lessons with kate - ruth bernhard

about this series

As many visitors to my blog will know I am a member of a photographic group at the Midlands Art Centre in Birmingham. Our expert tutor is Kate Green. I've been part of the group for many years now and Kate's cheeky, insightful and challenging lessons have helped me find and hone my own style. I owe so much to her encouragement, affirmation and guidance.

This term I want to take you behind the scenes as Kate leads us through a series of lessons which focus on women in photography, a much ignored subject. 

gender discrimination in photography is rife 

Here's just one example taken from an excellent on-line article by Lucy Buchholz in last February's edition of 'March 8'...

'When searching for top professional photographers, research from Wallflower Studios found that search results for terms such as ‘Best photography Instagram accounts’ and ‘Best photographers’ features 216 photographers on the first page of results, only 61 of which were women in the US and just 46 for UK results. For the US, women were represented 28% of the time; in the UK, the results were even lower at 17%.'

Lucy Buchholz ©

this week's photographer

The scene is set as Kate starts her first lesson by introducing us to the work of Ruth Bernhard.

Ruth was an indomitable force. Born in 1905 in Berlin she moved to America in 1927 to join her father. She lived in the States to the ripe old age of a hundred and one. A woman of passion she had several lesbian affairs before eventually settling down in her sixties with a Price Rice, a black US Airforce Colonel ten years her junior.

Ruth left a body of work, almost exclusively in black and white, which is absolutely stunning. She is best known for two things.

The first was her nude photography, usually featuring the female form. This reached a pinnacle with the publication of 'The Eternal Body' - a book which now finds pride of place in my collection after my dear wife bought me a copy to celebrate my reaching State Retirement Age!

The second was Ruth's still-life work, which placed particular emphasis on curved forms and vulva-like imagery. 

We looked at some of Ruth's photography then Kate set us a challenge to to take pictures based on the theme, 'Never get used to anything'.

Here's what I came up with...

what did I do?

I stared at a pair of boots on the floor. My boots. Dr. Marten's. I didn't look for anything in particular, instead I wanted to see. I let the images come to me.

In a little while light and shade, contrast, shapes and form began to emerge. At that point I got out my camera and chose the settings.  A reasonable, but not unduly high ISO suitable for low light,  a one stop down adjustment on the exposure compensation and a wide aperture to blur the background.

I kept checking each frame as I shot to see what worked, what didn't and what else I might need to see.

what did I learn?

The more I stared the more I saw.

The webbing on the side of each boot formed a bridge of light, the signature white stitching suggested something sealed within, the curves of the boot holes became handcuffs, the labels in each boot took on the form of skeletal teeth as two ghostly faces emerged from the gloom.

And then, the last shot. A warm erotic abstract which I think best reflected what the work of Ruth Bernhard was all about.

I learned to sit still and not rush, to blur my eyes not sharpen them so a fresh reality could emerge.

I learned to play not strive. And to my mind that is a very, very good thing indeed.

the passage of light

 

 

joseph mallord william turner plays minecraft and other stories

joseph mallord william turner plays minecraft

The homework set by our photography tutor this week was 'abstract'. Such a lovely word, it derives from the Latin which translates to, 'pulled away, detached'.

I began my research by revisiting the work of JMW Turner, now regarded by many as England's finest painter and the father of modern art. The critics of his time, however, held a markedly different opinion. Throughout his long and distinguished career Turner was viewed by the establishment as both insane and heretical. Despite such misguided opposition he succeeded in opening the doors of perception through which we may still follow.

Turner's passion lay not in surface beauty; he wanted to dig deeper, to extract spirit and meaning. Turner found it in bold washes of mesmerising colour from which emerged the essence of his subject matter - whether a hell-fired seascape or a speeding steam-engine cutting through the rain. And the older he got the more abstract his work became until eventually all form dissolved into glorious washes of liquid light.

Which brings us to the thorny question of whether photography is truly art.  Perhaps the difference is best summed up by the 'decisive moment', a phrase most associated with French photographer, Henri Cartier-Bresson. A poetic moment perhaps, but not a spirit.

Nowadays we're awash in images. Smart phones and digital cameras turn everyone into a photographer. The pictures flash before our eyes in an endless, unrelenting stream in search of yet another social media 'like'. They pass from our consciousness as quickly as they arrive. The homework this week provided an opportunity to stop, step out of the flow and reflect.

What better place to start than with an abstract of one of Turner's light-filled masterpieces.  The picture above is but a very, very small extract which I blew up on my Mac then photographed. It revealed a pixelated, distorted image which simultaneously looked back to the luminescent essence of the original painting and looked forward to the 'blocky' quality associated with the computer game, 'Minecraft'.

a cage of dreams

This photo was taken early one morning looking out of the landing window of our cottage. Our home is next to a church graveyard, a place for quiet, contemplative reflection. 

I wanted to create an image to reflect the peace I find in this place. I used a slow shutter speed, a narrow aperture, exposure compensation and some deliberate motion-blur to produce a dream-like quality. 

Perhaps this abstract questions which side of the cage we are on.

crossing place

One of the many qualities I admire in Turner's work is his ability to draw the viewer in with a sense of underlying movement. The light in his paintings is multi-layered and complex. It feels alive.

This stands in stark contrast to the work of Turner's contemporary, John Constable who sought to recreate the rural idyllic of his native Dedham Vale in Suffolk. Perhaps the most famous of Constable's paintings is 'The Hay Wain'. Whilst not detracting from the technical genius and great detail to be found in this piece to my eyes it looks still and lifeless.

My second abstract seeks to explore shifting patterns of light. The subject matter is a quilt made by wife. What do you see in this image? How does it make you feel?

 the man whose head exploded

Wikipedia describes 'pareidolia' as ...

'the tendency for incorrect perception of a stimulus as an object, pattern or meaning known to the observer, such as seeing shapes in clouds, seeing faces in inanimate objects or abstract patterns, or hearing hidden messages in music.'

In the 1920s the Swiss psychologist, Hermann Rorschach invented a psychometric testing system for the diagnosis of schizophrenia. He based it on the concept of pareidolia. Rorschach asked three hundred mental patients and one hundred control subjects for their response to a set of ten ink-blots printed on white card. He then presented his analysis in a little-read book called, 'Psychodiagnostik', published shortly before his death.

For lovers of trivia, the Rorschach nomenclature lives on in both the ink-blot diagnostic tool and the name of a fictional anti-hero created by writer, Alan Moore for his fantastic graphic novel, 'Watchmen'.

My third abstract explores pareidolia. Can you guess the subject matter?

my dream flew out the window

The final abstract in this series is a photograph of a photograph I took a few years ago. The subject matter is a feather, distorted again through the use of motion-blur and exposure compensation.

It's my favourite. The abstract unlocks in me the child-like imagination I treasure so dearly.  Life is and can be so very serious. Sometimes it's just great to be lost in the moment and to dream.

With the ephemeral flutter of a bird in flight my dreams transport me to a different and a kinder place.

show of hands

This week at Photosocial we looked at hands.

The session was really energizing but I came away feeling slightly disappointed with my photos. I'm glad I didn't delete them.  On closer examination the beauty of tone and form slowly emerged to create this series of abstractions.

What do you think?

an abstraction - the night-tripper

dusk falls

silent

on the dying field

filling it with blackness

only the abstract of weed

is lit up

sharp against the glooming horizon

as the night-tripper 

dances

song

These abstract black and white photos were taken on Monday night at the MAC.  Unfocused and devoid of colour they seem all the more powerful for it.

 

 

gaze

This is my favourite wabi-sabi photograph from Monday's session at the MAC.

What do you see?  A tiny person threatened by a rapaciously toothed monster?  Someone falling from the top of a very tall peak?  A gentle, straight incline? A fine-art museum-piece?

In reality it was a deliberately out of focus photograph of some minor imperfections and scuffs on the side of a waste-paper bin.

and he knew my name

and he knew my name