Visiting Speaker Adam Murray

'Preston is My Paris' - prestonismyparis@gmail.com

Adam Murray is a photographer and lecturer at UCLAN. Murray runs a project called 'Tent' for young photographic practitioners in Manchester. Murray explained that he completed an MA at London College of Fashion, before moving into lecturing. The presentation emphasised the theme of making the most of your surroundings, and how you do not have to be in London/Paris/New York to produce successful photographic works.
Murray started his personal project Preston is My Paris, in July 2009, to generate residents excitement about the city. By photographing his home city, he also aimed to generate interest in non-residents.

Over the years, Murray has had different issues of this publication printed, each with different or new images within them. Murray emphasised on the fact that early copies were printed with a photocopier, as funds were low, but turned out to be aesthetically successful. The small zines were given to locals for free, to do with as they wish. As 15 issues were made, copies of these are widely distributed in Preston. Murray asked the question 'what could you do by the weekend?'. Using found imagery, it would be possible to create a cheap series of zines/booklets. The 2nd series was shot on 2 rolls of film, and sold for £2 to locals in the pub. This exposure and unordinary way of presenting work, became a feature in the British Journal of Photography.

Overall, the talk was inspiring, as it allowed me to see that you do not need much funding, or travel, to be able to produce a successful piece of work.

The Work of Art In The Age of Mechanical Reproduction

The task of this session was to produce a paraphrase of Walter Benjamin's 1936 essay 'The Work of Art in The Age of Mechanical Reproduction. Benjamin's essay describes the effects of Industrialisation on art and it's production. By reading 'ginal's' paraphrased extract (https://frankfurtschool.wordpress.com/2008/02/28/summary-the-work-of-art-in-the-age-of-mechanical-reproduction/), he outlines the main points that Benjamin's essay covers.
These points include:
-The way in which we view visual art forms.
-Effects on modernity on art and it's production. This is how industrialisation has lead to mass production of art. Does this make works of art less exclusive, and personal as opposed to those who own an original piece.
-Talks about the 'aura' of an artwork, and how this aura is lost in production.
-An 'aura', being a singular authority within the work itself.
-How does mechanically produced art fill this void, or replace the aura?
-Benjamin describes that this loss of aura does have positive connotations, as it can open up a void in which works can be openly discussed, on aesthetic and theoretical levels.

"During long periods of history, the mode of human sense perception changes with humanity’s entire mode of existence. The manner in which human sense perception is organized, the medium in which it is accomplished, is determined not only by nature but by historical circumstances as well” (Benjamin, 222)."

Theory Into Practice

This post will explore two essay titles in visual photographic form. For my practice, I have chosen to interpret The Gaze and The Media lecture, and Consumerism (of which my essay title links to).

I have chosen to concentrate on The Gaze, from a media perspective. In today's society, I believe that the gaze has many definitions:
-The Gaze of men, to women
-The subject of the woman
-Views on media's influences
-Expectations of social demeanour & appearance

The most prominent of these points in mine, and many other young women's lives, is the issue of the media's standards of beauty. As this is directly to do with myself, I felt I would be able to convey this issue effectively, and chose to do so through images of eyes. Eyes are a connotation of the gaze, as being 'all seeing'. I came up with the idea of photographing both a regular woman's eyes, and that of a celebrity figure, when walking past a screen advertisement. The woman in the advertisement, for Chanel, has been post produced to eradicate any flaws, as she looks directly into the camera, confident and with clear skin. By pairing this image, with that of a regular woman, un-processed, we are able to directly compare the realistic, and the ideal.

The second set of photographs produced, represent consumerism. As this is my essay topic, I felt I should stay away from the generic photographs produced to convey consumerism- sale windows, price tags, garages ect. Instead, I realised I could link an environment to what I feel is associated with consumerism. I decided to photograph interiors of the Trinity shopping centre in central Leeds, in an architectural style. This is a complex which I, and many others in Leeds, associate with consumer culture, and mass spending, as it is often the centre point in which shoppers come to.

Violence and The Image

Photography as a representational tool is often criticised when used to portray scenes of violence, or imagery that may be distressing to a certain audience. This post will explore the question: do we need to photograph and document atrocities?
We associate violence often with war, and associate war with weapons, in particular, guns. In a symbolistic nature, the camera is much like the gun itself (note that we use the verb 'shooting' to describe a photographic session). The camera and the gun both carry connotations of people feeling scared or violated. Susan Sontag describes this uncomfortable emotion in 'On Photography', describing photography in a predatory sense. Sontag explains that when someone takes a photograph of you, you expect to appear in a certain way, although their viewpoint of you may be entirely different- on a physical and mental level.
There are examples of photography being seen as a violation in modern society. Those who work in photojournalism, particularly the Paparazzi, are often seen to be rude and disrespectful to the celebrities they are photographing. In turn, this means outside a studio setting, photographers on the street are misrepresented as being intrusive, whether they are Paparazzi or not.
The theory of Image fatigue is also a prevalent issue, which is the idea that we are no longer shocked by violent or explicit images anymore, as we see them so frequently (online and in print). With a rise in photo sharing technologies, there may be an issue of us becoming desensitised to these types of images which 10 years ago, may have triggered a strong emotional response from the public. This raises the question- do photographers now have to seek out more shocking images to gain a reaction from the viewer?

German photographer Christoph Bangert created the photobook 'War Porn', in which he photographed in areas of conflict (mainly Iraq and Afghanistan). War Porn pushes the boundaries of what is acceptable to photograph, produce and print, containing violent and explicit images as a topic of discussion. Bangert explores the violence within images, and presents a human instinct of curiosity towards the images, depending on how much the viewer wants to see.

http://blog.photoeye.com/2014/08/book-review-war-porn.html

Century of the Self: Consumerism

The documentary 'Century of the Self', focuses on the relationships of Freud's psychoanalytical theories and consumer culture. The documentary introduction presents Freud's theory, that primitive and sexual forces live inside the minds of all humans, much similar to that of animals. Freud believed that these forces if ignored (as part of our natural makeup), could potentially develop into violence, should these desires not be fulfilled. Century of the Self explores how this theory was put into practice by government forces, to control the masses in the interest of consumerism.

Edward Bernays, the American nephew of Freud, was the first person to put his uncle's theories into practice to control the masses. Bernays believed that he was able to link produced goods, to people's unconscious desires. These desires include feelings of power and lust. Freudian theory explained the feeling of threat: the dated idea that showing one's emotions to others was seen as a sign of weakness, much like 'selling yourself to somebody'. In turn, this was believed to make your empire look weak.

Psycoanalysis helped explain the idea of repressed feelings being highly dangerous. As these instinctive feelings are dismissed, Freud believed that they would erupt into other outlets, most commonly, violence. This is evidenced when in 1914 the Austrian Hungarian empire lead Europe into war. Although this was unexpected by many, Freud used the war as a perfect example of human violent tendencies, as a result of suppressed natural behaviours: 'this is exactly the way we should expect humans to behave'.

Years later, Edward Bernays was working as a press officer in New York, employed by president Woodrow Wilson. Bernay's job was to aid in promoting the idea that war would benefit the US. Bernays developed a strategy that made Wilson a hero of the masses, and as a result, created peace in of the masses. The phrase 'public relations' was then born out of Bernay's practice, which is still used in business and government relations to this day.

Citizen Journalism

The term 'Citizen Journalism' was first coined by Stuart Allan in 2006 in his book 'Online News: Journalism and the Internet'. Citizen journalism is the connection, dissemination and analysis of news and information by the general public, especially be means of the internet. With the rise in social media over the past years, citizen journalism has become a part of how we view news stories. Often, major news outlets will now use citizen's videos and photographs within one of their stories. The benefits of this is that citizens may be at the scene of an event there and then, whereas news outlets cannot predict and arrive at events that will happen. We have definitely seen a rise in citizen journalism because of advances in technology; most people have a smartphone now, with the capability to take high quality photographs and moving image.

As an example, I have researched a recent BBC news story of the 2015 Hong Kong marathon. The marathon has been dubbed 'monotonous' and 'boring', as the article states the course is made up of a 31 mile (50km) stretch, but of the same road, 25 times. Although the course is small, the organisers state that it is still quite a feat for central Hong Kong, where space is limited. After searching the hashtag #HongKongMarathon on twitter, I was easily able to find examples of citizen journalism.

The advantage of citizen's own photographs such as this one, is that they often give an insider or realistic view of an event. News outlets can often misinterpret, or even change news stories to suit their audience, whereas an example of a citizen's photograph here, is an unedited, unbiased picture of the real event. Below, we can see a travel campaign (discover Hong Kong) and how it presents the marathon in a very different way, using a posed, stylised photograph. This is a perfect example of how citizen journalism photographs can differ from media outlet photographs. 

Identity and Zygmunt Bauman

'Identity' is a short book (2000) by Zygmunt Bauman that is based on an email exchange between Zygmunt Bauman and Italian journalist Benedetto Vecchi. It discusses 'liquid modernity' which is the idea that in modern times, identity does not have to be fixed. Portrayal of ones self, especially online, gives us the ability to create a detailed virtual version of ourselves. We are able to dismiss flaws both physically and with our personalities by highlighting the best of ourselves, or the 'made up' version of ourselves.
One example of how modern society does this, is through the use of Alter Egos. An alter ego is a second self, which is believed to be distinct from a persons normal or original personality. Alter Egos are especially prevalent within popular music culture. Pop musicians such as Lady Gaga, Prince, Beyonce and many more have adopted alter egos as a form of escape from their original selves.
The Alter Ego I have created for myself in this mini brief is a direct opposite of my original personality and skills:
Name: Sarah Woods
Gender: Female
Occupation/Skills: Sarah is an accountant for a large successful firm in London's Canary Wharf district. She has always excelled in both Scientific and Mathematic areas of education.
Sarah was born and raised in London city centre, and lives a busy executive lifestyle.

I have chosen to photograph and create this alter ego, based on my own struggles with Mathematics, as an opposite of my own skills. By photographing the actual equations I have highlighted the difficulty I have with this area, and therefore creating it into an Alter Ego for this brief.