images of the north have always been so cliched, the union jack flying on a street lamp or the curbstones painted outside a housing estate...so i guess one more image of a ragged flag on a street lamp can do no more damage...
we all (by 'all' i mean who ever has) can claim responsibility to either reproducing the imagery of the north in either cheaply replicating it in our own work or by buying into the imagery it provides, such as borderlands, innocent landscape, the troubles photo montage (sean hillen).
people speak about the diverse imagery of the northern troubles, but what about it? as photographers the imagery of the north is too good to ignore, colourful (red,white,blue,green,orange and white again), le quotidien du spectacle (unless of course you live there with it every day).
but what i am interested in, is that the imagery of the troubles has become tired and has been in the years past source material for many irish photographers.. but now that we have the men in green back on the television again, i wonder whether if these bodies of work were intended ever to heal the wounds of the north or merely use them to their own gain.. has any image added any positive value to our notion of the north, or have we merely perpetuated the imagery of the north to meet our our needs...
we all (by 'all' i mean who ever has) can claim responsibility to either reproducing the imagery of the north in either cheaply replicating it in our own work or by buying into the imagery it provides, such as borderlands, innocent landscape, the troubles photo montage (sean hillen).
people speak about the diverse imagery of the northern troubles, but what about it? as photographers the imagery of the north is too good to ignore, colourful (red,white,blue,green,orange and white again), le quotidien du spectacle (unless of course you live there with it every day).
but what i am interested in, is that the imagery of the troubles has become tired and has been in the years past source material for many irish photographers.. but now that we have the men in green back on the television again, i wonder whether if these bodies of work were intended ever to heal the wounds of the north or merely use them to their own gain.. has any image added any positive value to our notion of the north, or have we merely perpetuated the imagery of the north to meet our our needs...
6 comments:
Your post brought paul graham to mind. While some of his early work sits, to a degree, in the bracket of the imagery you're discussing his ceasefire cloud photos seem to reach through cliche? - both of 'troubles' imagery and 'cloud' photos. One certainly couldn't say that his images are positive yet i don't find time reductionist(?) (at least in the vein of some other bodies of work).
http://www.paulgrahamarchive.com/hostilities.html
also what does 'positive value to our notion of the north' mean exactly?
something else that might interest/antagonise:
http://www.choppedliver.info/index.php?/people-in-trouble/
looked at those images ou suggested, as clouds go they are some of the best i'ave seen.. but i don't any reference to anything other than they cloudes title aside.. looks something like alfred stiglitz's equivalents.. which i never got.. beautiful but im not going to read into something that isn't there.. we are talking about feeding cliches i agree graham may'reach through cliche' but i don't feel that they either reductionist or not actually point ot any aspect of the troubles or ceasfire.. unless is some symbolic sense..
and may be i am being quite niave in saying positive value to the notion of the north.. i should have said.. to make real the people who are directly affected by these event and who live daily with the reality of them..
how are you doing by the way..
The thing is I can’t put the title aside (I’ve got a bit of a fixation on titles I suppose). It is in the image, without it there is little there. And yet with it there is little there – at least little solid, little firm. No place to root an ideology. The title both ties it to events in Northern Ireland in 1994 and delivers it beyond these – it’s just another ceasefire in the cycle, no? Very real and affecting at close quarters but but... Blow winds crack your cheeks…of course it is from the ground, from those close quarters that we observe the passing cloud from that spot that we can draw on memory and experience to create the surrounding mental imagey, be it someone with their shopping on a street in the north, a television in the corner of the room or a car driving past going god knows where, somewhere hot though, somewhere they’ve never heard of northern ireland. The images are of a lot more and simultaneously nothing more than clouds (being as I am more than willing to read into them than you).
And yes this is all complete shite.
I’m good and you?
but as a wise man once said, but hey their just photographs....but i think yeah ok..I'm being purposely stubborn in giving these images the time to think and reflect.. you draw a good picture:
'we observe the passing cloud from that spot that we can draw on memory and experience to create the surrounding mental imagery'
yeah you got me, thats nice shit..
you going to the dun laoghaire show this week..
i was thinking of heading up soon enough what day the show?
i thought it was soon enough, not 100% sure.. give me a shout when you are though.
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