User:Falcogdf/methods
Exercise 29/09/21
ORIGINAL
BAGNOLI INSIDE OUT
What A dismantled tennis field, a tube sticking out of a wall emitting a mysterious substance into the ground, overgrown weeds, cement, fences, machinery, all this on the beautiful coast of Camapnia, in a landscape haunted by an abandoned steel mill. BAGNOLI INSIDE OUT is a photographic project and subsequent journalistic piece about the neighbourhood of Bagnoli in the city of Naples, Italy. This neighbourhood used to be the site of one of the major steelworks in Italy which provided jobs and wealth to the locals, while heavily polluting the ground and sea around it and depriving an important city such as Naples of a touristic coastline. Many of its former employees perished due to health problems relating to the pollution. In the early 1990s the steelworks was closed down, leaving the neighbourhood in a state of disrepair and efforts to make the situation better have failed spectacularly, like the CITY OF SCIENCE museum (which was destroyed in a suspicious fire) and the huge sporting complex, including football, tennis and hockey fields, which was built but never opened due to the high amount of pollution in the ground. There are only two people in all of the photos: an old man cleaning mussels and a German tourist sunbathing on the only viable spot in the area: the long pier that extends for almost a kilometre into the sea, possibly the only successfully rehabilitated structure in the area. The images aim to give a sense of desolation and decay. This is reinforced even more by the photos I took when I broke into the sporting complex. In a place which was meant for children to play, the facilities are falling apart and a wall reads ‘Club for fucking, site number four’
How The project was born through a friend, who is the Director of Photography for the docufilm currently being filmed about Bagnoli: Un Futuro per Bagnoli (A Future for Bagnoli). He brought the topic to my attention, and I brought it to the attention of a potential writing partner. Since the film is crowdfunded, all the attention they can get is positive. Me and this writing partner travelled to Naples in the summer and spent time speaking with the cast and crew. Meanwhile, I toured the neighbourhood of Bagnoli on my own over the course of two days and shot five rolls of film. Eventually my writing partner backed down to other commitments, leaving me to do the writing part as well. This has not been written yet, I am still in the interviewing phase. After that part is done the idea is to pitch it to an English language magazine, and hopefully I can get it published in time for the launch of their second crowdfunding campaign at the end of October.
Why The project is meant to accompany and support a docudrama currently being filmed about Bagnoli. The aim of the project is to tell the story of the neighbourhood of Bagnoli through photos and text, the docudrama being just an excuse to tell this story. The text will tell the story of Bagnoli in a more straightforward fashion, and will talk about the movie only incidentally. It’s aim will be to help promote the movie, which in turn will aim to bring public attention to the travesty of Bagnoli, hopefully funnelling funds into its rehabilitation.
PSEUDOMEMORY
What A serendipitous light leak, an Impressionist-looking out of focus shot, a strange mix of chemicals creating abstraction on the celluloid, water between film and lens, an overexposure, a double exposure, a film end or something seen through a different lens. PSEUDOMEMORY is a collection of images (16 for the moment) which together seek to not only create a sense of confusion but also reflect on the concept of memory, the medium of photography and, most importantly, the relationship between these two concepts.
How Simple: by putting together photographs that I have taken over the years with analog processes, and setting aside those that have some kind of interesting mistake. The methodologies of achieving these results are varied, and are only sometimes purposeful. The project is open ended and doesn’t have a definite starting or ending point, I can keep adding to it for eternity, as long as I feel that the photograph fits into the aesthetic of the project.
Why It is a reflection on the way the average person interacts with the medium of photography, using it as an aide memoire. Think, for example, of parents taking pictures of their children in order to ‘capture’ them as they where at a particular age, never to be seen at that age again. There is an expectation of objectivity from the camera, more so then with most other mediums. PSEUDOMEMORY aims to comment on, and perhaps dismantle, that notion by showing that photography, like human memory, is inherently flawed.
ANALOG APPEAL
What Why play guitar with a valve amplifier when modern digital amplifiers sound even better? According to a friend of photographer Jim Cooke, its for ‘the smell of burning dust’. This documentary applies the concept not to amplifiers but to photography. It is made up of interviews with photographers Mark Powers and Jim Cooke about the history of photography, what the appeal of analog practices is and the very real consequences of the amount of data produced by the digital revolution. I also go into the darkroom with Jim Cooke, and he shows me the process of making prints from light, with enlargers. The cutaways consist of archival footage I compiled from old film reels I found in my basement, shot by my grandfather and showing moving images of my family at the time and his trips to faraway places around the world.
How This project was the thesis for my MA in Journalism and Documentary Practice at the University of Sussex and was the first documentary that I made entirely on my own. I wanted to explore the question of the resurgence of analog photography in recent years while digital techniques had caught up and surpassed it. My friend Dimitri was an invaluable asset in the making of this project as he put me in touch with a number of photographers, above all Jim Cooke and Mark Powers. Most of the project consists of simple talking head interviews, but I encountered challenges with lighting, since Mark Powers’ studio was poorly lit on a dim British day, as of course was Jim Cooke’s dark room. I originally wanted to shoot some, if not all, of the film on an old film camera I found in my basement, but the cost was prohibitive. Since I wanted to include some ‘film look’ into the documentary, I had some of my grandfather’s old film reels scanned and I used these as cut aways in order to cut up the interviews.
Why The documentary’s aim is to discuss the advent of digital photography, the reasons people still use film and the consequences of the volume of information the digital revolution has brought with it. There are a few key moments that highlight these themes, such as in the beginning when Jim tells me the story of his friend with the valve amp recounted above, when Mark talks about Robert Capa’s photographs of the D Day Landings, reticulated by an overzealous lab assistant but giving them a more iconic look, when a quote by Vilem Flusser is brought up, who said in the 80’s that we would enter a period of endless layers of digital fog, or when Mark talks about the loss of the family album, that a single photograph of your grandparents is a precious thing, but in the future our grandchildren may not be able to access photos of us in the same way due to degradation of digital media, or if they could they would have thousands of pictures of us, which is not quite the same thing. All of these moments touch on the themes of the project, while the film cutaways give a sense of nostalgia for a bygone era. Had they not been physical objects in my basement and had just been on the hypothetical smartphone of my grandfather then I may never have found them.
EDITED
BAGNOLI INSIDE OUT A dismantled tennis field, a tube sticking out of a wall emitting a mysterious substance into the ground, overgrown weeds, cement, fences, machinery, all this on the beautiful coast of Camapnia, in a landscape haunted by an abandoned steel mill. BAGNOLI INSIDE OUT is a photographic project and subsequent journalistic piece about the neighbourhood of Bagnoli in the city of Naples, Italy, the site of an abandoned steel mill. There are only two people in all of the photos: an old man cleaning mussels and a German tourist sunbathing on the only viable spot in the area: the long pier that extends for almost a kilometre into the sea, possibly the only successfully rehabilitated structure in the area. The images aim to give a sense of desolation and decay. This is reinforced even more by the photos I took when I broke into the sporting complex. In a place which was meant for children to play, the facilities are falling apart and a wall reads ‘Club for fucking, site number four’ The project was born through a friend, who is the Director of Photography for the docufilm currently being filmed about Bagnoli: Un Futuro per Bagnoli (A Future for Bagnoli). He brought the topic to my attention. Since the film is crowdfunded, all the attention they can get is positive. I travelled to Naples in the summer and spent time speaking with the cast and crew. Meanwhile, I toured the neighbourhood of Bagnoli on my own over the course of two days and shot five rolls of film. The text has not been written yet, I am still in the interviewing phase. After that part is done the idea is to pitch it to an English language magazine, and hopefully I can get it published in time for the launch of their second crowdfunding campaign at the end of October. This neighbourhood used to be the site of one of the major steelworks in Italy which provided jobs and wealth to the locals, while heavily polluting the ground and sea around it and depriving an important city such as Naples of a touristic coastline. Many of its former employees perished due to health problems relating to the pollution. In the early 1990s the steelworks was closed down, leaving the neighbourhood in a state of disrepair and efforts to make the situation better have failed spectacularly, like the CITY OF SCIENCE museum (which was destroyed in a suspicious fire) and the huge sporting complex, including football, tennis and hockey fields, which was built but never opened due to the high amount of pollution in the ground. The project is meant to accompany and support a docudrama currently being filmed about Bagnoli. The aim of the project is to tell the story of the neighbourhood of Bagnoli through photos and text. The text will tell the story of Bagnoli in a more straightforward fashion, and will talk about the movie only incidentally. It’s aim will be to help promote the movie, which in turn will aim to bring public attention to the travesty of Bagnoli, hopefully funnelling funds into its rehabilitation.
PSEUDOMEMORY
A serendipitous light leak, an Impressionist-looking out of focus shot, a strange mix of chemicals creating abstraction on the celluloid, water between film and lens, an overexposure, a double exposure, a film end or something seen through a different lens. PSEUDOMEMORY is a collection of images (16 for the moment) which together seek to not only create a sense of confusion but also reflect on the concept of memory, the medium of photography and, most importantly, the relationship between these two concepts. Most of the time the subject is not important, perhaps only when we see an out of focus image of a pile of broken TVs, or when two lovers kiss but are out of focus, with the sea and the horizon being clear. How? Simple: by putting together photographs that I have taken over the years with analog processes, and setting aside those that have some kind of interesting mistake. The methodologies of achieving these results are varied, and are only sometimes purposeful. The project is open ended and doesn’t have a definite starting or ending point, I can keep adding to it for eternity, as long as I feel that the photograph fits into the aesthetic of the project. It is a reflection on the way the average person interacts with the medium of photography, using it as an aide memoire. Think, for example, of parents taking pictures of their children in order to ‘capture’ them as they where at a particular age, never to be seen at that age again. There is an expectation of objectivity from the camera, more so then with most other mediums. PSEUDOMEMORY aims to comment on, and perhaps dismantle, that notion by showing that photography, like human memory, is inherently flawed. It aims to use photography not as a means of documentary but as something more akin to drawing or painting.
ANALOG APPEAL This documentary is made up of interviews with photographers Mark Powers and Jim Cooke about the history of photography, what the appeal of analog practices is and the very real consequences of the amount of data produced by the digital revolution. I also go into the darkroom with Jim Cooke, and he shows me the process of making prints from light, with enlargers. The cutaways consist of archival footage I compiled from old film reels I found in my basement, shot by my grandfather and showing moving images of my family at the time and his trips to faraway places around the world. Why play guitar with a valve amplifier when modern digital amplifiers sound even better? According to a friend of photographer Jim Cooke, its for ‘the smell of burning dust’. This documentary applies the concept not to amplifiers but to photography. This project was the thesis for my MA in Journalism and Documentary Practice at the University of Sussex and was the first documentary that I made entirely on my own. I wanted to explore the question of the resurgence of analog photography in recent years while digital techniques had caught up and surpassed it. My friend Dimitri was an invaluable asset in the making of this project as he put me in touch with a number of photographers, above all Jim Cooke and Mark Powers. Most of the project consists of simple talking head interviews, but I encountered challenges with lighting, since Mark Powers’ studio was poorly lit on a dim British day, as of course was Jim Cooke’s dark room. I originally wanted to shoot some, if not all, of the film on an old film camera I found in my basement, but the cost was prohibitive. Since I wanted to include some ‘film look’ into the documentary, I had some of my grandfather’s old film reels scanned and I used these as cut aways in order to cut up the interviews. The documentary’s aim is to discuss the advent of digital photography, the reasons people still use film and the consequences of the volume of information the digital revolution has brought with it. There are a few key moments that highlight these themes, such as when Mark talks about Robert Capa’s photographs of the D Day Landings, reticulated by a lab assistant giving them their iconic look, or when a quote by Vilem Flusser is brought up, who said in the 80’s that we would enter a period of endless layers of digital fog. Mark also talks about the demise of the family album: a single photograph of your grandparents is precious, but in the future our grandchildren may not be able to access photos of us due to degradation of digital media. Or, if they could, they may have thousands of pictures of us, which is not the same thing. All of these moments touch on the themes of the project, while the film cutaways give a sense of nostalgia for a bygone era. Had they not been physical objects in my basement and had just been on the hypothetical smartphone of my grandfather then I may never have found them.