Sarah Pickering – Public Order

My first impression is of a film set for a dystopian future and then I thought that the set is too clean and artificial. the series is more like a record of a Stalin era training ground for spies than an actual training area of police or fire brigades in Northern Ireland. I wonder how effective the sets were and whether the trainees imagined themselves in episodes of The Prisoner. This is to say that despite the crashed cars, the images of burnt out buildings and so on, we are presented with a shocking reminder that no plan survives first contact with the enemy. We have all seen newsreel of actual riots, damage and destruction and it does not look like this.

On a personal note – I was a student in Paris in 1968-9. I saw riots, chaos and social disorder at first hand. I learned very quickly to run away from the CRS and their pickaxe handles. I see no hint of fear in Sarah Pickering’s images because we can see that the set is a sham. There is no evidence of tear gas, rubber bullets, blood, lost shoes, or water cannon.

If these images are a documentary about how to deal with social disorder their scope is too narrow to be effective. But they do say something about the openness of a society that can allow this kind of look behind the scenes. The context of the set is blurry and so is the narrative. this is not necessarily a bad thing. There is space for the viewer to reflect and make up their own mind about what they are being shown. Does the fact that the authorities gave permission for Sarah Pickering to take these photos and publish them indicate connivance or openness? I this why the scenes seem too clean?

Is this set of images misleading? I don’t think so. After all, there has to be something in front of the camera to make the image. However, the images are very carefully composed. Scenes are selected.

In this example, the two cars are central and at precisely the right distance from the camera to show the falsehood on the left and the presumed reality on the right of the picture. The photographic process contributes to the unreality and absurdity of the images and perhaps that is the point.

 

Joel Meyerowitz on Street Photography

Meyerowitz shares when he first started to shoot in the streets in 1962, the first question he asked himself was: “How do I choose what to photograph?” He also shares how intense it was to be on the streets:

“I was overwhelmed. The streets, the intense flow of people, the light changing, the camera that I couldn’t quite get to work quickly enough. It just paralysed me. I had to learn to identify what it was exactly I was responding to, and if my response was any good. The only way to do that is to take pictures, print them, look hard at them and discuss them with other people.“

But what Meyerowitz learned was that although there was so much action and commotion on the streets– he just had to take photos and think about the consequences later.

Meyerowitz shares his reasons [for] shooing [sic] in color– one of the main reasons being the emotions and sensations he got from the description of color:
Interviewer: Why are you using color?
Meyerowitz: Because it describes more things.
Interviewer: What do you mean by description?
Meyerowitz: When I say description, I don’t only mean mere fact and the cold accounting of things in the frame. I really mean the sensation I get from things—their surface and color—my memory of them in other conditions as well as their connotative qualities. Color plays itself out along a richer band of feelings—more wavelengths, more radiance, more sensation. I wanted to se more and experience more feelings from a photograph, and I wanted bigger images that would describe things more fully, more cohesively. Slow-speed color film provided that.

12 Lessons Joel Meyerowitz Has Taught Me About Street Photography