Saturday 29 December 2012

Semiotics of Photography: U

U is for Undercover (Programme Leader)


A myopic visionary

Monday 24 December 2012

Semiotics of Photography: T

T is for Transmittance






'The eyes transmit thoughts, therefore I shut them from time to time, in order to stop having to think. When one is just there like this and doing nothing, one suddenly feels how painful experience can be. To do nothing and yet maintain one's bearing, that requires energy, a person doing something has an easy time in comparison.'


From Robert Walser's novel, Jakob Von Gunten.

Thursday 20 December 2012

Semiotics Of Photography: S

S is for Sick (Leave)

Or, Fingering Fingerboard Moves While The Moving Finger Writes And Having Writ Moves On . . .




Monday 17 December 2012

Semiotics Of Photography: R

R is for Reflection

Often murky, sometimes superficial



Thursday 13 December 2012

Sunday 9 December 2012

Semiotics Of Photography: P

P is for Perfect (Company)


Pizza Express (Falmouth)

Tuesday 4 December 2012

Semiotics Of Photography: O

O is for Ornery (Obstructive, Offensive, Obtuse)


Not unlike the scenario that unfolded the day our colleagues moved office:

So, the tables were turned
The chairs upside down;
The occasion?
Invasion.
Comm-Phot boys
Just hit town.

Would be wrong;
Deceitful,
To say all previously well.
To suggest the office
A haven.
In fact, it was hell.

If hell is too strong
Then, perhaps, purgatory.
But in no time at all
We were marking our territory.

Pissing on table legs,
Obstructing the doors.
(A note to Estates:
Please remove carpets from floors.

Clearly, unhygienic.)

So, it remains to be seen:
The lay of the land.
Now Comm-Photo are with us,
They may take a stand.

They may take offence
At the current regime.
Or we may stand united
An invincible team.





Sunday 2 December 2012

Semiotics Of Photography: N

N is for Nostalgia


Nostalgic spectacle:
A rosy hue.
Try turning back;
Horizon is blue.

Black and blue.

Always the longing
Wanting belonging.

But taken unforgiving,
To a place I had to go.

Damn, no

A gambler, performer
With an eye for a show.


Friday 30 November 2012

Semiotics Of Photography: M

M is for Moon

Since the beginnings of photography photographers have photographed the moon; photographed at night and by moonlight.


Man on the moon.
Dark side of the moon.
Moonstruck


Blue moon.
(Athens, Georgia, 2002)



Tuesday 27 November 2012

Semiotics Of Photography: L

L is for (The Camera Never) Lies

They say the camera never lies, so to whom do we attribute this sleight of hand?

Photographer or subject?


Friday 23 November 2012

Semiotics Of Photography: K

K is for Klein (Yves Klein's Leap into the Void, 1960)


A leap into the void.

A year later - the year before he died - Klein masterminded another brilliant stunt: Blue Monochrome (1961).

According to the MoMA website (http://www.moma.org/collection/object.php?object_id=80103) 'Klein likened monochrome painting to an 'open window to freedom'. He worked with a chemist to develop his own particular brand of blue. Made from pure color pigment and a binding medium, it is called International Klein Blue. Klein adopted this hue as a means of evoking the immateriality and boundlessness of his own particular utopian vision of the world.'

Blue: the hue of freedom and immateriality. Rebecca Solnit is Klein's true successor with her beautiful philosophical memoir A Field Guide To Getting Lost (2005).

From her chapter, 'The Blue of Distance':

'For many years, I have been moved by the blue at the far edge of what can be seen, that color of horizons, of remote mountain ranges, of anything far away. The color of that distance is the color of emotion, the color of solitude and desire, the color of there seen from here, the color of where you are not. The color of where you can never go. For the blue is not in the place those miles away at the horizon, but in the atmospheric distance between you and the mountains.' (pp29-30)


Wednesday 21 November 2012

Saturday 17 November 2012

Semiotics Of Photography: I

I is for I(Eye)-Balling

If high-balling doesn't suit you, try I(eye)-balling.


Wednesday 14 November 2012

Semiotics Of Photography: H

H is for Highballs

Something to consider when there's been a balls-up with the high-up at work.

According to Staffordshire Gritstone - The Roaches: The Definitive Guide (2009) edited by Niall Grimes:

'If a boulder problem occurs with a full grade in brackets opposed to just the technical grade, this means it is a highball problem, with aspects of a route about it. That is, you might not want to fall off. . . Use your sense.' (Grimes, 2009, 12)




Saturday 10 November 2012

Semiotics Of Photography: G

G is for Greg Lucas Connects

The most original and erudite commentary on photography I know. Free-thinking, free-wheeling.

http://greg-lucas.blogspot.co.uk





Thursday 8 November 2012

Semiotics Of Photography: F

F is for Fish (and Photography)

I maintain there remains a place in the multiple, myriad histories of photography for a history of fishing, fish and photography. . .

Image from M Haworth-Booth, 1997, Photography: An Independent Art, London: V&A Publishing, p56. (Royal Engineers US/Canada Border Survey, Columbia River Salmon Caught at Kettle Falls, 1860-1.)


Sunday 4 November 2012

Semiotics Of Photography: E

E is for Education (A Photographic Education)

Image taken from Marina Warner, 'Parlour Made', Creative Camera, Vol 315, April/May 1992 pp28-32
(Kate E Gough Album, V&A Collection)


Originally inspired by an enlightened ideal (art for art's sake), it was latterly hijacked by career aspirants.

Thursday 1 November 2012

Semiotics Of Photography: D

D is for Darkroom

A place for development, transgression, alchemy.
The analogue photographer's final sanctuary.
(Until our Alma Mater, the University, dismantled it.)


Image from (ed) Jay, B (1994) Some Rollicking Bull: Light Verse, and Worse, on Victorian Photography, Germany: Nazraeli Press

Tuesday 30 October 2012

Semiotics Of Photography: C

C is for Creative (Photography)

Enough to trigger a bulimic episode . . .

Image from: http://www.hillonphotography.co.uk/projects/recent_work.php








Saturday 27 October 2012

Semiotics Of Photography: B

B is for Barthes (Roland Barthes)

Image: R, Barthes, 1997, Roland Barthes By Roland Barthes, California: Farrar, Straus and Giroux Inc


Roland Barthes:  lecturing distressed him, panels and boards bored him.

How can you not admire or love him?

Wednesday 24 October 2012

Tuesday 25 September 2012

The 180 Degrees Project (Turning My Back On The Photograph)

In the 1990s, I travelled the Southern States of America with a photographer.

I took my camera, an Olympus Mju Zoom 35 MM Film Camera: point and shoot. But I was at a loss as to what to photograph.

I tried to focus on a small-town kind of vernacular but, unlike the photographer, who'd spent his formative years in America, I'd grown up in Europe; it wasn't a language I spoke or understood.

So I devised a plan. Whenever the photographer stopped to make a picture, I positioned myself behind him; back to back, facing in the opposite direction.

I turned my back on the photograph, and took whatever stood in front of me.


Monday 24 September 2012