How do photographers Doug DuBois and Robert Clayton represent social divisions in their work?

Society – “the aggregate of people living together in a more or less ordered community.”

Within society, members of the public domain are continually categorized and divided by their characteristics, a feature of a person in order to identify them, which is out of their own control to an extent, for example, their race. Societal politics serves economic categorization among people in order to accommodate for the different classes, altering their contribution to society or providing financial support so nobody is disadvantaged. However, society’s judgement upon receiving government help is generally interpreted sourly, creating an image of these people as inferior to those who work or those who don’t live in council housing. Society’s pretensions are detrimental for those on the receiving end of government provided benefits as it is places them into a social disadvantage in terms of acceptance and equality. Due to my parents being fifteen and seventeen when I was born, financial aid was paramount in our unique situation as both my parents were still in school, one way or another. Both my mother and father have accepted that “the odds were against them” in sculpturing and raising a child to be a good son, successful student and socially inline, meaning, I spent a significant amount of time of my life in the lower sector of society where “irresponsible” accusations commonly fell upon my parents. I have my own shameful experiences of embarrassment as I became more conscious to the fact my parents were young when I joined primary school and that our financial situation or home life was different to others. Although my time in state accommodation was limited, I do have experience and memories of living in social housing but it is more so the fact I was deceitful when people had asked where I lived, often not mentioning that particular area in case I was thought upon or treated in different fashion. The documentation work of Robert Clayton in Estates and Doug DuBois in My Last Day at Seventeen gives a valuable insight into the lower class lives, ranging from characters found within these regions to the buildings in which they live, all staying very loyal to stereotypes. However, what I appreciate the most about these two illuminating photobooks is the beautifying of what we expect to be Western slums, for instance, Doug DuBois’s crisp shots enriches the ugliness of these surroundings, giving a more accepting and warming perception of council housing. My intention with this complementary essay to my book production is test the social stigma I was once a part of in order to demonstrate that human identity and emotion remains despite divisions within society. In my personal investigation, I photographically documented my friends, my family, my girlfriend, my dog, the houses I either live in or visit, and the environments that have made me who I am today and who I am becoming. Having experience of two social classes, I aim to create a bridge between the social divisions in order to show the importance of unification, fundamentally appreciating one another’s differences and allowing equal opportunities despite alternative, inherited socio-economic statuses.

Doug DuBois is an American photographer based in New York who was sent to Ireland via invitation to attend Sirius Arts Centre in Cobh. In an interview with Lens Culture, Doug DuBois revealed how he had almost turned down the opportunity which actually became a five year project, his second most prolific to date. Frustrated by a lack of progress, DuBois requested to his two students they take him back to where they live for some photographic inspiration which is when the photographer first arrived at Russell Heights, the council estate photographed within the book. Following on from looking around and getting a feel for the surroundings, Kevin (a student of DuBois’s), showed DuBois his house where he “made a photograph of Roisin in her bedroom and realized almost immediately that this was his “entrée into a compelling and complex corner of Irish life”. In terms of provenance, I personally think it is refreshing and fair photography for DuBois, a member of the middle-class, to capture life upon Russell Heights as he is not attempting to show some sort of savagery among the lower classes that an upper class documenter would have portrayed, or promote life in these regions like the lower class would have. DuBois has initially entered an unknown area, meaning he would have documented what he saw using a technique I call the “transparent lens”, meaning you directly capture what you see. Although, DuBois confesses “only a handful of photographs in the book … aren’t posed”, reinforcing this sense of tableaux, and as consequence, the meaning behind each image remains the same and as yet there is a lack of imitation, which can detected in Steve McCurry’s The Imperial Way (1985). Despite being an individual council estate, the images portrayed stay loyal to a council estate’s stereotypes with young girls in short, semi-revealing clothing, unorthodox graffiti and hooded, smoking teenagers.

Crucially, the work of Doug DuBois is a valuable insight into the life within an Irish council estate in Cork as we, the audience, are exposed to a unique sub narrative which the majority of the world would not experience. Dubois’s photographic work upon Russell Heights in My Last Day at Seventeen (2015) breaks social boundaries as an American photographer from a middle-class background can stroll into an Irish council estate and request their photographic co-operation over the course of five years, demonstrating that this anti-socialable behaviour that is commonly recognised or associated with council estates is actually down to the role of the individual, rather than the collective. Due to relativity of DuBois’s piece, his sub narrative becomes reflective of other council estates and therefore an example of the grand narrative’ almost becoming a social protest against society’s pretensions. The mere fact that a stranger with a camera, an intrusive tool of documentation, can be welcomed onto a council estate indicates to me that the lower class lack guidance and opportunities as when instructed, teenagers we’d expect to disobey DuBois’s wishes, follow what he asks. As DuBois’s heritage does not stem from an Irish lower-class, we’d expect that DuBois would adopt a voyeuristic or objectifying approach to his photobook, acting as an “outside” to Russell Heights. In contrast, DuBois embraces the qualities Abigail Solomon-Godeau deems as “inside”, for example, “trusting” and “engaged” which he reinforces by clarifying he made a “handful” of “friends” during his time documenting the estate. DuBois’s attitude and accepting mind-set is a factor or trait the majority of the population need to adopt, as when the photographer gave the residents of Russell Heights a polite and respectable response, there was clear unity, something general society lacks.

In the same spontaneous fashion that DuBois discovered his own photography project, I discovered mine. The art of communication enlightened me as one night in my kitchen, I informed my mother of how I was struggling to meet deadlines with my photography course as I could not find a sufficient photography topic to develop and progress with. As a result of long conversation and me explaining a vague outline of the photography course, my mother concluded something “personal, something that shows who you were and who you have become”. I conjured up numerous plans and envisioned a multitude of photo-shoots in my head, ‘picturing him there and that there with that in the background’. Finally, I thought photographing everything that I felt was meaningful around me would give a clear perception and image of me and my journey of endless self-acknowledgment, almost like how the sub narratives of my friends, my step-brother and my girlfriend create my own grand narrative, yet my narrative is a sub narrative. Admittedly, I spent a lot of time photographing my social milieu, carrying my camera around with me on nights out, taking it to people’s houses with me and even following my friend’s playing golf, however, when it came to narrowing my vast selection of images down, they always seemed to fit the same sort of category. Problems inherent with social housing and stigmas our society possess always cropped up, perhaps a mental reference to the issues in my own life I have ignored and been embarrassed of. The images I had taken under this bracket seemed to be distant and taken from long-range, meaning the methodology of how I captured these images were reflective of how I dealt with these difficulties. Other underlying issues were also incorporated, for example, my father’s departure when I was aged three meant I no longer lived with him and as a boy; my dad was my hero so it was rather detrimental to not have such a paramount figure always present in my life. Thus, there were a lot of close-up images in his bedroom to establish this sense of my father’s absence and closeness that I believed I craved as a child, as well as any suggestion of our unification or instances of me present in his life.

Robert Clayton is a British photographer whose vernacular work rarely drifts beyond his 1991 production of Estates, a photographic documentary based upon the life in a particular council estate and how the setting is disturbed by the government’s decision to renovate the properties. The analysis of the Lion Farm Estate shows the government’s power and demonstrates how it trivialises the tenants of the high rises as Clayton captured Lion Farm on the eve of its calamitous invasion which would result in the partial destruction of the estate. In this scenario, the term “estate” is personified to be a living entity; it is the home to a multitude of tenants, a place of joy and an example of a certain time period. Within my own work, I aim to elevate the settings in question in order to show how these buildings, despite their negative connotations, can be important for members of society and contain their own account of events with every tenant having a different story to the next. Fundamentally, Clayton’s work lacks colour and is rich in vision as it portrays a setting that is worn and far-from perfect, yet still embraced by its residents, giving significant importance to the ugly. Clayton tests society’s questions of the aesthetics of the estate and its occupants civility as they are questioned themselves as he aspires to humanise the tenants and the live they lead. The estate is in the Black Country region, one of the most populated areas in Britain yet Robert Clayton has the ability to make it feel segregated and secluded to the rest of the country, even deserted to desolation. There are two reasons for this; the first being to depict the independence of the tenants that occupy the buildings, attempting to demonstrate that they don’t need to government’s aid. The second interpretation is that the government have deliberately isolated the estate, leaving the tenants who quite clearly need help, whether this personal or financial, alone. This factor coincides with my work and reinforces why I chose to analyse this book as I believe the governmental upper class is not too concerned with the lower class’s welfare and their alleged system which is supposed to improve lower class lives lacks a sense of personal. As I have eluded with analysis of Doug DuBois’s My Last Day At Seventeen, the people of these estates need more than a roof and financial aid, with a genuine care for their future crucial for social development.

The problems with government handling of the lower class is not a recent affair as Charles Dickens, a renown social critic discredits social policy on attaining information regarding the less fortunate and how they deal with this data. In his 1854 production of Hard Times, Dickens explains how the government is obsessed with “fact” and how they use “tabular statements” to deal with social ills, yet these methods are quixotic and lack personality. The government’s prevention to intervene and aid lower class lives on a personal level means there will always be social injustices in terms of equality as children from lower class backgrounds don’t have the same opportunities as children from the middle and upper classes. In 2018, Professor Green, a UK rapper brought up on a council estate by his grandmother admitted university was never a possibility for him due to his financial circumstances but when offered the chance to go to Saint Paul’s, a highly selective independent school, he knew by the age of eleven that people from his socio-economic background did not attend that school. Green developed upon this by granting the fact there was a stigma for “Working Class White Men” to attend university, clearly distinguishing that there is a social divide in terms of acceptance of the lower class.

Of paramount relevance, I analysed the work of Doug DuBois and Robert Clayton in order to examine how they portray the lives of the lower class against what society’s pretensions are. As stated, there is clear imbalances between the classes and not only in terms of finances as children, that are productions of their class, do not have equal opportunities regardless of their abilities. The leading classes tends to be less accepting of the lower class being successful, however, these photographers crucially question these pretensions and humanise the bottom of society’s pecking order. Throughout my photobook “Over the Fence”, I incorporate characters that represent a low socio-economic status that still achieve in the activities they do and the lives they lead both socially and in terms of sport. My work also includes daunting images of large high-rises to create the perception of the challenges facing thw lower-class, I even revisited where I lived in order to remind myself of my heritage and the difficulties my family faced. When embarking on this photographic expedition, I paid particular attention to detail in a fit of nostalgia as I used this opportunity to heal and accept where I came from; shrugging off any embarrassment I had previously felt. A factor I did not achieve when undergoing the creation of my photobook was a current notion of social protest as I should have used my tableaux orientated skills to enquire with residents of council housing about photographing them and perhaps their homes, much like Doug DuBois did in his My Last Day at Seventeen. Although the images would not have been personal, like the photographs produced in Ray’s a Laugh by Richard Billingham, it would be atmospheric and provide a stronger protest against the detrimental divisions within society.

“Knowledge is power. Information is liberating. Education is the premise of progress, in every society, in every family.” – Kofi Annan