The time has come for me to hang up the We English blog and move on to pastures new. I will periodically be updating the site with details of upcoming exhibitions, talks and events and you can follow my future projects over on my homepage here. The first of which will be The Election Project, where I will be documenting the British general election as the official Election Artist for the House of Commons. Why not get involved!
Thanks for joining me during the making of the work, I appreciate your collaboration and comments.
I’ll leave you with links to a few useful resources:
Download my commentary from We Englishhere or read an illustrated version on the blog here.
Download Professor Stephen Daniel’s essay from We English (The English Outdoors, May 2009) here.
The current edition of archive (March 2010 issue/ Volume 17), the quarterly publication by the National Media Museum, contains ‘In Conversation’ between myself, Professor Stephen Daniels from Nottingham University and Ruth Kitchin, Assistant Curator of Photographs, discussing We English in conjunction with photographs from the Museum’s Collection. The article is published in conjunction with the launch of my exhibitionat the Museum, alongside which we are exhibiting photographs from the National Media Museum’s Collection by a range of 19 th and 20th century photographers who have also been inspired to capture people and place. You can download a pdf of the article here.
Here is the second ‘film teaser’ from the National Media Museum in the run-up to the exhibition of We English (which opens at the Museum on 12th March). The film discusses my reasons for getting public participation in the project and was mostly shot last December on a couple of cold and windy day’s in and around Bradford (hence my bad hat and sometimes pained expression!), whilst I was producing the photograph for the Bradford commission.
If there are any you haven’t seen, why not check one or two out over the Christmas break? Rather than a re-run of The Great Escape or Gold Finger! Does anyone have any other suggestions?
Last night I watched the fabulous film, Sleep Furiously (2007) by Gideon Koppel, a documentary love-letter to Trefeurig, the Welsh farming community in Ceredigion where he grew up, and where his parents found refuge from Nazi Germany during the second world war. The film is a portrait of a landscape and population that is changing rapidly as the old ways and generation are dying out. It reminded me of the photographs of James Ravilious from rural Devon.
Here’s the trailer-
And watch a question and answer session with director Gideo Koppel from May 2009 here-
And read a review of the film by Peter Bradshaw in the Guardian.
I’ve just returned from Bradford where I was exploring the archives of the National Media Museum with the help of Ruth Kitchin Assistant, Curator of Photographs, and Brian Liddy, Curator of Collections Access (pictured). We were also joined by Stephen Daniels, Professor of Cultural Geography at Nottingham University (and author of the essay in We English). Ruth and I are curating an accompanying exhibition of photographs from the Museum’s collection that extend, and hopefully illuminate, my We English series, and will include works by the likes of Roger Fenton, Tony Ray-Jones and John Davies. More details to follow.
I received an unexpected gift before my talk at Host gallery last week. Fellow photographer John Wearing came up and presented me with a photograph that he’d taken after a Royal Photographic Society lecture that I’d attended back in October 1997. The photograph shows a keen young photographer -who’d recently moved to London to make his fortune – collaring the larger-than-life British photographer, Grace Robertson.
Robertson had just delivered a wonderfully inspiring lecture about her work and I was keen to meet her and hopefully show her some of my photographs (I sincerely hope that the cardboard folder under my arm wasn’t my portfolio of photographs!).
Robertson was a pioneering British photojournalists of the nineteen fifties and one of the few women to hold down a career in photojournalism at that time, and even then she found it necessary to work under the pseudonym Dick Muir. She was born in Scotland in 1930. After leaving school she looked after her mother who suffered from rheumatoid arthritis. Her father gave her a second-hand camera in 1949 and the following year she had a photo story about her sister doing her homework published in the famous magazinePicture Post.
She worked as a freelance photographer for Picture Post (1950-7) for eight years documenting Britain’s post-war life and was known for the humour, sympathy and female perspective that she brought to her work. On the magazine she joined many of the leading photographers of the era, including Bert Hardy, Kurt Hutton, and her future husband Thurston Hopkins.
As a woman working for Picture Post she tended to be given the ‘softer’ assignments, although one of her stories, on the birth of a baby, was killed for being ‘too bloody’ (wars, evidently, were not). She also worked as a freelance for Life magazine in the 1950s. She continued to photograph while working as a teacher in the 1960s and 1970s, and began painting in the 1980s.
Robertson received an OBE for services to photography and her prints are represented by The Photographers’ Gallery, details of which you can find here.
Thanks for the memories John, although I’m not sure I needed reminding of that haircut!
i notice that a first edition of The English at Home by Bill Brandt (Batsford Ltd, 1936), was recently sold by Somer Booksfor £345. A reasonable price when you consider thatHarper’s Books are currently offering a copy of this seminal photography book for $2500!
The English at Home was Brandt’s first published collection of photographs and provides a unique insight into the extremes of British society in the years immediately before the Second World War. In the mid-1930s such photo-journalism was very rare and the unsettling social questions raised by Brandt’s photographs rarely discussed. Brandt (1904 – 1983) became a regular contributor to Picture Post and Harper’s Bazaar and was famously commissioned by the Ministry of Information to photograph life in the London Underground bomb shelters during the Blitz.
Brandt’s The English at Home opens with a delightfully ‘English’ introduction by writer Raymond Mortimer-
“One of the pleasures of being English is to return to this country after a longish time abroad, especially if you come up the Solent in a liner. After the featureless American plains, the uncomfortable African deserts and the cruel mountains of Asia, the Isle of Wight looks unbelievably green and cost and neat, like something seen through the wrong end of a field-glass. Then comes Southampton, with policeman and postman looking touchingly Victorian, figures from the illustrated London News of seventy years ago; and custom-house officials, who may be ruthless but who at least are polite and have clean hands; and having bought a packet of Virginian cigarettes which you cannot get in Virginia, and Punch, and a cup of stewed station-tea, you subside into your railway-carriage and watch the hedges and steeples and bungalows rush by, murmuring half ironically, half affectionately, a line you learned at you first school – “This is my own, my native land!”
Brandt’s uncompromising style and eye for detail made him one of Britain’s most influential and internationally admired photographers of the 20th century his work influencing Robert Frank among others. He’s also cited as the grandfather of the British documentary photobook, and the proper context in which later work by Martin Parr, Chris Killip, Tony Ray-Jones and Paul Graham should be seen.
A celebration of “the English” or an expose of the country’s famously rigid class structure? This is the question David Levi-Strauss poses in his description of The English At Home in The Book of 101 Books. As Parr and Badger explain, having been raised on the continent, Brandt was something of an outsider in England. Despite his privileged background, though, he “managed to focus on the lower classes without the sense of condescension that frequently accompanied the Englishman investigating the lower order like an anthropologist examining a foreign tribe…. He photographed all classes with an unusual degree of sympathy, using the pages of his books to bring out stark contrasts…[that] were always pertinent and ha never quite been highlighted in this way before, or since. The images in The English At Home must have shocked readers who expected a cosy, conventional look at the old country.”
You can read a series of reviews and articles on the work of Bill Brandt here.
“I love processions – as humans, it’s almost part of our DNA to be instinctively attracted to big public events that bring us together. A good procession is in itself a public artwork: part self-portrait and part alternative reality.” Jeremy Deller
Jeremy Deller is in the news a lot lately promoting his new body of work, Procession, which will take place at the Manchester International Festival on July 5th. With participants drawn from across Greater Manchester, Procession represents what Deller describes as ‘northern social surrealism’, combining social clubs, special interest groups, popular music and invited individuals with traditional processional stalwarts such as Rose Queens and brass bands.
Given his current profile I thought it was about time I did post about this artist and his work.
Deller, was born in London in 1966 and studied art history at the Courtauld Institute of Art. Collaboration and participation are central to Deller’s work. As he explains, “A good collaboration is like going on a long journey without a map, never knowing quite where you will end up.” He acts as curator, producer or director of a broad range of projects, including orchestrated events, films and publications, which draw attention to forms of culture on the fringes of the mainstream or reveal hidden histories. He currently lives and works in London.
He is perhaps best-known for The Battle of Orgreave, ‘a piece of living history’ which was a commissioned by Artangel in 2001. This work brought together veteran miners and members of historical re-enactment societies who restaged the controversial clash between miners and the police during 1984-5. This collaboration resulted in a film, a book and an audio recording, which all ‘function to resurrect the raw emotions from the period and provide a fresh account of events that have been distorted by the media.’
Deller won the prestigious Turner prize in 2004, shortlisted for his installation Memory Bucket at ArtPace, San Antonio. The film uses documentary techniques to explore the state of Texas, focusing on two politically charged locations: the site of the Branch Davidian siege in Waco and President Bush’s home town of Crawford. Archive news footage is collaged with interviews, juxtaposing official reports with personal narratives. (You can find details of Deller’s prize winning entry on Tate Britain’s website here).
The project was filmed months after the US and UK invasion of Iraq and documents Deller’s travels in Texas which he talks to a variety of individuals, from staff in George Bush’s local diner in Crawford, to Quaker anti-war protesters. Deller has said “making that film made me realise that it was actually possible to talk to peple almost at random, and ask questions and get responses from them, and that a journey is a very good way to present or make an artwork.”
Deller has recently completed a new body of work in America, called ‘It is what it is, USA, 2009’. The work stems from a failed application to place the shell of a burnt-out car on the 4th Plinth in Trafalgar Square. The vehicle had been hit by a bomb attack in central Baghdad in which 35 people died. Instead he took the remains of the vehicle on a three-week road trip from New York to Los Angeles in a project co-sponsored by the public art group Creative Time. He was joined by Jonathan Harvey, a US soldier who served in Iraq; an Iraqi artist, Esam Pasha, who worked as a translator for the US army and now lives in the US; a curator from New York; a writer and a road manager. You can read an article by Esam Pasha in this month’s issue of The Art Newspaper here.
Jeremy Deller on a farm in Summertown, Tennessee for ‘It is what it is, USA, 2009’
Back on home soil, Deller has often explored the cultural and political heritage of Britain and it’s his work ‘Folk Archive’ with fellow artist Alan Kane, that was of most interest to me in connection with We English.
Kane and Deller took seven years to create the Folk Archive, (1998-2005),amassing a huge collection of vernacular artefacts froma cross Britian, from drawings and paintings to costumes and decorations. Among the 250 works are the detritus of political protests, car rallies, crop circles, clowns and office life. There are photos and footage of strange festivals and competitions where life becomes performance art, including the World Gurning Championships, and a festival of insults and horse skulls in South Wales, called Mari Lwyd.
Interviewed by Iain Aitch in The Guardian in 2005, Deller said “We are not looking for the most bizarre stuff ever produced. It is what surprises us, what we are not expecting to see. When you see an item that is a variation on something, maybe taking it further forward or sideways, that is what we like.”
“We were very conscious that stuff only exists in museums by accident,” says Kane. “No one was looking around at the time that stuff was produced. I think there is a slight discrepancy between being interested in folk art and wanting to maintain or propose that anything we selected will be maintained. It is just about shifting your vision slightly.”
The show was conceived out of love for popular art and abhorrence for the meaninglessness of the Millennium Dome. The last retrospective of British folk art took place at the Whitechapel in 1951, so they thought it was about time somebody attacked the subject. Kane and Deller considering the exhibits so unique, priceless or charged by their owners and locations as to be impractical and undesirable to keep together when not on show. (It was first exhibited at The Barbican in 2005).
The Folk Archive raises absorbing questions about British-ness. How do the strange events and visual ephemera of modern life create an image of a country’s psyche? What are the stories floating behind the glimpses of protest, anger, chaos and fun? Most importantly, how do these objects and images explain the motivation behind creativity? In fact, what makes this collection of photographs, videos and weird stuff so interesting is wondering why they exist at all.
You can listen to Deller in conversation with Guardian columnist and broadcaster, Jeremy Hardy (2004) here.
And listen to Deller talking at the Royal Society of Arts (2008) here.
Deller’s public event Procession will make its way along Deansgate in central Manchester at 2pm on Sunday 5 July 2009. Commissioned and produced by Manchester International Festival and Cornerhouse.
Start time – 2pm prompt and will last approximately 60 minutes. Route – Procession will start from the Castlefield end of Deansgate and will end at Manchester Cathedral. Click here to view a map of the route.
Today is Whitsun so what better way to celebrate than Philip Larkin’s beautiful poem, ‘The Whitsun Weddings’.
In the poem Philip Larkin describes his stopping-train journey through East Yorkshire from Paragon Station, Kingston upon Hull to Kings Cross, London on a hot and humid Whitsun Saturday afternoon in 1955. Larkin through his simple, yet elegant style divulges the details of a commonplace journey into a wonderful poem.
The Whitsun Weddings by Philip Larkin, 1958
That Whitsun, I was late getting away:
Not till about
One-twenty on the sunlit Saturday
Did my three-quarters-empty train pull out,
All windows down, all cushions hot, all sense
Of being in a hurry gone. We ran
Behind the backs of houses, crossed a street
Of blinding windscreens, smelt the fish-dock; thence
The river's level drifting breadth began,
Where sky and Lincolnshire and water meet.
All afternoon, through the tall heat that slept
For miles inland,
A slow and stopping curve southwards we kept.
Wide farms went by, short-shadowed cattle, and
Canals with floatings of industrial froth;
A hothouse flashed uniquely: hedges dipped
And rose: and now and then a smell of grass
Displaced the reek of buttoned carriage-cloth
Until the next town, new and nondescript,
Approached with acres of dismantled cars.
At first, I didn't notice what a noise
The weddings made
Each station that we stopped at: sun destroys
The interest of what's happening in the shade,
And down the long cool platforms whoops and skirls
I took for porters larking with the mails,
And went on reading. Once we started, though,
We passed them, grinning and pomaded, girls
In parodies of fashion, heels and veils,
All posed irresolutely, watching us go,
As if out on the end of an event
Waving goodbye
To something that survived it. Struck, I leant
More promptly out next time, more curiously,
And saw it all again in different terms:
The fathers with broad belts under their suits
And seamy foreheads; mothers loud and fat;
An uncle shouting smut; and then the perms,
The nylon gloves and jewellery-substitutes,
The lemons, mauves, and olive-ochres that
Marked off the girls unreally from the rest.
Yes, from cafés
And banquet-halls up yards, and bunting-dressed
Coach-party annexes, the wedding-days
Were coming to an end. All down the line
Fresh couples climbed aboard: the rest stood round;
The last confetti and advice were thrown,
And, as we moved, each face seemed to define
Just what it saw departing: children frowned
At something dull; fathers had never known
Success so huge and wholly farcical;
The women shared
The secret like a happy funeral;
While girls, gripping their handbags tighter, stared
At a religious wounding. Free at last,
And loaded with the sum of all they saw,
We hurried towards London, shuffling gouts of steam.
Now fields were building-plots, and poplars cast
Long shadows over major roads, and for
Some fifty minutes, that in time would seem
Just long enough to settle hats and say
I nearly died,
A dozen marriages got under way.
They watched the landscape, sitting side by side
- An Odeon went past, a cooling tower, And
someone running up to bowl - and none
Thought of the others they would never meet
Or how their lives would all contain this hour.
I thought of London spread out in the sun,
Its postal districts packed like squares of wheat:
There we were aimed. And as we raced across
Bright knots of rail
Past standing Pullmans, walls of blackened moss
Came close, and it was nearly done, this frail
Travelling coincidence; and what it held
stood ready to be loosed with all the power
That being changed can give. We slowed again,
And as the tightened brakes took hold, there swelled
A sense of falling, like an arrow-shower
Sent out of sight, somewhere becoming rain.
You can hear an audio clip of him reading the poem here.
In 1981, more than a quarter of a century after writing ‘The Whitsun Weddings’, Larkin recalls the genius of his poem-
“I caught a very slow train that stopped at every station and I hadn’t realised that, of course, this was the train that all the wedding couples would get on and go to London for their honeymoon: it was an eye-opener to me. Every part was different but the same somehow. They all looked different but they were all doing the same things and sort of feeling the same things. I suppose the train stopped at about four, five, six stations between Hull and London and there was a sense of gathering emotional momentum. Every time you stopped fresh emotion climbed aboard. And finally between Peterborough and London when you hurtle on, you felt the whole thing was being aimed like a bullet – at the heart of things, you know. All this fresh, open life. Incredible experience. I’ve never forgotten it.”
Maidstone Young Bird National Pigeon Race, Maidstone, Kent, 13th September 2008 © Simon Roberts/We English
