Colin Pantall and Robert Darch both think that the UK leaving the EU is stupid. They each reacted to the causes and effects of the vote to leave, and its aftermath, in their own way. And those ways are diametrically opposed.
Colin, angry, attached extended captions to images he already had. He imagined a parallel universe where Brexit makes sense. He posted these to Instagram.
Robert, melancholy, used the Brexit thing to reimagine an idea he was already working on, but had no real emotional attachment to.
I’m interested in how photographers can address the same subject yet still (if they are any good) have their personalities come through in the work, can make it their own.
So I asked Colin and Robert some questions to see if further light could be shed . .
What was the genesis (apart from the obvious) of your Brexit project?
Colin Pantall: I live on the edge of Jacob Rees-Mogg’s constituency. (ed note: Jacob Rees-Mogg is a hard-right arch-Brexiter.) Pretty much every day I walk through these gaps in hedges to go to my allotment garden or just take a walk. As soon as I walk through that hedge, I’m on Jacob Rees-Mogg’s land. I’ve photographed a lot there because of the allotment. There’s this strange mix of the rural – the allotments, the views of Solsbury Hill – combined with allotment weirdness.
This mix seemed to fit with the emotional idea of Brexit, an idea that mixed an idealised nostalgia for what Britain used to be with a blinkered and quite baffling hostility to anything ‘foreign’.
As Brexit day (originally 29th March ) approached I made an edit of my work that mirrored a journey into the mythical land of Jacob Rees-Mogg where everything made sense in an off-kilter kind of way. I started putting this edit up on Instagram.
But as the negotiations took hold, Britain found itself in the grip of these bizarre circular arguments that went nowhere. The votes in parliament were almost like a live sport. And so the Instagram posts evolved into something more responsive to events, and as events moved from the political to the satirical, the cynical and sarcastic, so did my posts. They ended in anger, frustration and despair. That’s where I stopped them. After all the negotiations and votes, Brexit has been delayed till October 30th before which the process will begin again.
I remember going to bed with a sinking feeling and waking up to see the vote confirmed. It was like walking through a door to a parallel universe. A universe where wrong is right and right is wrong, where the stupid get to lead, where liars are called honest, where thieves are made rich.
I’m sick of Brexit and its little England racism, I’m sick of the lies that have been told by the carpetbaggers, the delusional claims of the left that somehow Brexit will lead to a Workers Paradise, the blind eye turned to the destruction of Britain, of Ireland, of the lives of millions, of the freedom to travel, work and study where we want.
Luckily there’s a gap in the hedge near my house. I walk through it every day to get to our allotment. It passes from the constituency of Bath (where I live) to that of North East Somerset. The MP for our allotment is arch-Brexiteer, liar, and profiteer, Jacob Rees-Mogg. It’s like a magic land. I walk through this gap and suddenly everything make sense, the truth of Brexit rings clear. These pictures are taken from beyond the gap in that hedge, these words are from that place, that age of madness where right is wrong and wrong is right, from the place where I believe in Brexit, from the place where the Wizard of Mogg is king.
For the next month I’ll be posting from that magical zone, where everything is true and everything makes sense…
If prices rise or goods dry up, we’ll manage. In anticipation of unforeseen increased costs, I’ve started making my own razors and they work just fine. We survived the Black Death and the Plague with no problems. We’ll survive Brexit.
What was the genesis (apart from the obvious) of your Brexit project?
Robert Darch: In 2015 started taking pictures on Portland Island, a small island in Dorset, England, connected to the mainland by a road and causeway. The island is scattered with quarries, dramatic coastline, tunnels and imposing prisons. It has a peculiar, uncanny atmosphere, quite distinct from the mainland but with elements of Britishness, so really appealed to my sensibilities. My initial idea was to make some observations about the British nation, using this small island to reference the British Isles as a whole. This was of course well before there was any notion of Brexit happening, but I envisaged exploring a lot of the issues that led to the Brexit vote, immigration, poverty, etc. However the project didn’t evolve, most likely as I didn’t have any personal attachment or real passion for the idea, and aside from an interest in the atmosphere of the island I couldn’t envisage how the project would develop beyond that. My work specifically deals with attachment, feeling and emotion, to generalize, i’m a heart, rather than a head photographer and my initial idea for the Island was definitely a head led concept.
However, that’s where the title of the Island originated. Then a few years later when Brexit happened, I felt so heavy and sad about that decision, I just started taking pictures that attempted to visualize how I was feeling, which became a new version of The Island, photographed in the South West and the Midlands, where I grew up.
Most of my work has a slow genesis, often encapsulating older ideas and taking some time to realize the atmosphere or sense of place I am trying to create. Although The Island is a response to Britain voting to leave Europe, I was also drawing on feelings of melancholy I experienced in the past and how these emotions somehow felt heightened as a young adult.
Why do you use an imagined approach, as opposed to a documentary one?
Colin Pantall: Documentary is always imagined. Arguably it’s least imagined when its imagined in a positive way that embraces and recognizes the imagination? I think the straight expository voice of documentary is unbelievably fake and historically is a visual form of control. That might be a bit extreme, but yes, why not. Sometimes I wonder if straight photography isn’t like talking in a big, booming baritone voice that shows off your private education and economic status and your expectation to be believed because of it. And finding that actually you are.
Everything about Brexit and the Leave Campaign is imaginary too, but in a bad way that doesn’t embrace or recognize the imagination. It’s based on lies, dishonesty, and open racism and it’s backed openly or surreptitiously by people in all parties who pretend certain parts of it don’t exist because they’ve never been a racist so it couldn’t be possible.
Brexit has never been thought out, the Leave arguments are based on fantasy and emerge from decades of infantile anti-European propaganda that revolve around second-rate British icons like custard creams and sausages denied us by envious, snooty Frenchmen and scheming, organized Germans who never got over the war. When really we’re the snooty ones who never got over the war, or the loss of empire, or anything. Brexit is an emotional thing and to treat it in an expository documentary voice is to make a categorical mistake.
Imaginary though my approach is, it’s still documentary – documentary can be emotional, with an unreliable wavering voice. That’s the voice I have, it’s inconsistent and it changed as the negotiations became more conflicted.
Why do you use an imagined approach, as opposed to a documentary one?
Robert Darch: I am not a traditional documentary photographer, instead I work instinctively and use photography to capture a feeling or an emotion. I don’t like using the ‘A’ word as it feels slightly pretentious to me, but I do work more as an artist than a documentary photographer. Maybe I should just get over that hang-up and embrace it, buy some round glasses and a navy blue smock!
The Brexit vote and the outcome of that decision is highly complex and layered with a multitude of underlying sociological, political and psychological issues that make envisaging a documentary work close to impossible. Also if I did consider a documentary project about Brexit as a Pro European, I would start making judgements about certain elements and aspects of the British mentality that I can’t abide, and as an educated, white middle class man I can’t begin to imagine how I could do that without appearing judgemental and privileged in some people’s eyes.
Equally, i’m not so blinkered and idealistic that I can’t see and understand how this happened, why people would want to leave Europe, for the perceived safety and familiarity of good old Blighty. The Brexit vote was the result of years of austerity, mass immigration, lack of job security, raised aspirations, greed, the class system, politics, neoliberalism, privatization, fake news, indifference, social media and spin alongside a perceived lack of control over individual and collective fears…. I could go on.
Instead of trying to rationalize that I made a quiet series of images that reflect my own hopes, fears and aspirations for the future, combining melancholic landscapes with portraits of young adults, whom this decision will impact the most and (in general) they passionately want to remain part of the European Union
I hope this doesn’t sound too harsh, or cynical, but what’s the point of your Brexit work, what does it achieve?
COLIN PANTALL: It’s a reflection of a mood, a wave of fluctuating sentiments and emotions that accompanied Brexit. It’s not rational, it’s not considered, it’s not trustworthy, it’s not consistent. It doesn’t achieve anything and it became quite destructive towards the end, a wave of what-the-fuckery and sarcasm. I don’t know what the point of that is. Maybe it’s a kind of Instagram therapy, a release valve for me to vent my rage.
It really was quite a unique period in British history. Was or Is? Because nothing has been resolved, we’re no closer to a way out of the mess that has been created. In fact we’re probably even further away.
Why do people vote for assholes and their shitty, self-interested policies. That’s what I ended up asking. It’s like pigs voting for the butcher. That’s Brexit. I’m getting irate now just thinking about it. That’s why I had to stop. I was getting too angered by it all. Perhaps that was the point of it. It ended up just getting me all irate first thing in the morning and last thing at night. So what was the point of it? Probably it was pointless, but I’m not sure if it was in a good way or a bad way? Or a bit of both.
I hope this doesn’t sound too harsh, or cynical, but what’s the point of your Brexit work, what does it achieve?
Robert Darch: I think you have to fundamentally make the work and take the photographs that mean something to you, and if someone else shares in that experience and relates to them then that’s wonderful.
I don’t make work thinking about what it will achieve, especially not in changing people’s fundamental views. I am not a political campaigner, that’s why I chose to make a quiet series of images that capture a subjective mood about a specific time, rather than add to the chatter around Brexit.
We live in a time where people appear to be fundamentally entrenched in their views, tribes, religions, politics and aren’t able to see something from a different perspective. People inhabit bubbles surrounded by collectives that feel the same as they do. This has definitely been reinforced by social media, witnessing people deleting friends if they were pro Brexit for example.
There’s an arrogance about believing that your viewpoint or opinion is correct and a safety and security in surrounding yourself with people that think like you do. I am sad about (Possibly) leaving the EU, but I am also sad about how divided and less empathetic humanity appears, something I am guilty of too.
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COLIN PANTALL: Brexit Pictures
David Davis, 10 October 2016
I’ve never heard a truer word than that and there’s the path, smooth and steady with a clear end in sight!
My name’s Colin and I’m a Happy Camper because we’re leaving Europe and taking back control!
Which is good news because yesterday our powerful trade negotiators (our potential partners need us more than we need them, remember) were told by the US negotiators that the deal goes like this: we get their chickens, and that’s it.
I for one can’t wait to sink my teeth into the crunchy little critters.Chicken never tasted this good . . .
When he was asked if he wanted to keep his own freedom of movement rights intact he replied. “Yes. I know it might be selfish but I think on reflection now we’d probably vote, if we had a referendum, the other way now.”
The journalist asked him if he had “shot himself in the foot?” He replied:”We might have done, we may very well have done.” (The Scotsman)
So east it is then…. never saw that one coming.
She was lame yesterday and now she’s dead . . .
After last night’s no votes, the nation knows where it’s going and all is clear in the land of Brexit.
And I thought the deal was dead . . . I apologize for getting ahead of myself . . . The deal LIVES.
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ROBERT DARCH: The Island
