About A Perfect
Sentence
Recent
25 January - 23 March 2024
KARST
22 George Pl, Stonehouse
Plymouth PL1 3NY
A Perfect Sentence by Oliver Frank Chanarin interrogates the shifting terrain of documentary photography, exploring our drive for attention, the complexities of being seen and the anxieties of being overlooked.
Throughout 2022, Chanarin undertook multiple journeys across the UK, often finding himself on the margins - from suburban fetish groups, to carnival troupes in community halls, to gender activists protesting in the streets. Deploying an analogue camera as a tool for social exchange, collaborative photoshoots gave way to chance encounters with strangers and friends, missteps and wilful attempts at getting lost in the world. The resulting photographs capture a subjective and intimate record of a nation in transition, as Chanarin attempts to reconcile the mercurial nature of identity with the pressing need for new forms of representation.
Commissioned and produced by Forma in collaboration with eight UK organisations, A Perfect Sentence is the artist’s first solo project in the UK. The production culminates in a programme of exhibitions and presentations across the country (2023-25), public acquisitions, a digital platform and a publication.
Oliver Frank Chanarin, Untitled, 10 x 8 inches, C-type print, unique artist proof (#0009720244), 2023.
Oliver Frank Chanarin, with Eloise, 10 x 8 inches, C-type print, unique artist proof (#3784102246), 2023.
Oliver Frank Chanarin, with Adam, 10 x 8 inches, c-type print, unique artist proof (#0192888727), 2022.
A Perfect Sentence: Oliver Frank Chanarin in conversation with Euripides Altintzoglou
Dr Euripides Altintzoglou, Course Leader (Photography) and Senior Lecturer (Fine Art & Photography) at University of Wolverhampton is an artist, theorist and author of Portraiture and Critical Reflections on Being (2018) and assisted production of A Perfect Sentence in Wolverhampton. Euripides sat down with Chanarin to discuss how documentary photography has changed, the subjectivity of portraiture and the artist's first solo project, A Perfect Sentence:
I first met Oliver Frank Chanarin over a dinner when he was passing through Wolverhampton during the production of his new project, A Perfect Sentence. We sat across the table from each other, and Oliver was keen to know as much as possible about me, a new person that he just met. This left no room for me to ask him about a number of his past projects that I had long followed from his collaborative practice with Adam Broomberg, such as The Holy Bible and Spirit is a Bone.
Oliver, now working as a solo artist, told me about his latest endeavour, which has seen him revisit some of the tactics of his earlier work, of ‘being out there’ in the field of real life and drawing energy from the potentiality of unexplored locations and encounters. Indeed, with the rapidly changing operation of the image it can be very liberating to remind ourselves of photography’s push to get us lost by turning just one more corner in search of narratives.
The following interview is the result of two ‘proper’ sessions that wouldn’t come to pass if it weren’t for our conversations over that first dinner. In the exchange that ensues, Chanarin speaks about A Perfect Sentence with the same enthusiasm that drives him to raise his camera.
Oliver Frank Chanarin, with Pam and Mike, 10 x 8 inches, C-type print, unique artist proof (#0182745383), 2023.
Oliver Frank Chanarin, with Elaine, 10 x 8 inches, C-type print, unique artist proof (#1983382011), 2023.
Oliver Frank Chanarin, with L/Cpl Oliver, 10 x 8 inches, C-Type print, unique artist proof (#3290673187), 2023.
Oliver Frank Chanarin, with anon, 10 x 8 inches, C-type print, unique artist proof (#2278019213), 2023.
Euripides Altintzoglou (EA):When we first met you were in the throes of making A Perfect Sentence, a vast work in the field of documentary photography, where you were journeying across the nation to take photographs of people and places. What drove you to become invested in this project around portraiture, identity and contemporary aspects of being?
Oliver Frank Chanarin (OFC): I began over four years ago, with an ambition to create an objective photographic survey of Britain. The impulse was to reflect on this country we live in, Post-Brexit. I felt trapped in the echo chamber of my lived experience and disconnected from the reasons that drew me to photography. I wanted to re-engage with the camera as a tool for having experiences and conversations, for meeting strangers, and encountering places and people that were outside of my own narrow existence. I was partly inspired by August Sander’s Citizens of the Twentieth Century, a seminal series of photographs that captured hundreds of German citizens during the Weimar Republic, from farm labourers to circus performers and aristocrats. But having worked on this project for 11 months - travelling to the south, north, east and west of this island, and taking thousands of photographs of hundreds of different people - my initial idea of a survey felt futile. The DNA of August Sander, which evolved out of a movement known as New Objectivity, just didn’t seem helpful any longer. Instead, I’ve created an archive that is shamefully subjective. When viewed collectively, the photographs represent a partial view of a journey I’ve taken - but in no way do they encompass what we think of as a country.
EA: It seems that, unlike Sander, you were driven by an intention that is not burdened by a pursuit of predetermined completeness. I can also see a sense of intimacy in your portraits that is contrary to how people tended to freeze in front of Sander’s lens.
OFC: When I started working on A Perfect Sentence the process was more rigid, akin to August Sander. As the making progressed the images became more liberated, there’s a freedom and openness. Sander’s straight-up portraits of German archetypes suffer from the idea that a portrait can encapsulate a person's identity. Whereas Sander’s contemporary, Helmar Lerski, rejected that idea completely. Lerski’s approach to portraiture was entirely different. Drawing on his experience as an actor and cinematographer, he would photograph his dramatically lit subjects from multiple angles, creating a multidimensional portrait made from a series of composite images. It is as though Lerski were attempting to capture the facets of a person. This is actually much closer to the way contemporary smartphone users think about portraiture, as a stream of images that coagulate around a complex and layered sense of self.
EA: Perhaps because we conceive our being as multifaceted and in perpetual change, portraits are beginning to shift away from the constraints of singularity. Those being photographed can use the act of portrayal to understand who they are, discover who they want to be, and control how they are perceived as they construct images of themselves. Portraiture offers people a platform to engage with the very public dimensions of ‘being’. The challenge this presents to an artist is to enable the representation of these considerations through portraiture.
OFC: And one other thing I’d say is that after the photograph has been made it goes on a journey: it is selected, printed, framed and included in a display with other images that juxtapose and reframe it. While the sitter has given their consent for the image to be made, and they may feel very happy with the way the photographic encounter played out, they are unable to control the life of that image as it goes out to meet an audience. Neither can the artist. And this is when things can break down and some friction can occur. A portrait will always be a partial and incomplete view, a record of a moment that quickly passes; it’s never definitive, and its reading changes according to its context.
EA: Absolutely, because artists can fall into the pseudo-challenge of trying to capture someone's existence in one image. But if you approach portraiture in the way you describe, the work can be what it needs to be, and through it people can be whoever they want to be; elevating portraiture into a very positive and liberating enterprise.
OFC: Travelling around the country meeting people I’ve actually encountered a lot of anxiety about photography, which seems to have heightened since the dawn of social media and the mass dissemination of digital images. In the age of the algorithm, our drive to be seen and to not be overlooked knocks up against a desire to control our own representation and to be seen in the right way. Alongside this, we’ve also seen a shift in the ethics of documentary photography. The power dynamic between the photographer and the person being photographed has changed - the sitter has far more control which is a good thing. For centuries the flow of power between the person looking and the person being looked at was always universally unfair. On the flip side a certain kind of spontaneous image making, the very thing that made photography so immediate and responsive, has died.
EA: Given this new terrain - of the indefinite reach of images after social media and how it affects the power dynamics in the production of a photograph - how did you manage to meet these hundreds of people in their towns and their homes and create such intimate portraits? How did you convince them to let you into their lives?
OFC: There was a lot of anxiety on both sides of the camera. People questioned what would happen to the images, but there was also an aliveness to who was taking their picture and creating a representation of them, as we live in an era where the artist's biography has become central to the interpretation of a work. A Perfect Sentence is shaped by many spoken and unspoken exchanges. I’ve tried to make these encounters positive and inspiring experiences but the ‘perfect’ here is aspirational because every human interaction is fraught, especially when a camera is involved. We did a lot of work taking care to create a safe environment for photography to take place in, where engagement was planned, permission sought and the setting clearly defined. Sometimes I’ve met people briefly, through chance encounters in the street, but more often, I’ve been introduced to people through charities and organisations. Along the way, I’ve shared workshops and talks, and I’ve invited some participants to collaborate on devising the shoots. I wanted to create a more durational and reciprocal encounter with people, beyond the time it takes to make a photograph. The danger of photography is that you turn up, take a picture, and leave.
EA: It was Bruce Davidson who famously stated in an interview with Charlotte Cotton,that
‘Too much in photography is shoot and leave’. I’ve witnessed you on production as you start conversations and genuinely listen to people, and even after shooting you stay and talk. It seems that your method is rooted in acts of exchange, part of a renewed photographic practice respectful of human relations. Could you talk about a few instances of how these exchanges have influenced the creative direction of the project?
OFC: In Derby we crisscrossed the city catching hold of any small lead we could find and seeing where it would lead us. We met a taxidermied pigeon in the local museum that had flown to Rome during the second world war and miraculously survived and returned. We visited the Toyota factory where they have the longest production line in Europe and learned a new method of walking that they use in the factory to avoid collisions between people and machines! We had a remarkable evening with the current Carnival Queen and the Cultural Roots Carnival Troupe at Derby West Indian Community Centre. To be honest, I’m not very good at inventing something out of nothing. My process starts from these kinds of collisions with real life. If I can control everything then that’s boring. What I enjoy is the challenge of working with what the advertising world calls ‘real’ people in everyday situations, but somehow transcending that to create a moment and an image that feels ambiguous and layered. Very often I fail; but every now and again the person I’m photographing says or does something that creates a spark and I leave having had an experience that I could never have predicted.
EA: I’ve noticed some of the resulting photographic prints resemble annotated darkroom test strips. There is a strong impression that you consider these portraits finished, because they remain in progress.
OFC: Every photograph is shot on medium format colour negative film. It’s a dying medium. In the middle of production I had to switch from one type of printing paper to another because it was no longer being manufactured. I use film and these archaic processes because I have more control, but also counterintuitively more can go wrong. There are accidents that occur in the shooting and printing process that I enjoy. Working in a darkroom is time consuming and with colour printing, unlike black and white printing, there is no red safety light, so you’re in the dark, the pitch dark; and printing awakens other senses. I start by putting the negative into the enlarger and shining light down onto a piece of light sensitive paper; then making a test print to find the best exposure; finally adjusting the filtration slowly until the image looks right. I’m not a very experienced printer so these iterations took me longer than it would a professional printer. I started to feel that the imperfect tests were more interesting than the perfectly finished ones. They make the process visible and lay bare how intensely subjective it is.
EA: And then you write your own beautifully narrated prose about some of the encounters. It’s as though, after the photographic event, the image has an afterlife.
OFC: An afterlife? Yes, that’s perfect.
Recent
25 January - 23 March 2024
KARST
22 George Pl, Stonehouse
Plymouth PL1 3NY