Extended Caption

I have been asked by the National Portrait Gallery London for an extended caption that might bring some insights in the creation of 'Grayson Perry, Starr Auditorium, Tate Modern, 2013' for the upcoming exhibition at Chelmsford Museum, Spring 2020.

Submitted Draft

'It would not be original to describe the Starr Auditorium at Tate Modern as ‘womb-like’, the deep red envelopes you and like a foetus I was looking for the exit when I found this corner. It challenges reality just enough for it to lend a hand in examining this unique and complex subject. This portrait is a record of the first time I met Grayson Perry.

I consider my most successful portraits to be when I am able to document the literal first meeting with my subjects, they are invited in front of the lens without any conventional niceties and often in silence. In a portrait of the famous the resulting awkwardness and vulnerability can feel like iconoclasm but not in a negative sense, I am accidentally de-constructing the myths of celebrity because my main interest is in examining the human condition it masks. I enjoy photographing artists but there is a particular challenge in photographing Grayson Perry, who can present an alternative, equally valid persona ‘Claire’. Claire’s appearance is so radical as to parody the very notion of persona and in this first opportunity to represent her I was determined not to be seduced by the vivid character that protects him. Her otherwise infectious demeanour was met by a deliberate ambivalence that inspired this briefest glimpse that now represents the serious and powerful figure of the contemporary art world, influencer and commentator on the British national character…in a dress.

Perry has spoken to me since about the experience of being the subject of a photograph as ‘observing the photographer with equal fascination’ and this has remained with me since as the closest thing I can share about what he is like. It is the very definition of empathy, to step out of one’s ego in the true exploration of the reality of another person's life. Perry is the poster girl for an empathy with a more complex idea of what Britishness is, it is closer to a lot of people’s reality, not in any narrow definition of gender or sexuality, but existentially. This is his most generous aspect, like any artist the extremes of vulnerability and ego exist within him but he allows us to form our own relationship to him, projecting our own thoughts and feelings onto Claire and she loves the attention.'

Searching for Cindy

Untitled #540, 2010/12. All rights Cindy Sherman

In 1992 a 26 year old me came across a giant psychosexual masterpiece Untitled, #257 by Cindy Sherman in the window of a Soho gallery. A dripping jewel of cum illuminated in the darkness; held in suspense by gravity and photography as it hovered above a gaping manaquin's mouth. It blew me away and infected me with one of my most treasured and complex memes. It was a £1000 then, a price that felt out of reach but also I was not brave enough even to own it. 'Owning' a Sherman in a feminist context is a fascinating prospect but it is a constant regret that I do not and now cannot possess even a bit of her.

The recent private view of an almost complete retrospective in London (the image described above is absent) gave me the opportunity to reconnect to the exquisite pain of that regret and brush up against her genius and courage in the hope that a little more might rub off.

The majority of the evening was spent searching for the actual Cindy Sherman in the multiple rooms of the National Portrait Gallery and although surrounded by monumental self portraits I was still not entirely sure whether I would recognise her. At one point all the women of a certain age could have been her. Eventually though I found a diminutive and humble human in a dress which could have been made from the same fabric as the wicked witch's ruby slippers.

Sherman's early introvert documentation are iconic tropes for any contemporary adolescent obsessively seeking understanding through the selfie. Hers have evolved over decades of dogmatic repetition into a thorough examination of persona, from the 'protector' of the young through experiments in cultural stereotype to an eventual realisation that all persona is a barrier to progress towards any real understanding of self. This theme builds through the exhibition as the work becomes increasingly surreal and less defined by anything as tangible as gender. 

The final rooms are potentially most baffling and I met two curators struggling with the enormity of defining Sherman's practice for upcoming presentations. My solution is to surrender to the lack of understanding and in so doing be free from the conventions of narrative and rationalisation. Through this filter I can see that Sherman has handed over the contents of her dressing-up box to the randomness of the universe, inserting these new personas into the primordial landscapes that hint at the Jungian ooze that we are formed from and ultimately return.

The exhibition but especially the discussion chaired by Bonnie Greer 'Imitations of Life' re-inspires the quest for knowledge in the hope that somehow it will assist in the alchemy that is the successful synergy of 'self' and work. Sherman is the mistress and poster girl for us all in our attempts to be free of persona as glass ceiling and her intimate explorations are the canvas onto which we project the different stages of our own anxiety. Adoption is my unique USP, my disability and superpower. My own relationship to the existential lack of certainty is my nature and allows for a confluence with other's, it is a useful skill in a photographer seeking understanding of self through the exploration of the lives of others. I am however less comfortable turning that objective gaze onto myself, that takes a different kind of courage. A self-portrait is like hearing my own voice played back, I do not recognise it and I struggle to like it.

Greer disrespects photography by suggesting Sherman transcends the medium. This is often said of any artist who manages to work successfully with it. Photography is such a difficult tool to work with to create original work as it is the most present of mediums. Results are compared and defined by the aesthetic rules of contemporary capitalist culture. Sherman like any artist has chosen her medium and is masterful in its use and she is undoubtedly a photographer. She is after all part of the generation that discovered photography as an art form in the 70's so eloquently defined by writers like Sontag. Each new generation since has re-discovered these lessons and possesses them as if they are new truths. Similarly with gender and sexual politics, Sherman reminds us that all we need to do is look back to recent history to find the same complex questions we are asking now. How amazing and courageous these artists were to feel the new power of the medium for the first time and dare to use it. I can only be in awe.

Collective Alienation

Warren Family from series Darvell Bruderhof Community, UK © Richard Ansett 2019

Happiness is not a relative concept; we should not rely on a perceived lack of contentment of others to reinforce our own sense of wellbeing. If this is a foundation, we are are not on safe ground.

I am spending time with people who I may not immediately seem to have a natural affinity. On the contrary, firstly I always feel like an outsider and my adopted psychology seeks out anyone who shares my sense of dislocation regardless of any sense of otherness. Here I find an empathy with a need to withdraw to form a safe new universe in microcosm. This community, who has literally attempted to isolate itself, is representative of my view that we create worlds within worlds as a subconscious strategy to manage contemporary, complex reality. Of course the irony is that fear and contempt for Sodom are feelings we all share.

Here the word of God forms the firm boundary within which to explore the human experience. The Bruderhof boundary, based on the teachings of Jesus Christ, feels much closer to the lived experience than the limits imposed by the secular state. Rules are an attractive alternative to chaos when we struggle to find our place in, what I define as, 'a relatively free society'. The modern state no longer offers nostalgic cultural norms that we can feel part of (or alienated from). Even punks feel the need to belong to a movement, a collective alienation and we are denied even this right to feel 'other' now. The state has found a way to attempt to manage our rage through a strategy of inclusion. If queer is a welcome section of society it is in its very nature no longer queer.

We are not yet taught in schools to cope with the now inevitable associated existential anxiety that pervades society. Millennials must sometimes crave something less multi-dimensional that will quickly answer the open questions that have led to a 'mental health epidemic'. Cast adrift to form our own unique relationships to society we, instead of embracing the complexity and extraordinary gift of freedom of thought, withdraw to form more controllable worlds. We should however resist the desire for order and instead examine inwardly for solutions to why we aren't coping.

To refer to a biblical allegory I am very much involved with; can we say with certainty that if we fall down we will be helped up again by another member of our society that is so huge in comparison to the 300 members of Bruderhof, we call each other stranger? I believe so actually. 

Prayer seems an ineffective remedy for the suffering of others, I see it as an entirely delusional and self-serving act that subjugates responsibility.  It is at best a placebo defined as 'a measure designed to humour or placate', but there is an element of deceit in convincing the patient that what they are offered has any power to heal. There is huge value in being given some time and genuine care however it must be freely given to be most effective and not linked to a promise of heavenly timeshare.

The Bruderhof community will say I am missing the point and I agree that all my rational, atheistic objections fail in the face of 'faith'. I am doomed to never benefit from the power of God ifI do not believe and continue to stubbornly deny his existence. I am doomed to a life without answers, a constant searching for truth through one painful life experience after another and then the risk of eternal purgatory. How wonderful it would be to subjugate responsibility and be held in the strong and comforting arms of the great patriarch.

The Buderhof community in their isolation and withdrawal are no different to us, they are inescapably part of our community too. None of us can exist in isolation, we are entirely reliant on each other for our existence whether we have realised it or not. Our society allows for those that chose not to recognise that they are part of it.

The Kuenssberg Letter

Laura Kuenssberg, House of Westminster, London © Richard Ansett 2019

The portrait of Laura Kuenssberg was called in for a curatorial meeting of the National Portrait Gallery and initially not accepted into the permanent collection. It was called in again unusually for a second view but with a request to see other frames from the shoot. See below my response*. The email was read to the committee.

I am very grateful that the curatorial committee is considering my portrait of Laura Kuenssberg at Parliament. I am always honoured that my work is regarded worthy of even a conversation at such a level.

This portrait was taken at the height of the Brexit tensions and it was synchronistic that dark clouds moved across the sky as we shot her. The House of Westminster looms as a forbidding silhouette and nods to my own fascination with Monet’s representation from the other side of the river. The clouds are a classic pathetic fallacy of course and the flare from the additional flash light, hints at the scrutiny with which we observe and judge her as journalist and 'woman'. Whilst the setting is staged, she is caught slightly off guard as she adjusts her microphone revealing a glimpse of her guile.

Not only is Kuennsberg a great journalist but she is also the first woman political editor of the BBC and inevitably worthy of a place in the archive irrespective of which facsimile is chosen. She has the job of unravelling the complexities of the political class and presents this back to us. She must play an artful game in negotiating with people skilled at sophistry and avoidance.

What I might consider great portraiture possesses the emotional moment as priority stolen from an otherwise collaborative process inspired by the greats of portraiture, especially my own heroes Irvin Penn and Bill Brandt who I fear one lifetime is not enough for me to ever emulate. A portrait of any lasting value must represent something of the person beyond a flattering likeness and there is a line to be walked between the complicity of the subject and their collaboration in the portrait process. As 'subject' we are submitting to the risk of being exposed and scrutinised in a more exploratory way. In my work I seek to discover something in the moment that represents the subject beyond just flattering likeness and this I suggest may be at odds with tradition of objectification that accompanies the photography of women 'as beautiful' first. 

This lone image for your consideration prioritises the examination of her as interpreter of the Machiavellian but I do consider it not to be unkind or unflattering but indeed beautiful. There is a discussion to be had re. contemporary feminist representation and whether we should continue to interpret our modern, successful, powerful women figures primarily through the lens of aesthetic stereotypes that have defined portraits of women in the past.

Very best and kindest regards,

*slightly re-worked from the original text for the purposes of the blog

No Photography Allowed

As part of a road trip through the southern states I visited La Grange, Georgia. In 2017 it attracted press attention as the first town to officially apologize for the circumstances that led to the lynching of a young African American man, Austin Callaway in 1940. As part of the Equal Justice Initiative's 'Community Remembrance Project', soil from the sites of known lynchings was collected in special labelled memorial jars to be installed at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice.

‘In Lynching in America: Confronting the legacy of Racial Terror, the EJI documented 4400 racial terror Lynchings in 12 Southern States – and more than 300 in eight states outside the South – between 1877 to 1950. Most critically, Lynching reinforced a legacy of racial inequality that has never been adequately addressed.’

Lynching in America: Confronting the legacy of Racial Terror and hotel breakfast © Richard Ansett 2017

The soil collection for Austin Callaway's memorial jar had not yet taken place and before leaving for the states I requested that any descendants might be found and asked if they would participate in the collection as a specific event for the camera.

Arriving from the UK, racial politics feels very different in the US,  in many ways more progress has been made and even the unresolved issues between black and white feel closer to the surface. In Britain we are culturally less used to airing racial division so openly. We arguably avoided a US style civil war by massively compensating slave owners, funding the industrial revolution and we have unsuccessfully circumvented the conversation ever since. But even in the US there is a reticence to fully negotiate the minefield of racial tension and the EJI project recognises that contemporary generations are shaped by an emotional legacy associated with victim, perpetrator or bystander. The genius of the Community Remembrance Project recognises how these old wounds perpetuate continued  prejudice and division, damaging everyone.

When I visited the EJI offices in Montgomery, Alabama, the home of the civil rights movement, I was conscious of the monetary value of 'civil rights tourism' and in light of William. C. Anderson's article 'When a lynching memorial becomes a photo oppertunity' I can empathise with how behaviours more associated with tourism than commemoration are perceived as disrespectful. I photographed myself at the Rosa Parks bus stop, was photographed with the minister of Martin Luther King Jr's church and was even offered a haircut by his barber; At a time when tensions were rising in nearby Charlottesville, I sent a postcard of black prisoners to my partner in the UK with the standard sentiment and ironic 'Wish You Were Here'. There are many people on holiday visiting the sites on the civil rights trail offering opportunities for the virtue signalling selfie as valuable currency for our social media feeds. I can see that a form of 'Disneyfication' of the black struggle has occurred in making the suffering more palatable to the white visitor so as not to alienate and in that there is a danger of an empathic disconnect from the very demographic trying to be reached in any re-education process. 

Selfie with Lynching Memorial Marker, La Grange, GA, USA

However the overall approach across all the sites is an attempt to be educational, there was a generous welcome at MLK's church and I felt I was a valued guest in someone else's history and the minister pulled no punches in reminding our group tour that the oppression and inaction against black people was by 'white folks'. Surrounded by the safe space created by the love and forgiveness of the pastor there was a palpable sense of shame I faced in that moment at odds with an otherwise glorious narrative of British colonialism and white history that had an early influence on my racial and cultural identity. A confidence built on these foundations is racist.

There is an art to remembrance; in the UK we have our ostensibly conservative and austere permanent memorials to heroic sacrifice in 'victory' but we have no significant monuments to any collective guilt or moral failure defining our past as less than glorious. Germany, crushed and defeated twice and re-born, has embraced another form of national commemoration and Berlin especially has monumentalised the lessons of humanity born from defeat and hubris (my favourite is the Room of Silence at the Brandenburg Gate). But in re-framing the evidence the UK can be considered as equally defeated; the bullet holes in the walls at Amritsar are a more fitting testimony and potentially more valuable to the national character than any tribute to the glorious dead defending the empire.

Bullet Holes in the walls at Jallianwala Bagh, Amritsar, Punjab. Image subject to © .

The most successful memorial as visitor centre and museum I have seen is Oradour-sur-Glane, a village in France and the site of destruction and massacre of the population by the German army. On the instructions of Charles de Gaule it was sealed off to preserve the evidence of the atrocity as it had occurred. On arrival one is directed through an underground tunnel from the modern world into the heart of the deserted original village. Crucially the visitor is instructed on appropriate behavior including, no dogs, no photography or filming and no food or drink. With less distraction the silence encourages a presence to the terrors and increases the chance of empathy.

A white tourist's lack of empathy epitomised by the ubiquitous selfie at a memorial to black suffering directly as a consequence of white oppression is perceived as disrespectful in William.C. Anderson's article. The selfie defined arguably as only casual narcissism and photography's diminished power and importance by the vast numbers of digital images created can be argued as devaluing of any subject. In the context of the US civil rights movement, the contemporary snaps at a memorial to the subjugation and murder by a previous generation who thought so little of the victims that they photographed them as entertainment and were produced as postcards is darkly ironic. Mr Anderson's perfectly erudite description of the act as the ‘rigorous documentation of their own evil’ might be equivalent to the US army selfies with torture victims at Abu Graib.

Abu Ghraib selfies © Unknown

As part of my photographic project 'Lynching in America' I have included some abstracts of the soils in the jars as a typology to emphasise the scale and geography but my main focus is in the documentation of the simple, intimate action by the direct descendants Frances and Walter of the murdered boy Austin Callaway. This documentation of the collection of soil at the site of his lynching whilst conventional in appearance is not intended as a conventional editorial, photojournalistic observation.

Frances and Walter collecting soil for the EJI memorial jar © Richard Ansett 2017

Soil from the site of the lynching of Austin Callaway © Richard Ansett 2017

Entering the unmarked woodland glade and recording the events at the site of the lynching of Austin Callaway with his descendants Frances and Walter, my actions as a white photographer could be compared to a continuation of the damaging legacy of recording mass murder as entertainment and in this re-enactment I am a valid participant in the action equal to the subjects in a process of reconciliation. Any act of reconciliation requires the presence of all parties and I am welcome and present behind the camera. 

This event whilst staged for the camera is a collaboration and a genuine act and is not just between myself Frances and Walter but the result of negotiations with a huge number of other invested people from the La Grange community, black and white, church, police and state. Understanding of photography is transformed from a conventional document of complicity to murder and oppression, to its antithesis. It is the catalyst for healing and a search for truth. As the subject, the experience of being seen and recorded can feel personally valuable and in this moment Frances and Walter's lives are recognised as valuable to this process, very different to how the mob must have viewed Austin Callaway in 1940.

At the time of documenting our quiet act of truth and reconciliation, the riots of Charlottesville were in full swing and drawing the media gaze with the burning torches and chants of "Blood and Soil".

*The apology was not for the lynching but for the failure to protect Callaway from being taken from the police station cell by 6 white men and murdered in nearby woods. One indication perhaps of inherent racial bias and 'white saviours syndrome' is that the much-respected white Police chief who offered the original apology became the centre of the media story eclipsing the black community’s courage in its willingness to accept the apology and the hard work of the Equal Justice Initiative led by Bryon Stevenson for inspiring the entire process.

**There is the matter of the colonial gaze as an accidental inherent bias of the white documentary photographer as an ‘invested observer’ and obstruction to the fair and objective representation of any event . There is a responsibility on a contemporary photographer seeking documentary truth to at least have an awareness of this legacy..

This blog is developed from a response to 'When a Lynching Memorial Becomes a Photo Opportunity' - William. C. Anderson 

More Than Documentation

Danel and Erin, Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize Exhibition 2018/19, National Portrait Gallery, London

The portrait of Danel, 9 years old, a survivor of the Grenfell Tower from the series ‘Children of Grenfell’ and the Portrait Erin, 12 years old, a survivor of the Manchester bombing was submitted to the Taylor Wessing Portrait Prize 2018.  Both images were successfully shortlisted guaranteeing the inclusion in the exhibition at The National Portrait Gallery, London.

DANEL

The Danel portrait inclusion highlights the disconnect between ordinary people and the establishment graphically illustrated by the official response to the Grenfell disaster and the circumstances that led to the fire itself whilst at the same time its presence in a national institution reminds all those affected by Grenfell that they are infact valued. Further, the inclusion in such a prestigious international prize brings an increased level of exposure offering the visitor* an opportunity to engage with Danel’s portrait as a vessel for our empathy and sympathy for all affected.

In the presence of children it is impossible to not consider their potential; this was pronounced as I faced Danel with my camera during the capture of his image, his future has been inevitably altered by his experience. Photography can be more than just documentation and the inclusion in a prize exhibition is more than celebration of craft and ego. The process of creation and the bringing of the work to the gallery space offers an opportunity for further understanding and potential for healing.

Danel with his mother and brother were invited to return to visit his portrait for the first time in the elitist gallery environment. It is both a celebration and examination of the processes that are defining them. The gallery was specially closed to the public to allow them time with the work. A film crew was invited from ITV news to record the event.

” I feel like a celebrity.” – Danel

*The portrait was voted as the favourite by the visiting public.

ERIN

The inclusion of Erin’s portrait emphasises the therapeutic possibilities of photography. Similarly to Danel and the other children survivors of Grenfell, the act of attention during the photographic act itself offers the possibility of healing and Erin as a print is the focus for empathy for all those affected.

Erin’s unique circumstances as a survivor of a terrorist attack have left her (as with other survivors) with diagnosed PTSD. The inclusion of her portrait at the National Portrait Gallery exhibition offered an opportunity to invite the subject to consider attending the private view event that could have parallels to the Ariana Grande concert. The National Portrait Gallery offered Erin and her family a special space available to her exclusively to recognise her value to them in attending and to help her manage the experience of being once again in a large crowd in a confined space.

Erin had trouble liking her own image but since has requested a print and the family have put it up in their home.

Waffle House Index

WAFFLE HOUSE INDEX TYPOLOGY from American Road Trip © Richard Ansett

The typology is pastiche, tribute and critique of Ed Ruscha’s classic Twenty-six Gasoline Stations, 1963. No architecture better expressed American’s burgeoning love affair with the motor car and similarly I focus on a contemporary architecture of the road trip satiating a 21st century obsession with consumption. I reflect on Ruscha’s seeming casual, objective record as part of my exploration of ‘The American Roadtrip’ as an overworked and exhausted photographic genre.

Further I discuss whether historic art, literature and films have assisted in defining the prism through which we view the contemporary American landscape that obstructs a relationship to the now. There is an aesthetic recidivism that hides the uncomfortable truth that we are unable to perceive present reality as valuable or even beautiful without the crutch of established aesthetic convention. This snap shot and blunt cliché of the architecture of the open road undermines the genius of Ruscha’s original work and his once radical vision has become the sentimental yardstick and stalwart of any photographic right of passage. Perhaps this is the fate of any great artist whose work so completely influences the zeitgeist.

This pastiche masks a contemporary narrative. ‘The Waffle House Index’ is an informal metric used by FEMA the Federal Emergency Management Agency to determine the effect of a major storm and the likely scale of assistance required for disaster recovery. The geographical concentration of Waffle Houses and their 24 hour, 7 day a week opening times combined with their fixed menus makes the Waffle House chain an invaluable resource for the evaluation of the effects of any major storm on communities, through the assessment of any change in opening times and menus.

These 9 Waffle Houses were photographed with 1 hour and are no more than 2 km apart. Each restaurant has its own unique number.

Nothing Matters..

File:_T7A1950 Nothing Matters George © Richard Ansett 2018

File:_T7A1842 Nothing Matters George © Richard Ansett 2018

The huge challenge of attempting to illustrate the complex and bespoke nature of mental health, especially through such a limited 2 dimensional medium, has led me to the realisation that perhaps photography in its purest sense is not enough and I am deluding myself if I consider that somehow I am 'making a difference'. Don McCullin (who does not define himself as an artist) admits that his images will make no difference to the subjects he has taken, many of whom were either already dead or would soon be. It does beggar the question 'what are we doing this for ?' and this is an intellectual anxiety at the fore front of the mind of the empathic artist. Conscience and responsibility are part of the self negotiation in the representation of other people.

Depression is hard enough to define in any medium and perhaps so much exposure to it has allowed it to infect my own confidence. Being around complex and overwhelming mental issues does take its toll for a sensitive and confluent person. I have been known to say that I do not care about my subjects but this is a conceptual statement only, their identity is less important than the message I am attempting to communicate through them. I am attempting to detach the conventional narrative that helps us to easily define and therefore compartmentalise the subject as 'other', so that we as an audience can potentially imagine this hell for ourselves.

For example, without wishing to pull back the Wizard's curtain too swiftly, this man's name is not George, it is in fact Edward; it doesn't matter, nothing matters. I find confidence to declare my process through the anecdotes of other artists and I recently read that David Hockney re-named the cat in his most famous painting 'Mr and Mrs Clark and Percy' because it sounded better. 'Nothing Matters Edward' doesn't have the same flow either.

I spent some time recently alone with George, he is so consumed with ennui and despair at the loss of his mother that he inspired an attempt to define it, or perhaps to attempt to capture something of it, bottle it or worse pseudo-scientifically observe if the molecules bouncing back from him and onto the cold hard plain of my image sensor convey anything of his suffering to you or even me. Can his emotional and physical pain that is so visceral in the moment be captured within the boundaries of the conventional photograph? My practice is defined by this challenge. I am not looking to redefine the craft but create new and original work within traditional boundaries.

Margaret Atwood accidentally came close to defining depression when she stated that "There is always hope. Otherwise why get up in the morning." Similarly, to believe that “if one thing matters” to quote Wolfgang Tillmans “everything matters” noble as it is, sentimentalises a starker reality, that the fabric of our existence is a fictitious human framework to help make sense of our insignificance. Depression is a consequence of this awakening from this delusion. Depression can be defined as progress as we awaken into a hopeless realisation.

As in the myth of Daedalus and Icarus to face this realisation is to risk destruction. Depression is a bespoke emotional and physical destruction, the pain of imprisonment of self through a failure to rationalise truth.

The awareness of the hopelessness of reality and our existence within it, is something we must negotiate but this awakening can come as a terrible shock to the unprepared. As an artist I deliberately place my hand in the flame. Mortal anxiety is a catalyst to this process and how we manage our relationship to it defines us as unique, complex individuals.

The paradox is that there is hope; the irony is that there is only one thing that can help us come to terms with 'the hell of existential loneliness, OTHER PEOPLE. We are both the problem and the solution.

SEE FULL SERIES HERE: Nothing Matters George, 2018