iJourneys

John Gough Photography

Sally Soames

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Sally Soames
Sally Soames

Sally Soames died this week, she was a portrait photographer who worked in Fleet Street until 2000. She started as a press photographer in 1963 with the Observer and then worked for the Sunday Times for 32 years. She also freelanced for the Observer, Guardian, New York Times and Newsweek.

There is a gallery of her work here

Her portraits of famous people, including well-known shots of Rudolf Nureyev, Chris Eubank, Iris Murdoch and Hilary Mantel, are now held in galleries and collections around the world.

There are also studies of Margaret Thatcher, Seamus Heaney and Tony Blair, the latter taken during the 2001 election campaign. Her arresting image of Andy Warhol was photographed through a pane of glass.

The National Portrait Gallery in London has 17 of her images. However she said that “I don’t like to call them portraits, they’re photographs of people”.

Soames worked exclusively in black and white, out of strong personal preference, refusing to work in colour, despite newspapers switching to colour photographs during her time as a press photographer

Getting a connection with her subject was the secret of her mesmerising portraits. Once she had only three and a half minutes to photograph Sean Connery. Two of those minutes she spent in conversation with him, the connection however brief was for her most important.

As she said, “I used to talk to them. Nowadays you don’t have the time with people – everything’s changed and PR people are timing you; it’s a nightmare.”

Her trademark mono images were nearly always shot in natural light. Her inspiration was Anthony Armstrong Jones who did the same, taking black-and-white pictures using available light.

Save for a few pictures she kept to pass on to her three grandchildren, she donated her archive to The Guardian Media Group’s Scott Trust Foundation.

Her top tip: “Don’t do it. You can’t get the same quality stuff as I did. It’s not going to happen again.”

David Hurn in Conversation

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I have for a long time been a fan of David Hurn’s work. In many ways, he is the photographer’s photographer. This is because he cares so deeply about the medium, and is so anxious to encourage anyone who wants to seriously point a camera.

I first came across his work when I saw a BBC Two documentary: A Life in Pictures, which I have included above.

I also have a gallery of his work here.

Hurn is a massively successful photographer and a founder member of Magnum. In 2017, Hurn gifted two collections of photographs to the National Museum Wales; approximately 1,500 of his own photographs that span his sixty-year career as a documentary photographer; and approximately 700 photographs from his private collection of ‘swaps’, which he has compiled throughout the course of his career. 

I have been reading, On Being a Photographer, A Practical Guide, written by Bill Jay. A conversation between him and his friend David Hurn.

On Being a Photographer

I have curated some quotes from Hurn, that are in the book and that should inspire any serious photographer.

“My advice is: learn from the best or teach yourself. And do not bother at all if you do not have an exaggerated sense of curiosity.”

For David, photography is inextricably linked with life; the photographer is not invisibly behind the camera but projecting a life-attitude through the lens to create an interference pattern with the image.

“just wandering around looking for pictures, hoping that something will pop up and announce itself, does not work. Sorry about that, photographers, if it offends your fantasy of how a photographer behaves!”

“The photographer must have intense curiosity, not just a passing visual interest, in the theme of the pictures. This curiosity leads to intense examination, reading, talking, research and many, many failed attempts over a long period of time”.

“The best pictures, for me, are those which go straight into the heart and the blood, and take some time to reach the brain”.

“In all cases the pressing of the button is a reasonably continuous process, because you never know if the next fraction of a second is going to reveal an even more significant, poignant, visually stronger image than the previous one”.

“frames build up to a crescendo where a gesture, expression, or arrangement of shapes, signal that the image is captured — or the sequence abruptly ends because the event has collapsed”.

“Then someone who knows little about this way of working will see a single image, say in a book or at an exhibition, and think: that was a lucky shot!”

“Josef Koudelka who was shooting pictures around my cabin. I couldn’t understand what he was seeing, as the images seemed to have no connection with his known work. He said: “I have to shoot three cassettes of film a day, even when not ‘photographing,’ in order to keep the eye in practice.” That made sense. An athlete has to train every day although the actual event occurs only occasionally”.

The book is full of good advice and does not pretend that photography is easy and that anyone can do it.

Marketa Luskacova

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Marketa Luskacova
Marketa Luskacova

There is now an exhibition by Marketa Luskacova at the Martin Parr Foundation in Bristol entitled By the Sea and I encourage you to visit.

Marketa Luskakova is a Czech documentary photographer, whose wonderfully gritty observation of humanity shows through in the cold tones of her black and white images. You can see her work on her website and I have collated some North East images here, and there are more on her website here and here.

Have You Seen This ….. Martin Parr in Conversation

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This is an interesting video of Martin Parr talking to a group of students. It is a few years old now but worth a view. It is very short.

If you are not familiar with Martin Parr’s work then this is my Pinterest Board

Three things to take away from what he says:

  1. First take a lot of crap photographs, without taking the crap you will never get to the good.
  2. Connect with your subject. The only difference between your photograph and that of someone else is the quality of that connection.
  3. The connection, however, has to be so powerful that the photograph will stand on its own. Does it talk to us without you being in the room?

Here is more of his work. If you want to understand the meaning of connection then look through this book.

 

 

An Evening with Martin Parr

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Martin Parr

Last night I went along to the Martin Parr Foundation in Bristol, to hear Martin Parr talk about his life in photography.

These are just a few of the notes that I took away from the evening.

Obsession

His father was a fanatical bird watcher and every weekend Martin Parr would accompany him on birding trips. Parr admits that his photography is an obsession, a trait no doubt inherited from his father. However he is grateful, he believes that to be a successful photographer it has to be an obsession.

Projects

Projects I have always thought should have a beginning and an end date. Martin Parr does not always follow this rule. Although he has projects which have an end date, for example, he is currently working on a project which will be published as a book this year about people taking selfies. He also has recurring projects like the British seaside which he says he cannot resist, and keeps coming back to. This follows the success of his early book The Last Resort which was first published in 1986.

There are also longer term projects, for example, his love of photographing people dancing. This like his pertinacity to document the British class system, are continuing themes.

Colour or Black and White

Parr changed to colour in the early eighties. Even then colour was not a professional medium. Instead, it was more the domain of holiday snaps and hobbyists. I asked whether he had ever thought of returning to monochrome with the advent of digital. “I see in colour and photograph in colour” he replied, “I have no intention of going back”.

Gaining a Momentum and Eight Good Pictures a Year

Martin Parr admitted that when he arrived at a scene where he was going to take photographs, he would take lots of pictures. It is about getting into a momentum he said, so when that great opportunity happens, you are ready. He joked, that what we don’t see are the thousands of images he rejects. What was his hit rate he was asked? About one in ten thousand, or around eight really good shots a year.

Ordinary Things

In the early days, he would challenge himself to photograph things that were as boring as possible. He has always been interested in the mundane. The ordinary things later become extraordinary. He showed an example of a lady filling a car with petrol in the 80’s. Look he said the cars have changed, the pumps have changed and the fashions have changed.

Last Word

At one point during the evening, he said that it was his job to make fiction out of reality. That I think sums up his work.

Where to See His Work

He has a show Only Human at the National Portrait Gallery. There is also a book to accompany the event.

 

There is an exhibition of his photographs of in and around Manchester at the Manchester Art Gallery.

 

Martin Parr Manchester Art Gallery

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Martin Parr Exhibition Manchester Art Gallery / John Gough / Sony a6300

Martin Parr went to college in Manchester and his early work is at an exhibition at the Manchester Art Gallery. During his career, he has visited Manchester frequently and explored northern life. The result is a large body of work centred in and around Manchester. The Manchester Art Gallery recently commissioned him to create, ‘a portrait of the city and its people in 2018’.

The joy of this exhibition is that all this work is displayed in one big space, where there is room to look at the photographs and see the development of his distinctive style.

 

Don McCullin Retrospective

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Don McCullin

A major retrospective of the work of the masterful photographer Don McCullin starts at Tate Britain today. There is also an insightful documentary on BBC iPlayer for the next 27 days called Don McCullin : Looking for England. This shows the legend at work, photographing people at various locations in England, and working creating black and white prints in his dark room. The clip below is charming because he is usually so very serious and professional.

 

Don McCullin in Syria

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“Now I’m in an old man’s body with a young man’s eyes,” says 82-year-old veteran war photographer Don McCullin as he struggles to the top of a shelled building in the Syrian city of Homs. He and architectural historian Dan Cruickshank take a road trip from government-controlled Damascus to Palmyra. The Unesco-listed ancient Syrian desert city of temples and columns ravaged by IS during the war that preceded the other wars that are desecrating this country.

BBC Documentary: The Road to Palmyra

McCullin and Cruikshank, who we assume are old friends have a close association with the city. In the programme, The Road to Palmyra they travel through this war torn land to return and understand the havoc wreaked there.

The documentary is an opportunity to see McCullin at work, “My mind says, ‘We’re going up there,’ my body says, ‘Hang on, are you sure?’ If my legs shake a bit, it’s not because I’m afraid, it’s my body refusing my youthful mind.” He has lost none of his ability to observe, empathise and document. However, it is the emotional input to his photography that is paramount, as it has been throughout his long career.

 

“Photography for me is not looking its feeling. If you can’t feel what you are looking at. Then you’re not going to get others to feel anything when they look at your pictures”

Don McCullin

 

The documentary will be available on iPlayer for a few weeks.

 

Lee Miller

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She was a surrealist and Man Ray’s lover, a super model before the term was invented, a fashion photographer and an acclaimed war photographer.

Yesterday, I listened to a talk about the life of Lee Miller, by her son Antony Penrose. He is now responsible for the Lee Miller Archive.  A conservation project that preserves and displays the 60,000 images that were left behind, when Lee Miller died of cancer in 1977.

Lee Miller War Photographer

At the beginning of WW2 Lee Miller was living in Hampstead, with British surrealist painter and curator Roland Penrose. Her war photography started by recording the Blitz, and working for Vogue, documenting women at work in factories and munitions. In 1942, Miller became an official uniformed US war correspondent. She was one of only four ­accredited female US war ­photographers, following the US Army through the D-Day landings, the liberation of Paris, and the drive into Germany.

In Germany, Miller headed for the Buchenwald and Dachau concentration camps to record the depravity of the Third Reich. She told British Vogue Editor Audrey Withers: “I don’t normally take pictures of horrors. But I hope Vogue will find that it can publish these pictures.”

Hitler’s Bath Tub

After leaving Dachau, Miller and fellow photographer David E Scherman found themselves billeted in the Fuhrer’s apartment in Munich. It was there that she created one of her most iconic photographs, (see my board).  The image is of Lee Miller sitting in Hitler’s bath tub. The dirt from her boots has been wiped on Hitler’s bath mat. Hitler’s photograph is to the left, and on the right are Eva Braun’s ornaments. Even the shower hose straddles her neck like a noose. This picture reveals not only her creativity, but also her audacious defiance.

A Woman’s War

This is Kate Adie talking about a major exhibition of her work at the Imperial War Museum in 2015.

Additional Note

Next year Kate Winslet is to play Lee Miller in a film biopic. The film goes into production in 2018 and is based on the autobiography The Lives of Lee Miller written by Antony Penrose.