BA PHOTOGRAPHY – Level 2 Summer Project and Reading Task 2014 Brief title: ‘Here and There’
The Professional Practice brief at Level 1 has been an eye opener for many in terms of what happens when you start making photographs outside of the four walls of the university, and this ‘outward facing’ attitude is a key aspect of your second year programme. We want you to build on the experience of working with subjects ‘out there’, whilst holding onto the subjects and themes that you have some personal investment in.
Some of this year’s graduating L3 cohort have travelled to work on projects that have personal resonance for them, for instance; Naomi Goddard extended her work on the anthropology of food by going to Isreal to explore ritualistic attitudes within Jewish cuisine. Ross Williams walked the path of the old Berlin wall to develop a personal response based in the landscape, whilst Cian Oba-Smith travelled to Iceland to document the opening of the country’s first mosque. Of course, others have remained in the UK to explore subjects ‘closer to home’; Rhianna Petrie and Annie Clark have both documented the areas in which they grew up, employing different visual strategies, whilst Juliane Kreuger has used photography as a ‘crayon’ as a means to sketch out the personal and emotional connections between the close friends she has developed in Bristol.
What unites this broad range of projects and approaches is an inherent connection between, and investiture in, the photographer and their subjects. You do not need to travel to foreign lands to produce your project work, your subjects may be found closer to home, but we want your chosen projects to reflect upon your concerns and preoccupations as image-makers.
From the starting point of Here and There, you are required to identify and commit to a project that is driven by your interests as a photographer but responds to the circumstances/locations that you find yourself in for the majority of the summer. Your projects can work in any photographic genre (portrait, still life, architecture, landscape, and so on) but should take the form of a coherent, considered body of work.
You are required to initiate some preliminary research into your subject before you decide to commit to it. We want you to understand your subjects in a rounded sense, so research is not just about finding 2 or 3 relevant visual sources (photographers/artists/filmmakers) but is rather about gaining an insight into your subject from a range of perspectives – historical, social, personal, cultural, political. This means reading around themes that are relevant to both your subject and visual approach.
Your research should run in parallel with test shoots of your initial ideas, which can be digital or film, but you should remember that access to the department’s facilities will only run until the middle of June. As with all projects, we want you to be reflexive and responsive to your developmental process, your idea/approach may change as you find out more about your subject, or as a result of your shooting strategy.
From this platform of practical exploration and contextual research, you are required to push your idea forward to be resolved in a series of not less than 12 photographic images for presentation either as prints or digital projection during the first week of next year.
As this may form a part of your developmental process for your first practical project of the second year, ‘Obsessions’, we want you to document your process fully in a format that has the capacity to augment your project work next year, either as a blog or in sketchbook form.
‘Here and There’ is the title of the panel discussion at the L3 Fluxure show at The Bargehouse in London on 19th June and will prove to be invaluable contextualising material for your summer project work – we urge you to attend this event.
Task 2: Student Texts for Reading Groups
During this module you will also take part in a series of Reading Groups, but rather than be entirely led by the academic team we want you to select a piece of text that is relevant to your future project aims and intentions to be discussed within the group tutorials.
Over the summer we want you to pick out a piece of writing that is substantial enough to be discussed within a reading group environment; i.e. a simple descriptive article on a photographer or photographic project will not necessarily provide the level of critical ‘bite’ for discussion. Look for critical reviews or thematic articles that you feel will give the group something to chew over.
These sessions are not there to test you on your knowledge of the article under discussion (although having a good grasp of the content prior to the discussion will be helpful) but it is rather an opportunity for the group to discuss and share ideas in a constructive environment.
Bring your chosen text along to the first session on the 22nd September so that we can copy the texts and hand them out to the group.
Initial Idea
My initial idea for the summer project is to create an expressive project of 10-12 images that show my emotions. To do this I think I will manipulate an image a day. This way I will be able to show how my emotions change over the period of 12 days. Although I would like to have a varied subject matter, for the time being I will use a self portrait and manipulate it daily so they all fit together in a set. I will use different techniques to alter my images, some of them my own ideas and some of them inspired by other photographers however all makings will have a meaning.
Chosen Image
I have chosen to use this image of myself for this project. I chose to use black and white because that way the colours will stand out more and won’t look too off putting. I also used a white background so separate myself from my surroundings and to put the focus on me and my emotions.
Final Images
Here are my final images. There are 10 overall, each image representing a different day. I used a variety of techniques to manipulate my images including, paint, bleach, scratching, creasing, burning and ripping. I am happy with these images because they are personal to me and I think they look aesthetically pleasing too.
I would like to take this idea further in my work however I will not use self portraits and instead I will use images of other people and landscapes. If I was to carry on in a similar theme I would make photos based around youth liberation as it is something that is close to me and basing my project on something personal to me will make my work will better.
Obsessions 