head” in response) [sorry – I can’t remember the artist!], and the discourse on the role of the security forces and military was interesting. The role of the media – and even the internet (tagging of pictures on flickr and Facebook, for instance) – was barely covered (apart from a look at celebrities); whilst the whole exhibition was about privacy, it didn’t really seem like it was actually examined.

There was no examination of the extent to which everyone’s snaps – our holiday pictures, pictures of our children, for example – are intrusive, whatever the subjects’ complicity. An examination of how our attitudes to voyeurism and privacy have changed since the advent of photography would have been interesting, too. Now that everyone’s pictures sit on the web and we move through cities under the ever-watchful panopticon of CCTV, do we perceive the public and the private differently?

Almost uniformly, the subjects weren’t smiling; indeed, they looked pretty miserable. This is understandable in some cases – many of the pictures examined the living conditions imposed by poverty, for instance – but it was most marked in Nan Goldin’s pictures of New York’s social scene in bars and parties. Shown as a slide show, these hundreds of images featured willing participants who mostly looked bored or miserable. That is probably the point: the opposite of fun. But generally, people smile; I go to bars, I take photographs at parties: people smile.

But not in New York. And not in “Exposed”.

The Counter-Terrorism Act 2008, which makes it an illegal act to photograph police officers, came into effect on 16 February 2009. This picture was taken on 13 February 2009. The picture shows the back entrance to Downing Street, London. I think they saw me... And that is a sub-machine gun the female officer is holding!

This is my protest against an unnecessary, harsh law.

If anyone out there uses Photoshop Elements, can you explain the difference between the clone stamp and the healing brush? They seem to do exactly the same thing to me.

Ta!

The British Journal of Photography has an article stating

Set to become law on 16 February, the Counter-Terrorism Act 2008 amends the Terrorism Act 2000 regarding offences relating to information about members of armed forces, a member of the intelligence services, or a police officer.

The new set of rules, under section 76 of the 2008 Act and section 58A of the 2000 Act, will target anyone who 'elicits or attempts to elicit information about (members of armed forces) ... which is of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism'.

A person found guilty of this offence could be liable to imprisonment for up to 10 years, and to a fine.

Presumably this will include photographers covering any police activity - including violent treatment of suspects.

(via Boing Boing.)

I never cease to be surprised by what people look at on my flickr pages.

But I am curious for a real preference for scanned text over photographs. The pair scans of aphorisms which I was given by a stranger in Darjeeling 18 years ago have got way more hits than any of the photographs taken at the same time I uploaded today.

Also interesting is a real preference for people: the pictures of G., with whom I was travelling, also have more hits than the landscapes and cityscapes.

I often don't include people in my photographs - unless they are the subject of the photograph. I go to lengths to exclude people, sometimes: you could look at my pictures of Edinburgh, New York or London and think of them as unpopulated, desolate places. (Aside from some people getting married and some others running through an art gallery...)

This is partly because I am always wary of putting pictures of people I know on flickr - they may not want to be there. I have have some lovely pictures of the friends I stay with when I visit New York, but they might not want pictures of their kids splashed over the internet.

It is also because if a picture is of a building or a shape (and a lot of mine are), I don't need to see people there, too: the abstract is enough for me.

But that's just me: and clearly other people like pictures of smiling faces!

There is a meme going around that works like this:

Go to your picture files
Go to your 6th folder.
Go to your 6th picture.
Tell us about it.

This of course ought to be the perfect meme for me. You may have noticed that I take copious numbers of photographs. But I can't.

The sixth folder is empty. It doesn’t contain any photographs.

I don't order my photographs like that. My folders are structured differently. The control freak in me means that I refuse to use the "My Photographs" folder (similarly any other preloaded folder, apart from music, which iTunes wouldn't let me change to suit the way I think: I had to do what it wanted, which annoyed me no end, since I much prefer doing what I want).

I use folders and subfolders to organise my photographs, and a nested taxonomy (one of my favourite words...) to order them; although the most dominant classification is “places”: and within places, by date.

There are other classifications: the sixth folder in my Photographs folder (which is a sub-folder itself – see, I said this didn’t work for me) is “landscape”, but now most landscapes I take are subsumed in “places”. Other folders are “portraits”, “art images”, “botanic gardens” (which hasn’t been used for a long, long time, and should really be moved to “places/Edinburgh”…), “art images”, “events” and “music”. All of these intersect, of course: I understand the use of tags here (though I don’t use tags, apart from when I have dumped my photographs onto flickr ) to cross-reference.

I was thinking I would instead chose a favourite photograph; but I do that regularly (and I am about to post many pictures, later today) – and of course I write about them.

So you can make do with those, instead.

It’s just the way my mind works.

This is a a bugbear of mine, and I know a lot of people who read this journal are interested in the topic as well.

In response to a this video posted on Arbroath, which shows two policemen asking a photographer to see his licence for his camera (yes - his camera licence), Staticgirl left a comment about a short guide to photographers' rights by Linda McPherson.

You can find it here.

How come out of all the pictures I stick up on flickr, pictures of kittens get more hits in one day than any others?

The internet really is run for the sole purpose of transmitting pictures of cats.

So much for art!

This evening I did something I haven’t done for five years or so; it used to be a big thing in my life, but along with so much analogue, it got swept away in the digital tide.

I developed a film.

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