A DOUBLE THING:
Between this and that
Jon Nicholls
A-level Photography
Thomas Tallis School
2022-23
A-level Photography
Thomas Tallis School
2022-23
What causes me to want to stop, lift the camera to my eye, point it at the world and make a photograph? How does the act of making this photograph connect me to the world? In what ways can we understand photographs as points of transition between this and that?
The work of Italian photographer Guido Guidi is important to me because it represents a particular way of looking at the world with a camera. Guidi’s gaze is concentrated, careful and curious. He is drawn to everyday scenes, the mundane.
The work of Italian photographer Guido Guidi is important to me because it represents a particular way of looking at the world with a camera. Guidi’s gaze is concentrated, careful and curious. He is drawn to everyday scenes, the mundane.
I was interested in everything: the portrait of a person, of a house, of a wall…. Nothing was unimportant; everything was worthy of attention. |
This image (Fig. 1) of a suburban field, apartment block, farmhouse and electricity pylon is a case in point. There is nothing dramatic or newsworthy here. The title indicates that we are in Venice, but this isn’t the Venice of gondolas and waterfront Renaissance palaces. We are on the outskirts of the city, at the edges, in the liminal zone between city and countryside. What can we see?
Our view is interrupted by a tall cylindrical object in the foreground - a telegraph pole or street light perhaps. This idea of modern infrastructure is echoed by the metal and concrete object on the far right. Our eyes have moved from the pole to the pylon across an unmowed patch of grass. Dandelions are growing and the sun is strong. Deep shadows indicate that this is either early morning or late afternoon. There are no people about. From the pylon, my eyes are drawn to the base of a nearby tree and on, past the old farmhouse wall to a more distant tree. The wall beyond directs my gaze towards the left of the picture, to the apartment building and two small planters containing twiggy shrubs. I am then drawn back to the pole. The viewer’s eye is taken on a journey, perhaps analogous to that of the photographer as he composed his image in the ground glass of the view camera. Of course, Guidi would have seen the image reversed (upside down and back to front) and so this scene might have appeared even more abstract to him.
Guidi’s practice involves travelling across the Italian countryside, along well-worn suburban roads, looking for suitable subjects. He uses a large format view camera which is cumbersome and time-consuming. Taking time to stop and look, to set up the equipment and compose the shot, are central to his way of working:
Our view is interrupted by a tall cylindrical object in the foreground - a telegraph pole or street light perhaps. This idea of modern infrastructure is echoed by the metal and concrete object on the far right. Our eyes have moved from the pole to the pylon across an unmowed patch of grass. Dandelions are growing and the sun is strong. Deep shadows indicate that this is either early morning or late afternoon. There are no people about. From the pylon, my eyes are drawn to the base of a nearby tree and on, past the old farmhouse wall to a more distant tree. The wall beyond directs my gaze towards the left of the picture, to the apartment building and two small planters containing twiggy shrubs. I am then drawn back to the pole. The viewer’s eye is taken on a journey, perhaps analogous to that of the photographer as he composed his image in the ground glass of the view camera. Of course, Guidi would have seen the image reversed (upside down and back to front) and so this scene might have appeared even more abstract to him.
Guidi’s practice involves travelling across the Italian countryside, along well-worn suburban roads, looking for suitable subjects. He uses a large format view camera which is cumbersome and time-consuming. Taking time to stop and look, to set up the equipment and compose the shot, are central to his way of working:
What is important to me is travelling, and seeing what I come across. And discovering. Discovering oneself. To get to know more, to grow richer. To learn to be less afraid of the unknown. |
This picture represents the quiet intensity of Guidi’s gaze and the act of connection. The photographer has spoken about his identification with the things in his viewfinder:
In the moment that I take a photograph of something, I feel that I am that thing … it is as if I am praying. |
Guidi expresses a feeling of extraordinary connectedness between himself and his subject, an almost total identification with the thing being photographed. In what ways does the camera, therefore, facilitate this kind of empathic intimacy?
Guidi’s interest in everydayness and the surfaces of peri urban spaces has influenced my own photography. For example, Figure 2 was made in a side street of a Midlands town early one morning. A more obvious subject would have been the impressive Victorian courthouse facade, a corner of which can be seen in the centre of this composition. However, as I walked around the corner, I was struck by the overlapping surfaces of walls and signs, disrupted by vertical elements.
The central question of this investigation concerns my motivations for stopping and lifting the camera to my eye to make a picture. Part of the answer might be that I am recognising subjects and arrangement of forms from images by other photographers, like Guidi. But I am also interested in the way that the camera is the perfect tool for facilitating a connection between me (my sight, my memories, my wordless feelings) and the subject in front of me.
Guidi’s interest in everydayness and the surfaces of peri urban spaces has influenced my own photography. For example, Figure 2 was made in a side street of a Midlands town early one morning. A more obvious subject would have been the impressive Victorian courthouse facade, a corner of which can be seen in the centre of this composition. However, as I walked around the corner, I was struck by the overlapping surfaces of walls and signs, disrupted by vertical elements.
The central question of this investigation concerns my motivations for stopping and lifting the camera to my eye to make a picture. Part of the answer might be that I am recognising subjects and arrangement of forms from images by other photographers, like Guidi. But I am also interested in the way that the camera is the perfect tool for facilitating a connection between me (my sight, my memories, my wordless feelings) and the subject in front of me.
The photographer Philip Perkis describes his approach as follows (my italics):
I walk around in the world that’s outside of myself and inside of myself is a world and it’s filled with images and they may not be visual images, they may be just emotional images, or language images or just a feeling or a desire [...] I have this little camera, this black box and I see something and somehow this corresponds in some way with something in here (pointing to head). So a connection happens. So I pick the box up and I put it between this and that and I take a picture. So maybe I’m taking a picture of the correspondence rather than the object itself. So the photograph is about the relationship between what’s inside a person and what’s outside a person. |
I recently discovered that the Japanese have several different words for ‘space’. I was particularly drawn to the word ‘ma’ which describes a kind of liminal space, an interruption or absence, in which differences can be reconciled. I began to wonder whether Perkis’ idea (above) of the camera as a device for recording a correspondence between an inner and outer reality suggests a kind of ‘ma’. If one of the functions of ‘ma’ is to create space for reflection and integration, where we can contemplate difference without necessarily wishing to resolve it, could the process of making a photograph be a ‘ma’-like act? Certainly, when I am wandering around with a camera, the quality of my vision is different, more heightened. I sometimes ‘lose’ myself in the process. When I see something that interests me, it feels as though the world is reaching out to me. I am affected by it. I acknowledge this call, saying “Yes” to the world, as a way to make a connection between me and it, between this and that. Of course, it might be argued that this gesture is acquisitive. Throughout its history, photography has been the handmaiden of colonialism and shopping. The urge to make a photograph isn’t too dissimilar from trophy hunting. Even the language of photography is violent - shoot, capture, crop etc. But what if making a photograph is also a kind of reaching out, an attempt to make a connection and a reciprocal receiving of energy?
An idea that I’ve recently encountered is the Amerindian notion that “every relatable entity is conceived as having, whatever its bodily form, a soul” from Eduardo Viveiros de Castro’s Cannibal Metaphysics. de Castro’s work with a Northeastern Amazonian group, the Arawaté, reveals an entirely different cosmology to that practised in the West.
An idea that I’ve recently encountered is the Amerindian notion that “every relatable entity is conceived as having, whatever its bodily form, a soul” from Eduardo Viveiros de Castro’s Cannibal Metaphysics. de Castro’s work with a Northeastern Amazonian group, the Arawaté, reveals an entirely different cosmology to that practised in the West.
Successfully negotiating one’s relations with other beings therefore requires adopting their perspective, as shamans do when they become animals, in order to know what they see things as being, and thereby in turn anticipating and knowing them as definite beings. |
This is a radical and complex idea that I’m only beginning to make some sense of. I’ve encountered the notion that all matter is “vibrant” (rather than inert) elsewhere and it’s something that really interests me when I’m making photographs. Is the role of the artist in Western cultures analogous to the shaman of South America? What if I adopted an indigenous perspective of the world when making photographs? How would this change my relationship to all the things I see in my viewfinder? In other words, when I’m walking around with my camera is it possible that I am responding to the energy embedded in both human and non-human subjects and making a photograph to acknowledge this correspondence? The photograph could then be understood as a record of this exchange of energies, a subjectification rather than an objectification. Perhaps this is why Guido Guidi talks of praying when he is using his camera. If we imagine that everything is alive (or even human, from the perspective of an Amazonian) then our relationship to it must necessarily alter.
In recent weeks, I have been making more pictures of people on the street. This began on a trip to Barcelona. One of the things that interested me was whether making a picture of people was different in kind to making a picture of things. My usual practice is to photograph objects - discarded items, buildings, trees, fences etc. - on my urban walks. I made pictures like this in Barcelona too, but, perhaps because of the weather and the street culture of the city, I also made pictures of people (Fig. 3).
In recent weeks, I have been making more pictures of people on the street. This began on a trip to Barcelona. One of the things that interested me was whether making a picture of people was different in kind to making a picture of things. My usual practice is to photograph objects - discarded items, buildings, trees, fences etc. - on my urban walks. I made pictures like this in Barcelona too, but, perhaps because of the weather and the street culture of the city, I also made pictures of people (Fig. 3).
What I like about this image is the all-over quality of the composition. Although the central figure on the phone outside a hospital might be considered the focal point of the picture, there is lots of information spread across the picture plane. I used a high resolution digital camera and a small aperture resulting in a very detailed image in which almost everything is in sharp focus - back to front and side to side. It reminds me of certain pictures by Stephen Shore or Jeff Wall (Figs 4 and 5).
Fig. 4 Stephen Shore - Broad Street, Regina, Saskatchewan, 17 August, 1974
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Fig. 5 Jeff Wall - Men Waiting, 2007
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Some of my other recent street pictures are shot on analogue equipment and at much closer range (Figs 6 and 7).
Figs 6 & 7 Jon Nicholls - London, 2022
My current practice is an odd combination of pictures featuring people and things and I’ve been a little troubled about how to reconcile these two different types of image. However, my research about other photographers and some theories derived from disciplines like anthropology has helped me think about these pictures differently. Whatever decisions I make about how to construct a meaningful sequence of pictures for publication or exhibition, I feel much happier about the diversity of subjects to which I am drawn when photographing. If everything is alive or “vibrant”, to use Jane Bennett’s word (people and things) then there is no reason why I should be any less drawn to rubbish in the gutter or a person gazing at their iPhone. If everything emits a kind of energy (visible to me because of the light bouncing off them and into my eyes/camera) then why should I be concerned about their status as subjects?
My pictures are made on urban walks from the perspective of the pavement. I remembered seeing pictures by Rudy Burckhardt (Fig. 8) in a facsimile album that included separate sequences of building facades and pedestrians on the streets of New York. In the accompanying commentary, Doug Ekland writes:
As the measure of his subjects grew more precise and details more specific, the meanings of his photographs expanded. The world of curbside and sidewalk constitute the overarching mise-en-scène of the entire album, not only as the liminal zone that separates public and private, interior and exterior, but also as the ineffable space between people, energies, or entities [...] and perhaps even the space of the photographic image itself, which is indelibly touched by and inexorably removed from the real. |
I really like this idea that both the pavement and the photograph itself is a kind of “liminal zone”, a grey area or threshold both separating and connecting seeming opposites.
I began this investigation by using the constraints of a photo dérive. I would select a journey on foot (for example from Peckham Rye to the Elephant and Castle), a particular camera and film combination and make a sequence of pictures in a limited period of time along the route. This provided a certain amount of coherence to each individual photoshoot and across a series of them. Over time though, I have expanded this process and my images have become more diverse. The challenge I set myself in the later stages of this investigation, therefore, was how to select a smaller number of pictures from the archive I had amassed. In order to do this I began to experiment with chance, partly inspired by my re-reading (or, more precisely, listening to) the novels of Paul Auster.
I began this investigation by using the constraints of a photo dérive. I would select a journey on foot (for example from Peckham Rye to the Elephant and Castle), a particular camera and film combination and make a sequence of pictures in a limited period of time along the route. This provided a certain amount of coherence to each individual photoshoot and across a series of them. Over time though, I have expanded this process and my images have become more diverse. The challenge I set myself in the later stages of this investigation, therefore, was how to select a smaller number of pictures from the archive I had amassed. In order to do this I began to experiment with chance, partly inspired by my re-reading (or, more precisely, listening to) the novels of Paul Auster.
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Fig.9 Jon Nicholls - Barcelona Solitaire, 2022
One strategy I used involved creating a set of playing cards, each featuring one of the photographs I had taken in Barcelona on the back. I used the cards to play a game of Solitaire. The resulting configuration and sequencing of images was therefore dictated by the rules of the game, rather than by me or another editor (Fig. 9). This was fun to do and did produce some unusual combinations of images that I certainly wouldn’t have consciously put together. However, I didn’t want to be constrained by this particular set of pictures. I felt the need to continue to resolve the heterogeneous nature of my photography practice.
What if my pictures are not necessarily united by subject matter, or style, or apparatus but by an attitude? I recently saw a book of pictures by the Italian photographer, Luigi Ghirri called Puglia. Tra albe e tramonti. In the afterword, his daughter Adele writes:
What if my pictures are not necessarily united by subject matter, or style, or apparatus but by an attitude? I recently saw a book of pictures by the Italian photographer, Luigi Ghirri called Puglia. Tra albe e tramonti. In the afterword, his daughter Adele writes:
When we view a photograph, what we perceive with our eyes in the present is the visible echo of something that no longer exists [...] 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. |
I love this idea of the photograph as a “point of transition” between two seeming opposites. This reflects Philip Perkis’ notion of the camera as the midpoint between “what’s inside a person and what’s outside.” I began to think of ways to display my pictures in such a way that this midpoint or hinge could be a physical component, a kind of sculptural element.
I began by creating a mock-up of a loose leaf newspaper (Fig. 10). I imagined that, as well as being read conventionally, each page of the paper could be displayed separately, perhaps hanging horizontally or as a poster. This was interesting but not entirely successful so, having seen a couple of intriguing photographic installations, I decided to make a model of my own (Fig. 11). I couldn’t afford to make a full-sized version so I concentrated instead on playing with combinations of images and structures at a smaller scale.
I began by creating a mock-up of a loose leaf newspaper (Fig. 10). I imagined that, as well as being read conventionally, each page of the paper could be displayed separately, perhaps hanging horizontally or as a poster. This was interesting but not entirely successful so, having seen a couple of intriguing photographic installations, I decided to make a model of my own (Fig. 11). I couldn’t afford to make a full-sized version so I concentrated instead on playing with combinations of images and structures at a smaller scale.
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Fig. 10 Jon Nicholls - A Double Thing newspaper mock-up, 2022
I tried to imagine a series of billboard sized displays connected by a supporting structure. The images I chose were all doubles with a repeating motif - steps, mushrooms, chairs, chess boards, drawings of clouds, the word “love” etc.
Fig. 11 Jon Nicholls - Model for ‘Doubles’ photo installation, 2022
This was an obvious way of referring to the emerging theme of my investigation ‘a double thing’, and possibly related to Peter Fraser’s famous Two Blue Buckets (Fig. 12). I really liked the way that the arrangement of the images in the mini-installation further complicates the reading of these doubles. At a much larger scale, the visitor would be prompted to physically interact with the pictures and structure, stepping inside the spaces, looking up and down at the images, seeing layers and fragments of photographs together. The installation would be interactive, have an inside and an outside and require the viewer to move around and through it.
The structure I designed with the materials available to me was similar to the installation at the Miró Foundation that I had seen in the summer (Fig. 13). It could therefore be modular, have numerous elements and be accompanied by wall-mounted images, tables and vitrines etc.
My choice of double motifs in the images I initially selected for the newspaper and mini installation were perhaps too obvious. I realised that a viewer might fail to move beyond the superficial idea of a visible double, two of something, and not consider the underlying theme exploring the equilibrium, coexistence or transition between inside and outside, mind and body, psyche and persona, invisible and visible etc.
I therefore decided to broaden the choice of subject matter of the images in my final exhibition, using a chance-based process. Inspired by photographer Georgina Cook’s newsletter post about using number sequences to randomly select images from her archive, I began with a large collection of my pictures on Flickr, using an online random number generator to make the selections. I experimented with over-printing the images but found the results to be too decorative. I decided to continue making photographs and research ways in which chance and collaboration could combine in the final staging of a photo performance. I was interested in the viewer’s role in helping to shape the work so that there was a direct connection between me and them (this and that).
I have enjoyed both the intellectual and practical aspects of this research. I have developed a better understanding of my motivations for making photographs and how I am able to engage viewers in considering them as expressions of a double thing, a “liminal zone” to borrow Doug Ekland’s phrase. Photographs, after all, contain traces of reality and yet are also ultimately “removed from the real”.
I therefore decided to broaden the choice of subject matter of the images in my final exhibition, using a chance-based process. Inspired by photographer Georgina Cook’s newsletter post about using number sequences to randomly select images from her archive, I began with a large collection of my pictures on Flickr, using an online random number generator to make the selections. I experimented with over-printing the images but found the results to be too decorative. I decided to continue making photographs and research ways in which chance and collaboration could combine in the final staging of a photo performance. I was interested in the viewer’s role in helping to shape the work so that there was a direct connection between me and them (this and that).
I have enjoyed both the intellectual and practical aspects of this research. I have developed a better understanding of my motivations for making photographs and how I am able to engage viewers in considering them as expressions of a double thing, a “liminal zone” to borrow Doug Ekland’s phrase. Photographs, after all, contain traces of reality and yet are also ultimately “removed from the real”.
(3000 words)
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Books:
Auster, Paul Leviathan, Faber, 2011
Bennett, Jane Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things, Duke University Press, 2010
Burckhardt, Rudolf (photographs) and Denby, Edwin (poems) New York, N. Why? Nazraeli Press,
in association with The Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art, 2008
De Duve, Thierry, Pelenc, Arielle & Groys, Boris Jeff Wall, Phaidon, 1996
Fraser, Peter Two Blue Buckets, Cornerhouse Publications, 1988
Ghirri, Luigi Puglia. Tra Albe e Tramonte, Mack, 2022
Guidi, Guido Veramente, Mack, 2014
Perkis, Philip Teaching Photography: Notes Assembled, OB Press and RIT Cary Graphic Arts Press, 2016
Shore, Stephen The Nature of Photographs, Phaidon, 2007
Sontag, Susan On Photography, Penguin, 2008
Online:
Photopedagogy Threshold Concept #4:
https://www.photopedagogy.com/threshold-concept-4.html
Cook, Georgina - newsletter:
https://georginacookfragments.substack.com/p/fragments-2-a-numbers-game
Gestalt Theory:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gestalt_psychology
Films:
Lee, Jin Ju A Film Portrait of Philip Perkis: Just to See - a Mystery, 2017:
https://vimeo.com/ondemand/justtoseeamystery
Henry Wessell: Why it’s better to see without recognising, SFMoMA, 2010:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Myf0IJ7YCRU&app=desktop
Auster, Paul Leviathan, Faber, 2011
Bennett, Jane Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things, Duke University Press, 2010
Burckhardt, Rudolf (photographs) and Denby, Edwin (poems) New York, N. Why? Nazraeli Press,
in association with The Metropolitan Museum of Modern Art, 2008
De Duve, Thierry, Pelenc, Arielle & Groys, Boris Jeff Wall, Phaidon, 1996
Fraser, Peter Two Blue Buckets, Cornerhouse Publications, 1988
Ghirri, Luigi Puglia. Tra Albe e Tramonte, Mack, 2022
Guidi, Guido Veramente, Mack, 2014
Perkis, Philip Teaching Photography: Notes Assembled, OB Press and RIT Cary Graphic Arts Press, 2016
Shore, Stephen The Nature of Photographs, Phaidon, 2007
Sontag, Susan On Photography, Penguin, 2008
Online:
Photopedagogy Threshold Concept #4:
https://www.photopedagogy.com/threshold-concept-4.html
Cook, Georgina - newsletter:
https://georginacookfragments.substack.com/p/fragments-2-a-numbers-game
Gestalt Theory:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gestalt_psychology
Films:
Lee, Jin Ju A Film Portrait of Philip Perkis: Just to See - a Mystery, 2017:
https://vimeo.com/ondemand/justtoseeamystery
Henry Wessell: Why it’s better to see without recognising, SFMoMA, 2010:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Myf0IJ7YCRU&app=desktop