Exercise: Peter Dench
Read the article on England Uncensored by the BBC Picture Editor Phil Coomes: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/17190001.Dench talks about his “humorous approach with an underlying social commentary”. What do you think of this approach? Does it work? What are the ethical issues? (Open College of the Arts, 2014:77)
His book England Uncensored (2012) is described in the above article as a social commentary with a voice, Dench describes it the truth warts and all (Neon Sky Creative Media System, 2020). I was interested to read that it was his editor who pushed Dench to move away from his early pictures which are described as simply humorous.
The success of his Drinking of England series encouraged him to to look for further social themes such as ethnicity, love, the weather, clothing and food. Dench believes he is documenting reality to preserve “the nations past” (Coomes, 2012).
The humour in his work comes from his upbringing by the sea and seaside humour; he recognises that pictures can’t be funny alone but should have an effect/message, Dench suggests this can be achieved by dropping images in between them that are different/serious/have impact. He thinks people respond favourably to his humour because most can identify with it.
In some of his work, in fact most if The English Uncensored I agree with his sentiments. I can see that most of his work follows the route of social commentary, though I think it lacks the conceptual nature of Parr, whose influence on his work he is open about. He also uses saturated images and flash in daylight but in a more “smash and grab” perhaps influenced by contemporary media photographers.
Whilst his approach works, selecting and presenting to us contemporary subjects isolated to highlight behaviour/situations, I do question his ethics in some of his work. In particular I find his series The English Summer Season (2019) and Alcohol and England (2014) contain images which are over-exposing and humiliating to individuals. Ethics is a difficult field but to my mind he presents some images where subjects though in public places, they were clearly not in possession of their faculties and are shown in compromising positions.
Dench may argue that his pictures are honest and humorous, this may be so in the main however some I believe go beyond this and are potentially damaging to subjects and unnecessary.
References:
Ben Smith (2015) A Small Voice Podcast – 010 Peter Dench At: https://bensmithphoto.com/search?q=dench&f_collectionId=558f13b0e4b0b62583b2124a (Accessed 13/09/2020).
Coomes, P. (2012) ‘England Uncensored by Peter Dench’ In: BBC 29/02/2012 At: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/17190001 (Accessed 25/10/2020).
‘Drunkenness and debauchery!’: Peter Dench captures events of English gentility (2020) At: https://www.itsnicethat.com/articles/peter-dench-the-english-summer-season-photography-030919 (Accessed 26/10/2020).
Neon Sky Creative Media System (2020) england uncensored. At: http://www.peterdench.com/england-uncensored/England_Uncensored01/ (Accessed 25/10/2020).
Open College of the Arts (2014) Photography 2: Documentary-Fact and Fiction (Course Manual). Barnsley: Open College of the Arts.
Photography 2: Documentary 