Vol.181_Jason Manning
Jason Manning
From London,UK
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Photography by Jason Manning
I went to Art College in the early 90’s where as students we were obliged to try a whole range of disciplines and then decide what we wanted to specialise in. Initially I wanted to draw but there were no college courses that specifically catered to drawing in particular, so I gravitated towards photography instead. I was quickly immersed in all things photographic but failed to get onto a degree course, so I went to India for six months instead. It was always a social documentary thing for me. It was a kind of self-initiated photographic odyssey, and I was trying at the time to emulate 60’s American street photographers and the likes of Henri Cartier Bresson and other Magnum photographers.
Shooting nightlife allows you to observe people in certain states of abandon and release. Nightspots encourage revealing behaviours that we can all identify with, I think. There’s something quite primal and fundamental about needing to briefly escape the often banal rigours of daily working and domestic life and get lost for a few hours in a kind of celebratory catharsis. These kinds of nocturnal activities mean different things to different people of course but they certainly open up a rich and often explicit visual landscape.
Not everyone wants to be photographed and that’s fair enough. I’ve had a couple of incidents in the past, one culminating in a black eye which curiously seemed to serve me quite well on the next job in Moscow the following day. My approach in the main has been to shoot first and then answer questions later. I sometimes think I should have had more grief, but I think after a while you become practiced in recognising potential trouble and you learn to negotiate more effectively and get your material.
The other annoyance for me is getting too much attention and mugging for the camera. You end up sacrificing a series of shots so that you can get the images that are potentially more interesting, people with their guard down.
I don’t have a favourite place for finding images, I think its more about timing. You can find yourself in an exotic location that for all intents and purposes ought to offer up amazing opportunities for sensational images but somehow fails to deliver on a particular occasion. Alternatively, you might find yourself in the stinking back room of a shit pub and be rewarded with all sorts of colour, but only on the particular Thursday that you found yourself there. You bring yourself to the party as well of course and that’s another variable.
I don’t really have a favourite image from the work. I’m looking for rarefied moments that people can identify with. Ideally everyone can take something away from the work however small or apparently insignificant. I don’t think there’s a catch all image that summarises the body of work as a whole. I tend to think in terms of groups of images rather than stand-alone images.
The use of iPhones in nightclubs and at public gatherings has changed things. I think that people are more photo aware these days because photography is more accessible, and more people (everybody?!) is engaged with it on some level. People are more aware of potential picture or video moments and respond accordingly. The internet evidences this of course and I think people can be wary of where their image might end up residing. Most people will be more amenable to being photographed if they are enjoying themselves and having a good night out and that has always been the case I suppose. If you’re after documentation of something outside of that, people who are not so sure, who make for potentially more interesting subjects, then an appropriate approach has always been a necessary part of coming back with that kind of material. In the current cultural climate, the difference might be that people have a more pronounced sense of entitlement to not be photographed and choose to exercise it more readily. Fine. But they might be missing out on being part of the documentation process, albeit one that is more diluted, amorphous and far reaching than it ever has been.
I don’t think there can ever be a ‘best party’. There can’t be one, otherwise you’d find yourself measuring all the others against it which would distract you from being into the one you’re currently at! I don’t have a favourite moment either...