TogetherAlone is a short film made by young people, accompanied by information for post 16 teachers of Art & Design, Film Studies, Media Studies, Citizenship, Health & Social Care, and Humanities, and youth workers and agencies delivering a range of support programmes for young people about emotional health, decision-making, sexual health, and literacy.

Funded by Awards For All, artists Helen Cammock, Denis Doran and Rosie Holmes worked with the young people to explore notions of borders and boundaries - both real & perceived through discussion and a variety of creative activities. They learnt how to make films, and collaborated to create a visual representation of the lives and experiences of themselves and their peers.

The TogetherAlone film is written, performed and directed by young people. It presents their own ideas and views, and reflects something of the challenges faced by young people today, described in their own way, creating a valuable opportunity for young people to inspire other young people to go out and make films of their own.

The accompanying resource highlights some of the themes explored in the film, and suggests some of the learning opportunities that engaging with the film might present.

A limited number of the Together Alone DVD/resource pack are available free from BPB for teachers and youth workers. If you would like a copy contact: mail@bpb.org.uk

I saw parallels between the images I found on the internet and the experience they induced, to those images and the experience of standing in front of Thomas Hirschhorn’s installation 'The Incommensurable Banner' (2008) which was part of the Brighton Biennial. Although the banner enforced physical participation (one has to walk across the room to see long banner), as opposed to the passive exploration of the internet, I felt overwhelmed in both situations. It was the great size of the banner and horrific images in Hirschhorn’s installation, and the quantity and easy availability of the images on the internet, which was most shocking. Hirschhorn’s installation, of course, is one step further in bringing these images closer to the public than their usual home in the deep corners of the internet. The installation lacks, however, the very lonely, individual, and personal experience of sifting through hundreds of these images (which Hirschhorn no doubt did himself), and it also does not suggest the shocking quantity of such images, which are so easily available.

Many of the images were incredibly disturbing and deeply upsetting, especially as they were rooted so greatly in the reality of modern warfare, in turn eliciting a sense of hopelessness in the very system. I did feel a sense of hope, nevertheless, in the internet as a medium. It provides a site for free expression, a vehicle for mourning, and gives a voice to those realities which are cornered to certain parts of the world of which I, for example, have no way of accessing otherwise. The ethics or usefulness of displaying such images is another matter.
 

There are many people who deserve thanks for making the Biennial what it was, including all those who worked at the various venues, those who worked at the Biennial office, and those who helped with advice and loans, including people from the Imperial War Museum and the Archive of Modern Conflict.

I'd particularly like to thank those who gave their time for free: these included students from the University of Brighton and the Courtauld Institute of Art, who were essential in helping me to research aspects of the exhibitions and who ensured the smooth running of the Biennial events. Corinne Silva, a photographer and postgraduate student at Brighton, did an immense amount of work on the 'Iraq Through the Lens of Vietnam' exhibition--and without it the show would not have been as rich as it was. Heejin No also helped on that exhibition, particularly in the early stages.

Above all, I'd like to thank the artists, most of whom gave their work to the Biennial without recompense because they thought the project worthwhile. Without their goodwill, the Biennial could not have taken place. All deserve many many thanks, but I'd like to particularly mention Tim Page, who not only lent his own photographs of the Vietnam War but also allowed us to draw on his wonderful collection of works from the National Liberation Front and the North Vietnamese Army, which formed such an essential component of the University of Brighton show.

I will be continuing to add Biennial news here--about touring, reviews and connected events.

Success!! We did it... our Post Up public event over two days in Jubilee Square and our Hub at the Lighthouse was a fantastic time and resounding success. Many people passing by the Square came to engage and enter into the spirit of our group's efforts. Lots of comments were posted onto our Peace Wall and we accumulated another batch of photo placard artworks made by people of all ages. We also handed out free copies of our special edition newspaper containing artworks and writings by the group.

The group interviewed the public about their views on conflict, war and peace and engaged in interesting dialogue. We even had a Speakers' Corner which had contributors providing thoughts and debate around the issues of war and conflicts. It was a really mixed bunch of people, including our group members reading poems, their thoughts on war, the BPB curator Julian Stallabrass, and others (including a song in ode to Obama).

We ended our two day event with a rabble rousing parade with a samba band leading the way, taking with us the placards made by the group and public participants, and balloons complete with our slogan YWarY, taking our messages out into the town.

I'd like to thank all the Post Up group for their brilliant contributions and active engagement with such important issues. Their honesty, openness and ability to engage with challenge was profound. The critical dialogue that the group has shaped and participated within, I am sure will continue... .

The one day conference Memory of Fire programmed by Julian Stallabrass on Saturday 15th November is a serious opportunity to engage with the themes and issues relating to this edition of the Biennial. And Post Up! The War of Images by Anthony Lam on Friday 14th and Saturday 15th November in Jubilee Square, Brighton is an open invitation to participate and engage with what war means to you.

This is also the last chance to see the exhibitions at our partner venues, although do check closing dates and times. For more information see the ‘exhibitions’ section of our website.

I hope you can join me, Julian Stallabrass and the rest of the Biennial team this weekend.

' Julian, please document / photograph this book (comments) and include it as part of the site. It is also a document/ record which will be a valuable archive and adds a further layer to the experience of the exhibition.'

It is indeed a remarkable record of people's responses, and I will be posting a selection of the comments onto the blog for all the Brighton exhibitions (including Hirschhorn and Van Kesteren); they can be found most easily through the link at the bottom of each exhibition page.

Since I can't ask people's permission, I'll keep the comments anonymous, but if you want to be identified, let me know.

It has been really interesting to see the difference in ages between the participants disappear as they talk together, see exhibitions and make photographic art works in response to the themes of conflicts and war.

We have just made the visual contents for an 8 page tabloid size paper that we will be printing a 1000 copies for the Post Up event we are holding on the 14th & 15th November in Brighton. This paper has photo montage works the group made together in response to images of war and in particular, looking at the US army website photographs www.army.mil. We have been exploring propaganda in the Archive looking at original materials from WW2.

This week we are meeting again, keep posted for more updates....

Announcing special guest:
Simon Norfolk, currently showing in The Sublime Image of Destruction at De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill as part of BPB 2008.

Plus; Jacob Aue Sobol & Simon Roberts

Friday 7th November, 10am-5pm, Business Design Centre, London, N1

Come and learn from the best in the business at Europe’s only event dedicated to aspiring professionals and early career photographers.

Vision returns with a packed programme of talks, seminars and folio reviews at an upmarket new venue at the Business Design Centre in London Islington, providing inspiration, information and essential ideas to get your career moving.

This year’s show features talks by two of Britain’s hottest photographers – Simon Norfolk and Simon Roberts – who’ve carved an international reputation for their fine art documentary work, while continuing to shoot for the world’s top magazines. We are also flying in one of Magnum Photos rising starts, Jacob Aue Sobol, winner of the most recent Leica European Photographers Award

Many of the industry’s leading manufacturers will also be there to showcase the latest products and services announced at this autumn’s Photokina trade show, providing a unique opportunity to meet key innovators all together under the same roof.

With an emphasis on creative cutting edge, and focusing on effective tools and solutions to further your business, Vision is this year’s don’t miss photography event.

7th November 2008, Islington, London
Tickets: £10 + £5 for a portfolio review
To register visit: www.bjp-online.com/vision
Or contact Kat Harding: 020 7316 9747 vision@bjphoto.co.uk

Image caption: Simon Norfolk
The North gate of Baghdad, the scene of fierce fighting during the invasion.
19-27 April 2003
© Simon Norfolk

Photographer Marysa Dowling has been working with year 10 students from Bexhill high School, and Hillcrest School, Hastings. Together they have been investigating the complex relationships that young people have with each other, their families and the wider world, at a time when media representation is considered a powerful tool that manipulates image and perception. 

The exhibition continues until Saturday 15 November. The cafe is open Mon - Sat 9am - 5pm.

I have also been reading the comments books in the Brighton exhibitions, and these have contained long, thoughtful and deeply felt responses. They are remarkable documents, and we will start to put some of the comments onto the blog entries that ask for responses to each of the exhibitions.

I'll be posting up information and ideas that emerge during the project with links to any video or photographic material we might develop and upload onto YouTube or Flickr.

The students will also have the exciting opportunity to facilitate a breakout session, in collaboration with me,  during the Engage Conference (for further details visit www.engage.org). Participants will explore questions around censorship and how the development of interactive media, mobile phones and new technologies have changed the way we process and receive images of war. This will inevitable lead to critical concerns about how we view human suffering. The session will include a variety of discussion strategies and practical suggestions of how to run a workshop programme for A Level students that the undergraduate students themselves will be facilitating the following week.

There are many lengthy and heartfelt responses in the gallery's comments book. One asks: where are the pictures of the victims of the terrorists?

Well, there are undoubtedly many of them in the banner. Hirschhorn does not ask of these pictures--who are the dead, are they terrorist or soldier or civilian? There are also pictures from different wars included. His interest is partly in weapons as agents of terror as well as death (as used by all sides), and in bringing to light the subterranean circulation of such photographs.

There have already been many lengthy, thoughtful and engaged responses written into the gallery comments book.

One asked: why are there no Vietnamese images critical of their regime or any Iraqi images critical of Al Qaeda?

We do show Vietnamese images that the North Vietnamese government would have been uncomfortable showing, as some of the captions make clear. These show dead US servicemen, and also Vietnamese casualites of the bombing. I have not come across Vietnamese images that are overtly critical of the war effort; that they are very are should not be a surprise. Of course, the Vietnamese government censored the output of the press; but also such a view would have been very rare among Vietnamese at the time, who would have seen the war against the US as just another episode in a longer conflict to rid themselves of their colonial oppressors. More critical views did emerge later, after the war had finished, particularly in literature, and some have been published in Vietnam.

There are Iraqi photographers who are critical of Al Qaeda, whose murderous and highly sectarian strategies have been very controversial, and have now produced a backlash against the movement. This does not equate, of course, with support for the occupation or lack of symathy with the resistance.

While young men in their millions were dying in horrific circumstances in the trenches across the English Channel, Charleston was a seeming oasis of aesthetic calm, artistic sensibility, intellectual endeavour, and human value. A farmhouse in the countryside near the village of Firle, Charleston was also a balm to wartime London. From 1916, it became the home of painters Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell, together with associated children, friends and lovers in sometimes baffling and certainly bohemian combinations. Among the Bloomsbury luminaries who frequented Charleston were Virginia and Leonard Woolf, Clive Bell, Roger Fry, Maynard Keynes and Lytton Strachey.

But the year 1916 had a double significance –this was the year that the British government introduced subscription for military service for all men aged between 18 and 40 years old. Clive Bell was exempt on medical grounds and Roger Fry was a Quaker, but Duncan Grant and his lover David Garnett became conscientious objectors. After both a tribunal and an appeal, they were eventually exempted military service on condition that they worked on the land. Virginia Woolf, already resident in Sussex, recommended Charleston to Vanessa Bell. Farm-work was found for both Grant and Garnett, and the house rapidly became the centre of Bloomsbury life outside London. Grant continued to live there until his death in 1978.

This sense of context adds a symmetrical poignancy to Hurleys’ wartime photographs: they were everything Charleston was not, yet at the same time are testament to its raison d’être. But the irony of the setting should not be allowed to eclipse the images themsleves, as they are clearly worthy of exhibition in their own right, especially as part of a Biennial dedicated to memory and images of war. Hurley, an Australian, is not very widely known in the UK, so this exhibition dedicated solely to his work is particularly welcome. It works well in the Charleston space (not the main house but in an associated gallery), and the information supplied by curators adds to their interest without overwhelming them.
 

Looking at the images, one is drawn to a number of symmetries and tensions in addition to their location at Charleston. For example, many of the photographs may reasonably be described as “beautiful” despite the awfulness of their subject matter. This is something that critics of the medium have sometimes (mistakenly) claimed that photography is unable to do. It’s a creative dichotomy of content and form with which contemporaries such as Sebastiao Salgado, for example, are able to challenge the viewer. Hurley is also able to unsettle the comfortable viewing positions of 1914-1918 by showing not just the gallant Australian soldiers, but also the enemy dead. This he does, for example, in an image from 1917, underlining the complexity of the issue with the title “The Price of Victory”. In 1968, Don McCullen was able to photograph “Fallen North Vietnamese Soldier with his Personal Effects Scattered by Body-plundering Soldiers”, but public sensibilities had changed during (and partially because of) the Vietnam War, and a sympathetic depiction of the “enemy” (with implied criticism of one’s own allies) was possible if not universally popular. During the considerably more Chauvinistic First World War, however, these aspects of Hurley’s work must have taken considerable courage to present in public.

Importantly, as curator Julian Stallabrass makes clear in his supporting material, many of Hurley’s images (such as “Over the Top” from 1918) are in fact montages: composite prints of various negatives, thus not strictly reportage or “documentary” photographs in the simple sense. They involve much more creativity and aesthetic judgement; they are works which meld the raw material of reality with the compositional imagination. They are not literal but creative memories of the war.

Of course, we know that all photography is to some extent authored, interpretive, mediated and creative, but this composite work is much more so than is often thought appropriate for the historical record. It certainly struck Hurley’s bosses in the Australian government as deeply worrisome, especially for an official war artist. Yet there had at the same time been a long tradition of war artists working in fine art, especially painting, within which authorship creativity and interpretation were considered both acceptable and inevitable. The artists of the Bloomsbury set would not for a moment have considered otherwise.

In this context, Frank Hurley: Photographing the Great War serves therefore as articulate evidence not only of the battlefield, but perhaps more so of changing attitudes towards war and tensions between memory, art and photography as visual evidence.

Richard Howells

Richard Howells is Reader in Cultural and Creative Industries at King’s College, London.
 

Thank you to everybody who came to the opening night on Thursday. It was great to see so many people.

Check out the pictures of the opening night on our Facebook and Flicker pages.

The work addresses issues surrounding the consumption, treatment and dissemination of widely circulated photographs, particularly violent and gruesome imagery. The series invites us to reflect on the way we look images and understand them.

See also story behind the Abu Ghraib series and the encounter with the  British terror branch and FBI - posted on the democratic web site:

http://thedemocraticimage.opendemocracy.net/2007/04/25/the-story-behind-the-abu-ghraib-series/

Visit www.engage.org for more information. 

Deadline for Submissions: Monday 6th October.

Date of Portfolio Reviews: Saturday 8th November.

Reviews Venue: Sallis Benney Theatre, University of Brighton, Grand Parade, Brighton, BN2 0JY.

Successful applicants will be charged a fee of £65.00 for the Review. Limited concessionary places are available to Brighton & Hove residents.

It is fascinating to see the prints which show Hurley's artistic decisions in dealing with the negatives, suppressing detail in the shadowed silhouette of a ruined building, for example, to dramatic effect. The prints also seem to play up the theatrical effect of the works, and one wonders to what extent and in what detail Hurley directed his subjects.

His prints seem contemporary because of their use of montage to capture scenes that he believed to be true to the war but which could not be frozen in a single frame with the technology of the day; and also because of his extraordinary indoor and bunker scenes, lit with remarkable skill; but also because strangely they look so much like a current mode in art photography, in which people are instructed to perform social scenes for the plate camera.

See details below of The Magnum Workshop Brighton, a particularly exciting opportunity for photographers.

The Magnum Workshop Brighton UK is a five-day practical event intended for advanced photographers wishing to proceed with the next stage of their photographic careers. Led by three Magnum photographers Carl De Keyzer, Mark Power and Donovan Wylie.

It is staggering on many levels. Just days after combat, it gives the world an icredibly honest humanist view of what the war conditions are like for the Russians fighting.

The overtone of the series of pictures is not political. The pictures do not illustrate a point - or an article, as they do in the media. No Western journalist would have had this insight.  What I like the most about the series of pictures, is the layers of content: You get an idea of the horrors of the fighting, You see the battle field from all perspectives - from a distant landscape, right up to the bloody wound. The soldier's tale sensitively portrays something of the relationship that he has with his friends in the army, the effect of the death in the homes.

There are often very striking juxtapositions between the pictures too. One picture, showing a bashed up, burnt out army vehicle and a killed boy directly below it. Tragically, the next image shows a moving army vehicle making its way home - with the victorious soldiers waving and cheering.

Hopefully it will not get removed before you can see it:

http://www.navoine.ru/forum/viewtopic.php?p=551

WARNING: Images of gore and death

Text reads:

Presenting to your attention Arkady's report from the war zone. Reminder that he went from Valdikavkaz to Djava and then to Tsivanhal. Was part of of assault on Zemo-Nikozi, then went with the batallion West towards Gori and while towards there came back on the helicopter with the wounded.

While analysing patterns of web clicks on media images, I've noticed that photos of the heroic or tragic moment in war receive much less interest than I would have predicted.

The snapshot worthy of historic war photographers like Phillip Jones Griffith has all but lost its power on the contemporary (Internet savvy) audience. Here are some recent reasons why I think that's happening – along with some of the kinds of war images that are dominating at the moment.

(This arguement is based on rough analysis of web stastistics i.e. the greater number of clicks an image gets when it is posted on the same media-sharing site, the more interest I assume the image to have generated.)

Details of the Free University here: http://resonancefm.com/archives/215

The other, Picture Perfect by Kiku Adato, a sharp book about the image-management industry, which also considers Abu Ghraib alongside staged military photo-ops, including George Bush’s ‘victory’ landing on the carrier, Abraham Lincoln, and the toppling of Saddam Hussein’s statue in Baghdad, is also unillustrated. The author does not say why, but I suspect that it’s about the cost of getting permissions to reproduce from news agencies. It may also be a way to separate her analysis from the book’s deepest concern: seduction by the photo-op culture, which implicates media critics who try to undermine it but only end up producing a different concentration on trivialising pictures.

At the very end of the BBC film, War Photography: Reflection on Conflict, Philip Jones Griffiths talks of a visiting a ward in a Vietnamese hospital which had been set aside for those who the doctors had decided, given their very limited resources, were beyond help. He sees a boy with his face half burnt away by napalm, and thinks to himself that he can’t photograph anymore and starts to walk away. But the boy himself tugs at the photographer’s clothes and gestures for him to take a picture, which Griffiths did. It has never been published, he said, but he hoped one day that it would be printed up to hang around Kissinger’s neck at his war crimes trial, though—he adds—things don’t work like that.

Griffiths’ account here, as he tells it, is as powerful as some of his pictures, and what these various episodes raise is the issue of whether it is possible to turn our image culture against itself, or rather whether it should be simply turned away from entirely.

The strange power of this photograph is that it appears to be something out of a fairytale, in which the bound and blindfolded men are stuck to the Golden Goose that leads them. The drama of the light and the clouds beyond reinforce the sinister but also slightly comic effect. It may also appear as an image of victory, of the single hi-tech soldier over his numerous but primitive opponents, their archaic character suggested by their long robes, the strength of their bodies rendered useless by plastic ties.

There are other ways of reading it, and for that you need to know a bit about the war. That many US troops believed what their President had told them—that Iraq had some connection to the 9-11 attacks, and that the invasion meant payback. Another kind of fairytale, then. That, even on the reckoning of the US forces, the vast majority of those imprisoned were innocent of any crime. And that the prisoners were regularly seized with brutality, held without access to legal counsel, without their families being told of their whereabouts, and in unforgiving conditions. The soldier leading the group can see about him; his prisoners, if they can see anything, glimpse only the sand at their feet. Yet with each step they receive an education in the character of those who have chosen to be their enemies.

We are thinking of showing about 70 Abu Ghraib photographs in a grid covering an entire wall in the gallery. This type of display will emphasise the sheer quantity of the images, and the way that they build into narrative sequences. Amid the numerous and diverse horrors of the jail, I want to focus on the photographic aspect of the terrorising regime: that photography was used partly for the satisfaction of the guards—and in their standardisation and insistent repetition, these pictures can be compared to holiday snaps—but also that photography was used as part of the process of humiliation and degradation. That is the main point of having these things seen in a gallery, that they slowly, materially press that point home.

Here in a sunny Iraq, it is a scene of smiles and curiosity, though the boy who stands on the road, in military stance, staring into the scene is a more ambivalent presence. The face of the boy who salutes the photographer is also hard to read: it would be easy to say that the salute directed upwards at the adult soldier who stands before him is a gesture of subservience, and an acknowledgement of the power of life and death that the military holds over Iraqi civilians. Or perhaps it is just a piece of play-acting. Yet there is something in the intensity of the boy’s gaze and his grimace which suggests that he has already seen too much.

Photographs taken by US Army members as part of their duty are government property and thus copyright free (this also applies to the Abu Ghraib images). You can see and use as you like many, many examples of such photography here: http://www4.army.mil/ARMYIMAGES

We know, of course, that kids can be curious and many of them like military equipment. Also that US soldiers often distrust Iraqi children and keep a distance from them because they suspect that they may be spying on behalf of the resistance. Also that the US armed forces have, at best, been extremely careless about inflicting damage on the civilian population, of whatever age. Yet the Army’s photographic arm continues to pour out these images, in which children look up smilingly at the instruments of their destruction.