JOIN USJustin Coombes first read about the concept of ‘alterity’, which is the state of being other, in the work of French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty in 2004. But it was only a few years back that he started using the concept in photography. Since then the British photographer has given voices to an acid-scarred crow; the Taoist and Buddhist deity Kannon; a pregnant, nesting kingfisher, and an officious Tokyo tour guide. He will now be conducting a two-day workshop titled ‘Talking Photography: Speaking for Others’ — as a part of year-long photography festival Habitat Photosphere — where both sessions will be interconnected through interactive exercises and slide shows.
“We will be sharing stories and concentrating on photography’s capacity to do that. The first session will feature my talk on the subject of ‘alterical photography’. Most of the examples I draw on come from the field of photojournalism, but we will not be limited to that mode,” Coombes tells Metrolife.
“This will be followed by group work in which we will brainstorm, discuss and plan new projects. It’s important that participants find the time to take photographs between the two sessions, as the second session will concentrate on critiquing and editing our pictures. There won’t be enough time during the sessions to take pictures,” he says.
Coombes, who lectures at Southampton Solent University and the Ruskin School of Art, Oxford University, says that the workshop will be a good starting point to initiate a discourse on this subject. “The concept alone will not empower the photographer, but being aware of the idea and its history will be a good starting point. As I will argue in my workshops, and as we will demonstrate in the work we produce that ‘alterically’ requires a great deal of imagination,” he says.
According to London-based Coombes, even nearly 200 years after its invention, there is still huge debate about what a photograph actually is. “One of the paradoxes about photography that I find so fascinating is that on one hand it is extremely precise (for instance a digital photograph can be perfectly reproduced ad infinitum) but on the other it is, as you say, fluid,” he says.
“But part of the point of the workshops is to demonstrate that however hard we work as photographers, we will always produce meanings beyond our intentions. So there is alterity in the very act of taking a picture,” he says.
One particular moment, he says, that heightened his awareness about this concept was on his wedding day. Coombes, who is married to an Indian, says that he “experienced wonderful moments of ‘alterity’ during the traditional Hindu wedding ceremony in Lucknow”.
“I was especially aware of how groups of different people, especially extended family, were observing my wife and I, creating their own versions of our existence and how inevitably inaccurate those versions would have been,” he says.
“Marriage is, of course, a deeply personal and private experience but the public display of a wedding underlined to me the various prisms through which others see us: political, familial and sexual,” he adds.
He says that an artist constantly looks back over his works to look for patterns that shape his oeuvre.
“I too try to see what I have done in the past. What has worked and what has failed. Do I want to extend or disrupt those patterns in my next works, or perhaps both?”
he says.
“I realised only recently that there was a constant thread of trying to see through the eyes of another in my work, so this workshop, and my latest art project, seek to explore that tendency further,” he adds.
Talking Photography: Speaking for Others will be held on August 13 and 20 at Experimental Arts Gallery, India Habitat Centre from 11 am to 3 pm.