Don McCullin

Don McCullin is one of our greatest living photographers. Few have enjoyed a career so long' none one of such varied and critical acclaim. For the past 50 years he has proved himself a photojournalist without equal, whether documenting the poverty of London's East End, of the horrors of wars in Africa, Asia or the Middle East. Simultaneously he has proved an adroit artist capable of beautifully arranged still lives, soulful portraits and moving landscapes.

I have chosen to look at this specific photograph (shown below) for my research as it is the only image that he had produced which toyed with the idea of truth/reality. In his book that I got from his show at the Tate in London it has an explanation as to his reasoning for his actions, it says:

"I've only ever played with the truth once in my life - on the single occasion I moved objects to arrange a picture. I saw two American soldiers hunting for souvenirs from the body of a North Vietnamese soldier. He could only have been eighteen or nineteen."

He then continues to reveal how disgusted he felt to be apart of them, wearing their uniform etc. So he explains how he tried to rectify these soldiers actions by saying:

"They trampled on his possessions, his pictures of his mother, his sister, the little snapshots of seated children... He deserved a voice. He couldn't speak so I was going to do it for him. I shovelled his belongings together and photographed them..."

"...Theres no need to go around arranging still life on the battlefield. But that's the only time, truthfully, I have done that."

By rearranging the young, lifeless soldiers belongings on the battlefield to create a still life it has given both a positive and negative effect on the photographer himself. Although some viewers may feel that his actions were justified after the young soldier had bee wrongfully searched in hope of souvenirs by two American soldiers, others may feel that his actions have ruined his credibility as a photographer due to not being able to trust whether or not he has arranged parts of other photographs to achieve a desired effect.

Information can found at: https://donmccullin.com/don-mccullin/
Book can be purchased at: https://shop.tate.org.uk/don-mccullin-paperback/22514.html?cgid=don-mccullin
Image can be found at: https://www.military-history.org/war-photographers/don-mccullin-behind-the-images.htm

Body of a North Vietnamese soldier, Hue, Vietnam, 1968

Magnum Exhibition (Open for Business. Multistory)

In 2013, Multistory and Magnum Photos commissioned nine of the world's leading photographers to document contemporary British manufacturing. During a period of great economic instability, and where questions are being raised about the strength of western economies within the worldwide market, there has never been a more relevant time to explore the condition of Britain's manufacturing future.

British industry faces several challenges and Open for Business reveals that daily struggle as businesses attempt to cut costs, streamline processes and level up to international competition.

The photographs in Open for Business show what this means at a human level. They reveal the shifting balance between white and blue-collar workers, the physical reality of process automation and of environments in which a growing staff manage activity from a computer screen. The project raises questions about the corporate responsibility of employers to their employees, highlights the significance of migration to our workforce and shows the pride exuded from our workers who make a huge variety of products.

This project included Magnum's UK photographers: Stuart Franklin, David Hurn, Peter Marlow, Martin Parr, Mark Power and Chris Steele-Perkins; they worked alongside three international photographers: Alessandra Sanguinetti (Argentina), Bruce Gilden (America) and Jonas Bendiksen (Norway). They visited over one hundred workplaces across the UK; from on-man businesses to FTSE 100 companies. Their photographs take us from tradition, handmade crafts to modern, intelligent automation; from foundries and assembly lines to research laboratories and high tech cleanrooms, showing and economic sector of extraordinary resistance and diversity.

Link to the magnum site where you can find all the photos: https://pro.magnumphotos.com/Package/2K1HRGWQ9EYW
Link to the exhibition site where you can find all the information: http://openforbusiness.uk.com/stories/

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.