Black White Photography - UK (2019-11)

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B+W

For the photographic artist, a journal can offer a liberating platform to develop ideas

and play with themes and concepts, as well a being a personal record of life and

work, says Tracy Calder. They can also be works of art in themselves.

FEATURE THE ART OF THE NOTEBOOK

© Mandy Barker

T

here’s a library in Brooklyn, NYC,

that contains 95 sketchbooks

devoted to sandwiches. These

slim, tactile volumes are part

of the Sketchbook Project, an

idea dreamt up by art school

graduate Steven Peterman in 2006. In all,

Brooklyn Art Library contains more than

45,000 sketchbooks, from over 30,000

creative individuals. Titles range from

Things Found on Restaurant Napkins to

Waterslides I Never Rode and Fog. Ta k i ng

part in the project is easy: you simply

purchase a 5x7in sketchbook via the website

(sketchbookproject.com), fill it up and send

it in. The books are given a unique barcode,

catalogued and made available to the public.

Having spent a morning browsing the

digitalised catalogue I felt truly inspired.

Ever since attending playschool in the

early 1980s I’ve kept sketchbooks and diaries.

For me, these uncensored objects are a friend

to confide in, a record of ideas, thoughts

and feelings and, at times, a valuable

source of inspiration. However, buying a

new sketchbook requires serious thought:

white pages won’t do – there’s something

oddly intimidating about them, as though

everything you draw, stick or scribble on

them has to have gravitas. I prefer an off-

white page, no lines, no dots, no graph paper

to make me feel like I should be practising

trigonometry. My instrument of choice is an

HB mechanical pencil (with a 0.5mm lead),

although I’m not opposed to using paints,

inks and highlighter pens to make my marks.

Over time, you develop preferences.

In a 1982 interview for Pebble Mill at One,

author Roald Dahl revealed that he always

used six, freshly-sharpened pencils in a

writing session and sat in a sleeping bag to

keep his legs warm. While this might sound

rather obsessive, there’s evidence to suggest

that by keeping some things the same every

time you write or make art (sitting in the

same chair, drinking the same coffee, using

the same pencil etc), your brain does not

become overburdened by the countless tiny

decisions you might otherwise have to make,

leaving it free to roam and create. Of course,

there are also artists and writers who strongly

object to this view. Author EB White, for

example, once declared, ‘a writer who waits

for ideal conditions under which to work will

die without putting a word to paper.’ The

secret lies in finding a happy medium.

Mandy’s series Beyond Drifting features objects

of marine plastic debris photographed

to resemble plankton.