Level 3 Google Student Hangout 11th Oct

"There are those who look at these ruins today

As though the monster were dead and buried beneath them.

Those who take hope again as the image fades

As though there were a cure for the scourge of these camps.

Those who pretend all this happened only once,

At a certain time and in a certain place.

Those who refuse to look around them,

Deaf to the endless cry."

Alain Resnais, Night & Fog. (1954).

This poem quite accurately conveys the sense that the events of the Holocaust should not be seen as a unique, once in a lifetime event. It could happen again anywhere. I'm trying to convey this element in my work by using an anonymous woodland backdrop to my triangle images. But each time I show the images, questions are raised about the woodland. So I've thought about using two more backdrops in an attempt to lessen the impact of one particular place. Thoughts on this idea from fellow Hangout students would be appreciated.

Recently I've looked again at my initial work using the folded triangles. I made these for assignment 1 of my BoW. I then moved on into making other objects and placing the triangles and new objects into the woodland for assignment 3.

I chose the woodland because I wanted it to represent an anonymous setting for my pieces. I wanted to convey a sense of how alone the LGBTQ people were during their incarceration in the concentration camps; and indeed, how outside of history their story became as their plight was excluded from the Holocaust discourse. Woodland can represent many things to different people. This came out during a discussion on the use of the space at a recent TV meeting. I agree with this viewpoint as I also enjoy walking in the woods at times so it is possible that the anonymous element that I want to convey in my images may not come across that well. Questions seem to be raised by the viewer about the woodland when analysing the images.

So in an attempt to push the location into the background I've thought about using two other locations to display my pieces. I could maybe use a setting that uses water like a beach or river that has no defining features and equally anonymous. I could also include as a third setting my tiled backdrops to display some of the triangles.

 This would give me three distinct backdrops all equally hard to identify in terms of place; a tiled backdrop, a water setting, and a woodland setting. Thinking ahead to exhibition I like the idea of grouping the images together in the same way. I'm wondering if having three separate unidentifiable backdrops would help to signify anonymity and address the questions over place. I know that in their current form they would look really different, maybe even jarring, but with frames to bring the work together I think it could work. I guess the only way to discover this for myself is to experiment more and see how the groupings sit together.

Tiled backdrops:

'I was already wise enough to know exactly why a section of the 'dignitaries' - who included the Capos - were admiring us in this way. They were on the look out for a possible lover among the new arrivals.

The situation in which the five of us found ourselves seemed to me very much like a slave-boy market in ancient Rome.'

Josef Kohout, 22, while at Flossenburg Concentration Camp, 1940.

Excerpt from the biography: The Men With The Pink Triangle, Heinz Heger, 1972.

 " 'Blonde Heidi' goes a lot to the Kaffee Bettina in Bettinastrabe, where she is often to be seen with elegant young girls. She also frequents the Bauernschanke near the 'Iron Bridge' over the Main, which is said to be the meeting place for homosexuals. All these details are based on reports by our contact, and so far it has not been possible to check their accuracy. We shall make enquiries about this matter and, if applicable, send the results there."

Informer's report from the Sicherheitsdienst to the State Police Offices, Frankfurt-am-Main, 9 January 1936.

'You're a sticker, kid', he told me generously, with a slap on the shoulders. 'I like that, and I like you still more for it, even though I'd rather have a bird.'

The Men With The Pink Triangle, Heinz Heger.

Woodland backdrop:

Possible water location for new triangle pieces or maybe an outdoor concrete setting?:

Gillian Wearing, Claude Cahun: Behind the mask, another mask - National Portrait Gallery

Claude Cahun 1894 - 1954.

I must say that I thoroughly enjoyed reading the exhibition catalogue for this work more than the exhibition itself. In the gallery I found it hard to relate Gillian Wearing's work to that of Claude Cahun. Although it was clear that Wearing had made a number of pieces in response to Cahun's B&W images, the scale between the two was completely off. Wearing works in large format and the images are impressive and enjoyable to analyse; but juxtaposed against Cahun's tiny prints I found reading them together quite hard. In fact some of the works in the exhibition were not even placed together. It was not until I returned home and slowly went through the catalogue, reading the text and comparing the images (printed at a similar scale) that I was able to appreciate the intent of the exhibition. I was also unfamiliar with Cahun's work so it was a joy to discover her surrealist and subversive images and to learn about her lifelong struggles; first against misogynistic surrealist artists and critics who managed to expunge her from the history of Surrealism and then her efforts to destabilise the Nazi regime in Jersey through her art practise - a dangerous stance that put Cahun and her same-sex partner both in jail for a period of time. Cahun experiments with androgyny in her work and frequently changes her hairstyle or shaves it off and adopts all manner of costume to explore what it is to be gendered by society.

As a contemporary artist it is well known that Wearing plays with the idea around the construction of social society and the rules that are placed on gendered bodies. Wearing employs masks to play with the notion of gender, adopting the roles of family members of both sexes. Over time Wearing included famous photographers and other groupings in her constructions and the masks and body suits became more elaborate - although Wearing always takes care to ensure that the eye holes around the masks are visible. These pieces were included in the gallery as well as Wearing's new work made in response to Cahun's. I found the exhibition a bit confusing to read in this respect; but strangely in the catalogue the choices work better for me. I think the text helps to ground the work made for the exhibition and is a good reference for anyone undertaking gender as a theme in their photography studies.

On reflection the large scale of Wearing's prints and Cahun's endearing, tiny, absorbing images contain an interesting contrast; that of the ability and relative freedom of Wearing as a modern day woman to make large art pieces and Cahun who often made her work at home or in her garden. This of course is not a true representation as, technological developments aside, Cahun was fairly well known in the Parisian art scene; not only as a visual artist but as a writer too. But there is an element to be read in the juxtaposition of the subtle and not so subtle oppression that women had and continue to face in a patriarchal society that continues to assume and enforce gender stereotypes.

Bent - Sean Mathias

This film is based on a play, which in turn, is loosely based on the book "The Men With The Pink Triangle". 'Loosely' is an accurate word as none of the characters, including Josef Kohout, the main subject of the biography appear in the film. I recognised some of the situations; the long train journey to the camps, the soul crushing physical tasks such as hauling rocks and snow from place to place for no reason but to break their humanity - but other than that the work bears little resemblance. It is a complete re-interpretation.

Watching the film with its limited number of sets and occasional monologues it is quite obvious that the film began life on the stage. The opening scene depicting the infamous Berlin nightclubs was transposed to urban ruins - foreshadowing the collapse of the Weimar republic under the Nazi regime.

I enjoyed the unique viewpoint of the film. The director took the opportunity to explore the difference between two gay men, one who wore the pink triangle badge and the other who managed to con his way to a Jewish yellow star instead. This was a clever device used to highlight the fact that there was status in the camps between badge colours (pink being the lowest of the low) and also that badge colour was not necessarily an indication of sexuality. In other words a green criminal, red political, or yellow Jewish star could easily have also been homosexual - just not criminally charged as one. Sometimes it is easy to overlook this fact.

Some of the Nazi guards would have been homosexual too, as depicted in a conversation between the two gay prisoners; the 'jewish star' had given a blowjob to one of the guards in order to obtain medicine for his comrade. After enquiring if the medicine is working it is pointed out that the guard would only have received a blowjob from the yellow star prisoner, never the pink triangle one. Morality aside of having to prostitute himself for his friend's medicine, these situations highlight the utter hypocrisy at work in the camps. But, I guess, that is the least of their worries.

One description from the book that I have thought about trying to visualise in my BoW is that pink triangle prisoners had to sleep with their arms and hands above the covers at all times, all night, with the lights on - for the duration of their internment. This made sleeping difficult. The accusation was that "filthy homosexuals" would touch themselves or each other during the night. As Josef Kohout pointed out in his biography, being used as guard target practice as they hauled rocks during the day kind of puts paid to any emotions other than survival. In the film this 'no touching' scenario is worked out very cleverly. The two prisoners over time had come to cautiously care for each other as they worked side by side moving rocks. Every two hours they are allocated a two minute break where they must stand motionless to attention. The guard watching over them is some distance away and the two men begin to talk sexually to each other as they face forwards. With their minds and words they explore each others bodies, talking up the sexual tension until they reach physical orgasm. I thought this was a fascinating scene; not only for depicting the ability to connect sexually, mind to mind, without physical or visual contact; but also for portraying the utter inhumanity that was imposed on the concentration camp prisoners where touching and even looking was punishable by death. This scene must have been extremely powerful to watch when performed live on stage.  

Photographs, Museums, Collections: between art and information: Elizabeth Edwards & Christopher Morton

This book highlights the history of the photograph through museums and collections and its shifting status over time. Photograph collections in museums have long been uncategorised and often used as an additional element in a display - a bit like a label than a historical object in its own right. The book uses case studies from real collections and traces their trajectory as photographs have been shunted between departments, re-categorised and often de-coupled from their original source material. Copies of photographs often take on a life of their own creating mini sub-collections and the materiality of the photograph is highlighted by the many marks that are made on the backs and borders of photographs by their curators.

This book made me think about the shifting nature of information as it is repeatedly relayed between sources. The visual and written information from my triangle project has shifted and changed through interpretation over time; Josef Kohout, who lived his early twenties in the concentration camps recounted his experiences to Heinz Heger who wrote the book "The Men With the Pink Triangle". Kohout's experiences relied on personal memory, selecting and self-editing as he told his terrible story. Heger had to shape these memories into a coherent and readable form; no doubt his editor and publisher also had input with an eye to a market for a historical commodity. I read the book many decades after it was published through the lens of my own political and personal experiences of LGBTQ life in the UK. I've taken events from the book that stood out, affected me, and re-interpreted them through a visual medium of constructed photography; the images I made have been discussed at peer and tutor critiques and potentially adapted with a contemporary photography perspective. The work will be edited for assessment before possibly being produced as an exhibition in some form as its final output.

Kohout's original memories have taken a shifting and changing course through several artistic mediums and not only my work. I know that a play and a movie has been made (Bent) that uses the original book as its source material. I have no doubt that the work has inspired multiple trajectories from that original account that I am unaware of at this time.  

Family Frames: photography narrative and postmemory - Marianne Hirsch

This book was recommended by my tutor as part of my assignment feedback. It deals with how we relate to family photographs when we look and how looking is mediated through familial conventions and ideologies. The author goes on to discuss strategies that artists such as Christian Boltanski use to subvert these conventions when making art.

One of the most interesting chapters revolved around the architectural and curatorial layout of the United States Holocaust Museum in Washington. I was fascinated by the way that photographs rescued from family albums of Holocaust victims and survivors had been used to create a sense of people and place. As viewers moved through the exhibit they encountered the same photographs from both the perspective of the individual (using the conventions of familial looking) and from a distance to indicate that we can never imagine the actual horror or recapture lost lives; when we look at these old photographs and imagine who the people were and what was lost, we are using 'postmemory' to construct an unknown world in order to empathise.

The book goes on to explain the notion of postmemory using the experiences of children born after the Holocaust, that have no memories of the events, but have lived them through the re-telling of stories by their parents. Sometimes the postmemories are so vivid and so often retold that they seem more real than reality itself.

Postmemory as a term has also broadened out and includes art practice that makes work that sits in the disconnect between real and re-imagined events. The book goes on to talk about the ethics of making art via the filter of postmemory. Why it is important to recognise the disconnect to "preserve the shadows" and incorporate it into the work. This phrase "preserve the shadows" really struck me when I read it. It neatly encapsulates what I was trying to explain to members of the TV student group recently. I was trying (badly) to explain why I don't want to anchor my triangle work in a real location like a WWII site; and why I wanted the work to be partly anonymous or 'hidden'. By re-photographing my props and images in an anonymous woodland setting I am removing them from the documentary genre and acknowledging the shadows of postmemory.

A Handful of Dust - Whitechapel Gallery

David Campany is the curator of this exhibition, pulling together photographs from different decades and genres that emanate like a stream of consciousness from one original source - that of Man Ray and Marcel Duchamp's 'Dust Breeding'. The photograph taken in 1922 looks almost like an aerial photograph of the landscape with its grid lines and swirling forms. It is in fact a photograph of a piece of art created by Marcel Duchamp that was gathering dust under a bed in his studio. 'Dust Breeding' has had a number of titles and its meaning has changed and been appropriated by various art theories over time.

    'Dust Breeding' Man Ray, 1922.

Campany uses this image as the source of an exhibition of photographs that have featured dust in some way. This idea seems so simple but yet encompasses a fascinating array of images with political overtones regarding man's inhumanity or environmental impact on our planet. An image that struck me early on as I walked through the gallery was a photograph of Mussolini's staff car, covered with dust, as it sat in storage ten years after the dictator was pulled from the vehicle and assassinated by anti-Fascist rebels. This black and white documentary picture links conceptually with other images where political choices have led to major societal upheaval; the 9/11 image of a business man covered in grey dust and surrounded by paper from the collapsed towers; Dust bowl images from the FSA photographer's where intensive farming practice led to the loss of the top soil and exacerbated by the Great American Depression; all these images link thematically back to dust. The chaos in these linked images reminds me that regardless of our actions and great social changes that entropy will take everything back to disorder and nothingness eventually.

Mussolini's Car, Unknown, 1955.

'Allowing dust to gather, as a trace of time is a sort of canning of chance. Photography too can be a way of canning chance. The dust photograph is thus a trace of a trace.' (Campany, 2017).

The title of the exhibition 'A Handful of Dust' is taken from the T.S. Elliot poem 'The Wasteland'. Campany states that:

'Eliot's great poem [published the same month as Breeding Dust was taken] is modern in the same way as the dust photograph - a hybrid work of allusion and association that pictures the world in fragments if not ruin, but sees the world's possible redemption in those fragments too. It's a coincidence I couldn't ignore.' (Campany, 2017).

I found this exhibition to be illuminating in the way that it was put together from so many different types of photography. From documentary to conceptual they all had a common link. I can take this idea of an eclectic mix of genres held by a common concept with me into my own thoughts about making new projects and how to display pieces together in an exhibition. 

Reference:

Campany, D. 2017. '1000 Words' [online] At: http://www.1000wordsmag.com/david-campany/ Accessed on 10th June 2017.

Assignment 3

May 1st:

For this assignment I'm continuing to build on my theme of making props or images to conceptualise the events in the book "The Men With the Pink Triangle". In addition to this, because of the reading I've been doing on my Contextual Studies module, I'm also looking at making a prop based on themes of power and control. I've read Focault's essay on Panopticism and other pieces regarding representation and social control of LGBT issues. I'm yet to write these up and have a bit of a backlog of posts for this blog that I need to do publish before I move back to Contextual Studies.

I've had an idea to a make prop to represent a machine that can take hatred and bigotry and turn it into edicts that sound logical but are based on ideology. A lot of Nazi propaganda was issued in the run up to the war that severely restricted the movement and freedoms of Jews and other minorities. Book burnings took place and art shows were held to highlight degeneracy. These were all attempts to enforce control and a particular way of thinking on the mass public. My machine will have keys like a typewriter (or an enigma machine) and uses the framework of science and religion to convert bigotry into law.     

I'm quite looking forward to making a new prop.

May 10th:

I've started work on my Education machine today. I drew some sketches and spent an enjoyable couple of hours working out the dimensions and cutting out the shapes and constructing the pyramid.

I'd already sourced some typewriter style keys (missing the arms) so needed to find a suitable replacement to stick them to. Thankfully some wooden bamboo skewers from the kitchen drawer were perfect.

It's just a case of spray painting them black so they look right and re-assembling the machine, ready for photographing.

I had an idea to use the tile wallpaper to cover the machine instead of keeping it plain grey. I'm not sure if this idea will work visually but I will give it a try. I can always change it.

May 15th:

As well as the Ediction machine I am making some digital images using the human body. This is to represent the illegal and unethical medical experimentation that was conducted on the pink triangle prisoners. As horrific as the experiments and human suffering were I don't think I could ever convey the depths of such depravity in a photograph. I can only hope by using my constructed images to convey a sense of the injustice and repulsiveness of such an act. I'd thought about using clear medical tubing containing the barbed wire that I'd obtained previously. I thought juxtaposing the tubing against naked body parts would make a powerful statement.

I did a shoot on the kitchen floor with my model laying on top of strips of the kitchen tile wallpaper. This gave a backdrop that had a sense of a clinical environment. Then I placed the barbed wire tubing around the body. Once I had my images I then digitally manipulated the limbs and areas of the body to create new organic forms that looked familiar, strange, and slightly grotesque. The idea behind this piece is to convey the futility of the hormone experiments that were attempting to cure Homosexuality and the unsound science behind sexuality conversion and eugenics. A lot of time was spent working digitally on three images. By the time I'd finished the third my skills had improved and the first one looked weaker than the other two. I will need to re-assess at some point how to use these images.

22nd May:

Today I began scouting for suitable locations to photograph my triangle props. I had a choice of two nearby woodlands, both with different types of tree cover. I packed up my equipment (the Ediction machine in a plastic box to safeguard against accidental knocks and damage) and drove out to my first location. I was hoping for grey, even, bright light but it was partially sunny. It didn't take me long to find a couple of tree trunks that looked interesting and with enough space to not make the photographs look too crowded in. After all my thinking and planning there is no substitute for actually getting out and making work. I also wanted to test my machine design of white sides with gridlines. I can't decide whether to keep this design or spraypaint it gun metal grey. Only by taking photographs could I hope to make a decision.

My trial run made me realise I would have to get down quite low to include the distant treeline. This meant laying flat on my side or front at times. Although I'd thought about tough jeans and boots I should also have brought along some sort of ground sheet. I ended up getting quite muddy. Lesson learned for next time.

I packed up and moved to my second location and walked around for a bit looking at different scenarios. I took more test shots and again, it was only by being in the woodland environment that I began to see different visual possibilities for each of my props. For the Ediction machine I've decided to use a backdrop that includes paths and trails because they make me think about train tracks and columns of prisoners marching to and from the internment camps. More organic backdrops that would include twisted tree trunks and limbs could be used for the medical experiment triangles that I have yet to make. There is no way I could have sat at home and thought up these scenarios. The visual stimulus of actually being at the sites fed into my creativity.

I need to make several more visits and make another prop or two, but I am on my way with this assignment.

23rd June:

I made my third visit to my chosen woodland today. This time I took along the Ediction machine (now covered in grey paper) to try some more test shots. The previous shoot made me realise that the angles I was using for my composition gave me the backdrop I wanted but the machine's pyramidial form was somewhat lost. I've decided that at least one of the Ediction machine shots needs to be a downward facing image to capture this quality. By having possibly three shots of the education machine I hope to illustrate my intent whilst showing form in a way that would be too difficult to convey in one image.

When scouting the woodland floor for the shoot I noticed an area that had a thick covering of dead leaves. I thought that they would make a good juxtaposition for the Edicition machine and the devastation caused by the implementation of an ideology based on Panopticism. The image below came from today's shoot. The Ediction machine is starting to look a little battered by its travels around various woodland locations and being in the boot of the car. I noticed in this shot that the symmetry is a bit ruined because the machine's keys are becoming a bit wonky. This needs addressing  so some salvage work needs to be done before I take the machine back out again.

Edit 24th June:

Today I took the triangles that I made in assignment 1 out to the woodland. I played around with placing them in rows or on tree stumps but wasn't happy with the results. They look forced. Eventually I tried leaving them in a pile. Looking through the camera lens I could see the possibilities for this image. I was reminded of the photographs of piles of bodies taken in the concentration camps. I think this is quite an effective image in that respect.

  

Edit 26th June:

I showed the above image to a number of OCA students who's opinion I value. There was a consensus that there is something not quite right about the image. I had this sense myself and comments ranged from "It looks like it is floating" "Reminds me of the intro to Star Wars" and "The object looks too disconnected from its environment". I agree with these comments and went back to the woodland this morning for a re-shoot. This time I made sure that the leaves either touched the base of the machine or they reflected light and shadow onto its sides to help anchor the object in place. I also added a further element, a piece of barbed wire, to the background. I think this shoot has been worthwhile and I am much happier with the images. I'm really glad that I put up my orignal image for discussion. It has been most worthwhile.

Edit 30th June:

Back to the woodland today with some of the other images that I've made. As well as presenting them  as images in their own right I wanted to re-photograph them in the woodland setting too. I'm quite pleased with the results. The horror and suffering in the images is somehow magnified by the quietness of the natural setting without being more graphical. I chose to use barbed wire to hang the images to reference the concentration camps and as a visual link to some of the other images. I have about 12 images I'm think are ready to present for assignment so these will be sent to the online printers and along with my notes sent to my tutor for comments.

18th April:

I've finally returned to update this post almost a year later. My time has been mainly spent on completing my Contextual Studies module and completing my dissertation. I've also completed assignment 4 for this module and have a breathing space to update the backlog on this blog. My tutor feedback for assignment 3 mostly revolved around my need to justify my choice of a woodland setting for photographing my props and images. I've been asked by both my level 3 tutors about the possibility of using a woodland in Poland, nearer to the historical Nazi concentration camps. My response to this argument has always been that I do not view my work as documentary. It is primarily conceptual in nature. I chose a woodland for its anonymity. I want the work to be displayed in a space that has no name or location. The reason for this is that the project's foundation is in LGBTQ hidden history, but I don't want the viewer to draw a line under this event as if it is a closed chapter. LGBTQ oppression around the world still continues and the events of Nazi Germany could happen all over again, anywhere.

Alain Resnais script for the 1954 documentary 'Night & Fog' which looks at the aftermath of the camps draws attention to this misapprehension:

'There are those who look at these ruins today
As though the monster were dead and buried beneath them.
Those who take hope again as the image fades
As though there were a cure for the scourge of these camps.
Those who pretend this happened only once,
At a certain time and in a certain place.
Those who refuse to look around them,
Deaf to the endless cry.'

Alain Resnais, Night & Fog. (1954)

My BoW tutor's feedback also mentions that it may be helpful to think where the work is located in terms of other precedents of practice. Now that my dissertation for CS is almost finalised I will have more time to do more research into this aspect.

I also need to think about how the work might be viewed or engaged with, in terms of who the spectators might be and what I am expecting in response to the work. This aspect makes me feel slightly nervous. I know from reading the PhD dissertation of Nigel Hurlstone, who has undertaken similar work involving oppression of gay men in Nazi Germany, that he experienced homophobia and attempts to have his work removed from exhibition. Hurlstone's work took place in the UK between 1996 & 1999 so attitudes have changed somewhat since that time.

I primarily make work for myself and would also particularly like for it to inform a younger LGBTQ audience too; It is clear that those who are unaware of their own history, and kept in the dark, are often not politically motivated enough to stand up for their rights. Rights and privileges that minorities have often had to fight hard for every tiny step forward. It would be complacent to think that the human rights we have today are sacrosanct and could never be taken away. I need to think about engaging with an LGBTQ based art group of some kind. I will look to doing this fairly soon.

The reception of my work by a wider audience is partly dependent on location; a small provincial town, a coastal enclave with an art's based community or somewhere cosmopolitan like London, will have different perceptions and internal biases. All these issues make it difficult to think about the perception of the work by a larger audience.

I also need to relook at Heidegger as one read through is not nearly enough!

Martin Heidegger

"Being and Time" by Martin Heidegger was suggested to me by my tutor as part of my assignment 2 feedback. He also recommended an accompanying book "Heidegger Re-framed" by Barbara Bolt as a key to unlocking this difficult philosophical read. I must say that I struggled with both texts which appeared to write about "Das Sein" Heidegger's German term for those moments that catch us unaware and make us realise the strangeness of the world we live in - the things we accept as normal about our lives when they are in fact anything but. I had to get to grips with other terms, such as, "Das Nichts" meaning that we are heading towards "the nothing" and also the concept of being "thrown" into the world where we are forced into social and ideological situations from birth that have little to do with who we are as individuals.

The Barbara Bolt book also looks at Heidegger's thoughts on making art. That by handling, using, and becoming familiar with the tools to make art we can perceive the inherent message of a piece that utilises praxical rather than conceptual knowledge. In other words, by thinking of a concept before attempting to make an art piece the inner message will be hidden until we pick up the tools and handle the piece of work. Only then will thoughts and ideas occur to us that will help unlock the ideas within that would never have occurred to us just by thought alone. There is a lot of truth in this statement and the first few assignments of this module are based around creative play, which indirectly adhere to these concepts.

The Heidegger text is known to be a very difficult read and in the end I had to enlist the help of other OCA students. My Facebook post asking for help provided a link to a set of youtube videos explaining the work of Heidegger and broke down his ideas into easy to understand chunks. I was then able to go back to my reading and figure out the more complicated texts.

I think the attempt was worthwhile although I will definitely need to go back and re-read the texts again.


Heidegger - youtube short video

Google Hangout - BoW update

Yesterday's Google student hangout was most productive. I submitted the below prints for discussion on my Body of Work up to this point (Assignment 3). The work was received positively with various questions, suggestions and points of view. I came away with a number of thoughts and some pointers that will help me move forward to assignment 4. It is always interesting to get another students opinion on the work.

Our discussion covered a number of topics relating to Nazi concentration camps and the nature of humanity. A very rewarding session I think.

Gregory Crewdson - Cathedral of the Pines

I attended the OCA study day at the Photographer's Gallery recently. I must admit I was expecting to see more of the same with regard to Gregory Credson's work. I was pleasantly surprised. I think most photography students become familiar with his Twilight series early on in their studies and then move onto other interests as they progress. The Cathedral of the Pines is more subtle than his previous work. Maybe it is the reduced colour palette or the all encompassing mist that seems to pervade most of the outdoor scenes. Most of the images are of interiors, a solitary figure pauses to contemplate, their gaze turned inwards. Through windows or doorways the landscape is partly visible and the mist is laden with meaning.

I found it interesting during the post student discussion at the pub how many students had attached different readings to the ambiguous expressions of the subjects. Ironic that in most of the images a half empty glass sat on side tables or in a corner. For a glass half-empty person like myself (I hate to admit that!) I read, sorrow, anxiety, trepidation, longing, on the looks of the characters. Because of this reading I saw the mist as forbidding and ominous. That even if the characters were to step outside their oppressive houses there would be nowhere to escape to. So I was quite surprised when our tutor, Jayne, said that she read the mist as hopeful. That the characters were at a turning point and I assume she saw that turning point as a moment in which the character moved forward in a positive way.

I enjoyed seeing the large scale of the images and that the series was all in one place across four floors. I was pleasantly surprised to re-engage with Gregory Crewdson's work.

Queer British Art - 1861-1967

"The history of queer culture is punctuated by dustbins and bonfires - much has been deliberately destroyed or simply unpreserved... photograph albums rescued from junk shops, drawings and negatives smuggled out of the house of a dying lover - before a family can arrive to scour away any evidence of a life that was less than fully heterosexual." (Barlow 2017:17).


Because of the "dustbins and bonfires" the history of Queer culture is patchy and often suppressed or ignored by historians. This exhibition brings to one place a number of works by British LGBTQ (Queer) artists, spanning the period 1861 to 1967; from the abolition of the death penalty for sodomy (the death penalty! for having sex!) to homosexuality being decriminalised in the United Kingdom.


Coded Desires

Against a backdrop of oppression, secrecy and victimisation, Queer artists have made their art. The first part of the exhibition is arranged around "Coded Desires". Although many Queer artists were accepted in bohemian circles they still had to be very careful when making art for public consumption - being too overt was generally frowned upon. Earlier works from the period tended to concentrate on the male nude using the aesthetic style of Greek and Roman antiquity or from religious stories. There was already an established tradition of male and female nudes in painting so "coded desires" often went unnoticed by the general viewing public although sometimes critics from the newspapers would place knowingly barbed comments in their reviews:

"In style there is something seductive, but it is not masculine."

"That repulsive sentiment that too frequently marks Solomon's compositions."

The Bride, Bridegroom and Sad Love - Simeon Solomon, 1865.

It is stated in the exhibition catalogue that Solomon's "The Bride, Bridegroom and Sad Love" depicts the relegation of the bridegroom's male lover to the shadows. The groom's hand is touching the groin and stroking the palm of the angel figure. According to the catalogue a palm being scratched is an indication of lust - although I've not heard of this before symbol. To me this composition indicates that while the groom appears to show affection for his new wife his hand indicates where his sexual desire is really focused.


Crafted objects were also displayed alongside paintings and sculpture. This cup made by Charles Robert Ashbee for his homosexual friend James Headlam bears the inscription "To the ancient, from CRA, on the mournful occasion of his transition into matrimony." The handle and stem appear to show stylised balls and a penis.

Twin handled cup - Charles Robert Ashbee, 1893

Public Decency:

This section holds some of the artifacts relating to the trial and imprisonment of Oscar Wilde in 1895. His cell door from Reading Gaol hangs on the gallery wall and is a striking object. To take such a banal item and change its use; to make it an artistic statement of oppression for LGBTQ people is really quite powerful. This object has actually solved some visual problems that I've been thinking about in regards to an upcoming assignment in my body of work. The famous calling card that the 9th Marquis of Queensberry left, accusing Wilde of being a "sodomite" is also on show - along with photographs and letters between Wilde and his young lover Alfred Bruce Douglas.

These artifacts are pertinent to the exhibition as they show that although LGBTQ artists are given a certain free reign in bohemian circles, they can easily overstep the bounds and end up as targets for blackmail and victimisation.

Cell door, Reading Gaol - National Justice Museum, Nottingham.

Bloomsbury and Beyond

The Bloomsbury group of artists and writers famously "lived in squares and loved in triangles". In 1911 Duncan Grant was commissioned to create a mural for the dining room of Borough polytechnic. The naked swimmers are shown diving into the Serpentine, a well known hangout for homosexual men. The mural of a muscular naked man as he dives, swims, and climbs into a boat made some critics uncomfortable. "The National Review described the dining room as a 'nightmare' which would have a degenerative effect on the polytechnic's working -class students." (Jones 2017:99)

Duncan Grant lived with Vanessa Bell at Charleston in East Sussex and had a number of homosexual lovers; one of them, Paul Roche, who Vanessa Bell did not approve of was forced to camp on the South Downs and wasn't allowed inside Charleston. The famous economist John Maynard Keynes, bought a house with his wife adjoining the Charleston farm to be close to Grant.  

Bathing - Duncan Grant, 1911.

Defying Convention

Claude Cahun's photographs depict the interaction between the body and the natural world. Her self portraits are staged, often made on the coast or in the grounds of the home that she shared with her life partner, Suzanne Malherbe. Cahun's explorations can be seen as a way to work out issues of gender identity. Originally named Lucy, Cahun swapped to the masculine Claude and published a book on the themes of gender identity in the form of poems and montage. Cahun continued to use feminine pronouns and indications of her ambiguous gender-fluid identity are further noted when she states that "Neuter is the only gender that always suits me". (Young 2017:130).

 

I Extend My Arms - Claude Cahun, 1931-2.

Physique and Photography

Gay culture was still underground in the 1950s and 60s. Police attempts to stamp out homosexual behaviour meant that body building magazines were often extremely popular under the guise of health and fitness. Many of the photographers were themselves homosexual and the small ads in such magazines often enticed readers with the option to buy full frontal nudes and 'action' shots of the same models. Using the public postal system to send illegal images was often highly risky and photographers and recipients were sometimes caught and jailed. This practice almost completely died out when magazines specialising in Gay porn became more readily available in the 1970s.

Physique Photograph - unknown photographer, c1950s.

Queer British Art 1861 - 1967 is an extensive show and features work from artist's too numerous to mention here; the paintings of Francis Bacon and David Hockney; Joe Orton and Kenneth Halliwell's subversive art practice of doctoring book covers from the public library before returning them to stock. There are also categories dealing with LGBTQ input into the world of theatre and female impersonation. This show and its accompanying catalogue will be a useful reference point for me when researching hidden history and LGBTQ artists that are often sidelined or pushed into the shadows.






















References:

Barlow, C. (2017) Queer British Art 1861 - 1967. Tate Publishing: London.
Jones, E (2017) Queer British Art 1861 - 1967. Tate Publishing: London.
Young, L (2017) Queer British Art 1861 - 1967. Tate Publishing: London.