Costa Rica: A Photographer's View

In August 2014 I spent a fortnight in Costa Rica with my partner Helen, as part of a group on an organised “Exodus” trip. Costa Rica is very much a place to visit for tourists interested in its incredibly rich and diverse wildlife and environment, although it also offers excellent surfing and sun-soaked Pacific beaches. However, as befits a country with tropical rainforests the weather can be extremely wet! Whilst I was strictly on holiday I did, of course, record (where possible) the wildlife that we saw and, in the light of the “why feed the birds” subject of my major project, I was particularly interested in recording the Costa Ricans’ use of bird feeders to attract (mainly, but not exclusively) hummingbirds. During our fortnight I took 3300 photographs, ultimately keeping around 1000 as a photographic record of our visit. The following is a very brief commentary on our adventures.

Red-eyed Tree Frog, Manuel Antonio NP

The People

I’ve never been to an “exotic” country before where the people treated me as “part of the scenery”. They are not rude (quite the opposite), but they are presumably so used to seeing tourists that we don’t register as being unusual in any way. This was quite a revelation on the holiday. I also felt completely safe everywhere I went, although there is a small amount of petty crime at some of the major destinations. The Costa Ricans are clearly peace-loving people (they don’t have an army and have largely escaped the [civil] wars, which have recently affected some of their neighbours, unscathed).

The Landscape

Costa Rica has volcanoes and mountains reaching almost 4000 metres. But it also borders both the Caribbean and the Pacific oceans. The high rainfall (particularly in the east and in the mountain regions) produces lush vegetation (no deserts here!), which carpets large tracts of land and virtually all the mountain regions. As a consequence the landscape can start to look rather “samey” after a while: there are few exposed rocks or lone trees. This is not ideal habitat for landscape photographers! Upland areas are often hidden in a layer of cloud or mist, which can produce some atmospheric effects if you are happy to put up with a visibility of 10 – 50 metres. The limited numbers of landscape scenes that I photographed whilst in Costa Rica were mainly produced as representative images of what it was like to be there, rather than for their artistic or aesthetic qualities.

The Wildlife

Now you’re talking! Costa Rica has an incredibly rich, diverse and (importantly) colourful wildlife. It is possible to get close to monkeys, sloths, birds, snakes, frogs, spiders, crabs, butterflies and dragonflies. Not to mention all the orchids and other plant life. You name it, Costa Rica has it! With the exception of its secretive “big cats” (Puma, Ocelot and Jaguar), it is possible to find and take decent photographs of pretty much anything. The diversity of species reflects the diversity of habitats, so animals that are common at sea level may not occur up in the mountains and vice-versa.

Male Resplendent Quetzel

So is Costa Rica the wildlife photographer’s dream? Well, not completely. For a start it rains heavily throughout the year and particularly in the summer and early autumn months (i.e. when we visited!). This causes problems with water getting into the camera lens (as happened to me on more than one occasion) and steaming up: good waterproofing of your equipment is strongly recommended! Also, much of the wildlife is found in and around forested areas, which are shady at the best of times and particularly when the weather is overcast and/or wet. Consequently you have to rely on the subject being static or, if it is moving, using a high to very high ISO setting (say 1000+) to capture the action without blurring. I mainly used my Nikon D7000 camera in these conditions. The camera has many qualities, but does exhibit some graininess at higher ISO settings. My images would not print up well if taken under these circumstances.

A second problem was evident when we made a nocturnal visit to watch green turtles laying eggs on a Caribbean beach at Tortuguero. Strictly no photography! This rule is essential, because taking photographs may disturb the endangered turtles and cause them to abort laying, but watching the huge female turtles emerging from the sea, digging holes, laying eggs and then covering them with sand was an amazing “once in a lifetime” experience, which would have produced a dream photographic sequence….

The Hummingbirds

During the first part of the holiday hummingbirds were in short supply. However, we had the opportunity in Monteverde National Park to visit a “hummingbird garden”, equipped with sugar feeders, where several species of hummingbird were zooming around, sometimes within a few inches of our faces. What an amazing experience, and definitely one of the highlights of the trip! However, we only had limited time and the light was very poor (overcast with light rain in a forest clearing), so I had to settle for some static images of various species, taken at high ISO values. Fortunately the final lodge we visited, in Savegre National Park, had several (mainly hummingbird) feeders and attracted good numbers of three main montane species (we were situated at 2200 metres altitude). The staff had gone to some lengths to provide natural perches for them and I was finally able, on the penultimate day of the holiday, to get some decent photographs of the hummingbirds at rest. The commonest (and most photogenic) species was the Green Violet-ear: I took over 100 photographs of this bird, one of which is shown below.

Green Violet-ear, Savegre NP

Photographing the hummingbirds hovering and feeding on nectar proved challenging, even though they kept their bodies still during the process. My favourite portraits were all of static birds.

Do the hummingbird feeding stations in Costa Rica provide any insights for my project work? The feeders are easy to set up and common throughout the Americas, obviously benefit the birds and provide pleasure for tourists and locals alike. Monitoring birds coming to feeders provides useful information for conservationists and there is commercial gain for the manufacturers and lodge/hotel owners (the latter would attract fewer visitors if they did not provide feeders in areas where hummingbirds can be attracted). The provision of “natural” perching posts close to the feeders encourages wildlife photographers. Unfortunately we don’t have hummingbirds in the UK, but many of the reasons for feeding the birds in Costa Rica are equivalent to our own. Perhaps the biggest gain of all would be the personal pleasure gained by the private home owner or tenant, in the UK or overseas, who can get close to the birds and enjoy watching their activity by providing them with the food that they need.

Exhibition Visit and Walking Reading Group Review: "Dalston Anatomy"

(Photographers' Gallery and Ramillies Street to Ridley Road Market, Dalston: 30 August 2014)

The Exhibition

“Dalston Anatomy” is a colourful, varied celebration of Dalston’s Ridley Road market, created and produced by London based Italian artist and photographer Lorenzo Vitturi. Over several years Vitturi integrated himself within the vibrant Ridley Road community market scene, photographing local characters, collecting discarded fruit and vegetables and buying materials such as paints, dyes and chalk which, together, he would use to create makeshift sculptures and installations. These would then be photographed. The photographs were incorporated into a photo-book, “Dalston Anatomy”, published in 2013 to critical acclaim.

The exhibition incorporates many of these photographs together with sculptures and installations which, in a departure from “normal” photographic exhibitions, cover much of the floor space in the top gallery.

The Walk

The “Walking Reading Group” is an experimental group, set up by London-based Artists Lydia Ashman, Ania Bas and Simone Mair. The group meets on an irregular basis (booking required, to ensure things don’t get out of hand) to discuss themes arising from exhibitions and related texts, which are emailed to participants beforehand.

Exhibition Review

Two things struck me when I walked into the exhibition room. Firstly, the floor space was used to incorporate colourful installations, including some of Vitturi’s sculptures and a prominent poem by Sam Berkson, formed of fragments of conversation overheard at the market, which is written in large print on a mat on the floor (Image 1).

Image 1: Exhibition Layout

Secondly, bright and vibrant colours are everywhere. Countless varieties of bright fruit and vegetables (we didn’t recognise them all) form components of the photographic prints and sculptures (the latter use artificial replacements for the organic items). The prints (thinly) populate the walls, but can also be found on and around the central installation. Complementary colours in some prints mix with rainbow effects in others. Only one print (showing five artistically arranged bananas) is partially drained of colour, for reasons best known to the artist. Somehow, the subtlety of this print attracted me to take a closer examination: perhaps the image represents the peace that falls on the market at night, following the vibrancy of the day’s activities.

The artist is quoted as saying that “I wanted to capture Ridley Road market’s edgy dynamic”. Many photographers would have contented themselves with taking portraits of stall holders and purchasers, discarded food, transactions taking place, the setting up and the aftermath. Vitturi’s novel use of found objects as well as items bought at the market in order to create and then photograph art represents a new approach to celebrating his subject. However, does it take us too far from the market’s roots? A few street scenes are represented, but they seem incongruous, even out of place amongst his fruit and vegetable sculptures. Focusing on the latter means that we are now a further step away from the market and I found it difficult to visualise or warm to an event that was actually occurring as I toured the gallery. Which brings us to the walk….

Walk Review

Armed with material to use during the walk (well, at least a tour of the exhibition and a half hour browse of the varied texts) I joined up with around 20 other individuals and the walk leaders for a 4.5 mile walk from the Photographers' Gallery to (of course) Ridley Road market. After introducing themselves the walk leaders asked us to think up and write down some “key words” relating to the exhibition and texts on sheets of paper. We were then asked to pair up with someone whom we did not know, whose key words related in some ways to our own. After the initial chaos we set off on the walk, chatting with our new companions about the exhibition, the texts and pretty much anything else that came to mind. Roughly every 20 minutes we swapped partners, so that by the end of the walk (yes, we all reached the market) we had walked with five different people. During the middle section of the walk we were asked to walk silently, which meant that I learnt little from my third partner (and vice versa), although at least my throat got a “breather”. After discussing the exhibition (others had similar views to my own), my gambit of mentioning how much I disagreed with the author of one of the texts who stated (in so many words) that pioneering photographers such as Walker Evans, who photographed poor families in the depression era, exploited their subjects, started to wear thin. In the end the discussions veered more towards finding out about my new companions and rather less towards criticising the exhibition and texts. After spending over four hours at the Photographers’ Gallery and on the walk, my partner and I said our farewells and left most of the group to continue their conversation at a Ridley Road hostelry.

Conclusions

Exhibitions inevitably reveal some of the personality of the artist. Whether the viewer buys into the subject matter of the exhibition will depend to some extent on how well their personality is matched to that of the artist. In this case I struggled to find a reason why this exhibition might be greater than or even equal to the sum of its parts. Yes, I enjoyed the vibrancy of the colours. I also appreciated that the artist was trying to do something different, as was the Photographers’ Gallery in allowing photographs and other art to be portrayed as an installation. However, the lack of a clear theme and the lack of empathy that I felt with the market itself as a result of looking at these photographs did not align me with the artist’s aims. This feeling was shared by some of my walking companions.

I have to admit that I was dragged along rather reluctantly by my partner to the walk. However, I was pleasantly surprised: I found it uplifting to chat with people, often half my age or younger, with whom I had something in common, even if at the end of the walk I hadn’t gained a great insight into the works of the artists and writers that had been studied. Seeing issues from a different point of view was refreshing: I can imagine something similar (without the walking) working well at parties and I’m sure that friendships will be struck up by people who have attended these events. At the time of writing it is not clear whether Walking Reading Group events will continue. If not, it was certainly a worthwhile experiment.

Assignment 3: Critical Essay. Tutor Feedback and Final Comments

In the critical essay I commented on the role of the genre of wildlife photography (current, past and possibly future) and attempted to answer the following questions:

•         What are its values?
•      What is its current status?
•          Why is it largely ignored by the photographic art establishment?
•          In contrast, why is the genre of landscape photography (with which it has much in common) greeted by the photographic art establishment with far greater critical appreciation?
•          Is it possible to bridge the perceived gap between wildlife photography and photographic art in the future?
•          What benefits can the traditional “figurative” values of the genre bring?

By the time I had finished the essay I was satisfied that I had at least had a go at answering these questions and had painted an objective (although admittedly broad brush) picture of the genre of wildlife photography and its links with other genres, as well as looking at some possible future directions for the genre.

My tutor was not so happy, feeling in particular that the title of the essay (“Understanding the genre of wildlife photography: what are its values and is it art?”) was too broad (in retrospect I agree with this) and didn’t allow me to get to the heart of the topic. He noted that the document “has a good deal of interest relative to your study area” and that “you have made a good effort in the review and to develop your knowledge and understanding for the major project work”. However, “there is a limited amount of knowledge gained from this research piece in terms of how you can move your own work forward”. In his response he highlighted two areas that might, in their own right, have provided narrower subject areas for an essay. These are highlighted in points 1 and 2 below:

1.       “How does aesthetic appeal grow into pleasurable feeling for a viewer? Why or how can a documentary photograph evoke ethos, empathy or sympathy – considered or emotional reactions?” and:

2.       “What do wildlife artists add to their work that photographers may not understand and/or use?” Comparing and contrasting the work of a number of wildlife artists with known photographers of similar subjects would have allowed me to “categorise the elements involved” (in looking at the artists’ work as art) and perhaps identify a way forward for photographers who also wish their work to be considered as art.

Both areas are, as my tutor pointed out, pertinent and very relevant to my major project work and will be of value to me in plotting a way forward. They could have made good subjects for a separate essay. Nevertheless, the subject matter for the critical review had been agreed with my tutor beforehand and there is no way that I could have incorporated the issues raised by these points (assuming that I had thought of them!) into the planned essay without expanding it well beyond 3000 words.

In the essay I reviewed the work of Daniel Beltrá, a photojournalist who carries out assignment work for Greenpeace, within the context of showing that photojournalism can, in the right hands, amalgamate the genres of wildlife and documentary photography. My tutor commented that “you review his work well” but: “He is a photojournalist. He isn’t a wildlife photographer”. I disagree with this statement. Beltrá is both a photojournalist (by profession) and a wildlife photographer. More importantly, he cares for the environment and publicises the way that we are destroying the environment by the use of abstract, “artistic” images that have great aesthetic appeal and therefore attract a wide audience, publicity and a public reaction that just may bring to the fore environmentalists of the future. These, in turn, might even prevent the loss of all our wildlife. I removed a number of strong and/or controversial statements from the final draft of the essay but left one in. Referring to the (potential) influence of wildlife photographers it reads as follows: “…. and they need to be influential, because the damage we are causing to the environment may ultimately lead to the genre of wildlife photography disappearing altogether, as there will be no wildlife left to photograph”. This statement ties in strongly with the first and last questions posed in my introduction, above. The use of photojournalism to bind wildlife and documentary photography together, the use of the image of oiled pelicans (is this not a wildlife photograph?) and the popularity of images of threatened species (“take a look at this portrait of a tiger in the wild, because you will have to go to a zoo to see them in the future”) point to current and future values for wildlife photography, both “figurative” and “artistic”.

My tutor made the points that I did not provide names when talking about the world of photographic art (this was quite deliberate and also applied to my discussion of the world of the wildlife photographer) and that I provided no statistics in the review (the example he quoted was that when Kodak made film only 5% of the output was provided for the professional market [I’m surprised that the figure wasn’t lower!]). Point taken, but I didn’t feel it was necessary to quote statistics to make my points. Perhaps I was wrong.

When talking about landscape photography and the “New Topographical” conceptual examination of existence, rather than the figurative value of this work, my tutor comments that “the work and its derivatives have intrinsic aesthetic values. Those you should have examined, identified and discussed”. This is a good point and relates back to point 1 above. My research led me in some interesting directions and I used “New Topographics” to highlight how new concepts and ideas within the boundaries of the landscape photography genre led to its acceptance as photographic art. I bought the book of the original “New Topographics” exhibition and studied the photographs, but was unable to understand why the featured work was held in such high regard; only that it represented an important breakaway from the purely figurative values of previous work and that it was acclaimed by the artistic community. To understand the aesthetic appeal of this work will be to understand the general appeal of photographic art and its underlying conceptual approach. My tutor warned me that this might take me several years: I’m not there yet.

In conclusion, to fully answer the questions raised in the title and introductory pages of my essay I would have had to have written a far longer essay: perhaps one or more chapters in a book! Nevertheless I feel that I have raised most of the key issues and have done so objectively. Whilst admitting to being a wildlife photographer I have not “taken sides” on any of the issues. As a consequence my conclusions are unsurprising and, although I have been able to find little common ground between the world of photographic art and the world of the wildlife photographer, I believe that I have put forward a strong case for wildlife photography being regarded as an important and influential genre, both now and in the future.

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!

Red Kites at Gigrin Farm

On 20 June 2014 I paid my second visit of the year to the red kite feeding station at Gigrin Farm, near Rhayader in mid Wales, looking for images for my major project portfolio on feeding wild birds and the reasons why we feed them. Red kites are fed meat at Gigrin every day of the year, at exactly the same time of day (2.00 pm GMT or 3.00 pm BST). The meat is claimed to be too good for human consumption (!!) and it attracts up to 500 kites from all over the region: the sky seems to be filled with kites! Gigrin ticks quite a few of the boxes as to why we feed wild birds. Firstly it is a commercial enterprise (I paid £17.00 for the privilege of using an elevated photography hide with open views, although an afternoon in a public hide costs £5.00) and a selection of merchandise is available (I have three polo shirts in different colours in my collection!). Secondly the supplementary feeding station has been important in conserving and then increasing the population of this majestic bird in Wales after it had been reduced to a handful of individuals by the 1970s. Injured birds are nursed back to health here in a rehabilitation centre and, where possible, released back into the wild. Thirdly, it gives children an opportunity to see majestic birds of prey at close quarters and hopefully inspire them to love and respect nature. Finally, it offers unrivalled opportunities for wildlife photographers to photograph the birds in action at very close quarters.

I have been to Gigrin many times before and have recorded thousands of images of the birds in flight (they hardly ever land on the ground, preferring to fly low and seize food items with their talons). On this occasion I wanted to capture the entire feeding sequence and, in particular, to photograph the birds eating in flight. I knew from past experience that I had set myself a challenging target. Three hours and 800+ images (captured using the Nikon D7000 with 70-300mm zoom and 300mm f4 prime lenses) later I called it a day and completed the 420 mile round trip to my home. A lengthy session of “post production” resulted in just 40 edited images being retained. Whether any of these will reach the final portfolio remains to be seen, but the following montage (Image; reading across and then down from top left to bottom right) gives a summary of the various feeding “events”, from the time the meat is put out to the moment that a kite swallows its last morsel of meat.

Image: Red Kites at Gigrin, 20 June 2014

Henry Moore at Perry Green (Visited 25 May 2014)

My partner and I spent a pleasant afternoon wandering around Henry Moore’s house and grounds in the village of Perry Green, which is about a 30 minute drive from where I live in Royston. Both are open to the public: we have visited before, but timed our visit this time to coincide with an exhibition of the work of other artists and sculptors who have been influenced by Moore. Damien Hirst’s “pickled cows” were on display and it was interesting to note that at one point in his career Moore and his work were criticised and lampooned by other artists who felt that he was the “golden boy” of the establishment and that others were not getting a “look in”.

I always take a camera on these visits and try to look for novel subjects for the lens. Obviously just photographing Moore’s sculptures is of little value, so I looked to investigate the “inner space” of his works, concentrating on shape, pattern, colour and texture. I liked and kept half a dozen of the resultant images. One in particular caught my eye (Image): the combination of ovals and angles, the texture of the bronze and the variety of colour (slightly enhanced in post-production) were aesthetically appealing. I entered an A4 mounted print of the image into Royston Photographic Society’s 2014 “Open Print” competition on 12 June 2014. Much to my surprise, it received top marks and won the certificate for the judge’s favourite print of the competition (out of 55 entered)!

Image

How valid as a work of art is a photograph of a work of art? I enjoy this image purely as an abstract, just as I would an abstract created by focussing on a detail of a piece of engineering, such as a bridge or a clock mechanism, or focussing on a detail created by nature, such as ripples in the sand or rock strata. Sometimes man and nature combine (reflections of light on a canal spring to mind) to give the photographer the opportunity to create their abstract: in my view, all are equally valid.