New BBC TV series on photography!

I watched it last night, was very interesting stuff. Looking forward to the rest of the shows in the series.
 
Forgot about the Monday offering, so need to watch on iPlayer. This evening there are apparently 3 photography-related programs on BBC 4: What do artists do all day, Smile, and On Camera.
 
ChrisR said:
Forgot about the Monday offering, so need to watch on iPlayer. This evening there are apparently 3 photography-related programs on BBC 4: What do artists do all day, Smile, and On Camera.
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I watched about a minute of "What do artists do all day" before discovering that the "photographer was a super-objectionable paparazzi type wandering round London pushing his camera into peoples' faces. Too much for me! However, I really enjoyed the On Camera program. Perhaps it was predictable ground, but nevertheless interesting and (being oriented towards the history of photographers) very much film related, covering several genres. Smile however, I've found a bit trite. "People take lots of snapshots of family and friends. They're not very good, but they like them anyway"... or at least that was the gist I took from the first 15 minutes or so. Not yet deleted from the digibox but not enthused. Tonight however, we have another edition of the program that inspired this thread, I think.
 
I stuck with the Smile episode snd quite enjoyed it. It brought back memories of using the old instamatic cameras and gave me a bit of inspiration to scan in my older shots of the son and heir and possibly make a book, that should embarress him.
I watched the last episode of Britain in focus and it was very rnnoyable, it also introduced me to some photographers I hadnt heard of before. I rather enjoyed the whole series.
 
I watched all of them. The run down of the photographers in the separate programme was very interesting too. Never heard of Fay Godwin before.

I was irritated with Dougie Wallace to begin with but I watched all of it and kind of warmed to him. He seemed to at least say something and interact rather than just taking a picture like Bruce thingy in the US who's another that generally shoves a camera at people.

Smile was a bit dull. I did feel a huge amount of envy for the family that had free unlimited film and processing for a year. I vaguely remember that project. I'm sure I would have tried to take part!
 
Yeah, the Dougie Wallace thing is a double edged sword really, on one hand he's a k******d behaving like he does and with mostly mercenary motives, but on the other we need people to shoot the kind of things he shoots without fear or direction.
I enjoyed the series but I think it kinda ended on a sad note, I don't understand social media, that is I don't like the narcissism it encourages, or why anyone would want to be seen to be so self obsessed, not everyone is like that of course but I wouldn't like my kids to grow up with it forming such a large part of their early years.
McCabe nailed it when he concluded that the most important subject for the young everyday photographer in the 21st century, is themselves.
 
Or their food.... :thinking:
 
joxby said:
McCabe nailed it when he concluded that the most important subject for the young everyday photographer in the 21st century, is themselves.
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Is there anything more narcissistic about the self-portrait than the portrait, though? Because photographs of ourselves have always been the most important photographs - and before then, before it was democratized, people bought paintings of themselves and put them on their walls. The only thing that's changed is that practically every one of us has the means of taking those photographs and sharing them in our pockets at all times.
 
Just been watching last night's offering on catch up. Thought it was a bit meh and narcissistic so gave up. Lot of self congratulatory back slapping. Disappointed.
 
I enjoyed last night's episode. There was some interesting stuff in there (the picture postcard stuff for instance), plus most of the photographers they covered were ones whose work I enjoy. I wasn't too sure about the guy making pictures from satellite imagery - I can appreciate what he's doing from an artistic perspective, but to me it wasn't photography at all - but the piece on the young girl taking the phone-camera shots was nice and not all her shots were self-portraits, and the one she said was amongst her favourites was a good picture, as were (I felt) her reasons for it being so.
 
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