Catalogue SESSION 6

December 2011

instantcoffees.wordpress.com

© Instant Coffees, 2012

Edition, design and research: Alejandro Acín Translators: Jack Bradbury and Maider DominguezPhotography Cover: Daniel Meadows

On-line publisher: www.issue.com

instantcoffees.wordpress.comAll rights reserved.

On - line Catalogue

SESSION 6December 2011

Index

InterviewDaNIEl MEaDOwSThe Documentarist

Page 38

FOSI VEguEgrandes Exitos

Page 8

NaTalIE NaCCaChEMadaneh marriages

Page 13

MarCIa ChaNDraas serbian as youwant to be

Page 18

PETEr DENChDrink uK

Page 23

PIErFraNCESCO CElaDaInsideOut,The bigg Market

Page 28

MIKE luSMOrE /rEbECCa harlEybells Please!

Page 33

Intro So here we are, 1 year in. A time for looking back and a time for looking forward. We’re very happy at what we’ve all achieved so far. Being careful to stress that all, because it really has been a grand collaborative effort. A big thank you and a collective pat on the back to everyone for all the hard work, time, energy and enthusiasm we’ve put in. The sixth session was another great show and above and beyond the submissions, which have been consistently great throughout the year, there was a good flow of discussion around the work and some of the themes raised out of the idea of Celebration.

Fosi Vegue’s Grandes éxitos is suffused with tiredness and fading energy, that feeling in the early hours that you really should go home but you just keep on dancing and drinking well aware of the inevitable crash that will follow. There are faces looking into the men-tal distance still holding on whilst those around them keep partying. Vegue also focuses on the details, the velvet curtains, padded seats, broken glasses and faded suits. There is a jaded look to these dark images, surreal colours, even the bygone glory days look somewhat tired, or maybe even these memories cannot withstand the winding down of this grandiose watchspring.

The two pieces Madaneh Marriages by Natalie Naccache and As Serbian As You Want To Be by Marcia Chandra look at inclusion and exclusion from cultural celebrations and individuals connection with and perception of the concept of nationhood and belonging. Naccache’s project shows in one sense people isolated from their own country, from a need to circumvent conventional cultural norms. In another sense though, it is absolutely about connection, the cou-ples involved relying on the strength of their own bond to support them in the task of cementing their personal connection despite the legal conventions of their own country. These two elements are highly evident from the images, which show either highly intimate portraits of the couples together or faces cast with doubt and images preg-nant with uncertainty. To transport a social ritual such as this outside of the shared social space is perhaps not so unusual, after all many people marry in locations other than their home country. However the inability to carry the celebratory nature of the occasion back to the shared social space must have a profound impact on the nature of the marriage contract.

Chandra’s work on the other hand appears to show almost an inversion of this. Ostensibly a trumpet festival in the Serbian village of Guca, this occasion becomes a celebration of a national culture that is perhaps repressed in the wider country and so represents a way to create a shared social space that is both in and of the containing region but isolated from it. Certainly although Chandra makes clear that this is edit focuses specifically on the revelry of the event it is often the case that a repression of spirit can lead to a vio-lent outpouring of that emotion when the outlet arises. Added to this the brief nature of the festival gives the images a sense of ephemer-ality, as if the subjects are making the most of the time they have to express their desires.

Peter Dench’s Drink UK and Pierfrancesco Celada’s Inside-out, The Bigg Market taken together, show what happens when the process of celebration overtakes much of the meaning that it once had in relation to an individual event in favour of repetition of the act itself. In the case of Celada’s work these groups of men and women have chosen to subject themselves to a generally acknowl-edged series of activities in an accepted common location as one method of bringing the group closer together before the important ritual practice of marriage that is the marker of a change of life from one mode of existence to another. In Dench’s work there is less of a unifying factor in a specific sense, although the locations featured are all those in which some kind of social event which is itself a form of bonding is taking place. The supplanting of the specific activities related to these events with binge drinking ritual behaviours appears to illustrate a more general unifying factor that cuts across age, class and local geographical lines to the country level and to which Dench alludes in his title.

In both works a succession of visceral images show people in the throes of a very physical and highly familiar act or series of acts that one could certainly argue has the trappings of ritual itself. However the difference between the binge drinking illustrated here and the shamanic or tribal rituals of many cultures is that there is certainly no conscious attempt to embark on a search for truth or knowledge. The transcendence of total bodily functioning, both physical and mental, as a way to get past the mundane and access

a spiritual realm in which signs and symbols guide one towards per-sonal insights that inform one’s passage through the everyday world, does not appear to be present.

Instead what we do have is a process that appears to be used at least as a form of group bonding, the acts are communal and the familiarity of both the totality of the activity and the elements therein allows for a connection between members of a specific group or more general community. This familiarity not only allows for a con-nection between the participants within the work but also between us the audience and the work itself. In doing this the issue of indi-vidual engagement arises and a dichotomy similar to the “predator/collaborator” dilemma mentioned in the Daniel Meadows interview later in this catalogue presents itself. One is forced to decide be-tween identifying with the actions of the subjects and thus increasing the collaboratorial or even conspiratorial nature of the experience, or detaching oneself and maintaining a distance that can lead to a coldness in interpretation that could be defined as a predatorial gaze.

In contrast to these is the more inclusive work Bells Please! by Mike Lusmore and Rebecca Harley, an illustration of celebration in a small town with a strong feeling of camaraderie and connectiv-ity through shared purpose. This is due in no small part to the strongly collaborative approach of Lusmore and Harley, following the group of choristers local to the area as they spend an evening singing carols in various pubs in the town with the aid of a piano on wheels. The atmosphere of festivity is palpable, the piece has a strong sense of dynamic movement and place and the connection with the event and the subjects is increased by the use of field re-cordings and interviews.

by Jack Bradbury

FOSI VEGUEGRANDES ÉXITOS(GREATEST HITS)

© FOSI VEGUE

© FOSI VEGUE

© FOSI VEGUE

Fosi Vegue (1976, Talavera.) He is currently Based in Madrid. Graduated in Arts and BlankPaper collective member since its creation in 2003. BlankPaper school was founded by him in 2006 in which, he is the principal, teacher and exhibitions coordina-tor. He finished his “Extremaunción” project during 2005 thanks to the FotoPres grant of Fundación La Caixa, on the topic of the decline of the Spanish religious institution. In 2011 he finished “El último”, an essay related to an abandoned village and its last inhabitant. Nowadays, he is working on another project called “Grandes éxitos”, which is focussed on a night club. This project received a grant at FotoPres’09.

Descubrimientos PhotoEspaña 10 finalist.

His work has been exhibited at Galería Olido in Sao Paulo, Tabacalera Building, Conde Duque institution, Caixa Forum (Madrid and Barcelona).

Grandes Exitos (Greatest hits)

A party hall of refined and decadent atmosphere which lived its years of fame in the 70s and now all of its splendour has been lost. Years to recover its status. The club, currently in its death throes and aware of its impending end, is trying to change. Lying to itself night after night. A synthesis of the peculiar and the old fashioned. Dressed in velvet and served with a white shirt and black bow tie.

The public itself dresses up, imitating the manners, taste and opinions of the ones they admire in order to look the same as them.

www.fosivegue.com www.blankpaper.es

NATALIE NACCACHEMADANEH MARRIAGES

© NATALIE NACCACHE

© NATALIE NACCACHE

© NATALIE NACCACHE

Natalie Naccache-Mourad is a British-Lebanese photojournalist based in Beirut covering social issues. Graduated from London College of Communication she holds a BA in Photojournalism and a diploma in Art Foundation from Camberwell College of Art. Her work has be en featured in The National in Abu Dhabi, The Sunday Times Magazine, BBC, F2 Magazine and Foto8.

Madaneh Marriages

Madaneh Marriages is an ongoing story about Lebanese civil marriage. Approximately 1,000 Lebanese couples a year flock to Cyprus to marry on the land where the Greek goddess of love, Aphrodite was born.

Marriage and divorce are regulated according to the conventions of Lebanon’s 18 recognized religions. Rana Khoury, a Lebanese Civil Marriage activist explained, “we don’t have civil marriage in Lebanon because its a patriarchal society, therefore religious laws favour men over women, it is a religious society which has power oversocial and private lives”. I am photographing Lebanese couples getting ready for married life, during the weddings, and their lives after and the obstacles they face.

www.natnacphotography.com

MARCIA CHANDRAAS SERBIAN AS YOU

WANT TO BE

© MARCIA CHANDRA

© MARCIA CHANDRA

© MARCIA CHANDRA

I am a photographer based in London, born in Canada, rooted in Spain and India. In 2009, I took a break from my career in inter-national development to do an MA in Photojournalism and Documentary Photography from the London College of Communica-tion, and have since been working as a photographer and picture editor.

As Serbian as you want to be

Guca is a small, quiet town in the Serbian mountains that hosts an annual trumpet festival. While the trumpet band competitions are the main purpose of the festival, this has become almost an excuse for what is really a celebration of being Serbian. I first went there in 2009 and was immediately enthralled by the raucousness and extremeness of celebration, and the surprising focus on nationalism and politics. Amidst the lamb meat, non-stop trumpet playing and scenes reminiscent of a Kusturica film, you also get a sense of the complex relationship Serbia has with its own past and its perception by the rest of the world. As one young guy explained it, its a place where you weren’t afraid to be Serbian.

This multimedia edit I’m presenting is a shorter edit that focuses more on the excitement of the festival, but I’m also working on a longer edit that explores some of the complexities I explored around nationalism and tradition.

www.marciachandra.com

PETER DENCHDRINK UK

© PETER DENCH

© PETER DENCH

© PETER DENCH

Made in England. Based in London. Works primarily in the editorial, advertising and portraiture fields of photography. Achieved a World Press Photo Award for the People in the News Stories category and participated in the World Press Joop Swart Master-class. Placed 2nd in advertising at the 2010 Sony World Photography Awards. Solo exhibitions include England Uncensored at the Visa pour l’Image festival of photojournalism and LoveUK at the Third Floor Gallery, Wales. Contributing editor at photography and film making magazine Hungry Eye. Creative director at White Cloth Gallery.

He has recently funded his book “UK uncesored” through empashis.com, a crowfunding platform.

Drink UK

Britain has become a nation of binge drinkers. The statistics are alarming - 121% more alcohol is being consumed than 50 years ago. The British are drinking younger, longer, faster and more cheaply than ever before. Binge drinking followed by public order problems are becoming increasingly common in tow ns and cities.

www.peterdench.com

PIERFRANCESCO CELADAINSIDEOUT,

THE BIGG MARKET

© PIERFRANCESCO CELADA

© PIERFRANCESCO CELADA

© PIERFRANCESCO CELADA

After completing a PhD in Biomechanics, Pierfrancesco Celada is now concentrating his attention on his personal photographic projects.

He recently won the Ideastap and Magnum Photo photographic award and the West collection purchase award. His work has been exhibited at international venues, including: Bawag Foundation, Wien; Newcastle College, Newcastle; Photomonth Photo-lounge, London and more recently Onward’11, Project Basho in Tokyo and Philadelphia. He is currently working on his long-term project about solitude in the modern Megalopolis.

Insideout, the Bigg Market

“I lived in Newcastle upon Tyne, in the North East of England, for over three years. Since my arrival I have been fascinated and attracted to the colourful expression of the way locals entertain themselves; very different from my own experience. For this rea-son I have decided to begin this project. The Bigg Market is a small area in Newcastle city centre that comes alive at weekends. Here, people from all around the country, gather together to organise hen, stag and birthday p arties. The project soon became an interesting way to analyse how I personally perceive and visualise the idea of “socialisation” and “entertainment”.

Sometimes entertaining ourselves is a necessity. It is a mechanism used to try to forget the complications of daily routine, espe-cially during the last few years of financial difficulty. The term “entertain” indicates not just drinking and having fun to the excess; it also includes others expressions of socialisation: feeling part of a group, being accepted, respected and most of all, mutual support. In contraposition, despite the multitude around us, there are still instants in which our mind is set off; our body is there, but we are not. Those are instants in which our memories and thoughts blend together. A place where reality isn’t clear and time becomes relative. It is a time when emotions are magnified and particularly available for observation. The Bigg Market is a unique place where these concepts are particularly visible.”

www.pierfrancescocelada.com

MIKE LUSMORE / REBECCA HARLEYBELLS PLEASE!

© REBECCA HARLEY / MIKE LUSMORE

© REBECCA HARLEY / MIKE LUSMORE

© REBECCA HARLEY / MIKE LUSMORE

Rebecca Harley is a photographer and multimedia producer living and working in the UK. She studied Fine Art as an undergradu-ate and in 2009 completed an MA in Photojournalism and Documentary Photography at LCC in London. She started her photo-graphic career in 2001 as a news photographer for the British press, later specialising in women’s features.

Rebecca focuses on intimate and personal narratives and she is passionate about combining images with audio, enabling the people within her work to be an integral part of the story. She won the Press Photographers Year multimedia award with Memories of a house in 2010.-----Mike Lusmore is a photographer and multimedia producer living and working in the UK. After training as a Mechanical Engineer he pursued a career working for the British press, cementing his love of photography. His current work celebrates ordinary life close to home.

“ In 2011 I created The Hinterlands workshop alongside Rebecca Harley in collaboration with multimedia gurus duckrabbit. In the summer of 2011 I was a mentor alongside Rebecca at fotopub in Slovenia for the multimedia workshop.”

He is presently working in the Royal Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire, England.

Bells please!

In many smaller towns and rural areas singing clubs are a way for more isolated people to be part of a community. Wales is often referred to us ‘the land of the song’ and choirs are an important part of national identity. The Chepstow and Usk singing choirs perform together throughout the year and meet each festive season to perform Christmas carols to the public and to raise money charity.

www.rebeccaharley.comwww.mikelusmore.com

DANIEL MEADOWS THE DOCUMENTARIST

Filey, Yorkshire, “Butlin’s Boy”, from exhibition with Martin Parr: “Butlin’s by the Sea”, Impressions Gallery, York, November 1972

We had the pleasure of welcoming Daniel Meadows to the last session of Instant Coffees. He came to visit us and share his experiences and insights with our audience. Daniel was one of the leaders of the independent photography movement of the 70s in Britain, rethinking photographic practice and taking the necessary risks in order to infuse the medium with a contemporary way of telling stories.

Since finishing his studies in Manchester he has been developing a highly personal style of photojournalism. His project “Bus Stories” gave him the chance to travel around the UK and used photography as a means of encounter-ing and engaging with strangers to feed his curiosity about the world. Daniel has used not only photography but also interviews and multimedia as indispensable tools to develop his stories. “Capture Wales” was a collaborative project run by Daniel between 2001 and 2008. The idea was to empower people by running workshops providing them with multime-dia skills. This allowed them to elaborate their own digital stories with the aim of achieving a more democratised media and resulted in more than 600 pieces around Wales.

He has recently published a new book (Daniel Meadows: Edited Photographs from the 70s and 80s by Val Williams) with Photoworks and is currently exhibiting his early photographic works at the National Media Museum of Bradford.

Hi Daniel, thanks for coming to speak with us and giving us the time to answer a few questions.

As an experienced documentarist, what do you think this concept means nowadays considering the ubiquity of the photographic image?

I think documentary photography is about what it’s always been about: subject matter. If the subject matters to you then you will make good pictures. It’s great that so many people are taking pictures these days but it’s also sad that so few people are using the medium to really engage with their subject. The most wonderful thing about the digital age is that it affords the possi-bility for the medium to become truly democratic. But this won’t happen unless people are respectful of form. Media is always delivered according to strict forms: Shakespeare wrote sonnets, Twitter demands a message of up to 140 characters, postcards have room for a picture and about 100 words, and so on. Digital

Stories, my specialism, are multimedia sonnets from the people: 250 words, a dozen or so pictures, two minutes. If media is to become truly democratic then people need to learn the basic digital literacy of these forms, in just the same way as they learn the basic grammar of conventional literacy.

What do you think is the value of photography as a medium for people to explore their ideas about themselves and their realities?

It’s almost limitless. I particularly like the relationship we have with our own collections of family photographs. A photograph’s ability to trigger memory is second to none. We are all the repositories of the most incredible stories. But we must give ourselves time to reflect so that these stories can be given shape and meaning.

You were telling us that one of the most interesting things about photography is the chance to meet strangers and engage with them, discovering the stories behind the pictures. What do you feel are the ways in which to increase this engagement? A photograph of a stranger is not just about f-stops, shutter speeds, film/camera types or focal length, mostly it’s about what happens between the photographer and the photographed at the moment when the shutter snaps. When this magic is captured it tends to transcend time, travelling down the generations. I’ve been aston-ished by how many people who attended my recent exhibition at the National Media Museum have commented on this. Of course now, the Internet allows pictures to travel further in a few months than they would have travelled in a lifetime during the pre-digital age. And as it travels, a picture can have new adventures all by itself. Which is exciting indeed. Take a look at my story about the picture I took of Florence Alma Snoad in Southampton in 1974: here With the last question in mind, could you tell us a little bit more about the documentarist dilemma of being predator and collaborator?

The business of pointing a camera at someone is always tricky because it’s a process which is, ultimately, exploitative. So you have to decide which side you are on. Are you preda-tory like a satirist? Or are you working with the person you are photographing, helping them to find a voice, to shine? And if you

Portrait from the Free Photographic Omnibus, Southampton. Florence Alma Snoad. May 1974.

are working with them do you run the risk of getting too close and losing your independent eye?

As a multimedia producer, what do you consider to be the main contribution of multimedia to documentary photography?

Audio. The digital age has enabled photography to discover the talkies.

What are the keys to achieving a good storytelling narrative?

Work on the script. The script is everything. Include detail. Avoid cliché and repetition. Read it out loud before you record it.

What did you learn during the course of the “Capture Wales” project? What do you think is the relevance of continuing to produce this type of project for a publicly funded media company?

People are always surprising and interesting and full of surpris-es. What was lovely about Capture Wales was that these qualities infused the storytelling in a completely new way and a fantastic gaggle of previously invisible histories was assembled.

Check them out here

The reason we need more projects like this is that, if it isn’t to become increasingly irrelevant, media needs to be more democratic. The old top-down industrial model of mass media production is broken and we must work hard to replace it with something that represents us. The age of media being done to us is over and we must learn how to do media for ourselves.

Coming back to you again, what are Daniel Meadows’ photographic interests nowadays?

In August, after 31 years as a teacher, I’m retiring from academic life. I’m 60 and I’m worn out. I intend to stare at a distant horizon and do nothing for as long as possible. ‘Nothing’ looks very attrac-tive just now. I’ll probably drive about in my campervan a bit and listen to Bob Dylan a lot. But, essentially, I’m going to do absolutely nothing.

Could you give some tips for those who are thinking of becom-ing a documentarist?

Only pick up a camera when you’ve decided what your subject matter is.

What is your opinion of spaces outside of the gallery environment that provide opportunities to show documentary photography in less formal ways?

We need a return to the community. Start in your street. Village halls, church halls, miners’ libraries. That’s where we did Capture Wales. Keep it local. Everything starts at home.

Portrait of a foster mother with children in Meadows’s free photographic studio on Greame Street, Moss Side, Manchester, February - April 1972.

Born in Gloucestershire, England, in 1952 Meadows studied at Manchester Polytechnic 1970-73. Notable photography projects from that time include The Shop On Graeme Street (1972) as well as collaborations with Martin Parr: Butlin’s By The Sea in Yorkshire (1972) and June Street in Salford (1973).

Meadows toured England in the Free Photographic Omnibus (1973-74), and Living Like This – Around Britain In The Seventies was pub-lished in 1975.

In 1983 he moved to Wales and taught alongside David Hurn on the Documentary Photography course at Newport’s School of Art and Design.

Since 1994, Meadows has taught across the full range of courses in Cardiff University’s School of Journalism, Media and Cultural Studies. In the 1990s he also taught photography workshops for the Reuters Foundation, The British Council and others in the emerging democra-cies of Europe; also in India and Bangladesh.

His photographs have been included in a number of international touring shows. Solo exhibitions include Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), London (1975); Photographers’ Gallery, London (1987); Royal Photographic Society, Bath (1996); Viewpoint Gallery, Salford (1997), and Photofusion, London (2001). In the summer of 2007, his work featured in Tate Britain’s landmark photography exhibition How We Are, Photographing Britain.

He is the author of five books (see publications). His documentary for BBC Radio 4, Living Like This, was broadcast in 1996.

In 2001, he took the idea of Digital Storytelling to the BBC, where for five years he was seconded as creative director of Capture Wales which won a BAFTA Cymru in 2002 and a Cardiff University Innovation Network award in 2006. Between 2001 and 2008 Meadows travelled widely – particularly in Australia and the USA – lecturing about his pioneering work in participatory media. He delivered more than 40 au-ditorium presentations on the subject.

He was awarded his PhD in 2005 and an Honorary Fellowship of the Royal Photographic Society (RPS) in 2008.

Next Session 22nd of Marchbristol

please find the participation details at

instantcoffees.wordpress.com