Terrific piece in the Guardian today about George Plemper’s Thamesmead photographs. Kevin alerted me to them, saying it was like looking at ghosts. He’s right, and I see these very much in the light of John Carney’s The Outside Of Everything – evidence of another world beamed in from the past. A memory of a past that is often at odds with the ‘officially’ remembered versions. Like Dave Haslam’s Not Abba, or even Life On Mars to some extent (but not Ashes To Ashes), it goes against the grain of the accepted collective memory. What’s also really interesting to me is that Plemper had these photos unpublished for three decades before he was able to share them through his Flickr pages. And it is in sites like Flickr that there is that interesting relationship between the global publishing power of the Internet and the personal scale of things. The personal becomes public. Or vice versa.
I do not agree with Plemper’s statement that you cannot be an idealist in teaching though. I think that teaching is the perfect way to have idealism challenged, as you inevitably come into contact with so many different people with different stories to tell. Things suddenly don’t seem to be so black and white. It does not mean that you suddenly become a hardened realist, but it does make youthful idealism sometimes seem pretty silly. Or that at least you are mde to modify that idealism and consider how it can be put into practice. It very much challenges you to think creatively about how you can do what you think is right. It’s one of the reasons I love the job so much. I think Plemper also acknowledges this on the last slide in the Guardian article when he quotes Dylan’s “I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now” line.
The other thing that strikes me is that you could really not get away with taking these kind of photos now. I’ve had this conversation with people before, about the fear of photographing young people. It will be interesting to see what the visual record of young people in school today will look like in another three decades. Will it be reflected in rigidly posed press release images and/or scrappy candid snaps and video taken on mobile phones? And whilst that just doesn’t sound so appealing now, will the patina of time make it seem quaint and vaguely old fashioned?
Wait and see.
Good points. I make the same point, about it not being possible to take pictures like this these days, in my Guardian blog on George Plemper's photographs. For me, part of the charm of George's pictures are that the subjects are so calm and unselfconscious: partly, I suspect, because George was trusted, as the 'teacher' (an insider not an outsider), partly because he clearly has a gift for putting his subjects at ease (these are remarkably respectful portraits), but partly also because there was no real expectation on either side that these were for public show. As Michael Collins notes in his appreciation in the Guardian today, this was not an era of surveillance and happy slapping and Utube. A common response is that these epics show an innate 'innocence' in the children; more likely, they reflect a time when young people (as George puts it) "were happy to show themselves for what they were."
My blog is at: http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/joepublic/2008/05/reminders_of_a_forgotten_innoc.html
Michael's piece is at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2008/may/14/communities.society
Patrick Butler
editor, Society Guardian
Posted by: patrick butler | May 14, 2008 at 18:49
I find it interesting that when I look at many the photos I take of students in my school, that "innate sense of innocence" is generally still evident. Often it takes me by surprise, perhaps because, despite everything and as much as I fight it, I am on some level infected by the mediated image of contemporary young people.
Posted by: Me | May 14, 2008 at 20:39
I mentioned seeing ghosts in the literal sense. This was the area I grew up, give or take a few miles, and the time I grew up, and it's the first time I recall seeing landmarks and colours that I recognise published in photos. I am not sure innocence is the right word. It's more a sort of confidence I think, or naturalness.
Posted by: Kevin Pearce | May 15, 2008 at 10:00
Funny your comments mention innocence so much. When you wondered what the visual record of this generation would be my instant thought was of the overtly sexualised photos young people take of themselves and publish on their blogs. Maybe our fear of photographing children has led them to see photography as largely a sexual medium. We're afraid to photograph young people, yet their self-portraits often reflect what society is most afraid of.
Posted by: carrie | May 15, 2008 at 19:23
more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/interactive/2008/jun/04/george.plemper.audio.slideshow
Posted by: patrick | June 04, 2008 at 13:12
George Plemper is in the Guardian (again) - we've done an audio slideshow, with 'then and now' pics and interviews with some of his original subjects. You can see it here:
www.guardian.co.uk/society/interactive/2008/jun/04/george...
George went back to Thamesmead a couple of weeks ago at the invitation of the school to take pics of some of the current pupils. He's not lost his touch! You can see a gallery of these pics at:
www.guardian.co.uk/society/gallery/2008/jun/04/george.ple...
patrick Butler, editor, Society Guardian
Posted by: patrick Butler | June 04, 2008 at 18:34