IndieFlix and supporting documentary filmmaking

The hardest part of documentary photography is getting your work seen.

I’ve written before about how some of the world’s documentary photographers struggle to get their award-winning published. There simply aren’t enough news-focused magazines to support the medium, financially or otherwise.

For those who have not gained a foothold at the picture desks of the British supplement magazines or the American and German markets, the challenge of getting their work scene is even more of a personal Everest.

Those who turn to the internet find shrinking hope. While online platforms are able to display images beautifully, the reality is that a personal website generates only passing glances.

The images we consume online these days are increasingly social media-led – either images from friends (Facebook and Instagram) or through apps, a kind of curated best of which often only considers work made available through agencies. The independent artist has been slowly squeezed out of the picture.

But perhaps there is a glimmer of hope.

For documentary filmmakers, who for so long like stills photographers are underpaid, underexposed and undervalued, there is an organisation created in 2005 called IndieFlix.

IndieFlix says about itself: “For far too long, filmmakers have been forced to either sell out or starve. Thousands of brilliant, creative minds submit their works to festivals, hoping to catch a meaningful audience. Fewer than one per cent actually break through. As if finding the financing and making the movie wasn’t hard enough in the first place. We’re here to level the playing field.

“Founded by filmmakers, IndieFlix is part champion, part curator. We’re so inspired by independent filmmakers and the work they produce, we’ve created a stellar platform for you to discover the best and quirkiest around.”

NOTE: IndieFlix asked me to review their service in May 2013

Marlboro Nights, Come To Where The Smoking Was (looking back at the ban on smoking in public)

[gallery]My six-week exhibition at The Continetal in Preston has just come to an end.

Marlboro Nights the exhibition marked the fifth anniversary of the ban on smoking in public in public in England (July 1, 2007).

Marlboro Nights the book is availble now on Amazon in the UK and the US.

This big brash book documents smokers before the ban and then follows them as they were forced to go outside. Some of the portraits can be found elsewhere on this blog (or on www.gazcook.com where you can buy a signed copy from the store), below are some lovely landscape shots.

NOTE:

Is the Daily Mail the saviour of documentary photography?

The Picture Post was a British photojournalism magazine in circulation between 1938 and 1957.

Since the Picture Post’s demise, documentary photography has suffered a long and slow death in this country.

Publications showing in-depth photo essays have dwindled over the decades. Hardly any exist today.

Newspaper magazine supplements – such as Sunday Times Magazine, Guardian Weekend magazine and Telegraph Magazine – were once proud adversaries of documentary work. 

But from their 70s and 80s photojournalism heyday, these supplements have chosen to cut back on their once impressive documentary coverage in favour of celebrity driven content.

While there has been the occasional renaissance in coverage, the Sunday Times Magazine’s Spectrum strand springs to mind, the British press has largely become a wasteland for photojournalists.

But over the past 12 months something quite remarkable has happened – photojournalism, or at least a bastardised version of it, has become increasingly popular thanks to an unlikely source.

Step forward the Daily Mail, a British middle-class tabloid better known for whipping up scare stories and savagely attacking any woman deemed past it who dares to give herself a makeover.

The Daily Mail Online is officially the world’s most read news website (though you could argue that the New York Times website still has more hits if you take away views from the Mail’s sister titles). We are talking 45 million hits in a month (December 2012)

The British Guardian newspaper produces innovative photographic slideshows and actively promotes documentary photography online.

But the Mail Online beats it hands down with a fast moving, celebrity-driven front page with long title headlines which are optimised for website search engines.

Strangely, the stories you find in Mail Online are hugely different to much of the content in the print version.

But what editorial staff at Mail Online have quickly realised is that as well as a thirst for tittle-tattle on Cheryl Cole and Rihanna, readers also love a photo essay.

And the Mail duly serves up photo story after photo story, with collections of images ranging from the British weather, archived black and white collections and, more recently, documentary essays on subjects like Gypsy travellers and the Chinese culture of eating dogs.

Sadly, all of these stories are subject to the Mail’s derogatory spin, which can be xenophobic and prejudicial.

But the sheer volume of photoessays, sourced from various agencies, are giving a new platform to essays from around the world.

The discovery that there is a news-hunting audience out there ready to devour photo essays is a huge boost to the photography industry.

As the hits mount up, expect more online publications to follow suit and give documentary photographers new avenues to showcase their work.

Alternate look at Wadi Rum

As well as it's stunning landscape, Wadi Rum is also home to the semi-nomadic Bedouin people.

Contrary to popular belief, these people are more Westernised than you would think. These images include the Bedoouin town of Wadi Rum.

An interview with Garry Cook

[gallery]

You interviewed four paedophiles in Holland - what drew you to that and how did you find it?
Paedophilia is a very difficult subject and because of that it is hardly ever discussed. The media has a role to play in this area and, in this country, it has failed to contribute to managing the problem. How many people know if paedophilia is a disease, is hereditary or just a choice by one person?
We need to know more about the subject because the present system of dealing with it – which is led by the media, particularly the printed press – is to condemn the perpetrator, expose them and hound them out of their homes.
But these people have to live somewhere and surely it is far better to try and manage them in society rather than force them underground where the situation can, and often does, worsen. In Holland there are politicians and individuals willing to speak about these issues and the media reports on some of this with some intelligence. It is a hugely different way of thinking to here in Britain. 


You've done a photo project of Hebden Bridge, a quiet and picturesque town in West Yorkshire which is quite at odds with some of your more gritty work - why did you choose it as a project?
Because part of my work aims to attract more people to photography as art, projects like my Hebden Bridge images are important. It is a simple set of images documenting a town, its people and their way of life.
I am applying the same principles to this kind of project – to document and record, but am including less people and more landscape imagery. This traditional subject-matter is more accessible to people who don’t live and breathe photography and these are the people photography as in industry needs to attract if it is to survive as a profession.
At the moment photography – and I’m talking of documentary, editorial, street photography and social issues photography – is struggling because there are so few avenues for it to be seen and to be sold. The Hebden Bridge project is part of the Love Town series and will soon be published in issue three of the Love Town zine.



How did you get involved with Control and how have you found it collaborating with others?
The two exhibitions we have put on this year, in Liverpool ad London, have been superb. In Liverpool we got ourselves a very rundown warehouse and put on a show without electricity but with free running water – down the walls. It was a spectacular success, even hosting one of the big corporate events during the Look2011 International Photography Festival we were part of.


In London we have Oxford House, a quiet stunning venue in Bethnal Green. I don’t think we would have got the venue or been part of Photomonth, the East London Photography Festival if it wasn’t for one or two members of our group, particularly Pablo Allison and Ann-Marie Conlon who new the venue and had contacts within the festival. It’s these kinds of things which makes collaborating a joy.
But collaborating with others is not always easy. I put on a show in Blackpool this summer in less than two weeks, working with just the curator, Tom Ireland. It was fast and easy. With Control we give ourselves six months build-up to each show we do and at times it can be confusing to keep track of what has been decided and slow to agree to a proposal.
Somehow we ended up launching the show several days before the preview night which means two trips to London inside a week. I couldn’t tell you why this happened but it’s one of those group problems where the majority rule sometimes over-rides common sense.
There are usually nine or ten of us involved in Control. We have been lucky in that we are a placid lot but when people don’t reply to your emails – and often you feel you don’t need to reply because you agree with what’s been proposed so don’t feel the need to comment – it can be frustrating. I’ve been on both sides of this scenario and no-one is really in the wrong but it can make you wonder why are you putting in the effort but are getting nowhere.
Of course, come showtime everyone is delighted and these problems are distant memories. We keep up-to-date via an email group but so much information can get lost very quickly. The problem is we haven’t found a better way of communicating. Someone suggested Blackberry messaging but there was nearly a riot.
Control is a fantastic exhibition, examining the theme of Control in people’s lives through some hugely diverse styles of photography and subject matter. For my strand, Women and Alcohol, you get to see images of women getting drunk. It’s one of the more light-hearted projects in the exhibition.

Anything else you'd like to add?
I’m really keen to put on an exhibition in Preston during the Guild 2012 celebrations. I’m looking at documenting Preston’s diversity. For this I’m hoping to work with community figures to help me reach out and find inspirational and people to photograph, and also want to involve local business to help finance the project.

Control: www.thephotogroup.co.uk
More photographs at www.gazcook.com
The Love Town zine is available to by at www.lovetown.eu
The love Town podcast is available to download for free on iTunes at http://bit.ly/lovetownpodcast