Performance photography is a radical and unusual way to photograph. It is more of an art form and in some ways comes across as a political movement to try and challenge authority and the way we as a society think. Performance photography can tell a simple story in the way it is presented but a lot of the time these performances have deeper meaning. This style of photography is usually done outside where it can be viewed by the public. It is an act whereby the spectator will be whoever happens to be present when the performer decides to perform.
To me performance photography isn’t just doing something to entertain a large audience. It is doing something in the public eye but without drawing attention to yourself by calling people over but by just doing your performance and seeing how much of a gathering you manage to create and how interested people are in what you are trying to do. I think that we often need to find ways to challenge the way that society thinks and we need to push the boundaries of what is acceptable in our community too.
Whilst we were at the Societe Jersiaise, each group was given a photographer to research from the archive, then we had to choose one of his photographs to illustrate performance photography which links in with our course work theme change, challenge and chance. The photographer my group got given was Emile Guiton.
Emile Guiton is a Jersey photographer, who was born in 1879. Emile chronicled photographs of life on the Island during the 20th century. There is now a collection of 781 photographs taken by Emile at La Societe Jersiaise. He photographed big events such as the German Occupation and the Liberation of Jersey as well as his personal life.
This photograph is about a “presentation by the vice president Colonel Collas DSO, at the Jersey Museum, of a photographic portrait to Emile F Guiton on his retirement as editor of the Bulletin and other Société publications” therefore the photograph shows a performance which is the act of them both shaking hands as well as giving a presentation. I think this photograph also links in with chance because there was no guarantee that this moment was going to happen or that it would be captured. I think challenge is also portrayed in this photograph because the photo challenges the idea of a typical portrait and it has a portrait within the portrait. Finally, it shows a change in Emile’s life as he Is now retiring as the editor of Societe publications and moving on to a new chapter in his life.
On Tuesday the 9th of June we went to the Societe Jersiaise, to learn about the archive which can be seen as a visual history of Jersey. We then met the photographer in residence which was Tom Pope, who is a performance photographer. In Tom’s work he likes to push boundaries by doing something that is seen as socially unacceptable however isn’t against the law he does this in public spaces and wants to get audience’s participation.
One of the first activities we did with Tom Pope was, we got into pairs and throw an orange at each other with the aim of taking a photograph of the orange as close as possible to the camera. The main idea behind this activity wasn’t to necessarily get a good photograph of the orange but to show the performance/ act and push the boundaries of social acceptance. The second activity we did with Tom Pope was a ‘selfie war’ where in pairs you had to take as many selfies on your pairs camera while trying to stop your pair from doing the same thing but on your camera.
At the begging I struggled to understand why Tom was incorporating performance into photography, and how his short clips were seen as photography. By the end of his presentation I think I got a better understanding of why he was doing this as he explained the concepts behind each of his ideas.
Just another Hautlieu Creative site
