"I never see a photograph containing many persons in which they do not all look like a series of distinct figures, that won’t mass together, and this effect appears to me to be unavoidable … In photographing groups I should prefer to produce the figures singly, or by twos or threes, and combine them in printing afterwards, which can be done satisfactorily … without any violation of pictorial truth."
- Oscar Rejlander (From Daniel Novak’s “Realism, Photography, and Nineteenth-Century”)
(Source: garymcleod)
Play Fighting by Gary McLeod (2015)
Learning doesn’t occur without a fight or struggle. For Bruno Latour, the accumulation of knowledge was one-sided and shaped by the silencing of others. For Vilém Flusser, survival when facing the unknown relied upon creativity and dialogue with others. For me, as a foreigner negotiating the unknown daily, I am immersed in an accumulative process of learning alongside others. In doing so, my practice has expanded from an emphasis upon a single image to the collective gathering of multiple images experienced over time. This has not only created opportunities and room within my photographs for dialogue and collaboration with others, but it has also rendered my photographs permeable to their voices, allowing my process and its outcomes to be modified in unexpected ways.
This series of photographs is from “Cohorts”, an ongoing larger project to create a contemporary record of collaborations with university students. Produced as part of a workshop at Shizuoka University of Art and Culture, these six images were inspired by an Internet meme popular in Japanese High Schools, where students had photographed themselves in simulated acts of fighting inspired by anime and video games. In revisiting this meme, the participating students were given responsibility for key decisions (e.g. who to fight, which fighting-moves to use, who attacks and receives, etc.); those not fighting were invited to interact with and document the fighters with their own cameras. The students’ photographs were then woven into the reassembly of each picture, creating a contrast between the simulated fighting and the evidence of its making (e.g. out-takes, conversations, photographs of people photographing, photographs of me photographing, etc.).
At first glance, these pictures are of super-human students fighting to succeed. But a closer look reveals that they are also sites of shared creativity, play, idea exchange and co-learning, facilitated by an open approach to photography. While learning may not occur without a fight or struggle, these photographs suggest that it need not be experienced alone.
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(All images were produced in collaboration with: Mikaelle Bereber, Kohei Tajima, Asaka Isobe,
Mayumi Oishi, Michiru Takiguchi, Mayu Hoshino, Yuki Takeguchi, Mami
Shimozaki, Nozomi Eto, Miyoko Katsumo, Miyu Arata, Asuka Nakamura, Yuho
Asakura, Mikiko Yamada, and Nanami Nakaguro; and were made possible with
the help of Shizuoka University of Art and Culture)
Work in progress: Students at Shizuoka University of Art & Culture in Japan during a workshop I did in March 2015. Made from and in collaboration with the students. All © Gary McLeod 2015. Other imagery is used with permission.
Fascinating contrast in teaching strategies: Mark Klett (a rephotographer) suggests students carry a camera everywhere and at all times; Takashi Homma (a street photographer) suggests students replicate a previous image. From ’The Photographer’s Playbook’ ed. Jason Fulford & Gregory Halpern
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