“Authorial Identity in Photography” – SIMON ROBERTS

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 Simon Roberts - Authorial Identity in Photography by MJohnston

Roger Ballen

Roger Ballen

Roger Ballen: Lens Culture Conversations with Photographers from Jim Casper on Vimeo.

28 Millimetres

David Moore

David Moore is a conceptual documentary photographer, whose documentaries a lot of the time seem to involve a governmental/state power theme. David was tauht by the legendary Martin Parr. His work like Parr is more fine art based than commercial as he stated 'Do project and find out where it fit's afterwards' the idea that commercial will follow after. which he said after shooting The Commons porject he recieved three jobs of the back of it because he showed he could use macro and lighting to good effect. 

His first documentary The Velvet Arena in 1995 David attended private views, book launches, business parties taking pictures of the art directors and other attendees, whilst talking about this book David described himself the photographer the person with power and his subject the person without power. Which is true the photographer can manipulate the image however they want for example Don McCullin's shell shocked soldier has been reproduced in different ways firstly where the eyes are visable shows he soldier in it's shell shocked state whereas when the eyes are darkened the picture tells a completely different story where the soldier looks ready to go into battle.  He also described how he feels about hflash stating that useing flash is an assault on the person and that off board flash enchances the drama which it deffinately did in the velvet arena with what could have been potentially boring scenes have now been made interesting with amazing details in the skin and texture of the clothes. 

The second piece of work David talked about was his book the commons again similar to The Velvet Arena with David looking at things in a Macro sense and again using flash but this time without any of the MP's. Whilst talking about this project he firstly let on that the project itself had taken 3 years to gain access to but also when starting a project be very open ended so as not to have an idea until you get there which I guess is true for documentary photography when you do have time to shoot the project as you can go back and assess the pictures you have taken but this is not the case in the fashion world where you only have one chance to photograph the model as you are relying on so many other factors. 

The final project that david talked about was The Last Things a documentary on a Secure military bunker in London, for this project he decided not to use flash as the viewer has never seen this space before he wanted to be more environmental, obviously due to security reasons he had to photoshop certain things out. David decided to publish some of these photographs in the Mail on Sunday over the Guardian as he wanted a larger audience but also because he wanted a audience with less photographic knowledge. David's final piece of advice was that if you are going to photograph institution, community then there are always going to be people who don't like what you are doing or how you are portraying it but you just have to tak it on the chin and keep a clear conscience. 

Andy Earl

Andy Earl has been at the forefront of music photography since he graduated, when his first job was for 80's band Bow Wow Wow which ended him being arrested for showing the lead singer Annabella Lwin aged just fifteen, artistically nude as a parody of Edouard Manet's Le Dejeuner Sur l'Herbe (The Luncheon on The Grass). Andy started his talk of by talking about his time as a student where he developed a flash and a slow colour film to create a blur technique this later on lead him to create a music video for Rolling stones completely out of stills using 2 Nikon cameras. It seemed that this technique and the controversy surrounding the Bow Wow Wow incident were enough to kick start his career and he missed the assistant stage as he was having work thrown at him like Prince, Duran Duran's Rio cover and so on. 

Andy talked about various musicians he had photographed and mentioned stories on how Madonna was a nightmare to photograph and Courtney love turned up waisted, but it was the image that he did for Pink Floyd's the Delicate Sound of Thunder that interested me the most as the band have always had such strong imagery for their album covers, I mean an album cover that contains a man with light bulbs attached to his jacket whilst another is releasing several doves (which were waited so as not to have to take the picture first time) whilst the two men look like they are about to have a dual is always going to look good. 

Andy offered several pieces of advice firstly the History of Art is important like his parody of Manet's work, and this can be seen in many other photographers work especially that of early photography. To take risks but to also take a backup so if the risk doesn't pay off then you have a fall back point. To keep shooting like a pianist keeps practicing as to avoid getting rusty. 

He mentioned that there is more freedom in music photography than advertising and that your ideas are the selling point for the photographer in this industry which is why I think Andy's images do stick out compared to the majority of music photographers he isn't interested in just the band he is interested in making a really good image that as he Say's 'How can I say something?' Maybe this is why he stressing that the history of art is important. 

The final thing I want to mention about Andy is a story he told us about being commissioned by Cosmopolitan Magazine where he shot in the style of Cosmo, when he returned with the photographs they said they had commissioned you because of your style, which says that you should keep shooting in your style even if seems weird or take a back up as I mentioned earlier.