I have never forgotten the cruelty of this so-called school.
It is the kind of event that constructs who we become
and in particular, for photo or video documentarists
what we seek out and how we render it.

In these essays and the rest of my pod casts and writing,
I’m neither telling you what you should do
nor what or whom you should be.
I’m simply sharing with you
what I’ve experienced and discovered and continue to discover;
also sharing what I’ve thought about and become engaged with,
hoping that my making conscious these things and verbalising them
may help others recognise possibilities in their own struggles to become…
to become what???

Truly freed from oppressive social and political attitudes
which surround us,
truly able to discover your own visual language,
and truly clear about responsibilities to use your developing talents
in ways that touch other’s hearts and souls…
that is, using your skills to aid your community.

To express this more directly,
it is to give a gift of culture to others
which may help them discover new ways of embracing ,
coping with and challenging the world,
or producing something beautiful that serves to heal one’s scars,
even for a moment,
from your own and other’s profound trials in life.

There is another reason to write as I do
this mixture of photography, aesthetics, history and morality.
It is because I meet and speak with many young people.
I see their struggles and frustrations to understand
what is purposely a superficial opaque popular culture
disguising opaque political and economic systems,
with their misleading education syllabus,
(to memorise a pulp history rather than to develop critical thinking).

This clever overly sexualised culture appeals to our unhappiness
and to our brewing sense of vengeance and greed,
as it fabricates our desire for fame and celebrity.
Suffused with all that, they persuade us into believing
a materialist consumer existence is the purpose of life,
and their press, either owned by or enslaved to the needs and wants
of the establishment pounds away, day-by-day
with their purposeful misinterpretations.

While my new teaching platform, PHOTOGRAPHY-making-meaning.com
seems to be of value and delight to those who engage with it
but at its very heart is my belief that those of us who care about the medium
and as well, about the dreadful state of our shared world,
there are many visual stories to be told that may help others come to understand
and to perhaps act to change things for the better.
I believe we can entice awareness and kindness.

One of the most important services we can perform
is to help people come to recognise
that they are not to blame for the failure of society
although we may be called to blame,
justifiably,
if we jam our hands into our pockets, stoop our shoulders and look away.

NOTE:

You can join PHOTOGRAPHY-making-meaning.com
for as little as £25.00
*to gain permanent access to the first three of twelve films
which people are writing that they are beautiful
and also telling us
they have watched each of the 26 minute films 4 times.

*to gain access to Q&As, to more essays and to discounts for the further 9 films to be made about photography, love, beauty, kindness,
and to develop your visual literacy, your photographic skills,
your ability to pre-visualise and to tell stories….
it is all about making meaning.

But I recognised
that to be a photographer or film-maker
this presents a difficult quandary
whether photographing a wedding,
a theatre-piece or a demonstration.

This quandary engages the humility of a Buddha¹,
individuals who understand themselves
as being a part of all human beings and of a given time.

It is contrary to the self-concerns
of many contemporary Western egos
which dance in front of the world
as if it’s only a backdrop to their existence,
regardless of whether it is filled with love or horror.
This is what I see so often manifested in selfies.

This is not the view of those who recognise
they live as a part of a shared history with others,
for whom they/we can offer a place in history
via their cameras.

This hyper-self-concern is in general very American
but for this moment at least
it may still be less a European condition.
It represents a profound problem for photographers
because by the very nature of isolating
and forever freezing a moment in time,
we take possession of it,
we make it a part of our collection,
a representative of our oeuvre.
And what is that about
but a struggle to overcome our temporal life?
It is a chapter in the battle to grasp the eternal
by creating a cultural shard of our art,
a representation of our abilities,
a representation of our perception that will have a life beyond our own.

The photographer/film-maker (documentarist)
cannot be 100% a part of life
because we constantly observe it,
appraise its forms,
evaluate the light,
set the exposure,
calculate the meaning
of what is in front of us
and therefore we are preoccupied about when to release the shutter
capturing the precise moment(s)
which express a specific event or specific state of mind.
That is, we must be aware of the nuances of events and people
so that we do not generalise,
generalization is destructive to art.

Releasing the shutter,
by its very nature, requires calculation
which makes it almost impossible for us to fully live life,
to be inside of a life at the same time as observing it.

Art is life rescued from time,
but it is difficult to engage daily
with the ecstasy of capturing an iconic moment that will last forever.

NOTES

Central to Buddhist practice are…
Zazen: Seated meditation used to quiet the mind and notice reality as it is.
Direct Experience: Finding truth through practice rather than studying old texts.
(Sadly this may appeal to people who are anti-intellectual or who are blind to critical thinking.)
Buddha-Nature: The belief that a pure, awakened mind is already inside every person.
(This may be true but what we have witnessed over the last few centuries is how state control of education fosters the crushing of curiosity and creativity as these practices lead to people using the word poisonous to the status quo, ‘WHY’.
Koans: Short, puzzling questions or stories used to stop normal, logical thought patterns

Releasing the shutter,
by its very nature, requires calculation
which makes it almost impossible for us to fully live life,
to be inside of a life at the same time as observing it.

Art is life rescued from time,
but it is difficult to engage daily
with the ecstasy of capturing an iconic moment that will last forever.

As this burning weather continues
we must insist that the current Neoliberal plutocracy¹,
including all complicit million and billionaire fossil fuel tycoons
retreat into a dark space
(perhaps the cages where they are keeping children near the Mexican border)
leaving us to heal the dying earth and our troubled brothers and sisters
in Ukraine, Gaza, Somalia, Iran and and and…
and those others of all hues, places and beliefs,
in their troubled silences,
as they and we await insects to hum and birds to sing again.

Or will we allow the Neoliberals to continue burning our forests,
to again scar our earth with their toxins,
to continue to carve away our mountain tops
and to starve our children and slaughter other’s children
while we play into distraction with their AI trinkets?

Soon, when this boiling phase becomes,
with the help of the media,
the new normal,
we may discover sufficient wisdom to seek a crack in our Western Civilisation,
that crack, as Leonard Cohen wrote,
“where the light gets in”,
when we will truly witness and bid farewell to present cruelty.
This will allow the best of our souls to become mentors of kindness
– willing to say,
for the sake of our planet and for our civilization,
“we the people will determine all economic, political, social and cultural life
from a point of view which replaces wealth with fairness,
inequality with justice
hatred with love”.

Without these changes we will continue to live in unresolved sorrow and isolation,
surviving in the on-going Neoliberal/totalitarian climate-hell.
This will be midnight in the Holocene,²
when we will have extinguished the next dawn in our children’s eyes
before any meaningful life could be reprieved.

What is the unspoken promise
few of us can intrude into our long silence?
Do we wait to see if wise people and potential leaders
offer us profound changes to our broken moral compass?
Surely, in the 21st century, it is no longer God, Yahweh or Allah.
It must be, before all other measures: ‘human kindness’.

The British philosopher, Isaiah Berlin, (1909-1997)
wrote that within a democracy,
for social freedom and personal liberty to exist,
so must pluralism³
– the theory that reality contains more than one credible set of truths
that may, in peaceful discussions, strive for dominance.

It also means that one must choose between negative freedom –
in which the weak and poor are protected by laws written to discourage
the strongest in the room from dominating with force,
rather than positive freedom in which the strongest may do what they wish
to increase their power and wealth.

Within a pluralistic society individuals are able to make choices,
and in doing so, they express their liberty.
Berlin continued that the defence of pluralism
“is an inescapable requirement of the human condition”.
Having the ability to make choices
doesn’t mean the choice will be gained,
but that the individual is free to imagine and to make those choices
and legally to argue for them.
That is to say, in being able to make a choice, hope still exists.

Totalitarian and neoliberal brain washing
(and also the perpetuation of wars, terror and poverty)
destroy individual’s ability to imagine change.

These impositions reduce our capacity to be fully human
and therefore to be fully free.
The psychic exhaustion from terror or poverty,
defeats the imagination.
This could be why we have witnessed
the inability of long-term impoverished individuals
to not be willing to participate in their own potential freedom.
They have become victims to their own submission.
And this is why so many young people become nihilists.

All the above help to set out for me why and what I hold dear
as one of my goals when using a camera
to make the invisible powers and wealth become visible to others.

Neoliberal politicians, journalists and bureaucrats
do all they can to keep invisible behind thick propaganda curtains
the unjust, unfair exploitative conditions they create.
This is so we capitulate to their myths
which tell us over and over
living in a world of vulgar material consumerism,
exploitation by wage slavery,
believing, in our hollowed out lives,
they offer the only true path to happiness.

For photographers to understand how to use their images
and indeed what images they may make,
they need to think more about their power and role in society
in regard to continually offering other ways to imagine hope for a better world.

One of these ways is to understand that producing work
that offers individuals a glimmer into the validity of their pain, loves, kindness
and perhaps their reasons to exist and to hope,
is a way to embrace the souls of other suffering people.

My Substack essays feed directly into my new website:

Over the years I’ve read about the work of photographers and film-makers,
about painters and poets,
and about aesthetics and the politics of art.
I have taken notes, written essays and taught a small number of people,
always looking for better ways to expose them
to the profound underpinnings of their concerns.
This is to help them access what’s important
and to unite these things with who they are
because that is what makes wonderful images.
The first 3 of 12 films have been released along with an instructive manual
and numerous other essays, talks and Q%As to be announced soon.

You can access the website for free by tabbing the logo above….

Robert

A viewers comment:

“Your film is gorgeous, wise, compelling. I liked very much the humanity, the care for others, and you as an agent of change. I am very interested in this question of transformation – how can we use words, images, creativity to change people’s sense of agency. To get them across the threshold, to set them on a path?”
PROFESSOR J.P

Plutocracy¹ the rule of a few wealthy people over many

Holocene,² relating to or denoting the present historical epoch, which is the second epoch in the Quaternary period.

Pluralism/³ is a way of thinking and living in which many different groups, beliefs and ideas live together in peace. It means people with different religions, cultures, or political views respect each other and share power instead of trying to make everyone the same.

where SELF CONFESSION = TRUTH
Art is a kind of confession.
The effort is:
if you can face and examine your own life,
you may discover creative terms**
with which you can become connected to other’s lives
and they too can discover through your art,
terms through which they become connected to other people.
This is a gift of liberation for a struggling person
who may realise they are not alone, on their own, isolated.
Art has served them.

This is one reason why creativity is important,
but it would not be important
if life itself were not important.
Yet life is important.

Many people I speak with or have interviewed
for films or photoessays including for instance,
the last hangman of England,
two psychopathic mass killers and a handful of corrupt politicians
as well as wonderful generous talented and kind people.
Often they and others seem to be walking in the dark,
alone in the night hoping all will change and all will be well.

FOSTERING DISRUPTION
Nobody knows what is going to happen to them
from one moment to the next,
or how they will bear it.

The American writer and intellectual, James Baldwin wrote,
“Now, it is true that the nature of society
is to create, among its citizens,
an illusion of safety;
but it is also absolutely true
that the safety is always necessarily an illusion.

‘Artists are here to disturb the peace.
They have to disturb the peace…”

I agree with Baldwin.
I‘ve made image based works
that have given voice to those who have been without a voice
and consequently, I’ve gained an audience,
trust and support from those communities.

Herbert Marcuse, philosopher and author of
THE ONE DIMENSIONAL MAN
wrote that “even contemporary philosophy has rejected happiness.”
He went on to write that
“aesthetics***** are the only activity we have
that can re-create a complex multidimensional world.
Complexity is always the enemy of populism and any form of totalitarian government.”

That is why the status quo
fear that art helps people to see the lies they are living
and thus their guardians at the gates of culture disdain questions (and questioners),
and who better to pose questions than artists?
If artists do not investigate reality, test it, ask questions of it
they are decorators or entertainers.

EGOS OR SERVICE
In the simplest terms,
photographers need to put aside their egos
and then to enter a community.
There they need not only to see and hear but to look and listen,
and if they wish their work to be immediately relevant,
they need to represent the needs and wants of the community,
and to be twilling to be rejected in the corridors of wealth and fame
offered by the status quo.

The above is not the only role of artists in a complex and needy society.
In times of deep political, psychological and economic stress,
as now with capitalism and democracy passing through cataclysmic changes,
beauty is vitally important for all of us to recognise what humanity is capable of.

A work of art becomes beautiful when it offers recognizable and relevant truths produced with appropriately expressive forms
(composition, cadence, colour, tonality, etc.).
In this way, artists, or in my case, photo-documentarists,
can make small contributions in nudging people’s consciousness
towards an emotional and intellectual tipping point.

Recently I heard the English philosopher,
AC Grayling say
each of us must help in our community
even in the slightest way to become a pixel
in the overall image of our communities transformation into something more positive, kinder and more democratic.

Throughout the stories of civilization,
seismic shifts causing rapid transitions
have only occurred as a consequence of war, famine or disease.
Art can only ever expect to guide, encourage or nudge people
to feel the necessity for change
which can only arise from within the excesses of history.

NOTES

*Barry Cooper is an English painter and sculptor and a graduate of the Royal College of Art Painting School. He is an abstract painter of large large canvas works, and large-scale community and stone sculptures ad the ECOS amphitheatre and Last Tree Dreaming.
https://www.barrycooperarts.co.uk/profile-1

**Terms meaning creative devices, a visual language, metaphor that allude to or
gently nudge people into discovering like meanings in their lives, helping them to confront the universe of lies which surround us day-by-day.

*** TCFT stands for the international youth arts programme called THE COMPLETE FREEDOM OF TRUTH, a project of Opera Circus UK, the title inspired by the words of the Czech freedom fighter Vaclav Haval.

****SEE https://davidglassensemble.co.uk

*****Ricky Romain, another artist whose work challenges the simplistic assumptions of the status quo which produces only single dimensional one-sided conversations of propaganda. This is art which tells us or orders us to follow its instructions.see https://www.rickyromain.com

******AESTHETICS is the branch of philosophy that studies beauty, taste, and the emotional response to art and nature.

Readers can understand that these essays, published once a week, crossover with my new offering called PHOTOGRAPHY:Making Meaning which is subscription based.

There are 3 of 12 x26 minutes films and a 200 page manual filled with ideas, experiences, thoughts about how to make beautiful meaningful photographs, how to relate your images to whom you really are, how to touch people’s hearts, how to find your vision, how to represent other people’s needs, how to make a better would creating gifts of culture from you photographs. The films are an embrace of beauty, and the manual is filled with how to make pictures. There are additional written essays, invites to Q&As with Robert discussing ideas in greater depth along with podcast interviews with Robert and Robert interviewing artists about creative processes.

Audience response: “I watched the 1st episode . It was wonderful. Just the right amount of technique, philosophy, and personal experience. Your VO was also wonderful, as are the choice of photos. A total home run! Looking forward to seeing the rest.”
D.S. American commercials producer/photographer

ps: there will be a series of 3 different workshop/Q&As announced soon for

He thought, perhaps he became a documentary photographer,
because he had always felt others had a more real existence,
one that was essentially communal.

He had been on the outside of communities
with his nose against the window of life,
watching, studying, looking, asking ‘why’ this and ‘why’ that.

I told him, as far as I can see, he was not alone in his isolation.
I told him I had listened to and sometimes have taught young people from Bosnia, South Africa, Serbia, Ukraine and England.
It is a profound pleasure but I have sensed their uncertainty,
their isolation while wishing to belong to something supportive
and their sadness at the state of the world they are being given.

I remembered this quote from Chief Joseph
of the surviving indigenous American Nez Perce Tribe
who said “we do not own the land, we inherit it for our children.”

After years of battles and broken US government promises
he and his people were forced to surrender to the US Calvery on October 5, 1877.
Chief Joseph then gave a message to the US soldiers,
which is known to be one of the greatest American speeches:
“...Hear me, my chiefs,
I am tired.
My heart is sick and sad.
From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more, forever.”

I suggested that as my friend and I were born American,
loneliness is perhaps a consequence
arising from a culture and a land where 55 to 56 million indigenous Americans
were murdered,
where 12.5 million Africans were shipped across the Atlantic to the Americans
to be enslaved,
where women were and still are denied the rights of the ‘white man’
and still today the LGBTQ community is under assault.

These histories offered few possibilities within the establishment
to join something embracing,
something morally engaging or acceptable.
We had been taught that Americans were the good guys and falsely,
that we were the victors of World War 2.
We recognised the depth of deception, racism and contempt
for so many only given light by the civil rights and Womens
and anti-Vietnam War movements.
That was the Sixties; that was when we grew up.

I believe so many young people today feel those things we felt:
that the establishment
only wants to increase their wealth by exploiting our knowledge, skills and labour;
only wants to stuff us with half-truths, which we need to expose;
only wants to ignore the damage to out habitat as long as they extract wealth from it;
and wants to destroy people and places as they profit from their war industries;
and the list goes on.

Is it any wonder so many of us feel alone in a culture which thrives on our isolation?We are lonely because they have created a society
that profoundly atomizes us, alienates us
and turns us into wage slaves.

I told my friend that for me, photography has the unique ability to point this out.
For me, it is a responsibility.
It is embracing caring, kindness, truth-telling,
and making meaning out of a chaotic world.

This is partly why I am making 12 x 26 minute films about photography.

From new subscribers:
”I subscribed to the course at “Curious” level and watched the first video of series 1, which I have to say is simply brilliant.”

“I am a photographer, filmmaker, writer! i share the way robert golden is looking at the human situation just now in the world! i saw his great and truthful film documentation! a phantastic work and so important right now!”

“Just watched your video… beautiful!!!!! Love your narration. Loved your personal story running through. Wonderful approach to talking about how you see, look, and search - with some of your cultural and artistic references blended in. Wonderful!!!”

SEE THE PROMO HERE

Travelling by trains up the spine of Italy, I saw beautiful houses boarded up, surrounded by their gone-to-seed gardens, then shuttered factories, derelict goods yards, rusting bridges and ego-filled graffiti in its barbaric ugliness. All emptied by the sorrow of passing wars, globalisation, lost jobs and broken hope.

Thus it was a trial to witness the distraught photographic beauty of the Italian theatre director, Alessandro Serra, in the crumbling spaces of the 12^thcentury castle that sits above the southern Tuscan town of Sarteano. Again my emotions were pecked at and torn by the sense of utter degradation of our combative civilization evinced profoundly by Serra.

The only tingle of hope in Serra’s photographs was the reminder of a once beautiful earth, illuminated by his exquisite perception, capturing and delivering to the viewer the balm of beauty offered by his way of rendering natural light.

In Paris it was a trial to listen to the music of the Lebanese musician and composer Layale Chaker without being torn by the clashing notes of jazz in conflict with traditional Lebanese melodies and emotionally charged instrumental sounds drawn from a wider Middle Eastern soundscape.

Years ago I made many commercials in Beirut and a documentary about Lebanese food and culture. I befriended some and met many other people in the course of work. One day while driving north towards the ancient city of Baalbek my guide and I were confronted by a Hezbollah roadblock. A tough lout stuck his bearded face and machine gun muzzle through the driver’s window demanding to know who and what I was. My young guide and translator screamed “you better leave us alone, my father’s the mayor of the town.” Shocked by her vehemence and her news, he jerked away and we sped off. I said to her I had no idea she was the daughter of a politician. She smiled slightly and said she wasn’t, thus the past and present struggles of Lebanon are real and personal for me.

As I travelled I also saw people embrace or taking pleasure sitting in the shade of large umbrellas protecting café patrons as they quaff their cold beers, their finely bubbling rosé wines or their fierce black coffees.

But it was anger-making to hear from talented progressive minded artist friends they are locked out of theatres, galleries and publishers unless they conform to the needs of the dominant ideas which surround us all. This in democratic Europe.

CAMUS, ART and TRUTH
Many of us probably know people who, aching with uncertainty and confusion, return to passages in the Bible or to words of poets, as do I return to the writing of Albert Camus, who mends not just my mind but also my being. His humanity and his wisdom offer direction, hope and a balm for my soul.

All the above intersect with my endless hunger to make
and to create messages for those who may listen,
to those hungry to understand our trials and our cruelty.

This is a paraphrase from Camus:
‘…artists cannot bypass the time in which they live;
their work must live in this world ….
here, within the community,
it constitutes a means of stirring the greatest number of (people)
by offering them a privileged image of our common sufferings and joys.’

In that, Camus defines the “mission” of every artist,
‘…since their work must speak to the “greatest number of (people),
they can only be at the service of truth and liberty.’*

Again from Fatini’s essay:
The rejection of falsehood and oppression,
and the continuous search for truth and liberty,
are therefore the “commitments”
that characterize the (artist’s) craft according to Camus.
For this reason, the greatest error an artist can commit is abstention—
taking refuge in a world of illusion,
an Arcadia far from everything and everyone.
From the moment they choose to live in a dream rather than in reality,
they fail in their duty and definitively abandon the aesthetic universe.

As Camus states in The Rebel:
Art disputes reality but does not hide from it.
Art therefore, coincides with “commitment.
“Each generation, doubtless, turns itself to remaking the world.”

My generation, however, knew that it will not remake it.
Our task was even greater.
It consists in preventing the world from destroying itself.”

The purpose of my new teaching project,
PHOTOGRAPHY: Making Meaning
is to encourage people to ask themselves
who are they,
as they develop their skills,
what responsibility do they feel (if any)
towards themselves, their loved ones, their community
or indeed towards our species?

For me, Camus has from the first moments of reading him
through to the construction of PHOTOGRAPHY: Making Meaning
encouraged me to guide myself and provide hints for others
about what there is to do.

* 1. The Written Word, the Spoken Word:
The Community of the “Embarked” Artist
by Laura Fatini

“Hello Robert,

I am writing to thank you for producing and sharing your work. I’ve been photographing for some 65 years and have spent the last 3 years searching to understand how to connect meaning to my work and (to) establish direction for my ongoing efforts. It has not been an easy quest.

A few years ago, my friend and mentor pointed me toward Eugene Smith and from that focal point I recently happened on your images and philosophy. I’ve thrice completed the first three facets of your meaning-making series and anxiously await the next nine. I’ve also subscribed to your sub-stack and purchased two of your books. It seems you’ve struck a long searched for chord in me and I am grateful that you have chosen to share your work with the World.

I am writing a PhD at the University of Waterloo in catalysing change that is socially just, ecologically sound, and economically viable. That study is based in second-order cybernetics* and how collective consciousness makes or declines to make sustainable sociological decisions. The academics can be dry at times but I find that photography is a useful tool for connecting the research with my soul and therefore the directions that need to be pursued.

I love your exploration of the two sides of beauty. The beauty that, as propaganda, intoxicates and conceals Truth; and the beauty, whose subtlety penetrates to the radiance of Reality and the importance of caring for each other. Yet, the challenge of awakening to Reality is compounded by a universal abuse of power that conceals itself behind a polished and massive false narrative. I fell for it for a time, but no longer.

All this to simply say thank you. I hope the next three facets of your meaning-making series will be out soon. Meanwhile, I’ll continue to do what I can.

Best wishes,
Christina Comeau

NOTES

* Cybernetics is the science of control and communication in living organisms, machines, and other systems.

To find out more about PHOTOGRAPHY: Making Meaning go here

R.J.GOLDEN

A few days ago a woman, Donna, asked me by email if the course
PHOTOGRAPHY: Making Meaning would be relevant to a ‘street’ photographer?

I told her that my dominant love in the medium was for documentary work
and I think of ‘street photography’ as one of the forms of documentary work;
the others being news reportage, theatre photography and street photography.

I was interested in her questioning and asked her if she would send me her current most loved photograph, which is this:

Before you read the next paragraph make sure your screen light is on maximum
and then ask yourself:
’how do you respond to this image. How does it touch you?’

For me, I wish to direct the viewer’s attention to the essential subject matter in the frame. I know that one’s visual attention is easily drawn by the brightest tone and/or by the brightest colours. It seemed that the boy’s beautiful face and fixed stare into the camera were the most important elements, BUT for me, his face was too dark, too pushed into the frame and attention was badgered by his bright collar, the cones behind him and the woman’s shoulder and coat sleeve hanging over her arm.

Here enters a question of truth…is this rendition of the negative the truth `
and would manipulation of the tones and colour create a fake image?
What offers the greater truth?

After years of photographing people in many situations,
I believe that there are inner truths often buried under the burden
of failing to free oneself from the imposition of LUTS.

A LUT or Look Up Table is a set of standards imposed by the camera, media,
software and hardware of the computer systems we use in picture making.
They determine not what is actually recorded
but rather a limited breadth of possible tones, colours, clarity and sharpness, depending on if we have chosen to see our recorded negative rendered for landscape, portraits, closeups or normal (sometimes called as average, whatever that is).

To understand this, lay a piece of A4 paper on a table and place a coin on it.
Think of the paper as all of the information recorded and delivered by your system and the coin as that delivered to your camera or computer screen
by the LUT you have chosen or simply capitulated to.
All the rest is disregarded information, hidden from view.

When you push your sliders in your edit programme (as Photoshop)
you begin to see the other tones, colours, contrasts, highlight and shadow detail available to you.
There is nothing more real about the LUT
than the other colours and tones you discover.
You are not making colours; you are drawing them out of hiding.

The truth is not to be found in corporate settings of your equipment
but rather inside your own being.

I recognised the beauty of the boy and the touching openness to the camera
and therefore to Donna.
Something more filled with emotional and possibly social and political truths
are found in the photographer’s sensibility,
and the editing of the image should bring this to the attention of the viewer.

One of my mentors is Nigel Osborne, a brilliant composer of very beautiful music
and a human rights worker and a world expert on using music for trauma therapy.
I learned from him the idea of ‘giving a gift of culture’ to others.
I live by this, I work with this and I render my images with this in mind.
I think that may be the wish for many of us, to use our creativity with generosity.

I asked Donna if I could borrow her original negative
to reveal what I thought was her intention.

This was Donna’s generous response:
“I thought wow that is much more muted than I saw/felt it…more subdued.
Initially I wasn’t exactly sure if I liked the muddiness of the colours.
It seemed less upbeat.

The most obvious surprise was the fact that you chose a portrait aspect
vs my square and landscape versions. I never even contemplated a portrait version.

You chose to make the ice cream truck less of a subject by darkening it.
In my opinion you created a different mood—more sombre.

Making the boys face lighter really emphasised
more of the emotional aspect of the photo that I was trying to convey.

This was a revelation to me...
His gesture, the skew of his head,
his amazing eyes that seemed to go right through the camera
and directly into mine (as if there was no camera present).
For that split second, we were connected.

The innocence, the kindness and the gentleness of his expression
is why I took the photo.
Your edits emphasise that a bit more.
Initially for me it was the whole scene that was important,
including the colours of the van and the framing
—perhaps mine was more of a street approach—

I think your edits make for more expressive image and one that is more captivating.
Your edit definitely made me think of other images I have
—how could I edit these images to direct the viewers eyes?

Are there images where I need to focus the attention more carefully via edits.
I have a whole series of elderly people
and a loneliness and solitude series I am working on…
After your edit of my photo
I will go back and see if I can elevate the emotional aspect with different edits.”

For me, this is a beautiful moment.
Someone who cares, who tries to document our common humanity
has come to see a much richer set of opportunities
by my prompts.

This is what your studying my films, manual and other essays will lead you to:
something deeper, more in tune with your concerns,
more clearly expressed as a gift of culture.

This is how learning about technique lead to greater meaning.

I have been asked to clarify just what people can look forward to in joining up to:

Have you been introduced to the great value
in learning to appreciate the fine arts?
They will embrace you like a lover.

Do you know about the three levels
existing in every visual work?

Do you know the three phases of photography?

Do you know the three elements that are a part of each picture

Have you been introduced to the great value
for picture making in reading poetry?

As a documentarist
do you know the value of becoming invisible?

Can you imagine those in silence
may have moving stories to tell?

Have you discovered how to arouse in yourself
empathy, tolerance and kindness
for those with whom you fundamentally disagree?

Have you thought through the differences
between objective and subjective responses?

Have you asked, “what is photographic beauty?”

Do you know where beauty is found?

Have you learned there is a precious relationship
between truth and beauty?

Why is it an excellent practice to tell jokes?

Do you know what a story is?

Do you know how to tell/show a story?

Have you learned the difference between a story and a history?

Do you know the difference between seeing and looking?

Have you will seen the damage done
to picture making by generalisation?

Have you discovered concentration on technique and style
usually lead to boring work?

Are you conscious of your guiding themes?

Do your morals play a role in the photographs you make?

Have you understood the relationship
between your morality and your themes?

Are the people and beliefs which mean most to you

represented in your pictures?

Have you come to understand
the value of your art is not only in the particular photo
but also in how the audience are emotionally affected
by your way of showing our troubled world?

Do you know the meaning of metaphor?

And so on. There are many more questions, observations, trials, thoughts to be considered by the photographer. All of the above will enrich your practice, help you
to make more meaningful images that people will respond to.

In these ways you can address the many problems that exist in our lives and help others to see more deeply a way of understanding or coping or engaging in life.

Your work will gain merit and value amongst others.

We have built a website filled with podcast interviews, written essays, films, many discussions, ways to engage on Q&As and more. The website is alive and will continue to add new encounters between the 4 series of films and manuals being offered.

And this below from Thomas of FRAMES website

Dear FRAMES friends,

I don’t do it often, but today, I want to make a very personal and strong recommendation.

I want to encourage you to enroll in the brand-new photography course designed and built by an accomplished photographer and filmmaker, Robert Golden.

It is called PHOTOGRAPHY: MAKING MEANING.

I am recommending it because it speaks to something I believe many serious photographers eventually face:

Not how do I use my camera?
But why am I making these photographs?
What do I care about?
What am I trying to say?
How can my images become more honest, more personal, more necessary?

Robert Golden is a photographer, filmmaker, writer, and teacher with a remarkable career behind him — spanning documentary photography and publishing, film, education, exhibitions, and socially engaged work. But what matters most here is not simply his experience. It is the way he thinks about photography.

This is not a course about quick tricks, presets, or technical shortcuts.

It is about photography as a way of seeing, thinking, questioning, and connecting your inner life with the world in front of the camera.

The full course is built around 12 filmed episodes, released in four series.

The first series includes three 26-minute films and focuses on the essential foundations: visual literacy, subject matter, content, themes, truth, beauty, personal voice, and the relationship between what we photograph and what we believe.

Later parts of the course will explore light, time, composition, portraiture, still life, landscape, cityscape, documentary photography, and finally the creation of meaningful series and essays.

Depending on the option you choose, the course also includes manuals, essays, illustrated lectures, podcasts, Q&A opportunities, and additional references.

The first series starts at 25 GBP, with more complete options available for those who want deeper access.

I think this course will be especially valuable for photographers who already know the basics but feel that their work needs more depth, more direction, or simply a stronger reason to exist.

That is why I believe many FRAMES readers will find something important here.

Robert is not offering easy answers. He is asking the right questions.

And sometimes that is exactly what we need.

Explore PHOTOGRAPHY: MAKING MEANING here >>>

I warmly encourage you to take a look.

Warm regards,
Tomasz Trzebiatowski
Editor, FRAMES Magazine

A person wrote to us after watching the first film: “It’s beautiful. The story, the photos, the music… everything together makes it truly extraordinary. It’s so thoughtfully made, and I really enjoyed every part of it.” from a Serbian Youth Worker

The 12x 26 minute films offer a gentle, thoughtful approach to teaching photography, focused on themes, beauty and meaning. They express admiration for historical works of painting, sculpture and photography and how those fine works of art have informed my picture making*. They ask many questions of the reader, inviting them to think critically about what they do and what they wish to do with a camera.

Whilst making the first 3 films we** adapted the scripts for the accompanying manual with its more detailed information and references. That amount of information is not appropriate for films intended to stir the viewer emotionally as well as intellectually.

The films address understanding the differences between objective and subjective response, between learning about the harm done to one’s work because of generalising about people, places and things, and the profound differences between recording the surface of things and the inner truths of people and situations.

While making the films I came to question why it’s been and continues to be that I see many photographs, often well done, sometimes excelling in craft but frequently leaving me cold, without sensing my heart has been touched, but sensing that there is little poetry in the work. Why, if I am such an advocate and lover of the medium, can I not find interest in the image?

I believe it is because in essence I am more interested in the message and its story-telling qualities than in the medium itself. In my long professional life I have bent the medium to my needs, sometimes foraging into places unknown. It is clear to me that whilst one maybe an excellent stylist or technician, the vast difference between an amateur and a professional is that the former usually makes images of things they come across out of their own concerns and fascinations, but a professional must be able to answer a brief – answer someone else’s needs and wants - handsomely, appropriately and with the client’s message clearly delivered. There are, at the junction between the photographer’s and client’s attitudes, moral, political and financial friction points.

While I have had 5 intersecting photographic/film professions, I left 3 of them because of what for me were worrying moral and political problems which arose from me coming to understand that I could not service the needs of certain sectors of the economy.

The value of art is not only in the artist’s particular works but also in the way the audience may perceive the artist’s way of looking at our troubled world. This is where poetry, beauty, truth and the photographer’s life’s experiences play a role in the creation of meaning. This is where metaphor plays a role in communications with others.

Have a look at the trailer here: PHOTOGRAPHY: Making Meaning.com

*see my biography here.

**we meaning the designer Irina Maria Ganescu, the software engineer and web builder, Marko Stankovic, the critical eyes and supporting hearts of Tina Ellen Lee, Lisa Glybchenko, Joy Uglow, David Glass, Ricky Romain, Tomasz Trzebiatowski (from Frames) and all the others who have read and reacted with support and enthusiasm.

thank you all…

In this work, in this thinking and articulating ideas about his many different subjects, themes and content as well as styles of work have forced their way into Robert’s consciousness. In particular the question he now asks is, “why am I photographing what I am now drawn too?” After all, there is the whole of human and planetary life under stress to point his camera towards as he has in the past.

When he now travels, without the purpose to fulfil a commission or to pursue a specific story he has a phone camera in his pocket which he ever increasingly pulls out and uses.

In these first three films he talks about how serious photographers, whether they are devoted amateurs or professionals, most likely will have taken a camera with them into the world and responded to things around them; that is, to begin with they were being reactive, perceiving something as attractive, odd or having a particular and perhaps subconscious interest for them.

At some moment they will have expressed a desire to photograph something in particular. Perhaps they realised they could help a local NGO or charity with good photographs for their website or recognised that their potter friends could use some photographs to help advertise their work, and so on. This is where they have gone from being reactive to proactive, this is when they begin to become an advanced amateur. And they may become a professional when they can fulfil a brief.

One such recognition has led Robert to photograph people in public places and especially people in public transport boxed into their smartphones, preoccupied, isolated, indeed alienated to all around them. These phones are the perfect tool to over emphasize the importance of the individual in society and to thereby atomise people, creating a world of ultra individualism in which ’ME’ has taken over from the importance and solidarity of ‘WE’. Something seeming so innocent has become a tool to destroy solidarity in the community.

Also, people look to their phones to tell them what is around them. They are disconnected, unseeing, being present in their selfies but not in the place, having little or no idea the relevance to the buildings, to the sculptures, to the relationship of the lives they led. It is as if they are floating off the pavements, hardly engage, hardly present in the places they are ‘selfing’ themselves.

The last paragraph reveals how one’s work, brought together in creative ways can become a commentary, a reflection, a position on human rights, on our wellbeing as neighbours, as playing a role in society helping one’s fellow humans. This is how subject matter represents itself as content and how content represents our themes which embody our moral choices, consciously or not.

NOTES

*we meaning my around the world partners who are exposing this work to people in their cities, regions or countries.

For about ten years I have known and occasionally worked side-by-side with Laura Fatini, an Italian intellectual, playwright and director and many other things including having a profound caring for and understanding of Albert Camus’ thoughts, a treasure which we hold in common. I was in Florence last week where we met and immediately spoke about our work. What she had to say I believed my readers would appreciate, hence the short essay below from Laura.

Dear Robert,
as you asked, here I am with some words about my workshop “The important words” and a focus on Ikigai.

It has now been more than twenty years since I began directing theatre workshops for young people and adults, preceded by ten years working mainly with children. In Italian, we call this gavetta: the apprenticeship period during which you truly learn your craft. And working with children certainly did that for me.

Recently, I developed a new workshop—or rather, a process—which I call The Important Words. It is built around the words I find myself repeating most often during my theatre workshops.

These words are: enthusiasm, empathy, space, action, accuracy, and failure.

Each word becomes a lesson.

I always begin with enthusiasm—the force that moves us. In Ancient Greek, enthousiasmos literally means “having a god within,” an inner force that inspires and propels us forward. I always end with failure, a concept that is deeply connected to action.

The journey is therefore one from “me” to “the world,” from the self to others. The aim is to use the tools and language of theatre to guide people from their inner passion toward a conscious and meaningful presence within their communities.

It is ambitious, I know. But theatre is a political art—a powerful one—and it is worth trying to change the world, one step at a time.

This is the god that moves me.

During the lesson on action, I introduce the Japanese concept of ikigai, one’s reason for being. It is a fascinating idea that brings together four dimensions:

*what you love,
*what you are good at,
*what the world needs,
*and what you can be paid for.

Once again, it describes a journey from the inner self to the outer world, from personal desire to social contribution.

And every time I explain it, I see something happen. The eyes of my young students begin to glow. Their passions, their enthusiasm, suddenly seem tangible, as they start imagining ways to make them real in the world. Perhaps they will succeed, perhaps they won’t. But they will try.

At sixteen or eighteen years old, everyone should have the opportunity to believe that their passion can become reality. More importantly, everyone at that age should have passions in the first place.

This workshop is about that.

Why end with failure, then?

As Samuel Beckett wrote:
“Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”

Failure is part of action. It does not define us as human beings; it is simply one of the things that can happen when we dare to try.

Clowns understand this better than anyone. Their only goal is to fail. This is not a mistake—it is their entire purpose. In doing so, they teach us that vulnerability is a virtue, that humiliation can be transformed into connection and joy, and that laughing, stumbling, and making a mess can be the most creative way of living a very serious life.

Again, this is an ambitious workshop. Yet it is also the simplest and most direct way I have found to be an artist: using the small things I have learned through experience, through trial and error, through life itself, to speak to others.

Isn’t this what we call art?

“Your film is gorgeous, wise, compelling. I liked very much the humanity, the care for others, and you as an agent of change. I am very interested in this question of transformation – how can we use words, images, creativity to change people’s sense of agency. To get them across the threshold, to set them on a path?” J.P PROFESSOR

“The narrative is immaculately coherent, logical and guided by principle, and of course the images, beautifully segued, set the standard to which all of us would aspire. You effectively step an interested party through a reasoned methodology, defining a very effective pathway towards the capture / making of their best possible image.”

G F photographer

I have written 200 pages of information for the first manual reflecting in more detail the first three films, which will be sold separately online as a downloadable PDF to the general public.

In this work, in this thinking and articulating the ideas, many reflections of my many different subjects, themes and content as well as styles of work have forced their way into my consciousness, and in particular the question I now ask, “why am I photographing what I am now drawn too?” After all, there is the whole of human and planetary life to point my camera at.

When I now travel, without the purpose to fulfil a commission or to pursue a specific story I have a phone camera in my pocket which I ever increasingly pull out and use.

In the first three films I talk about how serious photographers, whether they are devoted amateurs or professionals, most likely will have taken a camera with them into the world and responded to things around them; that is, to begin with they were being reactive, perceiving something as attractive, odd or having a particular and perhaps subconscious interests for them.

At some moment they will have expressed a desire to photograph something in particular. Perhaps they realised they could help a local NGO or charity with good photographs for their website, or recognised that their potter friends could use some photographs to help advertise their work, and so on. This is where they have gone from being reactive to proactive, this is when they begin to become an advanced amateur or a new professional.

With my walking around towns and countrysides I have come to recognise that I am attracted to specific things and often find wonder in the oddity or beauty of things and also begin to see similarities and interesting differences in objects, city squares, public monuments, social-economic detritus as parts of cities and towns are left to poverty and ruin. Or I recognise how portrait worthy people are.

Amongst the subject matter I have been drawn to photograph are public monuments in different countries -England, France, Italy, Romania. There is a display of military prowess, pomposity, religious fervour, arrogance, of things above the honour or struggles or needs of normal people. Thus they are an imposition of cultural, wealth and class differences and in that sense they become symbols of the dominant classes’ control of society.

One such recognition has led me to photograph people in public places and especially people in public transport boxed into their smartphones, preoccupied, isolated, indeed alienated to all around them. These phones are the perfect tool to over emphasize the importance of the individual in society and to thereby atomise people, creating a world of ultra individualism in which ’ME’ has taken over from the importance and solidarity of ‘WE’. Something seeming so innocent has become a tool to destroy solidarity in the community.

Also, people look to their phones to tell them what is around them. They are disconnected, unseeing, being present in their selfies but not in the place, having little or no idea the relevance to the buildings, to the sculptures, to the relationship of the lives they led. It is as if they are floating off the pavements, hardly engage, hardly present in the places they are ‘selfing’ themselves.

The last paragraph reveals how one’s work, brought together in creative ways can become a commentary, a reflection, a position on human rights, on our wellbeing as neighbours, as playing a role in society helping one’s fellow humans. This is how subject matter represents itself as content and how content represents our themes which embody our moral choices, consciously or not.

*’We’ meaning my around the world partners who are exposing this work to people in their cities, regions or countries.

Through my life I have been intellectually and emotionally influenced by a small number of people who have helped me to grasp meanings in life. Most of these influences came from the writers of books I have read and studied. Camus and John Berger are outstanding amongst those whom I have read and been astonished by finding new questions, new comprehension, new creativity through them. Often a sentence can send me off to write pages in response to their wise provocations.

It is true that individuals I have met and learned to admire and in some ways to love have done the same for me: soothing, inspiring, comforting, opening me to other view, other worlds of perception and providing living examples of my moral beliefs.

This Saturday I’m travelling to Paris to see a one-off community opera by Nigel Osborne*, working with migrant families of the city at the Philharmonie de Paris**, a magnificent cultural building designed by Jean Nouvel. Faced with the challenge of starting new lives in a new country, families who have found refuge in Paris, have shared their experiences and emotions through music.

Nigel always has many projects at the same time. His pioneering and ongoing work with children and veterans in Ukraine using music to tackle trauma, a new production in Sarajevo and as always, summer music camps in Croatia and Bosnia for children with disability and suffering trauma often inherited from their parents who survived the genocidal Balkan wars of 1992-55.

I have photographed and filmed Nigel for over 20 years. He has given me and thousands like me what he has described as A Gift of Culture in my film of the same name.

Nigel has just been awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Society for Education and Music Psychology Research. It honours his work in music technology for disability and music medicine.

In June Nigel will share a day of conversation and exploration around a new Framework for Trauma Attuned Arts developed and influenced through his work and that of Veronika Skliarova and Art Dot in Ukraine. He will be joined by Darren Abrahams, singer, trauma therapist and co-founder of One World Orchestra and Dr Angela Kennedy, an eminent Clinical Psychologist and former NHS director and regional mental health lead with decades of experience working with the consequences of abuse and trauma. Full details here.

Tina Ellen Lee, my wife/partner/dearest friend/creative associate/lover suggested this essay and wrote a good part of it. She has worked with Nigel for many years and introduced me to him. She wrote,” Nigel personifies what it means to be useful in the world as well as being an exceptional composer, musician, linguist, inventor and friend.

Recently he gave me permission to use some of his beautiful music as an underscore for my second episode on Photography: Making Meaning. That was an exceptional generosity coming from a man who lives his finest beliefs.

NOTES:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nigel_Osborne
** https://philharmoniedeparis.fr/en/activite/28635?itemId=142981

Now pretty certain is will be released in June…

Remember, those who have supported my writing and those who decide to do so now for at least a year will have free access to this series of films and to the manual.

Very soon now we* will be releasing the first three films and a website filled with written essays, descriptions of this course of 12 films, 4 manuals and on-line discussions, pre-recorded talks by me about photography and interviews with other artists about their work and processes.

I have written 200 pages of information for the first manual reflecting in more detail the first three films, which will be sold separately online as a downloadable PDF for the general public.

You can see a short ad for it here.

In this work, in this thinking and articulating ideas, many reflections of my many different subjects, themes and content as well as styles of work have forced their way into my consciousness, and in particular into the question I now ask, ‘why am I now drawn to what I am now photographing?

When I now travel, without the central purpose to fulfil a commission or to pursue a specific story, I have a phone camera in my pocket which I ever increasingly pull out and use.

In the first three films I talk about how serious photographers, whether they are devoted amateurs or professionals, most likely will have at first taken a camera with them into the world and responded to things around them; that is, to begin with they were being reactive, perceiving something as attractive, odd or a particular interest to them.

At some moment they will have expressed a desire to photograph something in particular. Perhaps they realised they could help a local NGO or charity with good photographs for their website or recognised that their potter friend could use some photographs to help advertise her work, and so on. This is where they have gone from being reactive to proactive, this is when they begin to become an advanced amateur or a professional.

While walking around towns and countrysides I have come to recognise that I am attracted to subject matter, that I find wonder in the oddity or beauty of things and also begin to see similarities and interesting differences in objects, city squares, public monuments, social-economic detritus as parts of cities and towns left to poverty and ruin. Or I recognise how portrait worthy people are.

One such recognition has led me to photograph people in public places and especially people in public transport boxed into their smartphones, preoccupied, isolated, indeed alienated to all around them. These phones are the perfect tool to over emphasize the importance of the individual in society and to thereby atomise people, creating a world of ultra individualism in which ME has taken over from the importance and solidarity of WE. Something seeming so innocent has become a tool to destroy solidarity in the community.

The last paragraph reveals how one’s work, brought together in creative ways can become a commentary, a reflection, a position on human rights, on our wellbeing as neighbours, as playing a role in society helping one’s fellow humans.

This is coming soon, perhaps my mid June. Those people who are supporting my Substack financially will be offered the full highest tier for free of this course as soon as the films are released. If anyone wishes to support my Substack essays for the minimum of a year will also receive the project for free. To those who have supported me, thank you.

*’we’ refers to my around-the-world partners who are exposing this work to people in their cities, regions or countries.

The above is a reading by me of the short essay below.

THE late 19^TH century view of photography,
copying nature with a damnation machine:
‘it’s the fatal enemy of painting’.

It liberated painters from the concerns
of providing clearly rendered external reality,
allowing them the possibility of questioning
and exposing subjective, hidden unconscious worlds.

The neoliberal’s project
begun after the Second World War,
foisted upon us by Reagen and Thatcher
two threats continually upon societies
which objected to losing freedoms:
military solutions against one’s own and other’s society -
(think ICE in the States)(think laws and imprisonment in the UK)
-and continual increasing indebtedness for most people.

Half-truth deviousness, bigger lies
repeated, repeated, repeated
until they become ‘the new normal’
or slurs to shut down
not just the content
but the reputation of those who object.
The endless repression of many people around the world
continually creating terror amongst non-quiescent populations
think Gaza, Ukraine, Iran…

This will now continue to the end of time unless…
the most profound dreams of change arise from the oppressed classes
and from the young
as they are the ones to gain the most from change.

We are forced to imprison ourselves.
We internalise the misrepresentations,
the luring lies,
the endless filth-laden emails.

Their tomes written for bribery
not of goodness,
not for decent moral values,
not for shared kindnesses
but for wealth, sex and power.

Their bribery of our innocence
imprisons us in our lowering lowered wages,
the bullying threats of unjust justice,
the fear of losing one’s job, work, reputation, face
no matter how empty, meaningless, horrible or oppressive
their bribery has been and may continue to be.

Our photographs, pellucid signs of tenderness
need to line the insights of people’s dreams
as we learn to hold light in our hands
and to somehow feed it to our and other’s hearts.

Let there be beautiful goals
reckoned in beautiful images, told in delicious stories.

We are now thinking this will be ready by mid-June. It is composed of 3 x 26 minute films, a 200 page manual, podcasts with artists, numerous written essays about photography, the arts, culture, beauty, responsibility, moral considerations, the 3 layers of any picture to read, and much much more. By the time the 12 films and 2 manuals will have been produced and released it will consist of a very in-depths, intellectually, emotionally and aesthetically rich life-changing course of pleasure and study.

Perhaps you have read the last three essays about my multi-faceted career.

I know it is a tale of abuse and survival. The reason I have written about these shifts in my work is that in this age there is an ever greater need for artists to contribute to the discussions about where we are, where we may go, who stands in the path of evolving humanity and how artists need to respond.

Part of this survival is recognising how fearful the establishment is of truth and beauty and why they will continue to organise artists around fame and fortune rather than around making meaning.

My story is one of continual assault and resistance. Journalists as Carole Cadwalladr, novelists as Elif Shafak and painters as Ricky Romain all bear witness to their struggles with truth-telling.

What I have done across my life is attempt to reveal the invisible controls which exist behind the walls of our highly controlled educations, our superficial pop culture, our continually misleading 24/7 news and the endless evasions of politicians and priests.

But, as the horrors of Ukraine, Gaza, Iran and all the other armed conflicts continue to destroy infrastructure and innocent people’s lives, it is clear to me that my looking at society through the lenses of politics, culture and economics has been futile.

I ask myself, ‘what other species allows a small number of their own species to destroy their habitat wilfully?’ ‘What other species systematically destroys innocent bystanders as they, the already bloated billionaires pursue greater power, wealth and fame?

I have decided to look at how I have been presenting the outer objective world and my own inner being. I’m experimenting with how I transform so-called external realities into metaphor, to perhaps introduce more metaphoric signs into how I represent the world. Early days…but I have tried to introduce young artists into what is a struggle unless they subsume themselves in the entertainment and decorations of the rich, unless they conform to the ‘acceptable subject matter and stories.

We are hoping to release these first three films of 12
and our 200 page Manual in the last week of May…

In last week’s essay I spoke about how I moved from photographic illustration financing my documentary work to making commercials. The earlier stills documentary work included the production of 11 books and an exhibition about working class life, and 2 exhibitions** from my long documentation of black mostly West Indians helping to rebuild Britain.

Whilst directing and lighting commercials I was asked by several broadcasters to act as a Director/Director of Photography on re-constructed scenes for various documentary series they were making. I understood that what I was doing indicated to me I wanted to write and direct fictional films that would reflect my earlier desires to make the oppressive invisible forces in people’s lives become visible through fictional stories.

After 15 years and over 900 commercials I tired of the bullshit politics, reputations, jealousy, and money money money that surrounded the commercial’s work. I got to the top of the ladder but knew someone or something would eventually knock me off.

I recognised my discontent with the business, with my producer-partner and with the endlessly repeated “Robert, you must do well as this is the most important commercial we have ever done for this client’ rolling out of the mouths of Creative Directors, corporate advertising managers, etc.

Finally coming to realise I was also injuring people with my seductive commercials
and / or perhaps because I came down with cancer, probably from the strain of not doing what I thought I should be doing but doing what I came to recognise I shouldn’t be doing.

In that period between commercials and what would happen next, I applied to become a member of a very English film institution but was rejected, being told I hadn’t proven I was a filmmaker. I pointed out that I had won at least 20 awards and probably put more film through cameras than most directors in Britain, and also that my props stylist had been accepted for membership even as they rejected me. More futile arguments against an unseen foe.

Several years later I applied to the same institution for money from a fund they had for documentaries. I was told very clearly and with bad temper not to bother to apply for grants as they will never finance anything I wanted to make. ‘Why?’ I asked. No reason given.

When I recovered from cancer I decided to end my commercials career. I sold my ownership to our studio/offices in central London and made my first feature film co-writing it with two talented theatre makers, David Glass and Peta Lily. Both of them had an amazing knowledge of theatre, of storytelling and a hold on zany ideas.

We worked well together and produced BEG!, a Grand Guignol* piece of crazy film that gathered to it many followers and numerous haters. None the less, we entered it into the 1994 Edinburgh Film Festival in which it surprisingly won the audience award.

It was not usual that a first-time film maker would win such an award but the press showed zero interest. What was strange was that an assistant film reviewer for one of the red top papers telephoned my Producer and left a message saying “brilliant, brilliant, brilliant, the most inventive British film of the mid 1990’s. He insisted in having dinner with us in Edinburgh on the night of the awards ceremony. He waxed lyrically about the film. The next day he wrote 4words about it: “a film overstepping itself”. To say the least we were stunned and felt stabbed in the back. We were eventually told, that his boss, the senior film critic ordered him to write those words.

I and the film were invited to the prestigious SUNDANCE FILM Festival in the USA to be presented as one of the 5 most inventive European films of 1994. At breakfast one morning an English film critic I had long admired approached me. Recognising him, I smiled. He stopped, overly close to me and said, “you’re the guy who made Beg!” I nodded. He said, “oh yea, known as the rich rabbi.” That encounter didn’t end well.

None the less, as the now honoured film, it was invited into the London Film Festival.
On the day before the ceremony my producer was contacted by the Festival’s office. We were instructed to not show up as the film has been banned by the chairman, whom we believed, was the same person who ran the Institute I had been barred from. And so it went.

Being persistent, I had a last fling with a producer ‘friend’ of a longtime friend of mine. My friend said the producer had read my script and wanted a meeting. I of course thought this portended something good. We entered his office. He was sitting in a chair behind a round table. As we approached, his blank expression alerted a neon sign in my head saying ‘here we go again’. He nodded for us to sit. Before my bottom hit the chair he took the 100 or so unbound script pages and forcefully threw them in my face as he shouted, “Don’t waste my time. You wanna send a message, use Western Union. Get the f*@k out of here.” That encounter didn’t end well either.

All of this convinced me to make documentaries I wished to make, without lawyers, editors or moneyed people telling me what I should, could or couldn’t do. My education in history, my experience in photographing documentary stills, my intense work in advertising had taught me a huge amount about film-making. Of course, as photography was my soil and as I had learned to edit picture and sound sitting next to my wonderful editor Terry Jones; I had learned about the arts of voice-over for always directing the commercial’s VOs, and as I had shot so many stills and films about food, I had learned a lot about lighting and handling it for the best results.

In a dialogue with my friend/advisor/lover/wife we decided to make a series of good time films; films that would celebrate the best of what we are and what we do, whether in North Viet Nam, Morocco, New Orleans, Japan etc. From this came a 13 part TV series called SAVOURING THE WORLD. On those journeys we met and were fed and hosted by so many mostly poor people whose generosity moved us to tears.

As we travelled we realised we were meeting the same problems almost everywhere. People with glazed eyes were losing their customs, traditions, foods, health and traditional forms of employment as foreign money swept into their country selling via the new supermarkets, the fast food joints, the frozen and canned foods, the foreign sweet chocolate bars etc. Jobs/customs/traditions individuals had inherited from their parents whose parent etc through from decades to centuries to epochs were being squeezed out by trawlers, freezer ships, and the introduction of cheap ultra processed foods. Traditional Western diseases as diabetes, cardiovascular disorders, different forms of gut cancers, dementia and a whole ongoing list of sickness were decimating societies.

The series sold to 40 countries but not the UK. I needed to understand what was going on. I understood fairly well the tropes of history but not economics…..i read about 15 books by economists about our modern world. There I came across “GLOBALIZATION’, NEOLIBERALISM, WAGE SLAVERY and other concepts. My eyes were opened.

We made a second series, only this one, while still as joyous as could be about the surviving traditions, spoke about one of the central issues of globalization, the introduction of fast foods, the desecration of jobs, health, traditions etc. One day while my wife and I were standing on a rise above a peasant farm in Hungary, I turned to her and said: “we are going to be in trouble, these films will be ignored, will lose our money.” She allowed her lips to flutter into the tiniest moves that implied a withheld smile and all but whispered, “you know you have to do what you believe, what’s right.”

The series sold to 13 countries but not the UK. The reason we were told the reduced sales were because the broadcaster’s advertisers would not support the films.

This story goes on. It clearly shows that what or whomsoever have blocked my work and to a degree me, have done so, not because I am in any way important but because they wish to guard their greed, their unfairness, their manipulations of our consciousness and our understanding of ourselves and the limitations they place upon us from being exposed by their media domains.

Liberalism means they will allow a discussion of gender, of racism, of wars to a degree but as soon as one implies that class and wealth have something to do with the profoundly disillusioned, dreamless and largely dysfunctional societies we survive in they will try to shut us done or freeze us out. It is ugly and pernicious.

Democracy, if nothing else, is about plurality and the ability to be in the same space as those with differing points of view to discuss, to convince and to confront with reason, kindness and beauty and not with lies and violence.

I refer back to the British philosopher, Issah Berlin. He described how what he called ‘negative freedom’ is in a real democracy, the use of laws and rules as a necessity to constrain the worst excesses of the rich and powerful from doing as they wish without constraints over their ability to injure others and our earth, whereas positive freedom applies few laws and rules allowing the rich and powerful to do as they wish.

The right always chooses to create and enforce positive freedoms and in that they willingly victimise artists and intellectuals, journalists and human rights lawyers and all those who stand against their unrestrained bullying…..

*Grand Guignol
Its name is often used as a general term for graphic, amoral horror entertainment, a genre popular from late Elizabethan and Jacobean theatre.

STILL NOW SOONER’

Last week I described my first career which was about my documentary work, with a background of illustrative picture making. That was and still is my enduring passion…being able to gain the trust of strangers and to tell their stories, especially those that were universal. An individual or group struggle to survive with dignity, usefulness and kindness towards others often bring new ideas and hope to viewers.

As I explained, the establishment of publishers, editors, art directors and many of the photographers who serviced them were united in opposing positive stories or very dark stories of working class life. Anything positive or uplifting was called naive romanticism.

Immediately after one of my essays was published in a fashionable magazine of the time, I was invited to a dinner by two photographers who were members of the photo agency I had dreamt of joining since the age of 12. At the meeting I was left alone at the dining table with a young German woman while the photographers finished preparing dinner. Sitting there with her I asked her how she was. She looked at me and dropped her face into her hands and moaned, “oh my God, I am so sorry”. Not being sure what this meant I asked, “sorry about?” She mumbled into her hands, “Adolf”. Surprised and confused, I gasped, “Adolf Hitler?” She looked up for a moment and repeated his name. I snapped, perhaps with a tinge of temper, “Sorry about what?” She lifted her head and said, “about the Jews…he couldn’t finish his plan.” I was chilled. I had no patience for this whether it was a joke or a trial. The photographers entered and one of them told me,” Robert, in our Agency we are neutral, we don’t take sides and so you can fuck off.” I received neither dinner nor an invitation to join.

Several days later I was rung by a friend, yes a friend, who was an active member of a left wing political party to whom I had supplied free photographs from my many essays empathically describing working class people in labour, in the many meetings, demonstrations and marches.

He said, “ Robert, my comrades decided they want nothing to do with you, they neither want your pictures nor want you around the offices.” I was stunned. This made less sense to me than being baited by a Nazi sympathiser. “Why?”
“Silence and then he said, “we don’t believe an American can have the beliefs you have and so we think you are probably a deep-enterist CIA agent,” and then he cut me off. That was the last time we spoke after a friendship of 7 years.

My head was whirling. I thought that several days earlier I was refused entry into the photo agency because I was an opinionated lefty and now I am barred from helping people on the left because I am a right-wing secret agent. I thought I was doing either something very correct or very wrong.

At that moment I felt breathless as though all the things I cared about had belted me in the gut. There and then I decided I would no longer rely upon pursuing a profession in documentary work as it was a political trap. When I began, the media liked ‘committed photography’, but then, whilst being rejected, I recognised that the term ‘concerned photography’ had replaced the earlier description.

I decided I would only work as a photo-illustrator in a studio
*where there would be no light until I turned one on,
*there would be nothing in front of my camera until I put something there
*except for portraits of people,
* and I would only use a 10 x 8 plate camera rather than a 35mm Leica.

This changed my life.

I engaged with my study of history and my experience at film school. After a few years of making images for book covers, then for cookery books I developed a style that related to the world beyond the walls of my studio.

I then studied the history of still-life painting. These pictures, rooted in classical imagery, caught on fire. With great luck I became well-known, but what became clear was that I had to specialise in something. London at that time was overflowing with many excellent still-life or as we were known, ‘tabletop’ photographers. I had no interest in machines, cars, beauty/luxury products but had an admiration for all the things of and life around food.

I became a specialised food photographer and eventually was asked by advertising agencies if I would photograph campaigns for their food clients. In the 1980’s I knew very little about the nature of ultra processed foods, about the health curse of fast foods, about the negative effects of finely ground white wheat flour or the intense amounts of salt and sugar used in canned and bottled foods. At one point in my career I was photographing the images that would be used by MacDonalds to introduce their products to the British, and at the same time I was making similar images for Burger King and another local burger bar corporation. I was then referred to as the Burger King of Britain. I could only be so interested in how many sesame seeds there are on the top of the perfect bun.

I was eventually asked to light and direct food commercials. Again my somewhat classical style, concentrating on lighting that would not just provide exposure but highlights and shadows that created exciting richly coloured images along with macro close up details and ultra-high speed pouring, splashing, steaming liquids enhanced my reputation.

I learned more about film rhythms, the arc of timing and the graphic relationship frame to frame and many things about understatement and the use of sound to heighten the actions of knives, spoons and forks, of steam and frost and much more.

BUT after making almost 900 commercials, winning numerous awards, I was increasingly understanding that I was playing a role in seducing people into eating non-food substances as the wonderful professor and writer Michael Pollen wrote: for a “substance to be considered a food it must do one of three things:
1 help the body grow,
2 help sustain a healthy body
3 fight illness”

His research deeply disturbed me…not only was I aiding and abetting corporations but I was also helping them to corrupt people’s lives. I became more picky, more obviously principled and losing clients. My partner-producer was furious with me.

In the end I decided to quit commercials and return to my original love, documentary work but with a video rather than stills camera. After having made so many commercials for the most creative agencies and the largest clients I had learnt a huge amount about film production, editing images, dialogue, voice overs and music.

I researched and wrote a series of 13 films about food and culture.

More of this next weeks.

Soon my series of 3 films about photography and it’s connection between one’s deepest concerns and ones picture making, between finding purpose and making use of it in picture making, in finding one’s voice and discovering whom that may represent, recognising one’s responsibility to one’s talent, in coming to understand visual literacy and how to read the 3 levels of every visual image…etc.

Here are two responses from people whom we have tested the films on…these are representative of many responses.

G F - photographer
The narrative is immaculately coherent, logical and guided by principle, and of course the images, beautifully segued, set the standard to which all of us would aspire. You effectively step an interested party through a reasoned methodology, defining a very effective pathway towards the capture / making of their best possible image.

S B - collagist and film-maker
Just watched your video… beautiful!!!!! Love your narration. Loved your personal story running through. Wonderful approach to talking about how you see, look, and search - with some of your cultural and artistic references blended in. Wonderful!!!

This talk was delivered to the film students at the University Sarajevo School of Science and Technology in March 2019.

I’m going to talk about my three linked careers
and the political principals that convinced me to make the decisions
I felt were necessary to change one career for another.
I want you to understand I am addressing Anglo/American conditions.
What they may imply about your own countries is for you to decide.

This is especially dedicated to the many young people around the world
who are sickened by the realities facing them
as the climate crisis,
rampant political and financial corruption,
the lack of democracy,
the lack of justice for all,
the sexism, racism, classism,
the unending wars,
and the ways previous generations have decided
to drop students into debt for studying.

•••

Professionally I began by photographing
in the white folk music and then black jazz clubs
in Detroit where I was born,
providing inexpensive photographs for the artists.
Then Barry Gordy, founder of Motown Records, based in Detroit,
asked me to photograph The Four Tops for their first Motown album cover.

Soon after I moved to New York where, on my first day taking my portfolio around,
I was commissioned by a music publisher to do a series of photo-illustrations
for their new music score releases.

From there I began to work for numerous magazines,
book publishers and record companies,
beginning to learn about and to use studio lighting.

In that period I made many photo-essays,
which taught me a lot about storytelling with images.
Having previously gone to film school during my university years,
I worked on my essays as if they were films
– researching, looking at visual references of photography, films and the fine arts
and continually re-storyboarding what I thought I needed to photograph
to reveal the underlying truth of my story.

These storyboard scribbles, and indeed they were scribbles
represented a search for ideally composed and lit compositions
containing and revealing the inner nature of the subject matter
and therefore revealing the inner content I was searching for.

Looking at order versus disorder,
at disorder versus harmony,
at harmony versus anarchy
at anarchy versus remembering
at remembering versus forgetfulness
at forgetfulness versus empathy
at empathy versus kindness
at kindness versus hatred
at hatred versus beauty
at beauty versus ugliness – monstrousness – hideousness – repulsiveness etc

While photographing various commissions
I became discontented with the way my pictures were used.
The editors and art directors thought, because they paid me,
they had the right to construct out of my photographs
a different political, social reality more acceptable to them and their publishers.
I’d been driven into conflict between my responsibility to my media commissioners
and to those who generously gave me access into their lives
- something precious and delicate.
Ultimately, the misuse of my images by the media
forced me to turn away from photojournalism as a way to reveal truths.

This led to my second career which I will reveal next week.

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COMING VERY SOON

Soon my series of 3 films about photography and it’s connection between one’s deepest concerns and ones picture making, between finding purpose and making use of it in picture making, in finding one’s voice and discovering whom that may represent, recognising one’s responsibility to one’s talent and to one’s fellows, in coming to understand visual literacy and how to read the 3 levels of every visual image…etc.

Here are two responses from people whom we have tested the films on…these are representative of many responses.

PROFESSOR J P
”Your film is gorgeous, wise, compelling. I liked very much the humanity, the care for others, you as an agent of change. I am very interested in this question of transformation – how can we use words, images, creativity to change people’s sense of agency. To get them across the threshold, to set them on a path?”

S B - collagist and film-maker
Just watched your video… beautiful!!!!! Love your narration. Loved your personal story running through. Wonderful approach to talking about how you see, look, and search - with some of your cultural and artistic references blended in. Wonderful!!!

C H – photographer and gardener
Fantastic, and a genuine resource ... something to keep going back to. I particularly like the bit where you say that everything is interesting ...