Evaluation

My final book is a far cry from my first idea, I began this project wanting to create a book based around car fanatics and their pride and joy; their cars. I wanted to base my book on something that I knew nothing about. I thought it would be an interesting exercise to find out more about something that other people held a lot of passion for, where I felt none. This book was going to be called ‘60 seconds of passion’ and would contain a 60 second transcribed interview with each subject followed by a series of portrait/editorial type images. Oh how I am glad that I changed my idea, I quickly realised that 12 weeks is not a long time at all, especially when you consider that I also needed 2 weeks for delivery of the book (if I used an online book creator) and what if the first draft wasn’t right and I had to send it off to get reprinted, thats 4 weeks gone already. I had given myself a lot of work to do in this small time frame, I then decided that maybe creating a book about something that I already hold a passion for myself, would make life a lot more easier and I could therefore put more of myself into it.

My idea started to form in my mind over the next week, over the past few years I have based my Photographic career within the Music scene and I have noticed a change occurring. With the age of Digital Photography there seems to be more and more ‘Photographers’ at live shows every week, with the invention of longer lenses and more powerful flashes you no longer need to be in the photo pit at the front to get decent images of the bands. What I find frustrating is the next day the internet is awash with imagery and it is hard for Photographers who rely on their photos to pay their rent to get their images noticed. I observe more people every night taking photos on their phone and standing in a crowded venue uploading the said image to facebook, instagram or twitter within seconds of taking said image. I witness these people missing bands on the stage pouring their hearts into every second of the performance, just so they can get a badly lit, poorly composed image online to say “hey, look where I am!”. Do they realise that they could experience the show for themselves, right there and then and still go online the next day and see images created by photographers who are paid to be there.

I therefore wanted to base my book on this idea of Music Photography and the battle against ‘iPhoneography’. I wanted to show that Music Photography is something that some of us pour our hearts into rather than just pointing a phone over the crowds head and hoping for the best, then missing two songs whilst you show your online friends. I thought that just using my own images wouldn’t be the best way t go about this, mainly because I wanted a lot of variety in the images and I also wanted to reach a wider audience, maybe a collection of photographers and their images would be the way to go. Each Photographer would need to have a distinctive style to make the book work so I started to look for potential people to collaborate with on this project. The beauty of this idea is that it combines everything that I had thought about so far in the build up of this project; photography, people and their passions and Music Photography.

I sent an email out to prospective Photographers, probably about ten in all and I received replies from all of them; only three however said that they would have time to contribute in the small time frame that I had. I was happy with this, myself included that gave me four Photographers to contribute. I also asked one of the Photographers if they would write a small introduction for the book. I thought that this would add to the book as she is an editor on an up and coming London based music magazine called ‘Discovered’. This I thought would help with getting the book out there to the public. Unfortunately when it got closer to the deadline she had no time to supply either images or an introduction. This was a big blow to the structure of the book and I decided to get it written myself.

I eventually had ten images each from three Photographers, myself, Andy Ford and Greig Clifford. We each work in different areas of the south of England so as a collective it was quite a nice mix. I started to play around on Blurb.com with the images to edit them down and create an order that felt right. I started with Andy’s images as, to be honest, they were and still are my favourite ones. I believe that he has a great eye and always captures the moment of a show in a fantastic way. I whittled his ten images down to seven and placed them in a order and particular book format that suited the images. I chose 13 x 11 inches as I felt that this size gave the images the viewing format they deserved, small pages therefore small images would have been too small for the subject matter. Once I found a layout and order that suited the images  i did the same for Cliffords and my own images. I felt that the book needed something else to carry on the concept, I asked each of the guys to write a short piece about why they love music photography, why they do it and what their thoughts on the books concept were. This added another element to the book, it no longer was a portfolio of images, it now had an idea behind it, it gave the book purpose. I originally had this text at the beginning of each photographers section, I later chose to move it to the end, this worked better as a it added a kind of full stop to the end of the sections.

My final book arrived in the post and I have to say I was very pleased with it, the front cover image is subtle enough as to not take over from the text but attention grabbing enough to draw you in. The title itself ‘A View From the Pit’ was my second choice but I find works very well with the concept. The flow of the pages works well, it starts with a contents page and then you are faced with the introduction which i think outlines the concept in a short but punchy way intriguing the viewer to turn the pages. The quality and finish of the paper is very nice, I went for the more expensive heavy weight/matte finish. This was so it didn’t feel cheap in the readers hands and it also reduces shine off the pages so the images can be viewed from most angles. The only thing I would change about my book at this point would be to add more Photographers, it feels as though the book should be thicker and once you have got to the end you feel as though their should be more to come. maybe this is something that I can continue with after the module has finished. All in all I am proud of my book and it has encouraged me to do more with my images after the shutter has clicked. Photography has come a long way in the past ten years and we only seem to view images on a screen now, this module has spurred me on to change this with my own work.

Book Review

Charles Peterson - touch me i’m sick

The year is 1991. The place is Vancouver. The singer is held aloft, like Jesus among the disciplines, by his adoring fans. His Fender strat obscures his face but the ripped jeans and dirty blond hair can only belong to one man: the legendary Kurt Cobain. The photographer’s name is stamped across the centre of the image in bold white, deliberately lower cased lettering: charles peterson. The concept and title follows in muted grey: touch me i’m sick. This gives us all the information we need about this book, whilst Peterson is a little known photographer in today’s circles, if you are interested in the scene of late 80s / early 90s grunge or rock movement then you know the name Charles Peterson; this is one for the fans.

Something else that is self-evident from this very first image is that this book, like the musical movement it documents, is unapologetically non-conformist. It is clear from the outset that there will be no stringently posed, clinically lit and masterfully edited images of the bands; Peterson shoots when he wants, what he wants and how he wants and the image of him at the back of the book  taken in 1982 with his middle finger up says ‘If you don’t like it I don’t give a fuck’. And within that statement lies the whole concept of this book and, it could be said, the focus behind Peterson as a photographer as well as the appeal of the 80s/90s grunge rock movement. This book gives us a chance to view that movement from the inside as though we were there as it happened, with Peterson we are given an access all areas pass.

Famed for documenting the scene as Sub Pop’s (a record label famous for it’s grunge releases at the time) unofficial photographer, Peterson had the unique chance of documenting Seattles sudden explosion of grunge and rock bands, some of which went on to dominate the music scene. This book encompasses his early photographs from this era. Bold, brash, black and white: Peterson’s trademark style is evident in the pages of touch me i’m sick. His focus is more on catching the energy and passion of the people and experience he documents rather than on producing the perfect brightly lit, almost staged images that we see in all of today’s popular music magazines. This emphasis is clear from looking at the first twelve pages of the book. Introduced by Eddie Vedder (front man of the now world famous Pearl Jam), and with an essay by Jennie Boddy (publicist for Sub Pop at the time), the pages contain four images, in two of them the subject’s face is cut off from the composition, the other two simply show a dirty floor or a stack of amps. The inclusion of Vedder and Boddy’s texts in these opening pages shows that Peterson was well respected in the scene, both by the subjects of his images and by the people those images were produced on behalf of. The beauty of these first images, and I am including the cover image in this, is that it shows how Petersons images didn’t need to follow the same pattern as every other music Photographer working at the time. This book isn’t about straight up portraits of the singer looking great and therefore cultivating the perfect ‘Pop Star’ image, the images capture the true raw brutality of the grunge clubs and the music, musicians and fans that adored them.

Peterson’s style is consistent throughout; all the images are shot on high ISO black and white film, sometimes with a blast of flash. Always uncropped, Peterson’s images are known for the fact that what was shot at the time is what is displayed to the viewer. The rest of the book contains over ninety images by Peterson, all of which display this raw, passionate feeling in Petersons trademark gritty imagery. This reader’s interest is maintained by the varying formats Peterson uses to display his images on the page, some are single image double page spreads and some are side by side complementing each other. Throughout the book the images contain no signifiers as to who they are of until you get to the end, the last section of the book contains a couple of index pages, these are displayed as small thumbnails with the bands name, the city they were shot in and the year. Rather than cataloguing bands in neat chapters, Peterson blends his images together; Mudhoney collide with Pearl Jam, Nirvana jostle Black Flag and throughout it all the fans are omnipresent with whole pages given over to them screaming along and being thrown around in the moshpit. As well as maintaining interest this format plays another important role in the book by helping to show how interconnected the scene at that time was and also the great importance played in that by the fans and the fans experiences. One page that truly sticks out to me is a single image on a left hand page of Henry Rollins, singer of Black Flag at the time (a man who has since gone on to become a well-known name in the industry to say the least), turned away from the camera displaying his iconic tattoos, calm and ready with his microphone in hand. For me this image is immensely powerful, his onstage persona is beautifully captured and you can sense in the image just what this music lifestyle mean to him, it is everything.

To the right of this image is one of the pieces of text that pepper the book, an excerpt from ‘Melody Maker’ magazine in March 1990. Written by Everett True it asks the question “How on earth can they afford it?” He is, of course, referring to Nirvana’s obsession with trashing their instruments on stage. This is followed by an response from two of the three members of Nirvana, Krist Novoselic and Kurt Cobain (the bassist and singer/guitarist respectively), “Why do I do it? Why not? It feels good. Somebody cut down a nice old tree to make that fucking guitar. Smash It! We only ever do it if the feelings right; it doesn’t matter where we are” - Kurt Cobain. In this statement echoes of the title of the book can be found, we are witnessing something beautiful in decline, something sick. What I love about this book, and I guess this could be said to be the reason I love the scene of that time as well, is the frenetic blend of emotion that went into it. On one page you have this beautifully calm image of Rollins, then a discussion of the iconic destruction that went along with the scene (a destruction that extended to its participants as well as its artifacts) beautiful is documented, and then nine pages you have images of Kurt Cobain’s frenetic stage presence. With Peterson we are privileged to witness the eye of the storm as well as the havoc within it.

As well as this, the book also contains ‘behind the scenes’ images that show the everyday reality of the people involved in the scene. We see Mudhoney at a urinal in Bristol, a ‘Reservoir Dogs’ style image of Pearl Jam walking across an airport in Spain and Beat Happening in tuxedos attending a wedding in Seattle. This shows Peterson’s ability to capture the moment off stage as well as on. Peterson was clearly someone the musicians felt comfortable with and were willing to let into their world and, because of this, we are allowed in too.

All in all I love this book. As someone who was too young to be a part of the early grunge scene, it offers the chance to put on some music, open it’s cover and lose yourself in Petersons’ world. touch me i’m sick is a book that contains passion, youth and talent whether it be the subjects themselves or Peterson as a Photographer. History has shown that the scene sadly did not last the 90s; it was, indeed, sick. And I do want to touch it.

Charles Peterson - Book Review

I have chosen to review Charles Petersons book 'Touch me I'm sick.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Touch-Me-Sick-Powerhouse-Classics/dp/1576873919/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1357140599&sr=8-1

Review will follow in another post.