PHOTOGRAPHING
Contemplation, Decisive Moment, Pre-visualization
From March this year through early August I photographed and filmed 4 different pan-European projects involving young people from the age of eleven to the early thirties. As part of the process, I interviewed 35 people from, Mozambique, Eritrea, Kosovo, Serbian, Bosnia, Italy, Denmark, the UK and the USA.
While filming I recognised that there were several underlying stories embedded in the interviews. One in particular, the notion of BECOMING, began to take shape and to influence the nature of my questions. It was compelling to see several of the central problems were held in common by the young people. This is partly because of the internet and partly because of neoliberal globalization.
It revealed several things: that whether Christian, Jewish or Moslem; whether speaking different languages or coming from poor or wealthy nations, and whichever gender, they shared values and humane desires for a better world. They were often able to articulate their worst fears but could not grasp the underlying financial, economic, political and ideological causes of their hardship, although knowing that somewhere in the wider world, things are amiss.
The stills below are a small collection of those shot during the filming process. I always have a stills camera on my other shoulder when filming, in case I can get pick-ups to be used in the film or in other ways.
PLACES/ARCHITECTURE
There is always the place, the architecture and surroundings where events take place.
In storytelling, the first three things the audience want to know is ‘where’, ‘who’ and ‘what’s happening’.
These images are always more contemplative than any others except for still-life photographs. There is always an internal dialogue about shape and form, the relationship of the structure to the edges of the frame, and just what fills the space between the building and the edge of frame. Then there is a question about the importance of the structure’s surface (texture) and the nature of the materials. And usually the most problematic question is about the colour, intensity, direction and strength of the light relative to the form of the structure and the details of its surface.
GREETINGS & PARTINGS
There are the greetings, often between people who have previously worked, eaten, laughed and argued with each other, feeling their way into racial, religious, gender blind relationships, finding a similar universe of talent, skills, interests, attractions and affections. At the end, their are the partings, the heartfelt moments when they embrace with the joy have having come to care for others and the reality of the separation, silently wondering if they will meet again.
These need to be captured at just the right moment, at the peak of the embrace, which is both about the form and relationship of the people’s bodies to each other, as well as their facial responses. This is referred to as the Decisive Moment, a tool that is vital for any photographer who wishes to photograph/document people living their lives. It recognises that to show others the meaning of the event, a captured random moment doesn’t encapsulate the emotional depth.
It is more of less straightforward when only two people are engaging, but as in the top and bottom images, the photographer is lucky if there are others in the frame being at least supportive of the main event. In the bottom photograph, the young women in the centre of the frame is completely engaged with the embrace at picture right.
MOVEMENT AND DANCE
Movement and dance break down barriers, help liberate feelings while creating bonding.
Photographing movement and dance requires a slightly different use of the Decisive Moment. Only in the photograph at bottom right could I guess the moment because there were only two people engaged but also, as they were choreographing the piece, they were repeating patterns. But for the other three photographs, I had to attune myself to the flow of the movement and of the participants spirit in the dance. For me there is nothing else for it. In these situations I have to accept the actions are on the edge of chaos; all I can do is find an appropriate position relative to the light falling on the subjects and establish the angle of the camera relative to them and to the likely background.
MUSIC
Music plays a significant part in the processes, helping people to discover previously undisclosed talents while encouraging a sense of solidarity between people from different cultural traditions.
Watching Zangi, the guitarist/singer in the photograph upper left, is always a photographic winner because he has the ability to engage people in his improvisational musical moments and to get them singing with him. All I need to do is to be still and wait, and the others will forget I am there.
In the photograph top right, Lisa, from Ukraine was invited by David, from Denmark to work on a musical score for a film about peace she was finishing at the time. They were so deeply engaged in the process I needed only to stand by, stand still and wait for the right moment. This is related to the more considered moments of photographing a landscape, seeing, looking, watching, inspecting, asking what will happen, how should I make it look, what is the relationship in front of me? With David in the foreground and also being tall, I knew I did not want Lisa to appear as a secondary character nor in anyway diminished. That would be an entire misrepresentation of their characters. I waited until Lisa’s enquiring intelligent mind and energetic engagement was obvious by her movements; her lunge forward pointing something out was commanding and emphatic.
That is often referred to as Pre-visualization: seeing the image as it should be, as you want it to be, before releasing the shutter.
The four children’s joy being at the piano was a pleasure to photograph. Their engagement spoke so clearly about the power and pleasures of music.
Finally, Zangi in the corner, playing quietly to himself and using the walls to reflect his music was a pleasure to see, this wonderful artist perfecting his work.
INDIVDUALS
And there are the individuals, the wonderful, angry, hopeful, disappointed, dreaming realists and romantics seeking something several called ‘becoming’, which is the working title of the documentary.
These pictures below are screen-grabs, frames taken from the interview cameras and processed via Photoshop.
They are all lit by window light, there is no auxiliary illumination. I controlled the luminance relationships between the skin tones and the backgrounds by opening and closing the blinds or curtains on the windows, and in the case of the middle image, with a piece of white paper taped to a music stand to the right of the young man’s face. In Photoshop I was of course able to use so many other controls, some of which also exist in the films editing software.
A while ago I heard a right-wing politician say that when young we are romantics and idealists, but when we grow up, mature and become a viable part of the system, we become pragmatists or realists. Let us always hope to stay young in some aspects of our being.
NOTE
Several people have asked if there is anything else they could read of mine about the issues touched upon in some of these essays.
If you go to my website shop you will find
A ROLE FOR ARTISTS IN TROUBLED TIME
and A ROLE FOR ARTISTS POST COVID (free)
Also, when I began to offer these essays in February of this year (2022), I had not properly hooked up the emails from my website, so many people missed the first 3 essays about art. If you go to my page
and scroll down, you can find them easily at the bottom of the list….
Really nice story
CW