Anna Fox Photographer and Professor photography at Thames Valley OCA virtual meeting 16.5.20

Believes in FRICTION (fact a fiction in photography), she’s not an historian but reads history of photography all the time.

When she studied in 1980s, colour documentary was going on, she wanted to exhibit and publish it, and has done with many books including, Work stations, Blink, in many different designs and fabrics. Fox edits Langford’s basic photography The guide for serious photographers also Behind the Image Research in photography with Natasha Carvana (I have, however a new chapter is coming in the next edition). She has been teaching since 90s (Farnham University) which she says is one of the best in the world for documentary photography, and runs MFA at Farnham (2 year program); a collaboration with the National Institute of Design in India. I asked her about this.

Her Father was a keen amateur photographer, her mother was at art school, then publishing and graphic design, so her home was full of books, including those on photography. Both photography and fiction and comedy inspire Fox. She explained that stories teach you how to construct narrative, and how to use text and images. Fox says to think of text as you think of images, so it doesn’t feel like it’s image added to text, or vice versa, it should feel like one work (as Sophie Calle does); consider carefully, font, sentence breaks, to give the significance and the emphasis you want. Fox doesn’t like to see text added at the end of a project as it should take as much time to work out as the images do.

SHE TALKED MUCH ABOUT STAGED REALITIES:

• Cartier- Bresson’s work which she described as broken fractions of a second and asks, is this reality, or is it the equivalent of staging and composing?
• Fox talked about other examples of construction, such as payment for photographing people, like Edward Curtis when photographing native Indians in the early 1900s. She suggested that payment can lead to over exaggeration of the dress and character of subjects. Fox also cited the famous Dorothea Lange’s Migrant Mother, which we now know was posed; I didn’t realise that Lange had a big commercial career and was used to staging images
• She asked us if a Robert Capa photograph “Fallen Soldier” from the Spanish Civil War was staged and explained that his editor in America put under one of his pictures “war doesn’t look like much”, and this could have led him to construct and dramatize his pictures more.
• The book Falkland Road where the subject is a street of prostitutes in Mumbai, Mary Ellen Marks paid her subjects.
• Philip Lorca decorcia paid prostitutes for his images in Hustlers, though he acknowledged this and titled the photos the price he paid each (which was what they would have earnt). The commissioners thought that ethically unsound, fox thinks otherwise.
• “Everyone” (1994) https://sophie-ristelhueber.format.com/untitled-gallery inspired her book My Mothers Cupboards.  The work with images of scars is presented alongside references to war in Yugoslavia so it looks like its injuries from the war then discovered that these pictures were from people post-surgery, it was not as Anna first thought when she viewed the work.
• Fox also discussed Photo montage such as that of Blair in front of an inferno – more staging of photography that can aid fantasy.
• Photographers who emerged out of American photography that make fabrication is viable such as Gregory Crewdson.
• The Emigrants book by W G, Sebald where the narrator recounts his involvement with and the life stories of four different characters, all of whom are emigrants (to England and the United States). It includes many black and white, unlabeled found photographs and creates a reality about them inserting them in the story, so you feel like you’re reading a documentary.
• Didier Massard whose book with strange animals in it had an ISPN that would place it in the natural History department and yet it was fabricated photographs; the animals and fauna looks like actual animals but as you proceed through the book you realise the photos are of imaginary creatures; it is both funny and fascinating,
• Joan Fontcuberta (1997) project is a parody, where he becomes a journalist in order to tell the supposed history of the first initiative of the Foundation Sputnik. In order to give the story authenticity, the artist incorporates a large number of historical documents, but also if you look closely you can see that he is in each of the images; it’s both funny and fascinating.

Interestingly Fox asks why were people disappointed that sitters were paid? Someone suggested it might matter if a photographer claims the image is real. Fox answered that if they won’t say which, then the suspense can be useful, however if it’s relevant it is important to say whether staged or not.

Fox thinks of herself as an author with various different connections to truth.

She lists amongst her teachers: Karen Knorr, Martin Parr, Paul Graham; they influenced her in different ways, Knorr with her printing, lighting, Parr with lighting, flash and colour, and Graham with making banality and melancholy everyday interesting, and overall how to get these things into photographs, beauty, satire, and meaning, with an intelligent story and a sense of humour.

Her first body of work was Basingstoke 1985/86 (35 images) which hasn’t been published which means she can now add images. She chose this subject as it was a small town nearby and didn’t want to travel but did want to tell a story of thatcher’s Britain. In this work she describes the colour, flash and humour of Parr, the structure, image/text irony of Knorr, and the banality of subject from Graham.  Making this she collected text at the same time as images not thinking about what goes with what at this time, editing as she went along, with just the feeling she wanted to inspire, be humorous, but no more, it was then she realised she had her own voice.

Workstations was her 2nd commission, the subject of Office life in London, again in Thatcher’s Britain; this showed aggressive pursuit of wealth and success. The text makes it look like it’s shot in one office (with the daily timings added) but it isn’t. After this she was then asked to emulate this style but couldn’t do it as the meaning of individual work is wrapped up in its style.

Cockroach Dairy (1996-99) a story of a real invasion of her house, using a real diary she’d kept. Fox kept the feeling of authenticity with the book design, though she had to rewrite diary so it would print well and then added in some real-time events. She used film and autofocus, as cockroaches moved quickly, and consequently had little control over framing. The cockroaches get bigger as go through book, then the cockroaches disappear, and the house is sold.

My Mother’s cupboards and my Fathers words (2000) -the information “my father’s words” is hidden on the back cover, is not just about her mother and her father, but about relationships in general.

Her father’s words were directed at all women in his house and pictures of her Mother’s cupboards. It is both nasty and funny; Fox secretly wrote down the words under the table , She explained how she choose which images with which text such as “She’s bloody rattling again” using wine glasses as the image as they rattle. Sometime the images are chosen as juxtapositions.

Q: As her father was ill at the time does this explain the narrative? A: no because he was always like this, though maybe it was exaggerated, though it may have made him less physically aggressive and more verbally aggressive. Apparently Her father thought it was funny but her mother was upset about the book. This is an example that work doesn’t always come out immediately, this work was made 20 years ago and is now being exhibited.

Fox talked of her Peers:

• Hannah  Starkey–  fox suggests her work is about women in public spaces however Starkey doesn’t tell people about her images. These are constructed images with actors but linked to reality.
• Tom Hunter who has emulated Vermeer and turned on head ways of photographing squatters making them look heroic. He works on the Hackney community.
• Gillian Wearing, asking us to question her work with people holding texts, is this reality or not. Fox says that this shows you that portraits on their own don’t generally tell you much.
• Goldfrapp the singer who Fox collaborated with on the book Country girls 1996-2001, she grew up in the same rural village. She posed for fox’s deliberately staged images as a dummy half-dead, using flash again. We discussed the meaning of Sweet FA; I was unaware that Fanny Adams was murdered at 8yrs at nearby Alton, chopped to pieces supposedly by a bank clerk; Apparently a tinned meat brought out for sailors which they named Sweet Fanny Adams but changed to “Sweet Fuck All” as it was so tasteless. There was a local fascination with the vulnerability of women.

Photographers who surprised her:

• Roger Ballen a South African photographer who developed a style he describes as ‘documentary fiction’. His photography has a performance element to it as well as incorporating drawings, painting, collage and sculptural techniques to create elaborate sets; here there are no people altogether, replaced by photographs of individuals now used as props, by doll or dummy parts or  but improvised scenarios’.
• Trish Morrissey a fellow student at RCA, whose series Front, places herself in family photographs on beaches, replacing a family member.
• Alison Jackson another fellow student at RCA, who uses spoof style of photojournalism on royals and celebrities. She published a series of satirical photos featuring spot-on Trump impersonator in a fake Oval Office, surrounded by scantily-clad beauty contestants and then caused a stir in New York by hiring the lookalike—and more underdressed models—to appear in headline-grabbing performance piece outside of Trump Tower.
• Chris Dorley-Brown whose images are startling coloured and sharp; they look like they’re acted out but they’re not, they’re just taken over time (he stayed put for hours and photographed and added images together) to make narratives about city life.
• Alex Prager, her work Face in the Crowd, features large-scale photographs of elaborately staged crowd scenes, often with the subject looking disarmingly straight at the photographer. Her work comes out of documentary but she’s deliberately working with the idea of fiction.
• Susan Lipper, her work Domesticated Land about the wilderness has becoming occupied with traces of human presence. Apparently she wouldn’t want it to be called a documentary but as artistic work that shed created as she likes to work with fiction. She spends a long time editing to order as series images and changes the order -so look at how she decides this and the meaning of one on another.

Fox then talked about her work Resort 1 and 2 made at Butlins with a Medium format camera and flash. Even she felt awkward as people were on holidays and not interested as they think you’re selling something and intruding. So decided to make documentary work with a lighting director and team which worked as people thought they were a film crew and liked being in the pictures. In the pictures that holiday makers were using flash at the same time as herself she made the same comments as Martin Parr did that as other lights were going off with hers, the lightening was wrong but she joined together to get the correct effect.

It was useful to hear that when shooting a Karaoke image after 4 hours didn’t get one image she liked, so she stitched several images together. Butlins banned the image below from the exhibition as it wasn’t the image they wanted to promote – the woman on the mobility scooter.

Similarly, an image of a family round a table took 3 hrs. for her to get and eventually she joined 3 images together.

In her work “A moon and a smile” Fox took archive images of French leisure spaces and then took photos today of same leisure spaces now as they are accessible to more. She photographed over 8 hours and added people to the images.  

Blink her new work was shot at central St Martins. When the students were asked afterwards they didn’t recognise the place – so it’s her fiction of the space. She shot this in digital because she was short of time, and is more convinced of it as a tool now as the quality so good. She says that analogue is expensive not used much, so maybe if going to use do most of the work on digital and the final on analogue – Digital has democratised the media,

    (Anna Fox,2020)

On her involvement with the project Fast forward, began with conference at Tate modern (I tried to get tickets) there have now been 3 conferences. Fox believes that women in photography not been talked about or recorded enough and she thinks it has a lot to do with networking as they don’t seem to be able to do it in the same way as men.

Q & A:

How do you think men network? They promote and help each other as a group effort to move upwards for women more individual struggles to get on because not enough success. Women have networks were pushed into by the patriarchal society like domestic roles but not professional. We must take responsibility without blame. We need to do it ourselves and then work equally with men; not believing in yourself is a problem especially for women. Fox says that it’s important to see and understand the working practices of women photographers.

How do you decide which award opportunities are worthwhile? Look at reputation and don’t to enter pay except Taylor Wessing for instance where they’ll use the money to fund the prize. Do judges look at the name of the photographer? Look at judges and what their background, their criteria. It’s about exposing your work to people you want to know you Same as for portfolio reviews. Remember to get your work checked so you’re sure it’s not there because of an emotional attachment.

What extent does research play in your photography? It’s huge but don’t necessarily record it, it does play a big role in her photography, particularly fiction – likes to be informed, don’t forget to articulate your research.

Where is the line between documentary work to raise awareness, and pointing the camera downwards? You have to make yourself a good enough photographer to be telling the story in the right way, intention is important. It is important how you represent people, she doesn’t like to feel uncomfortable about work.

Regarding projects she suggests keep your proposals fluid, so that you can change it as it develops and then evaluate to justify your changes. Fox says context is everything; Work should give people space to think speak about something

LEARNING POINTS:

Overall I learnt a lot about the possibilities for “FRICTION” the fusion of fiction and documentary photography. I also picked up many other ideas:

• Consider using fiction to support ideas for my photography
• When using text and images integrate as one body of work. Consider carefully, sentence breaks, font and emphasis.
• Be aware of the variety of types of staging possibilities.
• Think about all possibilities of book design, suit the design to the project.

• Remember that even for experienced photographers it can take a long time to get an effective shot.
• Don’t forget to fully articulate your research.
• Intention and integrity in your work is important
• Ensure your work gives people something to speak about.

Reference:

Anna Fox (2020) At: https://annafox.co.uk/ (Accessed 06/06/2020).

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