READING:
Read the essay ‘Archive Noises’ in Fontcuberta, J. (2014) Pandora’s Camera – Photogr@phy after Photography, London: MACK, provided with your course materials.
I read Sharon Boothroyd’s interview and I listened to the interview with Arthur Ou before reading Fontcuberta’s chapter. This was an interesting way to do this exercise because I might have been swayed by Fontcuberta’s interpretation of Schmid’s work. He would, unlike me, be a great admirer of Schmid’s work. But with his considerably more experience of looking at and working with the work of artists he brought a much deeper incite and interpretation to the work than I was able to do from reading the interview and looking at the video.
Fontcuberta picks up on Schmid’s cynicism towards hallowed photographic works and photographers. Because he is selective in what he collects his ‘finds’ are someones masterpieces. Schmid, Fontcuberta points out, is also cynical of cataloguing and archiving. All that work to preserve our memories and prevent our forgetting. But the original image is a restricted version of reality. It is then re-photographed for archiving. So we are looking at a photograph of a photograph.
The Statics series by Schmidt is discussed and for me becomes the most interesting set of all his work. The destruction and re-construction of these sets of images produces really interesting final composite images. These, have for me a strong resemblance to the work of Mendjisky who cut his work into strips and reassembled it. Without having seen this Statics work I could not relate to Schmidt at all but seeing these images I re-watched the video and detected that little smile on his face when talking about his work. I wonder what he thinks of the latest Banksy trick of shredding his image just after it was purchased by someone, for a very large sum, in Sothebys.
If Schmidt’s ecological principals were so strong he would just destroy all the found images in one great bonfire and not create further images in book form or gallery prints. Or am I being too cynical?
Slightly unconnected with the work of Schmid, Fontcuberta opens the chapter with the story of the Salamanca papers. These are the spoils of the Spanish Civil war which after Franco’s downfall were supposed to be returned to their original owners. But successive governments both conservative and socialist bawked at doing this because they were scared of opening up old wounds. So much for archiving and remembering.
RESEARCH POINT !:
Read Sharon Boothroyd’s interview with Joachim Schmid at Link 1
I found the reference to Italo Calvinos book interesting, in this interview, as I find Joachim Schmid’s practise quite extraordinary. I like the play on this word in describing his work: “extra ordinary”!
It would be really interesting to interview non artistic people about their opinions of both Schmid’s books and his digital presentations. The answer to the question of why people only look, for short periods, at a screen compared to perusing a book would be interesting to investigate.
Schmid seems to feel we want, with our images, to generate the idea that life is good. We avoid topics that are bad. He maintains that although children’s behaviour is often bad we only make images of their good and happy behaviour. I don’t think this holds true anymore. Gill Greenbergs’ images of crying images are well known.
In reply to Boothroyd’s question about it being easier today as a photographer to be recognised as an artist. Schmid replied that there is an overproduction of qualified photographers. It has become harder and harder to get paid, as a photographer, for the work we do. I have to agree with that but I feel that if we can produce something truly worthwhile it will be appreciated and will have a value. I believe that digital imaging has reduced quality. I also believe that the ubiquitous presence of social media has lead to a mindless production of images.
Listen to Joachim Schmid talking about his collection and curation of discarded vernacular photography at Link 2
I find Joachim Schmid’s working practise completely bizarre. I think he is a compulsive obsessive which enables him to continue searching either the streets of various cities or in more recent times on the internet to find completely ordinary images. Most of what he found for his earlier work were destroyed or torn images. He concludes from this that these images have been discarded. Maybe this is so or maybe they have just been lost. He has no idea of their origin and no idea why they have ended up where he found them. He has no idea who made them or why. This would leave them meaningless for me. They are floating free in this world without a connection.
His series on a Day in May does have a sequential logic. Fifty murders occurred across America on that day and he chronicled these in a book which has a map of the location on the opening page. Compared to a whole book of food or bags I find this work really interesting. I would like to see it expanded with a further investigation of the exact locations and why these locations, how many were domestic, how many drug related or other causes entirely. There is so much more information which could be drawn from this work.
He does indicate that there are trends in what people choose to take as photographs and how they take them. Although this is not a learned process most of us seem to follow the same lines. I find this part of his work much more interesting.
But at the end of the video I find myself asking “Why”?
I find the work of other artist like Weronika Gesicka who worked with ‘found photographs’ much more interesting.(1)
- AnOther. 2018. The Artist Using Found Photos to Challenge Established Norms | AnOther. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.anothermag.com/art-photography/10277/the-artist-using-found-photos-to-challenge-established-norms. [Accessed 28 December 2018].
Digital Image & Culture 