Test Bed 2

Revisting Recreation and Leisure

I am a member of Scottish Photographers, and published in their journal (Autumn 2012) a short contribution about Recreation and Leisure. The original text was brief, but implied far more than the journal's space allowed. Three monochrome photographs were shown, which I would now like to revisit in order to see if after ten years, their messages have stood the test of time. I will look at each picture, and compare some of the original intentions with what they might mean now. The published text was as follows -

The pictures are about time spent not working. This can be active or passive: relaxing or pursuing an activity that can be more taxing than employment. The spectrum of recreation is as wide as the world of work, and often they are interchangeable. My subject is about the discourse of leisure; the particular patterns and specific looks that separate things which must be done to earn a living from those where this is not the prime necessity. Whether taking a nap, going for a walk, canoeing, treasure hunting, or twitching our use of spare time can not only have varying degrees of intensity, but also the notion of time gained or time lost. Some people work hard at leisure while others take it where and when they can find it in a relaxed way. The scholarly dissertations on the taxonomy of leisure tend to focus on the psychological and physical effects of recreation, using their findings to derive socio-economic conclusions as well as discerning the impacts upon our individual or collective well-being. I, on the other hand, am more interested in how the depiction of leisure can convey qualities that might get swamped in too much theoretical analysis. If the object of an activity is to get away from it all then I want the essence of that to be conveyed as directly as possible.

My metier is image making, but I also have had experience in the field of recreation and tourism studies. Early in my career I worked as a teacher of communication techniques in town and country planning. This involved recreational studies as a research support activity.

Before analysing the subjects, I should say that in spite of my comments at the time about 'not getting swamped by too much theoretical analysis' I feel justified, after a decade, to use a modicum of critical analysis to see if that original statement was appropriate.

The three pictures I will look at are - a) A Canal Scene, b) Twitchers, and c) Dolphin Watchers. Each image has its own distinctive subject and object, but the techniques have obvious commonalities while demonstrating separate properties.

A Canal Scene

This a composite time-lapse image where everyone (in the picture) is there, but not at the same time. As a polemical statement about designated spaces for recreation, it states the issues in a pictorial way, denoting a canoeist, crowds of people, and an empty space. The index describes the privilege of being on the canal, the herding of the walkers and cyclists, and a deserted space ready for redevelopment. This is a critique of local authority recreational planning, and looking back seems valid enough, but maybe too earnest in its advocacy. Ten years later I read the image a slightly different way.

Before I reevaluate the object, as the subject is going to remain the same, I should explain how the image was made. I chose a camera position overlooking the canal and composed the base ( with no persons present) into three divisions. I had to work out how to get a crowd onto the towpath. The canoeist would not be a problem, and the development surveyors would not be there at the weekend. By using time-lapse, three technical things had to be considered as post production would entail overlay, erasure, saving, overlay, erasure and so on. Firstly, when would be the best time to get a constant flow of people. Secondly, I had to calculate how many shots I would have to take to get small groupings in separate positions on the towpath, and enough to eventually fit the space, not to mention the time it would take to get enough material. Thirdly, composite time-lapse requires the overlays to be tonally consistent with the base. The solution was to work on a Sunday between 11am and 2pm on a fully dry overcast day when a trickle of people would be guaranteed, canoeists would be out and no surveyors would be working on the site. The decision to shoot in monochrome was to make it easier to manage the tones and not let any change in colour temperature cause variations from the background. It took a month to get it right, and two weeks to create 50 overlays, extracted from 250 shots.

As you can see, in 2011 I was not using random methods. Reconceptualising the image as it stood invited comparison with the original purpose and interpretation. It is still about recreation and is polemical, but the indices and connotations suggest that there are other are ways of addressing the evidence. The following breakdowns (in no particular order) list factors in the three sectors.

Alone/together/absent. Single/multiple/missing. Independent/reliant/void.

Safe/in danger/prohibited. Water/tarmac/earth. Towards us/going both ways/no movement. Relaxed/anxious/unconcerned. Light/dark/grey. One instance/multiple instances/only base. Ordered/chaotic/calm. Self/herd/deserted. Wide route/narrow route/open space.

One mode/several modes/latent modes. Licensed/public/private. Individual/social/employed.

Starting from the base, we can itemise this as having four main elements, the water and the verge, the towpath with verge on one side and the fence on the other, the development site with the fence enclosing it, and the tenement housing stretching across the top of the picture. Each sector has a specificity, and any relationships between the sectors are therefore dynamic. The canoeist has authorisation to be on the water, and the people have a right to walk and cycle on the towpath. Authorisation and rights are not quite the same, and are depicted as such by some semblance of order on one hand and disorder on the other. The boundaries forcing the people onto a very narrow right of way, say more about no go areas than recreational routes. Of course, the path was never that crowded, but this is an issue statement and exaggerates to convey its message. It is a concept and should be viewed accordingly. You cannot walk on water and you can't paddle a canoe on dry land, and you are prohibited from trespassing on private property. The image is fundamentally about partitions, and given that the activity is recreation, the freedom to relax and exercise is somewhat limited unless you have been given the appropriate permissions. The photograph is not about the particular setting or action, it refers to the idea that institutional and legal constraints can constrain recreation, and that recreation is an index for wider liberties. Finally, the symbolic value of the fence reinforces the idea of frontiers, and the difficulty one can have crossing them.

Twitchers

There is nothing too complicated about this photograph. The subject is 'two men', and the possible object is 'spying from a bunker'. The indices are binoculars, a monocular and narrow openings in a robustly constructed structure. They are, of course, bird watchers known as 'Twitchers', and the hide is a purpose built place constructed to withstand the wild conditions that can arise on this part of the East coast of Scotland. The subject should be 'two bird watchers', and the object 'spotting wild life'. The Index is slightly ambiguous, because the hide looks like an installation left over from war time even although it is a building erected recently for amateur ornithologists. The men are elderly, and their equipment signifies a modest but reasonable investment in the kit they are using. Also the hide is made of brick (not concrete) and is in very good condition. Their clothing suggests that they are retired, and are getting together with old pals on a Sunday for a day out pursuing a shared hobby.

The image also contains speculations of what happened before they arrived there and what would happen afterwords, illustrating that it is not only the spatial extensions that can effect things beyond the frame, but it can also be true for time. The Twitchers, get up, pack their sandwiches, and spending a good few hours in the hide before going to the pub with their mates; repeating this every Sunday as a matter of routine. This is a generalisation, which suits the depiction, but is in fact unreliable. If this was an East German archival picture, then the narrative would change significantly. They might be 'Vogelbeobachters', but we would assume that they had an additional agenda. The photograph would need a different English title; 'Birdwatching at Potsdam. 1975' or an East German heading, 'Menschen am Sonntag', expressing the freedoms of, and opportunities for, recreation in the old Democratic Republic.

This not a ridiculous suggestion, it shows how an information caption can change interpretations based on our ideological constructions about what we expect to be happening, culturally and politically, in other places. A careful examination of the image should tell us that this is not really a possibility given that their equipment comes from a later period, but their clothing does not completely contradict alternative possibilities and connotations.

If we gave the picture no title, how might it be read?

If they were much younger, with additional camera equipment, then there might be legitimate reasons to conclude that spying was taking place, because we use such signifiers as a verification of our preconceptions and prejudices. In any case the the bunker is a symbol of defence, and the binoculars represent watchfulness, so the image remains problematic. Syntagma is the term that describes this continuity of logical relationships, where the signifier and signified are dependent upon the connectivity of the elements provided. This constitutes the subject and object, and verifies their truth within the conceptual structure, proving as a consequence, the reliability of the narrative. With no title the image is ambiguous, because the referents are inter-changeable.

'Twitchers' has a number of unconnected bits of information, which call into question what it is we are really seeing. A cursory glance will not reveal anything untoward in the basic addressing of subject/object, but a secondary look will question the location, not as an impossibility, but as a syntagmatic inconsistency. A tertiary scrutiny will accommodate the diegesis, and bring it into line with the dominant mise en scene. It Is all a matter of whether or not the picture represents a true documentation of what is happening, where it takes place and when it occurs.

Dolphin Watchers

Every year during the spawning season dolphins gather off Chanonry Point to catch salmon on their way up the Moray Firth. Shortly after low tide they shepherd the fish towards the outgoing flow and gather in their prey. Photographers have made the journey North for many years to witness this event, and some of the most regularly published pictures in the UK of this harvest have be taken off this part of the Black Isle's South coast. The money shot has always been the image of a dolphin leaping right out of the water, before arching back into the waves. Having been a visitor to nearby Fortrose for over seventy years I am familiar with this ritual, and in 2011 revisited the site with the intention of witnessing and recording not only the dolphins, but observing the observers as part of my portfolio depicting recreational images.

The selected picture shows photographers, closely gathered, watching a patch of turbulent water, and waiting for the action to begin. The subject and object of the photograph is straight forward; photographers watching the sea. The signifiers are the cameras, the condition of the water surface and the clustering of the watchers. The signifieds are readiness, tension and concentration, and syntagmatically the joining up of all the indicators in the image to verify what is happening. Our focus transfers through the subjects' attention to the rough patch of water, and acts as a stimulus for us to take the reading of the diegesis to another level. The symbolic function of the eddying as vortex, suggests a grounding of our reference in myth. This emphasises the potency of the moment, in that we perceive that something untoward is about to happen. If we don't give the picture a title, the possibility of an undefined appearance is entertained. The given title 'Dolphin Watchers' anchors the act of observation, and only considers the dolphins as a secondary constituent; contingent upon what we imagine is happening under the surface of the water. The photograph is unambiguous in as far as its specificities reinforce our reading, but the latent elements are important for the exegesis.

The composition draws comparisons with other pictorial conventions, most notably what I call the 'visitation icon'. It is characterised by subjects looking away from our point of view towards something as yet to be revealed, but showing the beginnings of a revelation of something, previously unencountered.

The cliche has certain properties; Very wide angle, light ahead of the subjects creating silhouettes, close groupings that can be decoded as a collaborative activity, and underpin a certain nervousness alleviated by personal proximity. Reference science fiction films, which deal with encounters, and you will know what I mean. In the picture nothing has leapt out from the water yet, so the image is a pregnant rather than decisive moment. The subject (the photographers) is confirmed, but the object is more than just watching the sea. A preparedness is signified, and we can assume that with the event about to happen, the photographers are beginning to get active. The sixth man from the left is already in a shooting posture but we are a few seconds too early to see the outcome. I did photograph what happened, but chose to publish this shot because the expectation felt greater than the resultant event.