Assignment 2 – Response to Tutor feedback

I wanted to create some space between receiving my feedback for Assignment 2 and writing this response, which is why I am only just writing it now.  I found that had become attached to my very specific ideas on Lost, and in this assignment submission I had developed it into a substantive project whereby the next steps would probably have been ones of refinement and editing.  I see this now as a crucial decision point between continuing on this very specific journey or taking time out to allow other developments to influence my decisions about the Body of Work.  I therefore needed this time and space to break my mind set and come to believe in the advice I was being given.

To set the right tone to what I have tried to describe above, this wasn’t a feeling of rejection on what I had done so far, but much more one of reflection. The general feedback was positive and encouraging in how I had “effectively moved the ideas along very thoroughly” but a core piece of advice was to “put everything else on the backburner for now and go with that momentum [the development of my idea for a new project around the area I now live]”  I can see how this might become a further piece of the developing jigsaw without being too transfixed at the moment as to how this will all come together in the final gathering.

The other key message (or word) I took from this feedback was “ambiguity” & the opportunity that this gives to the viewer.  This is something I have regularly tried to challenge myself about – having the confidence to be ambiguous, and I am also aware that my proposals for the book to support some of the images in Lost would remove that ambiguity and become a very direct, personal interpretation.  I will need to think some more about whether to move on from this book idea, but for now it is resting on the backburner.

My next steps are thus to become a flaneur around the area I have recently moved in to.  As I said in my assignment submission, I can see the potential for how this could come together in connection with what I have already done so far.  This next assignment submission is, therefore, likely to concentrate on the development of this new idea.

Body of Work: Land Values – Assignment 2

As part of this assignment submission I have given some early thoughts on how I might present these projects, linked to my relationship with a potential audience.  This has moved me towards splitting the first project Lost into two parts.  The plan for the first part is to prepare a set six images presented as traditional A3 / A2 prints – these are included in this submission as individual photo files.  The second part will be presented in book form, which I have presented in this submission as an early draft pdf file (there is a lot more to do to develop this).

The other section of this submission is an update to the project Found.  This again will be presented as a series of six traditional A3/A2 prints.

I have decided to drop the third project Modern Society as I felt that it didn’t reflect the direction I was going with the first two projects.  I am, however, keeping in mind the process of blackening out objects within a photograph and might recall this as I develop the book for the project Lost.

I am also thinking of replacing this third project with something new.  My thoughts are to reflect on my wanderings around the new area I have just moved into in Glasgow.  I sense that this could become an interesting comparison with the project Lost, which reflects on the housing estate I grew up in.

The following is my first attempt at writing proper introductions to these projects.  It may change, of course, as I develop things further but it has been a useful exercise to do as it begins to link with my considerations for Contextual Studies

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This series of three projects presents an autobiographical reflection of my changing relationship with Land, society and personal associations.

The first project: Lost, uses the unreliability of memory and photography in representing the truth, as the basis towards developing a closer yet not totally reliable  understanding of my lost engagement with Land, the society I grew up in, and the personal relationship I have with my father.

 

 

 

The project is initially limited to 6 images of the place I grew up in.  Their strait aesthetics and limited signifiers towards interpretation are purposely intended to withdraw an audience’s interest and attention.  This is an important metaphor for how I tend to limit what I reveal about my past history, thoughts and feelings.  It thus becomes representative of my external persona.

My inner thoughts are expressed by presenting a wider range of photographs in book form, which is (will be) carefully hidden within a closed box.  This is a comparative metaphor of my hidden, inner-personality which is only revealed when I purposely ‘lift the lid’ to these thoughts and share with those I choose.  The photographs in the book reveal more of my thoughts and memories as I walked around the same place I grew up in.  More specifically, they also recall a walk I took with my father when I was 7 years old, which I still remember as a significant event in my relationship with him.  My thoughts as I retook this walk were tangential; jumping from memories of play, recollections of my free childhood engagement with Land, thoughts about societal change, frustrations about today’s restrictions on opportunities for engaging with Land, and also trying to better understand my father’s faltering concept of reality at that time.

The process of creating this book forms a further discourse on the dichotomy between my natural preference for not revealing my inner-thoughts, and the use of photography as a vehicle towards such revelation.  As these inner-thoughts are often more comfortably revealed when in a drunken state I have recreated this state of mind as part of the process towards creation of the book and thus potentially reveal more than I would normally prefer.

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The process of creating this book and then hiding it in a box will form part of my further development of this project, following more research and reflection.  I want to look into other photographers who have used personal circumstances as part of their body of work (OCA course notes provide helpful reference to Nan Golding, Larry Sultan, Elinor Carucci, Richard Billingham, and Robert Mapplethorpe as good points of initial research).  I am also interested in doing more research on surreal photography and how this investigates unconscious thoughts and differing perceptions of reality.

In the above ‘Introduction’ I am proposing to be in a drunken state when I create the book, which is a very radical divergence from my normal relatively controlled approach.  If this is a success then I hope it will produce something that is more spontaneous, raw and expressive.  I am also aware, however, that I could produce something that completely fails in this endeavour and that I may be trying to be too ambitious.  I have decided that I am still going to give this a go and then try to make a detached assessment of its success or otherwise.  I will be interested in my tutor’s view on this.

Lost book assignment 2 draft

Project 2: Found

My introduction to this project is currently outlined as follows:

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This second project: Found has become an important foil to the project Lost, as it allows me to ‘close the lid’ on these inner-thoughts and return them back into their metaphorical box before considering a more mature and newly found sensibility towards Land, my engagement with it, and its intrinsic value.

This is formed from the relationship between the selection of subjects which have obvious signs of a struggle for survival in their natural environment, and the aesthetically appealing composition I have chosen to use.

This choice to aestheticize Land’s struggle for survival is not only intended to be a direct appeal to an audience’s attention but it is also used to highlight the strength of my concern for Land and society’s impact upon it.

 

 

 

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In terms of developing this project further, I want to investigate the destructive influence of nature on the fragility of the photograph as a reminder of the subject’s own fragility and struggle for survival.  My thoughts on achieving this are to print out the six images and take them back to where they were made, before leaving them there for a day or two.  This will give them time to be affected by the potential destructive influence of nature and thus create something unique which might subvert the audience’s attention away from their previous pictorial aesthetic.

Project 3: New

I have changed my focus for this project away from a postmodern appropriated approach of society’s restrictions on our engagement with Land, towards what might at first appear to be a ‘softer’ investigation into the new neighbourhood I have just moved into.

I describe in one of my blog posts that one reason for abandoning this initial idea as part of a standalone project was that it wasn’t quite going in the direction of my other two projects and so I was struggling to keep it connected to them.  However, I still have thoughts about how I might merge this into the book for project Lost:

https://paulmmajorproject.wordpress.com/2014/06/01/barriers-to-play/

I have only just started playing with this new project and therefore don’t think it appropriate to include with this submission at this stage.  I want to remain free from trying to contextualize it at the moment and thus give it the freedom to develop.  Having said that, I have already described in another blog post how this is set out to be contained within three distinct collections, all used to create a sense of place of my new neighbourhood.  Ultimately, I expect this project to be drawn back into become a comparative reflection between then and now, and between Lost and New – with Found sandwiched in-between, perhaps.

A sample of images created so far for this project is included in the following post:

https://paulmmajorproject.wordpress.com/2014/06/22/new-project-3-new/

At the moment, I am obviously looking for advice on the two projects as currently presented but perhaps more importantly I am seeking opinion on my proposals for further developing them both.

I am a little concerned that I might be being a little too ambitious with them but then I also feel that it is important to give these ideas a chance.  I need to remind myself not to think of these ideas as potential final outcomes to my Body of Work but that they might just be part of the journey towards it.  Any wise words around this would be useful.

As part of my progress towards the next assignment submission I want to have created a proper version of the book for Lost (not necessarily the final version), developed my idea for exposing the photographs for Found to the natural elements, and be ready to present something more substantial for the re-worked project New.