Photographing Community

I’d like to take up the notion of photographing community.

The group members are primarily photographers – still photographers – and frustration was expressed that this seemed an inadequate medium for, for what?   Recording community? Describing it?   Reporting, commenting upon, celebrating, bemoaning its demise…?

So this led me to two issues to think about: rationale and technology.

First, why do we want to address the issue of community?   It seemed from the discussion that there were a number of points: redevelopment of housing breaks up communities; planners/politicians deliberately ignore or dismiss the idea of community; members of a community feel powerless in the face of redevelopment schemes (and need a champion?);  members of a community can be given (assisted, helped aided) to express community.   In addition, the notion of community can be co-opted by outsiders who use it for their own agendas  – political point scoring; support for or opposition to a proposal.   (This last point was articulated by Anthony Palmer when he talked about the changed attitude of those members of the estate when they learned he was from the area.   The distrust that members of an area feel towards journalists was also mentioned – outsiders whose agenda could not be trusted.)

So, we need to be very clear about the reasoning behind our decision to take the photographs.   Len Salem seemed pretty clear, he wanted to document the changes in the Gipsy Corner area through photographs supported by a small amount of text for his own interest.   Not knowing at the start what the outcome would be, nor how long the project would last, I would guess that the book and the possibility of the documentation becoming part of a public archive was not to the forefront of his mind when he started.

I would also guess that Anthony Palmer’s initial intention was documentary but tinged with an element of antipathy about the changes.   The later collaboration with Orly Zailer broadened the scope to include the people as well as the built environment and also made it much more complex.   Apart from the expressed statements of the residents, there is also the empathic relationship between the photographers and the people photographed which is implicit in the composition of the photograph – the posture and positioning of the people, the lighting, the discussions about including or excluding objects in the rooms.   The textual reporting of statements made, attitudes and feelings – matters which cannot be photographed – adds other layers of complexity.   This is moving into the area of qualitative social survey work; a field with specialised methodologies, analytical techniques and ethical governance.

The meeting discussed possible ways of approaching the capturing of community. Various media were discussed – sound recording, time lapse photography, video.

This brings me to the second issue.   The members of the group are experts in still photography and I think we should be looking for ways to use this expertise to express our intentions rather than branch out into areas of less competence (this might be where collaboration with others who have complementary skills becomes interesting and of course some of these skills might exist within the group).   Still photograph technology, including such extras as Photoshop, should be explored and its boundaries pushed rather than moving outside into other areas.   In addition to f numbers and focal length and white balance and RAW as areas of expertise I would include compositional and aesthetic considerations as components of still photography techniques.   Orly Zailer’s portraits suggested intangible notions such as companionship, intimacy and isolation and other photographers and pictorial artists in other media have managed to indicated joy and fear and love and happiness and so on. I particularly like  Art Kane’s Jazz Portrait 1958 on the community of musicians.   At the Central Group meeting in May (the first I attended) Rashida Mangera’s birthday wishes to Nelson Mandela showed love, affection, admiration…    And the artist Gillian Waring’s Private Lines used a similar strategy to express a different variety of emotions and feelings.   Degas’ dancers express emotion; Picasso’s Guernica expresses many.

Two issues arise from this approach: one is that when the picture is on view the photographer cannot do anything to direct the interpretations made of it by its viewers.   The second issue is one that was touched on at the meeting and this is the business of photographing people – what methods are ethical?   How to do it?   Whether to get releases?   And many, too many, more.

Barry Cole