Conceptual photography

Source three-part interviews on "What is conceptual photography?"with critics Lucy Soutter, John Roberts and Sean O'Hagan; curator Louise Clements; and conceptual photographers John Hilliard, Suzanne Mooney, Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarian.

Below are a comments taken form the three interviews that I found interesting. The photographs were taken by me, one from each video interview.  

Part 1

JH: Conceptual art is 'something that is not easily spoken about' where 'nothing is being communicated or taught other than by suggestion' and its normally art that is 'reliant on documentation for the art to be preserved' for example Richard Long [walking the paths - desert sculptures that are captured by him (photographs) otherwise nobody would now his art existed.]

Hillard is very structured, prepared in the way he approaches his art - he has a drawing (sketch) if the photograph before its ever made. Thus his work is totally conceptualised, nonetheless, as it moves form paper to the camera it will still evolve into something that works. Afterwards you're talking about something that is very 'nameable', a specific set of ideas that you can speak about. The purpose of conceptual art is to embed those ideas in the final photographs so that they can be retrieved.

John Hilliard describing how he made this double exposure image.

Part 2

SO'H: "I always start form the premise that there's something interesting here and I must be missing it."

LS: "It is often very easy to understand the content of the image, but you don't have any way access to the ideas, the motivation, the historical references, the inter-textuality. All the rich layering of the ideas and concepts that maybe going on in that work may require a little more leg-work to understand."

SO'H: In Paul Grahame's lecture 'the unreasonable apple' he talks about how conceptual photography has created or enabled the creation of an hierarchy of values within photographic genres, for example, Jeff Wall (and his approach - the conceptualisation, the creation of such detailed scene to photograph) versus the photographer who just goes out "snapping his surroundings". O'Hagen considers that going out with your camera and shooting your surroundings is equally important, in the event that we see it as no longer valid, then how will we get the next generations of Friedlander's, Arbus's and Frank's? These emerging artists will be consigned to the dustbin!

LS: "Conceptual photography is anti-personal, anti-emotional and anti-subjective".

SM: "I really don't see that its my job to be super-clear, maybe its good that there's a question or a puzzle or a difficulty" in understanding my art.

SO'H: The problem with conceptual art is sometimes the idea overrides everything else. "To be honest, I'm not that interested in the process you've used to get the images" - what's important is "does the image engage me? All the stuff before hand (is invisible) unless you have a huge text letting me know what it is". But "does that not indicate the photograph is not speaking for itself?"

SM:"Photography is very good at giving us one way to look at something, you can't skirt around the edges to see what else is happening. Sometimes that point-of-view can be quite deceptive, but at the same time that kind of ambiguity can be quite interesting."

"When I'm working, I'm shooting and I'm shooting and when I can't work it out  visually, then I know I've got something!"

Suzanne Mooney photograph

Part 3

OC: "There's no such thing as conceptual photography, all photography is conceptual and all photography is not conceptual."

SO'H: Conceptual photography is much closer to the art world than most photography... Certain 70's street photographers were conceptual, if you're walking along a street and you decide to go right under someones face with a flash and shock them (they/re going to react) and you're going to do this over and over - that's a concept! It's conceptual art. But there are false boundaries being made, (this typoe of art) probably isn't baffling enough or illusive enough or mysterious enough..."

LC: When you find the key to that work and it opens up your mind to the idea - that's a very inspiring thing."

AB: (Talking about a photograph taken of the assassination of Bhutta.) "The photograph was taken at the exact moment (the shutter opened and closed at the exact time of the event) the horizons are skewed, its very blurred, there is no information in the image, only that it attested to the fact that he was there when it happened."

OC: "How much does a photograph of an event need to represent that event to be evidence of that event? How much do we have to see for it to act as evidence?"

The artist 'signed-up' as photojournalists for a trip to Helmand Province, Afghanistan. 
Both artist then discuss the process of 'embedding' - the signing up to the types of photographs that they will take and the type the won't. The process of sanitation and censorship that the papers and news companies exercise every day, before the news is communicated across the world. Specifically - no wounded soldiers, no bodies, no enemy fire. In effect all images are standardised and bear no resemblance to what is actually happening. They asked themselves, how could they be subversive and capture their version of the war whilst not actually breaking the 'embedded agreement'?

As a result they took with them a roll of photographic film and each day when an event occurred (that normally the photojournalists would shoot) they exposed a 6 meter length of their paper for 20 seconds. This was done in the back of one of the army convoy vehicles and no where near the 'occurrence'.

The questions they ware posing to the viewers are:
"1. What do you expect to see?
 2. What do you want to see?
 3. How much would be enough evidence for you?"

None of the papers or the news station would touch the photographs they created whilst in Afghanistan, their only outlet were galleries and museums.

AB: "Often they would get a call from a museum telling them there was a scratch on the photograph and wondering whether it needed to be respired. AB explained that that was the point, this is a document in its true scene, its been there, its gone on the journey and come back. That scratch is as important as the blue colour or the black colour within the photograph."

The other component of the story is the video documentary they made about the journey of their roll of photographic film. From start to finish, they film the cardboard box - almost like it had a life of its own. The film is always shown when the images are exhibited.

AB: "Our impulse was not just to counter and to upset the journalistic community, but to engage a debate - why are we, in 2012, seeing images that are less analytical and critical that they were in the 1960's? Something is wrong, we are being controlled...."

Broomberg and Chanarian showing the unexpected faults in their image