DOCUMENTARY PROJECT - RESEARCH

by Rinko Kawauchi

I am always intrigued by the relationship between text and image. In retrospect, I remember Bill Owen’s Surbabia, Duane Michals’s some work, Alex Soth’s little photo book, looking for the loneliest man. (Just to name a few, as there are just so many artists good at juxtapositions of image and text.) They have such a key part in the photography in these works. If they had not used the texts for the images, the impact would not have been as strong. They have a narrative, expressive, and revelation feel to me.

There are quite a few visual diary, or some personal story telling photographic project. They are similar to what I am doing now. Byron Wolfe, Jari Silomaki, Dinu Li, Renko Kawauchi, Jacques-Henri Lartigue, Elinor Carucci, Lina El Yafi, Nan Golden…and there are so many more and similar to what I am doing. You come with some idea, 99% of chance is that there has been already this kind of works after you do some research. Nevertheless, there will be some difference, at the end of the day, it is my personal story I am doing.

Photography is a lonely process. When I am in, I just want to shut myself from everything and immerse myself with my ideas, engagement and references, and write my reflections or doing some shots to develop more.

DOCUMENTARY - COLOUR PRINTING 3

I had another colour printing session. The purpose is to print all chosen images so that I could juxtapose everything in front of me for further edit. I finally pin down the right colour balance after previous two sessions of ‘messing-around’. Colour dark room No.1, cyan 0, magenta 55 and yellow 55 is the right combination for Kodak Ekta 100 shot in grey weather morning time. F16 and 12.5 second give perfect exposure for most of the shot. However there are a few shots difficult to expose right. I played around different combinations and made a note for the last formal printing later. At least I printed everything out, though there are still lot of work to fine tune to get the best result. The two rolls of films, one shot by Hassalbladt was not successful maybe due to my handheld at 1/60 and wide aperture; the other one by Bronica SQA was quite good, as I used tripod and shutter release, though slower speed at 1/15 and f5.6 instead of 2.8. Printing is essential as it is easier to pin point the quality of the shooting while looking at film using magnifying glass has limitations. I also printed my 5 X 4 films. It was fantastic to see the rich detail on the print. If situation allows, I would prefer large format. It is so different. One good image is better than 1 billion mediocre images.

DOCUMENTARY PROJECT - TEXT

My first subscribed newspaper arrived today. I started to browse and look for ‘proper’ text idea to go with my images.

Originally I planned to random pick:

'Most Arab banks edged hesitantly upwards on Sunday, after Hosni Mubarak resigned as president of Egypt'.

If I look for a news account deliberately, I found it will be tricky. If I choose one:

‘Outlook for jobs to worsen – employment is predicated to fall over the next few months.’

It is very interesting, as it distorted the neutral image perception. However, I need to consider what signifier I would like to create out of the combination of text and image.

My purpose for this project is to depict the multi layers of life, surroundings, media and world. To use fixed composition and similar images, I could create the world from a detached point of view. Using text, I would like to strengthen this perception and at the same time signifies multiple layers of culture, world fair, media, etc. Therefore, I think probably dramatic news account goes with my intention of the project. I think a detail and time specific incident texts will have better power than generic non-specific non-timed news text.

So, I hand picked for today’s text presumably:

'After hundreds of bloodshed, Egypt’s new military leadership took firmer control of the country yesterday.'

DOCUMENTARY PROJECT - IDEA SHAPING

I would like to shoot a train station and railway at 8am every morning for 30 days. Same location, identical composition. Thousands of people commute using train, hundreds of trains run through, it is where private meets public. probably the first physical interface in a day when one gets out of the home to go to work.

Now there are two options. One is to shoot to get the right exposure using light metre. The other one is to shoot using a fixed shutter speed and fixed aperture. The purpose for the latter is to enhance the moment, the same amount of time but with different image brightness indicating that every day is bit different.

I would like to subscribe Financial Times for 30 days during the shooting and use some wording as the text for each image to be made. The same composition image with different news story line will interact with each other to depict the complex relationship of nature, machine, society, media, world affair, individual etc. I always think the normal mundane, down-to-earth, static or slow paced life has an interesting complex relationship with the fast paced and dramatic media, business and news world.

Then to create the static view of the image would make the same shutter speed approach invalid, as I would like to or will probably come up with minute changes on each image. Therefore I decide to use the first method – 8am, fixed frame, perfect exposure.

There are two options of the text. One is to get the headline on the first page. Second is to randomly choose a news from the whole paper. Third is to choose a news myself to manipulate the overall feel of the text and image. I think I just need to do all of these three to check and compare then decide.

The working title I will be using would be ‘We live in financial times.’

At the same time, I will be working on my personal intimate ‘Goodbye Yesterday’ series.

DOCUMENTARY PROJECT - IDEA STRUCTURING

Random news match

I subscribe a newspaper for 30 days. Everyday, I take a picture as my visual diary for the period.

1. I random choose a news account from a newspaper and use the title line as the text of the photo.

2. I choose the first page headline as the text to the photo.

The idea is to juxtapose my life and media news to combine the self with the external world to study the complex relationship between the external realities and me.

My private life

I take one picture a day. The picture I take is something I am touched, I visualise, or simply I see. I then put my thoughts or explanation as text to the image. I continue this creation for 30 days.

News – image creation

I subscribe a newspaper for 30 days. Everyday, I choose a news account from the newspaper.

1. Random choose

2. Headline in the first page

3. I choose subjectively

Then I take one image corresponding to the news every day for 30 days.

Headlines – morning

Find one place to take a shot fixed time fixed frame for 30 days, using the newspaper headlines as text corresponding to each image.

DOCUMENTARY PROJECT – IDEA DEVELOPING

We had a session of discussing ideas with everyone. Discussion is a process where idea develops when people ask questions and I think and when others, especially Eileen and Ulrike, give input references.

I found the interplay between text and image can sometimes create very interesting relationships, feels, and meanings. While the image is a snap shot, or not necessarily a snapshot, of one fragment moment of my visual life, the text is the key. The text could be what I feel, what I experience, what the situation is, something what I am interested in the news, or something I just randomly chosen from the newspaper. Even if the text is from what I random choose from the news, even if it does not go with the image, it still reflects a complex relationship between the world and me. Life, at the end of the day, sometimes does not make sense, anyway. Regardless of me, the world moves on and does not halt to a stop. Regardless what happened anywhere, life moves on. “Goodbye Yesterday” will be title of the project. It will be an elegy of my yesterday on the backdrop of the world.

There will be a few scenarios with the combination of text and image.

Idealised Scenario Matrix
Image	Text	Overall
Intimate	Personal	Intimacy
Intimate	Current	Conflicting/Complex
Detached	Personal	Conflicting/Complex
Detached	Current	Detached

Am I after some very intimate personal visual diary style, or some conceptual and special works, or some really detached style statement? I would like to make a combination of everything, as just like the weather, changes every day, my life and mood change everyday. The above four options could be results of different days. However, I worry about the coherence.

Regarding the text, I think I could create some moody atmosphere in some works, and come up with some cinematic story telling narrative, or some social and cultural comment.

I decide to start the project hopefully next week, and then discipline myself for at least 30 days to see how it goes. If successful, I just chose 5 to 9 pieces out of this 30 days trial result.

I would like to plan the shooting and at the same time to do some visual research as there seems many personal visual diary style projects already elsewhere.

ARTIST’S TALK - ADAM BROOMBERG

The Day of One Hundred Dead, June 8 


(Detail, Unique c-type 76.2x600cm)

by Broomberg & Chanarin

His talk has so many interesting points. There is always something refreshing in their (together with Oliver Chanarin) practices and projects. Their works have strong and complex social, economic, political context and for every projects, they had done so much research work. It is not only the images but also, more importantly the story, the edit, and the text that create strong meaning and personal point of views. He gave a lot of leads for me to engage further, such as military & game, camera & machine gun, entertainment & war, analytic & enjoying… His conceptual approach questions the current situation that media represent the world and we have less and less resistance. He gave several examples to advice not to respond to image – pay more attention to context. Yes, how could one image represent everything? I need to see more, the situation when the photographer took the shot, his contact sheets, the background situation of the incident. It was a mind blowing talk!