Regrettably those "weekly musings" that I promised way back in 2013 haven't been quite so frequent but I'm sure the world's been surviving just fine. What can be relied upon is my penchant for procrastination but it hasn't all been fruitless, here's a taste of what I
have been up to...
For
Dazed & Confused's 1993 To Infinity issue I interviewed NY cool kids
Ratking rapper Wiki and photographer Yung Bambi aka Jude Liana as part of Dazed's pick of the '93 kids killing it in 2013...
Read the full interview at:
http://www.dazeddigital.com/music/article/16721/1/20-20-visions-yung-bambi
And for the current
#Power issue of
Husk Magazine I looked to the work of Vivian Maier to try to reflect upon the artistic depths of the infamous "selfie"...
Since her life’s
work was accidently discovered by amateur historian John Maloof at a Chicago
auction house in 2007, Vivian Maier has become a captivating enigma and a name
that attracts reverence similar to that of photography greats Diane Arbus, Robert Frank and Weegee. Through a collection of roughly 100,000 negatives, prints and recordings
the very private world of this reclusive woman has slowly come to light. Vivian’s
photographs capture something unique in life’s characters and the scenes they
inhabit. Having spent most of her life as a nanny, her photos now present some
of the preliminary and most extensive examples of early Street Photography and have
already been the subject of a first book, produced by Maloof. As thousands more images materialise
for the first time, an incredible collection of self-portraits has emerged. Vivian’s
self-portraits reveal a personal intimacy that perhaps her Street Photography
does not. They offer insight into who this mysterious woman was, or who she
thought she might be. For his latest project, Maloof has produced a book of
these self-portraits that in many ways act as a precursor to our current
obsession with turning the camera on ourselves and the “selfie” phenomenon that
has defined 21st century culture thus far.
Although the
word can be traced back to 2004, the “selfie” really came into fruition in 2010
with the introduction of Apple’s Iphone 4 –crucially with a front facing
camera–and with the birth of Instagram. Whilst the self as subject is in no way
a new concept and photographers have long embraced it, the Iphone 4’s front facing
camera enabled any average Joe to effortlessly
capture their self-portrait. The
emergence of Instagram in the following months provided a home for and a means
of publicly sharing what we now embrace as the selfie. Instagram offered an environment
for people to opt into selfie culture without any guilt, for the practice to
fester and eventually become the viral phenomenon we see today. The success of the selfie lies in the
manner in which it functions for a wide cross section of society, all with
differing motives for embracing the trend. Whether it’s a simple question of
documentation (questionable) or the control it offers the person, the selfie
has infiltrated contemporary culture and it’s easy to see why.
Like Vivian, many
people use the self-portrait or selfie as a space for self-exploration or
documentation, a way of privately exploring who they are at that moment in time
or more immediately documenting what they have achieved. Cause for this latter
kind of selfie can be the tracking of weight loss, fitness programs, pregnancies,
even a night on the town. These all have links to motivation and encouragement
but also crucially to validation. Whilst our current selfie culture presents us
with unprecedented control over the image we project of ourselves, vanity,
validation and insecurity can all become tied up in this when such focus is
placed on the self. This current style of self-portraiture allows us a way of
reaffirming our identity in digital form. Through a plethora of angles, poses
and filters we are able to manipulate the image we communicate to the world and
perform a personal PR exercise of sorts.
The self-portrait undoubtedly offers its subject a space to express themselves
freely but does our current re-appropriation of the form stem from a more
shallow place? Perhaps we are now less concerned with identifying a part of our
true selves and more with conveying our own controlled perceptions of what we
understand that to be. The selfie reflects an unhealthy
preoccupation with the way we look but also with gaining the acceptance of
other people. It represents yet another symptom of our culture of oversharing
and the scrutiny that occurs when the private is made public. The selfie has come a long way from the
afterschool activity of teenage girls and has become common practice amongst
celebrities, politicians and now even Pope Francis who engaged in the first
papal selfie this summer, causing a Twitter storm. It has managed to transcend
all age groups and stigmas to become an acceptable means of publically communicating
who we are in 21st century society.
However the private selfies of Vivian Maier remind us of the
authenticity that has been lost from the form. If we examine Vivian’s self-portraits
we begin to see a more playful side to a woman who some described as proud or
as having had terrible manners. She worked with an abundance of shapes, moods
and reflective trickery; using mirrors, shop windows, distorted glass, moving
reflections and shadows. She does not always look into the lens, nor can you
always distinguish her face in the photographs but each self-portrait
represents an attempt to capture a different part of herself. Vivian was
perhaps most honest, most expressive and most playful in her own company.
As Maloof brings the last
of Vivian’s negatives to light and
with them her story, it raises the question, are we not betraying this woman’s
privacy? After all she took photos for herself, the majority of them
undeveloped, images only captured through her eyes. Although Vivian is part of
a renaissance in Street Photography and now in self-portraiture, would she have
had any interest in being part of what these practices have become? Most
likely not, but like so many movements that have crept into mainstream culture
over the last century, the roots of selfie culture do lie in art, and Vivian
Mair represents the purest elements at the heart of self-portraits and selfies.
When Vivian took her own photograph she was engaging in a playful and private
world, a world that allowed her to have full agency over whatever fragment of
herself she might capture in that moment. There is an intimacy with the self
that uniquely occurs whilst taking a self-portrait and this is conceivably why
so many still feel uncomfortable engaging in this phenomenon. Perhaps this space of reflective
intimacy has only been corrupted by our contemporary compulsion to share every inch of who we are and the
self-portrait bastardised into what we now know as the selfie.
On behalf of
Westfield Pulse I interviewed Superdry founders Julian Dunkerton and James Holder at Battersea Power Station to to celebrate 10 years of the iconic British brand...
I also joined exciting new publication Prowl as their Fashion Writer...
To read the full feature pick up a copy of the pilot issue here:
