Residency Gastatelier de Vindplaats 2024
Analogical photography by and with children, Camera's: Mamiya C330 Prof F (twin eyes) and Canon EF.
Pinhole's: shoebox and coffee can.
Transparencies and colours
Make as story
Motivation:
The working method and objectives of Gastatelier de Vindplaats really appeal to me. And I am referring especially to the open attitude to work, where the children's independence is central and they have the freedom to experience, experiment and create at their own pace.
From my experiences in working with children since 1993 that I did alongside my art practice until recently, and do freelance, I have worked a lot with children, actually always in a more or less traditional leader-child relationship, the equivalence that is paramount in Gastatelier de Vindplaats I therefore find a very special working method. It seems to me a challenge and a very valuable and enriching experience to explore this democratic pedagogical approach.
Research:
My initial question was what; happens to the experience of the time the children spend in the studio and making when there are different types of cameras at their disposal. What is that making actually in that time they spend there, what does that look like. What do the digital cameras bring about and how do the children respond to analog cameras in relation to their environment. What and how is this time captured, are there similarities and differences when using digital/ analog. Is photography also a game with or not, consciously or unconsciously certain rules of the game? What is the outcome of intensively capturing the defined space and time, namely the studio and during the studio afternoons, where continuous making takes place.
Working method:
From the working methods in my art practice, the plan is to offer step-by-step resources each time that the children are invited to work with and respond to independently to varying degrees.
Photo house, "little island" in the interactive space, a defined area in the room, to be able to work in concentration with the Mamiya on a tripod, and project color projections on it with:
homemade negatives, light sources
overhead projector.
Analog cameras, Canon 35mm SLR. Cameras with red dot = under my supervision.
- Digital cameras, compact and SLR. Cameras with green dot = independently.
- Atelier
- Pinhole cameras.
An arrangement of a small fixed photo studio in the atelier (space within space within space within space..., the school, de atelier, the little house, the box, pinhole, the creation...as a zoom lens) and photographing with my Mamiya twin-eye analog camera (6x6) and inviting children to choose a material or homemade object, and reflect on it.
It is a laboratory for making research where children collectively tell one story with the cameras. That is elaborated in larger-format analog prints, where stillness is captured and transformed in analog photographic prints, material awareness, objects made from craftsmanship, slow photography. And digital images that are placed in series in a stop motion film, literally moving past us like a movie, where all the fragments come together into a dynamic whole....
Discoveries:
Time and timelessness, dynamism and tranquility, digital and analog, observation and reflection. The moment I succeed in surrendering to timelessness, but also to an absence of pressure to perform, things around me seem to come alive. It is then literally ending up in another world. It is as if children touch everything with magic hands, bringing it to life and giving it other meaning.
During my presence and especially by having access to cameras that they are allowed to operate completely by themselves, the children get into a different viewing and playing mode.
The cameras are used in different ways. Sometimes a still life or portrait set-up is specially agreed upon among themselves, this arises completely spontaneously, sometimes they want to capture analogously what they have just made, which requires the necessary cooperation, also the camera is used as an inspection tool to capture and view all the nooks and crannies of the room. A kind of tag/catch game also develops. The shutter is pressed in series, which are small animations in themselves. Children also learn to respect each other and ask in advance if someone wants to be photographed or learn to say no if they don't want to. All kinds of boundaries are explored. Photographing each other is not necessarily a portrait of a face, can also be just an ear or other part of the body, but also the things someone is working on with or without the hands. Sometimes a child wants another person to capture the instructions of the child's explanation of what they have made. The camera as a viewing instrument. The materials and objects take on characters with characteristics, and seem to come alive, to tell a story. What is gluing, carpentry, folding. What does painting look like as a story?
With pinholes, something else happens again. These actually record the light present.
Pinholes are homemade pinhole cameras made of boxes, coffee cans, etc. By placing them somewhere in the room at the start and in consultation with a few children, they register the light per studio afternoon with the long shutter speed of an hour. During the presence of the children all kinds of things happen, also with these pinholes, they are moved for a moment or secretly turned around, sometimes halfway through something is placed in front of it or a child has glued the hole closed. Also, sometimes a child puts on a pinhole and walks around with it for an hour. The result is that anything standing still as a basic structure remains clearly visible but the more something moves in space the more blurry it registers. Still, in the end the photos give a dynamic impression, it is palpable that there has been intense activity in space for an hour. I compared it to a few shots during absence and they lack the movement element.
The small studio in the photo house also provides beautiful moments. Where suddenly there is focus and supreme concentration and a child goes its own way in solitude and peace, asking my help to focus and measure exposure, notions that children seem to gradually adopt. And even though the question is regularly asked with the analog cameras after shooting,...and where can I see the picture now? They now accept that it will take a week, because there is a roll of film in there that needs to be developed and printed, and then the next week a contact sheet will appear on the bulletin board.
Follow-up:
It's really fascinating what happens when you stay beside the children and give them the freedom to discover for themselves. What I thought before I started that it would be more of a material investigation, it ended up being an investigation of time, the time of the making story, being in the moment.
Everything that I had thought of beforehand that I could teach them, they did themselves within ten minutes, and then much more and much more extreme for example; serial photography, close-ups, still life set-ups, depicting scenes.
I learned an enormous amount from the children's point of view, their continuous movement, and the ease with which they switch from one thing to another, can do several things interchangeably, but where reality and fiction also exist with ease. One moment something is concrete but the next is a completely self-conceived world.
Where you might initially think that photography is objective evidence of a moment, it also gets sucked into the children's world, where everything is real and can be play at the same time. In fact, things are sometimes taken out of context beyond recognition. There is also running while photographing, there is a lot of frogfork perspective, so that undersides of things suddenly get attention.
Even the pinholes that at first don't offer so much in the way of possibilities to do something with themselves other than making them and putting them somewhere, children interact with those too, they provide a wonderful record of the making moment during the studio afternoons.
These findings evoke in me the curiosity to explore further.
A follow-up plan about children, time, timelessness and analog photographic means, zooming in and out in to their micro-macro world, fantasy and facts, the silence of a dreaming world and movement to manifest in the present..
quotes:
“ We’re all in power in different ways” (Hooks 1992 p. 152)
‘…onzekerheid en ambiguïteit, wat zo kenmerkend is voor de praktijk van de kunstenaar-docenten, kan als waarde het onderwijsdomein openbreken (Atkinson 2011) of een gebied in de marges creëren (Hooks1989) en onze opvattingen over democratische pedagogiek radicaal veranderen….’
Marike Hoekstra - Kunstenaar-docenten en democratische pedagogiek, Hoofdstuk 6 pg. 106