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Couple of months ago a friend asked me, what is culture?
Few days later on, he offered a cold beer and asked me again. I hesitated to reply both times. I think that he mentioned, wondering, those early humans in caves drawing hunting scenes on the walls. Of course, I thought, this was culture. All systems of ideas and practices; all different beliefs and norms are culture(s)… And if anyone attempts to make distinctions between ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture, as if some type of culture is not really culture, this is no more than a cultural imposition itself. Incidentally, but not surprisingly, a distinction that is traditionally loved by both conservative and left viewpoints…
Culture is nevertheless relational. I wanted to point out this. It makes sense in relation to something else and other… thus, we may need to talk about cultures rather than culture… But then I forgot all about his question, lost - as usually - in the multiple threads starting out of another little and ’simple’ question… I am simply not sure what culture is…
Only recently, I came across a published editorial by Ivan Mecl, which made me think about it again and which I want to share here. It was published in the latest issue of Umelec, an international art and culture magazine (English version, Vol. 12, 1-2008, published by Divus.cz)
All photographs accompanying this article are taken during one of my recent ‘cultural’ trips to London.
“We work like old people, yet we behave like children more than ever before. We surround ourselves with mobile miracles, and therefore we have no idea what we are dealing with. We try to live in safety, and yet we do not know what it means to be safe. Many of us have lost time, but acquired “things.” We love “things” and their names sound nice to us. We love them, but they do not love us. We are impressed by their being changed, and unhappy by their loss. We are unhappy and with no time to spare from unrequited love, and always on the move.”
Tate Modern: 'The moment art changed forever'... But which moment exactly was that? Now, then, when?
“So let’s forget about culture. We don’t know what it means. The word culture is at the end of its meamimg-making history, because it has become a crutch for all that is frivolous. Why have a ministry for some abstract culture, we have beer culture, table culture, legal culture, legislative culture, and all kinds of mold and yogurt cultures too. Culture without qualification is fraud.”
Tate Modern: Cafe culture. Welcome, thank you... The cafe (in both Tate Museums) was more than a state of the art establishment, competing for popularity against the exhibitions in all the other rooms
“Art is trying to become science. It deals with philosophy, sociology, and psychology, and desires to be a pedagogical resource too. It wants to be political, yet maintain the charisma of the underground (that is, by being non-political). It wants to be a commodity. It makes fun of pop culture, a society that desires property, and it exhorts humility while at the same time consuming high-profile grants and taking over entire exhibit halls for its presentation. Contemporary art wants to be everything but still remain unique. Because art itself has little meaning-there is too much of it.”
London streets: rose, tea and appricot tart in Soho
“Contemporary artists are like Switzerland. They are like a country that wishes to remain neutral in the game, while siding with the winning team no matter who that is. Artists need not know a lot, yet they wish to comment on all contemporary phenomena. There is no area where contemporary artists do not stick their noses, but should they act in error, they simply claim artistic immunity. The only concept they are afraid of is art that wishes to fulfil and not make mistakes.”
London streets: advertising 'slowness' in a fast city
“A thought process without tangible results might as well be called laziness. Today, laziness is unforgivable. Activeness is the universal solution for contemporary society; it does not pay to stay in one place. True passivity requires courage.
A living man speaks. A clever man writes. A dead man is silent; a dead, lazy man.
Giving up the term culture offers hope of finding meaning.”
London streets: performance oriented modern adjustments
(Photographs by Christos Stavrou © 2008 All rights reserved)
Soon after I took this photo above, standing by the entrance of Leeds University, and as I was waiting for a sudden wave of rain to pass - among shiny bikes and a man whose posture and reflection had intrigued me… well, very soon after that a security guard came out from his box running quickly towards me.
He bombarded me with questions, who I am and what am I taking pictures of… My mind was still wandering in search of aesthetic pleasures; how to find the best angle, selecting shutter speed and aperture. I was not prepared and got surprised from his sudden attack. I simply said, I take a photo of bikes and a back-lit silhouette… (Should an aspiring conceptual photographer ever admit these casual things, I thought…)
But the security guard was not friendly. He insisted making questions. I noticed his threatening body language and persistent eye-contact in order to intimidate. Later he revealed that he used to work for some kind of special forces. His glorious and authoritative past, who knows why he was dismissed, was obviously filling him up with pride and nostalgia.
The treatment was unacceptable. After all I had been running the University’s Photosociety for two years in the recent past and we always used to practice making rounds in the campus. Not to mention the hundreds of graduates taking pictures of each other around those areas very regularly. Maybe it was about the beard in my face and my foreign accent didn’t help either… (Should I start shaving every time before using my camera outdoors, I thought…).
But he even used all sorts of lies and excuses trying to intimidate me, about how a special licence is required from the media services (something they denied later when I asked them), about his official orders to follow this procedure with everyone, even threats about calling the police were thrown to me… I replied that yes, he’s welcomed to call the police and look very silly when try to explain the reason of calling them. But the whole incident was not simply redicilous and patronising, it was also offending and very upsetting.
This happened two summers ago. I’m afraid though things don’t get better rather worst. The Metropolitan Police (click at the poster below) has just launched its five-week counter-terrorism campaign asking members of the public to report any suspicious behaviour. Yes, you guessed well. Taking photographs is a suspicious behaviour.
It seems that now you can - or have to - call the authorities every time you feel reporting a suspicious photographer. What exactly is suspicious, what is an ‘odd’ photograph? Well, not easy to answer… Sometimes an act appears odd just because someone looks odd and different, or because of our own preconceptions. And anyway, everyone has their own ideas about it, it cannot really be defined… But, in fact, this is probably the point: To spy and report each other! The poster states it clearly: Report it and “Let experienced officers decide what action to take.”
I know. Many readers have already began wondering in despair: Isn’t this campaign an open invitation to arbitrary and/or selective abuse? Isn’t this another badly disguised excuse for further erosion of our freedoms? Actually, isn’t this quite naive in its assumed counter-terrorist potential, when considering its adverse social effect by increasing fear and paranoia, and posing a high risk of weakening the social bonds, is therefore rather undermining than strengthening the sense of security?
Fear and paranoia.
Remember these words. These were the underlying forces of the security guard’s over-reaction against me, and that was what in turn he wanted to install upon me. Now, with even a seemingly official support in place, the absurdity is reinforced… Photographers of this country be aware and prepared. And resist the identification of terror.
The scary, and final, thought is that these practices remind how the Gestapo used to operate in Nazi Germany. Unlike the general belief, the Gestapo was not a huge and omnipotent organisation. As historian Robert Gellatel (see wikipedia) has shown, it was mainly made up by clerical workers and bureaucrats, who “were for the most part dependent upon denunciations for information about what was happening in German society. The willingness of ordinary Germans to denounce one another supplied the Gestapo with the information that determined who the Gestapo arrested.”
* * *
On Tuesday 11 March 2007, 6pm, there is a relevant and interesting public talk taking place in the Institute of Germanic & Romance Studies, University of London, Senate House, Malet Street, London, WC1E 7HU.
The title is: “How Safe Do You Feel: Surveillance, Photographers, and the Privatisation of Public Space Post 9/11“
It is presented by freelance documentary photographer, writer and researcher, Dr. John Perivolaris (click at his photo above to visit work from his recent documentary project). The seminar is open to everyone and here is the abstract of the seminar as published in the website of the hosting University:
“On the streets of cities in the United States and Europe we are witnessing a dramatic proliferation of surveillance cameras trained on citizens’ every move through increasingly privatised public spaces. For example, the average Londoner is daily caught on camera 300 times. But, while the citizen is constantly watched, they are increasingly restricted from photographing those same spaces. What is the place of independent photography and image-making of public space post-9/11? How are photographers to resist the plethora of restrictions to which they are now subject in the name of security? Is the right to watch swiftly becoming a monopoly of the state? Is democratic citizenship also now a struggle for the right to see as well as to be seen?”
* * *
At the same time that these important questions are posed here, in another country Greece, left over surveillance equipment from the Olympic Games, costing over $250 million, has divided the country over its use to spy citizens. As reported by the BBC (see below), the emerging debate is around not only the question whether Greece will be following Britain’s example of spying its citizens, but whether it can resist the powerful march of the cameras. The costly surveillance equipment has taken its own reified form of existance. Note that Olympics are coming to Britain in few years time.
the kiss
How does it feel to know that one of the most romantic images ever made was staged? The famous ‘Kiss by the Hôtel de Ville’ by Robert Doisneau, captured in Paris in 1950, was no other but a manufactured image. Alas, this was revealed by its creator himself in a court trial in the 1990s when, in mid of controversy, Françoise Bornet, a former actress and the woman who was featured with her boyfriend in the photo, sued Doisneau for $18,000 and a share of the royalty in the image.
Her case was dismissed. Doisneau died the next year in 1994. But in the end, few years later, Ms. Bornet sold her original print of the photograph for over $200,000 at an auction (BBC News 25/4/2005) while the rights still remain with Doisneau’s agency.
So does it still feel an iconic image to you, a quintessential Parisian image of passion, a symbol of romantic spontaneity and desire?
Leeds under construction. The city deconstructed.
Photograph by Christos Stavrou © 2007. All rights reserved
Sousveillance is the recording or monitoring of real or apparent authority figures by others, particularly those who are generally the subject of surveillance. Steve Mann, who coined the term, describes it as watchful vigilance from underneath.
When I was recently covering a music gig following a local friendly political protest, I decided to photograph those who were photographing all of us all the time (see above).
Later I discovered that there is even a FlickR group called Surveillance Mirror from which I have borrowed the explanations of the terms. It is worth the visit, both for the the
written posts -concerned with democracy and freedom, as well as for the photos. They often do elevate it to art, as the photo at the left demonstrates (photo by Dr John2005)
The term sousveillance stems from the contrasting French words sur; meaning above; and sous; meaning below, surveillance denotes the eye-in-the-sky watching from above, where as sousveillance denotes bringing the camera or other means of observation down to human level, either physically (mounting cameras on people rather than on buildings), or hierarchically (ordinary people doing the watching, rather than higher authorities or architectures doing the watching).
In Britain we are officially the most watched people on earth. If you live in London, the chances are you are caught on CCTV about 300 times a day.
In a recent competition called ‘new ways of looking’ I sent that photo above from Bradford’s train station, in which I had photographed a massive police poster depicting an officer photographing the public. At the moment of shooting the photo, I smiled thinking that I was returning the favour.. And I was wondering if the poster’s self-controlling message had ever reached the man with the suitcase sitting on the bench away, appearing with his back and shoulders down as having a long and tiring trip ahead of him…
The idea of an inherent resistance to the top-down application of this type of power, and its disciplinary and normalising effects (with tools, such as ‘the gaze’ which target the mind and not the body any more) can be found in Foucault’s work. Especially in his classic Discipline and Punish and the selected writings and interviews titled Power/Knowledge.
Photograph by Gary Winogrand, World’s fair, New York City, 1964.
“The crystalline clarity of Garry Winogrand’s awareness of a photograph cutting through motion and time makes this image of people interacting on a bench absolutely riveting. The quality and intensity of a photographer’s attention leave their imprint on the mental level of the photograph. This does not happen by magic.”
This is what Stephen Shore writes in his book ‘The Nature of Photographs‘ (2007 Phaidon) about Winogrand’s celebrated picture above. And these comments, with their simplicity and power, have captured my attention. More than any debate whether this was a posed or unposed photograph, especially given the artist’s preference for a casual and rather poorly executed pictures.
A catalogue of the Museum of Modern Art stated about this photograph, according to this review, that “in addition to the physical description the work provides - the pattern of legs, the leans and whispers - it also alludes to broader human relationships and suggest the coexistence of two parallel worlds: the specific and intimate reality of the women clustered on the park bench and the anonymous presence of the crowds visible in the distance.”
Besides all and any meanings found in this image, those first words about perception keep coming back… ‘the awareness of a photograph cutting through motion and time’…
After a train trip of about 20 minutes toward the North of England, Leeds’s neighbor and very far cousin city emerges: York. Such different are their social histories of past and present that the return ticket price of £9.10 (an obvious rip off) feels almost justified…
Click here or at the picture above for a link to my photographs from a recent trip to York. It is part, unrefined yet, of a wider photographic project which is currently in progress, about the changing faces of the English North cities and the diverse spirit of experience within them.
All photographs by Christos Stavrou © 2007. All rights reserved.
I know we have almost a whole month until we are to officially celebrate Halloween, on the night of 31st of October, but the shops around us have a different idea. From little tempting chocolates which look like curved pumpkins to headless ’scary’ plastic men, a day’s shopping in downtown Leeds can hardly miss the Halloween commercial frenzy…
Not that the ubiquitous advertising has ever been desperate just for public holidays in order to grab people’s attention. Every case, such as a new club night, seems to demand and justify something impressive.. As far as I know, no the photo below does not show a military coup in Leeds…
But yes, you have probably guessed well, those little Santas and his deers are already out there…
[All images by Christos Stavrou © 2007 All rights reserved]
Christos Stavrou © 2007 All rights reserved
What will be happening next? We need change and excitement.
The final lines from ‘Waiting for the Barbarians’ a poem by greek poet Cavafy came to my mind:
“Why are the streets and squares emptying so rapidly,
everyone going home so lost in thought?
Because night has fallen and the barbarians have not come.
And some who have just returned from the border say
there are no barbarians any longer.
And now, what’s going to happen to us without barbarians?
They were, those people, a kind of solution.“
[By Constantine Cavafy (1864-1933), translated by Edmund Keeley]
Yes, I just came back from our own Carnival here in Leeds, tired and smiling… As a friend says, it’s like Notting Hill just better!.. And of course I came back with few photographs to show you as well (please ask written permission for any use)
The history of Leeds West Indian Carnival goes quite back, first initiated in 1967 by a Leeds University student from St Kitts. It was the first Carnival of its kind in Britain.
The Carnival takes places in Chapeltown, a Leeds suburb and centre of the British Afro-Caribbean community, which during the years has experienced a range of social problems and stigma.
It’s probably worth noting here, that until the end of the 60’s racial discrimination in England was institutional and non-white immigrant populations were not allowed to freely participate in the house market.
This was the second time that I visited the Carnival. My pictures and comments from 
the first time, back in 2001, can be found here in this photo-essay. Back then, I had found it the Carnival of no fun, of hardly anyone smiling… such an ironic contradiction. I was really sceptical, after all, if all this was anything more than a consumerist one-day firework without any real effect in understanding difference and emphasise commonality. I’m not sure how much things have changed. I did feel though that things were more relaxed this time, but maybe for real change we need more time and more work from all of us.
But there was one more reason for my good mood. I found out that ‘Honeydrum’ the music band of some old friends were playing their samba there. Well.. I honestly think that it was one of their best performances including some great dance improvisations!… I do recommend to catch up with them in another festival, you can find more details in their website here.
All images by Christos Stavrou © 2007 All rights reserved (written permission is required before any use)
Paris details by Omi Mai © 2007 All rights reserved
I could hear music far off and blurry talks of people gathering through my open window. The wind has been so warm these days and brings with it all the sounds from places that I can’t see. They bounce and echo in the empty walls of my room, I’m packing to move.
When the first dark approached, later that evening, I left the tight walls behind me to search for what was going on in the park of my soon-to-be old neighborhood… Hyde Park in Leeds (Saturday 4 August 2007)
(All rights reserved © 2007 Christos Stavrou)
The first days of the smoking ban in UK [edit: in fact, England] have gone and life goes on… It’s not surprising; people adapt as they always do, almost in any conditions, they rationalise and go on. People working in a nearby building told me that according to the new rules, they need to go 25 meters away from the building’s entrance in order to smoke. ”But isn’t there another building?” I asked…
Smoking is associated with living 10 years less and is considered a major contributing factor to health problems. And yes, at last we can fully provide for non-smokers now, but the question remains, why are there not any, just few, places to serve smokers? First we suffocated the non-smokers, now let’s suffocate the smokers?
Unfortunately, following the recent UK political trend: one more liberty is to go. And none seems to pay attention. Difficult also here to ignore the highly patronising and selective mentality of the new measure and its followers, disguising the attack on personal choices to simple -even if unhealthy- things in life! (What about all other things that are killing us? Does the list end anywhere? Or we should forbid everything in the name of health and safety!?).
The question in personal level becomes even more painful; under an increasing barrage of normative rules, does self-determination lead to self-destruction?
A growing tendency. Cig break in the streets (© 2007 Christos Stavrou)
Interestingly, it was not long ago that the socially stigmatised smoking of the present was a socially promoted habbit and behaviour, from cinema heros to prime ministers. And now smoking is transforming again, to a vague and grotesque act of individual liberty…
Left: No smoking (© 2007 Christos Stavrou)
And it seems that a society creates problems , such as of the existing smokers, only when there’s a decided action ready to be imposed, within the crucial problematic of regulating populations. In other words, is the public service of few smokers such a social problem -that has to be totally denied? Or, smoking just became a problem, when governments realised that the huge income generated from cigarette taxes could be replaced and actually increased (plus higher productivity rates) by a new health prevention policy? In order to enforce the latter new social problems needed to be defined. Other similar ‘new’ problems will follow (for example, watch out for the growing discourse about obesity)…
Ok, let’s forget all this and enjoy an arresting photograph of the writer Andre Pieyre de Mandiargues by Henri Cartier-Bresson (Italy 1933)
The advent of digital photography and the increasing number of people having access to it have, if anything else, given rise to hopes for a new process of democratisation (see for example one of my links to The Democratic Image blog). Although we should be very careful not to associate too easily the issue of greater access to visual representation (itself limited and fragmented in practice) with any greater access to political power and processes of decision-making, one area that seems to get a benefit from all that is the production and distribution of news. People are given new opportunities to visually record events, and as a new kind of independent reporters, or so called citizen journalists, to challenge the mainstream flow of news by corporate media and give voice, or, better to say, view to the own stories.
It is also a rather shared understanding, and certainly one I became convinced of since the public dissemination of Abu Ghraib photos, that photography has a powerful impact on society and the interpretation of reality.
I’m writing about all this, as I was recently informed of an incident in Hyde Park, the student area in Leeds. The police brutally and unnecessarily attacked, as it is claimed, some peaceful house party-goers in order to disperse them. The incident seems to be under investigation by an independent body now. But what grabbed my attention from the start was the relative quality and mainly the importance of photographic documents which were shown to me in order for those in the party to support their claim of officers lashing dogs and baton charging against them with no adequate reason.
Photographs such as those below gave me a graphic feeling and general indication of what was going on (photos by Callum Barker, Jess Woodall, and Nicky Crompton) :
The most striking picture was the following (photo by Callum Barker):
Whereas a more artistic tone is captured here (photo by Evan Harris):
The way that people will interpret the above story, despite these or any other pictures, may not change in the end. Stereotypes of students and vague ideals of law and order may be too dominant for some people when they judge things. However, I think the ability of the people there to capture those photos, just with their mobile phone cameras, enhanced their chance to have their complaint heard, both officially and publicly, as they attracted more attention and credit. I believe this story would have much less chance, if any at all, to find a place in the news or even to have a fair non-biased (but from both sides) representation, without its visual recordings. And if in the end it succeeds to strengthen accountability, it reinforces democratic processes too.
(For more details and photos, there is this facebook link: Survivors of the peaceful party on 19 Hessle Terrace and 20 Hessle Avenue)
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