Week 1/2: All The Glass We Carry
New Module, new ideas. And as with each previous one there is an urge to do something differant and challenging. The theme is clearly to focus on methods and new approaches, and then showcase that work in the most effective and efficient way. I think for me this will be the most challenging module so far, especially given the heavy video content. Initial thoughts and inspirations feed from work I had already researched in the Theatre, so very much performance based. Alternatively taking my practice to somewhere new, and a lead from science and macro photographer Kym Cox who in prep has been incredibly helpful as a mentor, more of which in my week two blog. It will essentially be a contest between method and methodology, with the emphasis on practice-led or practice-based theory and output.
I certainly have so far been a ‘outcome based’ photographer rather than ‘practice-based’ which is to say (I think) that my primary goal is to achieve the photo I want to display, regardless of technique, as opposed to focusing on the method or genre, and accepting the imaged results just for what they are. In week one one we have studied re-enactments, mixing old with new media, re-purposing and so on. It’s an area I’m not familiar with as my work is always original and current. However stories influenced from past or present do feature heavily in my work, and the restoration project from Informing Contexts certainly built upon that.
In the first weeks forum I shared two images, one of my great Grandmother from the era of Carte de Visite, to one of my daughter via the medium of polaroid. It was a nice connection over nearly 150 years of photography.
Fig 1: Lee, Circa 1880 (left)
Fig 2: Tipping, 2021 (right)