Charley Murrell’s work revolves around the negative impact the role of advertising has on our youth and the perceptions they have of themselves. Murrell created this series as her final project in university and used her bedroom as her studio as well as shooting in the children’s homes. Her Constructed Childhoods is simultaneously poignant and also rather chilling and most definitely thought provoking. The children in her photos act out their adult roles before her camera, but it is her use of signifieds in each image that causes the viewer to do a double take and come in for a closer examination.
In Fig. 1 we see a little girl sitting before a dressing table, putting on make up. Her actions are not those of a little girl playing dress up, but rather resemble those of her mother if we look at the angle that the head is held and the upward lift of the chin as she gazes into the mirror. But it is her returned gaze that stops us in our tracks. The overly large (Photoshopped) eyes are dead, expressionless – as if she has been exposed to more than she should have been at that age. There is no innocence reflected back at us. Very chilling!
Murrell is not averse to using a slight touch of humour to get her point across either. In Fig. 2 we have a little boy posing in front of a mirror, flexing his muscles as if he has just completed a weight lifting session. He proudly pushes his chest out and looks down at his “action figure abs” (again Photoshopped) – the culprit responsible for his body image issues standing in a similar pose on his bedside table. I did have a chuckle when I viewed this image as this is the only image in this set that addresses boys’ body image issues and it has been done in such a way that would deliver the message to children of that age group. But at the same time I was saddened that children should perceive that their toys are representative of the ideal bodies to which they feel they should aspire to achieve.
Hannah Starkey is well known for using light/shadow and mirrors and reflections in her work. She uses actresses or strangers who she asks to pose for her in her work. She often positions her subjects with their backs to the camera which set up an ambiguous dialogue between subject and viewer. What is the person thinking/looking at/doing? As Charlotte Cotton states: “we are not given enough visual information to make characterization the focal point of the image … we make meaning from a dynamic process of connecting interior space and objects …” (Cotton, 2009: 60). Her photography is a staged naturalism that echoes the self-conscious and unconscious (Campany, 2003:187).
It doesn’t seem that Starkey has a website as I had to jump around to find her Untitled series. What I found probably doesn’t come from a particular series per se. Personally I think her work falls more into the art photography category and don’t really quite see the “documentary” side of things in her work. Yes, she photographs women sitting in cafes or restaurants with far away expressions on their faces, often alone, or with their backs to the camera. Yes, her photographs are beautiful tableaux, but do they really convey “the psychological and physical space of an individual in contemporary Western society, during a climate of uncertainty” as Bright states (2011:95)? Perhaps Sean O’Hagan (2018) describes her work best as being “traditional observational documentary … (that is) … deftly choreographed”. I can go along with that – that’s pretty much what Jeff Wall does, except that his work seems to have more narrative attached to it.
In comparing Murrell’s and Starkey’s work, I find that Murrell has a very clear message or narrative that she is trying to get across, and she most assuredly succeeds in doing so. I feel rather ambivalent about Starkey’s narrative, but to be fair, perhaps if the work that we are being asked to critique was located in one place and could be viewed as a series, instead of stand alone images, I may have a different take on things.
The course manual asks me to consider what aspects of their work I might consider adopting in my own practice. If I have to be honest, I don’t think I’d adopt any. I’m not really interested in staging tableaux nor do I have space or the inclination to do studio work.
Bibliography
Bright, S. (2011) Art Photography Now. New York: Thames & Hudson.
Campany, D. (2003) Art and Photography. New York: Phaidon Press Limited.
Cotton, C. (2009) The Photograph as Contemporary Art. London: Thames & Hudson.
Jobey, L. (2018) Photographer Hannah Starkey on her everyday heroes | Financial Times. At: https://www.ft.com/content/dccde37c-e098-11e8-8e70-5e22a430c1ad (Accessed 25/11/2019).
Murrell, C. (s.d.) Constructed Childhoods. At: http://charley-murrell.co.uk/childs-play/ (Accessed 24/11/2019).
O’Hagan, S. (2018) ‘Photographer Hannah Starkey: ‘I want to create a space for women without judgment’’ In: The Observer 08/12/2018 At: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2018/dec/08/hannah-starkey-photographer-interview-space-for-women-sean-ohagan (Accessed 25/11/2019).
Illustrations
Figure 1. Murrell, C. (s.d.) Constructed Childhoods. At: http://charley-murrell.co.uk/childs-play/ (Accessed 24 November 2019)
Figure 2. Murrell, C. (s.d.) Constructed Childhoods. At: http://charley-murrell.co.uk/childs-play/ (Accessed 24 November 2019)
Figure 3. Starkey, H. (2016) Untitled, Paris, September 2016. At: http://www.artnet.com/artists/hannah-starkey/untitled-paris-september-2016-a-KanX8fOZB2diX1GqgJepPQ2 (Accessed on 25 November 2019)
Figure 4. Starkey, H. (1998) Untitled – October, 1998. [c-print] At: http://www.artnet.com/artists/hannah-starkey/untitled-october-Nn_xJTdQkyhd7HsYXPfnRw2 (Accessed on 25 November 2019)
Lynda Kuit Photography: Documentary - Fact & Fiction 