Families and Subculture in photography-- Using books: ‘The Game of Photography’ Garry Winogrand

Garry Winogrand was a photojournalist in the fifties as it was one of the only jobs a man could do in photography without proper technical training but still create photos he wanted. After travelling, being influenced by other photographers like Walker Evans and photojournalism became scarcer due to the shutdown of some major publications Winogrand took some of his best pictures; “images caught at unstable moments of public life in American cities on the brink of chaos” ( the game of photography page 12).

                A photograph taken in Sin Titulo in 1968 of a group of people and families walking in a park, people and children are looking at each other but the face that caught my eye the most was of a little boy pulling a confused, scared but sure of his place in society expression and he’s looking at a woman pushing a pram, the woman is black and is wearing a maid or ‘nanny’ outfit. Some of the other ladies that aren’t dressed as well as the boy as looking at his guardian, even though they are out of frame, as if to say “they’re snobby...” This whole photograph, to me, shows the different classes and their reactions to each other, this shows the different subcultures all in one place at the same time.

('The Game of Photography’)

                Winogrand also took some photographs of richer people partying, you can tell they’re well off because they are wearing suits and the main woman is in a white revealing dress and has a white feather boa hanging from one shoulder. This woman in the second picture is sat on a man’s knee (partner, close friend or just a friendly stranger) with her boobs out but no one seems to care so it’s a party group of people which shows the ‘party subculture’. A few pages after this selection there’s a few photos of hippies protesting against something. These photos show how different but similar the two types of people are; there are still crowds in both, people drinking and having fun but in different s ways and the protesters are standing for something they believe in which has bought them together, from the groups they could be in families or because of this closeness and beliefs they could be close as friends and so feel like families.

('The Game of Photography')

Documentary: new cultures, new spaces.-- ‘Photography: a critical introduction surveyors and surveyed’

The Archetypal documentary project wanted to make the audience recognise particular subjects, normally with the notion of changing the existing political or social situations. They weren’t presented as a single photograph but normally accompanied by or incorporated into written texts providing information about the nature of things and authenticity of the piece; however, the photographers were never named for their work for the magazines and so appeared anonymous. The post-war consumer boom in the 1930’s started to allow photographers to focus on different subject matter for example, everyday life and cultural spaces.

                ‘The Americans’ by Robert Frank captured documentary ironic figures of the fleeting moments of ordinary life; it bought the outsiders’ eye upon the USA in the 1950s, a point where commonplace life was about to be turned into myth by not specifying any particular social being or class. He found that documentary is based on what the photographer is interested in; facts now matter less than appearances. William Klein was photographing around the same but documenting the disorder and randomness of New York. His work created special artistic and psychological interest as they had strange juxtapositions and are randomly set out to show the city is restless, crowded and alienating.

                British and French photographers were taking a different approach to documenting the urban streets by presenting new subject matter or old themes treated in a different way. The political project of class and visual ambiguity interested most photographers; Tony Ray- Jones created a book, ‘A day off: An English Journal’, of social class from an English play. Bill Brandt compared photographs of different classes by showing maids and mistresses on a double-page spread, these types of photographs offered a personal view of the nature of social existence.  Power and control was another grand narrative that was prominent in photographs. Each society created its own ‘regime of truth’ that power is in everyday life; an abstract force that is used in order to enforce obedience, but within a disciplinary society the body is a source of knowledge. I t was found that photography was now used as surveillance rather than revealing the nature and suffering of society.  

                In the 1960s colour appeared, the American photographers used it to show feeling and expressions whilst the British showed a broader range of social and anthropological readings. Henri Cartier-Bresson thought there were problems with using colour that it doesn’t show its complexity as black and white. The improvement of photography has influenced photojournalism also but there are now no archives and anyone can take the photos and send them in to newspapers.

The Body as a Political site.

Using various ‘Source’ journals

Grown up child

            Trish Morrissey’s collection of photographs, The failed realist, of portraits of a woman with childish face paints that make her look like a bad clown shows how society has influenced our feelings, how we look and what we share or show to others. She wanted to reveal what are normally hidden and everyday anxieties; surrounding facial hair anxieties and challenge the conventions and ideals of femininity.

            These photographs show that childhood is a complex negotiation rather than an idyll. She portrays the nightmares and irrational fears through the face paint on the woman by creating oversized black tears and smudged smiles. The colours never drastically change, neither does the hair and the facial emotion stays constant. In the text it rightly says, “We do not meet the child and this is not quite an encounter with her world. The photograph is of the mother. We are removed from the moment and scenography of play.” Whish tells us that as a mother this woman could be taking the pain and troubles away from her child, or that she’s finding it difficult to cope with the fast change of becoming a parent and asks if she is a ‘good enough mother’.

This is because society has created the notions and attached stigmas to being a good or bad parent; due to what they can provide for their children and the cost or make of the items to how they look themselves. These factors have made new parents wary and can made to feel judged by society and so find parent hood harder than some other people that have the material things for their child. Morrissey’s work shows the body but won’t let us access the specific experiences of the mother and child; All the photographs provide evidence that the ‘child’ still has authority by using the face painting game throughout.

Party girl

Robots

Wendy McMurdo concentrated on contemporary children; in her series of photographs named ‘digital play’ most of her images are children sat in places you’d expect them to be but playing with not the toys that surround them but on new gaming devices where they can control rather than being controlled or looking at children’s toys that are trapped in a glass case as if they are in a museum. In an interview featured in ‘source’ she explains that in modern times we communicate digitally rather than to socialize which is different to how we used to; now technology is rising and becoming smarter and stronger the way we talk, learn and act. Like robots. She talks about how our interactivity has changed and that the world of play wouldn’t be pre-determined but a place where anything is possible; however, with technology over ruling imagination the gaming world is creating harmful ideas into children’s minds and bodies. McMurdo said that she has seen a full circle of technology “as work whose subject was engagement with the digital world… ‘The Scanner’ and ‘The anagrammatical body’ focused specifically on the position of the body in the digital world… ‘Unheimlich’ which concentrated on the notions of the uncanny in film and photography.” All of these exhibitions shows the journey at where technology is at that present time and how our bodies look and have changed.

Throughout the interview McMurdo repeats the words ‘play’, ‘crude’ and ‘robots’ this is to show how we now see the words and what they mean to us; play used to be in a park or outside and now more and more children have electronic toys which are and making them into robots; for example she has taken a photograph of a young girl looking at old dolls which are trapped behind a glass case as if they were in a museum which shows that they are seen as old artifacts rather than a new idea, she is stood far away from them so looks more confused and scared than intrigued and interested about the toys. McMurdo wanted to show the relationship between real life with a robot in her work so she did a moving image piece with an ice skater and a girl in her room who were the same age and look but were different girls. This piece had both films showing at the same time side by side with the ice skater executing her tricks and positions perfectly where the other girl was in her room looking past the camera to what can only be thought of this day as a computer where she was copying the moves and dance of the first performer; throughout the exhibition it was said that more people were watching the girl in her room trying to mimic the professional, this could be because we relate to her making mistakes and trying all over again in the privacy of her own space rather than showing off with perfect  balance and grace.

Present themsevles

Alice Hawkins is a fashion photographer and this has caused arguments due to the body and how it is looked upon because of the types of females shown in magazines and the media as having the perfect body or the ideal figure. Laura Mulvey is a feminist who explains the male gaze “the dominant visual representation of the female body and female sexuality is ordered and governed by an implicitly   male gaze; that is to say, by way of looking shaped within a society constructed along patriarchal and hetero-normative lines.” For a woman to create a different reaction from the audience it has been shown eye contact with the camera shows empowerment and strength. Hawkins places her models in their real habitat where they are comfortable; for example, Las Vegas models would wear crocodile skin in a leather couched room, or circus women in animal prints. Her photographs suggest stereotypes and labels given by society and themselves by their body language and how they dress and act; one photo of a Burlesque dancer, Storm, was captured in her retirement and people found it difficult to see past the boob jobs and Botox but to think that an old woman could have been a successful strip tease confused people. A montage of Danni Wells (glamour model) was shown too, and to the disappointment of teenage boys it was of her face and not the rest of her body to show that she is still a real person that has feelings; the reaction from the boys show how they are thinking these days and that women are just objects to be looked at.

Sarah Eyre did a photographic collection called ‘Wigs’ where she had put popular styled wigs on a manikin head but so they looked as though they were looking down or to the side. She concentrated on the theme of Victorian sex traders which created her technique on printing like a newspaper and how sex is packaged for us, she thought wigs were passive objects when in fact they have meaning which is very narrow and for her this related to what’s acceptable within mainstream sexual desire. She named her wig photos, one ‘Rachel’  because it looked like the type of hair Jenifer Aniston would have when she played Rachel in ‘Friends’, others were girly names like ‘Mandy’ or ‘Mindy’ which sound friendly and sweet when actually these were the types of name sex workers would use for themselves. So the wigs they put on or now we see them show how females were seen or how they sold themselves by just the wigs and nothing else, we don’t need to see their body to get an idea of their past.

Rosie