“In spite of everything I shall rise again: I will take up my pencil, which I have forsaken in my great discouragement, and I will go on with my drawing”
Everywhere I look at the moment there’s discussion about criticism and feedback. Brenda wrote of how some feedback given by experts on an online show was derisive and rude, my fellow OCA students Eileen and Penny have both written this week about their reactions to some hard-to-take feedback they were given, and Tara Sophia Mohr has written a very interesting article on the topic that puts a slightly different spin on things.
Tara’s view is basically this: feedback/criticism doesn’t tell you about you, it tells you about the person giving the feedback. She says that when we seek out feedback, we shouldn’t see it in terms of our own merit or value, but as useful information that tells us whether we are reaching the people we want to reach in the way that we want to reach them (my italics). So if you want to win the camera club competition, feedback from the judges can tell you how to do that. Of course, you may not actually want to produce the sort of work that pleases camera club judges, or higher-level education tutors, or someone who likes ‘greeting card’ photography, or the people who buy for IKEA, and in that case feedback from those people is essentially useless to you and means very little, except whether or not you’re not giving them what they value. If you take on board what they say when you don’t actually want to compete in that field, then you’re going to end up becoming discouraged or untrue to yourself. Of course, if you have ambitions in the area in which they’re expert, then it would be sensible to consider their opinions.
Only consider them, though. It strikes me that a successful photographer can tell you what has worked for them, but not necessarily what will work for you. That doesn’t mean – at all – that what s/he says should be dismissed. S/he’s successful at something you want to be successful at too and on that basis is worth listening to and has much to pass on that’s useful, helpful and interesting. I suspect, though, that if you put the same photos in front of six very successful photographers, you’d get six very different critiques – each person will give feedback from their own perspective of what they would do, how they would create, all filtered through their particular value system. This can be very useful stuff, but none of them are you, and many of them are only able to tell you how to be ‘them’. To accept without question what they say about your work is as mistaken as dismissing it without thought.
There is also a school of thought that says you have to be able to ‘take it’, that life is full of rejection and that harshly worded critique helps you ‘toughen up’. It’s mostly men who hold this view (and deliver criticism accordingly), and it seems to be based on the view that ‘it didn’t do me any harm’. It’s the kind of thing people used to say to justify hitting their children. Honesty is essential; brutality is not. People who think that it’s good to knock someone down in order to get them to try harder are often emotionally damaged themselves and don’t have much understanding of human nature and how to get the best out of people. The big stick may work for some, but most people respond far better to a more enlightened approach.
Mark McGuinness, writing on his blog Lateral Action, gives an ideal example of how criticism can be delivered effectively. At one stage in his career he had several of his poems critiqued by Seamus Heaney, who went on to win the Nobel Prize and who is therefore no lightweight in terms of merit and reputation. McGuinness tells how Heaney focussed on what was working and encouraged him in that, while staying honest about what wasn’t.
“Heaney made it easy for me. He was charming, tactful and funny, while making it very clear where my writing had some promise and where I was wasting my time. I left the room with renewed enthusiasm for writing and respect for the craft. Unfortunately, not everyone is so good at giving feedback.“
Effective criticism doesn’t have to be delivered in a hard-to-take manner, and is usually far more effective when it isn’t. The problem is that very few people are skilled at this and so, if you want feedback from someone who isn’t, you need to be prepared to take the flak and not let it get to you. If you can’t do that, and there’s a danger it will end up blocking you in your path, then it seems to me you’re better off without it. You have to know yourself – how much can you take without being discouraged?
Which brings me back to where I started: criticism, and how it’s delivered, says at least as much about the expectations and values of the person delivering it as it does about the merits of the person receiving it. It tells you if you’re reaching that person and people like them, in the way that you want to reach them. It doesn’t tell you a whole lot more than that. If you’re able to adopt this attitude, it can certainly take the sting out of negative feedback and make it easier to deal with the badly-delivered kind.
I do think there’s a small caveat to this which Tara doesn’t mention: that if large numbers of people give you the same negative feedback then there’s probably something to it and you should take it on board. That certainly applies to most of us. Of course, if he were alive today Van Gogh might disagree with that………
I’ve become slightly obsessed with the house next door. The house we rent is semi-detached, and the house we’re attached to is derelict. In a street like this – which is very pleasant, attractive, and middle-class – it’s a real shock to see a house in this state of disrepair. Through speaking to neighbours, we’ve learned that it’s owned by an elderly lady who’s been living in a care home for many years and who flatly refuses to sell the house, or maintain it. Windows are broken, the rendering is breaking off the walls, window frames are rotten, rubbish lies everywhere, and there’s grafitti on the back door. Our landlord has had problems in the past with damp seeping through to our house from next door and it would be difficult to sell the house we’re in because of the threat next door poses to its structure. Much longer, and the only option for it will be demolition.
It’s desperately sad to see this house lying abandoned and unloved. Something about it touches me and I’ve wanted to photograph it for a while. It’s quite creepy in some ways; from our own house we often hear muffled thumps and bangs that definitely sound as if they’re coming from the empty house. I’ve got no doubt there are mice and birds and quite probably rats inside it, and it seems likely these are the source of some of these strange noises. Still, being round there with one eye shut and the other to the viewfinder, I feel slightly ill at ease.
I haven’t been able to make my mind up how to photograph this. I knew I didn’t want the hard, sharp look of a photojournalistic approach. I wanted something that felt nostalgic, sad and possibly a little disturbing. I see this as an ongoing project and I thought I’d make a start by using my Lensbaby, with the plastic optic. I felt that the soft, slightly unfocussed look of it would give a dream-like feel, and I also wanted the gentle, faded colours and low contrast of an old photograph. These shots are pretty much straight out of the camera and I’m not totally happy with them, but I can’t think at the moment how else to approach things. I’d be interested to hear your thoughts and comments.
I’ve been going through rather a tough time lately, with some childhood unhappinesses resurfacing, and I think that may explain my attraction to this sad, neglected building. It’s one of the few times I’ve been able to directly relate my photography to what’s in my own psyche. I’m not sure if this helps things along, or perhaps gets in the way. These are quite different from my usual style – they’re not striking or attractive or colourful. They’re much quieter and less immediately interesting. I feel a little self-conscious about them because of this, but this simply feels like something I have to do.
Bricks – yes, but look at those colours!
I stumbled across the 52 by 52 project recently, which is a weekly photography challenge set by a different ‘accomplished’ photographer each week. You can join in at any point (it’s about halfway through now) and you can post photos in response to old challenges as well as the current one. I’m not terribly good at sticking to this kind of thing, and I don’t think I’m going to try doing more than the occasional one, but the challenges seemed a lot more interesting than the usual ‘weekly theme’ that you see in other places. They certainly require a lot more thinking about, to the extent that so far I’ve only thought about them and haven’t actually done any. I’m not sure whether this is a good thing, but at least it’s engaging my brain cells.
I’m still pondering the one just gone: ‘take a photograph that is strong and necessary of something that is not photogenic’. OK, ‘strong’ I get, but ‘necessary’? Mmmm………not sure what that means. More than that, though, it’s got me thinking about the question of what’s photogenic and what isn’t and why that might be. If something is ‘photogenic’, my dictionary tells me, it means it looks good when photographed. By this definition, anything that looks good when I photograph it is not going to be ‘not photogenic’. I hope I haven’t lost you with all the double negatives here – what I mean is that if I photograph something and it looks good, I haven’t satisfied the brief. Trouble is, I don’t want to photograph something without attempting to make it ‘look good’ in some sense; I can’t quite see the point. And I could, of course, get horribly pedantic here and start disappearing up my own philosophical tutu by asking what it means to say that something ‘looks good’.
You’ll be relieved to hear I’m not going to go there; greater minds than me have spent eons on that particular question. All this pondering, though, has made me question my own need to make things ‘look good’. (I’ll assume we all know what we mean by that) There is a photographic trend at the moment for photographing the banal, and keeping the influence of the photographer out of the image as much as possible – that is, you try to leave things looking as banal in the photograph as they do in real life. My problem with this is that it then becomes very boring to look at (certainly to me); the idea behind it might be interesting, but if there’s nothing to hold my attention visually then I think there may be better media to use to get the concept across. Photography is a visual art, and I feel there needs to be something visually satisfying about a photograph in order to make you want to look at it. (And when I say ‘visually satisfying’ I don’t mean it has to be beautiful – which is a word that strikes horror into the souls of art critics – just that there’s something in the purely visual aspect of it that makes you want to keep looking, even at an ugly or boring subject.)
I’m thinking as I say this about the photograph that won the Veolia Environment Wildlife Photographer of the Year prize for 2011. (I should point out that the photo doesn’t look anything like as good in the small size online as it does when you see it huge on the wall.) The subject matter is some pelicans who’ve been caught in a an oil spill and are covered in black, sticky crude oil. It’s a disturbing subject, and one that you want to turn away from. But the photographer has documented the plight of these birds while also managing to create something so visually interesting that you can’t turn away even when you want to. The colours, the tones, the composition, all pull you in and make you want to keep looking. Suffering animals distress me a lot, and normally I don’t want to know, but I kept going back to look at this again and again because of its photographic appeal, and for me its emotional impact was heightened by this more than it would have been by a straighter, more journalistic, approach.
But I digress. I’m aware that I have a strong need in my photography to make what I photograph look good, in this sense of visually satisfying. If I wasn’t allowed to do this – by the art police, say – then I’d give up photography. It’s that simple; it just wouldn’t hold any interest for me. I’m a lot out of line with the times in saying this, but that’s how it is. And I don’t mean that all I want to photograph are sunsets and cute puppies and mountain landscapes, as some of the tutors I know rather condescendingly assume of someone in my position. I like the mundane, the banal and the everyday, but I want to take them and make them visually interesting or satisfying in some way (and my definition of visual interest/satisfaction is a wide one). If I can also give them a deeper meaning, one beyond their surface appearance, that would be a bonus. But deliberately making something look as uninteresting as possible? – well it’s just not for me. Should I see this as a flaw, or an obstruction to doing quality work? I’d certainly like to think not, but I’m often given this impression and even start to feel some small sense of shame or embarassment when I know someone who thinks this way might be looking at my work. Foolish, or what?
This has been an ongoing challenge in my landscape course - how can I work with my need for visual interest and satisfaction without slipping into the realm of the cliche and the chocolate box? I’m still working on answering that one. I think a number of students simply jump on the bandwagon of what’s currently approved of by the art establishment because you get a lot of ‘strokes’ for that, and it’s the easy option. But perhaps I’m doing them a disservice.
Going back to my starting point, I rather suspect the key factor in this challenge is the word ‘necessary’. I include some pictures of very mundane things that I like to think are ‘strong’ in some sense. However, I somehow don’t think they’re ‘necessary’ – even if I’m not very clear on what that means – and to reproduce them without any of the photographer’s artifice would simply make them dull pictures of dull things.
String
Bird on a wire
Sun patch
Wheat
Stacked chairs
Sunlight on floor
We used to belong to a club that owned an ancient and very battered narrowboat, the big advantage being that you could hire it for very little money compared to normal prices. You booked your dates, and the morning you were due to leave you’d receive a phonecall or an email telling you where the last person had left the boat. This could be anywhere – fortunately these boats don’t move fast so it generally wasn’t too far from its home base. Then you drove to where it was, usually somewhere down a country lane with a muddy, slippery path down to the canal, unearthed the key from the gas cylinder storage cupboard, and let yourself in. There then followed about twenty trips up and down that slippery path, arms laden with bedding, food, drink and waterproofs. Once your holiday had come to an end, you found a place to moor, unloaded, took a taxi back to where you’d left your car, and let the next person know where you’d left the boat. These little breaks contained an element of surprise that’s hard to find nowadays.
It’s a different world on the canals. They often run alongside or underneath major roads and rail routes, but they go unnoticed by the majority and once you’re on the boat you see these familiar things from a whole new perspective. Large parts of the canal system cut through countryside it would be difficult to get to any other way, and a lot of that countryside is stunningly beautiful. Birds and wildlife don’t regard the boats as threats, so you get right up close to them in a way you never normally could. And there’s something very satisfying about the old lock mechanisms – it’s such a technically simple idea but so effective, and locks are interesting places to linger and watch as well. There’s a peace and simplicity about life on the canals that belongs to a previous age and you can feel that tight spring inside you effortlessly unwinding as you glide through the water, especially if you can manage to be the person in the pointed end with the book and the glass of wine.
It wasn’t as idyllic as this all the time, of course. Nothing is more miserable than standing on the back deck driving the boat while torrential rain bounces off the water and trickles icily down your neck. And this particular boat was very old. The sewage tank sometimes hadn’t been emptied by the previous occupants, and the smell from the toilet could be so bad on occasion that we waited till we got near civilisation and used the public loos rather than have to venture in there. The ‘double’ bed I shared with my husband was no wider than a large single and since he’s a large man that involved some serious co-ordination when it came to turning over in the night, not to mention ongoing insomnia. And all the cupboards were full of rusty tools, old boathooks, and other assorted junk so that there was nowhere to put anything and we’d constantly trip over all the stuff on the floor. There was also the fun of periodically having to turn the boat round – a 63 foot boat with no directional control when you’re going backwards is not easy to turn in a turning hole that’s not much wider than the boat is long. There are fishermen who’re probably still cursing us today.
The first twice we used the boat, the engine broke down. We were fortunate the first time – we broke down in Braunston, which is a major canal centre with engineers and chandlery shops all to hand. The second time was worse. We’d been told not to stop anywhere in Leicester as it wasn’t safe – you know what’s coming, don’t you? The engine went silent somewhere not far from the centre of Leicester. The boat swung sideways across the canal, but with a bit of judicious use of boathooks we managed to get it into the side and tied it to some trees. We were near a bridge that led up to a rather sinister and deserted industrial estate, and there were no passing boats, or people on the towpath, or any obvious source of help. There wasn’t much we could do except that old staple of the British – put the kettle on. After a couple of hours had passed, a man on a bicycle came by and shouted hello. He was a volunteer canal warden and contacted a call-out engineer service for us. The engineer couldn’t come till the next morning, and we were nervous about being left on our own in a notoriously bad area, so we took everything removable and of value inside the boat, and locked ourselves securely in for the night. We were right to be worried; that evening some local youths started throwing stones at the boat. They might, in fact, only have been the size of pebbles but the sound a stone makes when it hits the hollow metal box that constitutes a narrowboat has to be heard to be believed. It was seriously scary. They left us alone after a while, and the next morning – somewhat sleepless – we were towed to safety.
This long preamble is leading up to the fact that we visited the National Waterways Museum at Ellesmere Port last Saturday, and it’s the most amazing place – if you’re ever anywhere nearby, do go and visit it. There’s a persistent romance about the canals even though the reality in industrial times was that running a canal boat was a tough life, and had its dangers too. Whole families lived and did everything in a tiny space that measured about eight feet square (the rest being used for cargo), but they took pride in their living space and boats were decorated and painted, lace curtains were hung, and bonnets were made. The work was hard and unrelenting and I’m sure I wouldn’t want to have done it, but it still seems to me that it must have been better than repeating some monotonous task all day long in a dark and gloomy factory. You could at least feel the sun on your back and breathe fresh air, you were part of a strong community, and you were in charge of your own destiny to an extent that most working class people were not.
I leave you with some photos. I’m never very good at taking the kind of big views that make it onto postcards – they don’t interest me much – so these are small things I saw as we walked around, with explanations where necessary.
These elaborate bonnets were made and worn by the women of the canals.
They also produced this ‘canalware’ – ordinary objects decorated with brightly-coloured roses and castles. (I have no idea what that white circle is around the one on the right)
Some commenorative spoons, and some original mud from the excavations of the Manchester Ship Canal, which is nearby.
This is a small row of Porter’s cottages, which were lived in not only by porters, but by shipwrights, blacksmiths, and other workers associated with the canals. Each cottage recreates a home from a different era – 1840s, 1900s, 1930s and 1950s – with all the furnishings and decor of its time. We got there just as they were locking the cottages up at the end of the day, so we only had a quick look, but the little we did see was fascinating.
And finally, this one simply amused me: a picture of a tap to let you know the thing that looks like a tap underneath is, indeed, a tap.
Today I have a question: how does an introvert make friends in a new place? You’ve guessed, of course – I am that introvert. Before I go any further, I feel the need to clear up a few possible misunderstandings. I’m not shy, and I’m not anti-social. I don’t need help with my socialising skills (as some articles on this topic rather condescendingly assume) and I’ve even been told that I’m fun to be with. I’ve worked with people all my life and have had lots of feedback saying I’m very easy to get on with. You’d like me – honest. You might think I’m coming over a tad defensive here, but you see I have to get this out of the way because introversion has such a bad press. People think we’re gloomy hermits at best and serial killers at worst (well, he was always very quiet, wasn’t he? – a loner, you know).
None of which is true. However, we are very definitely not at our best in large groups of people and that’s a problem. Another problem, which might be unique to me, is that – can I be honest here? – I find most group activities and conversation very boring and I so hate being bored. I can do small talk and even enjoy it at times, but what I really love is those conversations with just one other person that flow effortlessly from trivia to something deep to something personal to trivia, and back again, and leave me feeling alive and happy and mentally stimulated. These kind of conversations are not easy to find, and are (in my experience) less likely to be found in group settings than anywhere else – I’ve often thought that in a group the conversation tends to settle at the level of the lowest common denominator (and that can be very low indeed). So it takes a huge amount of energy for me to project myself in a large social group, and I mostly get very little return for the effort; it doesn’t make me feel a whole lot like trying, especially as the kind of people I’m most likely to get on with probably wouldn’t go to these things anyway. I end up slinking home feeling as if there’s something deeply wrong and flawed about me because I don’t enjoy what passes for fun in the eyes of the majority. It’s not a good feeling.
So what to do? I know it’s up to me and people are not going to be beating a path to my door anytime soon. I’m happy and willing to make the effort, but where do I direct it? I’ve considered loads of things. Groups that are primarily for socialising really aren’t my cup of tea at all (see above) and I much prefer something where I’m doing something interesting anyway, so that if I make a friend or two in the process then that’s a bonus. In the past I’ve always made my friends through work or study – usually the latter. Unfortunately I don’t have any work here yet; I’ve thought about getting a part-time job, and that might be a good idea on a number of counts, but the kind of job I’m likely to end up with isn’t likely to produce much in the way of potential friends. There’s also the small problem that there’s very little work available locally.
I’d like to study something, but what? Photography, yes, but I can’t afford to do a college course and other courses are technically based for the most part and not what I want. I’d love to learn bookbinding, but can’t find anywhere that does it. At the moment I can’t think of anything else I want to learn about enough to go to a class. I do go to things like yoga classes, but they’ve never proved very conducive to making friends; people tend to come in twos and are anyway so zonked out by the meditation at the end that they get changed, eyes glazed like zombies, and quietly drift away.
A couple of people have suggested volunteering. I may well do this yet, but my history of volunteering is a sad and sorry tale. The first twice I tried it – at a unit for people with head injuries, and a centre for people with emotional problems – it turned out I was expected to sit around and make conversation with people. No, no, no…….I need something to do, and then I can happily chat to people while I’m doing it. Another time I volunteered to give IT help to a centre for disabled people. It took them four months to process my application, by which time I’d mostly lost interest, and when I did finally get there no-one seemed to need me and there was nothing to do except – you’ve guessed – sit and chat to people. Yet another time I phoned an arts centre to offer myself as a volunteer. ‘What sort of thing do you want to do?’ said the person on the other end of the phone. ‘I’m not sure, can you tell me a bit more about what you need?’ I replied. ‘I’ll send you a leaflet’, she said. She did – the same leaflet I already had that said to phone them for details. I didn’t persevere.
The one bit of voluntary work I really enjoyed was some tree planting, but even that didn’t work out. I’d moved to Scotland at the time, and like now, was in need of new friends and company. I went along to the local conservation volunteer day, to find I was the only person that had turned up. After being shown how to plant trees the right way, there I was, no-one in sight, alone in the middle of a large and empty expanse of moorland, busily (but admittedly quite happily) planting saplings. It could only happen to me.
I’m sure it will all work out eventually, and probably in ways I can’t anticipate right now. In the meantime, to those of you who just might be in the Liverpool/Wirral/Chester/North Wales area – coffee, anyone?
Some more photos from Ness Gardens. I went there thinking I might be able to get some shots that would work for my current assignment. I’m working on a set of 12 photos that emulate the style of Ernst Haas, and I wanted to concentrate on the kind of work he did for his book The Creation. This was an ambitious attempt to tell the biblical creation story in pictures, and is divided into three parts: the elements, the seasons, and the creatures. In order to narrow it down a bit, I thought I’d stick to the section on the elements and was even thinking that I might just do water and forget about earth, air and fire (I feel I might have particular trouble with the fire element as, unlike Haas, I don’t have access to many volcanoes). I’m not at all sure about this and it will probably depend on what I manage to achieve image-wise. The idea is to capture the essence and feeling of that element, as it might have been as the earth was being formed, so man-made intrusions aren’t welcome. As you can see, all except possibly the last one fail on these grounds, but my close-up images of the water itself simply didn’t work.
Haas wasn’t a great one for realism, preferring to use an abstract approach that expressed his feeling about the subject matter. I already have a small number of shots that I’m happy with and think will work for my assignment – you can see one of these previous attempts at capturing the water element here.
There’s something about the combination of reflections in water with things floating on its surface that I find intriguing. These two shots are much closer in spirit to what I want to achieve, but unfortunately don’t make the grade either, as they’re not really saying ‘water’ and aren’t close enough to Haas’ style.
I really like the richness of colour in this one, although it reminds me more of Eliot Porter than Ernst Haas:
And I love the light in this shot, and that red leaf, although it’s not at all what I’m trying to do for my assignment.
Anyway, I did at least acquire another two shots for my ‘Fallen’ series (if you missed my posts about it, see here and here). I’m not too happy with the amount of contrast in the first one – I think it’s a bit harsh, and actually the more I look at it, the less I like it and I think it might end up being trashed. I’m much happier with the second one – I like the way the light is falling in this one. I added a small amount of vignetting to hold the attention on the leaf.
I came across this notice when out walking one day. Trees with mood swings and and a tendency to fail – who knew?
Eruption
It was one of those days when I didn’t even want to take my camera along for the walk. The kind I’ve been talking about recently – grey, hazy, flatly-lit. I took it anyway, thinking that I’m always saying to people that you can find good shots anywhere, any time of day, any weather – you only have to be open to looking. I decided it was about time I took my own advice.
At first it just wasn’t working. I took a few shots, half-heartedly, not being happy with any of them. I came to the estuary shore; everything looked flat, dull and uninviting. In desperation I started out across the marshes, picking my way towards the large and permanent puddles, hoping I might find something there. I had to cross over a drainage ditch and as I looked down, I noticed that someone had spilt some oil or petrol in it. Something stirred, and I had a vision of what I could do with the colours and textures.
Many shots later, and after much Photoshopping, this is the result. They truly have been heavily Photoshopped*, which some little bit of me feels is cheating, but is it really? Especially as I took the shots with the post-processing in mind. I knew they’d need a lot of work to look the way I had visualised them at the time, but I also recognised the potential. They’ve turned out better than I hoped; like clouds, I see pictures in them and have named them accordingly. Perhaps you see something different…….
*In case you’re curious, processing included doubling or even tripling layers and using various blending modes, hue saturation of individual colours, small amounts of cloning, cropping, and rotating or flipping.
Distant galaxies
Sea serpent
Sea Horizon
Night mountains
Flight
Sunset
Winter Landscape
I made a little mention in my previous post of the camera lens being used as a phallic symbol. Curious about this, I did a Google search and found that Susan Sontag had been there before me, but I also came across the following exchange in a well-known photography forum:
“Just rented the 500 f4 and carrying it around some nature centers in Florida, I often notice a slew of admiring glances from comely women. Since I’m 72 and past whatever prime I had, I cannot help but think that the 500 is some sort of phallic symbol that is eliciting this ogling. So now I’m thinking of getting a glass-less 500 which would have the desired effect (although I’m not sure why I would want this effect or what at my age I’m supposed to do about it) and also would be cheaper and lighter. Since my photos with the glassed 500 are not so great anyhow (damn, it’s heavy), I wouldn’t be missing anything.”
“A Golden Retriever is a lot cheaper and works even better. They’ll come over and pat your dog and start up a conversation. The 500 won’t soil your lawn, however.”
Image courtesy of Corinna, at www.hairygoat.net
A week or so ago I met up with my friend Corinna in Birmingham, and we went to the Focus on Imaging exhibition at the NEC. It’s basically a photographic equipment fair – not something that interests me overmuch, especially when I can’t have a spend, but it was a good opportunity to meet up for a long chat and a wander round.
The first thing we noticed – and it was hard not to – was that the place was full of men pretty much all of whom were wearing their cameras round their necks, longest lenses attached and lens hood on the end to make it even longer. Since there was absolutely nothing to photograph, these could only have been for the purposes of display – I hope you’re keeping up with the symbolism here. Just in case you’re not, Corinna started referring to them as ‘willy wavers’, a name that brought a nod of agreement and a broad smile to the people manning the stalls. Naturally, we had our cameras with us too, but they were stashed in our shopping bags like Jane Bown used to do when she went to posh London hotels to photograph the Beatles.
Seriously, there were hardly any women there at all (if you discount the heavily made-up, scantily dressed, pre-pubescent ones that tripped around the place wearing advertising signs). Moreover, none of the equipment or clothing was designed with women in mind and much of it was unusable if you were female. I was rather taken with a camera harness, for example, that carries your camera on the front of your body, but having my fair share of female curvature made it not only very uncomfortable but positively obscene – it’s got a solid metal plate on front that sort of divides and pushes things out the sides if you get my gist. Camera straps worn across the body do something very similar, but they are at least narrow enough to more or less go down the middle.
Weatherproof jackets and those vests you get with all the pouches on them were mostly available in men’s sizes only, and there were some photographer’s gloves that we’d have bought had they come in female sizes. (Just in case you’re wondering, the index finger and the thumb have little caps on them that push off, leaving you free to operate your camera with the two essential digits while keeping the rest warm.)
One stall had some very innovative products; the one I liked was a set of photographer’s spectacles. When you get to the stage I’m at with your eyesight, you find that you need your glasses on to see what you’re photographing but you need them off to be able to read the display screen or do anything else that requires looking closely. So you end up in the sort of scenario where you’re trying to change camera lens – which involves enough juggling about with various bits and pieces anyway – while adding a pair of glasses to the twenty-three other things you’re trying to hold onto all at the same time. The photographer’s glasses have lenses that tip up out of the way, and you can even tip one of them up and leave the other one down, making it a cinch to see whatever you need to see without any need to remove them. I tried them on: ‘these seem a bit big’ I said, and got the reply ‘yes, we only do them in men’s sizes, I’m afraid’. Oh well, I guess I should have known.
Not only do camera bags only come in dull, male, colours – black or khaki, anyone? – but they’re often too heavy (even empty) and too large to work well if you’re female. Now I know there are plenty of women who’re probably quite happy with black, and this is not even a particularly genderised thing – I’m married to a man whose work briefcase is bright turquoise, for goodness sake – but there are other issues here. Men have pockets in their clothes. They use those pockets to hold their wallets, their handkerchiefs, their spare keys, and basically all their little bits and pieces. Women’s clothes mostly don’t have pockets; that’s why we carry bags all the time. So we need room in a camera bag for things like purses, and keys, and a packet of tissues, and a hairbrush, and even, if you’re that way inclined, a lipstick. You may have noticed that camera bags don’t allow for this.
There are times, too, when we’d rather it didn’t look as if we’re carrying a rather expensive piece of equipment around with us, especially if we’re walking around in the less salubrious parts of the inner city. (This may apply to men too, of course) So why can’t we have some colourful, attractive camera bags that have room for more than the camera and don’t make it too obvious that that’s what you’re carrying? We put this question to a variety of stall holders, none of whom seemed to know why, but more than one of whom mentioned that you can get these things in the US but not here. Seems to me there’s a gap in the market in this country.
I know from teaching workshops that there are at least as many women interested in photography as men, and women usually outnumber men on these courses. If I was being unkind, not to mention sexist, I might say that this could be because men don’t like admitting they don’t know something and would rather fumble around by themselves than actually go and get some instruction. But I’d never say anything like that. The fact remains, though, that there are vast numbers of women out there who like taking photographs and they’re not being catered for. Walking round this exhibition felt a little uncomfortable, almost as if we shouldn’t have been there, in this very male territory.
I’ve thought for a long time that photography is very male-centric. In our local newsagents, photography magazines are displayed under the heading of ‘Male Interest’. The content also has this bias, with portraiture articles only using young, slim, conventionally pretty girls as their models. I’d love to see something on photographing men, or ‘ordinary’ women, or old people, but you never do. Camera reviews assume you’re male, referring to things like the finger grips not being big enough – yes, they’re not big enough for large male hands, perhaps, but might suit some of us very well. A minor issue, true, but the whole impression if you’re female is that you’re not included in the gang.
All of this is true of the amateur photography market; it’s not nearly so true for the professional side of things, where you’ll find plenty of women in key positions. There were more women behind the stalls in the exhibition than there were in front of them, for example. But we all have to start somewhere, and I know from talking to them that many women are put off by the male emphasis on photographic technology and the sometimes condescending attitudes towards them of men with cameras. I’m really not saying all men are like this – I know some absolutely lovely male photographers – but the amateur, ‘camera club’ brigade do have a tendency to think you’re incapable if you’re female. Add that to the total lack of accommodation photographic manufacturers make for women and the impression is that this is not an area of life in which you’re welcome.
I’ve leave you with a little anecdote. When I was teaching regularly in London, I’d have to leave on a very early train on a Saturday or Sunday morning. The man who sold me my ticket asked if I was doing something nice that day. I replied that I was working, and he asked what I did. I said ‘photography’. An intense look of puzzlement came over his face for a moment and then (I could almost see the lightbulb going on) he said ‘oh!………you must be the model then?’ ‘No’, I spluttered, ‘I’m the tutor!’. Sigh………it can be hard to get taken seriously sometimes.
