Image dissection

Hello again and thanks for tuning in to another blog, as the substance of these blogs are changing, I thought I would break into this new style by dissecting a recent picture of mine, one that caused some questions about its validity. This can also be shown in no small part, in the amount pf questionable looks I received while making it. For this dissection I’m using three criteria of its; constituent parts, what it evokes and the process behind it.

Here is the image in question.

The image is of a urban scene with a 60’s style multi story car park butting onto a space that used to be a petrol station but is now enclosed by a white metal hording trimmed with red. In-between the concrete wall of the car park and the hording is a large tree/bush that has grown quite tall and overpowering, to the left of this bush is a well-worn traffic cone. On the white metal hording is a picture of a roof garden from a luxury block of flats but this is only on the side facing inwards to the picture and no other pictures are on the ‘front’ of the hording. This picture is partially eclipsed by the tree/bush. Above this hording is the tip of a roof of an industrial unit with yellow lettering, above that is a set of the ubiquitous luxury towers that make up part of the City Centre. There are many examples of disuse shown within the picture, with the damp of the rain leading to a greasy covering on the pavement making for what seems to be a very slippery pathway, further elements of misuse are present with a discarded traffic cone base, small random graffiti and a worn painted sign again partially obscured by the tree/bush.

Firstly its constituent parts as I see them:

The image is of a urban scene with a 60’s style multi story car park butting onto a space that used to be a petrol station but is now enclosed by a white metal hording trimmed with red. In-between the concrete wall of the car park and the hording is a large tree/bush that has grown quite tall and overpowering, to the left of this bush is a well-worn traffic cone. On the white metal hording is a picture of a roof garden from a luxury block of flats but this is only on the side facing inwards to the picture and no other pictures are on the ‘front’ of the hording. This picture is partially eclipsed by the tree/bush. Above this hording is the tip of a roof of an industrial unit with yellow lettering, above that is a set of the ubiquitous luxury towers that make up part of the City Centre. There are many examples of disuse shown within the picture, with the damp of the rain leading to a greasy covering on the pavement making for what seems to be a very slippery pathway, further elements of misuse are present with a discarded traffic cone base, small random graffiti and a worn painted sign again partially obscured by the tree/bush.

That’s a basic description of the contents of the image now we move on to what it evokes. I will start with my initial draw to this subject matter which is the positioning  of the aspirational selling points of living and the actuality of the scene in which they are presented.

The photograph on the hording is from a neighbouring building that was once office space and is now remade as aspirational living spaces, on this building is a roof garden. My presumption is that this image attached to the hording is a picture of that space.

The photograph is made on what looks like a warm summer’s night, it is a place you could relax and enjoy a pleasant evening. The place shown has no other people within it, the suggestion being that you can choose where to sit and enjoy this life, much like being on a holiday in warmer climes, except this is in Manchester and it’s your roof garden. Some elements missing from this picture, and they have been careful not to show, are the huge football stadium with its associated inconvenience and the city centre with its larger blocks of yearning, both of which it borders and can be seen from this roof garden. Could this be photoshopped or even a computer-generated image?

In this image the aspirational selling photograph is completely out of context within the environment in which it is placed, the puddles, the rain, the greyness and disrepair show the other sides to this story, but it is one that most of us are familiar to.

This images main evocation is a sense of sadness, the contrast of the aspirational images and where they end in reality. This could be my cynicism at play here, but it does seem that modern living spaces are symbolic of the direction of travel intent on a downward spiral to as yet unspecified but seemingly undesirable destination. I believe that this is mainly driven by late-stage capitalism, yet we all seem so unconcerned with this, possibly as most of us are doing what we can to just survive.

That sense of sadness is something that I try and draw out, with a hope that it is seen and it enables a little thought to what and where we are being driven. To facilitate the unseen, then as that is being seen, it is recognised as a signpost to the potential end point. I do realise that this idea, like the image, may be seen as naïve, common place and/or platitudinal.

Now to something of the process, I first noticed this scene when I was without my ‘proper’ camera and made an image on my phone, the desire to capture it ‘properly’ rose and I returned back to the scene and captured it again. I lived with that image for a short period, realising that I had not quite made what I’d seen and needed. This resulted in a final visit, the results f which are what you see here. I increasingly ‘see’ these ‘types’ of images on my walks around this conurbation and in reflecting on this, it seems that I have been drawn to making this style for quite some time. I have evidence of making these type of images as far back as the late 1990’s. They have always held an appeal for me, and now they have a place for exploration in Urgent Temporality.

If I further examine this fascination with these types of spaces, I consider some of their main qualities: they are often ignored spaces which in turn offer a sort of peace from the main throughways, they can be usually busy spaces but are seemingly quiet at the times I go to them. Originally when making them I partially believed that I was photographing spaces that had previously not been photographed before, well at least you hadn’t seen them in popular photography but were they there? Could they be classed under a movement? Could they further fit in with the New Topographics aesthetic?

As a little background the New Topographics ‘aesthetic’/‘tag’, started with an exhibition at George Eastman House Museum of Photography in New York in 1975. The term was devised by William Jenkins, one of the curators at the gallery. It featured a number of photographers (11 but popular sites say 10) whose overriding work linked together at that time with a similar banal aesthetic.

But one person’s banal is someone else’s poignancy. The spaces they photographed shared a wonder of the new to those not living with them, they seemed so foreign yet so familiar, I mainly place this in the fact that they are shared so thoroughly through the medium of television and cinema, therefore combining the familiar with a sense of novelty.

This familiarity highlights one of the individua problem with my own recording of these spaces. As my banality is so familiar to the audience, I’m sharing them with, in that they see them so frequently they become simply banal, I could almost state that they could tell you where image was constructed. My familiar scenes are rendered even more banal as I mainly work in colour and also choose not to let any dramatic weather conditions impede on them. In part I believe this edges them closer to underlining the banal.

Of course again I do see the cliches within this as well, the juxtaposition of luxury and misuse though is a well-worn pathway, a classic photographic narrative device used by many, many photographers. Common themes of distress, poverty and disrepair pop up in photo cliches all the time, from the Amateur Photographer to the Instagram as well as many other places throughout historical references.

But I am continually drawn to banality, unfortunately the current zeitgeist does not place banality very highly, it is not viewed as having much worth or value. I think in part this is due to a contemporary feeling that anyone could make this type of work (which in fairness is quite true) but this leads their attributes being seen as unserious or lacking depth, that is unless it is accompanied by a strong peer reviewed appreciation or a secure state of academicized thought.

I wonder if this is the main reason, or is it their recognisability which makes them oh so easy to dismiss?

Either way my exploration of the banal will continue, it will be added into the UT oeuvre, taking a place alongside the current themes of misplacement and/or ‘of being out of place’. I consider that they complement each other.

Now as photographies value is naturally contained in the sharing of its work, how best to share these images?

I have thought of a publication, which is certainly a future possibility but in the increasing crowded field, I do have to consider what its impact and value will be. As I do feel the need to immediacy with some images, such as this one and as my main form of dissemination is now via social media, I’ve shared this image upon Instagram. I do feel that in the creation and placement of the image on the Instagram, I’m adding into the original ideals of juxtaposition of the elements in the image.

An often-dismissed style placed upon a programme that rewards engagement via facial likeness, overt suggestion and the moving images (here both uses of the word moving are applied.)

At the time of writing it had 9 likes.

Thank you for reading and please if you have any comments, thoughts, suggestions or such like then please get me via the usual channels.