Assignment 4 Feedback

I was fortunate to gain two sets of feedback for this assignment; firstly from the normal route of my tutor, but also from the inaugural meeting of the new study group set up by and for Scottish students.

In terms of my tutor’s feedback, the two things this has made me think about are to revert the title of my work back to ‘Land Values’, and also to think a little more about the use of words and the impact this can have on the work.

In Assignment 4 I had tested the notion of using a new title, ‘Lost Opportunities’, arguing that the first set of photographs were about looking back at what had been lost from a time and place where I grew up, whereas the second set looked at the present to compare and contrast these losses whilst also considering the opportunities they might present for the future.  I did note my own reservations about this when putting these two words together; Lost – Opportunities, which then gave a different connotation of regret that wasn’t something I was particularly intending.  My tutor suggested that I might reconsider the title of ‘Land Values’ which I immediately agreed with.  It now seems like one of those things where you wonder why you ever deviated from this path.  Land Values is, and always has been, at the heart of my Body of Work, is probably the tag towards ‘Sustaining Your Practice’, and is also central to my Extended Written Project.

The next point to consider was the relationship between words and images.  I have been quite bereft of words in Assignment 4; including only the title at the front end, then the 12/13 sets of images, and then the artist’s statement at the end.  My tutor suggests thinking about including more of a ‘teaser’ at the front end that provides enough for the viewer to realise that the sets of images are meant to work together rather than being a series of independent, mundane images.  He also reminded me of the impact I noted from Cloe Dewe Matthews work whereby the ordinary images were given a new life by the introduction of text.

This is another feature of my Body of Work that I had been thinking about.  I felt that it lacked something to lift it to something that an audience might be interested to reflect on, but I have always been reluctant to use too much text as I can also see its power to destroy a work if used incorrectly.

With this, I decided to test something with the new Scottish Study Group, and as I quickly introduced each set of images I reintroduced the personal significance of each of the images from my childhood.  I was probably being a little unfair with them as some of these images reflect on very specific and personal issues that you would not get just by looking at these images – but was this the missing link that would raise this work?  I have, however, always wanted this work to remain fairly ambiguous to allow the audience to reflect and think rather than read them at face value, hence, I feel that my very personal interpretations push the work too far in one specific direction and away from its core purpose of considering ‘Land’s Value’.  This is also the sense I got from my test-audience’s reaction – a little too direct and thus confusing as to the overall purpose of the work.  I never really got chance to then reintroduce my work from its original perspective but I will look forward to doing this when we meet again.

There are a couple of things that this has helped me to conclude which are that a short introductory piece of text at the beginning of this series is needed, and I am also thinking about adding some words against each image – not as direct as discussed above but something that might allude to this a little more.  I intend to give this some more thought, balanced with my concerns over the use of too much text, and probably provide an update in a further blog post.

One specific issue that came from the study group was to consider taking out the set of images of my old and new homes as this directed the work too much towards different social classes, which didn’t seem to fit with the rest of the work.  I had used this set as a good stepping off point but I can appreciate this feedback and so need to give this some more thought whilst also making sure that the replacement final set remains sufficiently strong to conclude this series.

I am also pleased to be able to say that I have just finished my substantive draft of the Major Written Project, which has taken up a lot of my time recently, therefore, I should hopefully be able to come back to this Major Body of Work and give it some final and worthy attention.  I also want to look into printing options, particularly in terms of producing a book.

BoW Assignment 4

The following is a copy of my fourth assignment for Body of Work.  It consisted of the following covering note, a series of paired images that I submitted as a pdf in a book format (I have shown them below as a set of images rather than an attached pdf), and a draft artist’s statement which I intend to put at the end of the book.

Over the last few months I have been ‘getting to know’ my body of work.  Strange as that may sound, or at least it is to me, I found that with the previous Assignment 3 submission the work was visually coming together well but that I was struggling to express was it was about both verbally or in writing.  I also wanted to create some space between me and the sequence of images so that I could better review the overall work, the pairing of images and their sequencing.

The result has been a refinement to the pairing of images within the body of work and the creation of an artist’s statement to go with it.

I didn’t want to meddle with the work too much as I was concerned not to spoil the flow from overthinking the pairings and sequencing.  The main changes are that I have moved away from blackening out parts of some of the images, and I have changed some of the images to the second half of the set.

I thought about the advice from the third assignment which suggested using the blackening out technique on just one image (it had previously been used on 3-4).  I gave this a go but felt that it became an odd feature rather than providing a jolt to the viewer.  I also felt that I wanted to move away from the idea of using it to politicize my message; therefore, I have drawn away from this idea.  I would be interested to have feedback on whether I should perhaps reconsider this strategy.

Regarding the sequencing of images, I have kept the first half of the set identical to Assignment 3, right up to the Glasgow cash machine photo (the twelfth photo in).  I liked this sequence and didn’t feel it needed any alterations.  After that image, there are various changes including not blackening out, adding a couple of new images, changing some of the pairings, and altering the order a little.  I am hoping that this tightens up this second half a little more and is more in keeping with the first half without spoiling what I had already.

With regards to the Artist’s Statement, I have had five attempts at this and have recorded my progress with it on my blog.  I thought that I was almost there with it on the fourth attempt but had a slight niggle that I might have over-simplified it.  I then picked up a discussion on the OCA forum about artists’ statements which made me decide to look back at it once more and try to refer a little more to the visual culture and context that supports the development of the work.  This latest draft is included in this submission.

I have also been thinking about how I might combine this statement within the book format I am proposing for my body of work.  As I have mentioned above, one of the things that has troubled me with this work has been that I have struggled to properly explain this work and I think that one of the reasons for this is that even I see different elements within it when I have left it for a while and then come back to it.  I don’t want to lose that ambiguity of interpretation for the viewer and worry that including the artist statement up front will lead the viewer too much.  I would be more pleased if the viewer was able to appreciate the work from their own perspective before then asking to themselves whether this is what the photographer intended.  To achieve this, I am currently planning to include the artist’s statement at the end of the book rather than at the beginning and this is what I have tried to show in the draft pdf of the book that forms the main part of the submission.

Lost Opportunities investigates how changes of time, place, and society can change a person’s relationship with, and appreciation for, both land and the place it forms.  It does so by looking back at a Council estate in West Yorkshire where I grew up, and then compares this with the present area I have just moved to in Glasgow.

Images of the Council estate recall ordinary places that have a significance to me, whilst also depicting what I now reimagine as a childhood paradise where I was seemingly free to engage with the land and place oblivious of the threat to this utopia from adulthood and societal influences.  The imaginary idealisation of this time identifies with Neo-Romantic principles which regards the past as an integral part of our heritage and national identity and thus something we must preserve, or maybe long for its return.

In Glasgow I wandered around this new place to seek out the heritage I have now adopted, to reflect on its potential of becoming significant to me in the future, and to question whether the idealised notion of a childhood paradise could still be created in this place today.  This shift in time, place and society forms a narrative about change, to ask whether it is a threat to the way things were, or the beginning of new opportunities.