The Black Hit Of Space

Mornin' Varmints - well, what a snooze that was!
Ar yes m'dearios. Me and Mog finished off 16 stone o' Turkey leftovers on Boxing Day, settled ourselves down for some well-earned shuteye and the next thing we knew it was the 4th o' January!
"Well," I said to Mog -"Happy New Year to you, old friend."
"Happy New Year Cap'n," he said back.
That's weird I thought, he couldn't talk before we went to sleep.
I did wonder whether it were something we ate that was affecting me hearing, so I asked him,
"When was ye born me old soak?"
and he said,
"That's no' clear to me Cap'n. I can only remember the sack and the water."
And I thought, that's good enough for me. If it were my ears playing me up, he would have said something like the 24th o' May.
So I believes him.
Imagine that.
A talking cat.
I'm not going to let too many folk know though - there's a ton of people would pay a pretty penny to own one.

***

Been out all night, I needed a bite

I thought I'd put a record on

I reached for the one with the ultra-modern label

And wondered where the light had gone

It had a futuristic cover

Lifted straight from Buck Rogers

The record was so black it had to be a con

The autochanger switched as I filled my sandwich

And futuristic sounds warbled off and on

(The Human League - The Black Hit Of Space)

***

This week I genuinely wasn't going to write anything - call it Post Festive Disorder (PFD) - I didn't get half what I expected done, but I did have a fantastic time, which resulted in me indulging in one of my favourite pastimes ... reading. Lots.

Anyway, I got to Thursday morning this week and a little demon appeared on my shoulder and said 'You know, they're waiting . . .', so I thought Och bugger it and started. So this week's FB will be a little less heavy on the writing being as I've only had a couple of days to get it together - my apologies, but, given my subject matter it seems very pointless to regurgitate potted histories as the world is littered with them . . so here goes.

There's a dirty word still bandied around photographic circles.

It's pretty seedy and in fact, even though (and despite) the fact that it gets mentioned more now that it has been in the past hundred or so years, it's still a bit iffy. 

People get uncomfortable.

They stretch their collars, shuffle their feet and cough.

It is an unmentionable.

However, for myself I will stride into the arena, wearing my frock coat and winged collar, pommandered hair set nice and solid, moustache waxed to perfection and say, to me, there's never been a movement like it.

It was born from passion and enthusiasm and ideas of lofty artisticness way above its station.

It lived briefly like a Mayfly, wings glittering above the fast running waters of life in a dance of beauty, and then committed suicide. 

And when this tradgedy was all but enacted? What happened then? Why, its corpse was buried in a pauper's grave and its memory trampled and left to be picked over by dogs.

Sounds melodramatic eh? Well it sort of was like that.

And to what do I refer?

Brown paper bag ready?

Pictorialism!

Ah the Gods - PICTORIALISM!

Banner For The Photo-Secession

The greatest, most profound and beautiful photographic movement there ever was.

Lambasted, criticised, cynicised, ignored, Pictorialism stands large in the history of photography as a beautiful jewel.

Strangely I would say these days that is it arguably more important than Ansel Adams and Group f64. How's that for radicalism.

All of your realist movements of the 60's? As nothing.

All the shite that passes for 'art' photogaphy these days? Total bollocks.

You see, somehow, it has transcended its lowly grave and ascended to the heights.

Pictorialism, [which I am sure would be to the surprise of Mr.Alfred Steiglitz (its driver and mentor)] has become something other. As a movement I feel that there has never been another as profound or influential.

You see friends today, Pictorialism is all around us.
It's in films, on television, on posters and in magazines.
It influences and drives like never before, partly I believe because it saw the way naturalistically.
Think about it, and the world isn't really hard-edged at all. Centrally to your eyes it is, but the periphery? Blurred. And that blurriness and softening of image in the majority of Pictorialist photographs is incredibly naturalistic.
I think it is almost why the images speak so well.
Yes a lot of it was done to mimic 'painterly' techniques, but when photographers are already dealing with absolute realism, why not try and show it in a way that could be considered more 'arty'.
The Pictorialists were working with uncoated lenses, and there is a tendency nowadays to believe that lenses from that time (late 19th early 20th Century) were somehow not very good and soft.

This is a misconception.

Most of the greatest leaps in lens design happened in those times.

Ancient lenses can be softer, however they can also be as crisp as you like. There are incredibly wide variations in them, however Pictorialists, semi-eschewed the standard ones in favour of 'portrait' lenses (so called because they were able to soften an image to make it look softer. It was never good as a working photographer to have your customer's blemished skin shining out of a photograph) which when turned to landscape and still life and figurely photographs rendered things deliciously soft.
Pictorial pictures mostly exhibit a beautiful depth too, which somehow, to my mind, sends them over the edge from being a photograph. They are so very natural looking, possibly because my eyesight isn't what it was, but maybe that naturalness is apparent because of their lack of definition. Its the reason I suppose why all hard-edged CGI images in films look somehow so wrong, and why ordinary non-super-imposed filmwork looks so right.

Soft images are laughed at today, they are.

They are seen as being 'Romantic' in a brutal world, but to this I say what is wrong with Romanticism?

God knows the world is difficult enough - if a photograph can touch your soul because it is soft and ethereal looking then all the better.

Of course I am tarring every Pictorialist there ever was with the 'romantic soft image' brush - it was in reality a little like this, but then on the other hand you have Steiglitz's 'The Steerage' - as modern as you like. And of course, the nail in the coffin, Paul Strand's disturbing and harsh and beautiful 'Blind Woman - New York 1916', published in 'Camera Work' the journal of the Pictorialists and as loud as any death knell you could wish to hear.
I could go over this forever, however it is digressing from Pictorialism.

I won't write a potted history of it - pointless - there's loads of stuff on the web.

What I will say is that it repays studying. In spades.

From Clarence White to Paul Strand, from Annie Brigman to Edward Steichen and Frederick Evans - names that have greatness hewn into them.

To be honest I could have chosen twenty images to illustrate this, however I will just go with one which I believe to be the greatest . . but then that's just me.

Clarence White's 'The Orchard 1905' could have been top (it is an image laced with meaning drawn deep from Christian spirituality, and for all its carefree appearence, it is as set-up as a photograph could be) however it isn't.



Clarence White - The Orchard, 1905

To my mind the finest thing ever published in Camera Work, and that is a tall order, is something so old it is modern. It is so poetic, it is a script waiting to happen. Like all great photographs, it tells a story, and can also inspire a story in your head.

Are you sitting down?

Probably my favourite photograph ever is by a man called Mr.George Henry Seeley.

It is called 'The Firefly'. 

George Henry Seeley - The Firefly, 1907

It was made in 1907.

I love this photograph.

It is about as perfect as a photograph can get.

Yes it is soft focus. Oh God isn't it beautiful?

Compositionally, I don't think you could do better actually.

The curve of the bowl leads your eye in.

The woman (his sister I believe) is beautiful in a timeless way.

She could be from now.

She could be from the Dark Ages.

She has the headpiece as a prop, but again, date it . .

And there, she is holding a firefly, its tiny light like a jewel in her hand. The flare from the uncoated lens aids the whole feel of melancholia and age. It exudes carefulness in its composition, but also an instantaneousness, like she has run up to the camera and is saying 'See, brother, see what I have found!'

It is also as modern a photograph as you could ever want to find. I think it actually sets the bar. 

Can you imagine photographs like this in Vogue? I can.

If you are at all interested in looking at more images, then, if you can find it, the Taschen publication 'Camera Work - The Complete Illustrations 1903-1917 [ISBN 3-8228-8072-8]' is to be highly recommended.

If you can find the hardback (for less than the price of a car) all the better as the paperbacks have a tendency to split, due to their massive bulk!

Anyway, from beauty it is a trip back to earth, with an image that is no less profoundly moving, but very different.



Paul Strand - Blind Woman, New York 1916

From the last issue of Camera Work

This was really the loud clanging of the death knell. 

Steiglitz I believe realised that the end was nigh - you can't stand in the way of progress - and yet what an image to sign that warrant. 

Curiously, it is as obvious an analogy with regard to the golden, pre-WWI years and the sound of mechanised death from the Front as you could wish.

On one hand, beauty, etherealism and softness, and on the other, grim reality, indignity and the vision of a world changed forever.

In it's brief 14 year life Camera Work gave more to the world than the world gave to it.

For myself I find it as profoundly influential as I always have done.

If you wish to read further, just Google things like 'Camera Work, Photo Secession, Alfred Steiglitz, Pictorialism. The images really will work their way into your psyche. I think they can help to make better photographers of us all.

***

As usual with FB, I thought I had better do some shameless shoe-horning in of photography - so here's my pathetic attempt at emulating a Pictorialist style, with a Twin Lens Reflex!




The Woman In The Boughs

I actually am rather fond of this photograph, for a start it is my wife, so that is the best place to start.
It was made with my beloved Rolleiflex T and I was using a Rolleinar close-up set, with the focus somewhere between 10 feet and 30 feet, so totally out of focus.
Not a lot of people know that with the Rolleinars on a Rollei you can have a very subtly variable soft focus lens - at infinity things get more definition, but in the close range they are wonderfully soft, as you are using the natural lack of depth of focus you get with close-focus devices. I daresay any close-up lens used on a camera for a use that isn't a close-up would work, but the Rolleinars are something else optically.
Film was FP4 at EI 80 developed in Barry Thornton's 2 bath. The print was made on Grade 2 Ilford Galerie (my favourite paper) and it was archivally processed and then toned in Agfa Viradon for that vintage look.
We'd watched the film  'Possession' not long before that and the name of the photograph just sprang into my mind, inspired by that film.
Anyway, nuff z nuff. That's me, over and oot.
As usual, take care, God bless, and thanks for reading.

Rum, Sodomy & The Lash

             

" 'Said Captain.
I said Wot?
' Said Captain.
I said Wot?
' Said Captain.
I said Wot?
' Said Captain.
I said Wot You Want?"

***

Sometimes you have to suffer for your art, and, there's no way round this, darkroom work is one of those times. It does really seem ridiculous to me that these days, the key thing that defines you as a photographer (your images) is usually parcelled out to software and a machine. It is sort of like a music box. All of the right notes in all the right places, clearly defined, nothing left to chance, with each little tine being pinged at the correct time. Yes it is music. But it isn't music.

A musician (well a decent musician) can coax an unwilling lump of wood or metal into warm, organic life with a depth of feeling you wouldn't believe possible. A simple vibrato on a note can bring a full grown male human to a quivering blubbing lump. I think this is because music is such an intrinsic part of being human that we have an art form that can cut through all the insanity of modern life to the quick of what it is to be human.

I own a number of albums where the essence of organic musicianship has been distilled into something which is so heartfelt and deeply meaningful, that they seem to transcend the medium and become something other.

I am sure you've got a few like that too, but they are sort of rare aren't they?

Two I can point to with a definitive "That one" are by the Canadian artist Bruce Cockburn.

He's a funny sort is old Bruce. I must admit that although he has been going since the late 1960's/early 1970's there's been a certain patchiness; a patchiness which seems to have increased with time, but then again maybe he just changed . . .

So, I'll forgive him that, but will go back to 'High Winds, White Sky' and 'Sunwheel Dance' (his second and third albums respectively) and state that in them he has created two complete worlds.

Even (and especially) the covers work with the music to create a whole.

Obviously recommending music is a difficult thing . . one man's meat and all that, but if you have a penchant for British folk of the 1970's and like the thought of being tucked away in a cold Canadian Winter, then either of these albums does the trick completely.

The Cover to High Winds was taken at a place in Toronto called Ward Island. The photographer was George Pastic and somehow, the cover and the songs on the album fit like a hand in a glove. It even extends down to the whimsy of the enclosed booklet - Bruce on a bicycle; Bruce being mysterious in a river; hand-written lyrics - it's as near a total artistic statement as albums get.

And that is an important thing, because it is a statement of intent; a complete world, and you, buying the album (and thereby contributing to the artists's well-being) are being invited to purchase a seat to that world. For the asking price and a possible lifetime of pleasure, it was (and still is) a small price to pay.

The booklet was small and very beautiful.
It sets out with a purpose and achieves it.

Though not quite the same as a statement of intent, 'Sunwheel Dance' from 1970 (recorded in Toronto like its predecessor) has, if you let it get into you, such a feel of a lonely, homely cabin in the middle of nowhere, that you would never want to leave.

             

The cover photograph is by Bart Schoales and is as near dammit a perfect introduction to the themes of the album (light and spirituality).

The final track brings in outsiders to the cabin, visitors if you like (though the band has been present throughout the album, they have done what really good bands do, become transparent) and their singing in harmony is a thing of great wonder. It makes you feel so completely homely and comforted that you transcend the music. Your soul takes wings and moves and is moved in no uncertain ways. Well mine does anyway.

You see, certain pieces of art can transcend their weighty dimensional anchors and move you to places where spirit and feeling and consciousness combine.

You can get that with photographs too - there are images that bear multiple viewings, whereby the photographer has transcended all the dimensional realities of a piece of the world carefully chopped down to fit into a rectangular or square view of the world, and somehow managed to imbue the essence of their art into what you are viewing.

I could choose many actually, but two random examples are as follows:

Wynn Bullock - Tide Pool 1957

Walker Evans - Alabama Tenant Farmer's Wife

As you can see, they are utterly different, and yet I never tire of looking at either of them, simply because they speak to me.

So . . . remember at the top of the page before I started digressing, I was talking about darkroom work and how it was important?

Right, here we go.

It isn't just important, it is vital.

And why do I say that? Well, despite what the populists would have you believe, photography is a craft rather than an art.

It can be an art, definitely, but when you look back at its history and the great men and women who have made it their own, you are struck by one thing. Most of these people were craftsmen. 

They nearly all developed their own film.

They nearly all printed their own prints.

Most got their hands dirty (and stained, and suffered metol-fingernail) letting selenium and hypo and acetic acid and pyrogallol and metol and hydroquinone seep into their souls.

They laboured in dark places for our education of what it is to be human and in doing so managed to be able to transform the seemingly mundane into the everyday extraordinary.

That is craft.

They captured our intensely incredible, three dimensional world and rendered it into two dimensions.

And what dimensions.

They can take your soul and inspire.

They can make you weep and laugh and rage and crave change.

And they can change too, providing a voice, a proof of a world transformed or laid bare for all to see.

The seemingly humble photographic print is a powerful thing. it can change the world. It can change your life. It can be an exquisite object of love and labour. Tactile and beautiful; signed or unsigned, it is the distillation of photography, and as such should be treasured and revered, because you see print-making walks hand in hand with photography. 

It is as human an activity as making music.

Joseph McKenzie once said to me he thought I was lucky being a musician (which I sort of was) because of the immediacy of being able to create music. Were I able to speak to him now, I would say he was far luckier being a great photographer, because he was able to produce lasting works of extreme beauty and truth.

And that is why friends, I urge you. If you are at all interested in photography, you simply have to try and make photographic prints. It doesn't have to be a complex setup. I loaded film into daylight tanks in cupbards for years; I have contact printed 35mm negatives onto 6x4" resin coated paper. I have worked at the very most basic level of exposing paper with a torch and processing the paper in the dark because I couldn't afford a safelight, and what moved me to this madness? The love of the print.

I still operate on the same 'guerilla' basis; yes I now have a darkroom, but it is very rough and ready (and without any running water or sinks) however I can happily produce works of art that are entirely of my own creation, from making the photograph to developing to printing to archiving to writing notes on the back.

If you really want to achieve the beauty of the print, something that you are entirely in control of, then it can be done. It just requires a bit of thought.

I am not going to teach you how to make a print (there are many great texts online or on bookshop shelves that will do the trick), all I am going to say is that if you farm all your photographic effort out to the same software that everyone else uses and then let a machine spray ink onto paper and then say you have a print, then you are only half a photographer. There. That's me damned for ever!

Is it any wonder that most serious galleries these days still tend to poo-poo the inkjet?

I think they feel the same as me.

Yes it is an image, but no, it isn't a photograph **.

The following pictures, whilst poor scans are of prints.

The prints are properly processed and archivally stored.
They will outlast me, and you.

They are my wee attempts at rendering the world I see into something that hopefully moves the viewer in the same way I was moved when I made the images.
 They are entirely my own work from beginning to end.

Woods.
 Reverse of print with printing details

Woods.
Full frame negative.
Grade 2 Ilford Galerie
Kodak Polymax Developer
Archivally Fixed in 'Plain' Fix
Archivally washed
Untoned

A pleasant surprise
 flip the sleeve over and another print!

Silverprint Archival polyester sleeve.
These are great for long term storage.

I store my best prints in Silverprint Archival sleeves and then in Timecare Archival boxes. 

Yes it is expensive, but why not take the best care of what is, after all, a highly crafted product.

One day I might try and put on an exhibition - you never know.

Thanks for reading and God bless.

** I have no choice with regard to colour - it seems to have gone too far, but the monochrome print (my own concern) is as vital now as it ever was.

Drink Entire Against The Madness Of Crowds

Greetings m'Dearios, for 'tis time to straddle your nadger and prepare to gallop across the bacon counter . . . yes, another Weekend FogBlog is upon us and in an unashamedly commercial manouevre, I am going to urge you all to purchase a copy of Ramblin' Syd Rumpo In Concert.

This album of greatness from the 1960's meant one thing in the Sheephouse household . . . Fun.

And yes that is Fun with a Capital F, because such is the genius of it, the sheer eloquence and power of the English language contained therein; the oppulence of innuendo and the mind-bendingly weird words quothed, that should you not laugh at all upon hearing it, you are officially dead.

Remember, this is the record that circa 1965 (as far as I can work out) gave the word GRUNGE to the English language .

It is one of the things that has made your Ol' Uncle Sheephouse who I am today, and I will "tether my nadgers to a grouting pole, because the old grey mare is a grungin' in the meadow" such is my pride at being associated with it.

    

(To the right of this page you'll find a 'Sheephouse Approved' item. I am sorry to put a blatant plug on something like FB, it is an experiment really . . . for the price of a pint in these parts, you can experience what I am talking about. Ignore the terrible, shameful cover, also I urge you to ignore Track 17 onwards, as they are just supposed vfm add-ons. Up to Track 15 you have the whole album and it is pure comedy Gold.)

Anyway, commercialism out of the way, basically the above had a huge influence on my love of language. I pinched my brother Chris's copy when I was about 8 and never looked back. At that tender age, I couldn't believe anything could ever be as funny, and you know for all the 'sophistication' you supposedly get as you get older, personally, there's still a wee boy happy to play this on a hand-me-down Dansette and listen to it again and again and again, laughing out loud the whole time.
There are still people in the world today who would consider Syd to be too risqué!
Really!
So I urge you to laugh in their faces before hitting them on the grommet with a wrought-iron splunger.

***

This aside into the well-tilled earth of childhood is a way of leading you into the main point of this FB. Basically, a myriad things make up you as a person, but one of the deepest (besides a knowledge of yourself) is a sense of place and it is something we as modern and mobile citizens of the 21st Century have almost lost.
Having lived for so long in a city (and truly being a country boy at heart) sense of place means more to me now than it ever has. It has led me in my photographic adventures to try and find small, quiet places that have a sense of depth to them. That depth of feeling from such places has become a substitute for a longing which entirely takes me back to living in an ancient old cottage in the middle of nowhere with my Mum and Dad. The cottage (and I'll give it its full original name - Three Wells Cottage) was on a site above a steep drop down a riverbank. There were three natural springs on the bank as well as a river and (to me) there was a feeling about the place that it had long been a stop-off point for thirsty travellers. The water from the springs was sweet and good and there were well-trodden paths down the steep incline. I was incredibly lucky - I had a riverbank of some 2 miles to play along, I could walk and talk (to myself) and above all watch and listen. That powerful solitude (and it was incredibly lonesome at times) formed a deep well-spring of feeling for nature within me which I have never lost.
Being city-bound though, it is difficult to fully experience the country life (to say the least!), but as they say, where there's a will there's a way, and in my own inquisitive way, I have discovered places both nearby and further away which sort of have that same quiet solitude to them.
Maybe you are fortunate enough to have discovered such places in your life. They are to you (in a way) secret. It could be a room where you can be alone or a small corner of a field, an old graveyard or a mountain, but wherever it is, it is yours (for a while). It feels good doesn't it!
(Now the following little bit will take us away and on a slightly circular path . . but don't worry fearless FB'ers . . we'll get back on the main path in a minute!)
It was quite the thing in our ancestors day to travel little further than the fields surrounding the village. Some daring souls risked the next town on a market day. Long treks were considered gruelling and dangerous and populations generally stabilised themselves to certain areas. Obviously this all changed with the advent of the Industrial Revolution, and though the said change was inevitable it wasn't necessarily for the better, because something was lost.
I've never read about anyone thinking this way before, but it's my opinion and I'd love to know what you think:
Back in the mid-1990's I started thinking about my ancestors* and how their lives might have been and I realised that with all the movements and upheavels of modern society something incredibly important has been lost to modern man - namely . . .wait for it . . . the hearth.
Now that to you dear reader will sound totally bonkers, but the use of the word hearth doesn't just encompass the actual physical fire-burning centre of homes for millenia, it has become in my mind a concept which encompasses home; the feeling of being at home; somewhere with a rich loam in which one can root one's soul; and, vitally, one's family. My hearth is my family: my wife and my son, they are where I want to be, but strangely and contrary to this too is the feeling that before I die I have to live once more in the countryside, which is where my true roots are. The countryside is also hearth to me.
So, whilst my family and I have to live in the city for work and education, when we escape the hamster wheel we go to quieter places.
One day, God willing, we will uproot ourselves from the city and find somewhere quiet and with a sunny aspect.
But for now, we have to make do and make the efforts to find places that are brimming with solitude.
Places that could be called hearth.

***

Having a love of hillwalking I have lugged photographic gear to many different places, some barren and wild with no trace of any feeling at all and then, some that are extraordinary.
One of these is below.

(My notebook says: "This is the weirdest most secret place on earth. Can't help feeling that in wading in, I violated it - there is a strong presence to the place that is haunting. I did say thank you though!")

I simply would love to tell you where this is, but you see dear reader I am being selfish, and I cannot. It is not far from where I live, but it is a convoluted journey. Wending your way along quiet and ever-narrowing lanes you really feel like you are heading into the depths of nowhere. The crazy thing is, it is a popular destination for visitors of a Vibram wearing persuasion**, and yet I wonder how many have actually seen the place like this.
I have visited it in all sorts of weather, from bright sun, to mist and slight snow, hard perma-frost, to high white cloud cover, and every time it has looked different. It is a very secret place. To me I can well imagine it being a spot where the spirits of nature were worshipped in ancient times - it simply has that feel to it. Being there in the early morning, and hearing the sound of rushing water, it is quite easy to be carried back millenia.
The photo was made with my beloved Rolleiflex in early October. I was knee deep in icy mountain water but I didn't care. The Rollei was on a tripod, and the tripod took days to dry out properly, but it was worth it. I had no towel with me so ended up removing my trousers and drying my feet on them!
I think the spirit of the place has been captured sufficiently on a humble roll of Ilford FP4+.
It is a full-frame photograph, no cropping and the FP4+ was rated at EI 64 and developed in 1:3 Ilford Perceptol.
I wish I could use FP4+ more often these days as it is an incredible film, and especially so with Perceptol.
The print is un-retouched and was made on Grade 2 Ilford Galerie, developed in Moersch Eco print developer.
WYSIWYG!


* Inspired by a marvellous short story from the Master . . Mr.Frank Herbert.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_GM_Effect
If all you've ever read by Frank is Dune and the billion awful follow-ups to the original genius novel then I highly recommend reading his other books!
** Hillwalkers