Anthony Luvera is a London-based Australian photographer whose work I have been admiring and analysing about for a while now. I got his book Residency (2006-2011) in the mail last year, and the publication from the large-scale photography project which features assisted self-portraits from a long-term collaboration with people who have experienced homelessness, was a significant prompt for me to look at what these kinds of collaborative and participatory photographic processes mean to photographers and participants alike.
Photographs and Assisted Self Portraits
Preceding Residency, his series Photographs and Assisted Self Portraits (2002-2005) explored the tension between authorship (and artistic control), and the ethics involved in making photographs about other people’s lives. He turned the camera over to willing participants after deciding that he was curious about the problems of documentary photography, and the desire to make and look at images of social difference. This pivot in his practice came when he decided to turn down an opportunity to photograph homeless people, preferring to see what they would photograph.
It seems to me that forms of self-representation may go some way to broadening our understanding of individuals whose portraits are depicted primarily through the trace of their brushes with the institutions of commerce, charity, law and the state or in representations produced by social documentarians.
Played out in locations of the participant’s choosing, over repeated sessions, Luvera taught each participant how to use large format camera equipment with a cable release. Each subject is an active participant and co-creator of the image, while Luvera, as the photographer, serves more as a facilitator, tutor and technical advisor. The images produced by participants are themselves relatively bland, Djikstra-esque; solemn, still and simply framed. But the process is clearly exposed in the ‘process shots’––snapshots, on what appears to be a disposable camera, which infer the participants were responsible for the documentation of this more formal process.
In 2006, after collecting around 10,000 photographs, negatives and ephemera created by over 250 people, he was keen to examine an established photography archive to reflect on some of the practical, theoretical and ethical issues potentially involved in constituting an archive. Over the following five years he took his inquiry to Belfast Exposed Photography and created Residency, with homeless people living in Belfast. Doing so enabled him to develop questions for the collection and its possible transition to a public archive; to reflect on the complexities of potential decisions to be made around the constitution of an archive in relation to representational responsibility, participation and interpretation, and how this might impact on history and memory.
Luvera’s work has been catalytic for me pushing me to really consider the tension between the kind of evocative, sensational work that professional visual storytellers produce (particularly when they are working with the kinds of communities that Luvera works with homeless people and queer people) and the collaborative process which produces images that seem primarily to belong in a personal collection (like a family photo album). Specifically when the subject matter, and the people who participate and collaborate, are still ‘sensational’.
This work doesn’t scream dramatic. It is, across the board, simple, clear and straight forward. The images don’t ‘other’ the people in them, nor do they buy in to the audiences desire for a fly-on-the-wall account of homelessness or queerness. They simply present people as people, and lay bare the process of the projects. The impact here is not overwhelming, like the way that some photojournalism (of the same topics) can be––nothing punches you in the face. But the impression is a lasting one.
I find the tension between those two one of the most interesting aspects of extending documentary and photojournalism––and it has come to form the essential question of my PhD thesis, which is basically: How can we continue to utilize the visceral, affective visual language of documentary photography to activate for social change, while democratising the process of creating those images with people, instead of of people?
I don’t know if anyone has answers to that question yet. But I reckon that Luvera’s work sort of transcends that––the statements are bold, but they don’t force. And there is something quite beautiful about the way he holds the space to let the faces of the people he works with do their own talking.
I have previously drawn direct influence from Luvera, and implemented his own methodologies of assisted self-portraits within my own practice. There was an aspect of the ways in which this practitioner was working that really resonated with me, although how ever challenging the work was beautifully rewarding for all individuals taking part.
Not Going Shopping
not going shopping charts the process of the artist Anthony Luvera working with eleven people to create a photographic work for Queer in Brighton, a project that celebrates cultural heritage of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender people in Brighton and Hove.
The work made by Anthony and
J Bayliss
Raphael Fox
Ten Harber
Sarah Magdalena Love
Harry Pygar
Kelly McBride
Luc Raesmith
Matt Robinson
Kate Turner
Ed Whelan
Charlie Wood
in an outdoor citywide exhibition in Brighton February 2014.
Commissioned by Queer in Brighton, artist Anthony Luvera has collaborated with city residents to create photographs expressing personal perspectives on being queer in Brighton & Hove. The results are shown in a city-wide poster exhibition, free newspaper, online blog and a soft-back book.
Commissioned by Queer in Brighton, artist Anthony Luvera collaborated with city residents to create photographs expressing personal perspectives on being queer in Brighton & Hove. In response to an open call, eleven participants took part in workshops and individual meetings with Anthony. The name of the project not going shopping takes its name from the LGBT protestors’ chant “We’re here, we’re queer and we’re not going shopping!”
The collaborative working process and participants’ work are charted on the not going shopping blog and in a freely distributed newspaper. Portraits made collaboratively with Anthony form the poster exhibition showing across the city during LGBT History Month February 2014 and also feature in the Queer in Brighton anthology edited by Anthony Luvera and Maria Jastrzebska.
http://notgoingshopping.blogspot.co.uk/search?updated-max=2014-02-26T05:57:00-08:00&max-results=50
Luvera and participants mapped the course of the project on a blog, were they individuals responding and reacted to the project and the portraits.
Studying Photography 