Psychogeography

I feel drawn to psychogeography more than the previous genres explored in this part of the course and I feel that, so far, this where my work sits, although not strictly to the letter.  We are told in the course notes that it is "..about mindfully engaging with a physical place, looking at the geography, landmarks and architecture and responding to them in a literary or artistic manner".  Traditionally the place would be a city but I can see no reason why it couldn't incorporate the land and landscape and the wildlife within it.  I am a keen mountain walker and have recently returned from a trip to Scotland where we completed three planned walks and photographed as we went.  I include some of these images at the end.  We are told that psychogeography is linked to the Situationist International movement which was a group of Marxixt artists who believed that capitalism was destroying community.  Although it began as a group of artists, it ended up as a political group.  Wikipedia tells us that it was a group of social revolutionaries made up of avant-garde artists, intellectuals and political theorists and it was active from 1957 - 1972. (Wikipedia, 2015)  Guy Debord defined psychogeography, in 1955, as "the study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organised or not, on the emotions and behaviour of individuals".  It is just about anything that takes pedestrians off their predictable paths and jolts them into a new awareness of the urban landscape. (I would argue also just landscape.) (Wikipedia, 2015)

Two main terms are used in psychogeography: flaneur/flaneuse and Derive.  According to Wikipedia  a derive or drift is an unplanned journey through a landscape on which the surrounding architecture and geography directs the travellers with the goal of encountering a new and authentic experience. (Wikipedia, 2015) The flaneur or flaneuse, on the other hand, is the participant in such a derive.  So, according to the course notes psychogeography becomes a thinker who wanders or drifts through the landscape responding to the things that take their fancy, and, presumably in the case of a photography, photographing those things.  The course notes also point out that a more considered or planned route may be taken, often using a map to plan a route.

I was intrigued by the work of Pedro Guimaraes and the commitment it must have taken for him to visit all of the locations on his map.  He has taken to more planned option, although he has made his own map.  The random aspect comes in when he place an image of the Queen's head over the map of London.  The planned aspect is when he plots his locations.  When his images are examined, they could really be from a new town so how real or imaginary is 'Blue Town'. (Guimaraes, 2015)

Debra Fabricus describes herself as a Flaneuse and her project explores the nine mile route of the Regents Canal in London.  I like the way her images concentrate on the bottom section of each building and give as much emphasis to the wonderful reflections.  She doesn't say if the images were taken on the same day and she waited for calm conditions or had to pick several calm days or, even, did she use a very long exposure to eradicate the ripples on the water?

Jodie Taylor's photographs fascinate me.  Has she deliberately selected this type of location from where she lived or are these places she used to play as a child or did the family keep their car in the lock up.  The work asks several interesting questions with, perhaps, as many different answers.  I chose to look at her images before reading her excellent blog where she does answer these questions.  Maybe when they were/are exhibited it would be interesting to ask the viewer to look at them before reading the explanations to see if their story was the correct.

Is it possible to produce an objective depiction of a place or will the outcome always be influenced by the artist and does this matter?

I think the first thing to consider, here, is the route that a person takes.  If it is to be totally random how is it to be done.  On way that I have thought of is, from the starting point walk to a junction and turn left, walk to the next junction and turn right etc.  That would make it random in a location unknown to the flaneur/flaneuse.  If the location was familiar it would make it less random as they would always know where they are. I think that Pedro Guimaraes went someway to doing this by placing the Queen's head on the map of London.  He then made it less objective by choosing the actual location unless he had no knowledge of London.  Debra Fabricus walked the length of the Regents Canal, but did she choose/plan this route; if so it decreases the objectivity.  In Jodie Taylor's case she was very familiar with her location and must have known what she would encounter on her route.  How to make the images objective though.  Surely a photographer is always going to photograph what interests them and I think that is what these three photographers may have done.  Perhaps if three other photographers had repeated their journeys they would have photographed different things.  A way to make it more objective would be to devise a random plan: at location 1 face north and take an image, at location 2 face east and so on.  It still doesn't make it totally objective as the photographer would still select what interests them and make selections on focal length of lens and depth of field among other things.  I actually don't think that it matters and it would be interesting to walk someone else's journey and compare one photographer's images and interests with another.  I think it should be a very personal journey and objectivity isn't an issue.  In a couple of weeks I shall be visiting Lille, a city I have never been to or have any knowledge of so it will be interesting to try out this genre.

Two other literary exponents of psychogeography are Will Self (I have ordered his book and look forward to reading it) and Robert MacFarlane.  I have read several of MacFarlane's books and two come to mind with regard to psychogeography: The Wild Places and The Old Ways.  In these books he makes many such journeys, many unplanned and he writes evocatively of what he sees. These journeys are all on foot, apart from one in a sailing boat in The Old Ways, and often they are multi-day trips and he always sleeps under the stars.  He begins The Wild places with a quote from John Muir who writes " I only went out for a walk, and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found I was really going in."  On of my favourite chapters in Wild Ways is 'Forest'.  In it, in December, he walks into the wilderness east of Rannoch Moor in Scotland to explore the Coille Dubh or Black Wood.  He spends all day wandering in the wood, a flaneur, and spends the night there the only way, he argues to really experience the wild places.  He is not a photographer but a writer and he crafts beautiful word pictures of the thing that resonate with him.  He also collects things.  He tells us that his habit of collecting stones and other talismans was a family one.  His parents were collectors.  Shelves and window-sills in his house were covered in shells, pebbles, twists of driftwood from rivers and sea.  For as long as he can remember they had picked up things.  He begins the chapter by telling us that he placed a piece of dolphin-shaped wildwood pine on a shelf above his desk. (MacFarlane, 2007, p.88)  So not only does he give us evocative word pictures he makes personal and emotive collections.  This is so true of our myself and my wife.  In The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot Robert MacFarlane follows the tracks, holloways, drove-roads and sea paths that form part of a vast ancient network of routes criss-crossing the British Isles and beyond.  As in The Wild Places he creates word images and collects found objects.  In the chapter 'Granite' he describes a journey through the granite wilderness of the Cairngorm Mountains through the highest pass in the country: The Lairig Ghru. At 835m it is higher than most Lake District mountains a nearly at Munro height, yet still the mountains tower on either side.  It is a route I have walked myself on several occasions and, like MacFarlane, I have slept out under the stars.  He says in this chapter that it was a ritual walk across the Cairngorm Massif from south to north, and these were the things they met with in its course: grey glacial erratics, river sand, siskins, pine cones, midges, white pebbles, the skeleton of a raven, footpath, drove roads, deer paths, dead trees, sadness, rounded mountains and fire. (MacFarlane, 2012, P.185)  The previous chapter is called 'Gneiss' and in it he describes a journey to the Isle of Harris after first crossing Lewis.  He writes of Lewis "Dawn: two more eagles circling above.  A big easterly wind meeting the sea wind from the west; the sky above the beehives (beehive shaped shielings) full of crashing air.  I walked on south-east all that day towards the Isle of Harris, following the shieling path, croft path, drover's road and green way, stitching a route together." (MacFarlane, 2012, pp163- 164).  On Harris he meets sculptor Steve Dilworth who  "...makes ritual objects for a tribe that doesn't exist."  Among the materials that he uses in his work are the skulls, beaks, bodies, eyes, skins and wings of herons, wrens, guillemots, gannets......and dragonflies; tallow, lard, blubber, seawater collected during equinoctial gales.......eggs, feathers and sand. (MacFarlane, 2012, pp171-172)  We were privileged to see some of Steve Dilworth's sculptures for sale in may in a gallery near Beauly in Scotland.  His work is intriguing, unusual to say the least but absolutely beautiful.

Through Robert MacFarlane's writings I became aware of another Flaneuse: Nan Shepherd, who lived all of her life in Aberdeen and wrote beautifully about the Cairngorm Mountains. In The Living Mountain she writes "Summer on the high plateau can be as delectable as honey; it can also be a roaring scourge." (Shepherd, 1997,  p1)  Another flaneuse, although she had probably never heard of psychogeography, Nan Shepherd describes her journeys into the Cairngorm Mountains of Scotland.  Her intense, poetic prose explores and records the rocks, rivers, creatures and hidden aspects of this majestic landscape.

Richard Long is another artist who has worked in the style of psychgeography.   According to Wikipedia "Long made his international reputation during the 1970s, but already with sculptures made as the result of epic walks, these take him through rural and remote areas in Britain, or as far afield as the plains of Canada, Mongolia and Bolivia. He walks at different times for different reasons. At times, these are predetermined courses and concepts; yet equally, the idea of the walk may assert itself in an arbitrary circumstance. Guided by a great respect for nature and by the formal structure of basic shapes, Long never makes significant alterations to the landscapes he passes through. Instead he marks the ground or adjusts the natural features of a place by up-ending stones for example, or making simple traces." (Wikipedia 2015) 

Towards the end of Land Matters by Liz Wells discusses journeys  She begins by mentioning two English Exponents of what I thing must be psychogeography: Kate Mellor and Mark Power.  Both used maps as the basis for selecting observation points.  In Island Kate Mellor planned a journey round the British coast taking a photograph every 50 kilometres.  The work was published in a book which also includes the map.  In A System of Edges (2005) Mark Power used a London A-Z to explore the city boundary.  He went to the edge of each of the 56 pages and photographed a place just beyond the edge. Power remarked that, although he had a structure, it was only once the photography was completed that he realised that the project was about social identity, about inclusion/exclusion and the significance of being in - or beyond - London. (Wells, 2011)

Finally I like Will Self's definition of psychogeography in the Guardian newspaper: they study of how places make you feel.

 References

Guimaraes, P. (2015) Bluetown [online] Available from: http://www.pedroguimaraes.net/studio/sets/personal-work/ [Accessed 16.6.15]

MacFarlane, R. (2007) The Wild Places London: Granta Books

MacFarlane, R. (2012) The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot London: Penguin Books

Self, W. (2015) Non Fiction Review, Book of the Week; 60 Degrees North: Araound the World in Search of Home: Malachy Tallach, London, The Guardian

Wells, L. (2011) Land Matters: Landscape Photography, Culture and Identity Kindle London/New York: I.B.Tauris

Wikipedia (2015) Derive [online] Available from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/D%C3%A9rive [Accessed 16.6.15]

Wikipedia (2015) Psychogeography [online] Available from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychogeography [Accessed 16.6.15]

Wikipedia (2015) Situationist International [online] Available from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situationist_International [Accessed 16.6.15]

Wikipedia (2015) Richard Long (artist) [online] Available from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Long_(artist) [Accessed 16.6.15]

I include some images below from the walk I completed in Glen Affric with my brother this May.  My diary for the day can be found on my personal Natural Musings blog by clicking the link.  I think these images reflect my emotional engagement with these hills and the views that resonated with me as a flaneur.