Discussion on the Execution of the Critical Review: "Understanding the Genre of Wildlife Photography: what are its Values and is it Art?"

After many hours of hard work (far more than was suggested in the course notes) I submitted my critical review for Assignment 3 to my tutor on 7 August 2014. The critical review proposal can be found elsewhere in this blog: broadly speaking, I stuck to the plan outlined there. What follows are the explanatory notes that accompanied the review.

I am, first and foremost, a wildlife photographer. My interest stems from a love of wildlife that I developed as a small child. However, until the advent of digital cameras my output was very limited, mainly because I was concerned about wasting precious film. Nowadays I can instantly review my images on the back screen of my digital camera, delete the bad ones and, if my subject(s) is still around, take more photographs, correcting for exposure, depth of field etc. all the time. Suddenly wildlife photography has become much easier both for me and for millions of others around the world.

After I started OCA course work in 2007 I began to realise that there was more to learn about photography than simply improving techniques in order to produce better pictures. Photography had become integrated within the world of art and major photography exhibitions were appearing with increasing regularity in London. Very slowly I started to understand that producing aesthetically pleasing images did not guarantee recognition, particularly within the art world. Partly in order to broaden my horizons I dabbled in other areas of photography, in particular the use of reflections to create abstract images. I joined the London Independent Photographic Society (LIPS) for a couple of years and made a substantial effort to understand the photography that appeared in their monthly magazines and annual exhibitions. However, I never got to appreciate or understand the value of much of the work; nor did I find it aesthetically appealing. Without realising it at the time, what I was looking at was concept-driven photographic art. Eventually I gave up trying to connect with the work of other LIPS members and left.

Further down the line in my OCA course work I started to understand, by virtue of research and project work, more about the theory and practice of photographic art and to appreciate why there was more to images (or portfolios of images) that I had been studying than simple aesthetic appeal, which was often lacking. Understanding the background to the work helped me to appreciate the images more, although many still left me cold. I tried to connect my own wildlife photography to this work: I failed! Wildlife images may be popular and appealing, but they seemed as different to photographic art as chalk is to cheese.

Whilst I occasionally tried to integrate my wildlife photography into the OCA course work at levels 1 and 2 I put most of my effort into improving technique, investigating other genres in which I was interested (in particular landscape photography, documentary and photo-collage) and learning more about the history of and theory behind movements in photographic art. However, the current course offered more freedom to express myself and I decided to return to my main interest and carry out a major project with a conceptual theme (“why we feed wild birds”) within the genres of wildlife and documentary photography. A natural topic for the critical essay was therefore to look at the relationship (if any) between wildlife photography and photographic art: not only would this give me a better understanding of how to produce a concept-driven portfolio but also it would give me the opportunity to channel the frustration that I, as a wildlife photographer, had felt about the lack of interest shown in this genre by the art world, into a piece of writing.

 I concentrated initially on the relationship between the genre of wildlife photography and the world of photographic art. I was fortunate that as I was starting to put together my ideas I noticed a forum on the OCA web site:

(http://www.weareoca.com/photography/tweet/?utm_source=Student+Body+01%2F08%2F2013&utm_campaign=2e0238cdc1-E_bulletin_29_August_2013&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_d579763e43-2e0238cdc1-64339533)

The forum discussed the relationship of wildlife photography with photographic art, other genres and OCA course content. Although I found much of the discussion simplistic and superficial (understandably, given the medium) and I disagreed with some of the comments I was encouraged by the fact that some of the contributors were similarly frustrated by the apparent dismissal of wildlife photography in the artistic media and by being unable to express their interest in wildlife photography through their course work. The forum also reinforced my view that the very different attitude to the genre of landscape photography by the art establishment must be the key to understanding why wildlife photography has become isolated and this encouraged me to dig deeper into the reasons for the very different treatment of these genres.

 I had come into contact with the work of Daniel Beltrá and other “wildlife photojournalists” through my regular visits to the “Wildlife Photographer of the Year” and “Sony World Photography Awards” exhibitions and felt that their work provided an important link between the genres of wildlife photography, documentary and photojournalism. Whilst this does not provide a link with the creative arts it does both highlight a connection between wildlife photography and other genres and suggests a potentially important role for the genre. I had originally planned to give Daniel Beltrá’s work more prominence in the essay. However his output, whilst important to the flow of my argument, is still fairly limited so I decided to restrict myself to commenting in detail on a single portfolio of his work.

The research to find a connection between wildlife photography and photographic art sent me in some fascinating directions. Whilst I ultimately failed to find a clear solution that might integrate these areas I did establish (in my own mind, at least) why the genre of landscape photography has become accepted by the photographic art establishment, whilst the genre of wildlife photography has not. I am convinced now that the differences between these two genres explain why wildlife photography occupies its current niche.

The essay was started in March 2014, but the majority was written between May and early August, with breaks for holidays. Because of my interest in the subject matter I found it easy to write an initial draft. The main problem was in giving prominence to answering the various questions and issues raised in the introduction. I decided to write objectively, to provide a relatively impartial view (c.f. Project 5) of the subject. Despite being in love with wildlife photography I found that it was not too difficult to comprehend why there is so little interaction between this genre and the photographic art establishment, why it differs from the genre of landscape photography and hence why it occupies its current role. Of course I may be mistaken, but the review aims to understand the genre, its status and its interaction with other genres. It is not a polemic about the way wildlife photography has been unfairly treated!

I have consciously avoided mentioning specific wildlife photographers (other than the photojournalists), because I felt that discussing their (figurative) work would not add anything to the debate. Perhaps my essay is skewed a little towards understanding the role of landscape photography in the development of photographic art, but I felt that this was important in explaining why the differences between this genre and that of wildlife photography help us to understand why the latter is largely ignored by the art establishment.

Final Comments

When I started writing the essay I felt hopeful that I could find a role for wildlife photography within the art establishment. With the essay finished I now realise how hard it will be for the genre to establish a foothold! However, I do have a much greater understanding of why the worlds of the wildlife photographer and the art establishment show so little overlap. I hope that my major project will explore some of the areas of overlap.

 I do believe that wildlife photography has an important role to play, both in inspiring more people to interact with nature and in bringing the attention of the world to the way that man is destroying the natural world. The total destruction of our environment and the wildlife that goes with it will leave little hope for the future of mankind. Wildlife photography will disappear, but so will other photographic genres. Wildlife photography may not be art, but it is important!

"Stranger Than Fiction": Joan Fontcuberta, Science Museum, London

Joan Fontcuberta (b 1955) is a Catalan photographer and artist, whose works straddle the boundary between photographic truth and fiction. This, his first major UK exhibition, features six of his best-known works spanning nearly 20 years. Each work is, in every sense, a fabrication: a more or less convincing lie. As such, the works explore issues such as the power of the apparently objective photograph as evidence and the balance between our spiritual wish to believe and our logic-driven scepticism.

On entering the Media Space gallery we are confronted with Fontcuberta’s best known work: “Fauna” (1987). Produced in collaboration with artist and writer Pere Formiguera (1952-2013), the work purports to document the archive of the life’s work of the mysterious late Professor Peter Ameisenhaufen, discovered by the artists in the basement of a B&B in northern Scotland. The archive features “zoological discoveries” made by Ameisenhaufen on his worldwide expeditions, which appear to be exceptions to Darwin’s theory of evolution. The “discoveries” include a monkey with wings and a unicorn horn, a snake with twelve legs and a two-legged hybrid of a fox and a turtle (Image). Not content with providing photographs, “taken in the field”, of these monstrosities, the artists include sketches, extracts from contemporary notebooks, stuffed animals, X-rays and even vocalisations of selected exhibits: indeed, everything one would expect from a display in the Natural History Museum, just up the road.

Image: Joan Fontcuberta

There is no doubt today that this work is a very elaborate hoax, but when it was exhibited in Barcelona in 1989 apparently 30% of university educated visitors aged 20-30 believed that some of these creatures could have existed. Knowing the history behind the project, I found reading the notes and looking at the photographs to be an amusing and enjoyable experience.

The genesis of “Fauna” is suggested by studying the earlier (1984) work: “Herbarium”. Here, Fontcuberta presents an array of photographs of “new plant discoveries” which are, in reality, composed of a mixture of plant matter and various man-made materials. Later works include “Constellations” (1993), a series of prints purporting to be night sky views of star constellations but which are actually made from the traces of insects, dust and dirt that gathered on photographic paper on the window of his car as he drove to and from work. “Orogenesis” (2002) features prints of entirely mythical, computer generated landscapes produced by using a program to convert map contours into three dimensional landscape images. The contours have in turn been generated by digitally scanning old photographs as well as paintings by artists such as Cezanne and Turner.

Fontcuberta returned to the subject of mythical beasts with “Sirens” (2000), a series of photographs apparently depicting fossilised evidence for “Hydropithecus Alpinus”, a mermaid-type creation with human features. He collaborated with a local museum to produce the “fossils” and place them at a location in the French Alps where, as far as I am aware, they can still be viewed today. For this work Fontcuberta assumed the role of Father Jean Fontana, the “discoverer” of the fossils, whose photograph appears alongside some of the exhibits. This hoax proved too much for some and produced an angry response, in particular from teachers who argued that “amending” the fossil record in this way would confuse their pupils. Perhaps in the light of this the final work on display, “Karelia, Miracles and Co” (2002) is a very funny photographic record of miracles such as walking on water and “dolphin surfing” performed by monks (who look very much like Fontcuberta himself) at a monastery in Karelia, the region of northern Europe that straddles Russia and Finland. Anybody who believes that these photographs are for real definitely needs their head examining!

Conclusions

Delving more deeply into the works on display it is possible to see various common themes, the most obvious being the use of the supposedly objective medium of photography to practice deception: can we believe what we see in any photograph? Are the exhibits that we see in London’s museums genuine and, if so, how can we prove that they are? Nowadays we are used to seeing images that have clearly been doctored but in the 1980s, before the digital era, it is easy to see why the public might possibly have been convinced by the data presented in the “Fauna” exhibition. Now that Fontcuberta has been well and truly exposed as a hoaxer his works continue to amuse and entertain, but have lost some of their power to question perception because today's public is far more sceptical of what it sees in the media than it has ever been.

The Science Museum charges a fee (£8.00 for an adult) to visit this exhibition. In my view this is well worthwhile, despite the fact that the layout of the exhibition space makes it very difficult to work through the exhibition in a logical order. Also, the lighting is generally inadequate (both problems were also apparent on my visit to an earlier exhibition here by Tony Ray-Jones and Martin Parr). This is a rare opportunity to enjoy the work of a photographer whose unique blend of creative ideas and universal humour produces an enjoyable, if artificial experience. Suspend disbelief and visit!