Learning outcome 2 is about translating ideas into visual outcomes. The assignment I did which best realised this was Assignment 5 – A Very Private Lady. This assignment built on assignment 4 and my initial work with archives is shown there and in Exercise 4.5 – My Mother’s Memories where I first experimented with video.
Assignment 5 tell the story of my mother’s early life. It was a difficult piece of work to do because of the emotional difficulties of working with an archive and the words of someone who has died recently.
The research was important, both to inform what I was doing and to give me the impetus to take it forward. The most valuable piece was reading Annette Kuhn Family Secrets (Kuhn, 2002) as it made me think about the past and memories in a different way.
Identity and Place is aimed at making you think; about who a person is, what they are, where they are, and how these three things link together. Then how it can be shown by photography. The images might stand alone or be associated with words (yours or that of others) or recordings. When I started IAP I was extremely apprehensive about taking images of people as I had never taken many portrait images in the past. This was despite my eventual goal to to take images of people with autism and tell their story.
I have thought about this at some length, below is a description of the work and some of my thoughts, with the main learning points bulleted and illustrated.
The first part involved taking pictures of people who were unaware of you and also of of aware strangers. I experimented with taking pictures of ‘the unaware’ by going to the Edinburgh Festival and walking the streets. Most people were so involved with what they were doing that they simply did not notice me. Although the exercise was successful, I do have ongoing concerns about the ethics as in that situation it was impossible to gain model releases. I went on to approach strangers in my street and asked them to allow me to take images.
I need to take more control of a photo shoot without losing spontaneity.
Think about ethics – how much is the story worth; how can you get model releases.
Edinburgh Festival – totally unaware of anthing other than her phone – nomodel release – an ethical dilemmaThe Social Worker – a stranger who gave her time to help me, shows my lack of control over my model
For part two I worked with two sets of people with autism. In the first set I tried to take more control of the people I was photographing – but this had the downside of leading to some stiff and unnatural images. The other session where I simply chatted and took images when they, and I , were relaxed was much more successful.
Engagement with people makes for a better image, allowing me to come up with images that are more personal and tell more about them.
Reflective Sam – the individual image worked – but the series lacked coherency. The background is too complicayed and does not add anythingRich – still looking away – but a much mproved take on his personality
In part three I looked at narrative, telling stories of people and groups. I joined a group of people at a club over 3 months, the individual images were successful and the people at the club loved them – but the final story did not hang together well. I also spent some time with friends who run a guest house and who are immensely proud of their garden. This went together much better and I produced a newspaper for them.
Think about narrative, and plan what images you need – in a long-term project you have time.
Think about alternative ways of showing things, a single print, a book, a newspaper.
Totally engaged in his games
Measuring moves details make a story
Front cover of newpaper
A peacful place – all work done, end page of newspaper
By parts 4 and 5 lockdown was in full swing so I started to work with archives. My mother had recently died, and I had a huge number of her images, keepsakes and writing to look at, all unsorted. I experimented with using images of her put into small, still life set-ups to tell her story. For this I had to work on how to re-photograph old images, removing them from glassed frames and picking items that complemented the images. I also started experimenting with video, using some of her recorded words and initially putting them with my own images to express both what she was saying and my emotional response to those words and then combining her archival images and keepsakes with her words.
Video work is a completely different skill set from photography and takes a long time.
Working with archives is fascinating but can take an emotional toll.
Choosing the words give an underlying pattern to the final images
A different way of showing the images
Wedding – final set-up
Initial video – using my images to show the emotions i felt ta hearing her words
Summary:
Overall, this was a fascinating course.
I did a massive amount of research into other photographers, old and new, well known and less so. I love research into how other people tell stories – but am easily led down ‘rabbit holes’ and can spend too much time on this. I need to learn to use the research to better inform my own photography.
I discovered that taking pictures of people is not as frightening as I thought it would be but relaxing and putting them at ease is crucial. My directorial skill needs improvement.
I found two quotes to take forward – ‘You’ve got to take responsibility for yourself, the way you see yourself, and the way you see the world. That’s a tantilizing and scary thing, but that’s what identifies people as artists’(Heiferman and Perez, 2020) and ‘The archive is one of the spaces…. where the living go to encounter the dead’ (Laing, 2020). This is what I need to remember.
Learning outcome 4 is about reflection on your own work and that of others.
I have put my last assignment to our IAP group for comments and received some very helpful feedback which has led me to making a book to add to the project:
Because of lockdown – all recent museum visits have been virtual. The MoMA exhibition on Dorothea Lange is one I enjoyed (and would never have seen in the flesh).
LO 3 is about developing a critical understanding of contemporary practice and its place in relativity to the historical use of photography.
In IAP there are a lot of new concepts and ideas. These all needed to be researched. Some examples of this research are:
Research about essays that introduce the concepts:
Bates – The Memory of Photography – talks about the use of archives, the way photographs effect our memory of things and the way the present plethora of digital images alter the way family memories are held.
Research of a range of photographers who worked on a particular topic:
Journeys – 1 and Journeys – 2 – between them they show the work of photographers who have taken journeys, from the very earliest Victorian photographers to the most recent.
Research specifically for an assignment:
In Research for Assignment 3 I looked at the ways you can present a story and several different photographers, attempting to pull out what made their work successful.
This learning outcome is about technical achievement and its application to a piece of work.
The most difficult assignment I did in terms of meeting challenges was Assignment 4.
In assignment 4 I met several challenges:
I had to persuade family and close friends to give me words that described my mother’s without simply retreating to ‘she was a lovely person’
I then had to sort these words into themes without letting too much personal overlay change what was meant (see Assignment 4 – First images for details of this process).
I had to find appropriate pictures of my mother that fitted part of her life and matched with the themes that came out of the words
I had to set up small still life setups for each of the pictures
These then needed to be photographed
Sun and shadows effected the image
I learnt to remove the glass to avoid undue reflections
Focus need to be precise to point up the still life and throw the background out of focus
The titles needed to be appropriate (and in this case minimal).
Technical and development skills needed were:
Developing the process and ideas
Researching archival images and using a found image of my grandmother to focus my practice in a specific direction having initially considered several ways of developing this idea (see Assignment 4 – Initial Thoughts).
Setting up the still life images, choosing pictures and frames together with items that enhanced them rather than overrode them
Getting good final images
Making appropriate choices about final choice of images, colour versus black and white, backgrounds identical, similar or very different (I went with similar).
I was pleased with the final outcome as I felt that it had extended my thinking about photography and in using research to help me develop ideas. I also had to experiment technically to fulfil my ideas and get images that told the story I was wanting to tell.
Identity and Place 