Lights and Lines | On photography, on photographers, on my photography

Show Birds

18-05-2013

Collecting things is always something I have been trying to do with small success; I started with cans, moved to comics, records and photobooks but I have never managed to take any of it that seriously or, at least, I never got obsessed. Just as for many other people the passion would slowly die out or would never really lift off. And so I would basically just gradually stop.

Nonetheless, I am quite interested in the human pleasure of preserving and cataloguing objects regardless of their actual economic value. We are able to feel attached to pretty much anything, from beer pads to fridge magnets – I suppose it makes us feel that we found our niche and we are in control.

What I never thought of getting into was collecting animals. This is exactly the reason I felt attracted by this little book by Luke Stephenson: An Incomplete Dictionary Of Show Birds. The title itself is quite self explanatory: it’s basically a collection of 60 portraits of show birds introduced by a short foreword by Michael Smith and followed by an appendix containing the list of species appearing in the photographs.

LukeStephenson

The simple cover design (that comes in 4 different versions) puts the subject at centre stage relegating the title to the spine. No need for words. I liked this unassuming touch that, in my case, worked as a perfect teaser. The rest of the book design mimics the cover: page after page of pastel colour images in an attempt to catalogue but also describe a dying hobby.

“Bird fancying is a bit like growing giant leeks: people don’t really know why they do it, they just do.” - Michael Smith

In a way this is a project about a subculture. The author apparently spent a lot of time contacting bird breeders and traveling around UK in order to produce these images. He ended up discovering a world of collectors and enthusiasts who would meet at shows and organise events while he himself became just another type of collector, in this case a photography one.

Elegant and minimalist, this photobook is a really interesting take on portrait photography or, at least, on a specific photography niche with its rules and cultural references that most of people know absolutely nothing about.

Links:
My website
@lightsandlines

Daily Wanders: Darkness

By: marco

14-05-2013

Daily Wanders, On my photography

And so the grave digging continues. The whole thing is evolving into something quite dark lately, but at the end of the day it’s a cemetery, so what can I do? Darkness just comes with it. So here is a bit of happiness. I am not sure yet what is going to end up in the final project but it’s slowly taking shape.

Grave-Diggers-Marco-Barbieri-Photography

More:
Check out my website for other projects or visit the Grave Diggers gallery (on Flickr for now)
@lightsandlines

Cemetery Grounds

By: marco

13-05-2013

Daily Wanders, On my photography

I am still working at my Grave Diggers project. The Abney Park Cemetery in Stoke Newington, North London is, as many monumental cemeteries in UK, left in a state of controlled decay: trees and vegetation dominate the landscape and give the place an overall eerie feel. I am currently trying to document the everyday life in the cemetery grounds with a particular focus on some unexpected encounters.

Marco Barbieri - Grave Diggers

During the day, and probably at night as well, homeless people find shelter in front of the recently closed church in the middle of the cemetery while other guests are easy to find wondering around graves. Supposedly, this is a place for “cottaging” that, as wikipedia says is “a British gay slang term referring to anonymous sex between men in a public lavatory (a “cottage”,[1] “tea-room”[2] or “beat”[3]), or cruising for sexual partners with the intention of having sex elsewhere.” I have no real proof if this is actually the case, but it’s not difficult to meet people standing among graves or sitting on benches doing nothing, apparently waiting.

More:
Check out my website for other projects or visit the Grave Diggers gallery (on Flickr for now)
@lightsandlines

Accidental Art

By: marco

12-05-2013

Daily Wanders, On my photography

I like to call these findings Accidental Art. Creations made by chance and everyday objects.

Accidental-Art-Marco-Barbieri-Photography

More:
Check out my website for other projects or visit the Accidental Art gallery (on Flickr for now)
@lightsandlines

“Asocially” back

By: marco

09-05-2013

On my photography

While my daily job has a lot to do with Social Media and the idea of engaging communities and build online relationships, when it comes to photography I find pleasure in isolation. Asocial Interactions is an ongoing project I already spoke about in this blog. The basic idea behind it is to concentrate on those type of interactions that actually end up isolating us from the people that surrounds us.

Asocial-Interactions-Marco-Barbieri-Photography 1

It’s a common thing in London, especially within office blocks and skyscrapers areas: breaks are short, loneliness is a common thing and, most of times, people keep carrying on with their work even at lunch time. Lately I am trying to concentrate on pictures featuring groups of people which I am finding more challenging in terms of composition. The other common feature is a harsh contrast between light and darkness which is a way to underline the geometric qualities and the lack of individuality of these non-spaces: people get to centre stage.

Asocial Interactions - Marco Barbieri - Photography

More:
Check out my website for other projects or visit the Asocial Interactions Gallery
@lightsandlines

Freelancing?

By: marco

28-04-2013

Freelance, On my photography

It was time to add some freelance work to my website. This is not something I usually do but I am investigating the possibility to build a bit of commercial experience as I highly doubt that I will ever get some return from the rest of the projects I am working on. Nothing wrong with that, I do them for pleasure only.

When it comes to paid work, apart from a couple of random little jobs, here is something that I worked on lately: it’s cocktail photography, specifically a photo shoot I did for the brand Isolabella Sambuca. The idea behind it was to publish a brochure to be distributed to suppliers to showcase the range of possible cocktails that could be created using this drink. The location was the Sanderson Hotel in London where I recreated a little portable studio and, with some pretty basic equipment, I managed to produce this selection of images.

Isolabella - Marco Barbieri - Photography

More:
Check out my website for other projects or visit the Isolabella Gallery
@lightsandlines

Grave Diggers

By: marco

21-04-2013

On my photography

It looks like I am going have a lot of time on my hands in the next couple of months. A positive way to look at this is that I have plenty of time to start working on some new projects.

The next one in line is likely to be called Grave Diggers. A catchy name for sure… More details to come. Here is a little something

Marco Barbieri - Grave Diggers

More:
My website
@lightsandlines

A place that lost its purpose

By: marco

12-03-2013

On my photography, Thoughts

I previously wrote about St. Alphage, a project on an abandoned area right in the City of London. I defined it as a place that lost its purpose. What intrigued me was the actual possibility of its existence in a location with probably some of the most expensive real estate in the world and so I though I would document its decay in relation to the new high-rises being built all around it.

The financial crisis is still with us. Articles on the bad state of the economy are common and yet, London is changing face and skyscrapers seems to be the new trend, a consequence of the City Hall less strict urban planning system. As the Guardian puts it:

“They are the fulfilment of the desires of investors and of the policies of Ken Livingstone, pursued with equal vigour by Boris Johnson…”

It now looks like every architect is trying to come up with unusual shapes in a race to leave an imprint on the city. While there are different point of views on the actual design quality of many of these towers, the result is simple: in the eight years I have been living here I never saw such an obvious transformation.

You don’t need to have an interest in architecture to notice it: Renzo Piano’s The Shard is a new city landmark dwarfing everything around it, the Heron Tower is already in business, the so called “Walkie-Talkie” is near completion, 122 Leadenhall Street is being built quickly and 100 Bishopsgate will also appear soon. Many more to come.

Back to St Alphage - Marco Barbieri - Photogrpahy

In addition, unnoticed by the passing Londoner, other less iconic towers are slowly rising: I am referring to the boom of high-end residential developments. Supported by names that remind us of luxury and great views, such as Altitude, One Commercial Street (“Where City Meets Fringe”), The Heron or Neo Bankside, they are here to prove that there is no lack of people ready to invest. A recommended article on this issue was published on the Telegraph. And so while the crisis is hidden behind the glitz of these new urban developments, the government is cutting on education, social services and other less “visible” issues.

Yet, the economic downturn managed to leave its stamp on something more tangible: the Pinnacle project, a huge glass tower set to reshape the whole London skyline, came to a halt. The site is now empty and looks like an omen of these hard times. The foundations of a 300 m structure left rotting among the constant city movement are an unusual sight. It reminded me of St. Alphage and its peculiar sleeping atmosphere.

This prompted me to go back to this area and see how it coped with the transformations taking place. While plants are overtaking some of the high-walk, new concrete structures are now filling what previously were empty places in the vicinity, and consequently the frame. It’s a matter of time before this apparently forgotten section of London will disappear. In the meantime it acts as an oasis in this development craze.

The dormant quality of St. Alphage is now more evident than ever.

More:
My website
@lightsandlines

Alessandro Imbriaco: The Garden

By: marco

26-02-2013

On photographers, Thoughts

Alessandro Imbriaco‘s The Garden is a self explanatory and powerful photobook published by Dewi Lewis Publishing.

Three people, a father, a mother and a child are living on the margins of society. The concept of marginality is not only represented by their economic condition but also by the physical space they inhabit, a forgotten area where nature and urban developments coexist. The photographer’s intention is to document a sad condition that is unfortunately common to many major cities where integration is getting more difficult and social services are lacking.

The images can be easily divided into three groups: portraits, landcapes and daily life. However, the presence of trees and leaves is almost constant, making nature the real protagonist: its actions shape the life of this family.
Together with the environment, the dreamy atmosphere gives this project a sort of bucolic feel. This is particularly true with the images depicting the young girl who seems more at ease than her parents – in an image she seems sleeping embraced by a tree. The girl probably spent most of her life among these woods and managed to adapt to her surroundings.

Alessandro Imbriaco-The Garden

Alessandro Imbriaco – The Garden

We are taken back to reality when analysing the portraits of her mother and father. Appearing among trees, they look proud and almost hostile – their suffering is visible. A couple of pictures show the man bathing in an invisible damp, lighting up a fire or walking in the woods; his solitude conveys the harshness of his life.

The strong bond with the natural world is elegantly depicted through a selection of images that gives us enough information to understand the story while maintaining a certain sense of mystery and magic. The subdued colour palette is in my opinion the most powerful element in this book, lanscapes are shot at dusk and the consequent darkness acts as a reminder of the protagonists’ fragile condition. Their way of life can only be a temporary one and will probably come to an end as soon as a better place becomes available. Society might be far from their daily lives but our urban world is not forgotten and is a constant background presence referenced in most of these images: a building in the distance, some food leftovers or, as in the picture below, a street sign appearing among trees.

Alessandro Imbriaco - The Garden

Alessandro Imbriaco – The Garden

As mentioned, this is a self explanatory work and as a consequence no introduction to the photobook is included, that’s why I decided to give no background to the imagery in this post. Nonetheless, there is an interesting foreword that analyses the importance of the Düsseldorf School and the New Topographics movement in shaping contemporary documentary photography: Thomas Struth, Stephen Shore , Bernd and Hilla Becher are all mentioned. Most of all, I was intrigued by the concept of Temporary Autonomous Zone, a term coined by Peter Lamborn Wilson which refers to illegal settlements born in the name of social and personal freedom. This concept is now applied to the very different reality – one made of need for shelter and fight for survival – depicted in The Garden.

This is Italy and precisely Rome: in the top image sign we can read Via Tiburtina, a famous road of the capital. However it could have been anywhere else.

More:
My website
@lightsandlines

Staged Truthfulness and Paolo Pellegrin

By: marco

24-02-2013

On photographers, On photography, Thoughts

A Prize-Winning Ethics Lesson? is a NYT Lens Blog post that focuses on a single image that stirred controversy within the photography world. Paolo Pellegrin, a renowned Magnum photographer is accused of inaccuracy and misinterpretation.

Most of all he is considered culpable of providing us with a distorted view of reality: a portray of a man posing with a shotgun is not what it seems: he is not part of the “Crescent” criminal underbelly the project tries to describe. He has nothing to do with the gun culture of this deprived area of Rochester and he is not even an ex military sniper as Pellegrin initially stated. Yet this is certainly a powerful image.

In an age of “Staged documentary Photography” David Gonzales (@dgbxny) and James Estrin (@JamesEstrin) raise some good questions about the idea of truthfulness and general photography ethics.
Most of all, what caught my attention is the concept of outsider’s unfamiliarity used in the article, and I quote:

“…critics of Mr. Pellegrin’s project have said it was his very nature as an outsider that produced a distorted view of the area…”

Aren’t we always outsiders? Unless we are working on a autobiographical project there will always be a barrier between us and the subject. So the question is: can we really pretend to describe a reality that is not part of our lives in an objective and credible way? Possibly: it’s a matter of research and accuracy.
In order to gain this credibility photographers need to focus on a specific subject, a niche, i.e. the Crescent area of Rochester.

So did Pellegrin here, but it seems he forgot the concept of truthfulness.

Paolo Pellegrin – The Crescent

The fact of being an “outsider” is something every photographer will always have to deal with but the “point of view” issue is particularly relevant when it comes to press photography. Last year the World Press Photo of the Year 2011 caused another debate about the idea of filtering the arab world through Western eyes and values. On Conscientious, Joerg Colberg (@jmcolberg) posted The Problem with Western Press Photo, an article I recommend reading. At a certain point the writer states:

“…press photographs are not necessarily intended to make people feel good. The role of press photographs is to inform us about events in a news context.”

Sometimes there is a fine line between Staged Documentary Photography where the photographer’s act more as an artist and Press Photography. Initially I related this image by Pellegrin to the same problematic. He staged it and he managed to create a powerful portrait that adds up to the whole series’ feel. If no info came out we would probably never thought it was a fake and we would be judging it only from a quality perspective. The problem, apart from the information leaked, is that he did not ask someone related to the Crescent to pose for him (that, in my opinion, is acceptable), but a complete outsider: what was staged became fake. Truthfulness was lost.

It’ interesting to note how in this case, Pellegrin played with the “outsider’s unfamiliarity” of his audience: being outsiders ourselves we have to believe in the photographer’s objectivity. So the concept works in both ways. Is there a solution?

Lately I saw an interesting take on this: Light from the Middle East is an exhibition at the V&A in London that tried to increase accuracy by cutting the middle man and delivered an interesting series of Middle East focused photographs produced by photographers from the area. I thought it was quite a refreshing approach as there was no filtering involved in this case, at least not from a cultural point of view. The photographer’s subjectivity is still present but it’s made clear, specifically in the Recording section of the exhibition where the reliability of the medium is questioned.

And so, to put an end to this Sunday train of thoughts I will just state the obvious: the audience can be easily tricked and sometimes to positive results. However, when the “press” tag is attached to a body of work I still require a certain element of truthfulness, even if staged.

More:
My website
@lightsandlines