Exhibition – Farnham: What we leave behind

This is just a brief write up of this small exhibition that I happened across while shopping in Farnham. There is link to a Facebook page for the exhibition here: https://www.facebook.com/wwlb.exhibition although the 4ormat.com link to the exhibition site is inactive. There are a few images on the page and I made a few notes of what I remembered of the photographs at the time.
Work by Harry Allington-Wood, Matt Fox, Katherine Haines, Emily Hopper, Jonna Pennanen & Danny Singh,
These are notes I made when I returned to my car and have expanded on since I have been able to research the images at home. Most of the photographs I have not been able to trace. Where I have found a link, I’ve written my interpretation of them.

An interesting set of images, I especially liked the presentation of one set, each image of which had been framed by a shallow wooden packing tray, the stackable type used for fruit. The images were of a hat left on a TV, a walking stick on the back of a chair, coats hanging on hooks and a watch on a bookshelf. All of these things could have been left behind, forgotten, or be  objects left by a deceased person in their home as discovered by a relative. By Emily Alyda Hopper.

Another image was of an elaborately carved memorial seat to a dead friend – intimations of immortality.
Another slant on this theme was a set of images of the lost property store at Temple Meads station in Bristol. which I think was by Matthew Fox.  A fish eye lens perspective of shelves stacked with mostly bags  briefcases and umbrellas but also bikes, all pigeon holed and labelled by week number. Passing time and a limit on reclaiming what is lost.

http://lightwalkwithme.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/what-we-leave-behind.html This link is a  blog post of student Jonna Pennanen with three of the exhibited images. I think this is a personal blog as it is in Finnish but at least there is an opportunity to look again at the images:

‘This is a moment I want to remember’ I found this image striking because of its simplicity. The blank page invites you to remember something and the hands holding down the corners of the page, fix the moment, giving you time to remember.

The cardboard box, well it may be just discarded, it appears to be in an empty room but you can’t quite see inside so it may contain something important that has been overlooked by the previous occupier. It could be empty and represent things we no longer have. Absence.

The final image, the toothbrush and toothpaste tube on the window sill could easily be just  found objects in an empty house. I think this is less likely as a these objects are very personal and fit into a specific space in our lives. I’m reading this image as something familiar in a new place, so new, they look “out of place”, the old place having been left behind.

Reading: The Ongoing Moment – Geoff Dyer

 

 

This is the link to Sean O'Hagan's review which I read before purchasing the book:

http://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/2005/oct/16/art

I enjoyed it. A slow start but I soon got into it. A perfect foil to Art Photography Now as it concentrated mainly on the founding figures of American photography. Tongue in cheek at times it shows that there is nothing new in photography only that the same subject is interpreted differently each time a new photographer tackles it. The author writes not only about the photographs but about the lives and motivations of the photographers too. This is a book I will dip in and out of as I come across references to the work of the photographers included.

The ideas expressed have gone into the melting pot and hopefully will be absorbed and help me to  express myself photographically as I continue my studies.

Preparation for Assignment 3 – Monochrome

For this assignment, I have chosen a narrative theme which documents the removal of a Scots Pine tree from my garden. I wanted to mark the passing of this tree. It has stood for more than 100 years and survived the 1987 storm. Its proximity to the house and the increasing severity of winter storms meant that I had to have it removed. Fortunately, my fears were justified as the base of the trunk had started to rot. The tree surgeon told me that in three years it would have become dangerously unstable.
The photographs were taken over three days, the first in bright autumn sunshine the remaining two days were wet and overcast. The nine prints that I have made should be viewed in chronological order and as a start I have laid out this “contact” sheet as a guide. The prints are read from the top and left to right:

3958
3949	3954
3965	3969
3970	3977
3979	3982

I have asked my tutor to look at this post as the course notes suggest 5-10 prints. Sharon has already seen a tentative idea of the assignment at the Study Group on 19th October. While I am waiting for feedback I will start a post to my DPP Assignments blog and write up what I did to achieve these monochrome conversions.