iPhone pictures - Summer 2022
Part of my practice has been to take snapshots with my iPhone when I don't have another camera with me. I think of these as visual notes but they also serve to sharpen my visual awareness and ability to keep noticing my surroundings.
Dulwich photoshoot
This was an exercise in shooting a roll of (black and white) film over a limited period of time in a single location. I'm really interested in the way that constraints like this can help to focus my efforts and maybe even intensify my looking. The dérive is a similar strategy. This walk was less linear than a dérive, taking place in a more confined area and involving moving past the same subjects repeatedly.
Steffi Klenz exhibition at Sid Motion Gallery
I enjoyed the combination of photographs, drawing, sculpture and installation in this exhibition. It was interesting to be surrounded by the art and to have a constantly altering viewpoint. The wooden structures helped to frame the view and the marble and glass elements reached out into the room, like architectural structures. I'm interested in the potential of installation as a way to present my own pictures.
The embodied experience of the photographic installation has a potential that we rarely exploit to produce tangible, sensory knowledge, and an the expansion of photographic images, as enlargement, as physical object, and here as installation, show two sides to the photograph: a process where the image moves from the reduction of capture to the production of encounter.
-- Duncan Wooldridge from the accompanying exhibition text
Milton Avery exhibition at The Royal Academy
I visited this show on a whim one day after I'd dropped off some film to be developed and scanned. I really enjoyed the artist's use of harmonious colour combinations and the increasingly abstracted nature of his pictures. I liked the flatness of the images, especially in the last of the three rooms. Each element in the image seemed to have its own importance, as if nothing was superfluous or unnecessary.
I try to construct a picture in which shapes, spaces, colours, form a set of unique relationships, independent of any subject matter. At the same time I try to capture and translate the excitement and emotion aroused in me by the impact with the original idea.
-- Milton Avery
This quotation articulates something I feel when I take a photograph. The process of making the image is always exciting. The initial recognition of a potential image is followed by the act of framing the view, adjusting the settings on the camera and clicking the shutter. All of this is a physical pleasure but it's accompanied by a kind of intellectual and/or emotional engagement - what Avery calls an idea. This idea doesn't exist in words. It is inchoate - an instinct. The photograph is the location where all of these impulses meet. One of the pleasures of shooting film (rather than making a digital image) is the gap between taking the picture and seeing it developed. For me, this is usually a week or more since I rely on commercial labs. Therefore, when I see the pictures (as scans) on my computer, a space has emerged between the excitement I felt when I took the clicked the shutter and the pleasure (always mixed with varying levels of disappointment) of seeing the resulting image. A successful photograph, for me therefore, is one which is able to "translate the excitement and emotion aroused in me by the impact with the original idea."
Paul Auster's novels
I have been listening to some of Paul Auster's novels as audiobooks. The experience of listening to someone else read a book I've read before has been interesting. In 4321, one of the four heroes has an ambition to 'combine the strange with the familiar: [...] to observe the world as closely as the most dedicated realist and yet to create a way of seeing the world through a different, slightly distorting lens.' Auster's style embraces what might be called ordinary language and the story takes precedence over literary description. There is a paired down quality to the writing but you have the sense that there are big ideas swirling beneath the surface, a kind of philosophical speculation grounded in experience. Auster seems interested in coincidence, loneliness, the sudden, life-changing inheritances and their subsequent, slow loss, the road trip and American history. His characters often make unusual choices and have to deal with their consequences. This often leads them to reflect on the strangeness of life and the narratives we invent to explain our existence. What makes a life make sense? Disaster never seems far away but miraculous gifts are also a possibility. We like to believe we are in control of our lives but Auster seems to suggest that this is an illusion and that we use stories to turn chaos into some kind of order.
I like what Auster says about the business of writing:
I really, truly believe that writing comes out of the body; of course, the mind is working as well, but it's a double thing and that doubleness is united. I mean, you can't separate persona from psyche; you just can't do it.
-- Paul Auster
TUC March photoshoot
I don't often photograph people on the street, partly because I'm troubled by the imbalance of power between photographer and subject and the related issues of privacy and consent. However, a demonstration like this is intended as a kind of public performance. I therefore felt that taking photographs of the participants was ethically sound since they wanted to communicate a message to politicians and the general public and I could help to share this via social media. I also supported their campaign so I very much felt that I was on their side. I stood close to the beginning of the march at the top of Regent Street and waited for the various sections to pass by. Occasionally, I moved into the centre of the crowd. There were lots of other (press) photographers there so everyone seemed pleased to have their picture taken, some even posing deliberately or slowing down to help me. I was really impressed by the creativity, commitment and energy of the marchers. There were some brilliant home-made signs. Unfortunately, I failed to get an image of my favourite slogan:
So much wrong. So little cardboard!
-- TUC march placard
PRIDE photoshoot
I happened to be near Covent Garden when I remembered that the PRIDE parade and celebrations were taking place nearby. It was getting late and I didn't have a lot of time but these are the images that I was able to make, using an old rangefinder camera and colour film. Like the TUC march (above), I felt very comfortable taking pictures of strangers on the street because the purpose of the event was a very public celebration of the participants' lifestyle choices and identities.
In the case of both these photoshoots, I really like the way the camera is able to flatten complex subjects with multiple points of interest across the picture surface. I don't tend to make pictures like this very often, since I'm often drawn to a particular object or single point of interest. However, I'd like to experiment a little more with these all-over compositions so that the viewer is encouraged to move their eyes across the picture.
London Summer photos
This is a collection of pictures, all shot on film, during various summer walks in London. They are not as structured as either the dérives or the single location photoshoot (in Dulwich) above. They were made with a variety of cameras and film stocks and form a kind of visual diary of a particular period of moving through and looking at the city.
Planet Street (Carrer del Planeta), Barcelona
COVID-19 and the various restrictions on travel had disrupted two planned trips to Barcelona. This summer I managed to complete the journey and, by a happy coincidence, ended up staying in an apartment on the Carrer del Planeta (Planet Street) which runs across the north side of the Plaça de Sol (Square of the Sun). Thinking about photography's relationship to light and its role in helping to capture images of distant objects, it seemed like a good idea to make a series of photographs along the street and in the neighbourhood, exploring the play of light on its various surfaces.
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Itala Calvino's Mr PalomarI chose to take this book on my trip for two reasons:
A stone, a figure, a sign, a word reaching us isolated from its context is only that stone, figure, sign, or word: we can try to define them, to describe them as they are, and no more than that; whether, beside the face they show us, they also have a hidden face, is not for us to know. The refusal to comprehend more than what the stones show us is perhaps the only way to evince respect for their secret; trying to guess is a presumption, a betrayal of that true, lost meaning. |
I debate whether to take a film or digital camera. I was a bit concerned that the airport scanners might damage my film so I decided to shoot digitally. However, I wanted to retain the feeling of photographing with a manual film camera. I therefore committed to only taking one image of each subject (as far as possible) and to use the manual settings on the camera. This would force me to slow down, look more carefully and decide whether the subject I'd chosen was really worth it. I tried to imagine that each exposure was costing me about £1 (the approximate cost of each film photo). This helped me concentrate and be more selective, rather than snapping away in the hope of capturing something interesting. Having returned from the six day trip, I edited the pictures in Adobe Lightroom, creating my own preset. I decided to convert some of the images to black and white since I would have taken both colour and black and white film on the trip. I tried to approximate the look of Kodak Portra 160 and 400 and Ilford XP2 Super 400 when creating the presets and doing the subsequent colour grading.
Editing & Sequencing
In order to make some sense of this collection of images I have experimented with various sequencing strategies. Here are some attempts:
Sequence #1: OOOO
Sequence #2: Materials de Construccio
Sequence #3: Defensem La Publica!
Sequence #4: The Space Between
Instagram sequences
I have used Instagram to try out other versions of these sequences. Here is a screen recording of two example posts:
Triptychs & Diptychs
Occasionally, I decided to make make more than one image of the same subject, creating potential diptychs and triptychs. Here are some examples:
Here are examples of images which seems to resonate together for different reasons:
EXHIBITIONS IN BARCELONA
Goshka Macuga at Antoni Tàpies Foundation
I enjoyed Macuga's reseatch-based, interdisciplinary work in an exhibition entitled In Flux at the Antoni Tàpies Foundation. Macuga uses photography, mixed media, tapestries, sculpture and installation to interrogate institutional archives with a focus on issues of civil liberties and resistance to oppression.
Cinthia Marcelle and Teresa Lanceta at MACBA
Conthia Marcelle's A Conjunction of Factors at MACBA was an intriguing exhibition combining installations, photographs and films.
Across her practice, similar gestures are performed on radically different scales. Materials change shape, travelling across installations, photographs and moving images. Motifs recur in different configurations. Series of works do not begin and end, but recede and emerge, and may be shown together or held in reserve like a pack of cards to be played in a game of association.
-- MACBA website
I enjoyed Marcelle's collaborations with local people who perform for the camera - a brass band marching backwards and forwards on a crossroad, construction workers posing with various materials and a woman blending into an urban landscape. The large scale installation is shown here being constructed from a kit of parts:
I also enjoyed the Teresa Lanceta show in the upstairs galleries, particularly the massive installation of suspended canvas tapestries:
Miró: His Most Intimate Legacy
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Beda y Rosa and Resonances at KBr (Foundation MAPFRE)
The María Bleda and Jose María Rosa (Bleda y Rosa) retrospective at KBr was an immersive experience. Numerous screens displayed a variety of their photo series. Visitors could see several screens at once. The work explores "the connections between image, place and memory through rigorous and profound visual investigation." It was interesting looking at large, projected photographs in a dark space rather than printed images in white walls. I really enjoyed the formal rigour of the images.
The Resonances show described itself as an 'experimental manifesto', exploring the ways in which historical photographs by famous American practitioners might still resonate with contemporary images. The older photographers represented were Lee Friedlander, Garry Winogrand, Diane Arbus, Emmet Gowin, Helen Lewitt, and Robert Adams. A small selection of work by each of them was compared with work by Paolo Cirio, Juana Gost, Kurt Caviezel, Jon Rafman, Joachim Schmid and Miguel Ángel Tornero
Helen Almeida and Chema Madoz at Foto Colectiana
Inhabited designs builds upon resonances between the works of two of the first authors to form part of the Foto Colectania collection, revealing their personal approach to the creative process. The title of the exhibition pays homage to Helena Almeida’s Desenho habitado, the first series in which she used photography. We also drew upon the original concept of design in its Renaissance meaning, which refers both to the drawing itself as well as to the project and the mental process of translating an artist’s idea into work. A practice that accurately defines the fascinating work of these artists.
ARTIST RESEARCH
Kristian Häggblom - Brunswick Surfaces, 2017
Brunswick Surfaces is a photographic exploration of the iconic inner-city suburb of Melbourne and is a personal ethnographic study that looks to the surfaces, and often micro details, of the urban environment to understand contemporary relevance and conflict. The project is inspired by American photographer Stephen Shore’s iconic American Surfaces and is made through combined analytic discussion and joint psychogeographical wanderings within Brunswick’s borders with my infamous colleague Paul Batt.
-- Kristian Häggblom website
I'm interested in the use of photography as a tool for exploring (and seeing otherwise) a familiar environment. I like the intensity of Häggblom's concentration on a particular feature of the environment, the close framing and restricted colour palette.
Jeff Wall - View from an Apartment, 2004/5
The writer (and photographer) David Campany recently posted on Instagram that he had seen this image by Jeff Wall in an exhibition at Dulwich Picture Gallery. To illustrate his point about questions of narrative in the picture, he posted a sequence of close-ups. The picture is quite large and exhibited in a light box, so the viewer in the exhibition is able to easily peruse the details in this way, imagining the lives of these people on this space. Interestingly, Wall constructs these scenes with actors and props, recalling a memory of something he has seen in the world. The photograph therefore occupies a grey area between fact and fiction.
Stephen Shore - Church Street and Second Street, Easton, Pennsylvania, June 20, 1974
In his recent autobiographical book 'Modern Instances', Stephen Shore writes about one of the first times he used an 8x10 camera. He took this image which made him realise that he could "notice the details, like the boy in the window with his breath on the glass, and not have to move closer to emphasise them."
A Closer Look
One or two of the Barcelona pictures were taken from further away from the subject than my usual practice. I decided to explore some of them to see what I could discover if I looked more closely. I chose this image to begin because it included lots of different subject matter. I opened the picture in Photoshop and panned across its surface zoomed in, stopping whenever I noticed an interesting detail to select a square section.
I have arranged the resulting sections in a sequence which suggests a visual journey across the picture. It begins and ends with the figure making a phone call. I'm interested in the way that a camera 'sees' the world compared to the human eye. A still photograph freezes a moment in time, enabling a viewer to interrogate the resulting image in intense detail, seeing things that the photographer could not have noticed. Modern digital cameras are able to capture a lot of information on their large sensors, making possible this kind of exploration.
Here are a couple of other examples:
Three books about seeing differently:
I found a second hand copy of the Alvarez Bravo book in Oxfam. The reproductions are beautiful and the book contains an interesting (and tetchy) discussion between several 'experts' about particular images. I like the ambiguity of his pictures, what some commentators call 'poetic'. The introduction praises his ability to draw the viewer into the "very act of viewing."
I saw the Sophie Howarth book recommended by someone I follow on Instagram. It's not the sort of book I would usually read, but I was intrigued by the idea that photographing could be viewed as a mindful activity. I certainly believe that it has a positive effect on my mental health, because it keeps me in the moment and helps me to appreciate the small details of everyday life. The book is structured in chapters with the following titles: Clarity, Curiosity, Devotion, Confidence, Humility, Cultural Mindfulness, Gratitude, Receptiveness, Ambiguity, Playfulness, Perseverance, Compassion, Honesty, Acceptance, Generosity, Impermanence. I enjoyed the many wise words of advice from various photographers, including these from Thomas Merton: |
If one reaches the point where understanding fails this is not a tragedy: it is simply a reminder to stop thinking and start looking. Perhaps there is nothing to figure out after all: perhaps we only need to wake up.
Doubletake. A comparative Look at Photographs
Richard Whelan's book presents several examples of photographers choosing to make images of similar or identical subjects. The introduction explores this notion of the double in terms of the nature of photography. Whelan argues that photographs can be considered both evidential (if unreliable) documents and works of art. Photographs are both objective and subjective, referring to their "split personality". Borrowing a phrase from John Szarkowski, photographs are both mirrors and windows. Photographs are half found and half created. Photographs stimulate both the conscious and subconscious mind. My favourite passage deals with the issue of what the photographer sees at the moment of exposure versus what is actually contained in the image:
Although most people assume that photographs record precisely what the photographer sees at the moment he presses the shutter button of his camera, the truth of the matter is that the photographer himself cannot fully know what his photograph will look like until he has developed the negative and made a satisfactory print of it [...] The total effect of the variations between the way the naked eye sees and scene and the way the camera records it is so unpredictable that a considerable element of what appears to be chance enters into every act of photographing. |
The author continues to reference the "Uncertainty Principle" of nuclear physics and C. J. Jung's notion of "synchronicity" as it relates to the Chinese I Ching.
it takes the coincidence of events in space and time as meaning something more than chance, namely, a peculiar interdependence of objective events among themselves as well as with the subjective (psychic) states of the observer or observers
-- C. J. Jung
Unlike painters, argues Whelan, photographers cannot be in total control of everything that ends up in their pictures. The photographer may compose an image so that everything seems related to everything else but the picture will always contain numerous details which s/he did not consciously see. Some elements are selected and some are unexpected.
If we accept the claim that everything that occurs within an observed moment is somehow related, then the very act of recording these apparently random occurrences is a photograph endows them with meaning [...] By revealing order within even what appear to be randomly framed views, photographs can give us a unique glimpse of the inexorable logic of nature, of life, of the world.
-- Richard Whelan
A Closer Look (Part 2)
This image was shot on 35mm colour film and scanned by a commercial lab. When I clicked the shutter, I was drawn to the central figure in black who had stopped to light a cigarette. It was a hot day and he seemed to be dressed unusually, all in black with shiny trousers and boots. I edited the file in Lightroom and Photoshop before zooming in to select square sections of the image - details that interested me as I scrolled across its surface. I certainly didn't notice all these details at the moment of exposure. I really like the way that the camera has 'noticed' all these things.
I only wanted Uncle Vernon standing by his own car (a Hudson) on a clear day, I got him and the car. I also got a bit of Aunt Mary’s laundry and Beau Jack, the dog, peeing on the fence, and a row of potted tuberous begonias on the porch and 78 trees and a million pebbles in the driveway and more. It’s a generous medium, photography.
-- Lee Friedlander
Paste Table Gallery Group Show - Saturday 13th August 2022, Tension Fine Art gallery, Penge SE20
"Established by Nick Cash in 2008, Paste Table Gallery is a peripatetic micro gallery dedicated to showing analogue collage, a mini ‘white cube’ with white pegboard walls and grey ‘floor’. PTG show an eclectic mix of collage from the purely figurative to totally abstract, eschewing the digital flatness and neatness of computer generated work. In analogue collage a topography is created by the hand and the mind of the artist through the process of cutting, gluing and assembling."
-- @tensionfineart Instagram post
-- @tensionfineart Instagram post
I really enjoyed this small show and Nick's paste table gallery which displayed work from his collection. I enjoyed the wildly divergent scale of the work, from tiny A5 collages to wall-sized installations. Most of the work was 3D and paper based but other materials and forms were present including Nick's own sculptural collage (seen on the paste table above) and Alison Aye's textile collage. The folding paste table might be a really interesting way to display photographs and could mean that the gallery could be moved and set up in a variety of locations.
I walk toward the sun which is always going downThis book, by Alan Huck, combines text and photographs in a really engaging way. The author/photographer explores a period of time living in New Mexico. His practice involves daily walks during which, presumably, he makes notes about what he sees and takes photographs. This becomes a way of thinking about place, belonging, geography and identity. He references other writers who have dealt with related topics, such as George Perec attempting to describe every minor detail of a square in Paris or Varleria Luiselli questioning the role of the flâneur. The pictures and texts create an interesting visual rhythm and are surrounded by plenty of white space. Sometimes there is a clear parallel between words and images. At other times, the relationship is more ambiguous. Much of the writing is about the practice of walking, thinking and observing. Huck is aware that his ability to walk freely across the city and its various landscapes is a privilege not shared by everyone:
I recognise that I'm among the fortunate in that walking, for me, is not always a necessity, and that I'm able to move freely across the city with relative impunity. It's a privilege that not everyone is afforded, augmented by the fact that I'm only a visitor here. Reading this caused me to reflect on my experience of walking through Barcelona (and London). I must remember that walking, making photographs and tourism are not neutral activities but an index of power and privilege.
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Here, Alan Huck talks us through his choices, intentions and inspirations:
How to Win at Photography: Image as Play - The Photographers' Gallery
This seemed like a very contemporary survey about photography culture in the age of the Internet, social media and video games, although there were images from an earlier period (like those by Claude Cahun and Cindy Sherman) which seemed to anticipate some of the themes, particularly issues around gender identity and performance. I didn't really understand some of the work although I can see that interactivity and virtuality are key issues for some artists. I like the idea of play but I felt that the emphasis on technology overlooked some of the more exciting aspects of play in relation to photography. Also, the title 'How to Win at Photography' suggested a sort of competition which I found a bit unappealing. The cyanotypes of digital images were quite witty.
I enjoyed the parallel exhibition about The Partisan Coffee House which included lots of interesting documents from a time in which young people really felt that they could make a difference through culture and in politics.
An emerging idea ... a double thing
Looking back through my summer research I notice the theme of the double emerging. Paul Auster refers to the impossibility of disconnecting the persona from the psyche because writing is both a physical and a mental activity:
it's a double thing and that doubleness is united
In a similar way, making a photograph involves both cognition and physical action. The photograph might be considered a physical/digital persona (a projection of the photographer's psyche). Photographers see a world full of things and select parts of it. The camera lens 'sees' everything, unlike the photographer whose vision is partial, prejudiced and particular.
When we view a photograph, what we perceive with our eyes in the present is the visible echo of something that no longer exists. Something similar occurs when we look at a star like the sun, (tra albe e tramonti - between dawns and dusks), whose light always and necessarily reaches us after a delay; most often after it has already been burned out for millions of years. And so perhaps the photographic image does not reveal the succession but rather the relationship of coexistence between past and present. The photograph is simply the point of transition - or, as Luigi hoped, of equilibrium - between inside and outside, invisible and visible, between that which is excluded and that which is included in the framing of the shot, between personal memory and history between microscopic and macroscopic.
— Adele Ghirri from Puglia. Tra albe e tramonti by Luigi Ghirri
Doubleness is integral to the practice of photography. These binaries can sometimes be in opposition to one another but can also be held in balance:
macro/telephoto |
nature/culture |
in/out of focus |
black & white/colour |
studio/street |
insider/outsider |
behind/in front of the camera |
highlights/shadows |
snapshot/long exposure |
truth/fiction |
control/chance |
I like the idea, explored in Richard Whelan's book Double Take (above), that there is a fundamental difference between what the human eye (of the photographer) sees at the moment of exposure and what the camera eye 'sees'. This is revealed some time afterwards when the photographer is able to take a long, lingering look at the resulting images, either on screen or as physical prints. The camera lens will have 'seen' everything, indiscriminately, and details in the image may be revealed to the photographer as if for the first time. The phrase "double take" captures this sense of looking again.
Displaying (and shooting) images as diptychs suggests a different kind of doubling. This is perhaps more obviously visual and less about the psychological doubleness that interests me. However, two pictures of the same event that reveal the passage of time or a change of perspective, as in John MacLean's book Two and Two, might be an interesting thing to pursue.
Displaying (and shooting) images as diptychs suggests a different kind of doubling. This is perhaps more obviously visual and less about the psychological doubleness that interests me. However, two pictures of the same event that reveal the passage of time or a change of perspective, as in John MacLean's book Two and Two, might be an interesting thing to pursue.
Convalescence
Towards the end of the summer holiday I had a small operation and spent a couple of weeks recuperating. I was encouraged to move around as much as I could but, in reality, this meant walking up and down the garden. I decided to photograph the planes using a long lens. I was surprised by the variety of planes (and helicopters), the different flight paths and distances from the house.
Far Away
Close Up
As I got a bit stronger I was able to take a walk down the road. The dry weather had turned a lot of plants brown and there was a sense of the summer nearing its end. The trees were shedding their leaves as if it was already Autumn. I was eventually drawn to the leaves (and other materials) that were tangled in the chain link fence bordering the football pitches. I used a 60mm macro lens to achieve a shallow depth of focus. I felt as though I was back down to earth after staring so long up at the clouds. It struck me that these pictures might be similar to the planes - objects suspended against a pale background. If the planes pictures suggest the idea of adventure or freedom, the leaves pictures speak about decay, frailty and change.
Here are three examples of diptychs made with the planes and leaves pictures:
A strange transformation
The new park not far from where I live has a small lake, part of the water-management system for the estate. The hot weather has caused promoted the growth of surface algae, creating a green skin where the water is stagnant. I tried to photograph this phenomenon by walking around the perimeter of the lake and taking pictures that slowly reveal the green surface through the vegetation.
I'm not really sure why but the green lake reminded me of the film The Boy With the Green Hair. It's a bizarre film about a boy who wakes up one morning to find his hair has turned green. He is a war orphan and he is told by some ghostly children in a forest that his hair is to remind everyone that "war is very bad for children." I suppose the lake suddenly becoming green made me think about another unusual transformation. It also happened to be Ukraine Independence Day and the 6 month anniversary of the start of the war with Russia. War is still very bad for children.
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Klara and the BombThis new book by Crystal Bennes deals with several interconnected subjects: the development of supercomputers; nuclear weaponry; colonialism and the problematic role of women in each of these arenas. The story revolves around Klara Von Neumann who was married to the more famous John Von Neumann, nuclear scientist and mathematician. Bennes' detective work uncovers the previously untold story of Klara's close association with nuclear technologies and, in the process, raises important questions about the seeming lack of ethical oversight or any sense in which the efforts to promote America's power and influence in the Cold War might have devastating consequences for the inhabitants of the Marshall Islands, where the various bombs were tested.
One detail that captured my attention was a reference to the Monte Carlo simulations. These were used to test the probable behaviour of neutrons in nuclear fission (something impossible to do through experimentation).
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It seems that the method was 'discovered' by mathematician Stan Ulam whilst convalescing in hospital from encephalitis:
The idea for what was later called the Monte Carlo method occurred to me when I was playing solitaire during my illness. I noticed that it may be much more practical to get an idea of the probability of the successful outcome of a solitaire game by laying down the cards, or experimenting with the process and merely noticing what proportion comes out successfully, rather than try to compute all the combinatorial possibilities, which are an exponentially increasing number so great that, except in very elementary cases, there is no way to estimate it [...] In a sufficiently complicated problem, actual sampling is better than an examination of all the chains of possibilities.
-- Stan Ulam, quoted by Crystal Bennes in Klara and the Bomb, p. 199
Chance-based sequencing experiment
I enjoyed the idea that the Monte Carlo method was 'invented' during a period of convalescence. It reminded me of the idea of play from the exhibition at The Photographers' Gallery and it occurred to me that I could create my own set of playing cards using the pictures I took in Barcelona so that I could then use a game like Solitaire to help sequence them, using chance. A quick look online revealed that it was possible to design my own cards. Here's a screenshot of the site I chose. The process was simple and I managed to order a set.
My plan was to experiment with various ways to sequence these 52 pictures using Solitaire. I would then play the game with the number side up, obviously, but then, once the game was complete, I could reveal the images beneath and retain the sequence represented in each column of pictures. Alternatively, I could turn over all the cards and sequence the pictures based on the corresponding rows.
Barcelona Solitaire
When the cards arrived, I set about experimenting with games of solitaire. I thought it might be fun to video a game and resulting sequencing of images. Here's the result. I may continue to experiment with how the game could inform future sequences of images. This method definitely produced some unexpected sequences and correspondences that I would have never considered otherwise.