Below is my finished photo-book made using Blurb through Lightroom. It comprises of 50 pages, with a hardcover front. I don’t look like the look of an image wrap and I couldn’t find a text font which matched the handwriting style which I wanted. Therefore like most of the images inside, I created the title by hand with my own handwriting and then using Photoshop I added it onto my front cover and my name on the back.
https://www.blurb.co.uk/b/9950618-nothing-can-come-between-us
For my personal investigation I intend to create a photo-book project around the theme of documenting the youth of today and our culture, which is rarely portrayed accurately in the media, this may also include certain subcultures that I could decide to delve into. I will try the best I can to capture and achieve a realistic portrait of each individual person. The question then arises, ‘What does a ‘real photo’ even look like: is it something you can hold? Is it something you can see on a screen and alter?’ (Bright, S. and Van Erp, H. 2019: 17.) I hope to answer this question throughout my efforts of trying to capture a ‘real’ portrait of an individual. How much can you really tell about a person through looking at a mere photograph of them?
Throughout my research I have looked at a few documentary photographers who I think have been close or have achieved an almost perfect, realistic representation of an individual. An example of this is Jim Goldberg, an accomplished photographer and creator of the renowned photo-book ‘Raised by Wolves’. Published in 1995, this was a decade long project for Goldberg, in which he documented a factual representation of the youth living on the streets of California and San Francisco; at the height of the AIDS epidemic and surrounded by drug abuse and violence.
A key aspect of ‘Raised By Wolves’ was that it did not only include straight up photographs of the individuals, but it also included drawings and writings by them. Many photos in the collection have been scrawled with their own mini biography, such as Dave: an important character in ‘RBW’, in a double page spread featuring him (below), the words ‘I’m Dave, who the fuck are you? You need me to feel superior. I need you to laugh at’ are featured in his own handwriting. This has definitely impacted the authenticity of the images and made a bigger impact. This has provided another layer in which Goldberg has allowed these individuals to tell their own story through his efforts.
“I had the idea of having people write their stories on the photographs and, although I didn’t really know what I was doing, that turned out to be something really integral to my practice for 40 years. I just saw something that I felt I needed to try and make sense of. And using text enabled me to do that. ” (Jim Goldberg, ‘Raised By Wolves’, Huck 52 – The Documentary Photography Special 3)
Key Image Analysis: Dave, nicknamed ‘Tweeky Dave’, appeared as one of the most charismatic and sympathetic characters in Raised by Wolves. His early childhood had been plagued by abuse from his parents, addiction and constant violence. At the heart of the book is his doomed ‘love story’ between two 16-year-old runaways. Tweeky Dave and Beth, known as Echo, share an appetite for heroin but not much else. He moons after her, proposing marriage and children, fueled by impossible, sweet bravado as he walks, half-starved, down Hollywood Boulevard with his bedroll. She recognizes him as worse than a bad risk and dumps him to run with other boys, who abuse her. She becomes pregnant, has her baby, then returns, broke, to her mother’s home. The photo above is in my opinion one of the most disturbing in the book, it depicts Dave, the 16 year old runaway’s malnourished body. His scar from where his father shot him in the gut at ten years old is very apparent, he almost shows it off to the camera in a model pose-esque manner. Dave is dirty from his years spent on the streets, his hands and nail permanently tarnished, as well as his teeth covered in plaque and falling apart, from years of drug abuse and lack of cleanliness or medical care. Technically the image in itself is split into two sections, one a main body shot showing his clothing, scars. The other, a white page with a note saying ‘I’m Dave who the fuck are you? You need me 2 feel superior I need you 2 laugh at.’ Like most of the images in the book, it is black and white against a white background, this allows more emphasis to the tone, texture, line, light, and the balance of the composition. Goldberg hasn’t prepared this image at all, which is obvious: natural-on the street lighting is used, the image has in no way been staged and was most likely taken in the moment.
When discussing documentary photography I think one must also mention the photography movement which was Realism/Straight Photography. This is a concept of photography in which the reliance is on the camera’s technical ability to produce an image in sharp detail and without manipulation. Straight Photography images ‘depict the scene or subject as the camera sees it.’ These approaches to photography continue to define contemporary photographs, while being the foundation for many related movements, such as Documentary, Street photography and Photojournalism. Straight photography is often described as a ‘snapshot in time’ or a moment frozen in time, as it is a process and time based approach. ‘It represents immediacy, the passing of time as in history, or the freezing of time as in a snapshot. As Henri Cartier-Bresson once stated “we work in unison with movement as though it were a presentiment on the way in which life itself unfolds. But inside movement there is one moment in which the elements in motion are in balance.” This notion of the “decisive moment” defined much of the Straight photography of the mid-20th century. ‘ (The Art Story- Straight Photography Movement). This movement relates completely to my study on Goldberg’s work. There is a sense of realness and immediacy within every photo in RBW. One in particular which I find to be the most genuine and ‘in the moment’ is the image of 14 year old girl, pregnant with triplets eating out of a box of cheerios in an empty kitchen. Alongside a drawing from a notebook of her father supposedly having sex with her. If the question we are asking is: are we capturing reality? Then I think that the answer is clearly yes, however every person will always react or interpret an image differently. ‘Photography merely depicts bodily functions: sex not love, violence not hate.’ (Eric Margolis: ‘The Matter with Kids Today’:98) A person’s thoughts, feelings and experiences will most likely always manipulate their view of a photograph. At the end of the day, the girl is still just a child caught in a world where she will have to grow up quickly and Goldberg has captured this in one telling image.
Another Photographer who was criticized for his controversial career was filmmaker and photographer Larry Clark. 18 year-old Clark began his career photographing the daily lives of his friends. Over the next several years, he revisited the project that ultimately culminated in the 1971 publication of the book Tulsa. This iconic and controversial book sparked the beginning of the world-renowned photographer / filmmaker’s creative journey. These photographs launched both Clark’s career and a new style of photography ‘marked by equal parts intimacy and objectivity, treating shocking images of sex, violence, and drug use as ordinary occurrences alongside pictures of friendly parties and moments of solitary contemplation.'(Phil-brook Museum of Art: Larry Clark, Tulsa).
Similar to Goldberg, Clark seemed over his career to have a growing obsession for documenting the lives of teenagers, both photographers documented the lives of the teenagers in very similar ways, through black and white straight photography and immersing themselves in their subjects. This is an element which I tried to re-create in my own photography, although it is of course different as I am one with the group already: I know all the subjects well and my photos were in a sense planned, as in most occasions, I went out specifically to take the photos. Clark and I also have this in common, as he (in the making of Tulsa) was among those he was photographing, they were his everyday friends and it was his everyday life back then. Below are some of my own images and responses to the various photographers I have looked at throughout my personal investigation.
To conclude, Jim Goldberg and Larry Clark both effectively capture the lives and routines of teenagers living on the streets the 70s,80s and 90s in the US. Through their documentary photography showing sex, drug use, pregnancies and the abundance of drug use and poverty surrounding their lives. Their method of straight photography clearly shows this without any manipulation to the stories or images included and brings into discussion challenging aspects of the morals and ethics of representation in this genre of photography. Both photographers have been able to tell “their truth”, whilst carefully avoiding elevating the subjects to the status of folk-hero. Its seems that navigating these tricky waters can change the outcome of any photographers work, so that we end up with different versions of the same truth.
Bibliography: New York Times, Magnum Photos https://www.theartstory.org/movement/straight-photography/ https://philbrook.org/larry-clarks-tulsa-comes-home/
My subject in 3 words: individuality, friendship, closeness. A sentence: A look into the lives of some of my friends and the world around us. Paragraph: My project is centered the intention to create a photo-book which is based on specific people in my life and what makes them an individual, I want this to also center around the theme of youth culture. Each picture/section of my book is about one person and their features/interests and things that make them who they are. I also plan to have pictures which break theme in the book to act as a barrier between each portrait,etc.
The plan for my photo-book is to have it hardback if possible and smooth feeling with a simple clean looking cover, I just want it to be completely black the title somewhere on it. I am planning on having just black and white ‘premium lustre’ pages, for my images which are mainly darker with a lot of black I will be using a white page, and the other way round for the lighter images. I also plan on having a mostly classic layout with a single image per page with a blank page opposite, with the exception of some double page spreads and ones with 2 images. Format, size and orientation: I think that I am going to keep my book portrait and just use a double spread for the larger landscape photos. The size will be standard portrait: 25x20cm.
Front cover: Above is the image which I created by hand and later on Photoshop which will act as my front cover, blending in with the black on the rest of the outside.
Title: ‘NOTHING CAN COME BETWEEN US’ This is the title that I derived after looking at the Tupac Shakur poem of the same title, I also added this as the first page in my book.
Design and layout: This aspect can be seen on a previous blog-post: https://hautlieucreative.co.uk/photo20al/2020/02/12/completed-photo-book/s
These are my third and final set of finished images for my photo-book. They follow the same process of capturing and editing as my first set of photos, this can be read on my blog post of the same title. I have now accumulated 27 images for my book which will result in 50 pages. I have kept the same theme of black and white photos with red accents and text also. Again most of these images have been taken on film which the exception of one or two which I took on my phone and later edited.
Above is a poem by Tupac Shakur which I am including as the first page before the images in my book. I have inverted the colours to make the white text blend in with the black background on my book. Although it is slightly blurry but this is to be expected as it a scan from his original notebook of poems. This was written for John Cole, Tupac’s best friend during his high school days, it is about friendship and loyalty, therefore it fits the subject of my book quite well. The edited version also fits right into my book’s theme and layout, it may be printed slightly blurry as it was hard to find a high resolution version of basically an old document, however it will still be legible.
These are my second set of finished images for my photo-book. They follow the same process of capturing and editing as my first set of photos, this can be read on my blog post of the same title. The only difference from this time is that I have chosen to use red as an accent colour in my editing as it contrasts against the black and white and when the book is actually created I plan on including it in other areas also, such as book title or page cover etc, therefore in the end it will match as a complementary colour. I have also taken an image from my last set and re-edited again as I wasn’t sure if it fitted or not. Again I am very satisfied with these images and will be using them all.
The book is quite large, at around A3 size it is bigger than most photo-books I have seen. In hand the book is heavy and looks as if it is packed full of high quality images on thick paper. It is smooth and glossy on the outside and feels not much different to any other new-ish book. It contains a mixture of mostly black and white images and some coloured ones, accompanied also by notes and writings on each image written by the subject of the photo themselves. The paper texture remains the same throughout: slightly glossy. RBW is a mix of full bleed landscape images covering two pages as well as portrait. It is a soft back book that can be bent easily, there is no cloth cover or intricate binding.
The title is probably what attracted me most to the book; ‘Raised By Wolves’ is a term which was coined by one of the subjects who was being photographed, he wrote it down on a note and Goldberg has displayed it next to his portrait in the book. I interpret the meaning of this title as coming from how most of the young subjects in this book have been abused physically/sexually etc, by their own parents and have been brought up around constant drug abuse. Therefore they couldn’t escape from this way of life and ended up living on the streets and mostly following in their parent’s footsteps- the young runaways had been set up to fail since birth.
The focus narrative in RBW is the story of Tweeky Dave and Echo. The pair share an appetite for heroin but not much else. He moons after her, proposing marriage and children, fueled by impossible, sweet bravado as he walks, half-starved, down Hollywood Boulevard with his bedroll. She recognizes him as worse than a bad risk and dumps him to run with other boys, who abuse her. She becomes pregnant, has her baby, then returns, broke, to her mother’s home. This is all portrayed through numerous written interviews with the two, as well as other characters, and through constant photos and notes that they have written.
“I didn’t really fit in to my family as much as they wanted me to and I think that lead me eventually to photography. A camera back then, and probably still now, was like having a calling card that let you into places that you normally wouldn’t go to, or to people you normally wouldn’t talk to. I moved to San Francisco at the end of 1976 and probably soon thereafter I started going out on the street. Some of the people that I met were living in transient hotels, and they invited me into their homes and I photographed them.That was interesting to me. I was dealing with a group of people who I had very little contact with; they were poor, they were hidden, they were invisible people in these grimy rooms.”
Jim Goldberg spent 10 years photographing, audio-taping and videotaping to prepare this book. The book pairs images of the adolescents in their makeshift environments with extensive interviews. Their stories are accompanied by testimony from social workers, doctors, parents and police. The truth about a runaway’s childhood is sometimes hard to determine. These kids seem acutely aware of what adults want to hear. Some may not separate the rights of parents to exercise authority from fantasies of child abuse. But the blase accounts they gave Goldberg of violence at home and of streets rife with prostitution, AIDS and hard drugs are too numerous to be discounted.
“I had the idea of having people write their stories on the photographs and, although I didn’t really know what I was doing, that turned out to be something really integral to my practice for 40 years. I just saw something that I felt I needed to try and make sense of. And using text enabled me to do that.”
There is a definite link between the images and text in the book. As each image more often than not came alongside a note or physical writing on top of the photo, in the subject’s handwriting. Goldberg has since been using this process for many years as it allows a more open discussion between the subject and how they are being portrayed through the photograph, in their own words.
Bibliography: https://www.huckmag.com/art-and-culture/photography-2/flipping-gaze-photos-jim-goldberg-documentary-storyteller/ , New York Times.
To start practicing and developing a response to Ed Templeton’s art/photography. I’ve decided to use some select film photos which were taken and developed over the summer, these comprise of just some candid/unposed photos of my friends, as well as some I have gathered from my most recent photo-shoot. Next I am going to scan them, edited them all into black and white to create a sequence to the images, then I am going to print them out and start working over them physically with paint, pens, nail polish etc, and also add in some text where needed, I also decided after doing these to incorporate red as a colour into my book when working over the top- this is because it complements the black and white really well and contracts all the darkness aswell. I really like how they all turned out and since this process takes a long time to get each imagine finished I am planning on using all of them as finals for my photo-book, since they all have a clear unification and go well as a collective. I think its clear that they have all been influenced by Ed Templeton which was my intention, but they also are not exactly the same and include some elements of my own which I really like aswell.
Ed Templeton is an American photographer, artist and pro-skater. He is the founder of the skateboard company Toy Machine. Outside of skateboarding, Templeton is a painter, graphic designer, and photographer, areas that he has gained a reputation within without any formal training, the Photography Colleges website, in an article entitled “New School Photography: Ed Templeton”, identifies Templeton as “probably the most influential contemporary photographer”. Templeton’s signature model skateboards for the New Deal company were self-designed and he subsequently became the head designer for his own brands—Templeton produces all of the art work for the Toy Machine skateboard company that, as of January 2013, is his primary skateboarding project. Templeton is also a co-editor of ANP Quarterly, an arts magazine started in 2005.
Teenage Smokers: in 2000, Templeton’s book of photography, Teenage Smokers, won the Italian Search For Art competition and Templeton was awarded US$50,000. ‘The idea for this book sprang from finding the original boxes of Polaroid’s that started this whole series, shot in 1994 at my local skateboard park in Huntington Beach, California. I would be skating there when the kids finished school and they would collect there to hang out and smoke. One day I brought a Polaroid camera to the park and started asking all of them for a portrait while smoking. Those first Polaroid’s were the photos that Aaron Rose saw when I did an exhibition at his Alleged Gallery in 1999.’
‘Templeton began taking candid, sometimes intrusive photos of his wife Deanna, strangers and teammates on skate competition tours. His next show with Alleged, in 1999, was a large collection of voyeuristic photographs of kids and the accompanying book, “Teenage Smokers,” that caught the attention of art critics and garnered a very different reaction from his first paintings. The series was acquired by the Orange County Museum of Art and the book, if found today, goes for a nice chunk of change. Since, Templeton has proven that he clearly has an extraordinary eye for composition, and is valiantly carrying on the tradition of contemporary art photography in the vein of Nan Goldin, Garry Winogrand and even Walker Evans. However, like his predecessors, his subject matter is extremely raw and personal; at times X-rated, violent and emotionally draining.’ (From Skater To Artist – K.CET)
The reason I am choosing to use Ed Templeton as an artist reference in my personal investigation is because I think he is quite unique in the way he photographs people, the images all appear to be genuine as if there is a backstory to every single one, this is reinforced with the writing that is included on almost every picture; these state dates,times, names and even the actions of those in the picture. Therefore all of his images seem raw and unedited, which is something I want to include in my own photography and responses to him. Another aspect I enjoy is how he incorporates multi-media into still photographs, such as: paint, pen, cardboard, backgrounds and other ways of displaying the photography. These techniques bring colour to the black and white photographs and give another personal touch from the photographer.
For my Personal Investigation I intend to create a photo-book which is centered around specific people in my life and what makes them an individual, I want this to also center around the theme of youth culture. Each section of my book will be about one person and their features/interests and things that make them who they are, I want to include the stereo-typically non attractive of a young person’s being. Things like: scars, tattoos, teeth, eyes. Things that are unique to them. I also just want candid shots of their faces/bodies just doing everyday things.
Context that everything will be changing soon in our lives and the photo-book is about a brief moment in time and how we were at this age, clothes we wore, what we looked like etc, things that used to interest us.I also would like to take a multi media approach where I am going to have my photos developed and later paint and write over them in different ways which relate to my project.
-artists references: Ed Templeton – mixing art with photography on print outs – draws on photos. to talk about: litmus tests, teenage smokers etc, Jim Goldberg.
Bibliography: Bright, S. and Van Erp, H. (2019), Photography Decoded. London; Octopus Publishing House.
‘Photography emerged into a 19th-century world that was undergoing rapid transformation in almost every aspect, and as such the new medium answered a deep human need to see and explore this changing landscape in unprecedented detail.’ (Bright, S. and Van Erp, H. 2019: 17)
‘If manipulation is the first thing someone thinks of in connection to photography, what does that say about the value of the photograph as a reflection of reality? And what does a ‘real photo’ even look like: is it something you can hold? Is it something you can see on a screen and alter?’ (Bright, S. and Van Erp, H. 2019: 17)
‘The process of manipulation starts as soon as we frame a person, a landscape, an object or a scene with our cameras: we choose a portrait or landscape format.’ (Bright, S. and Van Erp, H. 2019; 18)
‘The binding principle of photography, however, remains it’s relationship to reality, especially when at question is documentary photography or a picture in news media: we are convinced that ‘it happened’- that the events they represent are real, that they actually took place.’ (Bright, S. and Van Erp, H. 2019: 18)