People and Place: my final assignment

Notes on my creative journey: from a concept to an image 

A public bench makes a fascinating study. Having previously used a park bench as an object for my earlier assignments and exercises[8], I decided to continue exploring the theme in the final assignment.   

The bench attracted me because of its long history, universal existence, and its many uses and interpretations. 

According to the Encyclopaedia Britannia[9], benches were used widely by the Romans as seats and were wide enough to be used for sleeping and eating from. They “were the most common form of seating in medieval halls at a time when a chair was a rare luxury reserved for those of high status.” The civic benches at plazas in the14^th Century Tuscany were used for theatre performances and tribunal hearings, which conveyed “the sense of civic action and stimulated popular use.”[10]

Its long-standing history has secured the bench a prominent place in the everyday people’s life all around the world. 

In many ways the bench represents a part of our shared cultural heritage that is instantly understood across the world. 

A bench is often used as part of the visual language to convey certain feelings and emotions – depending on the context they could range from loneliness to love and romance. Its regular appearance in visual and verbal clichés is in itself a fascinating area of study. 

A bench as a public space has an endless variety of uses. It can be a home for homeless or a quiet spot to enjoy a quick lunch. It can be a place to meet with friends or a part of someone’s daily routine. It is one of the few places where social division can be played down and where talking to a stranger is still acceptable. 

It is a meeting place for strangeness and familiarity, similarity and difference, ‘Us’ and ‘Them’, public and private. 

Not surprisingly, the use of public spaces has been the subject of many academic studies and research projects, some of which are mentioned below. 

The first theoretical concept that helped me to develop my thinking on the subject is the idea of the city as an ‘ecology.’  Kevin Lynch (1981:119)[11] described human settlements as a ‘complex ecology.’ This understanding is built on seeing the urban spaces as living and constantly developing. A strong connection between the space and its occupants is the key to the ‘city ecology’ concept. As Kevin Lynch commented, ‘most utopias fail to keep space and society simultaneously in mind.’[12]

Building on the ecology of human settlements, a concept of the city making as a social process is helpful in this discourse. In her most recent work ‘City by Design’ (2013:1)[13], Fran Tonkiss describes how people shape, create and re-create their environment day by day.    

Applying the ecology of a place to the assignment, public benches can be seen as the living spaces that change from one moment to the other depending on who and how is using them. These living spaces are created and re-created with every passing moment, with every new situation and every new visitor. 

It seems fitting to describe the public bench as a ‘situational place,’^[14] a kind of on-going theatrical performance, with the visitors and passer-byes being the actors. These situational bench-places ‘emerge and vanish with the performative interactions that create them’ (2010; 44).[15]

This is evident when trying to ‘capture the right moment’ with the camera as there is a constant flow of emerging and vanishing individual moments-performances.

My exploration of the ways people experience public spaces started with observing and taking pictures of some strangers - individuals and groups of people - using public benches. Can the photography help us to understand their experiences? If so, what can we learn? 

From my experience, observing people in public places has similar qualities and is as engaging as watching a theatre performance. A bench helps to create a suitable and well-defined stage and there are plenty of actors who appear to be willing to perform. 

Lunchtime city 

The shooting angle and the composition of the image above were used to maximise the sense of a staged performance. Using a 70 mm lens helped me to stay relatively unnoticed. The lines created by the pavement slabs are leading the eye to the bench where the real life situation is played out in front of the viewer. We observe some strangers sharing the same space: some are eating in silence, or drinking and chatting, whilst others are emerged in ‘people-watching.’

The bold angle of the shot, the presence of the wall and the geometrical lines leading up to it - all of these make the viewer (quite mercilessly) a part of the picture putting them right in front of the observed. This creates slightly uneasy dynamics and adds some tension to the scene. It seems that the tables (or benches!) may turn anytime as the occupants of the benches may switch their attention to the viewer and become the observers themselves at any moment.  

Lunchtime city raises a question whether a public place could still be seen as a space where spontaneous social interaction between strangers takes place. The inhabitants of Lunchtime city share the benches but their experiences of the present moment seem very different. Their facial expressions caught by the camera range from (what appear to be) loneliness to boredom, and from disapproval to content. 

Lunchtime city points that where there is a potential for a spontaneous social interaction, there is a chance of meeting ‘the Other’ and a possibility of withdrawal or misunderstanding, conflict or friction. 

Looking down

The theme of interaction and withdrawal is explored further in the Looking down image. Shot from the gallery of a shopping centre in central Cambridge, it captures an everyday situation that can be observed in any urban centre around the globe. 

Our daily lives are full of the fleeting moments like this one – all compacted together until they become just a kind of background noise. It is only when an individual moment is frozen in time and is observed closely, it reflects back a mirror image of our modern urban way of life and how it affects individuals who are caught in it. 

Then we recognise how the urban pressures make people look, feel and behave. We are able to read the signs of their body language, the direction of their gaze, their postures, the way they shield themselves from the surroundings with various mobile devices – often choosing not to see, hear or communicate with their immediate environment.  

As M.Grimaldi and P.Sulis noted in the context of modern public places, ‘it is paradoxical that in the very moment when everyone can potentially reach every different place or being, in contact with numerous cultural realities, cities instead deny their original attitude and become places of avoidance.’(2009:262)[16]

Still, as long as the opportunity for a contact exists, there is a possibility that it would be used. As Storper and Venables pointed out, ‘being close enough literally to each other allows visual contact and emotional closeness, the bases for building human relationships.’[17]

A deeper understanding of the ways that people use and experience public spaces is at the heart of this project. In this context the discussion on the issues of identity and culture, and similarity and difference is helpful. The focus on identity and diversity highlights that people might experience and use urban places differently, as observed in the images Lunchtime city and Looking down. 

Looking at the Facing away image, even the same individual may use the same space in various ways depending on their needs, emotional state and changing situations and ‘in line with their own shifting subjectivity.’(2000:42)[18]

Facing away

People and Place: my final assignment
Notes on methodology and planning 

Introduction and background

This assignment explores the relationship between the people and place with a focus on a bench in a public place. It aspires to be a visual exploration of the many lives and the uses of the public bench. In ‘City by Design’ (2013:1)[1], Fran Tonkiss discussed how places are constantly re-created and re-lived through everyday uses. This approach is at the heart of this study as it examines the places through the people’s experiences.

Limitations

The nature of this assignment introduces certain limitations that would need to be considered: this work is not intended to be a comprehensive study on the subject but an exploratory introduction. My intention is to continue working on this theme in the coming year and use this assignment as the first step and the foundation to build on. 

Method and planning

To plan my work on this assignment I used the method described in the ‘Behind the Image: Research in Photography’ publication[2] which was on the recommended reading list for the course. I also practiced the tools and techniques I have learnt through the People and Place course.

Having discussed some emerging topics for my assignment with my tutor, I first developed my proposal (assignment brief).

When starting to plan the project, I drew a mind map of my ideas.

This helped me to organise my thinking and prepare on a practical level, for example, by creating a list of potential locations and a possible timetable of work. The Edward De Bono’s six thinking hats method[3], which I used only briefly here, helped to ensure that I don’t miss anything significant out.

When thinking through my assignment work I always gave a special consideration to my audience.

My next step was to carry out my background research consisting of the literature review and a number of other photographers’ portfolios. I spent a couple of days working in the Cambridge University Library as well as researching various online sources. 

As part of planning my assignment work I looked at other people’s image collections and portfolios. I found it particularly useful and inspiring to look through the images produced by some Magnum photographers and a selection of the street scene portfolios mostly shot in 20^th century. The black and white street image collections by John Deakin, Ilse Bing, Brassai, Francesc Catala-Roca and Marianne Breslauer showed the streets as places for spontaneous and chance encounters, as places where public and private lives meet – this was something that I was interested to look out for and capture through this project. Although many of their images can be regarded as timeless, it was interesting to note how the city scenes captured over the last century have gradually been changing.

I look at some colour image collections, including for example the street photography by Philip-Lorca diCorcia and Jeff Wall. I specifically picked these two photographers who employed very different techniques in their work. Jeff Wall’s images capture mostly well-planned and arranged scenes in comparison to the spontaneous situations depicted by diCorcia. My approach with this assignment has been both to plan some of my shots and to capture the spontaneous situation so I found it useful to look at the techniques used by both photographers.

I drew inspiration from the work of the modern street life photographers, including the black and white images by Chema Fernandez[4] documenting the street life of Oviedo, Spain, and the online image galleries by Japanese photographers Hiroki and Tatsuo Suzuki[5]. Their work, although very different from one another, often captured the sense of confusion, isolation and vulnerability of the momentary street encounters. Their images alluded strongly to a sense of transience and impermanence.

When preparing for my practical work on the assignment, I looked at the image collections by Rut Blees Luxemburg, in particular the ‘Caliban Towers I and II’, and ‘London: a modern city’.[6]  Her images tell the story of the city life. Her exploration of the neglected and decaying spaces conveying the feelings of loss and emptiness left a lasting impression on me.

Whilst doing the online research for the project, I came across two photographers who carried out photographic projects concerned with park and public benches, Jon Cartwright and Eugene Kotenko[7]. Finding out about their work before the completion of my own project was helpful: for example, I realised that my working title Bench life was already in use.

Public vs private space Public space as a neutral ground Borders and boundaries in public places Presence of benches in clichés, assigned and assumed meanings Users and uses of public places: groups and singles, families, animals; doing all things human and un-human; routines and rituals    Emotion: fear, love and romance, boredom, desperation, loneliness and connection, sadness and joy Link between the past and the future: a connecting point? Segregation and fragmentation Vs connection and engagement Interaction and the lack of interaction in public places Interaction with: strangers, acquaintances, friends, devices and gadgets, animals, yourself.

To summarise, doing the project research and looking at other photographers’ work helped me to become more aware of the issues I wanted to explore through my project. Based on the research and the mind-mapping session I put together a list of topics, which I felt I would like to explore as part of the longer-term project. 

Having done my background research, I reviewed and finalised my plans. I then started my practical days out on locations. From the start I had a very good idea of the kind of images I wanted to have for this series so it really helped to plan my days out, making adjustments for the weather and lighting conditions.

I worked on a number of locations in and around Cambridge and London. Due to the weather conditions I had spent longer than anticipated shooting images and had to make some repeat visits to the same areas. Some of the locations that I originally planned to include appeared to be unsuitable for my project (for example, I was disappointed to discover that the area around Westfield shopping centre did not have many traditional bench seats). This meant that I had to review and adjust my plans as I went along.

I enjoyed working on this assignment more than on any other project I have undertaken this year. The ‘public space’ theme fascinates me and I am very excited about continuing my ‘public benches’ project in 2015 using the list of ideas I put together. I also think that the time and effort I put into planning of this project have helped to make it a very positive and enjoyable personal learning experience.