As I indicated in the last post I have been having some serious reservations about the originality of my approach to my East End project. I outlined two alternative directions in which I could take the work. The second of these was to base my series on Charles Booth’s 1889 survey of East London. The idea would be to select locations from places Booth and his colleagues refer to in the book and associated notebooks. I have established that the work is out of copyright and so I have no problems in using these texts. Also Toynbee Hall supported much of the Booth’s work and so they might prove to be a useful ally in taking the work forward.
The thrust of the work does however need to change. My previous aim was to demonstrate the transient nature of the influence of immigration on the area. As I said in my previous post I feel that the references I have found for this work are simply too cliche. My thoughts on the direction the work might now take are set out in a first cut (very first cut) artists statement below. The working title for this redefined project is Lifting the Curtain. The rationale for this is explained in the statement.
Lifting the Curtain – Artist’s Statement
I am interested in the relationship between place, memory and the passage of time and how photography can mediate within this space. What can a picture of a place tell us about what happened there? Can we know the truth of what lies beneath the surface of a photograph or are we only able to read it as a cultural construction?
In his 1889 socio-cultural survey, Charles Booth echoed this concern about cultural conditioning, when he expressed the view that East London lay ‘hidden from view behind a curtain on which were painted terrible pictures’. He saw his survey work as an attempt to lift this curtain ‘to see the world it hid’.
Lifting the Curtain revisits Booth’s East London through a series of photographs of modern day urban landscapes. The locations are places Booth and his associates visited and commented on either in the published work ‘Life and Labour of the People in London’, or in their working papers. Texts extracted from the book and notebooks are presented alongside the photographs.
The landscapes were made at dawn, dusk and at nighttime when no one was around. This was a deliberate strategy. If there were people in the pictures, they would draw attention away from the subjects I am interested in, the places themselves.
The absence of people and the dramatic lighting give the photographs the feel of an empty theatrical stage, onto which the viewer is invited to project their own narratives. The texts open up additional meanings and raise questions about what a photograph of a place can in itself tell us about its past.
The juxtaposition of photographs of modern day scenes with historic texts draws attention to the passage of time and the transience of human existence, with the absence of people and the deep shadows in the images serving as metaphors for mortality.
London School of Economics maintain an online record of much of Booth’s workbooks and they have been very helpful in directing me on the best way to identify suitable locations (and associated texts). So far I have identified 9 texts which will work well with my existing photographs (some I was already planning to use). I have found 7 other texts/locations which have real promise – I have yet to visit these new locations however. This means that I will need to find another half dozen or so locations….this seems eminently feasible.
Here are the ten photographs I have so far completed. I am thinking that I will use the text as a caption for any art prints, but may well decide to use the text as an integral part of any poster presentation. I have yet to consider the presentational aspects properly, but this naturally flows from the concept behind the work.
©Keith Greenough 2014
©Keith Greenough 2014
©Keith Greenough 2014
©Keith Greenough 2014
©Keith Greenough 2014
©Keith Greenough 2014
©Keith Greenough 2014
©Keith Greenough 2014
©Keith Greenough 2014
©Keith Greenough 2014
photo-graph 
Catherine
May 5, 2014
This seems so well-suited – that direct link with Charles’ Booth’s writing, yet plenty of room for the viewer’s own interpretation.
Keith Greenough
May 5, 2014
Thanks Catherine….it feels more right to me…if that makes sense. I have lost the link to immigration but the truth is that East London is more than just waves of immigration.
Catherine
May 5, 2014
I suppose it’s not so much the layers but the bedrock they create.
jsumb
May 5, 2014
The title “lifting the curtain”, the presentation providing a ‘stage’ and others provide a very strong illusory reference to the ‘stage’ wherein the curtain is referred to as the ‘fourth wall’ a singular and privileged view into the mis en scene being played out for the viewers benefit, with Booth’s text appears as the script? I also can’t help thinking of Riis’s ‘How the other half lives’
Keith Greenough
May 5, 2014
Not sure I am following your drift here John. But Booth’s concern was principally with the way in which East London was viewed as a cultural construction, Jack the Ripper and so on…. His desire was to present it for what it really was. This seems to be the different from the way you are viewing it.
jsumb
May 5, 2014
I’m thinking of the ‘stage’ as means of revelation, I detected a strong sense of that metaphor, but maybe that’s just my reading :). Riis’ work was as much a cultural construction? And the means by which the work is presented is to provide a glimpse behind the curtain? I don’t think we’re talking at cross purposes……
Keith Greenough
May 5, 2014
Yes think you are right. The stage metaphoric reading is just what I intended
Guy
June 23, 2014
Let me start by saying that I really like the colour and contrast that you are achieving with your dusk/dawn lighting.
Now, may I ask, would it be fair to surmise that this project has as its intended audience either native born or long term naturalized londoners? I ask because despite a passing knowledge of this area based on family history I am quite adrift with both the text and the images.
Don’t laugh, but when I first read the text for the Shadwell basin I had to stop and ask “who is Paddy and why do I care” then after a short time — the aha moment. But even then the image didn’t connect with the text for me beyond the obvious wharf/water/dock work.
Looking at the Altab Ali Park image I couldn’t figure out what I was looking at until I enlarged it enough that I could make out the wreaths. Having done that I still don’t understand the connection with the text.
I understand your concern with showing the passage of time and the consequent changes in the environment, living conditions, population, and so on; but, despite beautiful images and interesting historical text the change isn’t visible to me. Is it apparent to members of the intended audience (assuming that I’m not the intended)?
In other postings you are initiating a discussion of turning each photograph into an “open work”. I wonder if instead of the very formal captioning with the text you might find someway to include multiple texts that provide different kinds of information that might fill out the historical or present day contexts (I have no idea what that might be). The variety and differentiation of the information temporally might provide a basis for the multiple kinds of viewer experience implied by the “open work” concept.
Keith Greenough
June 23, 2014
Hi again Guy
your capacity for feedback is impressive…thanks for that..
No the audience is not restricted to native born Londoners or those with a knowledge of the area per se. However, neither am I expecting the viewer to look at the images without the benefit of an artists statement which provides some context, i.e. that the images are urban landscapes from East London, that the texts are extracted from an historic socio-cultural survey by Charles Booth undertaken in 1889 and and that the images are modern day urban landscapes of the locations to which the texts refer.
I see the text and image as two streams of information about the same place, what happened there in the past and how it looks today. I deliberately don’t want the text to close down the meaning of the image. I want the meaning and interpretation to be open, yet influenced by the information provided in both textual and image form. The challenge is to balance the amount of information in both image and text so that the work is left open to interpretation. So the more textual information I provide to explain the images the less open the work becomes (and the more it becomes like a historical guide to East London…which I don’t want).
As i say in the statement, the work is in a sense an investigation of what a photograph of a place can or more to the point cannot say about its history.
With regards to the Shadwell Basin image, when i look at it I see the history of the wharfs etc and also the new development and change of purpose from industrial to residential which reflects the way in which the economy has moved. The text which is a quotation from Beatrice Webb also refers to the its prior purpose as part of London’s docks, but also draws attention to the role of immigrants such as the Irish in the development of the London’s economic base…. The text does not spell this out, deliberately, to leave scope for the imagination of the viewer, but….it runs the risk of losing the viewer which seems to be the case in your reading.
It is interesting that the feedback I have had from different people seems to fall into two camps. There are those who want more ‘referential’ text (as Eco would call it) that explains what the photograph is about. And others who prefer the ambiguity and disjuncture between image and text that allows for alternative interpretations….striking the balance is not going to be easy….
Guy
June 23, 2014
No, I wouldn’t want to see this turn into a guidebook, but I am having difficulty making connections between text and photographs. To use The Highway as an example, the image doesn’t say “but that has all changed” or “same thing is happening just a hundred years on”. Though I would expect that with appropriate local knowledge it might be otherwise.
My call for local knowledge could be interpreted as a request for referential information, but perhaps I am just expecting to understand more than is reasonable…
Keith Greenough
June 23, 2014
Your feedback is useful….so keep commenting… I have still got quite a way to go with this so the image text pairings are going to change….
as regards the Highway, the normality of the scene does seem (to me) to implies that the nature of the area has changed…however the reference to the ‘Strangers Rest’ on the church sign shows that some vestiges of the past remain…’stranger’ is a term which was used for foreigners (followed by aliens, immigrants and asylum seekers…etc)… The Highway used to be called the Ratcliffe Highway and was notorious for high levels of poverty and crime with a large foreign community derived from its proximity to the docks. The question which interests me is whether a photograph of a modern day urban landscape can reveal anything of the place’s past.
Certainly people with local knowledge will interpret the image/text pairings with the benefit of local knowledge and indeed some might still feel that there is still too many incomers (through both immigration and gentrification) and too much crime… Others will draw on their own experiences of multicultural, post industrial Britain to come to their own conclusions….