Public benches once more

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Shopping in Spalding, Lincolnshire, the other day we passed several benches that had recently been painted. They were the sort of bench that public and private authorities buy with everything in mind except people sitting on them in comfort. They looked relatively inexpensive, vandal-proof, low maintenance and were clearly made with an eye to how they looked rather than how they performed as a resting place for the human posterior in all its manifold forms. Comfort had been given no consideration whatsoever - they wouldn't have chosen hard, cold steel if it had. Nor had lumbar support ever entered the mind of either the designer or the purchasing officer. But, they looked sleek, modern and eye-catching, particularly with their new coat of paint, and so those responsible could rest easy, knowing that the public would see that they had been discharging their duties with the required diligence. That is, if they ignored the fact that not a single person was sitting on them.

I've lamented elsewhere in this blog - several times, and at length - the fact that public benches frequently look great but are absolutely useless as a place to sit, rest and reflect upon the world. It seems that today, as these examples testified, benches can have every ancillary attribute but never the main quality required to warrant their name. In such designs form is a stranger to function.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Sony RX100
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 31.8mm (86mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f4.5
Shutter Speed: 1/100 sec
ISO:125
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Making the best of time

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"Which of us is not saying to himself -- which of us has not been saying to himself all his life: "I shall alter that when I have a little more time"? We never shall have any more time. We have, and we have always had, all the time there is."
from "How to Live on 24 Hours a Day" by Arnold Bennett (1867-1931), English novelist and writer

In 1910, Arnold Bennett, an English novelist best known for his novels such as "Anna of the Five Towns" and "Clayhanger", wrote a short, improving text called "How to Live on 24 Hours a Day"(Project Gutenberg download here). It wasn't the first such piece to come from his pen. Only the previous year he had written, "Literary Taste: How to Form It", in 1903 "How to become and Author", and  in 1898 "Journalism for Women". There were other such texts too, pieces that contemporary writers saw as "Victorian", old fashioned, not "modern". Bennett freely acknowledged that he wrote profusely and with an income in mind, and yet as more recent critics have come to acknowledge, that motivation didn't prevent him writing works that bear reading today.

In the essay quoted at the head of this piece Bennett sought to show how, though incomes varied, with some amassing much and many accumulating little, rich and poor alike share exactly the same number of hours every day. He lamented the kind of tedious work that many engaged in and tried to show how people could make better use of their time away from paid work, looking at how, for example, the journey to work could be made more productive, or how the time after the evening meal could be better utilised. Put in those terms the tract sounds mundane, and coming from someone who had made himself very comfortable through his writing, more than a little patronising. Yet, as I discovered a few years ago, taken in its entirety this piece repays reading even today.

On a recent visit to Barton upon Humber I saw the scene I captured in today's photograph and pondered the great value that can attach to unplanned conversation, wherever it takes place. As I've grown older and the pressures of work are now less, self-imposed rather than employment-imposed, I've stopped seeing this kind of socialising as something of a waste of time and started to value it as an activity that can be life-enhancing. The other, quite unrelated, thought that came to mind as I framed this scene was the patched up wall behind the sheltered seating. Graffiti had been roughly painted over and the broken render filled but not painted. The latter, when I first looked at it, appeared to be a cloud trying to put a symbolic damper on the meeting of the people below. On reviewing it on my computer it took more of the form of a heavily perspiring horse! Ah, as W.H. Davies wrote in his poem, Leisure, "What is this life if, full of care, We have no time to stand and stare?"


photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Camera: Sony RX100
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 19.5mm (53mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/200 sec
ISO:125
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Oh no, not another bench!

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"Another unsettling element in modern art is that common symptom of immaturity, the dread of doing what has been done before."
Edith Wharton (1862 - 1937) U.S. novelist

The title of this piece wasn't exactly the phrase that my wife used when she watched me get up from our dry bench and start to photograph this nearby wet one, but it is the gist of what I thought was her rather hurtful remark (I'm a sensitive soul you know :). I've commented before on my predilection for photographing public seating. Some might think this an obsession, others a harmless character trait, and there will be those who see it as a mark of the lack of imagination in the photographer. However, in my defence I offer the quotation at the head of this piece. It is by the famous U.S. author, Edith Wharton, who was the first female winner of the Pulitzer Prize, in 1921, with her book, "The Age of Innocence". I make no claims for art in my photography, but I do think that mining the seam of a defined subject is a good way for any photographer to proceed.

Thinking further about the quotation it seems to me it is truer today than it was when it was made. Certainly many UK artists of the last twenty years have skipped from one subject to another, using a variety of media ranging from paint to concrete to elephant dung to dead animals to...well, you name it. I've often thought the productions of the likes of Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin to be shallow, juvenile, the sort of work where what you see is all there is. Edith Wharton's "that common symptom of immaturity" strikes a chord with me.
I used to think that my photographic ouvre was rather wide ranging, and I recall blogging a piece to that end. However, when I stand back and look at my output I've come to realise that I do plough a fairly defined group of furrows. And yes, one of them is public benches!

I took a few shots of this rather uncomfortable bench, including this one that is deliberately slightly overexposed. I was looking to de-emphasise the ground and adjoining wall, and, even though it took the detail out of some of the highlights on the bench itself, it's the photograph I prefer. This sepia-tone finish on a black and white conversion also appealed to me.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Lumix LX3
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 5.1mm (24mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f2.8
Shutter Speed: 1/200
ISO: 80
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Public seating - again!

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I've said it before and I'll say it again - I seem to have an obsession with making photographs out of uncomfortable, jazzed up public seating!

The other day I was in Kirton with a few minutes to kill (Kirton in Holland that is, not Kirton in Lindsey), so I wandered around the centre of the large village with my LX3 looking for photographs. I took a couple of shots of the statue of William Dennis, "The Potato King", and several of the exterior of the medieval church. I was pleased to see that a few trees have been cut down around the church. Normally I lament the passing of big trees, but there are plenty left in this locality, and the removal of a few specimens has opened up the view of the church to great advantage, not only for the passing photographer but also for the look of the centre of the settlement. I took a couple of shots around the war memorial too, and noted that the recently installed gates with two figures looked very "heroic Soviet-era" in style. However, none of what I captured was particularly great, so I wandered a bit more.

I'd already passed the brightly painted seats-cum-sculpture that were installed in Kirton a few years ago amid some controversy, but thought I'd look at them again. I don't know about you, but I find that sometimes photographs don't appear to me until I've pondered a potential subject on a few separate occasions. And so it proved on this day. The metal seats are pierced with decorative, leaf-like shapes, with those on the seat section having mesh behind the holes, whilst those on the back of the seat are open. All of the apertures were making highlights in the strong shadows that were being thrown on the block paving, so I thought I'd try a semi-abstract shot that included part of the seat and part of its shadow, aiming to capitalise on the light shapes against the darkness. This is the shot that most pleased me. The seat is bright green, but I found that the image had greater force when converted to black and white.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Lumix LX3
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 5.1mm (24mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f2.8
Shutter Speed: 1/320
ISO: 80
Exposure Compensation: -0.66 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

An obsession?

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Sometimes you have to be honest with yourself. You have to acknowledge your weaknesses. You have to face up to your obsessions and the fact that you have an unwholesome fixation. Today is my Tiger Woods moment, my time to come clean and admit that I have a compulsion that leads me to ... photograph public seating.

Where this comes from I don't really know, but if I was to place the blame anywhere (rather than on myself that is) it would be on seaside promenades. I first got hooked at Blackpool in Lancashire. When I went further up the coast to Morecambe I found I couldn't escape the dependency. Even a relocation to Lincolnshire on the other side of the country didn't allow me to elude my desire to make images of street furniture, and I found myself photographing examples in Heckington and Sleaford. Like everyone who has such a craving I thought I could kick the habit. It was only when, during a visit to Wisbech in Cambridgeshire, I found myself spurning the photogenic marina and further shots of interesting buildings old and new, and was focussing on a row of ridiculously uncomfortable stainless steel benches that I knew my problem was long term, and I needed to do something about it.

Today I take the first step in my rehabilitation. Instead of posting the original shot of the Wisbech benches for its own sake, I've included it only as the source image for today's colourful flight of fancy. This consists of the same image copied four times, rotated (and flipped), then coloured (with complementaries at opposite corners), all with the aim of turning the focus of my obsession into something quite different - a vibrant, symmetrical, radial pattern. I quite like it. The trouble is it has a sort of psychedelic feel to it, and is the sort of image that might have been projected as part of the light show at a concert by Traffic, Jefferson Airplane or some such 1960s rock band, and I wonder if I'm simply swapping one obsession for another. Don't know what I mean? See here, here and here!

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 16mm (32mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f6.3
Shutter Speed: 1/1250
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Benches, phones and bleak modernity

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In a couple of blog posts I've commented on the lack of comfort of much public seating, observing that it veers towards either the "artistic" or the "indestructable" (and sometimes both), qualities which rarely do anything for one's posterior. A few days ago I came across a bench that, in my experience, surpassed all others for the torture that it inflicted on my backside. It was made of wood and had no back, but what made it especially painful was the spacing between the "slats". In fact there were only 3 slabs of wood each about 4 inches (10cm) wide. But, presumably for aesthetic reasons, the voids between them measured exactly the same. Thus, it was impossible to position yourself without part of you slipping through the gaps and coming up against the sharp edge of the wood. It made eating my sandwich a much less pleasant experience than I'd have wished!

The location of this bench, should you wish to avoid it, is Fisher Square, Cambridge. This is one of the few determinedly modern squares in Cambridge: elsewhere classical and gothic buildings provide the backdrop. It is tacked on to the shopping centre of Lion Yard, and has been furnished with the usual contemporary trappings - uncomfortable benches (of course), block paving with patterns, solitary "specimen" trees, steel railings, steps, and in the middle the mandatory modern sculpture (with uplighters), in this case an incised granite boulder by Peter Randall-Page called, "Between the Lines". All in all it is as bleak a bit of Britain as you'll find anywhere. It's a fairly recent development but already the sleek lines are being mottled by discarded chewing gum.

However, such locations often provide photographic opportunities, and as I munched on my ham and tomatoes I spotted one that captured my depressed mood. Across the square a man was pacing up and down, animatedly talking into his mobile phone. As he stopped and gesticulated - seeming to want to make his point more forcibly to someone who couldn't see him! - I composed this shot and pressed the shutter. The discomfort coming from my backside, combined with the depressing environment, seemed to converge and produce an image that summed up a dismal aspect of modern life!

Tune in tomorrow for another cheery blog post from the front-line of amateur photography ;-)

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Lumix LX3
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 5.1mm (24mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f2.8
Shutter Speed: 1/400
ISO: 80
Exposure Compensation: -0.66 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Pity the poor posterior

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Public seating is becoming a recurring theme in my images. I've captured a curved (seemingly never-ending) bench, a seat that rotates to keep the occupants out of the wind, and an example made of curls and swirls. All these structures have two features in common - they are interesting to look at (and therefore to photograph), and they're pretty awful to sit on. Today's photograph shows a further example that shares these qualities.

The seating, known as "The Sampler", is outside "The Hub", Britain's National Centre for Craft and Design, at Sleaford, Lincolnshire. The red and yellow seats are painted metal discs on short poles - no backrest, cold to the touch, and not made with the human anatomy in mind. The large black structure has a big, central, parasol-like, metal disc on a pole, with a couple arms that extend from it (some are out of shot), with circular black seats and tables(?) that are mounted on wheels. A big open square shape that can be fitted with a screen(!) is also part of the ensemble. The structure was originally designed to rotate so that anyone who is foolish (or desperate) enough to sit on it could experience a different view should they so wish. However, it has now been fixed in place after boisterous local youths found it an exciting attraction. Perhaps they had read the views of a local spokesman who said “the piece is designed to be exciting and dynamic, and we hope it will become a focus for social as well as creative activity.”

There are many problems with this structure: the Arts Council funded price of £18,000 for a start; its design that manages to make something flimsy out of unyielding metal; the likelihood that it will never to be used with a screen and projected images; but most of all the fact that the designer created a structure that is best experienced not as you sit in comfort upon it, but as you gaze down at it from the balcony at the top of The Hub! The multiple black circles with the red and yellow highlights and the buff curve make a Miro-esque composition that must have looked great on his or her drawing board. However, one can only wish that as much thought had gone into its purpose as a place of repose as went into its function as a piece of eye-catching, multi-purpose street sculpture. It is clearly a form of public seating that follows the modern trend of trying to combine sculpture with a place to sit, and like other examples of the genre, sculpture has taken precedence over the provision of seating, with uncomfortable consequences for the public's posteriors!

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 40mm (80mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f7.1
Shutter Speed: 1/160
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On