Miss Aniela Photography

On 9th July I gave a presentation on my work at the Microsoft Pro Photo Summit in Redmond. I had been invited to talk about photo-sharing and how it has impacted on my work and opened up some doors for me. During the presentation (20 mins with 10 mins for questions) I did as best I could to give a general introduction to myself and to describe my ‘journey’, as well as analyse what I think might be the elements to the way I work. I did this by breaking myself down into four factors, factors that may constitute ‘Miss Aniela’ but are also interesting and relevant to photography and art more generally, as we move with technology and try to think where these changes might lead us in the future. The four factors were:
1. Digital photography
2. Digital processing
3. Photo-sharing online
4. Self portraiture

1-3 are topics at the heart of the Pro Summit’s debates and discussions, photo-sharing being the newest factor which has been mentioned more than ever this year at the Summit as the popularity of sites like Flickr proliferate. Number 4, however, was the ‘Miss Aniela’ crux: the colour to my presentation and the selling point which made my presentation different to anything else during the event. Combined with 1-3, I was positing the whole process of ‘Miss Aniela’ (an alter-ego I began two and a half years ago at first without intention of creating ‘art’ or being an ‘artist’) as essentially offering control, complete independence and privacy over the whole image-making process.

I illustrated the presentation with many pics, describing along the way my exhibitions in 2007, 2008, various press I have had and where I think it was all going. To make my words as relevant as I could to other people, other artists, to the general photography scene and their speculation of the future of the art, I mentioned how last year Tate Britain had not only decided to put up digital photography in its gallery for the first time but actually collaborate with Flickr to invite members of the amateur photo-taking audience to submit their pics themed on Britain. (One of my own images was selected as one of the final 40 to go on display.) It is extremely interesting how this move by a prestigious institution suggests a blurring between traditional or established art, and the modern photo-sharing public. It maybe attempts to make the bold statement that amongst the hoards of photo-sharers, there are some ‘artists’.

I contrasted that attitude to how the press coined the term the ‘flickr photograph’ (The NY Times to be precise, re: a previous blog entry of mine, but I used their words not to rant, but to point out something interesting). The term suggests that photo-sharing and digital photography/enhancements go hand in hand, which I have likewise suggested in my own presentation. However, my stance is that this shouldn’t necessarily be to separate those photographs from the ‘real’ art world. By using examples of how my own work has been welcomed as part of art magazines, art galleries, and the homes of art collectors who traditionally buy paintings (well, at least one buyer I heard about) I wanted to show how maybe things are changing, that digital photography is being accepted. I also wanted to share the idea that although modern digital accoutrements may make the creation of photographs easier, as a consequence it makes it more difficult to be unique or interesting. Bringing the theme back to the predominant one of photo-sharing, I concluded that the viewership artists accrue on sites like Flickr rewards the hard work they put into their craft, strengthening the idea of democracy and that art is ‘made by ordinary people’. I wanted to show how the figure of ‘Miss Aniela’ can encourage the modern artist to celebrate the control digital photography offers and to have their say over what ‘art’ should be.

–Hmm, I’ve blabbered on a bit there but that’s the gist of my presentation. I think it fitted it nicely to other discussions going on during Day 1, such as Lise Gagne’s story of success on i-Stock and the general talk of the blurring between amateur and professional.

Some reviews of the 2008 Summit here:

Recap by John Harrington

PDN Pulse: Microsoft Targets Pro Photographers With Summit: Who Is Listening?
PDN Pulse: Is The Amateur The New Professional?
PDN Pulse: Pirates and Money and Bears, oh Microsoft!
Thomas Hawk: Microsoft’s 2008 Professional Photgraphy Summit and What Microsoft is Up to With Digital Photography (scroll down for that one - a few nice pics with it)
The mesmerised audience by Scobleizer

I can’t yet find a video of my presention though I heard the whole Summit was streamed live on Scobleizer’s (above) video site. If anyone finds one please let me know, thanks!

Above image from: http://www.bbc.co.uk/apprentice/videos.html

Warning: this post has nothing to do with photography. Yippee!

I think I am losing respect for Sir Alan Sugar. Throughout the previous three series of The Apprentice, one of the most enjoyable and stimulating programmes I have ever watched, I have always trusted Sir Alan to act as God on Judgement Day to pluck out not only the unworthiest candidates in the business sense, but those who have literally acted as Judases.

The Apprentice clearly works in black and white: those who make money, and those who make less than the other team; hence who has ‘won’ and who has ‘lost’. Alot of the time, characters who have contributed to a task in non-monetary ways are fired because their performance didn’t translate into direct cash. Those people may include highly-emotional people, certain women who have stumbled on the emotional side of the experience (such as Adele in the first series) or men who simply desire to make their efforts more ‘artistic’ than simplistically hard-sell. I’m thinking of Raef from the current series, fired a few weeks before the final.

However, the first three series impressed me because Sir Alan always managed, through the eyes and ears of Nick and Margaret, to dispatch the ugly-minded and intolerably arrogant candidates; some of those candidates who may have fared well up right up the final, but whose selfish intentions suddenly become exposed in the last stages and trip them up before the boss himself.

The final of the current series see four business people, three of which I am hugely disappointed to have made it, making a three out of four chance that I will be thoroughly unimpressed with the winning ‘Apprentice’ next week. There is the cocksure and overly-defensive Alex, whose habit of referring to himself in third person makes my skin crawl. For the record, he most definitely does not win my female ‘he’s gorgeous’ vote as other gigglish women viewers seem to be doing, so much so, that I would go as far to count Nick as a more attractive specimen of manhood. Besides, what’s being attractive got to do with it? This is The Apprentice, not Big Brother. A carnal attraction to Simon in episode 3 made the viewing a little more pleasurable for me, and it was pleasurable enough considering that episode was the photography task, but it was the fact that he wasn’t an arrogant plonker and that he preferred to practice rather than preach, that made me disappointed that he didn’t get anywhere near the final. Sir Alan seems to have (uncharacteristically) ignored the schoolboy-like tact Alex took up in the last episode when he petulantly exposed Lucinda and the doubts she aired (in confidence) to the others during the interviews. Neither was I impressed when a few weeks ago, Alex joined in the verbal gangrape of Sara (Zara?) following her escape from the firing line. Only Raef had a streak of gentlemanly conduct in him and came to her defence, and yet Raef was fired for making a subtle one-time mistake with the advertising task. Contrast that to the many chances Sir Alan decided to give Michael ‘I’ll trod on anyone!’ Sophocles , and I’m even more baffled.

Lee McQueen (who also sinisterly refers to himself in third person, and who was also part of the aforementioned verbal gangrape) is also in the final. He narrowly escaped losing the respect of Sir Alan when it transpired he’d lied on his CV last week. Somehow he got confused and, erm, couldn’t remember whether he had spent 2 years, or four months , at university. I dislike his shouty mouth-spitty manner, slightly insane expression, and most of all, his sales technique in the car task. Saying ‘Help me out here’ in order to close a sale with a customer is pretty pathetic in my book! He’s not the worst candidate but certainly not as impressive as I found the likes of previously-fired Raef.
I’m not quite sure what Helen Speight is doing in the final. To my sister during conversation I like to refer to her as Helen Speightful, as my impressions of her had been fixed during the photography task when she bullied technophobe Lucinda into working (or not working) a laptop whilst mulling round with a cup of tea as a self-professed technophobe herself. Not only that, but what exactly has she done during the series? I have only seen her mull in the shadows of tasks, sucking figurative lemons, coming to the camera only to swear her ugly Northern mouth off (I am Northern so I can say that, ha ha) about making her way in a male-dominated environment and how she takes no nonsense from anyone. Don’t all women have to make their way in a male-dominated environment, me love? Highlighting a supposed personal difficulty, one that is part of every woman’s experience in the world, is weak.

Then there is Clare. She is the only one I did expect to see in the final, and the one I don’t mind winning, unlike the rest. To me she is a strong candidate, in the Ruth Badger sense (her from Series 3), only with an eternal squinty smirk on her face and the slight smudge I see on her character from being a slack twerp in the first three episodes. Since then she has improved, as everyone can see. However, I’m a bit bored by the constant accusation that she talks too much. Her voice might be droney with that mono-intonation but there are times when her mouth’s been clapped shut and Sir Alan still manages to throw the Clare ‘motor mouth’ cliche at her.

Watching something like The Apprentice makes watching Big Brother a bit like drinking diluted Robinsons after having a glass of freshly squeezed orange. I have to use an analogy there that not only sums up how The Apprentice is a much more wholesome and substantial programme, making the watery meaninglessness of people-who-have-done-nowt of Big Brother more obvious, but I also want to express how unhealthy and less enjoyable a programme like Big Brother is compared the business lesson one receives whilst watching a reality programme with probably just as much enjoyable bitching.

So, Sir Alan, your godly gaze upon your contestants may be as strong as ever, but please do not direct it toward the ones cannot even swell up a vestige of modesty to be the one next chosen to sit at your right hand side. I’ll watch the final through the gaps between my fingers…

‘Uncensored’ version of Ode to a gull.

Full version of Ode to a gull

The weather has been encouraging for picture-taking… this was taken at Leonardslee Gardens at the weekend. See here for more

There seems to have been a number of artists experiencing appalling cases of copyright infringement, someone in the latest line being Lara Jade, a self portrait of whose (an image made when she was 14) was used by a pornographic film company.

Lara has tried to approach the company but received rude, pathetic responses. I hope that posting this on my blog will raise awareness about the improper use of this image, and if you have any advice for Lara about what to do, please help. Read about it and comment with any advice on her Flickr page