Martin Brent Critical Research Space

“I suspect no landscape, vernacular or otherwise, can be comprehended unless we perceive it as an organization of space; unless we ask ourselves who owns or uses the spaces, how they were created and how they change.  J.B. Jackson

Ive used this quote a few times throughout the course, not because I think it looks good but because it genuinely resonates with me and chimes with my project exactly.

As I have careered around the boundaries, often way beyond in retrospect, of my project Ive found it essential to revisit my practice and what I think it is more often than I ever felt I would. I knew my practice revolves around humanity.  This was a conclusion thats slowly dawned on me and became clearer, my time in hospital although on the face of it was a great time to be able to devote thought and gain clarity did nothing of the sort and my anxiety led me down many dark paths that I almost regret.  

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When the images you work with look like the above you know that your mind has travelled into much darker spaces and had I not been in such a precarious state with my own health I doubted I would have gone there. However maybe you have to go there to be able to come back better informed.

I used to think I shot many different subjects which is true to an extent but looking at them with a more informed eye I can now see it was always he human element that is the consistent feature. Landscape in particular there will be inevitable traces of human activity in one way or another. 

Taking take the privilege of the unseen observer, the image of the beach above I suppose could be considered voyeuristic but I wasnt hiding via use of long lens or digital technology, i’m using a standard lens and stood in plain site but unseen to the subjects as they are very absorbed in their ‘photo session’ continued for a good ten minutes, were the poses a tacit invitation for all to record? So my gaze falls on the world where humans inhabit or have made their inevitable marks.

Thus my view on the world is influenced by the changes humans have made to it, I rarely if ever photograph purely natural things.

My own ‘style’ or ‘look’ I would describe as observational.  Im looking for themes, often making comments that I hope my audience will spot and investigate further. I do use compositional rules to help the viewer find their way around the images. In many cases following my directions will lead to a questioning of what it is exactly the viewer is looking at and my theme or comment that may not have been immediately obvious to them might merge.

“Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape” was how Jenkins had identified in the work of US photographers  Robert Adams, Lewis Baltz, Bernd and Hilla Becher (hurrah, a woman!), Joe Deal, Frank Gohlke, Nicholas Nixon, John Schott, Stephen Shore, and Henry Wessel, Jr. This is very much what I am also concerned with, the man altered landscape.

Sean O’Hagen in his piece in the Guardian, New Topographics: Photographs that find beauty in the banal observes

“Only one photographer, Shore, shot in colour. It seemed to heighten the sense of detachment in his photographs of anonymous intersections and streets. Shore was influenced by Ed Ruscha, the conceptualist of Californian cool, who, in the 60s, had made a series of artist’s books with self-explanatory titles such as Twentysix Gasoline Stations, Some Los Angeles Apartments, Every Building on the Sunset Strip. The show also nodded obliquely at the later work of Walker Evans, who had photographed the vernacular iconography of America in road signs, billboards, motels and shop fronts”

Although I also choose to photograph the vernacular and banal, I do not pursue my subjects in the same way as Ruscha shot his gas stations, he shot them as they were. A “they are what they are” approach. See my post last week about Ruscha.   I choose my subjects with a point in mind.  The image above, shot near Hisperia CA is the a gigantic recently cleared plot on the new edge of town.  Clearly Main Street isn’t what it was. Maybe this phase is transient but the collapse of small town America is no secret and I fear the lot will remain as it is.

Andy Grundberg has noted,

“For all its virtues in making us engage photographs more closely and complexly, the aesthetic of the equivalent…has one major shortcoming: after asserting that an apparently transparent image of the world is imbued with individual vision or feeling, it has difficulty defining what that vision or feeling is. Used as a critical instrument, the theory of equivalence is unable to determine any intended meaning in a photograph. But as a credo, it has served as the dominant aesthetic of American photographic modernist practice.”

As a photographer whose practice has evolved without the benefit of an arts based education or any real appreciation of the world of art photography until quite recently in real terms every discovery sheds new light on my practice and its incredibally exciting to discover what motivated Shore, Balts, Adams etc also motivated me before I was formally aware of their work beyond a superficial level and certainly their motivations for producing it.

To me it proves that the need to record, make sense of the world around us, the landscape according to your vision is an inbuilt trait, an obsession or need that we have to express.

Jenkins speaking of the photographers in New Topographics claims that although their photographs convey “substantial amounts of visual information,” they are, above all, aesthetic arrangements resisting interpretation.  He quotes Robert Adams:

“By Interstate 70: a dog skeleton, a vacuum cleaner, TV dinners, a doll, a pie, rolls of carpet…Later, next to the South Platte River: algae, broken concrete, jet contrails, the smell of crude oil…What I hope to document, though not at the expense of surface detail, is the Form that underlines this apparent chaos”.

Deborah Bright says “If we are to make photographs that raise questions or make statements about what is both in and around the picture, we must first become more conscious of the ideological assumptions that structure our approaches”.   This interests me and resonates, my first aim when embarking upon this MA was to understand my own practice and then be able to articulate that vision.  Also as part of my journey and evolving desire to create works for gallery display this next statement concerns me.

“As part of this, we need to examine the restrictive terms of the art museum and gallery nexus and ask ourselves whether we need to seek out other markets and audiences for our work”

This is something I never really considered, as I make my own art, playing by my rules and personal motivations will it ‘fit’ into the gallery nexus, will I need to discover my own outlet?

As Lewis Baltz says “The landscape…seems more a set of conditions, a location where things and events might transpire rather than a given thing or event in itself; an arena or circumstance within which an open set of possibilities might be induced to play themselves out”

References:

J.B. Jackson, “Concluding with Landscape,” Discovering the Vernacular Landscape (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984), p. 150.

D Bright Of Mother Nature and Marlboro Men An Inquiry Into the Cultural Meanings of Landscape Photography

www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2010/feb/08/new-topographics-photographs-american-landscapes

http://www.hyperallergic.com/417634/walker-evanss-eye-on-the-city/

Andy Grundberg, “Ansel Adams: the Politics of Natural Space,” The New Criterion (November 1984), p. 150.

Lewis Baltz, “Landscape Problems,” Aperture 98 (Spring 1985).

This time I am looking at photobooks that dont follow the usual format of two hard covers and bound internal pages, well not entirely at any rate.

The first is from Hoxton Mini Press and one of their early productions from their collectors series ‘I’ve Lived in East London for 86 ½ Years‘  by Martin Usborne which provides a signed and numbered book with a small edition print contained in a clamshell box. Its all very nicely done, nice colours, nice papers, even a nice opaque wrap with minature fox (Hoxtons trademark) sticker protecting the print. Can you have too much of a good thing? Actually yes in this case because its all so perfect I dont want to unwrap and disturb anything!

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Its a really lovely little book and a heart warming and wrenching story about the books protagonist the late Joseph Markovitch. I would like to see more books about folk like Joseph so I am glad this book was made but is the formate suitable for me? Maybe, again the original print ticked my box, this is something I did do and, the clamshell box provides a safe means of delivery but at the size of my eventual production a slipcase proved most suitable.

Refrences

I've Lived in East London for 86 ½ Years (Book 1: East London Photo Stories)

Book Photos Brent Guest M 2023

Harris & Erel Art, a high end digital gallery have approached me with a view to selling The Inbetween Places book and as prints. Although they have not featured photography previously this look like an interesting opportunity.

Anthony Harris (ex Getty/Cultura/Imagesource) has been charged with creating a roster of photographers to grow their sales into this area both online and via traditional galleries in the future.

The onus is on quality, editioned work and only working with the best. Its early days but this could prove to be a very exciting outcome to the project.

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You can view the gallery site here https://www.harrisanderelart.com/

I am absolutely thrilled with the final design of The Inbetween Places Book.

Handmade by Cathy Robert, slipcased and folio bound containing 32 original archival prints. The first edition is limited to 5 signed and numbered copies. It is published by The Burcot Press and its ISBN number 978-0-993445-1-4.

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The page size is based on A3, images printed onto Hahnemuhle duo 277 gsm paper. The index prints being printed onto Innova gloss mylar OHP film.

The foreword was written by Wayne Ford, this was the real test of the project, I only gave Wayne the base project description and left it to him to see what he saw in the images. It was actually quite nerve wracking but I was relieved and a little proud to see Wayne had infact picked up on the issues I was attempting to address in the compositions.

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Spending a lot of time prior experimenting with different papers and materials really paid off too. I did not want to load up the pages with copy, the intention after all is that the pages be removable for display so elected instead to provide index images, in order, to identify the images and show the correct page order. For this I used a mylar OHP film which was difficult to handle but did print quite well,

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The materials chosen for the cover, a faux green reptile skin and yellow linen for the interior and slipcase trim, really have worked well with the tome in the image, I also had the title and my name embossed into the leather.

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So my aim, to be able to produce a large format book, showcasing the images in high resolution and being able to include at least one original print, in this case 32, has been fully met. I have made mistakes though, in retrospect the pages could go a little lighter, the cost was far higher in the end than I anticipated also but some of this was the metal blocking which will be used for future editions. It turns out there isnt a limited supply of the green skin so all 5 first editions may need to be unique.

Overall though I feel the project is a success, I have the book, an exhibition should take place in the US in March 2021 and the social media aspect of the project has been very well received culminating in an offer of gallery representation.

You can view a movie showing the running order of the book here :

Refeences:

All images 2020, Guest Brent M, The Inbetween Places

www.theinbetweenplaces.com

So book production has started in earnest. The final image selection made, a total of 32 final executions plus two index pages. As the intention is to produce a bound folio of actual prints they need to be archival. So I am using Hahnemuhle Photorag Duo for the main pages, its coated on both sides but that wasnt the reason for its choice. At 277 gsm it sits nicely between the single side coated Photorag 308, which is too thick for this application and the 177 gsm which feels a little thin for the image pages.

Although I am using the 177 gsm for the intro, forward and credits pages. Its also nice to be able to separate the image pages in this way, it also emphasises the pages are removable.

I have chosen a translucent film for the index pages, a material by Innova, not easy to print on and will need cutting down to A3 from its A3+ original but the result is very interesting and at only 174gsm the thickness is a close match to the typeset pages.

Once complete the pages will be taken to Cathy Robert for final binding.

Looking at various options for the book cover I have settled on a slightly crazy faux reptile skin, I like it because at first glance it appears to be quite formal and academic, reminiscent of an old dusty encylopedia but closer inspection reveals the reptile effect which then throws it into a completely different sphere, something a little decadent, something a little Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas even.

Other options considered were linen and metallics

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As already described the book will be an edition of 5 only, the pages being actual prints on museum quality 270 gsm paper and will be removable as per Lee Friedlanders, American Monument

In 1977 William Eggleston released Election Eve, his first and most elaborate artist’s book, containing 100 original prints in two leatherbound volumes, housed in a linen box. It was published by Caldecot Chubb in New York in an edition of only five, and has since become Eggleston’s rarest collectible book. Although my book will not be as big as Election Eve, mine consisting of only one volume of approximately 35 prints, the essence and intention will be very much the same, to create a handmade, very limited edition artists book.

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I am also very pleased Wayne Ford has agreed to write a foreword for the book, Wayne is passionate and extremely knowledgable about photography, art director for The Observer Magazine and Creative Director for Haymarket Business Media. His work has been recognised by:
D&AD, Type Directors Club, Art Directors Club, Society of Publication Designers, Society of News Design, British Book Design and Production Awards, and the Periodical Publishers Association (PPA); and been featured in numerous books, periodicals and exhibitions around the world.