Eight x Eight x Twenty
The shipping container belongs to an invisible industry. One that feeds us, warms us, and puts clothes on our backs. In fact Nine out of Ten non-bulk items you buy arrive by ship. How ironic then that the more ships have grown in size and consequence, the less space they have taken up in our imaginations.
Through the globalization that it has helped create the modern shipping industry has determined the destinies of entire countries and shaped our individual lives. But who of us knows anything about this essential and insular world of shipping?
This series that includes Contact Cyanotype prints, Scanographs, photographs, a book and collaborations with sailors are a response to this imperceptible activity, and the providence of consumer goods through the largely invisible industry of shipping.
Passage on the Spirit of Sydney
My first step with this project was defining Globalization as tangible concept, and one that I could distill visually. This initial research led me to the shipping industry, and I found that the ability to move goods around the world at next to no cost has been one of the major forces of the interconnected world we live in today.
It is an industry connects us, feeds us, warms us, and puts clothes on our backs. It is the reason why you can eat a strawberry in the middle of winter, buy a T-shirt for 5 dollars and own a reasonably priced television.
These photographs were made as a passenger on the Spirit of Sydney crossing the Tasman sea from Melbourne to Auckland.
Scanography
As an exploration of the shallow understanding that I was devoloping of the shipping industry and globalization, I began making scanographs with a portable scanner that I brought with me on the Sprit of Sydney. I was especially attracted to the aesthetics of the scanographs, the intricate detail mixed with extreme depth of field giving an almost chiaroscuro quality.
Cyanotypes
As part of this project I also began a series of contact cyanotypes consisting of the materials most often travelled through the port of Melbourne.
This cyanotypes were slowly built up and layered over 5-8 washes and exposures.
Collaboration with The Mission to Seafarers
Usually when undertaking a new project after I have refined my focus I look for a similarly aligned people to collaborate with. In this case I initially worked with the Mission to Seafarers, a welfare charity that has been providing services to merchant sailors since the 1800’s. They were kind enough to facilitate access with them when they visited ships in port. I photographed with them on ships for around 6 or 7 months.
One of the things that struck me while I was on these visits was how little time the sailors were able to get off the ship. With the advent of containerization, the process of loading and unloading ships has become extremely fast. The sailors now can get maybe a few hours off the ship while in port in Melbourne, where previously they were able to get a few days.
The job of sailors living and working in boxes to deliver boxes, the contents of which is usually unknown to them, seemed to me deprived of individual agency. So I thought that a possible way to express this would be to make portraits of the sailors in their living space, their personal space on an impersonal vessel. Then to make scans of the personal objects that the sailors chose to bring on-board with them to connect them to the world outside of the ship, like letters or photographs and tools that they workwith. What that idea eventual turned into was distributing disposable cameras to sailors when they came into port and visited the Mission to Seafarers, where after the sailors would photograph and send the cameras back to me to be developed.
An excerpt from the book created for
Eight x Eight x Twenty
The Remains of the Captains Lunch
I enter the mess hall and take a seat next to the remains of the Captains lunch. I had upset him earlier in the day while I was photographing some containers on the deck. “What are you doing?” He demanded when he saw me, “What for this?” he asked pointing at the boxes and then back at my camera. I tried to explain that I was doing an art project on container shipping, and also that I liked the colours.
“No more.” He had said flatly. “I don’t understand why you taking photos. You are not allowed to take any more photos. Because there are rules.” He said miming writing in a clipboard. “You want to take photos wait until port – then from the bridge you make photo of the land – this is all.”
During my time on this ship I had got the feeling that the Captain leaned heavily on the rules, the crew certainly didn’t overly enjoy his approach. Every Monday extensive drills were run that met with varying degrees of apathy. The crew would assemble and stand inside their designated circle painted on the deck just big enough to fit a stencilled number. Then they would run a fire drill, or an abandon ship drill or a chemical spill drill.
Later I talk to one of the crew about this, “Twenty-four faces, this is all you see everyday. We struggle. So many jobs, papers. Everyday stress. For what? Just for rules.”
None of the sailor’s mess around while they are on duty, not even during the mind-numbing drills, they just do their jobs. No one seems to like the Captain, but they don’t disrespect him either. I’ve noticed that when any of the crew are speaking to him they stand as far away from him as possible. He’s not a bully, neither is he a figure of inspiration, he is more like an office manager.
When I set out on this journey a secret part of me expected to find a band of intrepid rouges ready to impart their hard learned secrets of life. Secrets that only a life of salt and sea can teach you.
What I found instead is a totally unsurprising reality.
This is a floating office. These men are here to complete a task, and are not the benefactors or beneficiaries of more or less philosophical wisdom through their jobs than any other office employee.
I am finishing my lunch in the ships messhall next to the debris captain’s meal when he walks back in to make himself a cup of tea. I say hello and we have our first conversation since I’d upset him.
I ask him about the shore leave at the next port, how it didn’t seem like there was much interest in getting of the ship because we were only stopping for a few hours.
“Yeah, before people lining up to get off the ship. Now? They just go inside the room for the DVD. They still always on duty.” He laughs shrugging.
“Work, send the money. They reduced crew now, thirty-seven before, and now twenty-four. Three people on watch before, now one.”
But what about picking up some creature comforts in town? I ask. Maybe something to make the journey more comfortable at sea?
“You want something comfortable, is easy to find. But water? On this ship – everything fresh water you know. Some ship, they use seawater - saltwater for the toilet, for the wash hands. Fresh water better because of pipes, you know, no rust.” A massive din of machine droning steadily crescendos to fills our ears while we talk, maybe something coming from the engine room. We have to stop talking for a moment but eventually we ignore it.
“It’s not like water from the mountain, that comes from the sky, and river and from the grass.” Continues the captain.
“We make something from nothing. But it stays nothing. You understand? It’s fake”.
Eight x Eight x Twenty
Catalogue version of the book
