Provoke was a Japanese magazine which rejected glossy commercial imagery and the style of documentary photography. The Provoke era refers to its influence on photography made in post-war Japan. Provoke was initially set up to challenge the idea that photography has its own language, independent of words. Following the decimation and rebuilding of Japanese society after the Second World War, photography played an important part in a new self-definition of Japanese visual style, set apart from Western influences.

Provoke was a magazine with only three issues in the late 1960s, but its influence continued into the 1970s and 80s. It set itself apart from the photojournalistic style of the day, looking for a more subjective voice and validation of the person behind the camera. The images are often grainy and disorderly, reflecting the social and political upheavals taking place across the nation. The magazines main purpose was to contrast with the glossy imagery of commercial magazines which were around at the time. Takuma Nakahira and Yutaka Takanashi were founding members of the Provoke group. Daido Moriyama joined a little later, bringing with him his early influences of Cartier-Bresson, but with a desire to be a witness with more self-expressive intent.

This youtube clip details how the Provoke magazines was set up and then the ways in which it began to be used by the three photographers listed above to change the practical and theoretical meaning of photography. Provokes main focus comes from the name, the photographers aimed to provoke people with their imagery and even more so provoke visual language. The background is crucial to understanding the emergenece of breaking the boundaries of documentary photography.

Provoke was founded during the moments of massive changes in Japanese society around the 1960’s. One of the most notable for triggering this emergence was the ratification of the US-Japan security treaty which lead to companies in japan acting in an neoliberal way which had never been seen before in Japan. Protests from workers in factories are even more so farmers began to protest and millions of Japanese citizens took to the street campaigning and protesting against the government. This is when protest photography became huge being accompanied by about 80 protest ooks which were filled with images of the mass amount of participations that these protests had. The images and books spread visual information and was used to mobilize new protests by provoking them to join. The photographers documented the performances of these events and the images became dynamic and ephemeral which are the exact elements which ‘Provoke’ as a magazine adopted in their photography.

All three of the photographers which founded provoke magazine began to show a new conceptual approach to photography were the outcome was unpredictable as they shot the photos without looking through the viewfinder and instead ‘ shot from the hip’ creating spontaneous imagery. The artists were questioning established documentary photography and experimenting with breaking the boundaries of what were thought to be the rules of photography. Their images were judged as being rough, grainy and blurred which contrasted with what classic photographers labeled documentary photography should be. Nonetheless there were always shown differences between the three photographers as Yutaka Takanashi who was the most classical amongst the three photographers did not seem to push the boundaries as much as the others, still using the viewfinder when making his images. ‘Provoke’ seems to be an examination of photographers possibilities and lead the way for other photographers to push the boundaries of photography.

“Today, when words have lost their material base—in other words, their reality—and seem suspended in mid-air, a photographer’s eye can capture fragments of reality that cannot be expressed in language as it is. He can submit those images as a document to be considered alongside language and ideology. This is why, brash as it may seem, Provoke has the subtitle, ‘provocative documents for thought.”
— Manifesto of the Provoke Group by Kohi Taki, Takuma Nakahira, Takahiko Okada, Yutaka Takanashi, and Daido Moriyama – http://www.photopedagogy.com/provoke.html

Photography was too explanatory, too narrational for me. […] It was natural for me to join Provoke. […] They said they were photographing atmosphere. But I was very precise and careful. […] But my work changed after I saw how they worked. I saw that I could not control everything. I understood that photography is only a fragment. I used to be a photographer who interprets things via language. And then Provoke changed me.
— Yakuta Takanashi

Furthermore i watched this video by Daido Moriyama  where he reflects on the rebellious youth culture of late 1960s Japan, a period when he and his colleagues were working on the avant-garde photography magazine Provoke. He discusses his attempt to deconstruct the medium in his series Shashin yo sayonara (Farewell Photography) (1972), though it ultimately deconstructed him. Daido Moriyama was on of may of the young photographers who were involved in the provoke magazine and in the short video he suggests that young people i this time had the motivation to express themselves and that they were inspired by the feelings of rebellion to produce radical photography which allowed them to express themselves. When Provoke came to an end, Moriyama ould not settle with taken normal photography an this is were he continued his social rebellion through photography and produced his photobook ‘Farewell Photography’ where he questioned every little thing about photography as he was “excessively caught up in a desire to deconstruct photogrpahy”.

When looking at photographers such as Daido Moriyama, Takuma Nakihara and Yutaka Takanashi words such as radical, expression, unpredictable, spontaneous, grainy, blurred, unique, individual, protest and rebellious come to mind. These Japanese photographers which used social rebellion as inspiration and motivation for their photography capture extremely unique images which break the traditional boundaries of photography, but i think that there is a need for photographers who want to get there message across to break the rules and produce pieces which are different and radical as this catches the eye of the audience, the viewer, the political protests. To me, to provoke means to initiate question and debate of the meaning of something. And that is exactly what the provoke photographers where doing, they were questioning the boundaries of photography and therefore making others also question it. I think that once a subject is brought into the eyes of individuals as being question by one it has the domino effect to provoke offers the also question this and what the Japanese provoke photographers have caused is a longitudinal debate of the possibilities of photographers.

PLAN:

For my response to breaking the rule of technicality i have been heavily influenced by documentary photographer Laura El Tantawy. She breaks the rule of technicality through her unusual colour tones which highlight the drama of the situation as well as not correctly exposing the image so that there is a blur on the images. these are aspects that i am going to try to recreate in my own image. The focus of my shoot will be on highlighting how women are politically free in the twenty-first century to express themselves in the way that they want to.

Over the weekend i will focus on taking images of adolescent females who are expressing themselves. in further blog posts i will be researching the freedoms and limitations of women and how they fought for political freedoms and won the right to vote as well as the feminist movement which shows how women continued to fight for gender equality and the right to express themselves. this will continue to be the basis of my project for the next 6 weeks were i explore feminist photography and how women in photograph and their representation has changed over the last century following the 100th anniversary of women’s rights to vote.

This shoot will act as a starting point for the rest of my project and i will also use it as a way to experiment in the way that i can break the rule of technicality throughout the project showing another element of freedom as photography is now a lot more free and we are able to capture documentary photographs in any way we want. Therefore i am going to use coloured plastic sheets to over the lens whilst making my photographs to firstly alter the natural colour of the image and secondly to create a slight blur to the images.

EVALUATION:

Overall, i am happy with the outcome of this shoot, i used the the filter paper as a way of distorting the natural image as well as leaving the exposure open for slightly longer so that you can see that the images are over exposed and have not been taken in a correct technical manner. The photographs that i made, due to the orange filter look like the outcome of images from the 70’s which is what i was hoping to capture. Although i have created images of females in a modern view they still highlight the new found freedoms that women have due to the females that protests in the feminist movement throughout the twentieth century. From this shoot i have considered breaking the rule of technicality more in my project to create this old fashioned images linking the theme to the time i am focusing on. In further shoots i will try to recreate images from the 1970’s when the movement was actually occurring and show women as they were first experiencing freedoms to express there sexuality and femininity.

This task involved reading through Lewis Bush’s article ‘Rule Breakers‘ which highlighted the eight ways in which the rules of documentary photography could be broken.  He emphasises the key point that as documentary photography is not photojournalism and has no requirements to truthfully portray an event/environment or subject, therefore rules can be broken which are associated with documentary. Some of the rules to be broken that Bush considers are The rule of reality, the rule of the camera and the rule that i found most interesting was the rule of technicality. During the article Bush discusses that breaking the rule of technicality involves ignoring the norm to take perfecting correct,well focused and composed images. Bush states that many young photographers are being more experimental and are, ‘among a new generation express themselves lyrically, skilfully throwing technique into the wind’. i convey this to mean that elements such as using the correct amount of exposure and having in focus images are now not the focus and not a critical part of the image.

those who had chosen the same rule to break went into pairs and together we produced a mind map of ideas that we thought would be breaking the rule of technicality. we considered how we could make images that were purposely taken to be technically bad. A few of the ideas we came up with consisted of creating grainy images which may depict and change the look of an image, blur photographs through slow shutter speed in night time situations where normally photographers would try to avoid blur or fuzz. we also began to look at a few artists that we were already aware of that we considered to take technically bad images purposes and one we came up with was Francesca woodman would blurs her subject whilst they are moving.

Laura El Tantawy was a photography that Lewis Bush mentioned in his article, i had a quick initial look at some of the work that she does which can be liked to breaking the rule of technicality and was really intrigue by the night time scenes that she captures. Bush explains that her  ‘long exposures express a very personal vision of a monumental event.’ and that ‘her work hints at the uncertainty engulfing the country at a time of change.’ Tantawy, a Egyptian photographer with egyptian parents grow up in England. Although starting university in Egypt she finished her degree of journalism and  political science in the US. In 2006 she became a freelance photographer so that she could begin to work on her own projects and this is were her sense of breaking the documentary rules began. It was her first self published photo book which drew me to the attention of her works. In 2015 ‘the shadow of pyramids’ was published showing her interest in returning to her routes in Egypt, however she documented her view of the country she was from in a compleatly free way. Her interesting use of slow shutter speed and orange tone to her images convey the heat and fast pace life which she saw during her time in Egypt. The toughness of her vision is almost mask through the use of the bright and vibrant colours to the image and you have to look beyond the aesthetics of the images to understand the true story of the protesters which lies underneath

Creative Review described her first book  as “close-up photographs of protestors and street scenes of fervent crowds in Cairo during the January revolution in Tahrir Square, are mixed in with local witness accounts, alongside old family photographs from her childhood growing up between Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the US. Shot between 2005-2014, the series is a heady combination of documentary photography, portraits, and more dynamic, abstract images, jarring with the retro, candid shapshots.”

Through conceptual photographs she creates modern documentary styled images which sway from the usual path of documentors and create eye catching and meaningful narratives. The blur which is evident in most pictures highlights the first pace of life we live in as well as making the audience have to look deeper into the image to understand the meaning which lies behind them. Due to the freedom which is now acceptable she explores the limitless themes of identity, culture and notions of home which are all evident in her project ‘ the shadow o the pyramid’. This short video (The Photographer’s Gallery, Deutsche Börse Photography Foundation Prize 2016)  Explains her reasons for starting the project and a few experiences she had during the project which enables us to understand why she takes the images which she does.

Analysis:

I chose this image to analyse as when i came across it i was the work that interested me the most. the colours and tone sin the image give it a really warm feeling. however when researching the context of her images this particular photograph comes from Tantawys photo series ‘the shadow of pyramids’ where she focuses on the riots and protests in her home country of Egypt. Therefore although the orange and red tones may convey a warm feeling this may actually be too mean heat and anger for what the people are protesting for. The way that tantawy uses colours to convey the heat and power of a situation brings such a different element to her images one which i would like to convey through my images when considering freedom and/or limitations. Tantawy breaks the rule of technicality and this can be seen in this image as there may have been a filter over the lens to create the red tone which breaks the rule of technicality through that the images aren’t conveying the correct colours and the artist has manipulated the natural colours. Furthermore there is camera shake which is considered technically wrong however i think that this was purposely done to add to the high pace of the event and adds to the realness that the protest were really going on whilst she was there and that as it was taken in the moment whilst all this was going on it is slightly blurred but this just represents the action.

initially the audience’ eye is caught by the bright yellow in the left side of the image, this is actually technically correct as she has followed the rule of thirds although this may not have been intentional. nonetheless the image can then be considered to be breaking the rule of thirds as the protagonist is directly in the center of the image, i think this fits really well with the way she breaks the rule of technicality as the subject in the center really begins to tell the story of the protests and what tantawy is trying to capture through her photo series of Egypt. furthermore the stance of the protagonist is crucial to analyse. the subject is standing tall with his arms opened out wide as if he is a symbol of the protest and he is in the centre of what is going on and he is shouting out for what he wants and fighting for what he believes in. Therefore i think that in this image especially Tantawy is almost a photojournalist as she is truly capturing what is happening in that moment in Egypt however the fact that she has then manipulated technical aspect of the images creates a documented image. She also manages to include depth of field which adds a lot to the image, the people walking on the street in the background although ma be blurred add to the depth of the meaning of the image as it is showing that there are others protesting alongside the main subject.

Through the inspiration of Laura El Tantawy, i am going to try and break the rule of technicality in similar ways. I will consider changed the colours of the image possibly through not adjusting the white balance for different situations this may lead to the colours in the images being incorrect. I am also going to experiment with long shutterspeeds which may slightly blurr the image creating a technically wrong image. My focus will be on women and how in the 21st century they women have the FREEDOM to express themselves and be free to show who they truely are. this will then hopefully link into the rest of my project of showing the story of how women that were once the gender of limitation fought for their rights and became free.

http://www.lauraeltantawy.com/