August 23, 2007
Northern Exposures
Chris Steele-Perkins
As I have another book out I thought I'd post again to follow up on my Tokyo Love Hello and Korean Comfort Women ones, and respond to your comments - sorry for the long delay if anyone is still out there - most were very positive, so thanks a lot for that feedback. (Rafal there is a Magnum book of new work on Korea coming out. Daniel and Alok, an interesting idea to photograph the perpetrators, but few are now alive and I am sure would not come forward.)
Front cover of Chris Steele-Perkins' new book Northern Exposures. © Chris Steele-Perkins/Magnum Photos
This is the cover of the new book, Northern Exposures. Its in B&W and about Rural Life in the North East of England; County Durham to be precise.
Why B&W? It was great to change modes - it is also in medium format, on Mamiya 7s mostly - and to adopt a slower more contemplative approach than towards the frenetic urban life of Tokyo. It was shot in some of the same time frame as Tokyo too. I like to keep plugging away at my own country, exploring England at the same time I am exploring foreign places. Maybe it keeps you rooted. But the answer to why it is B&W is nothing more complex than I wanted to. It just felt right.
What started it off? It all started from a small commission from Side Gallery in Newcastle who were working on a larger group project on Durham Coalfields, the onetime heartland of the defunct British coal-mining industry. Once I got started I found myself hooked into it, in Cartier-Bresson's phrase, it got between the shirt and skin, and I decided to continue working on it for my own interest.
Haswell Plough is a small village with an auction in a barn over the weekend and is a magnet for country people from the surrounding area. It sells everything from poultry to rusty nails. Through people I met and photographed there a network of contacts came into place. People were helpful. I explained what I was trying to do and they generally tried to help. It is often that way if they feel you are being straight with them. True in Africa as it is in Japan.
How to fund it? Mostly from my own pocket. Side Gallery were very helpful and they gave me some more money, I got some from Durham Arts, and the Sunday Times Magazine commissioned a part, but mostly I paid for it from other work I do. Recycling. In the end I am a photographer to do the work I think important and that interests me, and I do it by whatever means are available.
Book spreads from Chris Steele-Perkins' new book Northern Exposures. © Chris Steele-Perkins/Magnum Photos
How to shape it? Animals, or rather people and their relationship to animals, provided a focus because it became clear early on that everyone I met seemed to own a number of animals. Slowly it began to break down into different groups of images, often animal based: shooting, pigeons, hunting with horse and hound, ferrets, farming and also included country services such as the slaughterhouse and the vet. It became a much more structured study, more sociological, than Tokyo Love Hello, and one that required text to provide the information I wanted to get over. (Not as essential as with the Korean Comfort Women, but quite different from my intention in Tokyo Love Hello, where textual information is deliberately withheld in order to encourage ambiguity and multiple readings). Some subject groups I actively pursued, like hunting, and others emerged from the overall accumulation of work and from actually being there photographing. I finally decided to write short introductions to each of the subject chapters.
How to present the work? I like a simple design for a book though its interesting to play with some small layout variations, but overall I wanted to keep it very clean and for the book to be big enough that the quality of the medium format could be understood, but not too pompously large.
Working on Nothern Exposures with i-view.
I worked with i-view and inDesign along with making small ink-jet prints and you have to rework it and rework it, selections, sequencing, texts, layouts till it seems to settle. Or go back and shoot some more if you are unhappy with some areas.
Some pictures was used as a magazine feature on country sport, another time as a feature on farming, but my intention was to make a book as I thought of this work as a whole, not a series of photo-essays, and I felt it was a valuable record of an important but neglected area of English life. I have a great belief in the value of photography as History; in writing my own slices of history. That is what you do as a photographer. These sets of work are aspects of the times I live in that have fascinated me and I hope they will fascinate others if they are of high enough quality. Books are the best way to preserve these personal histories and I want people in the future to find a portal into the world I have preserved.
However, rural life in northern England it is not a sexy subject like Tokyo, which has a more immediate appeal to mainstream publishers, and some publishers told me that soon enough. Finally I got lucky and a local university press, Northumbria, took it up. They had done A Dictionary of North East Dialect, but they had not done a photography book before and I was anxious about production quality, though they did a stunningly good job, at a very good price in the end. Problem is they don't have proper distribution so you have to buy it on the web unless you live in Durham.
Side Gallery exhibition using small inkjets to provide more information. I also used a number of poems, mounted on panels, by a local poet Katrina Porteous, which shared the same subject matter and concerns. © Chris Steele-Perkins/Magnum Photos
Then there is the question of exhibitions. Side Gallery did an exhibition before the book came out and Northumbria University Gallery did another for the book launch. They are both very different spaces and I tried to make the shows different too and experiment with presentation.
Northumbria University Gallery with much larger ink-jet prints and little text. © Chris Steele-Perkins/Magnum Photos
Then in October Host Gallery in London will do a show that brings together and contrasts my Tokyo work with my Durham work. This was their proposal and I find the idea really intriguing, moving between cultures and ways of responding, but we are still struggling with how to do it.
I am also trying to do a Magnum in Motion essay which I hope will be posted soon, once I have figured out how to best present the work in that medium.
Then what next? I really am unsure. I have ideas but none of them has got me by the throat, or between my shirt and skin, yet. I will continue working in Japan and I want to work on a new part of English life which is quite different from what I have done before. I went to the Cotswolds for a short break this summer and took some pictures of country gardens. It was great, but it wont be the next big thing for me, but it does help you to relax.
The currently relaunched Magnum Photos Store is waiting for signed copies of Chris Steele-Perkins' new book "Nothern Exposures" to be available. Until then you can order a signed copy of Steele-Perkins' "Tokyo Love Hello" and a signed copy of "The Teds". If you can't wait until then to get your hands on a copy of "Nothern Exposures" you can order one via Amazon.co.uk.
Links:
» Photographs from Northern Exposures
» Chris Steele-Perkins Website
» Chris Steele-Perkins' Magnum Portfolio
Published on the Magnum Blog on August 23, 2007
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