FOUND, SHARED: THE MAGAZINE PHOTOWORK

curated by David Brittain, Research Associate at MIRIAD in CUBE gallery, Manchester

Sources and documentation

VISUAL STUDIES WORKSHOP was the partner organization for David Brittain’s three-year AHRC funded research project. VSW was founded in 1969 in Rochester, New York and currently runs the MFA in Visual Studies for State University of New York. VSW provided access to primary research material and offered in-kind support by providing staff with skills in software design.

The following images were taken in the VSW Resource Centre as visual research for the planned exhibition, Found, Shared:The Magazine Photowork

A 30 sec tour around the magazine archive at Visual Studies Workshop

The latest periodicals are boxed up, awaiting storage in the archive

Testing the “archive aesthetic”

Uschi Huber and Jorg Paul Janka edit Ohio, an artists’ magazine (Cologne) that deploys found photographs. In September 05 David Brittain

curated “Out of Print: Ohio a magazine art project” at the ISP gallery, Birmingham in

collaboration with University of Central England. The show was to test what could be

learned from Ohio’s gallery practice

OHIO INSTALLATION, IPS Birmingham Sept 05 Curated by David Brittain in collaboration with Uschi Huber and Jorg Paul Janka

Huber and Janka gather photographs from various “folk archives” and re-present them in both a periodical publication and in installations that appropriate the look and trappings of institutional display spaces

Found, Shared: The magazine Photowork opened at CUBE gallery, Manchester in MAY 06

The exhibition, which took the form of a “meta-magazine”, put into practice ideas, insights and material gathered in the course of three years research. David Brittain asked the editors of four contrasting magazines - Ohio (Germany), Useful Photography (Netherlands), Found magazine (USA) and Permanent Food (Italy) - to use their archives of found photos as the basis of special installations that would complement their respective publications

The concept involved building a new temporary space within an existing one. CUBE supplied plans of ground & basement galleries. Gallery 1 would be converted to an archive room that would set the scene. Gallery 2 into a study centre and cinema. Gallery 3 would contain four installations.

Gallery 1 & 2: Archive and Study centre

Gallery 1: ARCHIVE ROOM. Flash animated overhead projections (click to interact with magazine pages)

Monitors from 4 cpus mirror the projections in archive room - mice enable interactivity with scanned magazine pages. Page animation was produced by personnel at Visual Studies Workshop, USA

In Gallery 2 users turn virtual pages of each of four magazines projected in archive room

“Study centre” provided context in the form of web links, small magazines and publicity material

Gallery 2

STUDY CENTRE MURALS BY NIGEL AONO BILLSON WERE SOURCED FROM MATERIAL FROM PERSONAL ARCHIVE OF MAGAZINE INTERIORS AND COVERS

PERSONAL ARCHIVE OF PHOTOS OF MAGAZINES

Another mural was installed in the downstairs space

The exhibition included a programme of films by some magazine producers that deploy found material. A loop of these films was shown in an improvised cinema

Gallery 3: Four magazine installations

As the era of chemical photography draws to a close - with digital files beginning to replace paper prints - a group of small magazines is finding new uses for the material that was excluded from the official photographic archives. This includes anything from intimate Polaroids, exchanged between lovers, to fading studio portraits, blurry snaps, amateur montages, home-made greetings cards and pages torn from picture magazines. Everything, in short, that has been deemed too tasteless or worthless for serious consideration.

Ohio (Germany) and Found magazine (USA), Useful Photography (Netherlands), Permanent Food (Italy) are very different in content and intention, yet could be seen to hold a critical mirror to the philosophies and methods underlying the creation of the Modernist archive. They also represent a challenge to the hegemonic practice of taking (rather than adapting) photographs.

USEFUL PHOTOGRAPHY

The editors of Useful Photography use reject archives from commercial catalogues, etc. One installation led visitor from upstairs galleries to downstairs. Primary material was displayed in a vitrine (right) placed above the stairs

Second installation by Useful Photography comprised livestock photographs found by Hans van de Meer

Installation showing video by Hans van der Meer of livestock photographer in action

View of a site specific installation by artists Uschi Huber and Jorg Paul Janka. They deployed display cases, DVD players and monitors and stools. Viewers watched videos and stills documented by members of various community groups in Germany, including the Central Association of German Chimney sweeps and the Dusseldorf scuba divers club

OHIO MAGAZINE

Found magazine was the only vernacular magazine or zine. Zines grew out of the amateur journalism movement of the early 20th century and the modern blog owes its existence to the zine

FOUND MAGAZINE Editors requested that material from the Found magazine archive (consisting of found images and finders’ letters) be fixed to a wall to create a “readable wall”. Installation wall text visible (left)

Found magazine installation: detail of the wall that shows one of the contributions received by the editors of Found magazine

Found magazine installation (detail) shows combination of found photos and reader’s letter. Each envelope in the archive unpacks to make a collage like this.

PERMANENT FOOD

This artist’s magazine is produced by Maurizio Cattelan as part of his output. This installation - in the form of public art - was designed for CUBE by the curator and design team as a homage to Permanent Food. A fax machine received images from outside the gallery, who responded to invites to send in found material.

Faxes from the public were received then collected in a box to be bound together to make a special “found” edition of EMBLEM, Manchester Metropolitan University’s in-house magazine project. This way the exhibition generates its own magazine

Faxes were hung from hooks and images of magazine subscription cards were projected into the wall

Found, Shared: The Magazine Photowork. Curated by David Brittain in co-operation with MMU Design School staff, David Crow, Graeme Brooker, Neil Grant, Shelley McNulty. Design and murals by Nigel Aono-Billson.

Funding from AHRC, MIRIAD (MMU) and CUBEPartner organization: Visual Studies Workshop (USA)

Catalogue by Righton Press