Thoughts On Photography

Photographic dream # 16.

Tim Mills — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 07:51:54 +0000

Anna sends me a link to a photograph.
It is displayed on what looks like the layout of a Facebook page.
The image is of an empty beach, sweeping off to the horizon where a building akin to a castle stands proudly on top of a hill. The sky is dark and the clouds are thick.
Anna poses the question in the text box; ‘Have you been here before?’
It looks much like the Isles of Scilly, possibly Cromwell’s castle on Tresco, at the north west side of the island. If it is, then yes, I have.

Suddenly I am able to climb into the photograph and the scene goes from being static, two-dimensional, to real life.
The beach is now heavily populated and I am stood close to what I thought was a castle but is, in fact, the Duke of Cornwall Hotel in Plymouth.
In front of me are five men, around the age of 22, possibly Anna’s friends; I have never met them before. They each remove their clothes apart from their trousers and proceed to run into a very turbulent sea. They are not the only ones in the water; there are hundreds of people swimming in the surf although the temperature feels like that of winter.

I am then immediately transported back to another photograph, with again, a Facebook style layout.
The image before me presents four girls, one of them Anna who stands on the right hand side of the frame, I do not know the identities of the other three. They appear to be standing in a kitchen; the photo is tightly framed and made from a slightly higher vantage point than the participants. There is a window in the background with blinds reaching half way down and a range of potted plants upon the sill.
The photograph, as detailed in the ‘from the album’ section on the bottom right of the page, reveals that it is a French themed party and each of the girls have drawn elaborate moustaches in black pen upon their upper lip.

I am once again able to enter the photograph, but I am not in the kitchen. Instead I am outside, next to a car on a residential street, it is getting dark and the streetlights are on.
Lined up against a large wall are my cousins Oliver and Eleanor. We are saying goodbye to my friend Andrew’s grandfather; Bill, he hobbles over to wish us all in turn farewell.
My other cousin Sarah then invites Oliver and Eleanor to Bath, where she lives, and suggests they are welcome to visit whenever they would like, enthusiastically describing a typical weekend that could be spent in the city.
They agree to do this sometime.

Then I woke up.

‘Pecking Order’.

Tim Mills — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 10:53:24 +0000

I am interested primarily in documentary photography, or what documentary photography is, or whether ‘it’, whatever ‘it’ may be, can still be classified as such.
I am interested in subverting a subject through a number of levels of deconstruction and the take-away trays are I believe a useful starting point to this ongoing investigation and exploration.

Take-away trays are objects that are frequently spotted in any major metropolis. They are the consequence and the conclusion of an evening out. They are so common in Plymouth that they almost become invisible. The remaining contents of chips or a kebab form the staple diet of many sea and urban birds (Hearing Gulls, Black Back Gulls, Rooks, Feral Pigeons and Pied Wagtails) and they are to be discovered in abundance littered throughout Union Street, the main ‘entertainment district’ of Plymouth, particularly on Saturday and Sunday Mornings.

Instead of simply photographing these boxes in-situ, I decided, – since I have never made them before and with an understanding that graphically they could be of interest – to make photograms and therefore hark back to not only one of the most primitive forms of image making, but arguably one of the most objective means of image representation.
I liked the idea that I was taking something very unnatural – a polystyrene food tray – and making images that historically – take Anna Atkins as a useful reference – were produced using ferns, or leaves for horticultural studies.

I also enjoyed, in my own mind, imagining the seagulls consciously making specific shapes with clear artist determination and outcomes, much like Matt McCormick’s film ‘The Subconscious Art Of Graffiti Removal’; a spoof, ‘serious’ film, narrated by the serious and authoritative sounding Miranda July discussing how council cleaners in America were in fact producing abstract impressionist paintings when all they were doing was blocking out tawdry scrawls and tags.

Context is of key importance to my working practice, so too engaging an audience as wide as possible.
The photograms that were produced in the darkroom on 12×16 glossy paper were then enlarged to A0 and A1 and placed upon existing posters at the Palace Theatre in Union Street.

Their somewhat scruffy and not all together considered application (mainly through haste and fear of arrest) adds further levels of context and in some respects, the idea that these objects, the trays, are invisible, makes reference to the fact the Theatre is somewhat invisible and is being left to decline progressively, and it might be added, shamefully.

Indeed many of the feral pigeons responsible for the peck marks could well house themselves with in the building itself and therefore I have facilitated the pigeons to have their own work displayed upon their own walls.
I like this idea.

The following images are from the resulting series ‘Pecking Order’ showing 20 scans from the original photograms, together with the installation view of Union Street at the top of this post. Documentation of the book produced can be found in the ‘Books’ section.

Photographic dream # 9.

Tim Mills — Tue, 01 Nov 2011 11:53:02 +0000

I am at the opening of a group photographic exhibition, the specific location is unknown, yet the building itself is of seemingly modest size; rather narrow in width, yet its length extends far beyond my peripheral vision both left and right and it would appear for quite some distance, although this is unconfirmed.
The walls are painted off-white, the roof is a cross hatch of steel trusses punctuated with glass pains, it reminds me of the canopy at Bristol Temple Meads Railway Station, but on a much smaller scale.

I begin a conversation with Bret Rogers of The Photographers Gallery who compliments me on my sensitive and diligent choice regarding the size and content of my prints from the series Chat Roulette.
She specifically states that twenty-four inches wide is quite appropriate given the dimensions of the space and the cumulative number of works contained with in the show.
Although I can see the other photographs displayed, I can’t make out the content of the imagery. Neither am I aware of the theme that is supposed to be running though the exhibition.

Directly opposite my prints – that are displayed in a line at eye level, of which I think there are four – is a large bed that runs almost the length of the room. There are a number of people clustered together lying on their backs conversing, their legs raised at 45-degree angles with their feet pressed flat against the wall.
I pause for a moment, admire the scene before me, and make a photograph in my mind since this evening I am camera-less.

Bret and I chat away casually upon the bed before being joined by Jan Williams of The Caravan Gallery and, having met once before, we reacquaint ourselves with one another.
Bret and Jan then proceed to discuss the Chat Roulette series at some length while I patiently listen on taking mental notes of their discussion.
They conclude unanimously that Chat Roulette is a tremendous body of work and a highlight of the exhibition.

Then I woke up.

Fantom Photographic Quarterly.

Tim Mills — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 10:23:52 +0000

Fantom, with an F, is a new international publication about the uses and abuses of photography, compiled under the editorial direction of Selva Barni in Milan and Cay Sophie Rabinowitz in New York and published by Boiler Corporation in Italy.

Alongside essays and portfolios, Fantom divides itself into five sections that form the structure of the magazine for each issue, they are; Eye To Eye, Sample Size, By Appointment Only, Eye Of The Beholder and Means To An End.
Described by the editors as follows, Means To An End “surveys the unintentional surprises of purposeful image production, i.e. scientific, commercial, surveillance, documentary and the like. Herein the vernacular can take precedence over the artistic and visa versa depending on the value not of a discourse that comes after the image, but allowing pictures to lead the discussions”.

For the Means To An End section in issue Number 07, complementing photographic research by Arianne Di Nardo, I wrote a passage about ‘The Virtual Home’, describing architectural visualisations that promote an idealized, aspiration environment with in the hyper-real photographic realm.

I extend my sincere gratitude to the Fantom team in Milan and look forward in anticipation to the forthcoming issue 08.

The following layout images are courtesy of Fantom Photographic Quarterly/Boiler Corporation.

My Mum is a photographer; Dogs.

Tim Mills — Sat, 22 Oct 2011 12:25:25 +0000

My Mum was born in 1951 in Coventry. After High School she attended Stage School before venturing south to the warmer climes of Portugal in 1971 where she worked a variety jobs including assistant keeper at a monkey sanctuary.

It was in Lisbon that my Mum met my Dad and they returned to the U.K to marry in January 1974.

Nines months later they moved to Den Haag in Holland where my Mum commenced an apprenticeship at a poodle parlor in a rather notorious area of the city while my Dad worked as an engineer.

In 1978 they returned to England, specifically Cirencester, where my Mum developed and nurtured her successful dog grooming business, serving the needs and demands of both local and national dogs and their owners for over thirty years.

To commemorate her 60^th birthday in April I asked her to take before and after photographs of her regular clients, which I intend to compile into a small book in due course complete with a real dog coat cover, the first of its kind perhaps?

The photographs reveal the inherent ability of the camera to record and compare through accurate representation by aligning the before and after images side-by-side for immediate comparison and obvious difference through the passage of time.
In an article by Estelle Jussim titled The Eternal Moment: Photography and Time, published in Aperture in 1989, Ms Jussim draws attention to a sequence of photographs made by Robert Doisneau of a wedding party sat on a bench upon a raised platform: the image on the left shows the said wedding party, the image on the right shows the same scene emptied of people.
She notes;“The primary reason we ‘read’ this as “before and after” is that we read our written language from left to right, and therefore tend to read series of images in the same left-to-right sequence”. She goes on to say, “Readers of Hebrew, for example, or any other language read from right to left, might easily see the empty bench as the “before” and the wedding group portrait as the “after”. Perceptions of time sequence in photographic images may be as culture-derived as our written languages”.

Logic would suggest that the before and after dog photographs are precisely that; before and after. The dog arrives with shaggy, unkempt hair, and departs clipped and presentable. However, given that the photograph reveals little other than its surface content, it could imagined, reading from right to left, that the images were produced over a much longer period of time. That the “before” image was made upon the occasion that the dog was cropped and the “after” was made moments before its hair was removed once again, with a period of four or so months missing in-between.

Regardless of what cultural position the viewer takes, and their ability to suspend their disbelief, here are some of our favourites.

My dad is a photographer; Holes.

Tim Mills — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 11:50:31 +0000

My father was born in Prestwich, Manchester, on the 29th of February 1948. He is technically 15 3/4 years old.

He grew up and attended school in Birkenhead and later won a scholarship to study Mechanical Sciences at Cambridge University. He features in the 1966 Mensa Resister Volume 1 where his interests are listed as Science Fiction and Fantasy books, UFO’s, new bridge building designs and jigsaw puzzles.

During his 38 year career as a Civil and Structural Engineer – having spent time living and working in Germany, Holland, Portugal, South Korea and on-board a North Sea Oil Rig – he has amassed a vast archive of photographs of holes in the ground.
Many of these holes have been photographed on significant construction sites throughout the U.K, Europe and Asia and, with his assistance, I have begun the seemingly arduous task of collating these images. This may take longer than I anticipate as they are housed in multiple offices throughout the country.

In the meantime, the photographic panoramas with in this post are from a scrapbook he made documenting the construction of the Link Center in Swindon during 1983; note the lack of high visibility jackets or hard hats yet marvel at the appearance of a classic Ford Escort tradesman vehicle.

Stuff from a hard drive: FA Cup Final 2011.

Tim Mills — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 11:20:34 +0000

Recently, whilst compiling a set of pictures from the Contact Photography Festival for a friend in Toronto, I became reacquainted with a bulk of snaps (and films) made during the FA Cup Final between Manchester City and Stoke City.

Curiously, during the Festival I was staying on Dundas Street West four blocks along from Opera Bobs Public House; a bar home to the official Manchester City Supporters Club of Toronto and since football is just about the only thing I am interested in combined with the novelty of the occasion and venue, I naturally attended.
It was a great pleasure to witness City’s first major domestic trophy victory in 42 years surrounded by welcoming, friendly Canadian sports fans. The chap with the fantastic mustache holding a telephone aloft capturing key snaps even offered me his couch to sleep on in Mississauga whenever I deemed it necessary; thoroughly nice man with facial hair groomed like a true craftsman.

Unfortunately, my video is nothing compared to BillywithBlueballs and his truly wonderful documentary of the day; far, far superior to my feeble efforts. In fact don’t even bother to watch my film, just sit back and enjoy Billy’s instead. I am rather fond of the multiple self portraits/dramatic interventions. It is quite brilliant.

Nice moment, although mildly strange yet ultimately interesting, I make a guest appearance at 4:02 where I can be observed actively seeking more redundant images for the said hard drive.

Cameras In The Community Exhibition.

Tim Mills — Sun, 03 Apr 2011 09:13:23 +0000

Cameras in the Community at Plymouth Arts Centre was a contemporary photographic exhibition curated by Fotonow, a Plymouth based photographic organisation, working across the South West of England.

The exhibition revealed Fotonow’s mission to create opportunities in photography and facilitate socially motivated projects, and explored the documentation of communities through a variety of approaches to photographic practice.

The show featured The Free Photographic Omnibus by Daniel Meadows; The South West Graduate Prize with work by Teo Ormond-Skeaping, Celine Smith, Kirsty Gash, Sarah Jackson, Amelia Stewart and Kirsty Thomas; Camper Obscura (Jon Blyth and Matthew Pontin) in Devonport; ‘Fotobooth’ where audience members were invited to make their own portraits that uploaded immediately to Flickr and The Launderette Residencies by Jamie Webb and myself.

Alongside the three portraits (above), a documentary (below) of my time spent at Bubbles Launderette was projected, complementing Jamie’s ‘Floor Observations’ ‘Bags and Baskets’, ‘Literary Observations’ and ‘Window Gazing’ series.

The Laundry Room also included a selection of images by Tracey and Kelly from Bubbles Launderette; Tracey’s holiday in Las Vegas and the departure of Kelly’s Husband on-board HMS Cumberland, both events that took place during the residency.

The exhibition concluded with the Cameras in the Community symposium, which presented an opportunity to explore and reflect upon the photographer’s response to engaging with communities and the role of the archive in contemporary photographic practice. Daniel Meadows, Val Williams, Pete James, The Caravan Gallery and Fotonow all featured to examine the theme, with a panel discussion chaired by David Chandler.

Documentation of the show courtesy of Simon Keitch can be viewed here.

This never gets updated.

Tim Mills — Sat, 02 Apr 2011 23:51:18 +0000

A blog should be something, from what I can gather, that gets updated daily, perhaps twice a week, a few times a month may be, but nevertheless, regularly.

This is blog never gets updated, mainly due to my working commitments, of which there are many. Many.

However, these working commitments have been exciting, interesting and for the most part highly enjoyable and I shall endeavor to post retrospectively – presumably something a blog is not, a retrospective – examples of the said commitments when the opportunity to do so presents itself.

Two weeks ago I made a long overdue (very long overdue) visit to see Arianne Di Nardo, Editorial Assistant at Fantom Photographic Quarterly in Milan. To curb the boredom and my mild yet increasing anxiety of flying, I decided to occupy myself by drinking a vast quantity of water.

As soon as I boarded the Orio Shuttle Bus destined for Milan Central Station I realised I should have visited the bathroom beforehand at Bergamo Airport arrivals lounge.
The Shuttle did not have toilet facilities so in a bid to concentrate on anything other than relieving myself, I opted to photograph as many truck cabs as I could. The following are some of the more successful images. I accept that I would probably fail the ‘panning’ practical session of an A-Level photography course, which is fine.

For the record, the bathrooms at Milan Central Station can be found towards the rear of the building on the third floor, on the right hand side of the concourse when approached from the bus terminus. It is One Euro per visit and I was impressed with the cleanliness, the soap dispensers and the powerful hand dryers.

British Literary Greats.

Tim Mills — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 22:00:38 +0000

Tolkien, Orwell, Woolf, Kipling, Hardy, Shelley, Tennyson, Dickens, Austen. And…