Week 6/7: Methods & Strategies & Collaborative Mini Project
In this week I submitted my ORAL PRESENTATION for peer and tutor review. This was initially a draft and had already been through numerous iterations, so it was interesting to receive feedback and see if any of the positives and negatives resonated with me. I found this quite a challenging exercise, purely from the aspect of editing and knowing what was relevant content and what detracted from the overall aesthetic. Initially I thought I would struggle to fill 8 minutes with images and commentary, but eventually found myself going beyond 10 minutes and having to ruthlessly cut out a lot of slides.
Chance and serendipity are two coincidences that I personally believe do play a part in photography. It is also true to say that their effect can be minimalised with preparation and pre-visualization. This is something I regularly practice when shooting musicians or taking taking portraits, as certainly there is a level of unpredictability in shooting people. The more you can assess the lighting, the scenery, the nature of the person themselves, the less you leave to chance. I often watch performances of artists in advance of a shoot to see how their body language works in relation to the audience and stage, and indeed to photographers.
Not all performers like to see camera’s pointing at them when they are working. You will be either ignored, deliberately avoided, or when you get lucky or actually know the artist, you may get picked out (although this is quite rare). Here is a shot of Neil Hannon where I was indeed grateful for his acknowledgement. We had met at rehearsals and so he was aware of my participation, so when the artist makes that connection between me and them personal, that interaction is priceless in a photo as you can also substitute the photographer, for the viewer of the image, thus giving them the one to one association through the lens.
Figure 1: TIPPING, 2019, The Divine Comedy
Sometimes chance can bring a much more authentic feel to the image, and indeed offer more opportunity and collaboration that could be hoped for. As i mentioned in my week 4 Blog this lady who is now an artist actually studied this very same course a few years ago, and we met purely by chance when I asked her if I could take her portrait for my research project.
Figure 2: Tipping, 2020, Judy
Combining week 6 with week 7 we were asked to collaborate with another student/s on a micro project. This was ideally to be inspired by the work of Gillian Wearing and Robert Adams, around the theme of ‘psychogeography’ where a photographer looks to their immediate surroundings to capture less familiar images.
A few years ago I tried this as a solo project and the outcome was surprisingly good. The images were heavily edited to achieve the desired effect, but I was keen to explore the idea of the ‘less attractive’ representation of a location. This actually led to some features on me in the local press, who felt the originality of the photo’s deserved some coverage.
So this week I teamed up with award winning portrait artist and fellow student Sofia Conti, who resides in Glasgow, Scotland. I arranged a brief webinar for the two of us in CANVAS so we could introduce ourselves to each other and talk through the options for the micro project. As a result Sofia provided me with the following challenge:
Mark for week 6/7 we have agreed to pair up for the Peer Commissioned Micro Project after we had reviewed the content of the various photography projects relating to the assignment.
During the webinar discussion I discovered more about your photography interests, background, and your current situation. From here I believed that you producing a commissioned piece relating to Brassai’s, Paris by Night, would be particularly interesting. As you are located in Honiton, England, which is a small town, it will demonstrate the unseen moments that occur at night to give a contrast to the busy streets of Paris. The direction and the way in which you creatively capture the towns centres vicinity will be entirely down to your own discretion. Please ensure that you always consider your health and safety when working at night to remain safe.
As you shoot in film and use an external lab to develop the images it will be vital to commence shooting within the first 48hrs of receiving this brief to meet the assignment deadline at the end of week 7. The images will be captured on tungsten film Cinestill low light that can either be presented as colour or black and white. From the roll off film used please select 6-10 images that work best as a series. You have the option of titling the project, but it can remain untitled if you prefer. The final selection must be placed on a PDF that is no grater that 20MB to ensure they can be reviewed together next week prior to the showcase/webinar.
Have fun and I look forward to discussing what you have achieved.
In return my brief for Sofia was as follows:
Sofia, we agreed to join forces based upon the specified mini-project as our week 6/7 assignment. Having read the text and looked at the examples of work by Gillian Wearing and Sophie Calle, and knowing your particular interest in Street Photography, my brief to you is to take inspiration from the work of Robert Adams. His work on the nocturnal exploration of the suburbs around his home make for a fascinating insight into the lesser seen and sometimes unsavoury aspects of home turf. This is in some ways similar to the approach taken by Brassai's excursions around the Parisian boulevards and back streets.
You told me a little bit about your practice and where you live, and your previous experience with night shoots in the city of Glasgow. Therefore I think your practical exercise should be to go out and take what will be a final 6-10 images of your local surroundings, in either colour or black & white. What you choose as your subject matter is up to you, but i will be interested to see a side to your location that perhaps a normal visitor wouldn't. I do not wish to be overly prescriptive on content or context, or even time taken. I am sure you already know what images will be the most effective and interesting for me to view.
We have agreed to start this project early to kindly accommodate my use of film and subsequent developing, so thank you. Have a great shoot and I look forward to catching up soon to discuss the results of your work.
The reason Sofia and I teamed up early was really to accommodate me shooting film, so I had time to develop and edit before the presentation deadline in our weekly webinar. Both Sofia and I accomplished our assignments and met for another Canvas conference to assess the outcome of our shoots, and compare our PDF presentations. The following images were five of the six I chose to represent the challenge and outcome.
