A visit to Brighton Biennial - 20 October 2012
- Shipping Container on the beach
First we viewed Urban Exploration in a snug shipping container on the beach. Powerful photographs of international spaces and structures captured by daring photographers, abseiling, sneaking through tiny tunnels, scaling shards, to share superlative perspectives of places we know, from off-limits angles. Or places we wouldn't come close to knowing otherwise.
- Edmund Clark
Edmund Clark is a photographer I have admired for a few years thanks to my good friend Fiona for tipping me off on the brilliant photo book Still Life Killing Time.
Here in Brighton, Clark exhibits Control Order House, a photo series as well handled as many of his other works capturing lives during - and post- incarceration. This house of intense control, under full time scrutiny, unbeknown to neighbours, an anonymous existence of sorts. This house is used to detain people without judicial process under the Prevention of Terrorism Act. "Revealing the identity of the controlled person or the location of the house would be an offence."
I've worked with him on two occasions, once interviewing him on his work about Guantanamo prisoners, and later commissioning Clark for a photo essay for Article Magazine. The resulting photographs commemorated scenes from the Falklands war, Clark scattered and photographed broken toy soldiers on a surface of appropriated background photographs of Mount Longdon. An subtle arrangement which made for a moving reimagining of loss and destruction.
- My Brighton Biennial highlight was Omer Fast's 5000 Feet is Best. I get keenly wrapped up in skipped narratives, and overlayed stories, other stories, other stories, back to the main story - not sure what is the main story. In this case a former drone operator is interviewed by Omer Fast. He's telling how he controlled unmanned planes and had them fire at targets - people and militia in Afghanistan and Pakistan - from a Las Vegas Desert base. But there are all these other stories of other people that he keeps telling, and some are harrowing, others compelling - good stories. Stories that are good and easy to tell again. Somehow the confusion sheds light on the workings of a drone operators mind full of skewed distant realities.
The project’s title refers to the‘optimum’ firing position of the drone plane.
I reluctantly share it here, if you can see it in Brighton then don't watch it online. Our encounter with the film was appropriately dark, so dark someone tripped over me and grabbed my head for rebalance.
5,000 Feet is the Best from Commonwealth Projects on Vimeo.
Finally worth a solid mention, Fabrica has The Beautiful Horizon, a long-term collaboration between young Brazilians living on the streets of Belo Horizonte with artists Julian Germain, Patricia Azevedo, Murilo Godoy.
Photography is the mediating tool between the artists and the street children, and extends to us as the viewer. Fabrica have a sensitive and fascinating presentation of this vast archive of photographs all taken in Belo Horizonte by young people growing older, each granted a camera and taught to use it. Suspician turns to friendship as the artists build trust with the children over years and gain an insight into lives played out in a poor, disadvantaged location. From death, joy, escapism, confusion, to contentedness, all of which can be read in the people, faces and situations portrayed in the photographs.
Photography is the route through which we gather up their stories, and through which the young people can take pride in using this medium to tell us how things are for them. Editing out the moments of life, they are photographers, quite simply.
Before leaving Fabrica I also bought Julian Germain's book, For every minute you are angry you lose sixty seconds of happiness.
'I met Charles Albert Lucien Snelling on a Saturday in April, 1992.
He lived in a typical two up two down terraced house amongst many other two up two down terraced houses… It was yellow and orange. In that respect it was totally different from every other house on the street. Charlie was a simple, gentle, man. He loved flowers and the names of flowers. He loved colour and surrounded himself with colour. He loved his wife. Without ever trying or intending to, he showed me that the most important things in life cost nothing at all. He was my antidote to modern living.'
Julian Germain
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See my archived post on Brighton Photo Biennial in 2010
