This part of the course asks us consider how words make an impact and how we can depict that.
I found the reference to Sophie Calle’s ‘Take Care of Yourself’ a little odd, as this is in response to an email not spoken words. This another hark back to work covered in Context and Narrative, which I found a bit repetitive. There we were looking at ‘self-absented portraiture’.
In that respect I can see the link between details shots with added text to enhance a series of images.
Anna Fox‘s work ‘My Mother’s cupboards and My Father’s Words’ on other hand is based on excerpts from her father’s rantings about her mother. Each image of the inside of her mother’s cupboards is paired with something she heard her father say. We are not told if ‘rantings’ were her father being nasty and unkind or whether they were indeed his attempt at humour. We are told the relationship was ‘claustraphobic’, but nothing else about their life together.
Is Fox asking us to assume that her mother’s tidy cupboards were a direct response to her father’s ‘bullying’ behaviour. Personally, I am lucky that I have experienced living with someone who made disparaging remarks about me. Do we assume that this is all he said, did he ever say kind words? Did Fox’s mother ever retaliate? How might we,. with today’s view of the world, understand and react to this set of images.
Whilst I like the work, I am left with more questions than answers, perhaps that’s the point. As a woman how, does this make me feel and what might be my reaction to this kind of treatment. I wonder if male viewers would have a different point of view?
Thinking about this in my own work, do I build in deliberate ambiguity to prompt those questions or do I attempt to answer the questions.
Mario Cipriano
For Assignment Three, I was inspired the work of Mario Cipriano, who made a series of ‘audiophotographs’ in which he made 10 second recordings of a place. After 5 seconds he took an image of what was in front of him. The premise of the work is that having heard the first 5 seconds of the sound can you predict what image you will see when it appears. He didn’t use those sounds as text with the images but the sound definitely inspired the work.
Top Takeaways
- consider what is the point of the work, what do I want the viewer to experience
- listen to readings, conversations, podcasts etc to use as inspiration for creativity
