Ideas of Beauty at Summerhall

2016 has been such an ugly year, it feels like anything beautiful will just slide right off it, give it two fingers, and run away for all its worth, maybe never to return again. But just before it gave 2016 the slip, John Sumpter of the Democratic Camera Club gallantly chased beauty down with his butterfly net, dressed in a dapper yellow tie, suit and hat and placed beauty gently but firmly under his magnifying glass for an exhibition called Ideas of Beauty held at Summerhall in Edinburgh.

In an open submission, he invited enthusiasts, professional photographers and artists alike to puzzle over ideas of beauty. We discovered that, beauty being ever elusive, many of us do not agree on what is beautiful. Beauty then, was traditional, unconventional, mundane, dynamic, whimsical, concrete, uncanny, homely, alive, dead, deceptive, revealing, brash and shy, boring and interesting and even, yes, I am afraid to say, it could be really downright ugly.

Then the public came, and some of us were convinced there was a strong possibility that they would think Flickr sunsets and picture of kittens are beautiful and would be disappointed and not buy anything at all from our exhibition and leave rude comments. Then some of us thought that that this was maybe patronising and not the right way to imagine the public but then we asked ourselves - well who is the public exactly anyway?

In the era of Brexit and Donald Trump, do we have to listen to popular opinion even if we don't agree with it?

Luckily for us, as it wasn't a referendum, or even an election, we didn't. The public came, also trying to get a glimpse of beauty before it evaporated forever, and not one of them asked why there were no kittens or Flickr sunsets in the show. Instead they had so very many different and unpredictable ideas of beauty that surprised us.

And for some of us, some of the pictures became more beautiful over the ten days the exhibition was on, like friends do when you get to know them. I would say some of them became less beautiful but that would not be polite.

If I could pin down beauty just a little bit, it would be to say that the process of assisting John in selecting and arranging so many disparate ideas of beauty on the walls together with Elaine Robson was a truly beautiful process, though by saying that I may be falling into chocolate-box cliche, the cardinal sin of beauty and best to be avoided if we have any hope of getting beauty to stick around in 2017.

Charging the Void

I took these series of photos for the last photo theme of "Personal" at the Democratic Camera Club here in Edinburgh. The vase in the photos was made by my dad who taught ceramics and was an art lecturer. 

I first wrote about the vase in a blog post called Forget Me Not three years ago. Unfortunately, the vase had just broken which prompted me to write about it. I also wrote about the other objects I had inherited from my dad and how, although I was sorry this particular piece had broken, I wasn't even sure if I had really liked it. Although I love some of his other works, I wasn't really sure what to think of this one. Then, I wrote about it as if I had made peace with the fact that the vase was broken, saying that memories of a person shouldn't have to be preserved through objects, especially if you don't find that object particularly attractive. I may have written that, but I didn't throw it away. 

When we moved to Edinburgh from Germany in 2013 I took the two heavy pieces of the broken vase (it broke at the "neck" so to speak) with me and eventually found a restorer. (It must have been one of the few moves where things get mended rather than break). I must admit when it was away at the restorers, I didn't miss it much and only remembered where it was when they called me a few months later. When I picked it up I was amazed as I couldn't see the break at all. 

I still don't really know if I like the vase. The project gave me the opportunity to find a way of photographing it now it was mended.  In these photos I wanted to show a process of relating to it, not just showing the object itself. Maybe because the vase dates from the 70s, the artist Rosemary Trockel popped into my head and I began to think about how she addresses feminism and politics in her work, and how she mixes the distinctions between craftsmanship and high art, all themes in her work at that time. I then conducted rather functionary arbitrary actions on the vase, like a performance. I used the vase as a pillow and also as a rolling pin. (as far as I could see there was no functional use to the vase, so I gave it one.) In another I used it for target practice, throwing screwed up pieces of paper to see if I could get one in the opening at the top. (Quite a futile game, but an interesting way to map failure.) I shook out its contents onto a piece of white paper (the vase became almost corporeal, dust and debris reminiscent of ashes). 

At the meeting the main feedback I received was to film it as a performance. The term "(positively) Charging the Void" was used by artist and lecturer David Grinly in his introduction to the theme of "Personal" on why we take photographs today.