Situationism is a theory in psychology that began in 1968 when a Person-situation debate was triggered by the publication of a monograph by Walter Mischel.
It refers to an approach to behavior which holds that general traits do not exist (perhaps apart from Intelligence). Behavior, then, is seen as being influenced by external, situational factors rather than internal traits or motivations.
Tom Pope said that he used psychogeography when taking his images. When Pope was going to different places wherever he was he would always bring his camera, and there so if he was inspired to take a set of images he was always ready to. As Tom had a film camera he usually only had 12 chances to take the image that he wanted, which would be completely up to chance. The environment which Pope was in would inspire him and give him an idea for a photograph and this is what Psychogeography is, it is being inspired by the urban landscape that you are in. When Pope would think of an idea he would set up his camera and then he will just start taking the images. 
These photographs show at different times in Pope’s photography how he was inspired by a location and took an image, to take these images he would use a button which he could hold in his hand so he could press the button when he wanted the photograph to be taken, this was to test whether the idea of chance worked and if the image turned out good or not.
The themes of chance, challenge and change are the title of which our current work is upon. The main photographer which we are looking at is Tom Pope, who uses these concepts within his photography. I think that the them of chance relies of the idea that when taking a photograph you are taking a chance with it, you have no idea whether the image is going to turn out how you want it to, or whether the image is not going to work. This is why in some of Tom Pope’s photography he uses a film camera which only has 12 takes, which means that when Tom is taking his images he has 12 chances to make the images that he wants, and if in those 12 chances he does not make the image, then he does not make the image. And i think by using this idea of chance it makes taking photographs quite exiting and can make a photographer become more adventurous with how they take their images. The idea of challenge i think is to do with when Tom is taking his images he like to challenge what people in society believe to be the norm in everyday life, he challenges this by doing things out of the ordinary and that are strange, not things that are illegal, however some people would believe it to be because they have never seen someone do such a thing before. By showing other people how Tom is challenging everyday norms in his photographs or videos that he makes he shows the people that are in the background to see their view on what he is doing, in this videos tom is completely silent and lets the viewer focus on what is happening in the images, and makes the focus on the people in the background who are either looking over or even some are asking questions. The idea of change in photography i think relates to the idea of challenge as it photographs or everyday people who are trying to change the opinions of viewers who are looking at the images/videos and questioning them and it is getting people to change and stop being so rigid on their views between what is right and what is wrong in society.
When learning about how to engage with the Photo-Archive it was clear that a lot of pride had to be taken in the work that you had produced. This was made clear when going on our trip to the Jersey Archisle when we saw some of the photographs that had been placed in the archive over the years. I think that some of the images that have been placed in at the time the people who took the images did not realise the significance of them documenting that specific time in history, but for photographers and even for everyday people it is interesting to use the archive to look back at portraits and landscapes of people in the island and of the island to see the differences in how Jersey has changed. I think that by looking at different portraits over the years, which was one of the tasks that we had to do, it was clear that the style that photographers use to take portraits has changed over the years, as back in time there were very classic portraits of families all together looking all happy, maybe doing an everyday task. Whereas nowadays the portrait images that are taken are usually taken in a studio with professional studio lighting and it would of taken a lot of time and effort to get the image exactly how the family imagined it, and good enough for the photographer to be proud of the image. I think that it brings up the question as to whether in the olden days when portrait images were taken where they more realistic of the true person and their identity?
Some of the work which is in the Archisle is of projects which different photographs, some of which have been the photographer in residence at the time, have taken of the island to show the islands true beauty, but usually the photographers try to show this in a different light. For example Yury Toroptsov who was the photographer in residence in 2014, when he was going through the images he found some images from the Jersey Battle of Flowers and he was inspired by the name of one of the floats which was called Fairyland and this helped him understand the island more. Yury found this nation of ‘fairy’ was very present in Jersey, as because he came across some documents of cows where most were named after fairies. Yury believed that Jersey was a very ‘discrete’ and ‘mysterious place’. http://toroptsov.com/en/projects/fairyland.htm
This outcome depicts a game of ‘selfie battle’ taking place between Ben and Mr Toft. I find that this image is effective because it captures both individuals completely submerged in the game, putting all their focus and attention into it. Whilst the game is taking place there is a small gathering of people looking intently at the game. This image is evidence to support the appealing nature that performance plays beacause it has created a ‘spectacle’ (see blog post on Situationism) by which people surrender their focus, time and effort towards. A question which is interesting to considered is whether the audience is concerned with the material aspects of the game itself (i.e who wins and who loses) or instead are they concerned with the moments of fun and interaction in which it creates.
There is something which i find very appealing about this image. There is a sense of positivity that it evokes form two people enjoying a simple, unplanned moment. There is also a certain intensity to it. You definitely can see a battle going on, and tension is evoked through the look of excitement from the crowd.
In this photo, I have captured a few people observing one of Tom Pope’s performances. What I find very interesting about this image is that the individuals appear completely drawn into awe and fascination by the performance taking place. There is a definate feel of intensity in this photo in the sense that all subjects seem to be diverting all of their attention and energy into exactly the same place, and all seem to be drawn into absorbing the feel of a particualr moment. This photograph I think shows how powerful single moments have in creating an effect on people around. This therefore explains the potential that performance has to convey important messages through the large amount of focus and attention that it seems to evoke an audience.
There is also a sense of mystery to this photograph. They are looking intently at something which the view of the image has no knowledge of. This therefore forces the viewer to consider the what type of performance or event that is taking place. A moment is created because of a completely separate moment, a domino concept which i find to be very fascinating.
This photograph shows a few oranges lying on the ground after the orange throwing game. Some of the oranges were dropped on the floor and therefore have been bruised, split and cut. This is a subtle image that effectively shows the consequence of an action. Because the oranges were thrown around they therefore dropped on the floor in some instances. On a deeper level this symbolises the fact that an action will allows be followed by a response. This logic can subsequently be applied to performance photography. The performance will always result in a reaction form an audience, whether that is sub-consciously, subtly or dramatically – it does not matter. The act of the performance will occupy the viewers mind for a certain point and temporally control their action, viewpoints and perspective.
When planning for taking photographs in St Malo the images needed to be related to the idea of chance, challenge and change.
Shoot 1: Take photographs or videos walking into a pond/fountain somewhere and video it and show peoples reactions
Shoot 2: Take photographs/video of someone being carried around St Malo
Shoot 3: Get a video of everyone walking backwards and change it so that everyone is walking forwards and the people walking past are walking backwards
After meeting Tom Pope for the first time, he challenged us with the theme ‘Chance, Challenge, Change’ to see how we could interrupt this concept into our photography. He talked to us at the societe jersiaise where he spoke this how his brain works in his photography and gave us an idea on what new type of photography we should try. Taking a chance in photography is risky as you have to cover aspects of what the meaning behind the photo is and how your audience with react to it, positively or negatively. The challenge aspect is ultimately challenging yourself as a photographer and seeing how you cope with the work you are producing by trying something new and perhaps something you’re not comfortable with. I view the change aspect as manipulating your ideas and environment to capture the best outcome that you possibly could.
Tom gave me Clarence L Ouless to research on the archive to see what I thought of his work. His work mainly focuses on individual, family and group photographs from the late 1800’s and the early 1900’s. His photographs are good quality for the time period that these were taken, and would have been a popular photographer. However, these images don’t appeal to me as they aren’t the style that I would usually be interested in. I like the vintage look to them though and I do like black and white pictures, even though there were no options for coloured photographs until much later on I like the set up and imagery. They are staged photographs but I can still the emotional relationships between the people in the photographs which is what I want to express in my photographs. In my opinion, his photographs are successful in meeting the demands for family and individual portraits but not for anything more.
With regard to Tom Pope, our development of the key themes came down to various statements: repeating an action over and over again to benefit the chances of capturing the performance which becomes influenced / held within the margins of challenge and how you can change the chance by altering the subjects performance.
Tom’s influence comes down purely by walking through a threshold of chance and change. His approach to walking through a public arena or audience gives sense of a performance but not of that being successful, its always down to chance regardless of environmental, physical or social factors. I fell when approaching this challenge, this ideal of chance stayed in my mind. I questioned myself on how to make this shoot more successful, and doing so I changed the way I angled my camera and positioned myself in a more beneficial and approachable position. The more I did this with more control, the more effective the photograph turned out to be.
In this image above, Molly was positioned around 5 meters from where i was standing. She threw the orange towards my camera and I did vise versa. This photo was among the most successful, as using a manual blur helped contribute towards the main focus of the image, in this case, the orange. This also helped as during the editing processes in Photoshop, we were able to not insert a Gaussian Blur or any artificial focusing tools because this feature was so effective.