Looking, Seeing and Capturing
Lecture Notes
My Reflection
This week’s lecture was based upon looking, seeing, and capturing evidence of your surroundings. John Berger’s book ‘Ways of Seeing’ was once recommended to me to read and shall put this on my list for future reference. John speaks in his interview that ‘drawing is constant correcting of errors, which is maybe a great deal of creation’. That’s a great way of defining how we draw through expressing our creativity in the medium of drawing. He comes across very articulate and passionate about art and you see his understanding is so rich with history that he lives and breaths art. The Situationist International organisation by avant-garde artists, intellectuals, and political theorists, which is a social revolutionary movement prominent in Europe. This movement of aesthetics and political renegades were derived primarily from anti-authoritarian Marxism. This movement is very fascinating, which the Internationale Situationiste developed a critique of capitalism based on a mixture of Marxism and surrealism. I really enjoyed the playful and inventive idea in psychogeography by Marxist theorist Guy Debord. He explored in navigating the urban environment in order to examine its architecture and spaces. I found this widely interesting as he’d question how places make us feel through our emotions and behaviour of individuals? The video on ‘The Girl Chewing Gum’ by John Smith, 1976 was great footage of dictating the social behaviour in an urban setting. The way the video was documented, created a very witty film, as the narrator Nicky Hamlyn is governing the behaviour of society is this genius idea of directing this film.
Vivian Maier’s photography work is so inspirational, which her archive of imagery speaks a million words. Watching the film ‘Finding Vivian Maier’ was a great documentary in the discovery of her work that was brought in an auction by John Maloof. John went to great length in getting Vivian’s work noticed by highly regarded professionals and the public. Creating the documentary was a great insight into her work and as she kept her passion for photography to herself it became more interesting to understand the person that she was. Martin Parr, The Great British Seaside exhibition showed some really great photography prints. These images showed the working-class people who have escaped to the beach to relax and lose inhibitions, where Martin found true personalities come to life in this display. He captured very unusual and unique moments of society at their best to express their true colours.
I really found Charles Booth ‘Poverty Maps‘ an interesting graphical piece in showing the social class of its inhabitants. For one I love the designs of maps and that already gets me interesting. The idea of the map showcase the categorise of the classes throughout London showing areas of poverty to the wealthier areas. It demonstrated design in such detail that the information it provided was genuinely an item of significant interest in how London was shaped.
Laura Coombs’s works on ‘Sentimental Time Item‘ is an impressive piece on a set of lectures by R John Williams where the publication is divided into three sections: past, present, and future, which run parallel as three columns: white, grey and black. “The reader must choose how to read the book – one column at a time, all three simultaneously, or in a random, choose-your-own-adventure pattern,” Laura outlines. It’s clear there are many different perspectives in capturing a journey through documents and materials to support the evidence of seeing the subject matter.
Overall this lecture has a wide range of insightful content that is worth researching further and help me with knowing many ways of capturing and observing things at the moment of time. This has broadened my understanding of the perspective of ways to record any findings in my journey wither it’s for this week’s workshop challenge or future side projects. This will make me a better observer and more tempted to note things down on a regular basis.
Further Research
I furthered my research by looking more into the work of Martin Parr as I live right next to the beach in the small town of Bexhill-On-Sea. I really enjoy his photography as it captures the essence of the culture that brings to the British coastline. It’s completely a great way for people watching and absorbing the idiosyncrasies of the British seaside. Martin quotes his reason on why he’s so fascinated with photographing the social aspect of the seaside
It is a place where we relax and lose our inhibitions, and that’s when true personalities come on display
He’s quietly right and you can see that in his photography which really brings to life on how we relax and lose our inhibitions. These are really remarkable art of photography capturing these moments of joy, happiness, and memorable times with family and friends.
Another photography that exhibited in the same exhibition as Martin Parr was Tony Ray-Jones who worked as a freelance photographer which he decided on a project to visually document the English at leisure. For two years he traveled around the country in a campervan capturing, in his words, ‘the sadness and the humor in a gentle madness that prevails in a people.’ During his project he quotes to say in the exhibition:
My aim is to communicate something of the spirit and the mentality of the English, their habits and their way of life, the ironies that exist in the way they do things …
You can truly accept that in British culture when we are most relaxed and enjoy our moments of being away from the hustle and bustle of our busy lives during our holidays.
Workshop Challenge
This week’s workshop challenge is how do you find unique insights into a problem? How do you look into, research, and record this process?
This involves you going out to really look, explore and record a local geographic area. I will have to visit the location several times at different times of day/night to find a unique exploration into my findings.
The location is a particular of my choice within 2 miles, which I chose a road called De La Warr Parade which is on the coast of Bexhill-On-Sea.
Day 1: Looking, Seeing and Capturing
On Monday 6th July I took my first exploration into discovering the unnoticed surroundings of De La Warr Parade. This time round I took only images, but more I explored I wanted to capture the sounds around me which I didn’t set up at the time. Here are some images I’ve come across on my journey:
Day 2: Looking, Seeing and Capturing
On Tuesday 7th July I took my second trip to the De La Warr Parade. This time around I took more images, and capture the sounds around me on my journey. Here are some images I’ve come across on my journey:
On my second trip, I took the opportunity to capture the sounds on my journey along De La Warr Parade. It was very breezy that afternoon and captured a lot of wind hitting the mic. Overall it was an interesting experiment in capturing my surrounding through audio.
Day 3: Looking, Seeing and Capturing
On Wednesday 8th July I took my 3rd stroll along De La Warr Parade and focused my objective of looking for typographic names for buildings. I felt this was an interest in my discovery and came across interesting typographic signposts. Many had unusual and witty names suggestions for buildings, but what I really enjoyed was the style of type used throughout the journey that collated the story. With this, I also collected more sound recordings on my journey when taking these photographs and put together a montage of images with sound.
The Signs of De La Warr Parade
Ideas wall
Weekly Reflection
This week really gave me some great inspiration through the lecture from the likes of John Berger, Situationist International, Vivian Maier, Martin Parr, John Smith, Charles Booth, and Laura Coombs. These all showed great examples and inspirational work of joy that showed a series of methods and outcomes in documenting an event or the surroundings of our environment. Each of these creative showed their findings can really showcase a great story of the moments that might be recognised by those looking for the intension but documents a great way of seeing and capturing evidence of the habitat around you. In my workshop, I really took advantage of pushing myself out of my comfort zone in approaching this challenge. I really enjoyed going out and exploring new findings and observing in more details of my surroundings. I did a few trips on my location, De La Warr parade as it was a long stretch of road next to the beach and can be a very busy strip. On every trip, I came across many findings and more observant through looking and listening. This was why I documented in my development the visuals and audio sound of my surroundings. The building names really directed me in developing my piece as I was drawn by the various typography and names that were given to these absurd pieces of architecture in a funny context. I enjoyed creating my piece as I put together several images of these signage names to the buildings and along with the audio of the environment that these are situated in. One image that stood out for me was a picture of these care homes and one said ‘Barbados’ in this Miami looking type. I was wondering if there were more like this that associated with the Caribbean islands. I later found on the following road there were several blocks of flats with these names, which would have been perfect in a series of images. I could really see this footage placed in an exhibition inside a black box where it would screen. I could ask for an opportunity at De La Warr Pavilion to showcase this as an exhibit. I would consider developing further of my piece in creating the series if images of the flats with the Caribbean Island names which would be a picture-perfect outcome and documented piece. This was so much fun to do and it’s given me the belief and encouragement to be more observant and document my findings where ever I go. There’s a good opportunity that something could develop out to be something bigger within a side project.