Mathieu Asselin

Mathieu Asselin produced a project based on the chemical and industrial company Monsanto. In order to construct his tedious and time consuming investigation he exhumed and consulted hundreds of documents whether it was press excerpts, judgements, archives, films or testimonies, he vigorously went through them all focusing on the key facts and dates that dramatically illustrated the ravages of all kinds which marked the company's long history of sprawling development.

"Agent Orange - a Monsanto product - is an acid-based herbicide and defoliant which the US military will detonate on the plains of Vietnam from 1968 to 1971, permanently contaminating up to ten percent of its territory, causing thousands of victims."

His book of the Monsanto project also methodically illuminates another facet of Monsanto's processes to establish its global grip using propaganda and communication. Most of their advertisements describe an ideal world where chemistry and its derivatives contribute to universal well-being, they also show contracts that have been signed by thousands of farmers condemning them to an unfair economic model and ecological nuisance; each document published by Monsanto can be analysed as an exercise in disinformation.

I chose to look into Mathieu Asselin's series Monsanto because it again links to the idea of the truth within Photography, much like Ansel Adams, Asselin was also under a very strict contract to not show the company in a bad light which lead him to conduct deep investigations into the facts and dates that Monsanto themselves have provided so that he can show the true consequences of their products without the company being able to sue him. This again links back to the context in which my project is based on by challenging the idea of truth within Photography.

Information can be found at: https://www.mathieuasselin.com/monsanto

Images can be found at: https://www.mathieuasselin.com/monsanto

Monsanto: A Photographic Investigation video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGjnjVDOmO8

Ansel Adams

In 1943 Adams visited a prisoner of war camp, it was made up of all of the Japanese-American families who has been wrongfully moved there because of their involvement in the second world war. Adams was told that he could not photograph the place or the people if it showed that they were in a prisoner of war camp, he could only photograph them as if they were out in the world living their lives as normal. However, Adams was clever in the way that he used natural occurrences such as shadows to capture the reality of the situation such as an image of a guard/solider or barbed wire without the government spotting those things in his photographs.

A bit of background/context to explain why it was Japanese-American families:

"After Japan bombed Pearl Harbour on December 7, 1941, fear of a Japanese invasion and subversive acts by Japanese-Americans prompted President D. Roosevelt to sign Exective order 9066 on February 19, 1942. The act designated the West Coast as a military zone from which "any or all persons may be excluded." Although not specified in the order, Japanese-Americans were singled out for evacuation. More than 110,000 people of Japanese ancestry were removed from their homes and lost out on their businesses in California, Southern Arizona, Western Washington and Oregon and they were then sent to 10 relocation camps."

The reason I have chosen to look at his Manzanar project is because it falls back to the idea of truth within Photography; he got permission to go and photograph the people and the place of Manzanar but with the agreement that he couldn't show them as prisoners of war, he then asked himself the question of "how much of the truth can I actually tell without getting caught?" He took a risk when it came to this particular series but by exploring the ways around what the government had asked him not to include, he managed to obey them whilst not 100% obeying them and the photographs really do emphasise that point. This all links back to the context in which my project is based on by challenging the idea of truth within Photography.

Information can be found at: https://www.loc.gov/collections/ansel-adams-manzanar/about-this-collection/

Images can be found at: ansel adams manzanar

Sam Vale

When looking through Sam's work I found that I was the most attracted to his series known as 'Presence is a Curious Thing,' which is a photographic series all about him examining and exploring his grandfathers garage. Once a place of hard work and creativity is now a mere remanent of what is left behind.

"A mechanic his whole life, the garage charts over thirty years of collecting, accumulating and repurposing of objects... Yet, my grandfather's presence is etched on the interior of the space, made visible in the piles of objects, machinery, engine parts and re-appropriated receptacles... Within this dark and dirty space is the essence of the man that created it."

When looking through these beautiful photographs it gives me a different perspective to a working mans garage, very different to the company garage that I am looking at for this project.

It has a remanent of time to them and by this I mean that in comparison to the Arriva, that it a company that does all the same things every single day, each person in the company is a cog that keeps the machine running so it never stops. Yet with Sam's grandfather he worked alone on his many projects for the majority of his life, all of which were equally challenging and frustrating, yet rewarding. In the photos you can pick out many of the things that he was working on such as fixing up an old car however, in his passing there was no one to keep that well oiled machine (known as his workshop) running so that it turn slowed time down to a halt which is a very prominent, yet elegant, feature of these photographs.

The lighting in these photographs is probably my favourite feature. For me it adds almost an angelic presence to them, almost as if his grandfather is present in more then just the dirty cloths and the empty chair, it truly is something magical. I specifically like the way that a small fraction of light comes through the window and hits the cloths and the back the car that he had been working on, its almost like he's 'sending a sign' or a message for someone to finish what he started and for me it adds a nice and warm feeling of both affability and closure.

Information (quotes) can be found at: http://www.samvale.com/presence-is-a-curious-thing

Images can be found at: http://www.samvale.com/presence-is-a-curious-thing

Statement of Intent

'The assignment is an Open Brief and you must produce an accompanying Critical Journal. You will propose a theme / project and, with tutor guidance, you will manage and produce the project. What you propose is of course down to you, but note that it needs to be within the context of documentary.'

In my project of documenting the real I want to explore the idea of truth. By truth I mean that I want to test the boundaries of Photography itself by showing the true everyday happenings of what really goes on inside of a company and for this project I have chosen to use Arriva.

Arriva is a well-known and well used bus travel company in the UK (specifically South East England depots) that helps ordinary people from all waves of life to get from A to B, whether they are going to work or to school or even just popping to the shops on the weekend, Arriva will help them to get to where they need to be. The company Deutsche Bahn in Germany has taken travel to the max by offering many bus and train services but they decided to branch out to the UK where they created their subsidiary company Arriva.

In our first lecture we spoke about the idea of truth in Photography which lead me to ask questions such as; How much of the truth can we tell? Can we even tell the truth? If a company or if the government says that you are not allowed to take photographs of certain things can we disobey that? 

Throughout my project I will be researching into different photographers series such as Ansel Adams' 'Manzanar Project' and Mathieu Asselin's 'Monsanto Project' in order to get a better understanding of how (if possible) I can tell the truth of what goes on inside of a company without actually telling the truth. All of the work and links that I use in this project will be both factual and a true representation of the everyday runnings, behind the scenes, of Arriva from the depots point of view instead of from a bus journey.