Redeye's Paul Herrmann presents his pick of the photos submitted for the first week of the 52 Weeks at Redeye challenge on Flickr - images responding to the title The Present.
It's maybe a bit of an obvious title for the first week of the year, but damn it was tough. We thought people might still be surrounded by presents, or have photographs from Christmas the week before. Of course it's also the week when people are looking to the future, and thinking about the past, so the present at New Year is a strange void where most people are on holiday and not much seems to happen right now. Another take: although we didn't need you to know it, it's interesting what Paul Graham was trying to do when he chose The Present as the title of his book. It's a key stage on his fascinating and slightly mindbending journey to unpick the decisive moment, to show life as short series of slightly different viewpoints just moments apart. How can we really know what the present is? Photography deals with moments, but none of them in particular really make up the present. For a magnificent exploration of this subject see this short film.
[img_assist|nid=10632|title=|desc=|link=url|url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/thefunkymunkyofmanchester/11794482036/in/pool-redeye52/|align=right|width=220|height=245]On to the entrants, and hearty thanks to everyone for thinking around the subject. There were several beautiful pictures that one might say are more about the past than the present, and several more photos of lovely things that might have been meant as presents. I write here about the images that have taken the brief slightly further. The more I look at the very first picture submitted, by Adam Spillane, the more it unsettles me, and the more I like it. It's a watch or clock, half unwrapped. The colour, the light, the background are all a cloying purple, like too much Quality Street. No matter how hard I look, I can't quite tell what's going on.
The timepiece showed up quite often. Alex Banahene also gave us a low key timepiece, his father's pocket watch, simply and appealingly done. Air Adam has a brief history of watches. I particularly like Carolemon 2010's speaking clock (at the foot of this page). Solid, everlasting British engineering. I've dialled 8081 (then 123) countless times, but never would have imagined that the reassuring voice speaking to me looked like this.
[img_assist|nid=10634|title=|desc=|link=url|url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/10200378@N05/11894002413/in/pool-redeye52/|align=right|width=220|height=87]Congratulations to Samantha Young for the most cerebral interpretation, with a nod towards Paul Graham. Two images - the past and the present. Are they the same? Have a look at what Warhol tried at the new show at The Photographers Gallery - multiple photos stitched together in the days when stitching meant a sewing machine. The effect is quite peculiar.
[img_assist|nid=10629|desc=|link=url|url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/andy-chittock/11192448896/in/pool-redeye52/|align=left|width=520|height=347]Andy Chittick has uploaded a series of long exposure photographs taken of the sea, including various bits of what you might call sea furniture that look like punctuation. I've picked out (above) the simplest, two slabs of grey, the sky and the sea, interrupted only by a small foreground block, a bit like an unwanted comma, in the middle of a sentence.
[img_assist|nid=10635|title=|desc=|link=url|url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/77148233@N05/8093434372/in/pool-redeye52/|align=left|width=520|height=347]John Shinnick gives us the populace rises against the yoke and with one voice, cries "liberte, egalite..... brioche !" Yes indeed. The populace is smiling, the photographer is smiling, I'm smiling; only the aristocrat under attack in his shiny shoes, three piece suit and mismatched facial hair looks worried. Humour might be our last weapon against the powerful. His other image is a bit of a contrast; his birthday subject with the two tone hair and multicoloured balloon is anything but cheerful, and the funnier for it. I like the shallow focus and the hair and those glasses...
[img_assist|nid=10636|title=|desc=|link=url|url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/16268378@N08/11844599963/in/pool-redeye52/|align=right|width=220|height=146]Don Tonge might have tracked down the source of those glasses. A shop stand of sunglasses somewhere clearly warm. We know this because it's partly a self-portrait, or several. Don with water bottle, shorts and camera, in a range of colours. Echoes of Warhol. But not quite, because each scene is slightly different, the tint and angle emphasising different views of the present. Then the woman (shopworker?), peering through, jolts us away from this plane of the present and into the depths behind. Strange, the contrast between warmly quizzical subject and focussed, multitasking photographer. Wouldn't it be great if we saw a real reflection of the artist within other portraits - what did Sally Mann or Nick Ut or Rineke Dijkstra look like when they made their seminal photographs? A clever, rich image.
[img_assist|nid=10638|title=|desc=|link=url|url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/sammaddocks/11906518564/in/pool-redeye52/|align=right|width=220|height=165]Finishing off with two thematically slightly similar interpretations. Cheese and Pickles looks down at someone standing still on perhaps a station concourse, while everyone rushes around him. It is one of the tricks that a camera does really well; and this one is something slightly different. To see just how far people have gone with this, see the work of Michael Wesely.
My pick of the week is by Julie - Jooleyg (top). A woman waits, while a tram and passers-by whizz past. The sense that the woman is being tugged in different directions is almost palpable. So little is given away about the structure of the scene that I'm drawn to try and rebuild the dimensions of what I'm looking at, to try and solve the mystery. What are the shapes in the foreground, how many reflections are we seeing, what do the windows and roof belong to? I know that woman and the girl are not linked, but my eyes tell me different. I'm happy to believe the title, that this scene was gone in an instant. Occasionally a photograph creates its own present that tells a new story worth preserving.
To see all the images, and find details of upcoming weekly themes and how to submit work, see http://www.redeye.org.uk/opportunity/52-weeks-redeye.
[img_assist|nid=10637|title=|desc=|link=url|url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/caroline2010/10617178003/in/pool-redeye52/|align=left|width=520|height=520]