The Art of Regret- Ethnographic Film on Photography and the Digital Revolution in Kunming, China.

http://www.berkeleymedia.com/catalog/berkeleymedia/films/arts_humanities/the_art_of_regret

In relate to the photography conference at the British Museum this weekend, the RAI has been screening a series of films on a Tuesday evening, most of which I have missed due to work. The final film was entitled 'The Art of Regret', by Judith Mac Dougall, an American ethnographic film maker, and was of special interest to anyone who had lived in China, or had an interest in photography.

The scene is clearly set- bill boards, focus on the future, and technology everywhere, Kunming reminds me a great deal of atmosphere of Chongqing, the Chinese city I lived in for a year. Mac Dougall asks, 'What do people want from photography? Beauty, truth, memories or money?'.  

The film follows the digital revolution, and how this is impacting how photography is viewed, whether it is a medium to preserve the truth of the past, or whether it is a means to enhance ones good qualities and hide the flaws through digital retouching.

The art of regret is how photography is known in Kunming, China. As a photographer points out on film, no picture is perfect, there are always imperfections you will look back and regret. The film maker and her translator visit a photography exhibition and interview the photographer about his art. For the photographer, photography captures the 'truth' reality before it fades away, in a way that painting or drawing can not hope to match.

The eternal feeling of regret, is especially true for traditional photography, but much less true for modern day where it is possible to reverse the signs of ageing at the touch of a button, and all people can be made more beautiful.

In the opinion of the 'profession photographers and retouchers', ordinary people are only capable of taking 'ordinary pictures', of their everyday life. If someone wants something 'special', produced with technical and aesthetic skill, the customer has to go to one of the many professional photography studios in Kunming. The majority of people go to have the lost youths recaptured, they can take 'real' pictures of themselves at home.

There was some fascinating commentary on the Cultural Revolution and how when everyone in China was wearing plain clothing, people would dress up in ethnic clothing whenever they had the chance. Later on we see young men posing for their photograph in military uniforms, and scenes are interspersed with a band singing communist songs.

The film ended with this very wonderful scene of a young boy getting upset at the retouching of his picture being retouched. He started crying and shouting, 'bu yao', 'not want', in English, at the purposeful manipulation of his image. 

Edith Durham Research Seminar with Elizabeth Gowing: Edith and I

Elizabeth Gowing gave an insightful and thoroughly researched talk about the little known Edith Durham, pre-modern female scholar, adventuress, artist, writer, curator, adventuress and humanitarian. She was potentially he first English person, let alone a woman, to travel areas of what was then wild corner of Europe, unknown to her own countrymen and women. Once approached by the King of Albania to represent the country in an exhibition in London, she started on the road to becoming a respected authority of the area, writing often for the Anthropology journal 'Man', and eventually Vice President of the Royal Anthropology Institute.

She came to be known as the 'Mother of the Albanians', for her work as a nurse running relief shelters during the Balkans War 1912-1913.A Florence Nightingale type figure, there is no blue plaque marking her name on the Hampstead house she shared with her ill mother, which stands in direct contrast to the many street signs and schools named after her in her beloved Albania. Elizabeth Gowing herself experienced local people commenting that her questions about their customs, 'was much like Edith Durham', a reference Gowing followed up when she returned to England.

She exists in the consciousness of the Balkans people, but few people, including myself, had ever heard of this stout and determined Englishwoman. Unconventional for her time, her family assumed that she was gay, however there is no evidence in regards to her sexuality. There are only nine known pictures of her in existence.

 After returning from a country she had fallen in love with, and trying to cope with the realities of London life without intense experiences, Elizabeth Gowing discovered a kindred spirit in Durham, When Gowing returned to the Balkans but with a 'new friend' to to take on the journey with her. The result was, 'Edith and I: On the trail of an Edwardian traveller in Kosovo'.Unlike a traditional biography, 'Edith and I' is written instead like a detective story, following Durham's foot steps through Kosovo.

You can find out more about Durham on Gowing's website: www.elizazbethgowing.com

Edith Durham: The Queen of the Mountain People

Source:wikipedia

This Wednesday the Royal Anthropology Institute will be host to Elizabeth Gowing giving a research seminar on Edith Durham, an Edwardian woman who left behind her conventional life to travel the Balkans at the age of 37. Gowing is author of the book 'Edith and I; on the trail of an Edwardian traveller in Kosovo', started researching the life of Edith Durham to help deal with her own 21st century identity crisis.

A life time of painting water colours and nursing her sick mother eventually lead to Edith's break down, which fortunately a doctor proscribed travel to cure. She left for Montenegro, a place relatively unknown to Victorian England, an untamed Europe. After that year she spent ten months nursing her mother, and then two months travelling Bosnia, Serbia, Macedonia, Albania and modern-day Kosovo.

After her mother's death she moved to Albania and produced accounts of her travels. As a lone woman traveller she was assumed to be many things, including the King of England's sister and a man dressed as a woman. She was made the Vice President of the Royal Anthropological Society, the first woman to hold that post, irrespective of the fact that she had no formal training.

Reference: http://www.totally4women.com/2013/12/09/edith-durham-on-the-trail-of-an-edwardian-traveller-in-kosovo/

The Darker Side of Tourism

What had we expected? I had expected a research seminar on the anthropology of dance. Instead we had a research seminar on the darker side of tourism with Jonathan Skinner from the University of Roehampton. http://www.roehampton.ac.uk/staff/Jonathan-Skinner/ As a traveller, I was interested, and thought perhaps it would be a analysis of the darker side of the tourist industry. It was in a sense.

Death Camps, prisons... the low points of humanity.

What is the darker side of tourism? What about taking a tour of the crash site of Princess Diana's death? Is that on the bucket list of things to do before you die? What would you get out of this experience as a tourist? Is it voyeuristic? How dark would you rate this attraction? Would you go? Would it touch in you emotion? Would it enable you to make contact with more powerful forces in a commodified society? What is dark tourism?

Our first stop on this trip is Montserrate, where the volcanic eruption, which claimed the lives of 17 people, and encouraged the government to first declare a national day of prayer, and secondly to start encouraging 'volcano tourism'. What do you think about that?

Next is HM Prison Maze or Long Kesh, depending, the site of the H blocks where Unionists and Republicans were both incarcerated during the troubles from 1971 to 2000. And this 'tourist site' is so contentious in a still polarised society. There was once a proposal to dig a tunnel to allow tourists the effect of coming up into the prison for dramatic effect, but this was criticised as glamorous and would have the effect of 'the great escape'.

A tour guide in HM Prison Maze/Long Kesh is impartial, which means that they will not tell you which side of the troubles in Northern Ireland they were on. If the group is a Unionist, the tour will focus on that perspective, if it is Republican, it will focus on that perspective. There is no meeting point between these two positions. As an anthropologist it was difficult to not be labelled as belonging to one side of the other. And what did 'tourists' gain out of this experience? What would you feel visiting a place like this?

Tours sometimes include people who have first hand experience of being imprisoned in Maze, and as such add their first hand experiences to the knowledge of the tour guide new stories that will come up in a future tour, further adding to the construction of that experience for future groups.

What is to be made of this dark heritage? Many of the H blocks have now been demolished with only one H block remaining. Should it be kept for future generations? Should it be left to slowly decay?

As human beings, as well as anthropologists, what can we learn from the sites which represent the darker side of our natures?