Study Visit, Whitworth Gallery Manchester. John Stezaker

Study Visit, Whitworth Gallery, Manchester.

John Stezaker.

This study visit was organised by two OCA alumni and members of my Hangout Group Stan Dickenson and John Umney.  As well as having the opportunity to look around the exhibition they had arrnged for us to have a private room for pre and post viewing discussion.

A graduate of the Slade School of Art in 1973, Stezaker's work is surreal in tone and makes use of collage and he appropiates pre-existing images  such as postcards, film stills and publicity photographs.  He actually cuts up the original images and produces collages from them.  What we see is this original collage, curling and edges and all; they are not then rephotographed as he considers himself a conceptual artist but not a photographer.  A point that I took from this is that work does not always have to be pristine, although there is a time and place for this.  It has been suggested to me when working with Arts Meridian and Linda Ingham that I could draw into my photographs or stick found objects to them to enhance my work on the Lincolnshire coast.  I have fought shy of this, but this exhibition has made me begin to think otherwise.  During our post viewing discussion John and Stan shared some prints of their collaboration where Stan has been reworking some original Umney prints.  Their work not only resonates with Stezaker's but gave us the opportunity to discuss the benefits of prints and their 'physicality'.  One of our group  suggested that the materiality of the print is important and makes it unique as art, unlike most photography.  A colleague of mine in our Lincolnshire Image Maker's portfolio group is a great enthusiast of the print and he would certainly agree that images have more meaning as physical prints.  

The exhibition is organised in groups based around Stezaker's various projects.  In our discussion we talked about the fact that mixing portraits and landscapes had a secondary message about photographic conventions.  This made me wonder about the project that I am planning using some original writing of my mother's about a day out in 1930 delivering bread with her father on his horse-drawn baker's van.  I plan to retrace her route and photograph it as it is today and then combing these landscapes with family archive images of my grandfather and my mother along with her writing.  I also contemplated this project when looking at his mask series and wondered if I could use it in my new work.  I decided that it would be perhaps, rather creepy.  Sometimes it is no bad thing to unsettle the viewer but probably this would not be the project to do so.  (July.  I have now begun to work on this.  The link is here.)  We also discussed whether Stezaker's work was formulaic or were there hidden meanings.

Mask-CXI

The Marriage series fascinated me.  Here photographs of men and women are joined together to make one image, as in marriage or could they be about to divorce.  

Marriage - VIII

This reminded me of an image I made many years ago in my first ever OCA course: Introduction to Digital where I combined photographs of my son and daughter into one image below.

It was interesting looking out this image and reading my tutor's comments from the time.

One final thought that came up in discussion is that photographs are to do with memory, but Stezaker's work deprives it of memorial value.  Or do his images give a new memory?

An excellent day which has provided much food for thought and has been relevant to new work that I am beginning to embark on.  My thanks to John and Stan for a fascinating day.