Although I had set out armed to take some more photographs for my Autoflora project the wind was just a bit too strong, so it was into the sandplant with the 50mm lens attached. As I spend most of my time these days with a 28mm (or equivalent), or wide zoom that covers that angle of view, the 50mm felt like a telephoto again! It took a while to get used to standing a bit further back from subjects. I liked the way this sheet of clear plastic reminded me of the way ice covers things in puddles, the lines of the rushes, the scratches on the plastic and the way the splash of yellow rubbish sparks against the more earthy hues.
The sandplant is beside the seaside, which brings me to my recurrent moan about how British seaside resorts are portrayed. This has been dragged up again by a forthcoming book (which I might add to my collection for the hell of it). Stag and hen parties in Blackpool seem to be too easy a target for mocking mirth. Blackpool's tackiness has been done to death over the years, and drunken Brits have been done much better in Cardiff After Dark if the photos I've seen are anything to go by. Maciej Dakowicz's pictures seem, to me, to be far less judgemental than those of Dougie Wallace.
As an aside, there is a way to approach the documenting of the British without sneering or resorting to the stereotypes of drunken louts and eccentrics. That's to show ordinary people doing ordinary things in an ordinary way using straightforward, solid, photography. A fine example of this is Ken Grant's recent publication, Flock. It's a down to earth record of the last years of Hereford's city centre livestock market. There's no irony that I can see, just people doing what they do and things as they are without obvious artistry or photographic tricks but still done intelligently,
Getting back to this 'new wave' of street-documentary photography (if that's a genre!) I get the impression that a lot of it is being made in the same way that internet-street photography is being done. With no reference to anything other than the superficial look of what has gone directly before.
Look at the black and white of Parr as seen in The Non-Conformists and you will find the influence of Cartier-Bresson. Look at Parr's earlier colour work and there's more than a hint of Tony Ray-Jones - whose work shows the influence of Winogrand as well as HCB. These influences can be found in Maciej Dakowicz too, I feel. There's an underlying understanding of picture construction, rather than composition by numbers in an imitative fashion, or in the case of internet-street a poorly done superficial pastiche of a look.
It's all too easy to ape the look pf pictures without getting to grips with what lies beneath. Too few photographers seem to be interested in finding out why their 'heroes' make the pictures they make. Their thought processes are far more important than their techniques, or their superficial style. When you engage on internet forums it soon becomes clear that many hobbyist photographers have scant knowledge of what photography has gone before them. They know only the work of photographers who get published in the current populist photography press, and increasingly only those who have websites, blogs and Youtube channels! Some even profess to have no interest in any photography done in the past. And so they simply repeat the 'tricks' they see used by their favourite photographers. It's as dull as using the 'rule of thirds' all the time.
The aping of style also came to mind when I was looking at some more Vivian Maier pictures the other day, and again when I read (via The Online Photographer) a piece about posthumous use of photographs the photographer had never printed which contained the following:
"Because she photographed in so many styles, her sensibility is indistinct and a signature viewpoint is absent. Depending on which picture you are looking at, she could be Weegee, Helen Levitt, Saul Leiter, Bruce Davidson, Andre Kertesz — even Garry Winogrand."That was just what I'd been thinking as I browsed a gallery after reading a bit more about her history. The way Ms Maier has been marketed is as a naive genius. The truth, it seems increasingly likely, is that she was far from that. If she was a genuinely uninfluenced photographer then she would have had a signature style.
Everyone is always influenced by everything they look at, and more so by stuff they like and look at again and again. I know I am. The easy part is recognising that. The hard part is finding a way through it! The best way I know is to try hard to make 'straight' pictures, and let your influences, your own personality and viewpoint seep in by osmosis.
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