lessons with kate - julia margaret cameron

 

what the (male) critics said in 1865...

'Mrs. Cameron exhibits her series of out-of-focus portraits of celebrities. We must give this lady credit for daring originality, but at the expense of all other photographic qualities.

A true artist would employ all the resources at his disposal, in whatever branch of art he might practise. In these pictures, all that is good in photography has been neglected and the shortcomings of the art are prominently exhibited.

We are sorry to have to speak thus severely on the works of a lady, but we feel compelled to do so in the interest of the art.'

from Malcolm Daniel's treatise - The Met's Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History

'What in the name of all the nitrate of silver that ever turned white into black have these pictures in common with good photography? Smudged, torn, dirty, undefined, and in some cases almost unreadable, there is hardly one of them that ought not to have been washed off the plate as soon as it appeared.

We cannot but think that this lady's highly imaginative and artistic efforts might be supplemented by the judicious employment of a small boy with a wash leather, and a lens screwed a trifle less out of accurate definition.'

from 'The Photographic News'

what the (male) critic said in 2024...

Writing in the Sunday Times on the Julia Margaret Cameron - Francesca Woodman paired exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, critic Waldemar Januszczack said this...

'Cameron was one of the most important contributors to the early days of photography. Coming late to the art - she was 49 when her daughter gave her a camera as a gift - she brought experience, confidence and an enviable address book to the task.

Her portraits of eminent Victorians still adorn our school textbooks. Her softly focused visions of angelic children and dreamy Guineveres introduced a new set of feminine values into photography. She was an inventor, a shapeshifter, a pioneer.'

Regrettably, he also went on to say this about the young female photographer Francesca Woodman...

'Woodman (1958-81) was none of these things. Born in Denver, Colorado, to parents who were artists she was nervy, narcissistic and neurotic, and what little time she gave herself in her short career was spent acting out floaty photographic situations that usually involved taking off her clothes.

plus sa çhange ...

As a man I am both disgusted and ashamed. Francesca Woodman was a brilliant photographer, as was Julia Cameron.

They both deserved better than this.

my photographs

lessons with kate - berenice abbott

 

face-off

"The world doesn't like independent women, why, I don't know, but I don't care."

Berenice Abbott ©

the photographer

Berenice was a polymath.

polymath

/ˈpɒlɪmaθ/

noun

a person of wide knowledge or learning.

"a Renaissance polymath"

Berenice shot fantastic photographs of famous artists associated with the surrealistic artist, Man Ray.

Berenice shot brilliant photographs of the developing skyline of New York in the 1930s.

Berenice shot fascinating photographs of abstract scientific principles.

Berenice was a woman.

Berenice was lesbian.

Get over it. She was genius.

the challenge

Shoot some photographs taking 'delight in simple things'.

I chose a chess set designed by Man Ray. Berenice worked for a time as an assistant at the Man Ray studio in Paris. He designed a fantastic chess set of which this is a copy.

what did I do?

I used a light-box and explored different exposures.

what did I learn?

Look beneath the surface.

lessons with kate - miho kajioka

the brutal truth

I detest discrimination in all its many hydra-headed forms. I believe in celebrating difference, not using it as a weapon to divide.

Whilst explicit sexism has become just a little less common these days the more insidious danger lies in the implicit. Click on this link to find out more about discrimination in photography - it remains the brutal truth.

this week's photographer

Week 2 and Kate Green introduces us to the work of Miho Kajioka,  a very talented young Japanese photographer now living in San Fransisco. Her work is ethereal, calming and fragile. She uses empty space in and around an object to define it.

Miho's photographs have a timeless quality to them, enhanced by the thoughtful use of black and white tones or muted colours.

Not only are the images beautiful, the way they are presented brings a painterly quality to them too. Milo places her subjects in long or wide frames to emphasise the negative space to be found within. She applies origami folds, she uses silver-tone and she stains her pictures with tea. 

Her images transcend photography and enter a place where everything is art and art is everything.

the challenge

This week's challenge is to produce two images applying what we've learned about Miho's work. The theme is 'connect to your inner child'. 

Here's what I came up with.

what did I do?

The technical bits first. I used a Fuji medium-format camera for its super resolution and image quality. The ISO setting was high and the aperture wide - I was shooting in virtual darkness.

After taking each shot I reviewed the image on the camera's back-screen and used both exposure compensation and film effect to create different images.

Back home I tweaked highlights and shadows, cropped the pictures slightly and applied a vignette and a silver-tone to create a dream-like quality to the images.

Creatively, my focus on connecting to the inner child centred on the mystery and magic of seeing the world in the dark.

As a very small child I remember my parents bundling me and my younger brother into the back seat of the car and driving in the dark in the vain hope he would cease his incessant bawling. I marvelled as the headlights lit up a world which looked so very different in the day.

The choice of a tree to photograph was deliberate. It reminded me of when I was four or five with a hunger to read everything I could lay my hands on. I found Enid Blyton's 'Faraway Tree' stories on our local library and they became a safe sanctuary of my own where I could visit and dream.

what did I learn?

The act of stopping after each shot to check the results on the camera screen made me slow down. It created a natural, gentle-paced rhythm which enabled to think (whether consciously or unconsciously) on a much deeper level.

I'm also intrigued by the way Miho presents her images. In the next few weeks I hope to investigate how I may shape my images using physical means rather than software.

 

just surfing

 

spellbound - part two

For the second series of photographs I wanted to create a film noir feel. 

I dialled down the exposure to use the shadows cast on the white back-drop to good effect.  Again, I left in the imperfections at the edges of the shots and applied a silver tone filter to enhance the mood.

spellbound - part one

 

I had a great time on Monday at the Midlands Art Centre photographing a burlesque model. 

My goal was to create two distinct series of images. The first, shown here, was deliberately disorientating - an attempt to capture mysterious movements and moments in time.

The effect was achieved by a combination of over-exposure and use of the in-camera multi-image function. I added a silver-tone treatment in post-production to give the pictures a filmic feel in keeping with the mood of the series.

Finally, a number of the images contained vestiges of the white backdrop against which the model was shot. Rather than cropping them out or using a retouching tool I made a conscious decision to leave the imperfections as they were, again to create a filmic feel.

hope is

 

 

hope is

flayed

across

the back

of 

a

naked

torso

 

hope is

flexed

and

coiled

and 

burnt

 

hope is

wisdom

 

 

 

 

body of work - tribal masks

 

 

shapes draped

 

 

shapes draped

in silence

freeze-framed

 

 

 

fourteen self-portraits of the man who disappeared

 

transgressive

(trænzgrɛsɪv )

 

ADJECTIVE

 

Transgressive is used to describe actions that break a moral law or a rule of behavior.

 

[formal]

To write and publish this poem was a daring, transgressive act.

 

COBUILD Advanced English Dictionary.

 

Copyright © HarperCollins Publishers 

 

 

 

 

scraped and scabrous

parsed skin

from dry bone

the body

brushed beneath the rug

reaches

out 

 

fourteen self-portraits

of

the man

who

disappeared