I work with ideas but I am conscious that they will slowly evolve through the act of taking photographs.
In an introductory conversation with Mark Sanders, Waplington describes the project and his way of working: I try to never pre-visualise what I am going to make. Nick Waplington's 'Indecisive Memento' is a kind of document 'An eight week journey as a work of art' through Central and South America and the Pacific. It’s that they’re so coolly composed, so infernally correct that there’s nothing raw about them, and you find yourself thinking: would it not be more interesting if his moments were a little less decisive? This desire to organise and control has drawn admiration and criticism: The reason his photographs often feel numbly impersonal now is not just that they are familiar. His images are momentary glimpses of reality but organised into a geometric pattern. Cartier-Bresson was obsessed with form and composition, with the aesthetics of photography. The book is divided into two chronological and geographical sections: the first spans the years 1932 to 1947 and is made up of photographs taken in the west the second spans 1947 to 1952 and was shot mostly in the east. He began photographing seriously in the 1930s, influenced by the Surrealists and their understanding of the camera's ability to create a new reality. This famous formulation of the essence of photography can be found in the introduction to Cartier-Bresson's 1947 book 'The Decisive Moment'. In an age of ubiquitous digital photography and social media, how might we re-think our relationship to photographic moments and the documentary tradition? The Decisive Moment Photography is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event as well as of a precise organisation of forms which give that event its proper expression. Waplington's obvious reference to Cartier-Bresson is a challenge to some of the conventions or expectations of the role of photography and the photographer. This project is designed to encourage students to reflect on some of the images in Cartier-Bresson's book, to think about the model of photographic practice they represent and to consider alternative ways to think about the relationship between photography and moments in time, with a particular focus on Nick Waplington's book 'The Indecisive Memento'. The history of photography is, in part, the history of photographic books (since this has been one of the major ways in which photographers have been able to share their work) and one of the most significant books ever published by a photographer is 'The Decisive Moment' by Henri Cartier-Bresson. Of course, this isn't the only way to think about photography but it's a powerful and important concept about the way photographic images work and how they alter our sense of reality. The camera, unlike our eyes, has the ability to freeze time, to take a slice of out of the ongoing flux of life, to select and frame a moment so that we can return to it and explore its details. Photography is often conceived of as a time-based medium.
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