Discussion Photograph (see Dec 11 2011 in the Comments Link)

 A Submission to Sleep

Four youthful figures, students perhaps, lie prone, at rest across beanbag chairs at the staged footing of an event unknown. There’s a humour in the casual pose of the figures who, in full public view, seem to have just dumped themselves there without a care in the world. In the upper right corner, just within the periphery of one’s outer vision another lesser activity, not at first glance clear, is taking place.

Large format photographers, while viewing the ground glass under their dark cloths, are well trained to always consider carefully the edges and corners of their photographs as they compose, as often these areas hold or give substance to the image proper. The slightest shift of camera direction can change drastically the final result.

With 35mm cameras, as used here, minus the customary set up time afforded large format, the keenly observant photographer does the same thing; he scans the edges prior to pressing the shutter, albeit instinctively.

The eye, momentarily captured at once by the central figures of this image, senses a form sitting in the upper right corner. It could be a broad backed forestry worker in an industrial style chequered workshirt. On closer inspection it is revealed how the mind plays tricks and one sees small legs protruding from under the shirt, realising that this is in fact a small child standing on the surrounding platform, reaching for the back of someone’s head, as if about to jump them.

This hilarious error of judgement is further added to by the heavily anchored strops set into the ground behind them, like some bungy awaiting release to hurl both into the strata beyond.

The confident submission of the centrally framed youth, collapsed into the body moulding comfort of the beanbags is immediately striking. Older persons in a public arena might be less prone to such wilful abandonment of consciousness.

We notice the figure on the far left has even kicked off his branded sneakers and loosened his belt a little-- he is apparently there for the long haul. The girl next to him lies face to the sky, vulnerable, confidently comatose, while the next figure appears grateful the bean bags were there to capture his helpless toe-tipped stumble into blissful oblivion. The last remaining figure looks like he may be subconsciously calculating the results of his recent maths exam for errors, but the overall impression of the students’ total submission to sleep, stretching out in such random, abandoned comfort in a public place is something I find very encouraging.

Given today’s political currency, we in New Zealand have little need, at least by overseas comparison, to take up arms in protest for our liberty. We assume our safe political situation, taking it almost as a given. We can safely lie around on bean bags. In countries struggling for their democratic voice, thousands of youthful students lie dead on bloodied pavements and blood soaked desert sands, a far cry from our present comfort.

I consider this photograph to be a very successful image, as it reaches me on various levels of awareness. Many of Julian Ward’s photos take a gentle, enquiring approach, other images of his, I find perfectly poetic, some even grate like an old bus that can’t find the correct gear to change down to; that’s not in any way to be seen as a fault of the photographers, rather, it tells me that I need to look harder, for longer, to reflect with a mind that has stepped away from the mundane and gain the deeper centres of possible meanings his richly printed photographs offer us.

Tom Elliott.
Karekare. Waitakere.
December 2011