Exercise: A Decisive Moment

The aim of this exercise is to read Simon Bainbridge's article on the 2011 Hereford Photography Festival, in which he presents five artists on the theme of Decisive Moments. Taking one of the artists we are then to write a 200 word reflective commentary.

I chose to look at the work of George Georgiou, born London 1961. Bainbridge presented Georgiou's work The Shadow of the Bear: Georgia / Ukraine. This is a piece of work to demonstrate the effect that Russia has on its neighbouring countries. I found this piece of work hard to follow, the images were small on the PC screen but I imagine in a gallery these would look more impressive. I do see how these images string together to form a basic documentary but do not feel that the decisive moment is strong.

Looking at Georgiou's more recent work, Last Stop, did resonate with me. All of these images are taken from a London bus and carry a great theme: a documentary of a bus ride in which the outside literally does appear as another disconnected world of moments of time, some captured in great decisive moments. 

There is an air of continuity carried by the bus ride that takes the viewer to different parts of London, occupied by very different people in many circumstances. There are too many images in this collection to show but I really admire the way many of them contained more than one decisive moment.

George Georgiou - Last Stop

[200 words]

The exercise continues with listening to Jon Levy on the subject of The Intent of Documentary, making reflective comments.

From what I could extract the focus on this interview revolved around photo-journalism. Levy makes an important point that the intent of the photographer defines whether or not it falls into the genre of photo-journalism. This intent often being deciphered after the event has taken place. Could this 'intent' be to report, to shock, to confuse (propaganda), promote? I am trying to think of an intent that would not or could not fall into the category of photo-journalism. After all isn't this just 'Story Telling' as Levy points out in his opening statements?

In the past Levy points out that photo-journalism was largely a western view of life but rightly rejects this claiming that it is the view point that is all important and not the origins of the photographer. A good point was also made about how much easier it is to connect with remote photographers to get varying viewpoints making the world of photography a much more broader.