Finishing subject|object — seeking subjects of colour

It was 2015 when I started the subject|object project. Or maybe it was even 2014; I don't really remember. All I remember was coming up with the original brief:

Each subject is photographed twice for the project: A head-and-shoulders portrait (“object”) and a full-figure nude (“subject”). The two images will never be displayed together; there is no link between the “object” and the “subject”.

With the “subject” are displayed the subject’s details: their name (or pseudonym), age, profession, and their thoughts on the objectification of people in the modern world.

The “object” images are displayed alone, to allow viewers to have their own thoughts on the person in front of them

Since then I've photographed 35 people, and I'm getting to the point now where I'm getting ready to put the project out there in the wild. At the top of this post are some of the "object" images — the portraits. I haven't yet worked out how I want to display the nudes, at least on the web (though you'd think I'd have figured that out after a couple of years).

Overwhelmingly, the people I've photographed for subject|object have so far been white. I really want to change that before I wrap things up and start preparing for a gallery show. Britain is a wonderfully diverse country, and I want to photograph way more people of colour before I call the project done.

So, if you're a person of colour, and you're within reasonable travelling distance of Manchester — or you know someone who is — please don't hesitate to get in touch. I'd love to photograph you for this project. If it's going to be about the way that we, as a society, objectify each other, then it should be made up of a representative cross-section of our society, don't you think?

That's not to say, by the way, that if you want to be part of the project and you're white, I won't welcome your participation — I absolutely will; I just really care about this project being as diverse in its participants as possible.

You can get involved with the project by filling in the form on the subject|object project page.

It's Always Worth Doing Something That Terrifies You

Until very, very recently, I've never entered a photography competition. Well, that's not actually true: I entered, I think, one competition at the Lancaster Photographic Society some part in the last decade. But nothing national, or international, or indeed particularly outside my little bubble. Partly because failing was scary, but mostly because I was absolutely convinced that there was nothing in my output that was competition worthy.

If there's one thing that I've finally started to learn this year, it's that you've got to do the stuff that scares you. If you don't, it will continue to scare you, and you'll never know if you could have done it. Fear will have won, and all you'll be able to do in the future is make some excuse about not giving it a shot — "I didn't have anything that was a good fit for the competition," for example, which is just code for "well, I was too scared to try." If you're really honest with yourself and the people with whom you're talking.

So this year, I decided to throw my cap over the wall this year. And because I'm a lunatic and I don't like to do things by halves, I decided that the competition to enter would be the British Journal of Photography's International Photography Award.

Yes, I am that mad. I've got no illusions that I'm actually going to win anything. After all, I'm just a guy submitting some work. Maybe next year I'll do something more considered. Photo competitions like the IPA are about getting your work in front of the judges, and about making sure that people know you're alive. Other than that, it's pointless caring about winning — there are so many great photographers out there and so many stunning images.

I entered two sets of photographs this year: one of character studies — partly drawn from my Fifteen Minutes Portraits project, partly from stuff I'd shot on other commissions — and one of evening.camera images. Because after 400+ images in that project, why the hell not? 

Here they are for your enjoyment: hope you like looking at them as much as I liked making them.

Conversations with my Inner Dickhead

It's World Mental Health Day today, so I thought I'd share something that I wrote a couple of days ago, when I didn't know that today was going to be World Mental Health Day. This piece was sparked by listening to Wil Wheaton being interviewed on the podcast The Hilarious World of Depression, a truly wonderful podcast that's well worth your time.

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I have an inner dickhead. An imaginary frenemy. He likes to try to make me miserable; as far as I can tell, for his own amusement.

I have decided, just now, to call him "Jeff". Important note: Jeff is not real. Except to me.

Jeff doesn't think I'm very good at what I do — as an artist, anyway. Tech, code, building devices that do interesting things over networks, sure. Jeff says I'm good at those. Art? Jeff thinks I suck.

And Jeff not only thinks that I suck. He thinks that I suck so hard that everyone has noticed, but that all the people who have noticed, all the people I've ever worked with, are just far too polite to come out and say it.

Jeff tells me that everyone who ever congratulated me, who ever told me my images were good, was lying or a fool. Friends, loved ones, professionals. All of them, Jeff says, are either full of shit or empty of brains. And if someone doesn't congratulate me — if a client, say, isn't overflowing with adoration for the work we did together — it's evidence that they, too, think I suck; they're just keeping it to themselves to spare me the embarassment of having to face my failures.

I think Jeff has been with me for a long time. I can remember him not being there — or at least I think I can. He wasn't there when I wrote plays at school that were largely Star Trek rip-offs, and got my friends to star in them, and filmed them, and made props for them.

But he was there when I was meant to solo in the brass quartet that I played in back then. And when I hit a bad note, he shouted at me as I played. On stage.

Jeff is the art teacher who told me that my self portrait was pretty rubbish, actually. He's the boss who told me that I wasn't shaping up, and asked me where my pride was.

Jeff's a shit.

Jeff will happily take anything that I'm happy with and turn it on its head within minutes. He's why I procrastinate about looking at images from a shoot — because I know Jeff will pipe up. He always does.

The worst thing of all, though, is that Jeff is a part of me. And so by hating him, and getting angry at him, all I am doing is hating and getting angry at myself. Which makes Jeff all the stronger — he feeds on that kind of thing.

The only ways to combat Jeff are:

1. To accept that he's there, and give myself permission to sulk, and hope he'll be gone by morning.
2. To tell him I don't have time for his bullshit right now, and to get on with what I'm doing.

I haven't really tried #2, if I'm honest. I really ought to. Because I often don't have time for Jeff's BS — but I give it to him anyway.

If Jeff had had his way, I would have thrown all of my camera equipment, and hard drives, and negatives, into the Manchester Ship Canal years ago. Sometimes, Jeff likes to have me think about doing this from the top of the Barton Bridge (he always neglects the fact that there's no hard shoulder there, so it would be impractical and inconvenient and would get me arrested).

Jeff is, I know, the scared part of me that doesn't like doing something he's not used to doing (or at least not used enough to doing yet). He's got my best interests at heart, but unfortunately he's a complete cock-end about actually trying to look after me. He's the cruel-to-be kind voice of friends who half want to not see you hurt, and half want to hold you back because if you get happy, they'll have to look at their own lives and realise how much they don't have themselves.

I could say that I hate Jeff, but I don't. That'd be like hating my left kidney, or my nostril. I don't like him much, either. But I do have to live with him.

So some day, if you're with me, and I'm seeming a bit glum, don't worry. It might just be that Jeff's jumping around and throwing a tantrum because I'm doing something cool and scary. He'll go away again.

He usually does.

Except for me.

Can we shoot something cool together in just 15 minutes? Come and find out!

One of the biggest joys in making portraits, I find, is getting to meet interesting people. And the truth is that everyone is interesting in some way. I've yet to meet a truly boring person in my career as a photographer.

But here's the thing: when you work a lot with models and musicians and people with a media profile to project and maintain, you encounter a lot of artifice. Not always deliberately; there's rarely a moment that a person decides "I shall pretend to be someone else in front of the camera," but often: The band who want to look like hard-core rockers, and who are completely different when the camera is off them. The model who is painfully shy until the camera points their way.

For my latest project, I want to do something different. I want to work with people who don't regularly sit in front of a camera for a professional portrait. And I want to push the boundaries, creatively, of what I'm able to do: with lighting, with sets, with props. I want to make portraits that are weird and wonderful and different.

And because I like to make my life harder, I'm giving myself only 15 minutes per sitter to shoot a portrait. 

Here's how it works: the sitter comes to my studio in Manchester, we have fifteen minutes to shoot and chat. We pick a few favourite frames together, then we're done. The selection of the final portrait is mine, and because I'm limiting the amount of retouching I'm doing, the sitter should have their image within 24 hours.

For all of this, I'm charging just £30 per sitter. That's a fraction of what I'd normally charge for a shoot. Why? Because I honestly believe that people want interesting and different images of themselves, and £30 is not a high bar to clear for most of those people.

If you're in North-West England, come and be a part of it all. You can read a bit more about the project and book a session over on the 15-minute portraits page.

I can't wait to work with you!

evening.camera has moved…

If you've been paying attention then you'll already know that I've moved gmb.photo/grahambinns.com to Squarespace, because I was fed up of trying to make Wordpress perform the way I wanted it to.

Today I've finished moving evening.camera from a custom Wordpress deployment to this site — you can find it at its new home here. https://evening.camera will redirect theretoo, too, and all the old URLs should redirect correctly, if I've done the necessary magic correctly.

Why am I bringing everything under one site? Well, because I'm fed up of maintaining multiple Wordpress installs, which is a pain in the arse. I've also run into a bunch of social-media crossposting annoyances that I know I can solve with the Squarespace platform… and which solving with Wordpress plugins would just be horrendous.

And also, I want to show this stuff off on my site, frankly. It's different from the other work that I do, but it's still worth showing off, no? I've got further plans for evening.camera now that it's passed its first birthday. I'll keep you posted.