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Categories / Still Life /Tags / conceptual photography / Europe / UK / Click here to open comments section, click again when done to close / 8 Comments

8 Responses to “Anti-Glamorous and De-Illusionised”

1. mijntje!!!, on November 28th, 2009 at 8:58 pm Said:

   I don’ t love it so much and I don’ t really get the message…

   XX!

2. emiliano, on November 28th, 2009 at 9:43 pm Said:

   Hi!
   Ok, so one day I’ll go to the fishmarket to buy fish and find out that they sell just meat. Ok, ok.. if that’s the way goes.. lets accept these as “conceptual photographs”.
   I am a bit upset…

3. Gordon, on November 30th, 2009 at 12:01 pm Said:

   Emiliano, Perhaps you should become vegetarian? then you wouldn’t have to visit the market and there would be no reason upset… and other dull analogies…

4. emiliano, on December 1st, 2009 at 2:34 am Said:

   the only dull thing i still see are this over-dull dull photos, dear Gordon! I think there’s a certain limit.. So, ok, i’ll give you another lovely dull analogy: tomorrow I switch on my camera and I take photos randomly, in my not so clean toilet, very well flashed of course. Without even see in the viewfinder! So, then a guy called, dunno, Jack Cocacola, will have the magic intuition:
   “pubic hair randomly positioned on white tiles ground, as the troubly days passing by on a dirty-simple life… running water from a broken tap and half of an arm, the existence of the three elements minus two equal.. ciao”.

5. Gordon, on December 3rd, 2009 at 12:12 am Said:

   Emiliano, I think we will have to disagree again. Dull analogies aside, Harry’s work, it would seem to me, is about the plethora of possibilities offered by photography and, in the end, the futility of photographic expression. I know this is a difficult thing for photographers – I am one myself – but the idea of finding oneself in a situation where anything is possible – the studio – and only having the photographic apparatus around you to express these possibilities is interesting to me. I also find the images beautiful and the admission that photography is its own fetishistic framework, a very engaging thought. Good luck with your work, I hope people engage with it on the plane that you intend them to.

6. Ben, on December 7th, 2009 at 4:01 pm Said:

   Looking over this series of folios, here are a few “choice” comments posted in response to the work selected by Gordon MacDonald.

   “I kinda like”
   “makes much more sense”
   “nice interesting effect”
   “I don’t love it so much and I don’t really get the message”
   “Ok, so one day I’ll go to the fishmarket to buy fish and find out that they sell just meat. Ok, ok.. if that’s the way goes.. lets accept these as “conceptual photographs”.
I am a bit upset…”
   “Not to be unkind… but I really think that with the latest british photographers shown here on the blog I can almost tell United Kingdom photo artists are disappearing from the nation”
   “I, too, am a bit disappointed here really… this kind of reminds me my first days with a camera in my hand, pointing it at anything that stood still long enough to be captured… or has life in the UK become so uninspiring since the last time I visited?”

   Why should I care what you like, or what you find interesting, if you don’t substantiate these very personal opinions with reference to a useable criteria for engaging with and assessing the value of photography. What does the photographer set out to achieve, why might they have done this, and how successful are they in pursuing these ends? Most importantly, if you think these aims lack value (as they may well do), then why?

   It is crucial that we subject all forms of culture to rigorous analysis. Sadly, most of the comments in evidence here repeat the same inadequecies at play in a lot of art criticism today. Why are your personal likes and dislikes of any interest to anyone else if you don’t seek to explain and to justify them?

7. Emiliano, on January 9th, 2010 at 3:31 am Said:

   I don’t know Ben…!
   I might sound again very superficial with this comment, but… I take the word “comment” as something which should come out from my quite “quick” first impression, in this case after just seen the images. So, I don’t know… I would like to deeply explain “why” some of the photos here lacks value. But I feel like when I will never ever make the effort of explaining why, for example, I dislike very much the so clapped and copied Terry Richardson’s photos of his flashy genitals…
   I mean, sorry, but if a picture looks “bad” to me and I’m allowed to comment it I’ll do it “my way”.
   Otherwise let’s write “Your Analysis” instead of “Your Comment” and then I’ll surely write nothing, leaving space for art experts and philosophers of imaging. I’m always looking for cooperation in everything… Can we cooperate then? :)

8. Crackerhead Johnson, on February 17th, 2010 at 5:13 pm Said:

   I think it stinks. A ten year old with a camera could have made these photographs. It’s too easy and just because the photographer used the rule of thirds and some diagonal lines, doesn’t make it more interesting.

In this stark body of work I hope to literally strip away the glamorous and illusional.

The studio space is potentially, yet invisibly occupied by objects which exist only as a aid to the visual creation, rather than meant to be seen as themselves.

Created and coated in grey light absorbing materials these objects stand mono-chromic in a empty person-less studio.

Gordon MacDonald is head of publications at Photoworks and editor of Photoworks magazine.