As you work through Part Three, carry on developing your major body of work. Continue to shoot and reflect on your work so far and build a set of images to submit to your tutor.
Remember that the point of these assignments is to get tutor feedback on the project as a whole so come with your questions on how to move forward and ask for your tutor’s opinion on how the project is working so far.
Submit your work in progress together with a reflective commentary. Your reflection may consider some of the material in Part Three if it has been relevant to your practice. You may also wish to consider how genres are continuing to influence you and how you’re relating what you’re doing in Contextual Studies to your practice on this course.
Background and summary from Assignment Two
Since the submission of Assignment two so much has happened both here in New Zealand and around the world that has affected my direction for both my Body of Work and Contextual Studies. The lockdown in New Zealand in early March happened fast and hard, resulting in no travel and working from home. For me that was no real hardship as I could still work remotely and spend my usual travel time catching up on my studies. A number of live photo festivals moved on line which was great as I could log in and listen or view the exhibition gaining ideas for my both parts of this course.
As the days turned into weeks it soon became apparent that I might need to start to think of alternative approaches to the Body of Work. Trying to find archival images drew a number of blank avenues. Requests on social media – no responses, emailing the authorities confirmed all data had been sent to Archives New Zealand, but when I contacted them, they required a visit to their site in Wellington which was not possible and they held very little in digital format, so I was back to square one.
I wasn’t really panicking as I still had over a year and like most people I didn’t expect this whole situation to last as long as it did, but following an on line presentation I decided to think about other aspects of my location, what was effecting the local community and how I could use the images I have already managed to take and if I could have face to face interactions with the residents of Ngawi what could I produce as an alternative. This has resulted in a number of themes that I’m still progressing and reviewing to make an initial edit for the next Assignment.
Theme 1: Ngawi as a location
In this I planned to use the location images I had already shot plus the portraits I had managed to achieve from my second photo session. When the lockdown ended, I managed to get two responses from my letters and was able to complete those plus a trip out on the cray boat. The images from these sessions can be found on my blog site:
Theme 2: Street Panorama
My second thought was inspired from an NZIPP lecture even I attended before lock down. Andy Spain a Wellington based photographer had produced a two seven-meter-long images of Cuba Street in Wellington. These were displayed on two light boxes. I made contact with him and got some really good advice and finally visited Ngawi and made my initial attempt. The images can be found on my blog:
These are just groups of three images as the stitching to one single image was not possible as I explain later and in my Work in Progress blog.
Theme 3: Cray Fish
The main industry or livelihood of Ngawi is cray fish. The current export value for New Zealand is over three hundred million dollars to the Chinese market. They expect high quality and live cray only. Although a number of locals have holding tanks the cray can only stay in there for a limited period of time while they wait to be moved for sale or for the market price to change.
No one knew how long the lock down would last and so the locals had to ask permission from the Ministry of Primary Industries to release the cray back to sea. The holding tanks cost around $400/month to maintain and with no income the fishermen needed to save money and so the cray were released and the tanks closed down.
With this in mind and remembering the work by Paul Hill who photographed a dead badger in the Peak District of Yorkshire until it had completely decomposed and weeds began to appear, I purchased a cray fish on line as we were able to still obtain certain items when the lockdown levels changed. Following a human killing I set the cray in position and started to photograph each day and reported progress within my Work in Progress blog. As the decay was very slow this has now turned to be monthly reports.
Theme 4: The women of Ngawi
When I was able to return freely to Ngawi and I had completed the cray boat trip I photographed Alison the wife of the boat owner. This was with the original theme to find local residents to photograph, however as she slowly opened up to me and we spoke about the community and life in the area she explained that there were only eight women living in the village. Discussing this with fellow students on the Rest of the World forum, one of them suggested that this would be a great theme as there have been a number of other photographers that have documented similar situations around isolated communities and women in these situations. My research has been documented in my Work in Progress blog. Using Alison as a point of contact I have finally managed to photograph each of the eight although the images for Pam have been taken I was concerned that I had provided an update so these have not been included in this submission:
Demonstration of technical and visual skills
Review and considering my initial thoughts when I first started this course the theme of isolation and mental health is still there however through gaining access to the residents and listening to their stories, I realise that first impressions and what you read in the media is very different to what life is like. The people of Ngawi are resilient and the women even more so.
For me each theme has its strengths but still needs work. I didn’t want to throw away the initial images I had produced but due to the pandemic issue I need to progress over areas to produce a bod of work that would show how life is in a rural community in New Zealand.
The use of both a black and white tone and colour provides a different mood and aspect to the images and I have continued to process in the two different ways. I have tried to show board environmental scenes and close up detail shots using a variety of lenses and depths of field.
Through the next section of the course I would like to try and progress these and experiment more with the use of different cameras such as polaroid’s and film.
Quality of outcome
Overall I’m happy with the progress to date. Portrait photography is not within my comfort zone so I have really stepped outside of this to gain access to peoples lives, to gain their trust and to spend time to really get to know them before picking up my camera.
The panorama image wasn’t as successful as I first hoped but following a discussion with Andy Spain I will rethink and introduce other images from the original shoot and more environmental images.
The cray boat trip was very challenging – trying to keep up right, not get in their way and still capture a range of situations from pulling in the cages, unloading, measuring the cray and returning those back as they were under sized, damaged or female with eggs.
I think some of the images of the women were more successful than others. A number of the ladies seemed more relaxed with me than others and this has come across in some of the images. Donna was extremely hard to get to know and it wasn’t until the last part of the shoot that she really relaxed. This as I explained in my blog was due to a large number of family issues.
Demonstration of creativity
Currently I have only used digital images and I would like to expand on this using other formats. I have also discussed in my blog a means of linking each of the women with a series of still life images and have started the process of producing a mind map of each lady to pull together my impressions and thoughts of items to use to represent each of them. I would also like to produce the series of resin blocks that I discussed in my Work in Progress blog of the 14th August based on the work by Erika Diettes and Matt Palmer
I’m also looking at the production of a concertina book for my panorama image and following a discussion with Andy Spain the deliberate inclusion of other images to give a feeling of mental health/isolation.
Context
I feel as I have progressed a number of different themes due to the pandemic situation but need to settle on a single theme and progress this. The next stage of the course addresses the editing of my images and I think this will help me move towards a final approach.
Future work
I have researched a number of photographers that have produced projects around isolated communities, mental health, isolation and women in communities:
https://www.matthewgenitempo.com/jasper
https://garlandmag.com/article/erika-diettes-relics-in-amber/
Looking at their work and the books and exhibitions they have produced I feel like I need to work on how I link my images to really tell the story and provide a more detailed narrative. I will continue to research and formulate ideas depending on feedback and which of the four themes I progress. I feel as if the strongest theme is number four but need to develop the story more and this maybe through the use of alternative formats, still life or the introduction of a different artistic medium.
Michele Usher 