Post Documentary Art

PART FIVE: NEW FORUMS FOR DOCUMENTARY

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POST DOCUMENTARY ART

RESEARCH POINT

Learn more about crowd funding by reading the following articles:

‘The 7 Essentials of Crowd-Funding Your Next Photography Project’ (Light Stalking March 2012):

http://www.lightstalking.com/crowd-fund-photography/‘Crowd Funding’ (WeAreOCA September 2011): www.weareoca.com/photography/crowd-funding/ (Open College of the Arts, 2014:1085)

Crowd Funding

I’ve heard the term crowd funding many times, but never really taken the time to understand how it works. It seems it’s a method of raising finance for a personal project- that much I did understand. Having read the OCA post on the subject I can see that it’s a great possibility for creating impact with photographic projects.

The Kickstarter project launched in 2009 as a web platform for funding personal creative projects is described as the original crowd-funding concept. The concept is that funds are raised by offering creative rewards to individual backers who pledge varying amounts. The OCA post cites the example of Pete Brook’s Prison photography projects for which he has raided $8000 from 142 supporting people. This was done by a pitch that touched the collective conscience and offering items such as limited editions, signed books and so on. Other crowd funding platforms mentioned are the UK WeFund, and Empash; these platforms deal with donations and take commission. There are arguments that projects may be trivial and self-indulgent, but then how would they reach their target funds? There is also the suggestion that once funded projects could be released pro-bono creating a surplus of free documentary work. The point is also made in the OCA post that work can be professional even if it isn’t commercial. The author concludes that crowd funding creates “digital democratised photography”. I make no apology for the fact that here I have summarised the article, which I have done to clarify my understanding of what feels like a “dark art” to me.

In my further browsing on crowd funding, I was interested to also come across Crowd books, a platform for crowd funding books.

I found some tips online for successful funding photographic projects by crowd funding, curtesy of lightstalking:

  1. Build enthusiasm before launching your project.
  2. Create a personal and story-telling video.
  3. Set a realistic but achievable funding goal.
  4. Keep your project specific with clearly defined goals.
  5. Target specific groups and individuals – build your networks.
  6. Offer rewards that don’t require a lot of overhead.
  7. Create updates and keep people engaged.

These all seem good ideas also to use when setting up an exhibition or for marketing for any project.

I’m not sure crowd funding will be something that I’ll ever use, but at least I understand the process a little better now and will keep it at the back of my mind.

References:

Jose (2011) Crowd Funding. At: https://www.oca.ac.uk/weareoca/photography/crowd-funding/?cn-reloaded=1 (Accessed 06/04/2021).

Kickstarter (2021) At: https://www.kickstarter.com/ (Accessed 06/04/2021).

Open College of the Arts (2014) Photography 2: Documentary-Fact and Fiction (Course Manual). Barnsley: Open College of the Arts.

The 7 Essentials of Crowd-Funding Your Next Photography Project (and How We Funded Ours) (2012) At: https://www.lightstalking.com/crowd-fund-photography/ (Accessed 06/04/2021).

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PART FIVE: NEW FORUMS FOR DOCUMENTARY

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POST DOCUMENTARY ART

5.4 Exercise

Read the article ‘Images that Demand Consummation: Postdocumentary Photography, Art and Ethics’ by Ine Gevers (Documentary Now! 2005). Core resources: IneGevers.pdf

Summarise in your learning log the key points made by the author. (Open College of the Arts, 2014:105)

Ine Gevers is a Dutch art curator, activist and writer. Here she suggests that documentary should engage with the world not just record it. Where photographer, viewer and subject come together in a “consummation of the image”.

Here is a summary of her main points:

  • Since the 70’s there has been a blurring of the boundaries between photography as document and as art- she calls this post-documentary photography.
  • She is particularly interested in how image makers are stretching the boundaries of perception, expanding aesthetics.
  • Aesthetics and ethics have been considered opposites post-documentary artists are trying to restore their former connection.
  • She probes the concept of aesthetics, suggesting that it broadens and makes you notice what you’ve not before. However, that old style aesthetics can constrict viewing and viewpoints.
  • Photography can open up our world by sharing experiences, but it can close down our view by turning subjects into objects and “murdering their individuality”. Sontag called this numbing our conscience.
  • Photography can be democratising as it creates a reality that is more real than real, even though there are always efforts to expose the limits of representation.
  • Martha Rosler is cited as one who though not a documentary photographer she regularly uses documentary photography in her work subverting objectivity in photography.
  • Allan Sekula is also cited, who has appropriated documentary photography, using it aesthetically to show its ambiguity.
  • She explains how the horrors of subjects such as the twin towers attacks made us look beyond instant immediately consumed images that cause one- dimensional reactions. Examples given are black pictures, with sound (Moore’s documentary), Alfredo Jaar’s images of the Rwanda atrocities that were all, but one contained in closed boxes for his installation (Lament of the images, 2002).
  • Alain Badiou’s philosophy is shared- where artists remain faithful to personal truths, even in opposition- exemplifying artists and ethics being intertwined. He argues for interventionist ethics that are situation specific as the truth is an event, not an opinion.
  • Photographs carry no weight in themselves but by acquiring meaning they can unleash a truth process, which can be followed by a process of completion encompassing artist, image and viewer. The viewer then as co author gives weight to the image.
  • She suggests this may align with Barthes punctum, the extra that may seem to be added to an image.
  • Gevers suggests that this truth moment, makes the viewer come alive, and teach viewers to perceive differently. This sets in motion something other than the observable, enabling “one that consummates to become someone”. For this the viewer must be able and willing to consummate the image. Then when the viewer is involved in the image, they can become autonomous, and ethics and aesthetics can be a partnership.

My learning:

To consider that it may be the way that images are consumed, viewed and interpreted that gives documentary photography its autonomy.

Reference:

lne Gevers curator \ writer \ activist (2005). ‘Postdocumentary Photography, Art and Ethics’ by Ine Gevers (Documentary Now! 2005). At: https://www.oca-student.com/sites/default/files/IneGevers.pdf (Accessed 04/04/2021).

Open College of the Arts (2014) Photography 2: Documentary-Fact and Fiction (Course Manual). Barnsley: Open College of the Arts.

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PART FIVE: NEW FORUMS FOR DOCUMENTARY

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POST DOCUMENTARY ART

Exercise 5.3

Listen to Jim Goldberg talking about Open See and his exhibition at the Photographers’ Gallery: http://vimeo.com/22120588

Visit Goldberg’s website http://www.opensee.org and reflect on how or if it works as a documentary project within the gallery space.  (Open College of the Arts, 2014:105)

The interview

This short clip shows preparation for an exhibition. He was part of a magnum team sent to photograph different aspects of Greece for the 2004 Olympics, his focus was immigrants. He talked of the immigrants he came across from various countries, some trafficked, some economic migrants, and some prostitutes. He shared his images and annotations of their stories, but with no idea given about the number of images and how they fitted into the final exhibition.

Goldberg’s website

This functions as a gallery space for images and text of displaced, economic migrants, illegal migrants, and refugees. The front page presents images in a compact montage, as if on gallery walls, guiding the viewer across them.

The side bar tabs:

Wilhelm-Hack-Museum: annotated images of immigrants and their stories.

Tate: A video how to fold a single sheet of images into a book, which is useful; probably an interactive activity at the Tate exhibition.

Deutsche Borse: Another video with a story about a refugee boat, and how to make a paper boat.

Objects: such as torture files to support obtaining amnesty, wallets of the dead, fake adverts and interviews.

Resources: with website links that informs about the issues of many of his subjects.

Reflections:

It is interesting but again lacks information for instance a summary and detailed context. The images are small, and I expected to be able to click on them and they would open in their own windows so I could have closer look, but this was not possible.

Overall, though fragmentated there is a lot of information presented: documents of people’s journeys. The work is collaborative, he uses a variety of media and has unusual narrative techniques. Though disjointed the work together tells a themed story and is a good example of a balance between expression and information in a gallery and could be shared and articulated in an art gallery space.

I can compare this with my viewing of his work see previously, “Raised by wolves” (1989) which documented the lives of runaway teenagers living on the streets of San Francisco and Los Angeles from 1987 and 1993. In this he used photographs, video stills, found documents, and handwritten texts by the subjects themselves. Here he also tells the story in different ways: a traveling art gallery exhibit, a book, a website, and an experience, though most of the book is photographic as even the handwritten notes are photographed using these texts and his imagery to share their experiences.

What struck me then was the huge variety of presentation that he has used in this project and the same is apparent in his website. The mixed media he uses adds an earthiness and reality to the narrative in the photojournalistic style.

 References:

A Completely True Work of Fiction: Jim Goldberg’s Raised By Wolves (2018) At: https://www.magnumphotos.com/arts-culture/art/jim-goldberg-raised-by-wolves/ (Accessed 20/2/2021).

AMERICAN SUBURB X. (2018). JIM GOLDBERG: [online] Available at: http://www.americansuburbx.com/2009/11/theory-raised-by-wolves-as-non.html (Accessed 20/2/2021).

Open College of the Arts (2014) Photography 2: Documentary-Fact and Fiction (Course Manual). Barnsley: Open College of the Arts.

OPEN SEE – JIM GOLDBERG (2021) At: http://www.opensee.org/ (Accessed 20/02/2021).

The Photographers’ Gallery (2011) ‘Interview with Jim Goldberg’ At: https://vimeo.com/22120588 (Accessed 20/02/2021).

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