World Press Photo: We oppose discrimination and harassment in our community

The Sexual Harassment issue seems to be getting a lot of attention and heading into constructive directions following Aryit Das's outing of Manik Katyal last week. 

A number of organisations have already made their position clear in one way or another (including Schilt Publishing, Delhi Photography Festival and Kassel Photobook Festival).

World Press Photo have also added a statement this week to further convey the seriousness with which they take the issue and the recognition that there is a photographic community that is concerned about this problem (just as there photographic communities, magazines and publishers that are genuinely not concerned about it or even recognise it as a problem).

“We work hard to be a creative, independent organization, and the core values that help secure our integrity are:

•      Accuracy

•      Impartiality

•      Fairness

•      Respect

•      Transparency

•      Accountability

We strive for equality and diversity. We do not discriminate against anyone on the basis of age, gender, race or ethnic origin, religion, or sexual orientation. We oppose discrimination and harassment in our community.”

It's a small step but a good one that starts to strengthen the message. Given the range of World Press Photo programmes and workshops, I get the feeling that WPP will be extending this statement to involve photographic festivals, workshops and educational instutions. That would be something. We'll see. 

'I am Vendula and I belong to the big kid's folder.'

It's curious that most of the pictures we look at we see on computers, phones or tablets. We see them on screens. And the way we get to the screen is through desktops and finders and millions and millions of folders.

We have libraries of images, folders of images, and individual images stuck all over the place in a chaos of confusion and bad filing.

And photographers have these things, Borgesian networks that (if the photographer is in any way to be trusted) are weird streams of consciousness of fake starts, false beginnings, suppressed ideas and uttter failures. Dig deep into the folders and files of most photographers, and you'll see a virtual visual subconscious complete with digital defensive mechanisms (denial, anger, displacement), neuroses and avoidance.



The only exceptions to this rule are those obsessively organised, neat and tidy people who can always easily find a file and know exactly where everything is. But these are people whose neuroses are hidden even deeper beneath the surface so... we do not have to deal with them.

But we don't often get to see this netherworld of how people think about their work. Sometimes you do in talks (visitors to the talks Stacy Kranitz and Alec Soth gave in Bristol were both privileged to quick trawls through their computer desktops - which were both chaotic. A good thing.), but most of the time you don't.

And certainly not in books.



Except for Vendual Knopova's Tutorial. This is a book that has as its starting point, the folders on her mother's computer.

This is what the statement says: 'Tutorial is a best-of compilation from my mom's hard drive, which had to go an adequate selection process of pictures of pets and natural disasters. I am Vendula and I belong to the big kid's folder.'



It's a family album then. And it's fabulous. It cracks the sombre myths of the family album by organising the images into numbered sections which don't really have a logic or order to them.

Section Number 11 for example '...is from the series "Lying to Children". I honestly thought that Fanca had but one puppy.'



And there's a picture of Fanca with but the one puppy.

So there's a dark humour in there that is quite cutting in places. It's a vision of growing up that gives a sitcom quality to the family album. And Knopova has the perfect family for this; a large blended affair that 'lives in the country, doesn't have a Tesco Club Card, drinks Coca-Cola only on prescription'.

It's a fun book then, but it also adds something to how we represent the family; it's not all trauma, guilt and the creation of idealised squeaky-clean mythologies. Sometimes the mythologies are more creative than that.

Along with Ivars Gravlejs' fantastic Early Works, Tutorial is a book that brings energy, intelligence and wit into how we understand the visual representation of childhood. It's a very familiar book in that sense, with a cast of characters who are somehow both visually and emotionally recognisable.

It's a book that I both like and enjoy. It makes me think and it makes me smile.



Buy the book here.

shoji ueda: isolated and austere

Shoji Ueda, published by Chose Commune, is a collection of great photography by the Japanese photographer of the same name.



Ueda began photographing in the 1930s, and developed his staged style of shooting in the post-war years, using the Totori sand dunes as a back drop for staged photos that were both surrealist (and you can see more of that side of his work here) and minimalist in nature.






The minimalism is evident in this new publication which focusses more on the landscape of Japan than the surrealism. There are some images from the sand dunes (but not the best known. I guess there's another book in the wings somewhere), there are pictures from his Children Calendar series, and there images of snow; it all goes to create an idea of Japan as a country that is somehow austere and isolated. Which it is I suppose without really knowing.






It's quite beautiful really, with pictures of a boy on roller skates on a harbour wall leading into a broken television and an austere snowscape. There are profiles of children, figures isolated on a wave like tower of a sand dune and a framing of a figure within a picture frame against a big sky.

Big skies, silhouettes, and geometric patterns create a strong formal narrative throughout the book. It gives a slightly lonely and sad feeling that combines the claustrophobic and the agrophobic in equal measure. I'm not quite sure how it does that, but the openness of the big skies and the wide seas is matched by a closed-in feeling.



There are colour pictures slotted in there as well, but they interfere more than anything. But overall, the book is a really lovely monograph that has been very thoughtfully edited to give a narrative direction and an overview of Ueda that gives a feeling for where his work is situated.



Buy the book here.

Sound, Word and Landscape: "All sound is memory; a repetition of an event that has already occurred"

Regular posts on Sound, Word and Landscape have been on this blog for the last few months. The day of talks took place on Saturday and it was wonderful: a mix of speakers, perspectives and approaches that combined to form something that was greater than the whole.

In the first section, Angus Carlyle talked about sound, memory and images in a talk that has really transformed the way I think about images, Beth and Thom Atkinson talked about the myths of the city and photographing what is and isn't there, while Max Houghton talked about the written word and landscape and how it defines what we see.

In the second session, Jem Southam talked about walking; long walks, short walks and how they affect our seeing and our being. Walking was also a major theme in Paul Gaffney's talk which also featured his latest work, Stray and how this became an immersive exhibition.

The final session featured Ester Vonplon's beautiful image and music film, Gletscherfahrt, and the idea of the earth as a living being, while the fantastic Susan Derges talked about her changing relationship to water and place and how photography expresses this.

The beautiful thing was in every talk you could see resonances of other speakers, so there was a communication across the day.

I was asked if I would write a review of the day and I said no, because well, I co-organised it with Max Houghton so it would be a bit biased.

But instead I had the delight of live-tweeting during the day (something I look forward to doing again in 2017 or 2018 maybe). So here, more or less, with the Samsung Swype typos corrected, are the live tweets of the day.


Angus Carlyle



"All sound is memory; a repetition of an event that has already occurred"

"Our ears have evolved from the bones and breathing tubes of reptiles and river creatures."

Angus Carlyle talked about different kinds of listening, and the different conventions they have. A whole list, including dirty listening.

Angus Carlyle referenced Michael Taussig: 'Writing is inadequate to the experience it records' And sound too.

Angus Carlyle: He spoke about the difference between word, image and sound memories.

Buy Angus Carlyle's In the Field: The Art of Field Recording here.

Buy Angus Carlyle's On Listening here.

Beth and Thom Atkinson 



They describe their book, Missing Buildings, as a book made by walking, about buildings that are no longer there

Thom Atkinson: "If the past is still in the present, how do you photograph that?"

Beth Atkinson: "We're really influenced by Thin places - where the gap between the physical and the spiritual world is thinnest."

Beth Atkinson: "You need some buildings remaining to be able to call it ruins. If all is destroyed, it's not ruins."

Beth Atkinson: She likens the lack of domestic ruins from the Blitz to a form of historical repression, referencing Rebecca Solnit

Beth Atkinson: "We can only understand what was lost through what remains."

Thom Atkinson: "The myth of the Blitz was formed through films, photography and family legend."

Thom Atkinson: "Joseph Campbell ( a mythologist) describes myth as being like a group dream."

Thom Atkinson: "Myth gets layered all the time. London is the symbolic focus for the Blitz  It's the landscape of the Blitz."

Thom Atkinson: "The Keep Calm and Carry On poster was never used in the second world war. It was seen as too patronising."

Thom Atkinson: "The myths of the Blitz are removed in contemporary news, sport and soap operas."

Buy Missing Buildings here.

Max Houghton



"Towns and cities grew out of the land, from the materials it is built out of and beyond."

"I find solace in nature writing. You don't need to go anywhere to read it. It's perfect!"

She talked about the contradictions and polarities in contemporary Britain and how the need to merge those polarities.

"In Walden there is a chapter on sound. On the birdsong  but also the railroads that disturbed Thoreau's peace."

Emerson: the true test of civilisation is to be found in the city.

She talked about WG Sebald and Solly Zuckerman and when language fails and image text succeeds.

"We can transmit images and sound but we  can't transmit touch or smell."

"Walking can be a pilgrimage, but in it has also brought us some of the greatest works of poetry, music and art."

She talked about Rebecca Solnit.  'The narrative or temporal element has made writing and walking resemble each other...'

Talked about Robert Macfarlane - Walking enables thinking and seeing

"Does something happen to our way of seeing when we lose ourselves in nature, landscape, walking?"

Read Max Houghton on 1,000 words here. 

Jem Southam



Liz Nicol's Rubber Bands

"Forty years ago I had a job, I had a flat, I had friends but I didn't have a photograph practice.. So I gave up my job, I gave up my flat and I gave up my friends. And I walked the length of the country. And I still didn't have a photographic practice."

He talked about Auerbach, painting and walking, and the connection between. walking to work, walking for work, walking to make work.

He talked about shadows Van Gogh's walker and the series of paintings Francis Bacon did off it. The walk can be an alter-ego

"Whenever I'm out walking I know I'm walking in land that people have been walking on for 800,000 years"

The simplicity of walking as exemplified by Robert Adams' Summer Nights. "You close the back door and you walk."

He talked about Liz Nicol's Rubber Bands - a series of cyanotypes featuring the rubber bands picked up on walks to her school

"I've done walks with David Chandler. He doesn't like the rockfall walks where rocks are crashing down."



He talked about Richard Gregory's cafe illusion. Based on a simple walk past a tile pattern on a St Michaels Hill cafe in Bristol. A pattern discovered by walking.

"What are we missing by not walking, by not doing those everyday short walks."

"I love using the iPad camera. It's a but like using a 10x8. You compose and you take a picture."

"When you photograph with a 10 x 8 camera you say I'm not going to photograph that, I'm not going to photograph that, I'm not going to photograph that..."

He talked about landscape, plant life, the passage of time and how that is contained in the image. And the joy of the ipad, Instagram and the ability to make small observations on life.

He photographed Conchie's Way. A road to nowhere built on Dartmoor by conscientious objectors during and after the First World War.

Jem Southam: Conchie's Way

Paul Gaffney 



"I seemed to be an expert at making life complicated for myself... that's why I started meditation"

 Paul Gaffney: "Long distance walking is like meditation. You slow down, you are stripped back to your body and your thought processes."

"I became very precious about the edit for We make the path. I wanted it to flow, so the images wouldn't jar."

"I was slowing down, waiting for the images to come rather than searching them out as part of a preconceived idea."

"The edit for the  book comes first and the edit for the exhibition comes after."

"The project was as much an excuse to go walking for five months as to make photography."

"The title We Make the Path by Walking came from Antonio Machado - 'there is no path, the path is made by walking.' "

The times he's let other people curate his work, it's been "a disaster."

His new book Stray started when he got lost in a pine forest and took high iso pictures to find his way out .

"The Belfast Exhibition of Stray was an experiment in how to communicate this idea of being immersed in a forest"

The exhibition developed from a series of pictures on the wall to eight projectors in a darkened room projecting the night images. Only one in four of the carousel slides was an image so it mirrored the darkness of the forest at night and the struggle to see.

Buy Stray here. 

Ester Vonplon

I didn't get to tweet about Ester. I was in conversation with her instead. It was a short session. She showed her Gletscherfahrt film and we talked about the sounds she recorded, the words that came with it, and the requiem that accompanies it. So there's sound, words, landscape and music. It's a beautiful piece of work. You can buy the book here - it comes with a white vinyl recording so you can recreate the slideshow in your own home.

Ester didn't talk about her other work. Which is a shame because it is brilliant. She doesn't think of herself as a landscape artist. Maybe because like all the rest of the people who talked on the day, she's more than that.

This is what some other people tweeted about her.

Rob Hudson ‏@RobHudsonPhoto  Nov 8Cardiff, Wales

Seeing Ester Vonplon’s ‘Gletscherfahrt’ with the requiem composed to accompany it was the day’s great revelation. http://www.estervonplon.com/index.php?/gletscherfahrt/ …

Denise Myers ‏@Denise_Foth  Nov 8

Denise Myers Retweeted colin pantall

Now battery is alive again I can say, Ester Vonplon's image & requiem piece was STUNNING. 4.00 a.m. words not enough

404 Error ‏@Boom_Gallery  Nov 8

404 Error Retweeted jmg

The most talented photographer of her generation? Ester Vonplon.

Buy Gletscherfahrt here.



 Susan Derges



Susan Derges: from Tidepools

 "Most of the work we have seen today is  a form of biography."

"The accident of photography helped make the Observer and the Observed."

"Everything is always unfolding. It's either dying Orr coming into being. And your own reaction to it changes."

"There's a sense of self in Anna Atkin's cyanotypes."

 "You are always a participant in a photographic event because of the photographic choices you make."

"I could regard the river as a long piece of photographic paper or transparency."


"I couldn't explain why some pictures were coming out blue or dark"

"Then I built up a sense of the cycles of the moon and the effect of streetlights bouncing off the clouds."

"The tidepool pictures were made digitally; Ilfochrome stopped producing the paper and I became allergic to the chemicals."

"These tidepools are strongly related too my childhood memories."

See Tidepools at Purdy Hicks Gallery in London, opening 20th November

And then the kid's party started!

Thank you to all the speakers: Max Houghton, Beth and Thom Atkinson, Ester Vonplon, Angus Carlyle, Susan Derges, Paul Gaffney and Jem Southam.

 And from Max and me, a big thank you to ICVL, Photobook Bristol, the Southbank and RRB, as well as to all the volunteers who made it possible: Chris Hoare, John, Nathan Woodman, Hester Brodie, Scott Klang, Josie, Amak Mahmoodian, Onny Thomson, Alejandro Acin & Rudi Thoemmes (who made it possible in the first place).

And thank you to everyone who attended and for all the kind words and encouragement. You make the next one possible by coming!

Dispara: The First Steps on a 1,000 mile journey

It's interesting to see how a publisher develops itself and gains an identity. Some short-lived entities such as Akina feed on their own hard work, vision and energy but then suddenly hit the brick wall of circumstance, others like Cafe Royal take a long view and slowly build up year on year. Some become annoying, some nostalgic, some old before their time, some just a little bit random.

I was wondering this when I received a shipment of books from Tono Arias at Dispara books. They've got four books out to date.



Behind the Waterfall by David Barreiro shows the South coast of Iceland during tourist season, when people come and people go, where the temporary becomes permanent - for a few months at least. So that's all about the illusion of place and the impernance of population.




a barriera invisible by Tono Arias is a series of staged photographs with plastic bags covering faces, a symbol of consumerism that consumes us - our bodies, our faces, our words. So there's a message for you. It's all about the illusion of the everyday lives we lead.



aires de familia is a book by X.lois Gutierrez Failde - this shows a family album where the people have been cut out. It's relationships, our imagination of them, their fragility. It's more loss, more about what lies beneath the surface of our imagined realities.



Nos by Tono Arias shows the home where Arias was born and grew up. He restages family pictures there in the now empty and dilapidated house so that what was a home becomes not a home and then a home again.

It's a consistent list that struggles with fairly heavy questions of being; an existentialist photobook publisher if you like with a Spanish sense of gravity that comes out of living through a devastating economic crisis. These are books about who we are and where we live. I like the idea of work that shows a trail of footprints; these are the first footprints on a 1,000 mile journey.

Good luck to Dispara and the books they publish. They're not expensive either.

Buy the books here.

Who's going to deal with the problem of sexual harassment?

So then. Aritry Das has named Manik Katyal, editor of Emaho Magazine as a harasser and sexual predator on Facebook. And following her outing, many other photographers described their experiences on the blog below.

I don't know if having a blog focussed only on Katyal is a good thing - but I can understand the frustration, resentment and rage (that in India has been going on for years and years) that must be felt at seeing Katyal gladhanding it at places like Paris Photo, Fabrica, Kassel, ISSP, New York, Tokyo after being a serial harasser in India for so many years. He's not loved by many in India, and there is a sense of gobsmacked disbelief that he was so successful in other parts of the world. How come the Europeans are so dumb! Let's put it that way.

Katyal has been communicating with women in a similar way in Europe and other parts of Asia for many years. You're a woman, you're on Facebook. The proposition is likely to come. Very few people in Europe are at present willing to put their names forward publically, though many, many do so privately or in public gatherings.

The problem is while Katyal was known by many to be a sleazebag of the first order, in Europe, people (writers, editors, curators, festival directors etc) were promoting him and saying he was a great guy - including me. I apologise for that. Which only increased the reluctance of people in India, or South Korea, or Japan to come forward.

We're all connected in other words. We have a responsibility to who we like on Facebook, who we Share and all the rest of it. The problem is social media and photography culture is based on being positive. When things go bad, there's no easy way to take it back. And even if there is, if you have said this person's great and then it turns out they are not, the easy thing to do is pretend you didn't say it. The easiest thing is to ignore the problem.

This is not a problem that should be ignored. But at the moment, apart from a few organisations, this is something random individuals are trying to tackle on an isolated international basis.

But surely this is something the big photographic organisations and festivals should be dealing with. And this would help in people feeling the need to have social media witch-hunts - these are not good.

Photographic organisations need to take some responsibility for their actions and their influence (which they are always happy to proclaim in good times). They need to put policies in place that have some kind of strategy that can make it unacceptable for people to use portfolio reviews, workshops or lectures as opportunities to hit on the female (or male) participants.

And there should be an organisation that oversees this, something that has the ability to deal, on an globally institutional level, with the kind of opportunistic harassment and exploitation that the above case exemplifies.

At the weekend there was a really successful conference in London called Women in Photography. This wasn't about the issues mentioned above, it was about representation of women in photography and it sounds like it was brilliant. But there should be an organisation that does deal with and advocate on the issues mentioned above. It shouldn't be down to random individuals or random blogs. It needs something more.

So I'll throw this out there. Who's going to deal with this? I'm not. Who is?

Or, maybe it's not really a problem. And we can just ignore it.

Silence is the Ultimate Weapon of Power

Indeed. I love it. These are by Angus Carlyle who works with image and sound - and how the one changes the other. And how silence operates, both within the image and without!

Angus is talking tomorrow at Sound, Word and Landscape in Bristol. If you're interested in how to communicate with images to bring in word, sound, music and more, come to this. It will be brilliant.

The full schedule and other information is below.

Buy Tickets here

RUNNING ORDER
Doors open 12pm for 12.30 start

1st session

Introduction by Jesse Alexander
12:30 – 1:15 Angus Carlyle
1:15 – 2:00 Beth and Thom
2:00 – 2:40 Max Houghton

2:40 – 3:20 Break – and signings

2nd Session
3:20 – 4:05 Jem Southam
4:05 – 4:50 Paul Gaffney – followed by Stray: book launch and order taking

4:50 – 5:20 Break

3rd Session

5:20 - 6:05 Ester Vonplon
6:05 – 6:50 Susan Derges
6:50 – 7:20 Panel Discussion/Q and A: Jesse and Max Chair: Susan, Angus, Jem, Paul, Ester, Beth and Thom

8:00 Dinner

BUFFET DINNER
Dinner after the event is at 8pm and will be a buffet prepared by Chandos Deli (If you’ve been to a Photobook Bristol event before, you might know how great this food is). This costs £10 and you can pay on the day in cash, but we need to know numbers in advance, so please email us back ASAP and let us know if you would like to be fed. Thanks.

GETTING THERE
The SouthBank Club is on Dean Lane, Bedminster, Bristol BS3 1DB - From the centre take the second left off Coronation Rd., running along the south side of the river. The venue is down the hill on the bend. There is no off road parking at the venue.

On foot

The Southbank is 15 minute walk from Bristol Temple Meads Train Station.

Take the swing bridge by the Arnolfini and the pedestrian footbridge over the river. Straight across is Dean Lane. Its 10 mins walk from the Arnolfini & 5 mins walk from Asda car park.

TICKETS
All your names are on the door. No physical tickets needed.

FREEBIES
All advance ticket holders get the choice between a £5 voucher to spend on the day at the RRB stall, or a free copy of Fulton’s Walking Artist. Claim your preferred option when you arrive.

BOOKSHOP
Will be open all day with a large selection of photobooks on offer.

SNACKS
Will be available to buy from the venue throughout the day.

See you there on Saturday.