Posts

Posted on

Assignment 2 – Photographing the Unseen – methodology for assignment

I have decided to concentrate on the idea of exploring how to photograph how it feels to touch something.  The idea is to create an image that is inspired by the item rather than the item itself.

In order to really experience the touch of the item, I feel that I need to eliminate sight from the reality.  To that end I am going to work to the following methodology.

  1. I will ask 7 – 10 people to participate in this assignment with me (the thinking behind this is that I will get objects that I don’t know and therefore won’t be influenced by what they look like)
  2. I will be blindfolded and won’t see the item at all
  3. The participant will be asked to take a photo of the item and a photo of me handling it, but won’t let me see the item.  They will also write a paragraph about the item, and why they chose it.
  4. I’ll handle the object for no more than 5 mins
  5. I will record my comments during the touching sessions so I can make notes afterwards.
  6. The object will be removed immediately, so I don’t see it.
  7. Following this I will create an image based on my feelings of touching the object, which will include colour, state, feelings etc.
  8. I won’t see any of the objects until after all images are complete. (my husband has agreed to collect the images of the items and me handling them and keep them save until the assignment is finished)
  9. Each image must be finished before attempting the next item (I think this is necessary so that individual images aren’t influenced by other items)

I will use this methodology with the first item as a test, it may need to be amended based on my findings, but this feels like a good place to start

The brief for participants can be read here

Posted on

Assignment 2 – Photographing the Unseen – ideas, planning and research

Photographing the unseen
Start by doing some reflecting in your learning log. What kinds of subjects might be seen as un-photographable? How might you go about portraying them using photography?  List a few examples of things you’re experiencing now or have recently been thinking about. This doesn’t have to be too in-depth or revealing, but it can be if you want. Equally, it might be something as apparently trivial as how you’re going to fit everything into your busy day. At first you may come up with literal examples, but the more you think about them the more those ideas will develop into specific and more original ones. 
Make a list of at least seven ideas. Try and keep to things you have a personal interest in or curiosity about. Keep a notebook with you at all times and make notes when ideas strike you as interesting. (This is good practice for all stages of the degree and beyond.
Ideas books are something to be revisited time and again for ideas and hints for the photographer you’re becoming.)
Now implement one of your ideas. Aim for a tightly edited and visually consistent series
of 7–10 images.

So here’s the reflecting in my learning log 😉

I was immediately drawn to this one of the two options and did keep my notebook with me at all times.  In fact it’s amazing how many times, I woke in the middle of the night and added something to it.

What kinds of subjects might be seen as un-photographable?

  • Connections (between people or environment) you can place a person within an environment or next to another person, but it’s very difficult actually capture the emotional connection between the two things.
  • time – you can photograph the effects of time on a person or object but how do you capture time or the concept of time itself.
  • Memories – 
  • Emotions / feelings
  • thoughts
  • touch
  • dreams
  • ideologies – religion / politics
  • sound
  • absence
  • love

most of these things are things that are experienced by a person within by your senses.

Fraenkel Gallery 2013 – The unphotographable [accessed 02.01.2019] 
The Unphotographable, s an interesting article about an ambitious exhibition exploring the history of that which cannot be photographed. A lot of these images are abstracted and distorted, does this imply that to represent something unseen, it has to be unrecognisable. they are said to represent sound, absence and love.

Touch – this is the one that really interests me – I’m really drawn the idea of trying to capture how it feels to touch something.  Not photographing the act of touching an item but trying to represent how it feels.

The video I found here about photographers trying to represent food they were eating blindfolded.  The results were really different and very interesting.

using your senses to create an image

As photography is a visual medium and I want to create a visual representation of the feeling, it seems logical to remove the visual element of my senses and try to create an image that is inspired by touching something.

My idea is therefore to ask 10 different people to give me an object to touch whilst being blindfolded.  I will write a brief and ask people to help me. I will expand on this more in a separate post.

Posted on

Part 2 – Project 1 – Exercise

Exercise
• How does Briony Campbell’s The Dad Project compare with Country  Doctor?
• What do you think she means by ‘an ending without an ending’? Make some notes in your learning log.

To read reviews follow links below:

At first you think that Briony’s project is personal and full of emotion, reading the story that goes alongside it, really engenders some of that raw emotion in the view as well.  The soft tones and shades add to dreamy almost unreal aura they produce.   Whereas, you when you view’s smith’s images they are following a stranger around doing his job and you would think they would be dispassionate. However, that’s not how they come across, the compositions and use of high contrast really give a sense of drama and factual.

However, having read Smith’s bio, it appears that these images were taken  only a year after he himself had recovered from a major injury sustained whilst acting as a war correspondent during the 2nd World War.  Putting them into the context of his own experiences and this may be why they are full of emotion and candour.

Briony Campbell says that the work is ‘an ending without an ending’? – I believe she means that because this is personal about her life that it can’t / won’t be packed away in box some place once the project is finished.  It will always be with her and help her to remember her dad.  Personally, I think once you’ve invested in a project it always very hard to draw a line under it and never think about again!

Posted on

W. Eugene Smith – ‘Country Doctor’

W. Eugene Smith was an American photojournalist.

His work the ‘Country Doctor’ was a ‘fly on wall’ documentary of the day to day life and work of  a general practitioner named Dr. Ernest Ceriani.

Doctor Ceriani checks 4-year-old Jimmy Free’s foot, cut when the boy stepped on broken glass.

Smith’s images although documentary also capture the emotion of the scene by his composition and angles.  Taken in 1948, this is only a few years after being a war correspondent where he focused on taken images of the suffering of the people rather than the soldiers and battles.  He himself was injured and had to undergo a lot of surgery so it is perhaps these to events that led him to concentrate on the life of a doctor.

source: – Art Blart –  https://artblart.com/tag/dr-ernest-ceriani-following-the-loss-of-a-mother-and-child-during-childbirth/   [accessed 04.01.2019]

Posted on

Briony Campbell – The Dad Project

Briony Campbell‘s Essay written in 2011, 2 years after her father’s death gives a more reflective and object view of her ‘Dad Project’, than her first draft.

The Dad Project by Briony Campbell, Nov 2011 [accessed 01.01.2019  

Briony Campbell – webpage

The project is personal and emotional and although she found it difficult to do at the time, it has become very intrinsic to her and her work.  She has been struck by how sharing her work has helped her grieve but also the impact it has on others.


But after the terminal diagnosis, it served to comfort my mourning. by Briony Campbell

I understand her comment about remembering that new viewers to the work are just experiencing this impact and she must remember this in responding to their reactions.

She says that the work is ‘an ending without an ending’? – I believe she means that because this is personal about her life that it can’t / won’t be packed away in box some place once the project is finished.  It will always be with her and help her to remember her dad.

My own reaction was very raw, my own father passed away 4 years ago and this brought back many memories for me.  I would love to have such images of him.  It is a bit of a taboo in our country to photograph the dying process of our loved ones, but it is also a part of life, we photograph birth and weddings, why not death.  Whilst I don’t like having my photo taken, I have come to realise that how important they become when someone is no longer here, but for me, like Briony, I want to capture the real person, not the person in wedding and christening photos.

Another photographer who has used grief for a body of work which I much admire is Kirsty Mitchell.  The work and subsequent book is called Wonderland.  She created this a tribute to her mother who had died from cancer.  It took her six years.  Her website here, tells the story 

Google search for photographer Kirsty Mitchell’s Wonderland

For me both of these stories are personal and thought provoking.  The accompanying narrative in both cases is well written and in some cases quite raw.  I think this helps the viewer really engage, understand and relate to subject matter and set of images.

Posted on

Assignment 1 – Complete!

Having taken an age to get into this assignment, I actually got quite hooked by the concept in the end.

I am actually quite pleased with the set of images I’ve produced.  They have generated quite a lot of conversation between my family over Christmas and I had a room of about 10 people arguing about which were real and which not.

My biggest reflection comes from the fact that feedback and discussion helped my refine some of the images and think more about how to present them.  This is something I will utilise in future assignments.  I also reflect on how much I enjoy manipulating images and making something new from what is already there.

and finally, I opened the introduction of “on being a photographer’ by David Hurn and Bill Jay and came across this quote from Abraham Maslow:

The purpose of life is to become actually what we are potentially”

I love this quote and it will be my new year’s resolution!

To see Assignment 1 – Two sides of the Story – click here

Posted on

Assignment 1 – Two sides of the Story – Ideas and Planning (i)

https://www.bjp-online.com/2018/05/dorley-brown-corners/


Sandringham Road & Kingsland Road 15th June 2009
 10:42am – 11:37am, from The Corners © Chris Dorley-Brown

Corners ideas

I have been working on an idea inspired by Chris Dorley-Brown’s Corner’s series.   It also reminded me of an image I liked when I was doing EYV, by Guy Bourdin.  

“The aim of the assignment is to help you explore the convincing nature of documentary, even though what the viewer thinks they see may not in fact be true.”

brief for assignment from Context & Narrative p 45

I have played with the idea of taking images of corners in the town where I live. The first set will be the real images and second set will be ‘reconstructed’ corners.

These four images are the first I’ve tried to test my idea, the first two images are the real images and the second two are ‘reconstructed’.  The third images is an amalgamation of the first two images and the fourth image is a mirror image of the second image, but I have reversed all of the signs so that they still read properly.

The fact that these were taken on dull grey days, means that the light is flat and the sky is almost monotone.  This makes it easier to merge the images so I think I will use that idea for the rest of the set.

Posted on

Assignment 1 – Two sides of the Story – Ideas and Planning

So having thought about the Yangtze River examples, and the different approaches taken by the various photographers, I like the idea of exploring the town I live in from two points of view.  I moved the south coast in my late 20s so don’t have the benefit of school acquired knowledge of the area.  I have photographed the seafront quite a lot and used the promenade for “The Square Mile”, the first assignment in my last course but was more interested in how people use the space.

I’ve decided to research the history of the town to see if I can use this as the perspective for the first set of images.

A history of Littlehampton: [accessed 14.12.18]   http://www.localhistories.org/littlehampton.html

Old pictures of Littlehampton [accessed 14.12.18]:   https://www.gravelroots.net/history/199.html#here

On reflection: I am going to park this idea, as I don’t think it meets the brief, but I do like it, so want to record it in order to remember at a later date

Posted on

Assignment 1 – Two sides to the Story – Research

Eureka!

I have been struggling with this piece, trying to think of something inivitive and yet simple.  I have used my new job as an excuse not to get on with it! to be fair it has been a bit, but I was really struggling with what story?, how will I find the time.

As a proverbial ‘kick up the bum’ to try and get myself back on track, I decided to have a look at some other students blogs to see how they had approached this.  In doing so I came across some tutor feedback to one student which I think became my eureka moment!

“Overall Comments
. . . . . . This assignment is essentially about the same subject matter, but shot in two different ways. It is a test of the input of the photographer to produce two viewpoints (often in both senses of the word). To see yourself and your work objectively like this – questioning how you produce work and what this communicates – is a difficult task . . . . .

https://scottishzoecontextandnarrative.wordpress.com/2018/05/11/assignment-1-response-to-tutor/

source: https://scottishzoecontextandnarrative.wordpress.com/2018/05/11/assignment-1-response-to-tutor/ [accessed 14.12.18]

“Suggested reading/viewing
I suggest you look at three projects on the Yangtze river. Comparing different photographers work in this way should illustrate how it is the photographer and (in this case) their differing methodologies, which can produce very different outcomes. This relates directly to this assignment, where the subject matter can be largely similar, yet the results diverse. The Yellow River by Zhang Kechun http://www.zhangkechun.com/the-yellow-river/  Mother River by Yann Wang Preston http://www.yanwangpreston.com/projects/images and Nadav Kander’s The long river https://www.lensculture.com/articles/nadav-kander-yangtze-the-long-river  I recommend reading On Being a Photographer: a Practical Guide by David Hurn and Bill Jay, LensWork Publishing, Portland (2007). This book is more about a photographer’s approach, attitude and their mind-set, rather than technicalities (as the title might suggest).”

Looking at the three examples above, I was particularly struck by the work of Nadav Kander but also the difference in the approaches to the three bodies of work.  Some subtle and some less so.  Kander was definitely struck by the pace of change and how people were feeling because of it, where as Wan Preston’s images were very structured and placed based.

This has given me a much clearer idea of my goal with this set of images now.  I found a cheap copy of ‘On being a photographer’ so will have a look at that when it arrives and in the meantime will have a think about my subject for this assignment.

Posted on

Project 4 – Exercise

Sarah Pickering – Public Order

Exercise

Look at some more images from this series on the artist’s website.

• How do Pickering’s images make you feel?

• Is Public Order an effective use of documentary or is it misleading?
Make some notes in your learning log.

resources used to complete this exercise:

http://www.sarahpickering.co.uk/Works/Pulic-Order/workpg-01.html [accessed 18.11.2018]

https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/d/documentary-photography [accessed 18/11/2018

Sarah Pickering, Denton Underground Station, 2003
google search of Sarah Pickering's images

how do these images make me feel?:

Well I think they are a bit unsettling. At first glance they looked ‘not quite right’ but as I looked at the them it is obvious that they are fake.  Then I became interested in looking at the marks on the walls and wondering what scenario was being played out in the exercises being played out there

The images work well together and you get a real sense of the story, but individually I don’t think they say much.  

Is Public Order an effective use of documentary or is it misleading?:

The Tate website describes ‘Documentary Photography as: 

“Documentary photography is a style of photography that provides a straightforward and accurate representation of people, places, objects and events, and is often used in reportage”

At first I wasn’t sure this is documentary photography, but I suppose that if you take the images as their reality and not the set they are portraying then it could be.  with no action actually taking place, you are left to imagine what might happen here and therefore, I think it’s a bit misleading