Tom Pope lives and works in London. For Tom’s photographs he uses a film camera and develops the images in a light room. When we went to the Jersey Archisle for a workshop with Tom he explained that his photography has an element of chance, he believes that a studio is too isolated to work in and he uses the theory of psycho-geography, whereby he gets inspired by the location he is in to take the photographs. To take Tom’s photographs he uses no post production or does not plan to shoot his photographs as he believes it makes for a more “truthful document”. Tom’s work involves “drifting around and seeing where the city guides you” i think this is an interesting idea of exploring the terrain.

Tom Pope studied photography at the Swansea Metropolitan University and the Royal Collage of Art and he is a champion Archer.  Tom is also interested in Philosophy.

Tom Pope sees his photography as him ‘recording a performance’ as the film is made until the video is over. For example Tom Pope’s video of him shaking a tree and the performance is over when the petals have covered the camera lens. In a performance there may be no record if the performance is trying to hit the shutter. Tom believes that photography and film is intertwined and that it is ‘lens based media’.

In addition Tom Pope says that he ‘subverts the meaning and lines of objects I see’ and he ‘subverts social situations’. I think by this he means that by going to different places and going to different situations then he can subvert how we would usually see people act in those places and shock the people around us. I think that in Tom Pope’s images this is shown by when he makes his videos the audience’s reaction in the back of the videos.

Dérive is an unplanned journey through an urban landscape which is led by the colours and architecture, with the aim of experiencing something different. It was made by a French situationist called Guy Debord in 1958. Dérive is closely linked to psycogeography which means exploring the urban environment being led by curiosity and allowing your senses to ‘discover’ the landscape.  I think that Dérive is also linked to our project theme chance because of the uncertainty that may not find a new interesting landscape.

Situationist theorist Guy Debord defines the dérive as “a mode of experimental behavior linked to the conditions of urban society: a technique of rapid passage through varied ambiances.” He also notes that “the term also designates a specific uninterrupted period of dériving.”

During our photography trip to St. Malo, we took some time to ‘derive’ we walked around St. Malo without a destination, we walked through the main urban area and ended near the beach taking photographs along the way and doing small activities which link in with Tom’s idea of pushing the boundaries of what is and isn’t accepted in society for example we climbed some tree trunks which were placed along the beach and seen as a tourist attraction because this isn’t seen as ‘normal’ behaviour in public. Overall I think that Dérive is a good and fun way of exploring new environments which I think could be more effective than actually planning places to visit.

Tom Pope is a British performance photographer born in Bristol, he studied photography in arts at Swansea Metropolitan University, 2008 then he went on to study photography at The Royal College of Arts in 2011.  Tom Pope’s work involves photographing an act, he uses videos because he thinks that one still image can’t capture the whole performance. Some of his videos are humorous where as others have a deeper meaning to them, Tom likes the idea of repetition and incorporating the public into his work as it makes it more interesting. Although some of his work looks spontaneous he puts a lot of work into them behind the scenes such as getting permissions. However, Tom also likes to push the boundaries of society  by doing things which aren’t seen as acceptable in society. Some of the awards that Tom has won include:  2013, Public Arts Grant, Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea.  2011
Deutsche Bank Award Winner of the £10,000 Bursary Prix Leica Photography Prize and in 2010 Photograph of the month, National Portrait Gallery London.

Play

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 20^th 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.

‘Chance, Change and challenge’ is the title of our 6 week project, this title is closely linked with the work we will be doing with the archive at the Societe Jersiaise and the photographer in residence Tom Pope. Chance is the possibility of something happening. Change is to make or become something different and challenge is to dispute the truth or validity of something. I think that this title will allow us to explore, think deeper into the subject and learn about the history as well as engage with the community that we live in. The photographs and videos that we will be taking will have a deeper meaning and context behind them rather than just taking a photograph because it’s appealing to the eye. I think that this project will be interesting because it’s almost as if we are ‘discovering’ new things and changing the way at which we look at photography.

On Tuesday we had a workshop with a photographer called Tom Pope. He was accepted at the Swansea Metropolitan University where he got a 1st Class Ba(Hons) for Photography of the Arts in 2008, and then got a Ma at The Royal College of Arts in 2011.

He has his own website where you can view all his work. We had had a look at a few of his videos and photos in class on Monday but I personally didn’t quite understand all of his work. He showed us a fair amount of his work within his presentation and it was then, when he was explaining the process and reasoning behind his work that I started to understand what he was trying to achieve through his work.

One of these photo shoots which I now really like is titled Weak Anarchy. His intentions behind this set was looking at social norms and unofficial ‘rules’ society has seemingly put in place, and seeing how far you can push them, going from simply wearing socks on the wrong feet, to making a fountain in a public space with a lemonade bottle and mentos. Pushing societies rules is a fairly common theme among his work.

He mentioned a lot of things which he tries to incorporate in his work, like Time, Play, Situationism, Humour, Repetition, Psycho-geography, differences between public and private, Failure, collaboration and more.

German troops march through the streets of St Helier during the Nazi occupation of Jersey 1940-1945

9.30 am – 10.45 am:  We arrived the Jersey Archives Building, and made our way to a large conference room.  When we arrived we were greeted by Gareth Syvret, the event organizer and a researcher for the Archives. As an introduction to the day, Gareth tackled the question of what an archive actually is and spoke of the great importance that photographic archives play as both a cultural and historical research tool, as Gareth says himself, “we must understand the past in order to understand the future” Gareth then spoke of the role that the Jersey Archives as the official Archive Center in the Island.. He showed as a series of early studio portraits from the mid-late 19th Century. Gareth explained the historical role of photographs and how the Archive can be used as a research tool to show the cultural trends and behaviors of people throughout the different decades, as well as a means of highlighting the dramatic change in photography over the last 170 Years. Gareth spoke also about his own influences which include Kessel Kramer, a creative digital communications company, and William T Collin’s, a 19th Century photographer from the Channel Islands, who made an extensive collection of portrait of different Channel Islanders during the Victorian Period.

11.00 am – 11.30 am – The focus of the talk began to concentrate more on the role of the archives in contemporary photography. Gareth explained how the Arshilse Photographers in Residence Michelle Sank (2013) and Yury Toropstov (2014) used to archives to inspire their own work, showing us Yury’s video documenting his journey with the archives to. I found Yury’s video documenting his journey during his 6 Month Residency to be very fascinating, as this work was very much as progressive journey he undertook to greatly explore to Island despite his ‘outsider’ perspective with little knowledge of the Island. As well as this, we also undertook a mini challenge which involved us having to guess the dates of 17 different photographs, ranging from 1840 – 2010. I found it challenging and difficult but also fun. I got most of them wrong but it was interesting to see what I was lacking when it came to evaluating the photos. Also some of the photographs were quite deceptive, which does show the extent of overlap of photographic techniques in the 20th Century.

Here are 7 interesting facts that have I learned from Gareth’s talk.

1. The Archive stores over 80,000 Photographs, dating back to 1840
2. Archives are split into categories of specific topics
3. Archives have shown us exactly how important photography has been as a source of evidence in the last 150 Years.
4. The earliest cameras were known as plate camera, it took up to 15-60 minutes to record an image
5. An archive relates to anything which can store information
6. Archives are an important as a social documentation.
7. Photographs can be used to reflect the photographers relationship with the community

Here are the links to Michelle’s and Yury’s blogs and the Archilse Project

www.archilse.org.je
Yury – www.archilse.org.je/catergory/yury-toropstov-blog/
Michelle – www.archilsse.org.je/michelle-sank-insula/