I am really pleased that an image I submitted was accepted for the TIME TO THINK: Shutter Hub Exhibition at @festivalpilours in France. The day I took the image, I had been at the first of three Pic London workshops and arrived home exhausted.
I was certainly not the only middle-aged person there but there were many much younger people and I felt a little like I had gone back in time to the mid to late 90s when I was doing lots of acting workshops, although those were somewhat more physical. I loved that feeling even though it was intermingled with feelings of inadequacy or perhaps discomfort due to not being younger.
We had been given a bit of homework. We must bring 5 objects into the next workshop to work with and develop ideas which might have emerged out of the story game we played last time. The game had been quite simple but involved role-playing and imaginative storytelling. I guess what we were encouraged to take away from the day was the fact that one can start with some very simple ingredients when making collaborative work. (I am due to do a workshop in my middle son’s school class and it was rather helpful for that actually).
The image is a portrait of my two younger sons’ game with some tinfoil. They play effortlessly as we adults must be retrained to do so. It seemed to sum up what we have been directed to think about during the workshop. I think tinfoil might be one of my 5 objects.
https://twitter.com/shutter_hub/status/1134360162700058624
Women & Photography
I was interested to read the following post by Carole Evans about women and photography. She expressed quite a lot of what I think about the term ‘woman photographer’ and it is interesting to note that Shutterhub’s call out was only open to women.
http://www.disphotic.com/to-be-a-photographer-is-to-be-male/
Evans ends, “Georgia O Keefe famously said, “The men liked to put me down as the best woman painter. I think I’m one of the best painters” (Chadwick, 2012). Similarly, the term “women in photography” is patriarchal. I am a photographer; I don’t want to be judged by my gender, but rather by the merit of my work. And to do that, my work needs to stand besides, not apart, from the work made by men.” (2019)
I completely agree with the above statements. But I am conflicted, even so. We need to address the imbalance in photography BUT always recall it simply reflects the society we live in.
What’s also weird is that so few people seem to comprehend unconscious bias or unconscious structural preferences which swim about our collective imaginations. I really thought more people were aware of all this. (On Twitter, someone reported being racially profiled in a well-known health store recently, and the response from the police and the store were patently lacking in that awareness. It was really bizarre. In fact, the more I speak with people the less I am certain it’s widely accepted that people, myself included, often act on an impulse driven by long-held beliefs and patterns which they don’t even begin to unpack in any way whatsoever.)
Andrew Jackson’s recent article which he wrote alongside Savannah Dod focuses on race, but their arguments are also applied to all non-white-male subjects and seem a little more robust than Evans’ (a lot of which I agreed with and felt was valuable, nevertheless). They really try to dissect the way in which we are trained to see and value images – looking at the unconscious construction of reality.
“This is not to say that there exist inherent and incontrovertible “male” and “female” ways of seeing. Instead, this means that men and women, and of course people of different ethnicities and sexual orientations, experience and move through the world differently, and this difference is relayed through the images that they create…[]… editors privilege this particular way of seeing over all others.” (2019)
They quote Danielle Zacman who is very vocal about white male dominance in photography.
“But even beyond concerns for the fate of the industry, disseminating an “incredibly narrow” worldview has far-reaching consequences that impact society as a whole. Daniella Zalcman is clear: “Photographs don’t just tell us stories, they tell us how to see. So when representations of womanhood, the female body or femininity are largely constructed by men, it’s not just that they define us, they teach us how to see ourselves.” (2019)
So both articles say something similar but the latter seems to delve deeper into why the world sees and judges imagery as it does. As long as it does, various attempts to dislodge the habits that are so deeply, deeply entrenched will come along, including female-only competitions. I think what’s really positive about Shutter Hub and Festival Pilours is that it is less about ‘one winner competitiveness’ which might very well be a patriarchal construct and more about growing a community, I think. Which just feels rather less confrontational and aggressive – although of course, there is other ‘stuff’ as there always will be in any scenario.
As for the amount of time, energy and space mothers without nannies and money have for devoting to their work… well, I could write a bloody book on that!
Refs:
http://www.disphotic.com/to-be-a-photographer-is-to-be-male/