Charlotte Sometimes

Category: Studying

STEM vs Arts & Humanities

A friend sent me an article yesterday with the education secretary Nicky Morgan’s views on students who pick arts subjects at university. Naturally I was interested to hear what she has to say especially considering that she herself was an arts student – she has a law degree.

Education secretary Nicky Morgan has warned young people that choosing to study arts subjects at school could “hold them back for the rest of their lives”.

Speaking at the launch of a campaign to promote science, technology, engineering and maths – the STEM subjects – Morgan said the idea that choosing arts or humanities subjects can keep pupils’ career choices open “couldn’t be further from the truth”.

She continued: “But if you wanted to do something different, or even if you didn’t know what you wanted to do…then the arts and humanities were what you chose. Because they were useful – we were told – for all kinds of jobs.

“Of course now we know that couldn’t be further from the truth, that the subjects that keep young people’s options open and unlock doors to all sorts of careers are the STEM subjects.”

Morgan was supporting the Your Life campaign, which aims to increase the number of students studying maths and physics at A level by 50% within three years.

Clearly as an almost-thirty year old who is spending around £50k to study one of the ‘worst offender’ subjects of Art History for seven years, I have a few opinions on this.

It’s not that studying an arts subject will ‘hold you back’. To me, that seems like a silly point to make. If I studied a science subject I would almost certainly be more ‘held back’ than if I studied an arts subject. Why? Because I am not science-clever. My ability for humanities subjects is much better than my ability for science subjects. (Trust me, I failed my Maths A Level and nearly took my Physics A Level with it.) Being ‘held back’ is relative and can only be measured against yourself.

When I decided to go to university at 28 it was a serious decision for me. I had a real passion to study photography and new media through art history, but I took the time to weigh up lots of other subjects, including the core STEM subjects. I looked at league tables for universities, contact hours, and yes – future employment statistics. What did I learn? That art history statistically has absolutely fucking terrible employment statistics post degree.

In many ways Nicky Morgan is right. If you study a STEM subject you are more likely to trundle out of your degree and into a nice job and you’ll be able to bounce from job to job with a nice pay rise every year or two – especially if you get involved in good research jobs or the London tech community. Those are much safer jobs and more likely to bring immediate reward. Which is fine, I can appreciate that. But the statistics don’t give you all the information – you have to be able to interpret that data against sociological norms for it to be meaningful (OH HAI ART HISTORY DEGREE, I’M USING YOU RIGHT FUCKING NOW).

Women skew graduate employment statistics. Men too, but mostly women.

You can’t just take post degree employment figures as an exact guide of what’s happening in those industries after graduation. Ultimately we still live in a country that engages with reasonably sexist ideals. For example it’s normal for many women to go to university with no plan to have a career – they wish to marry and have children instead. Which is fine, but that’s reinforced by things like unequal ma/paternity leave in employment and unequal pay due to career progression loss because of this.

I think having gone to a girls school for my secondary education that I have a further interesting insight into this too, because women are still pushed into studying what are considered ‘feminine’ subjects. For example, I really wanted to study DT (that’s design and technology – or woodwork if you’re old school) at GCSE and then A Level, but the course didn’t run because I was the only person who wanted to do it and they needed six to run the subject. There were over 170 people in my year at school. Most of them seemed to be pushed into what passed as IT fifteen years ago, business studies, history, and textiles. Not that those subjects are somehow invalid, but there was a certain emphasis on them when we were making our choices. I’d like to point out though that our school was exceptional in its decision to encourage students into the sciences – although I seem to remember that there were still only four of us in our A Level Physics class.

What this leads into is the convergence of several different streams; the fact that many women wish to be mothers and housewives instead of having careers, and the fact that women are pushed into ‘feminine’ (or soft) subjects. On top of that, humanities tend to be studied by those who have money and are just going to university because it’s the expected norm for them. In my own year group studying art history, around 98% of the students are female. Many don’t plan to have careers. I’d also suggest that about 15-20% are what I would call ‘wealthy’ and plan to go into family business and similar. Of course that’s only from my own observations and from talking to people – but I still think it’s interesting nonetheless.

So there you have it. Women and the wealthy often study humanities when they have no intention of getting careers within the field that they study. This skews the figures that are on offer from official sources, since you can’t just discount people because they choose not to have a career after their undergraduate career.

May 12, 2016
Osborne’s Nursing Cuts (OR: I already know y’all hate my career choice)

So, Osborne has cut bursaries for nurses. As my post the other day indicated – I’m struggling to see a problem with this. At all. It seems to me that nurses will be better off while at university if they take a student loan instead of a bursary, and it will enable universities to improve their offerings and take more students – which should in turn improve the quality of education and mean that other departments don’t have to fund that degree. As well as meaning that – in the long term – we have more nurses. Great. I’m struggling to see how you can be against that at all.

However I’ve woken up to an explosion of hurtful comments about my choice of degree – and it’s hard not to take it personally. Well, not about my degree specifically, but about how we should – as a nation – not fund ‘pointless’ degrees.

There seems to be a strong belief amongst many that the government should fully fund and bursary ‘essential’ degrees. Largely this includes degrees for teaching, engineering, maths, medicine, nursing, dentistry, etc. And that everyone else should have to pay full price – and often this belief also suggests that we shouldn’t give a student loan to anyone not doing an ‘essential’ degree.

If I had to pick one of those ‘essential’ degrees, I would fail. I failed maths at A Level. I don’t exactly have the bedside manner to be a nurse or a doctor. Engineering largely doesn’t interest me. And teaching children, well, that career is off-limits to me than more reasons than ‘I don’t like children’.

Besides if we *all* did those jobs it would be a total race to the bottom. We’d end up working for nothing because there would be so much competition (oh hey, just like photography and/or the art world can be sometimes/most of the time).

“But” you say “Of course we would limit the amount of people who can do those degrees.” Well, ok. So that means that anyone not capable of doing ‘essential’ degrees has to pay for their own degree. Thus enforcing the two-tier system that the British university system has been trying to move away from for years. If you make people pay for non-essential degrees up front (and pay for their expenses while they do those degrees) then you end up with only the rich being able to afford education. And that would be a very bad thing (again).

I love this drawing. I’ve seen it pop up time and time again and I think it’s just great. Not because it places art as one of the most important things in an alternative hierarchy of needs, but because I think it reinforces the fact that in our modern society it shouldn’t be about ‘existing’ it should be about living. I think people don’t understand that society is so much wider than just the essentials. Without the complex interaction that compliments the other subjects we’re just fucked. And we’re possibly even more fucked if those complex interactions are led by only those people who can afford to self fund a degree at 18.

But I often feel like people misunderstand what I do on my degree in particular. Art History is a subject that is all about research and analysis. It’s a very powerful degree, it enables you to take both written and visual sources and turn them into something extremely meaningful (well, you hope that anyway). It’s not all about art. Modern art history is as much about the society that creates the art as it is about the way that the works were produced. It is a subject that helps us to make sense of the world around us, to see what has happened in the past and apply those lessons in the future.

It seems that a subject like art history (amongst many others) is as essential to a productive and happy society as any of the aforementioned ‘essential’ subjects. So why do so many people tell me that my degree is worthless, pointless, and a drain on the social benefits system?

November 26, 2015
Is Feminist Methodology still relevant in History of Art today?

Since I’ve now had my results back from my second year at university, I can post the final essay for my Culture, Gender and Sexuality module. I got 80% overall in this module – 70% is required for achieving a 1st.

Enjoy!

Is Feminist Methodology still relevant in History of Art today?

There is little doubt that the New Art Histories revolutionised the way that many art historians saw the world and participated in art historical academia in the 1970s (Rees and Borzello, 1986a, p. 3). The term ‘The New Art Histories’ came into use because of the book of the same name which tried to summarise emerging methodologies in the late 1970s and early 1980s (Rees and Borzello, 1986b). Other authors interpreted the term as an umbrella phrase for critical theory (Jõekalda, 2013, p. 2) and most would agree that the term the New Art Histories cover political, feminist, psychoanalytical and theoretical approaches (Fernie, 1995, p. 19). This poststructuralist approach marked an important shift away from art as objects and focussed instead on social context rather than concepts such as connoisseurship and biography. In this essay I will focus on how feminist art history methodologies do not address queer artists and artworks adequately, however it should also be considered that non-Caucasian, non-Western, and disabled people are also not addressed by mainstream feminist theory either – amongst other personhood statuses. The word queer itself is complex but for the purpose of this essay I will be using it to represent non-default gender, sex and sexuality.

Women were often left out of the traditional art historical canon and the New Art Histories enabled feminist art historians to rethink the past. Initially there was a push to rediscover women artists and attempt to place them within the traditional canon. This was primarily achieved by questioning assumptions about the difference between art and craft – many feminist art historians at this time believed that these definitions of art and craft were one of the primary reasons for women’s art being seen as inferior (Fernie, 1995, p. 20). However this approach relied on traditional canonical and biographical methodologies and the late 1970s saw a move by feminist theorists to challenging the discipline of History of Art itself. Academics began to suggest that merely inserting women into history was not the same as writing women’s history (Fox-Genovese, 1982, p. 6) and Griselda Pollock put forward the idea that women’s studies were not about women but rather the social systems that allow and maintain the dominance of men over women (Pollock, 1988, p. 1). One of the formative essays for feminist art history was Linda Nochlin’s ‘Why have there been no great women artists?’ (Nochlin, 1978) which warned against the idea of simply trying to name women artists who might be considered ‘good’ and insert them into the traditional male-dominated canon.

Feminist methodologies, especially when combined with Marxist theories, gave academics a powerful and alternative way of looking at both history and the present, yet feminist methodologies as applied to the history of art have remained reasonably static in their approach. While feminism as a political movement has moved on with successive waves of ideologies, feminist methodology for history art often still works from the same seminal texts (such as Nochlin’s) that broke the original ground.

In many respects feminist methodologies fit neatly into hegemonic, patriarchal culture – as much as their practitioners would like to suggest that they now champion intersectionality (McCall, 2005, p. 1771). They support the notion of a bigender society and specifically exclude those who exist outside of the gender paradigm that society currently uses to view the world and write history. Feminist art historical methodologies may well be the fight against the male dominated view of the history of art, but when viewing the history of art as a queer participant these methodologies only serve to reinforce the patriarchal structure and act as another hegemonic barrier that needs to be removed before a queer history can be composed. Traditional and New art histories combined act as a complete patriarchal version of the histories of art, a history that could potentially be rewritten by a new queer methodology.

Introducing queer methodologies to the history of art is unlikely to be as simple as just viewing the world from a queer point of view. Queer methodology must be counterhegemonic in its nature, allowing new paradigms to be enacted. It is not simply a case of rewriting the history of art from a gay or lesbian perspective, or even a transgender perspective. In order to create a truly queered history of art the bigender paradigm should not be used and another must be found; otherwise queer methodologies will become just another pillar that supports the dominant patriarchal norm by acting in support of male masculinities and female femininities (Halberstam, 1998, pp. 3–4). Stephen Bann’s suggestion that a new cultural critique can gain strength from the fact that old positions have already run their course is as relevant now as it was when he discussed the idea almost thirty years ago (Bann, 1986, p. 19) and so queer theory must learn from the limitations faced today by feminist theory. As McCall discuses in a paper on intersectionality, feminist researches are already very aware of the limitations of using gender as an analytical category (McCall, 2005, p. 1772).

‘Feminine success is always measured by male standards’ claims Halberstam (2011, p. 4), and so by acting outside of the expected standards we can relieve ourselves of the pressure to conform. Some ‘renegade’ feminists, Jack Halberstam argues, have addressed that failing might be better than success while in pursuit of the counterhegemonies and this is a lesson that could potentially be learned by any new approach to the history of art. For instance lesbians do not conform to the expected heterosexual framework so they therefore fall outside of patriarchal societies and could redefine what gender means to them (Halberstam, 2011, p. 4). This way of thinking allows us to begin to construct a different gender narrative for the viewing of the history of art, by enabling those outside of the patriarchal hegemony to apply their own definitions of gender and sexuality. However most feminist history of art is largely unconcerned with sexuality or gender-fluidity and therefore this is not a tool that would be used by most feminist art historians. In most feminist art history the assumption is that the artist is heterosexual, white and often middle-class; there is no discourse available for the kind of alternative femininities and masculinities that Halberstam addresses in their text on female masculinity (Halberstam, 1998).

Some feminist academics have begun to offer a kind of queer methodology – although still under the banner of feminism. The idea of introducing sex, gender and sexuality to feminist approaches is proposed by Mimi Marinucci (Marinucci, 2010, p. 105) and can be seen as part of the wider movement of mainstream feminism towards an intersectional approach. In some ways this approach works very well – there is real solidarity between the experiences of many women and those who are LGBT* (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex) due to the basic understanding of what it is like to be born into a state of patriarchal oppression. However there is also tension between the feminist and queer movements and as Marinucci points out there has been a history of feminist studies showing bias against lesbian women, gay men, minority sexualities and transgender people (Marinucci, 2010, p. 106).

It could be suggested that art history is now in a state of post-feminism; where equality has begun to be achieved in academic writing and galleries. Certainly the large art institutions in the United Kingdom, such as the Tate, have no problems with showing large retrospectives dedicated to twentieth-century women artists. Marlene Dumas (Marlene Dumas: The Image as Burden, no date) and Sonia Delaunay (The EY Exhibition: Sonia Delaunay, no date) are currently showing major retrospectives at the Tate Modern in London, Cathy Wilkes is showing at the Tate Liverpool (Cathy Wilkes, no date) and the Tate Britain has hosted retrospectives of well known women artists such as Susan Hiller (Susan Hiller, no date) and has a Barbara Hepworth exhibition opening in June 2015 (Barbara Hepworth: Sculpture for a Modern World, no date). I am aware that naming the exhibitions being held of women artists pushes me precariously close to being guilty of what Nochlin warned against, however it does certainly appear that women artists now have a roughly equal number of major exhibitions as artists who are men when considering twentieth and twenty-first century art. Most feminist art historians can be categorised as using one of the other approaches to art history (such as connoisseurship, biography or iconography to name just a few) so it could be suggested that feminist art historians should just continue to work under those banners rather than identifying as feminists since the feminist art historian label seems to be no longer required.

Marunucci presents the idea that queer feminism provides a new direction for feminism as a critical perspective. Introducing questions of sexuality into feminist art history would greatly increase the scope of the methodology. According to the label on the front of the book Art & Queer Culture it is ‘the first book to focus on the criticism and theory regarding queer visual art’ (Lord and Meyer, 2013). If this statement is indeed true it means that no feminist (or any other) art historian has been addressing the criticism and theory of queer art. This raises the question – if feminism was truly interested in any sexuality, sex or gender other than heterosexual women who were identified as women at birth, wouldn’t this book have been written years or perhaps even decades ago?

Even if feminist art historians use approaches borrowed from gay and lesbian studies, this does not go far enough. A relatively recent biography of photographer Claude Cahun (Doy, 2007) is a good example of why feminist approaches are often inadequate even when combined with gay and lesbian studies. Cahun was a photographer who lived from 1894 to 1954. Originally identified as female at birth, Cahun had romantic relationships with women and in 1915-1916 began using the gender-ambiguous name Claude Cahun instead of the assigned birth name of Lucy Schwob (Claude Cahun – Chronology, no date). Most of Cahun’s body of photographic work is self-portraiture and Cahun presents as outwardly male in a large portion of the images. Where Cahun presents as a woman in images it is often an exaggerated and drag version of femininity. The biography by Gen Doy deals extensively with Cahun’s theoretical interests in sex and sexuality and also recounts her preference of living with a woman multiple times, however the assumption is always made that Cahun is a lesbian woman. Not once is the idea entertained that Cahun could possibly be transgender (and therefore potentially heterosexual) or genderqueer and Cahun is referred to as ‘she’ and ‘lesbian’ throughout the text without any explanation. Both feminist and gay and lesbian studies have failed as approaches when it comes to artists such as Claude Cahun since they refuse to engage with major political and personal aspects of the artist’s life and work. A queer approach may well have shed more light on this popular photographer from the early twentieth-century.

According to government surveys only 93.9% of the adult population in the UK identified as heterosexual in April 2011 to March 2012 (Woodsford, 2012). Estimating the amount of transpeople in the UK is problematic due to the difficulty defining transgender status within current gender paradigms (do we consider self-identification as with sexuality or is medical intervention the standard for defining a transperson?), but a 2008 European study suggests that there could be as many as 1 in 20 transgender individuals within the male population alone using the most wide definitions – and this number is increasing exponentially (‘Transgender EuroStudy’, no date). Going forward feminist approaches do not offer enough scope to record and analyse these important aspects of an artists work and personal life.

Feminist approaches to art history are still an excellent methodology for looking at artworks in the past and for discussing women’s status in society. However the fact that feminist methodologies rely heavily on a bigender paradigm, as demonstrated by the earlier discussed assumption that women’s studies are about the dominance of men over women (Pollock, 1988, p. 1), means that they are not so well-placed to look at artists today and in the future. In a society that is slowly but steadily rejecting the idea of a clear-cut ‘male’ and ‘female’ status (Hird, 2000, p. 348) we need methodologies that can produce a discourse on this new approach to working practices. Feminism is still relevant to the discipline of history of art while examining the past, but it becomes less relevant as we move into the future when those writing about art will need to talk authoritatively on a wider range of gender, sex and sexuality than feminist methodologies currently routinely discuss.

Bibliography

Bann, S. (1986) ‘How Revolutionary is the New Art History?’, in Rees, A. L. and Borzello, F. (eds) The New Art History. London, England: Camden Press.

Barbara Hepworth: Sculpture for a Modern World (no date). Available at: http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/exhibition/barbara-hepworth-sculpture-modern-world (Accessed: 6 May 2015).

Cathy Wilkes (no date). Available at: http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-liverpool/exhibition/cathy-wilkes (Accessed: 6 May 2015).

Claude Cahun – Chronology (no date) Claude Cahun Home Page. Available at: http://www.connectotel.com/cahun/cahunchr.html.

Doy, G. (2007) Claude Cahun: A Sensual Politics of Photography. London: I.B. Tauris. Available at: http://site.ebrary.com/id/10333422 (Accessed: 6 May 2015).

Fernie, E. (1995) Art History and Its Methods: A Critical Anthology. United Kingdom: Phaidon Press, Incorporated.

Fox-Genovese, E. (1982) ‘Placing Women’s History in History’, New Left Review, (133), pp. 5–29.

Halberstam, J. (1998) Female Masculinity. Durham: Duke University Press.

Halberstam, J. (2011) The Queer Art of Failure. Durham and London: Duke University Press.

Hird, M. J. (2000) ‘Gender’s nature: Intersexuality, transsexualism and the “sex”/’gender’ binary’, Feminist Theory, 1(3), pp. 347–364. doi: 10.1177/146470010000100305.

Jõekalda, K. (2013) ‘What has become of the New Art History?’, Journal of Art Historiography, (9).

Lord, C. and Meyer, R. (2013) Art and Queer Culture. London: Phaidon Press.

Marinucci, M. (2010) Feminism Is Queer: The intimate connection between queer and feminist theory. London: Zed.

Marlene Dumas: The Image as Burden (no date). Available at: http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/marlene-dumas-image-burden (Accessed: 6 May 2015).

McCall, L. (2005) ‘The Complexity of Intersectionality’, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 30(3), pp. 1771–1800. doi: 10.1086/426800.

Nochlin, L. (1978) Art and sexual politics; women’s liberation, women artists, and art history. 4. print. Edited by T. B. Hess. New York: Collier Books (Collier books).

Pollock, G. (1988) Vision and Difference: Feminism, Femininity and Histories of Art (Routledge Classics). United Kingdom: London ; Routledge.

Rees, A. L. and Borzello, F. (eds) (1986a) ‘Introduction’, in The New Art History. London, England: Camden Press.

Rees, A. L. and Borzello, F. (eds) (1986b) The New Art History. London, England: Camden Press.

Susan Hiller (no date). Available at: http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/exhibition/susan-hiller (Accessed: 6 May 2015).

The EY Exhibition: Sonia Delaunay (no date). Available at: http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/exhibition/ey-exhibition-sonia-delaunay (Accessed: 6 May 2015).

‘Transgender EuroStudy’ (no date) TGEU. Available at: http://tgeu.org/eurostudy/ (Accessed: 7 May 2015).

Woodsford, S. (2012) Integrated Household Survey April 2011 to March 2012: Experimental Statistics. Available at: http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/integrated-household-survey/integrated-household-survey/april-2011-to-march-2012/stb-integrated-household-survey-april-2011-to-march-2012.html#tab-Sexual-identity (Accessed: 7 May 2015).

June 23, 2015
Quick referencing with Zotero for essays and dissertations

OR: HOW TO SCORE SOME PISS EASY MARKS AND STOP WASTING YOUR LIFE WRITING REFERENCES AND BIBLIOGRAPHIES

(more…)

May 7, 2015
Paris: Day 3

Today, all day, was spent in the Louvre. The morning was spent in a lecture looking at the sculpture of tombs and then the afternoon I dragged myself around some of the antiquities parts of the museum. I say dragged, I wasn’t feeling well. And because I went in as a group I didn’t have a ticket, which meant I couldn’t leave the museum to get food and then come back in again. Most irritating.

The Louvre – Tomb of Philippe Chabot

The Louvre – Tomb of Philippe Chabot

The Louvre – Cour Marly

The Louvre – Cour Marly

The Louvre – Cour Marly

Seeing the Assyrian Guardians in natural light was incredible. They are much more beautiful this way than how they are in the British Museum.

The Louvre – Assyrian Sculpture

The Louvre – View from inside.

For anything popular – this is the view. I’m going to take Adam to see the Mona Lisa later in the week and I expect it to be worse.

This, by the way, was the Venus de Milo.

The Louvre – Venus de Milo

The Louvre – Venus de Milo

The ceilings in the Louvre are one of the best bits. They are spectacular and ornate, and reflect various parts of its history and French nationalism.

The Louvre – Ceiling

The Louvre – Ceiling

The Louvre – Ceiling

The Louvre – Ceiling

The Louvre – Roman(?)

It’s quite remarkable to think that this was, at one point, basically someones house. This was one of the service corridors that would have led to the stables and other utility areas.

The Louvre – Inside one of the Etruscan and Roman Galleries

And of course if your service corridors are that grand, then they must lead to grand places. This was the indoor riding school – above the stables. Look at the beautiful ceiling. And the capitals of the columns were all carved with gorgeous animals – I’ve included some of my favourites here.

The Louvre – The original riding school from the palace.

The Louvre – The original riding school from the palace.

The Louvre – The original riding school from the palace.

The Louvre – The original riding school from the palace.

Another famous work. Don’t bank on being able to see it from the front, without a crowd.

The Louvre – Cupid and Psyche

The Louvre – The first selfie?

Spotted this guy on my way out. Cute eh?

The North bank of the Seine

April 6, 2015
Paris: Day 2

Bastile

So, the photo tour of Paris continues.

It turned out to be a glorious day today which was a lovely contrast to the very grey day that we arrived on yesterday. It was even warm in the sun, although bitterly cold during the day.

I set out at 0900hrs for a leisurely wander to my first lecture of the day at the Pantheon.

Boulevard Henri IV

I really love the classical design elements on some of the Parisian townhouses. And the ironwork balconies too, of course.

Boulevard Henri IV

Boulevard Henri IV – a garage with petrol pumps on one of the main roads through Paris. Just pull over, mid flow of traffic, and fill up!

Pont de la Tournelle and Notre-Dame.

Pont de la Tournelle – statue of Saint Geneviève (the Paton Saint of Paris).

Notre-Dame again, showing the wall built to create the more solid island.

Townhouse windows – Rue du Cardinal Lemoine.

Window gardens – Rue du Cardinal Lemoine.

Amazing part of the old Monastry that was knocked down to make way for the Pantheon.

The back of Saint-Étienne-du-Mont, showing the flying buttresses.

Saint-Etienne-du-Mont – front elevation. Weird mix of classical and gothic architecture.

Saint-Etienne-du-Mont – even more weird combos of classical and gothic architecture. The turrets in particular are interesting – their use was restricted in Paris so they were a status symbol for those allowed to use them on their buildings.

We couldn’t get inside the church because it was Easter Sunday, but I wanted to show you guys what it looks like inside. The decoration is utterly spectacular.

The Pantheon with it’s dome covered in scaffolding while it undergoes restoration.

Rue Valette, looking towards the Seine.

The pediment of the Pantheon. A secular frieze celebrating the great men of the nation.

Front elevation of the neo-classical Pantheon, behind is the more recent 19thC classical university library.

Under the portico of the Pantheon. Notice the heavily ornate neoclassical decoration that goes against what we often think of as a ‘classical’ building. The scenes are secular, but were originally designed to be religious to celebrate the patron saint of Paris.

The dome of the Pantheon is undergoing restoration right now, but instead there is a really cool photo project being exhibited. So the Pantheon has changed in usage so much over time, religious to secular, back again… back again… and now it’s showing contemporary art. Pretty cool.

The frosted windows in the ceiling of the Pantheon. Originally they were clear, but when it was turned into a secular building the windows were frosted in order to make it feel more sombre. All of the windows in the walls were bricked up too.

Showing the windows in context.

The huge secular sculpture that now dominates the ‘altar’ end of the building. Above the painting at the back is a beautiful Christian painting of Christ.

Love locks on the bridge to Notre-Dame.

I find the love locks kind of weird. Like, you’re trying to say that your love will last forever or something and I’m just not sure it works that way. Or that you should put yourself under pressure to try and make that happen. Relationships are better without pressure.

Also – stop breaking the fucking beautiful bridge.

More love locks – including a remarkably beefy one. That couple were optimistic!

The afternoon was given over to a lecture discovering the Hôtel’s in the Marais district. Not hotels as well know them, but private residences.

Hôtel de Sens – that hole above the door was for pouring boiling oil on unwanted visitors. It’s most likely not real though. They’re called apotropaic features – they’re designed to put people off visiting unless they have business.

A 20th century Jewish Synagogue in Marais. Amazingly this is made out of cement cast to look like stone, and is by the designer of the Paris metro entrances.

Double bass busker with trumpet player. \m/

The cloisters in Place des Vosges.

Hôtel de Sully – which I now need to write an essay about.

April 5, 2015
Paris: Day 1

I’m half way through writing Paris: The Prequel but I’m determined to actually do a half decent job of blogging about the trip this time. Plus it makes it easier when I come to write articles and things, because I actually have a record that’s better than my notebook.

I’ve been quite nervous about traveling alone. I’ve never done it before you see, but it’s a fear that I did really need to overcome at some point. I’m more likely to start traveling alone for work over the next year or so, so being self sufficient in an alien country is a good thing.

Of course I wasn’t traveling completely alone, I was with my classmates from university. But I don’t know any of them that well really and I’m staying in an apartment on my own, away from the group. So that added some extra challenges.

I managed to get about 800 words of an essay written on the Eurostar, which was a promising start to the week. It’s not for this Paris module, it’s for my Culture, Gender and Sexuality module. I’m writing 2000 words discussing if feminist methodologies in art history are outdated, and arguing for a new queer methodology instead. It’s interesting – if you like that kind of thing.

Gare du Nord was an eye-opener. It seems on the Paris Metro you can just hold doors open for people, and in fact this is utterly normal. Just wedging stuff in the doors so that they can’t physically close, sometimes delaying the train by minutes. Once going the trains are pretty much like the London Underground. But with smaller turnstiles (clearly, France does not like fat people) and with marginally more odeur de piss. And beggars. Gypsy beggars. Everywhere.

Finding the apartment was largely uneventful. I’m the street behind Bastille which is a bit of a score to be honest. I mean, this is how close I am:

That’s the Paris Opera down in the bottom right hand corner. The apartment itself is functional. It’s a single room with a shower room basically. But it’s fine for me to stay in for a few days and then for Adam to join me later in the week. It was dead cheap, it worked out about £300 for a Saturday to Sunday stay (there’s a £300 a night hotel just around the corner…). The hotels in this area of the city were much more than £40 a night! The walls are a little thin, I can hear my neighbour when they run the water, but frankly I’m not complaining. I’d quite happily come here again – and if I can get a cheap Eurostar ticket later in the year I may well do so. The wifi is more than good enough for me to work from in the summer.

Anyway. I met up with the guys from uni and we were treated to a bit of a guided tour around the Seine. We checked out some old medieval streets, a wonderful backstreet full of kebab shops (Rue de la Huchette) and a vegetarian falafel stall, some bridges, some doorways, Notre Dame and the Louvre. Then five of us went and had crepes to celebrate being in France.

Now I’m in bed, exhausted. Having got up at 0530hrs and walked 18km.

Some pictures with brief notes – enjoy!

Quai du Bourbon

Paris from Quai du Bourbon

Notre Dame – West Face

Notre Dame – West Face

Henri IV

Seine – with Eiffel Tower

Love Locks – Pont des Arts

Louvre – Pavillon de l’Horloge

Louvre – East Face

April 4, 2015
Some Stuff about LARP Photography (Again)

This post is going to be a huge mishmash of stuff, covering lots of different things. Some of these ideas have grown out of Facebook posts I tried and failed to make, some have grown out of conversations, some are just things that swim around in my head. I’m not looking for sympathy here, or ego-massage. I’m just using this blog for it’s intended purpose – catharsis on a personal level.

There’s a reason for picking that photo there, of a monster being shot and recoiling backwards. That’s how being a LARP photographer feels like to me most of the time.

This weekend I crewed Shadow Wars as a photographer. It was a fascinating experience and there was not a second that I didn’t completely love (ok, maybe I didn’t completely love the bit where I still wasn’t well from flu and a chest infection and therefore had to choose between toting a camera and toting a gun). Adam has been crewing Shadow Wars for years and convinced me to come along to shoot some pictures, I was assured that T and the rest of the crew would love to have me there. As usual I signed up to the event with utter confidence, completely sure that I’d be able to bring a unique vision to my photographs of the game. The week before I began to lose my confidence, even considering cancelling – my chest infection gave me a handy get-out clause. The day of the game I was convinced I looked stupid, I was terrified that I wouldn’t be able to roleplay with anyone (since this is the first time I’ve shot a game where I can legitimately be there as a photographer) and that I’d have a breakdown and cry in the middle of the site.

Turns out that none of those things happened. I looked cool, I roleplayed with players reasonably successfully and I didn’t cry once. (I almost cried a little bit when my quadricep injury played up, but nobody saw so that didn’t happen.) In fact I think that the weekend was a huge success. I certainly came out with some pictures that I am happy with (perhaps not as happy as I could have been, but everyone has off days) and I also came out of the event having made some awesome friends which is – let’s face it – what hobbies are really all about.

I am hard on myself with my photography. It’s not just enough to get some pictures that everyone else likes, it’s crucial to me to get pictures that are exactly as I wanted them and raise the bar over the last thing I shot. Somebody once said that you’re only ever as good as your last photograph and this is something that I really take to heart.

During some downtime on site I had an interesting discussion with someone which they summed up well in their own Facebook post yesterday. For ease I’ll just copy here what they wrote:

*talking about making kit and about helping other people make kit*

“Oh god, don’t you just hate it when people say ‘It’s ok for you, you’re good at everything you try’”

“Yes!! Because holy shit that’s not true. It’s feels dismissive of all my hard work, practise and like… all those failed projects and fuck ups!”

“I’m not good at everything, I’m just dishonest about my failures!”

I can’t remember which one of us said which. But I’m fairly sure that there was this great moment of realisation on both sides that someone else had experienced this and also just doesn’t show people the fuckups. This happens in my LARP photography. People tell me I’m amazing. But the truth is at Shadow Wars this weekend I shot just under 750 pictures and I’m only happy to publish 195 of them. 3/4 of my pictures are so rubbish that I’ll never show anyone unless I’m trying to make a specific point.

In all honesty I’m a proper sensitive soul when it comes to my art. I never feel like it’s good enough and I always feel like I’ve let people down. I always feel like I’ve let myself down too, which is never a very nice feeling. All I really want is some respect for my photography when it comes to LARP, but it seems I struggle to even get that sometimes. Or that’s how it can feel.

I’m sure I read something years ago that said ‘if you show some vulnerability, people will find you easier to relate to’. I understand that sometimes I come across as a bit of a broody, impenetrable fortress, but in all honesty I guess that’s from growing up as an only child. I never had anyone to let inside as a kid, not like siblings do. I suppose I can be a bit broody, but I’ve written about my general melancholy before I think. But the truth is that I’m a vulnerable, fragile person. Albeit one who occasionally has some strong opinions. Ok, one who usually has some strong opinions.

There can be a tendency in life to believe that disagreeing with someone means that you should hate them and even bitch about them. Or if you’re on Facebook then the solution seems to be to block them – but I digress. Sometimes people bring up a disagreement that I’ve had with someone and point out how much I must hate them, but I’ve never really felt that way. I embrace debate and discussion and I find opposing viewpoints generally quite fascinating. I love to throw my ideas out into the world and let them rub up against other peoples ideas. I love to see people come back with brilliant oppositions to my ideas that make me think. I love to pick the bones of the debate until there’s no meat left on it. I think that all my friends realise the worst criticism they can receive from me is no comment at all – because no comment means it just doesn’t interest me.

But the last two years (that I’ve been taking pictures of LARP) has become somewhat difficult. It has got to the point where I’m starting to feel like I’m facing an uphill struggle every time I think about going to a LARP. I had been naive when I first started writing on this, my personal blog, about LARP and when interacting in LARP Facebook groups. I love to talk about things and I find interesting, and I find LARP absolutely fascinating.

Yeah ok, I’ve apparently said some controversial things. Perhaps I shouldn’t have said on an open discussion forum that I felt people should be brave enough to challenge their employers social media policies (when discussing photographic take-down policies for LARP systems). Perhaps I shouldn’t have said that I felt glasses didn’t always look IC and that the reflections were hard to photograph. And then of course there was the deeply personal post where people believed I was being unkind to women who are larger than me. But I feel like I’ve been dragged over hot coals so many times for these things which are really relatively minor infractions in the grand scheme of things, that were just blown out of proportion by people who somehow felt like I’d eaten the souls of their kittens or something.

The latest round for me to struggle against is because I posted on this blog about why I felt that just reblogging photos isn’t a good way to build community. A few days after I made this post the commendable Ladies Who LARP Tumblr started. Have you taken a look? It has some fabulous ladies on it! The Tumblr’s author asked me if I could use a photo and we had a conversation where I said, I’d prefer you to have a discussion about something relevant to the photo and being a woman at LARP and use it to illustrate that post. It was all very amicable, she seems utterly lovely and I wish the blog all the best. But I’ve had a few messages now from people suggesting that I submit my pictures to her Tumblr. I inevitably explain that we’ve had a discussion and no, I’m not really happy for my LARP photos to be just reblogged without discussion. I’m happy for people to use them to illustrate points (and the interview pieces she’s posting), but not just to reblog. Especially not on Tumblr, which is a bit of a cesspit of deattribution and lazy picture stealing.

While most of the people have completely understood where I’m coming from on this point, some people have not. It was even suggested that I’m hindering the progress of women in LARP by not allowing people to use my photos. I should add here that I’m absolutely passionate about creating a more equal playing field for women in LARP. I’ve written about it on this blog, I’ve written about it on larp.guide and I will continue to talk about it and write about it until we’re genuinely at that point. But I still want to retain some control over my photos, and doing so doesn’t make me a bad person. Thankyouverymuch.

But that’s easier said than done. Last night I found myself awake at 2am wondering if I was indeed a bad person because I wouldn’t let people reblog my images on Tumblr. That perhaps I was somehow putting the cause of women LARPers back ten years. And then of course my mind strayed and I wondered if I was being an arsehole to people who wear glasses. And people who have restrictive jobs. And then I told myself to stop being so silly. Because I am generally identified as female, I wear glasses and I spent the weekend partially in the company of someone lovely who has a job with a restrictive photo policy (and they don’t seem to think I’m an arsehole – either that or they like talking to arseholes).

I think that lots of people don’t want me to shoot at the systems they play at because they perceive me to be an arsehole. Unfortunately I think that these perceptions are built on rumours, exaggerations, and moments where there’s been a disagreement on the internet (and whereas I still get on with people when I’ve had an internet disagreement with them, not everyone does). I’ve found out recently that a couple of people have been far exaggerating experiences that they’ve had with me at LARP and really tarring my reputation. I’ve said it on this blog before, but spreading untruths about people and damaging their professional reputation isn’t actually very cool. Ultimately it makes you look like a dick, but the side effect is that it makes me potentially lose money.

There were a few conversations that happened at Shadow Wars over the weekend with various different people. It does seem that people enjoy confessing their ‘bad LARP photographer’ stories to me. You wouldn’t believe some of the horror stories I’ve been told. But I was struck by the guy who says that due to photographers generally getting in the way and being dicks, he avoids booking at any games that have photographers attending. I nearly put him off Shadow Wars by heading along, but he decided that the game was just too good to miss. (I can confirm that Shadow Wars is indeed too good to miss.)

Lets take a photobreak to celebrate how awesome Shadow Wars is with a fabulous lady who LARPs:

The truth is that I’m saddened that my presence at a game could put people off. Fortunately the same guy then said ‘but I’m really glad I came because actually you’re lovely and not at all like people say you are, and you don’t get in the way either, I didn’t even notice you’. But if people feel this way about LARP photographers (it’s not just me by all accounts), then something has to change.

I guess though that we can only work out what to change if we know what’s going wrong. When I sat down with Matt and Simon at PD and we hashed out the set of guidelines for photographers, I got a pretty good idea of what organisers felt was wrong with some LARP photographers. We introduced rules about kit, about flashes, about not being in line of sight and about minimum focal lengths on lenses (about 70mm with a dash of Rule 7, btw).

It was an enlightening experience, learning about what was important to enabling immersion in the game. Because let’s face it; immersion is King in games like Empire and Odyssey, and indeed Shadow Wars too I believe. Photographers generally break immersion. And while some people don’t mind, others find it a problem. So for me it’s worth not stopping at the rules we hashed out on a cold evening in GOD at Odyssey, we should be taking this further as LARP photographers.

Shadow Wars has brought a new perspective to the way I feel about LARP photography. For the first time I was able to be a fully functioning NPC a game. I roleplayed with players, I roleplayed with monsters and I took photos for three days. It was great fun. For those three days I was a war correspondent working for New Horizon Media on a job that I didn’t really want. I felt like I got better pictures because I was immersed in the system – and getting plastic BB’s fired at your face certainly sharpens your senses and makes you ultra aware of your surroundings.

Every event my experience as a LARP photographer grows. And every event I take less photos. Not because I’m getting better, but because I self-select out of situations where I might impact someones game negatively. That does mean I get less shots. That does mean I miss some awesome moments. Some might argue that makes me a worse photographer because I’m not capturing so much for so many people, but I feel like in fact it makes me a better LARP photographer. I’ve long argued, in my professional career, that being a good photographer isn’t about exploiting every situation possible. It’s also about knowing when to draw a line and be respectful.

Being a good LARP photographer, to me, is also about working with the organisers to fulfil what they need. Not all organisers need photographs, not all photographers want photographers. Not all photographers suit all organisers styles. I’ve worked quite closely with PD over the past two years to try and give them excellent pictures that they can use for marketing and to construct their game world. I’d like to work closely with Shadow Wars in the future to do this as well. If I don’t feel like I’m giving someone something of value then I don’t really feel like I want to shoot an event. Part of the fun for me is in turning over a set of pictures that the organiser will use to make their game somehow better – anything from style guides to selling more tickets.

I’d also like to work with other organisers in the future, those working on new games. Helping them to build style guides and wikis when they don’t themselves have any content. Helping them to produce fantastic publicity material to generate hype and just generally helping the community produce a better quality of game. Because that’s what we all want, isn’t it? A better quality of game to play? Imagine what games we could have if we all worked together on making the standards just that little bit higher. Wouldn’t it be fantastic? I feel like I can help somehow with that. We live in an increasingly visual world and not everyone has the skills to describe things in pictures.

I don’t know where I’m going with this now. Which is what I usually say somewhere after 2500 words. I’ve rambled my way round a few different topic and I’ve somewhat lost my way. I suppose really what I’m trying to say is that I’m feeling rather undervalued as a LARP photographer at the moment. And this isn’t me just fishing for compliments or looking for a great big virtual cuddle-pile, but just looking around to figure out the way that I want to move forwards. And perhaps even finding new organisers that would enjoy working with me.

March 17, 2015
Proper Academic, Like.

I got mentioned in the final project of the lovely Emma Shea – you can see her bibliography here.

In fact you can hear her draft run through of her paper on her YouTube channel and you can read her notes here – and do read them because they’re really very interesting.

I’m pretty honoured to be honest. I never thought that my random thoughts on photography would ever be included in any academic work, although this isn’t the first time. Earlier this year I found that my work was being studied on a City and Guilds photography course, which was pretty cool too.

I’m reminded of a tutor I had for one of my first modules at university last year. I studied the Arts of Japan and we had a genuinely brilliant tutor. Jasper is one of the authorities on Japanese Pink Cinema, his book Behind the Pink Curtain is on my bookcase where it stakes a claim to being one of the most interesting books I own. In our first lecture with him he cracked a joke about how he was still studying for his PhD which means that although his book is used to teach students at universities, he’s wasn’t actually fully qualified to be a lecturer in his own right.

When I heard about Emma’s use of my post (it’s the one on displays of hyper-masculinities in photography) and about the City and Guilds course, I couldn’t help but feel a bit like Jasper. People are using my work – both written and photographic – to illustrate courses and dissertations that are actually at a level higher than I have personally achieved. I’m still only in my second year, trailing a year behind Emma, and at the time I’d not completed anything past an A-Level in anything creative (I don’t think my personal training qualifications count here).

I sometimes wonder if I’m convincing people that I’m something I’m not. I mean, I get paid to write about photography for a living, and I’ve not even finished my degree in history of art. I get paid to write exhibition reviews and discuss theories about photography and do all that stuff that graduates struggle to be able to do. Some of my colleagues on my degree course actually thought I was just writing for free when I said I was a writer – they didn’t know that I actually got paid (and get paid well!) for my work.

Every time I get a magazine through the door that I contributed to I’m excited. I open it up and I see my name as the author for articles and I squeal with joy. I really hope that this feeling never goes away. The excitement of seeing my name in print, month on month. And I hope that people still continue to enjoy reading my work.

But most of all, I hope that my work continues to provide an inspiration for students who are formulating their own arguments and opinions. Because I really admire the people who’s work I read and use in my essays. And it would be an honour for others to feel that way about me in the future.

Warning: I had flu when I wrote this. Might be overly sappy and incoherent.

March 2, 2015
Talking about videogames

So I had my first meeting about my ISM today, discussing what makes a videogame art, what might make it design instead, how different institutions have coped with the issues of displaying videogames in galleries and what makes a good videogame exhitbion.

In preparation for my meeting I was reading a book called The Art of Videogames. It says lots of interesting things, I’m sure there will be lots of blogs about the interesting things it says (and that other books say) in the future.

It discusses the idea (on page 186) that gaming criticism isn’t yet at the level of discussion needed to situate it within the wider understanding of culture and arts. It argues that videogame criticism is not advanced enough with it’s theoretical understanding of it’s place within the arts. That it needs to move from ‘game reviews’ into something more substantial.

The problem is, Tavinor suggests, that game reviews tend to revolve around a rather one-sided and ‘fanboy’ish account of the game. Hell, major developers have their own magazines that produce reviews of their games – you think they’re ever going to be honest? The fact is that in this kind of situation somebody has to pay the bills, and if you’re writing for a magazine it’s generally going to be the advertisers. And the advertisers in videogame magazines tend to be people with a vested interest in you giving their produce a good review. This doesn’t tend to happen in the art world (as a counter-example). The most respected reviews tend to be in national newspapers – they have their own political slant, but they’re rarely influenced by the backers that they have in quite the same was as, oh I don’t know, Nintendo Magazine. Even the glossy art magazines like Frieze are known for their unbiased editorial opinion, I’m not sure I can think of a gaming magazine that quite can say the same.

So you think to yourself that perhaps there will be some more meaty reviews on the internet, where people aren’t being influenced in the same way by advertisers. The problem here is that the fanboy culture is really, really strong and players will be loyal to a franchise or a design studio to the extreme. Fanboyism has seen a massive rise over the past decade or two, and one the places that is truly bad for it is within gaming. In addition the gaming community isn’t the most unbiased community in the world, but I’ll leave the #GamerGate remarks alone for fear of more rape threats.

You see, I read game reviews and I find them… dull. They often provide a good factual insight into the game. It has good playability, the shadows are rendered so well, the storyline isn’t quite so hot. It might tell you a bit about why this game is important or if it’s a new franchise or something.

Here’s a paragraph from the Gamespot review of the remastered Grim Fandango:

That isn’t to say Grim Fandango doesn’t harbor its minor annoyances. It’s easy, for instance, to walk into that elevator in Rubacava by accident when you wander too close and descend to ground level, only to have to get back in and rise again to the top. More relevant is the remastering itself, which might leave you disappointed in light of the dramatic visual transformations we see in remakes like Oddworld: New ‘n’ Tasty!, or remasters like Halo: Combat Evolved Anniversary. You can see the differences between the old version and the remaster with a click of a button, and you’ll note that environments and cutscenes haven’t changed in any meaningful way. Granted, Grim Fandango’s background art remains vibrant, but the new, smooth character models and shadows sometimes look out of place as a result. I often found myself sticking with the original models just because they looked more natural in front of the low-resolution backgrounds.

And here’s a paragraph from Brian Sewell’s review of the Matisse Cut-Outs exhibition:

Enjoy the gaiety of colour. Be moved by the myth of the old genius, victim of a botched stomach operation, discovering new inspiration when told that death was on his doorstep. Be astonished by this sensualist turned saint, finding God in his own work, lying a-bed and drawing on the wall with a six-foot pole, cluttering every surface with the worst drawings this worst of draughtsmen ever did. Delight in the jaunty amusements of the infants’ school, but do not discard your critical faculties. Is what you see in this Matisse really a match for Michelangelo’s Adam, his nude youths, his prophets and sybils, his Last Judgement? What nonsense.

I mean you could argue that one is a virtuoso and the other is just a game. Except that Grim Fandango is considered one of the greatest cultural videogames ever produced. It has warmth and genuine emotion while stick ticking all the gameplay boxes. It does things that other games still have not done. It was – and still is – groundbreaking. Like Matisse and his cut-outs.

Or you could argue that the target audience for videogames is not the kind of person who could easily read and understand the kind of language in the Sewell review. Except I feel that really does do a disservice to both art and videogames. You see, when we enjoy art we don’t have any other options. This is what we start with – the advanced stuff. If you want to know about an artist then your simplest text is probably Gombrich’s book which is aimed at the beginner. Except even that is aimed at an advanced A-Level audience really. There’s no reason to dumb a subject down, your audience will raise their game if they want to understand what you’re saying.

I fear I might be straying into dangerous territory here, but I can’t help wondering sometimes if that’s the nerdrage problem with people like Anita Sarkeesian. Is it because she uses long words and talks about concepts that are just not discussed within the gaming world?

I’m kind of reminded at this point of Mark Grist and his ‘I’d like a girl who reads’ poem. It seems so shameful to enjoy using expressive vocabulary and to enjoy reading it. I mean, could you imagine how much more exciting debates and experience would be if we ‘used our added vocabulary to hold lively conversations’ in every day life about gaming?

I mean, I just want to put another video here and I’d like you to compare the words of Mark Grist and Aukes. I find watching the rap battles that he participates in to be a real sobering experience to see what some people think is good use of language. ‘The structures that you’ve got are what’s covered back in preschool’ at 4 minutes or so.

I guess you could say that gamers just don’t want to discuss videogames at this level, but then why do so many gamers insist that gaming is indeed a cultural and worthwhile activity? You can’t have it both ways. You can’t argue that gaming is an cultural art form akin to film or music and then not apply the same kind of rigorous debate that these other art forms have. The language we use to talk about videogames needs to grow up if it wants to be accepted as part of the wider arts.

But this will only happen as more people study the intersection between culture and videogames and we develop the vocabulary required to talk about the artefacts in a meaningful way. There’s relatively few books written on the subject and those people have not generally gone through their education with a focus on this particular subject (of course I’m not saying that their books aren’t insightful and useful, it’s perfectly reasonable to jump across different interests in that situation) but the real game-changing texts will only start to come about when people emerge from the system having spent many years studying it.

Videogames are still new to academic writing, but it’s really exciting where it’s going. I’m already sold on the idea of videogames as art however I think that the surrounding culture – like reviews and critical discussion – needs to catch up before we can convince the public majority of this opinion.

(Got lost somewhere in the middle. It’s pre-0730hrs and I’ve not had enough caffeine. Might expand later.)

February 6, 2015