Everyone takes photographs. They are taken every minute of every day across the world. The occasions and compositions can be very similar but why? Only a handful of people are educated and trained in photography but there is a common need to capture moments in the same way.
Joachim Schmid, (b.1955) the German photographer gathered thousands of ‘found’ images [1] and put them into categories to form a study of the snapshot and an attempt to understand peoples relationship with photographs. One of his observations is that we only capture the good times. There are no photographic records of tears and tantrums. No records of funerals and divorces. Although his ‘found’ collections can be studied for similarities across the eras the viewer can also identify the peculiarities of individual images.
Schmid observes one of the issues for photography as an art form is not necessarily the volume of photographs but the number of photographers. There are more people producing photographic art than there are galleries and ultimately there is not much money to be made. Everyone gets paid to put on an exhibition except the person producing the artwork.
The volume of images is discussed in an article on the WEAreOCA website – Dealing With The Flood… [2].
During a discussion with Alec Soth he quoted Robert Frank who said “If all moments are recorded, then nothing is beautiful and maybe photography isn’t an art any more.” Trying to find a positive to progress from Soth identifies three ways photographers are dealing with the ‘flood’.
Firstly they can make it the subject as photographer Erik Kessel has done in 24 Hours of Photographs. Here he printed all photographs uploaded to flickr in a 24 hour period.
Other photographers have taken the second approach, appropriation, where rather than take there own images they pick the ones they want to create there own art. Figures such as Roe Etheridge, Mishka Henner and Doug Richard are practitioners of this approach.
The third category, and the one of most interest to assignments in this course, is story telling. Cristina de Middel is a photojournalist who works on projects involving elements of fiction and strange headlines. Stories that she has examined included the Zambian space mission – The Afronauts (2012) [4] which was nominated for the 2013 Deutsche Borse prize. Interestingly she picked the story because “It attracted my attention precisely because my first reaction was, is it true or isn’t it? …and that is exactly the response I want from my audience when they see my work.” [3]. She uses images of newspaper articles, documentation and archival images then adds her own images and process to tell the story.
As an art photography student it is a formidable thought that I am entering such a vastly oversaturated practice but I see it as a challenge and adventure.
References
- https://weareoca.com/photography/an-interview-with-joachim-schmid/ (accessed 16/05/2017)
- https://weareoca.com/photography/people-are-hungry-for-stories/ (accessed 16/05/2017)
- http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/photography/10882577/Cristina-de-Middel-The-Afronauts.html (accessed 16/05/2017)
- http://www.lademiddel.com/the-afronauts-1.html(accessed 16/05/2017)
Martyn Rainbird 