Philosophy & Photograpphy
Robert Cressy
In my late teens, I became interested in Philosophy and studied the subject for four years in the ‘Welsh hub’ of Wittgenstein, University College, Swansea. This philosophy, ‘a battle against the bewitchment of our minds by language’ (Wittgenstein) had a major impact on how I viewed the world and how I thought about problems of science, religion, psychology and the rest. However, I was never interested in only one thing and pursued other interests simultaneously.
Unlike Cartier-Bresson, who ‘burst in upon the world [of photography] with a Box Brownie”, I entered more sedately with a Nikon FG, an SLR film camera recommended to me by a friend in London, after he took my portrait. One of my earliest photos worthy, I thought, of at least a passing glance, was #1 Beatitudes (c.1978). In it, a ragged tramp passes unnoticed by the group of rich, privileged attendees at the Queen’s Garden party, smiling delightedly at the camera as they emerge from the Buckingham Palace grounds. They were annoyed, I felt, at the sequel when I immediately turned my back on them and walked away. So this was one of my first attempts at representing the English Class System, still alive today, although now representing a select group of New as well as Old Money.
1: Beatitudes (London, England 1982)
It was never published. Had it have been, would it, as a social statement, have changed anything? Of course not. But there again, I never imagined it would. I, like many others, including the great film director Joseph Losey (The Servant, Accident, The Go-Between) and his young literary collaborator, and subsequent Nobel Prize winner, Harold Pinter, was just fascinated by the English Upper Classes, of which we were not a part and could never join, and felt compelled to represent it to others for what it was.
Soon after that, and with a day job as an academic, I was after work pounding the streets of London taking Street shots of people, trying to ‘say’ something about them and their surroundings. By then I had bought a few photo books and was now poring over them for inspiration. I had also bought a Leica CL, a 40mm camera that I instantly fell in love with. One of the more notable shots from this period was
Busted (London, 1982).
A London bus has broken down and the mechanic has his head under the hood looking for the trouble. Meanwhile the ticket seller, ticket machine around her neck and in full-uniform, has turned up for work only to find her bus in a mess.
By now I had of course studied HCB’s opus magnum, the Decisive Moment, borrowed from the local library. It was a lightbulb moment for me (as for thousands of others) and showed me that you could really ‘say’ something with a camera, the art of story-telling. I pored over this book like a soul obsessed.
As a result I even enlisted in a week’s course taught by a Magnum photographer, David Hurn, taught in Portugal in 1986. Over those seven days he provided a group of about five, invaluable, detailed feedback on our amateur images. He provided information, including on ‘Henri’, who he apparently knew well, but above all offered a detailed daily critique of our work that was inspiring. He sent us tasks to photograph the people of Loule, close to Albufeira, a Portuguese port, where we were located.
Examples of this I provide here are:
Beheaded, Hello Sailor! and Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered, all taken in during the course. These remain some of the best photographs I have ever taken. The same small camera had also delivered in 1983, The Staircase from the Plaza de Espana, in Seville. I was now definitely looking for ‘the lasting image’, pictures that I could look at again and again and never get bored.
The Staircase
The Staircase: A woman ascends the grand wooden staircase of the Plaza de Espana, Seville seemingly in a trance whilst a man, high up on the stair and partially obscured, descends. The man could almost be part of her dream.
Hello Sailor! (Loule, Portugal1986) What I love to this day about Hello is the flamboyant, and indeed, for the time, outrageous invitation of the ‘woman’ with the hat and the apparent rejection of her advances by the ‘conventional’ guy disappearing rapidly left.
Beheaded (Loule, Portugal1986) This was my first venture into surrealism. A man is talking to someone his head obscured by a blind. On the ground next to his outstretched foot is a motorcycle helmet, his ‘head’, chopped off by the blind.
Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered (Algarve, Portugal1986) Named after a famous song by Rogers and Hart, ‘BBB’ was the end-product of six shots of these ‘lovely ladies’ which reached a climax when the grandmother’s cat appeared in the doorway.
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I became engaged with another life theme of mine when I married in 1983, namely that of religious ceremonies. Holy weeks in Seville and Zamora fascinated me. Despite a lack of personal religiosity I became totally absorbed in the intense drama, rhythm and ritual of these events.
The boy and the balloon and Saints and Sinners both from Seville, Spain 1987, are representative of that two year period.
A young boy stares up in wonder at his helium-filled balloon whilst his father has suddenly noticed a shirt in the shop window that he likes.
Cofradores, members of the religious brotherhoods, follow the Holy Week processions clothed in black hoods and white gowns. They are the ‘sinners’ parading as penitents in public. A passer-by across the road looks up at the statue of a Saint just as the closest cofradore looks at the photographer.
None of these photos yielded an income of even the most meagre kind. So in view of that and my meagre University salary, when my daughter arrived in 1987 I decided to pursue my academic career with much greater determination. I continued taking photos, but mainly of my daughter as she grew up, apart from the ‘odd’ photo that might occur at an academic conference such as: Old Crones and Topless Bather(1988); Wild Horses(2005), The Smoker(1985), and Shoeshine (2017).
Old Crones and Topless Bather (Nice, France1988) Two fully-clothed old ladies arrange deckchairs on the stoney beach in Nice whilst their daughter strides confidently and topless into the waves.
Wild Horses (Moscow, Russia 2005) In the centre of Moscow ‘Three Graces’ examine their friend’s tourist shot in front of the monumental statue of three wild horses.
The Smoker (Moscow, Russia 2005) An apparently pregnant 30-something woman takes a break off work to smoke and to think about her situation.
Odysseus and the Sirens (London 1988) A young boy escapes the throng of the January sales where he has accompanied his mother on her buying spree. Too young to be interested in the opposite sex and in search of adventure, he is unaware of the Sirens (female mannikins) in the shop window singing their beautiful but dangerously alluring songs. (In the Odyssey they lured passing sailors on to the rocks.)
Shoeshine (Aguascaliente, Mexico 2017). A well-dressed, eighty-something man is having his shoes shined in the town centre. I take several shots of him as I move round from the back. At the last one he looks up at me but does not show emotion. He seems to be transfixed by my decision to take his portrait. Fate has arrived and he is powerless to stop it.
The decade of the Nunties saw me visiting Vancouver to pursue my new obsession with photographing clouds. This obsession originated with seeing shapes in the skies over the English bay that seemed to fit many of the Greek myths that I had studied in my days as a philosopher.
An example of this kind of photography is Confrontation of the Wind Gods.
Confrontation of the Wind Gods. (Vancouver, Canada, 2010)
Here you are invited to see two wind ‘gods’ (large clouds with human shapes) on the left and right of the photo apparently engaged in a stand-off over a large expanse of water, dotted with tiny sailboats. My money’s on the big one.
On retiring in 2015 I once more took up photography in earnest. I had by now absorbed something of the styles of other famous photographers like Atget, Lartigue, Kertesz, Sander, Muncaci, Frank, and so on. I also had a lot of opportunities for foreign travel and, accompanied by my dear wife, visited Spain, Italy, Hungary, France, Netherlands, China, Russia and Ireland, as well as various places in the UK. Some of the best photos from these last six years are:
When asked “What is your favourite photograph?” HCB famously replied, “The next one to come out of my camera!”. He didn’t look back. Of course in photojournalism, of which he was the father, ‘you are only as good as your last photograph’. But he did in his 90s look back and with great pleasure on some of his best photos. At one (I call The Irish horse owner and his horse) he exclaimed: “La gloire, c’est la geometrie!” (“The joy is in the geometry”). That is one of the major learnings I took from HCB and remains with me today. The very last photo (for the moment) to come out of my camera is Burlington Boys (3/11/2021)
We are once more and in England, commenting on the Class System, just as I was when I started out on my photographic journey. (Beatitudes). The circle of life.
Our Challenge: if you’ve got a story you can tell in just a few shots, send it to us at Progressive: (progressivestreetphotography@gmail.com) This is a great chance to express yourself in a special way. You must have had sessions or days where you’ve got a real good feeling about how a story has played out. Could be people you tracked for a while or a day at an event. Your call. Let your pictures tell the story. Share it with us, no less than 5. We’ll share the best on our Website! But remember that words are also important for communicating sensations and your thoughts