Tag: Paul Seawright

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Paul Seawright – Sectarian Murder

Research point

Look online at Paul Seawright’s work, Sectarian Murders:

  • How does this work challenge the boundaries between documentary and art? Listen to Paul Seawright talk about his work at: http://vimeo.com/76940827 [accessed24/02/14]
  • What is the core of his argument? Do you agree with him?
  • If we define a piece of documentary photography as art, does this change its meaning?

Video accessed 27.10.2018

Seawright describes himself as a  photographic artist and is talking about his images as art rather than journalistic.  He describes a balance between it being too explicit and leaving some room for the viewer to access the meaning.  

He is wanting his viewer to take time to look at the images and learn more from them and their context in taking that time.  He compares this to journalisic images which he says need to give up their explicit meaning quickly, so that the viewer can keep turning the page.  

In both Seawright’s sets of Sectarian Murders (Above) and Hidden (below), he hints at previous aggression and conflict, by showing what is left in the places where it happened.  That coupled with the factual text under the images allows the view to look around his images as he describes in the video.

All of images in Sectarian Murders are complex and you see different things each time you look.  However, they are much more than just a documentary images, there is an artistic quality to the composition.  It appears that he has tried to give a feel of area and from a person’s point of view.

I think I do agree that presenting documentary photography as art it does change the meaning.  Seawright’s images definitely take on the ‘aftermath’ aproach showing us the place where something HAS happened.  The viewer has to react to the context and or narrative that goes alongside the image.  It makes you look for the meaning in the photo

Had these images just been shown in the media, they would have been looked over quickly.  I kind or relate it to the annual poppy festival, it’s a way reconnecting people with things that have happened so that they don’t happen again. 

sources:

https://richardwhittlefmp.wordpress.com/research/paul-seawright/

Research List

Introduction

Part 1

Project 1, Eyewitnesses?

  • Dorothea Lange
  • Martha Rosler’s 1981 essay ‘In, Around and Afterthoughts (on documentary photography)’
  • Lewis Hine (1874 – 1940)

Project 2, Photojournalism

  • La Grange, A. (2005) Basic Critical Theory for Photographers. Burlington, MA: Focal Press
  • Martha Rosler
  • Susan Sontag
  • Abigail Solomon-Godeau

Research point
If you’re interested in the critical debates around photojournalism, try and make time to find out more about at least one of these critical positions during your work on Part One.  

Here are some questions to start you off:

(extract from Photography 1 Context and Narrative, page 27)
  • Do you think Martha Rosler is unfair on socially driven photographers like Lewis Hine? Is there a sense in which work like this is exploitative or patronising? Does this matter if someone benefits in the long run? Can photography change situations? 
  • Do you think images of war are necessary to provoke change?  Do you agree with Sontag’s earlier view that horrific images of war numb viewers’ responses? Read your  answer again when you’ve read the next section on aftermath photography and note  whether your view has changed. See also: http://lightbox.time.com/2014/01/28/
    when-photographs-of-atrocities-dont-shock/#1 [accessed 24/02/14]
  • Do you need to be an insider in order to produce a successful documentary project?
  • Roger Fenton
  • David Campany
  • Joel Meyerowitz

Project 3 Reportage

  • Eugene Atget’s frontal views of Parisian buildings and their inhabitants
  • Nan Golding

Research point
Do some research into contemporary street photography. Helen Levitt, Joel Meyerowitz, Paul Graham, Joel Sternfeld and Martin Parr are some good names to start with, but you may be able to find further examples for yourself.

  • What difference does colour make to a genre that traditionally was predominantly black and white?
  • Can you spot the shift away from the influence of surrealism (as in Cartier-Bresson’s work)?
  • How is irony used to comment on British-ness or American values?

Project 4 The gallery wall – documentary as art

  • MoMA 1967 – John Szarkowski
  • Tate Modern, Cruel and Tender, 2003
  • Tate Modern, Street and Studio (2008)

Research point
Look online at Paul Seawright’s work, Sectarian Murders.

  • How does this work challenge the boundaries between documentary and art? Listen to Paul Seawright talk about his work at: http://vimeo.com/76940827 [accessed 24/02/14]
  • What is the core of his argument? Do you agree with him?
  • If we define a piece of documentary photography as art, does this change its
    meaning?
  • Sarah Pickering, Public Order, 2004
  • Alessandra Sanguinetti, The Adventrues of Guille and Belinda and the Enigmatic Meaning of their Dreams

Project 5 The manipulated image