T&R April 2020

2^nd April 2020

Well I think New Zealand is finally getting used to the new normal – working from home, keeping distances and trying to stop the spread.  The 28^th March saw our first loss to this deadly virus and I think this has really made people here feel very vulnerable.  There’s been no lack of community spirit and for the first time since moving here I have had the opportunity to interact (well via txt anyway) with my neighbours.  This isn’t because I’m antisocial it’s due to the fact that for the first time in my life I’m full time at home, a situation that I thought I would be happy with but I think I do prefer the ability to keep my home life from that of work.

Anyway, my work for Contextual Studies has progressed and I have reviewed a number of articles.  A full summary can be found on that part of my blog and these covered areas on ethics within the use of video research and photography in the form of Photovoice and an introduction on ‘who needs identity’ by Stuart Hall.  An essay that was not easy to digest.

I received two formal assessments from my tutor for Assignments 1 & 2 for Body of Work and I have reviewed and produced notes and highlighted the points I need to address:

Assessment Report for Assignment 1

Assessment Report for Assignment 2

All notes and work can be found on my blog under Work in Progress.  One of the recommendations was to consider planning for an alternative approach to the project if the current situation continues for much longer.  Unlike a number of other Level 3 students on the forum I have till 2023 to complete my course, however this doesn’t mean I should not start to consider alternative avenues to find points of contact to photograph.  A friend has a 91-year-old grandmother who has just moved to Carterton to be near her family, but spent all her life in Ngawi.  She has agreed to speak to me following the lock down and to look for any old photographs she may have of the area.  I have tried to find some in the local Archives but with little success.

I have continued to look for other photographers that address isolation and mental health as part of their work, not really had much more success then those already detailed in my Work in Progress files but I will keep on looking.  I mentioned my project to a group of work colleagues before our weekly stand-up meeting started and one mentioned that Ngawi was used as a location for a film that was awarded best short film in 2007.  The film ‘Fog’ although not based around isolation or mental health it did show the location beautifully and addressed the struggles of a teenage boy growing up in this location.

6^th April 2020

Attended the Rest of the World Hangout which was joined by Roger who lives and works in Chile.  He added an interesting perspective to the general discussions on the current worldwide situation.  Based an hour outside of a major city they have seen very little effect so far, the government seems relaxed with no lock down in place.

I have continued to research and read papers on ethics and the power relationships between researcher and participant and how easy it is to sway the results and outcomes of any study

7^th April 2020

Bit of a busy on line session taking advantage of free on-line talks and discussions.  They are a bit of a mixed bag really but I think they are expanding my horizons and giving me options for how to present my final project.  The first was a discussion with Matt Martin who originally started out as a professional skateboarder who also liked photography, due to a bad accident he is now a full-time photographer, but he started by producing free magazines in order to get his name out in the market.

The second presentation was by Susan Bright a British writer and curator of photography and her work all based around food and how it has been presented over the years from the ‘Good Housekeeping’ magazine through to the modern day.  Interesting that she didn’t produce any of her own images but used others.

8^th April 2020

I started to attack the comments provided by my tutor and revisited the work by Chris Killip and his project on Skinningrove.  This second look really made me think about the place in relation to my own Body of Work and how the two locations are very similar from both a geographical perspective and culture.  Both sets of residents are fearlessly protective of their community.  It was interesting to read that Killip only publicly released four images from that project but in an on line video he presented those that he had never released before.  He spoke so personality about the people and place, it obviously meant a lot to him.

I have continued to take advantage of the current lock down and thanks to the web I’m now able to take a virtual tour around the Canadian Photography Festival and others in the UK.  These are a great way to get photography out there and really broaden your horizons on different techniques and processes.  I really like the work by Adad Hannah on ‘Social Distancing Portraits’ (see my Exhibition page on this blog)

10^th April 2020

A rather early start for me here in New Zealand in order to watch the first of a list of presentations and talks with photographers being provided by the British Journal of Photography 1854 Access programme.  This first one was with Jack Latham, a photographer based in Bristol.  I was fascinated to hear how much time he spent research verses the time behind the camera.  For his project ‘Parliament of Owls (2019) he did over a year’s research and only took two trips to the US to get the images for the book.  I haven’t really considered producing a book for my final submission, although I’m an avid collector and reader of photography books I think I lack the confidence of images to be worth the production of a book, but I do like the idea of Matt Martin and producing a small magazine to go with the exhibition as a free give away to the people of Ngawi.

15^th April 2020

Spent the last few days working my way through two books by John Berger and Jean Mohr.  I managed to order these prior to the lock down and finally arrived.  I have found the first book ‘A Fortunate Man’ (1967), is based around the life and work of a rural doctor.  Berger and Mohr followed him for six weeks.  The work, patients and the place were his life, until in the end he committed suicide.  A powerful book that really made me stop and think.  I like the idea of following a person for a period of time, getting to know them, understanding their life and passions.  This might be another avenue to explore if the letter drop doesn’t result in another volunteers.

I attended another presentation by 1854 Access with Laura Pannack.  I hadn’t come across her work before and the presentation turned into a Q&A session which was a little disappointing until a question was raised by a lecturer from Spain who asked what she should advise her students who are trying to complete their final projects.  Laura said she would tell them to ‘do a one eighty’ if they were trying to photograph a particular group of people, for example think about what would be the effect of this on them and try and photograph that.  This really made me think about my current Body of Work project.  If I can’t get out how can I apply that process to the people of Ngawi?  Their main source of income is crayfish, the loss of the ability to fish will be devastating.  So, I have been thinking of ideas around crayfish, loss, decay of both the fish and the location through loss of income, local generation, infrastructure including roads, homes etc. I remembered the work of Paul Hill from my Landscape course at Level 2.  Hill works extensively within the north of England and as part of his project ‘White Peak Dark Peak’ which was based in the Peak District national Park he produced a series of images of a dead badger as it decayed.  The meaning behind his image was around the cyclic processes of nature, mine will be about loss of a resource to the village.  I will run this in parallel to my planned project of photographing the residents and a single series with my main subject of Assignment two. So now three ideas.

As I don’t have a studio, I spent sometime on line researching how to make studio lights. There are loads of examples on YouTube.  Due to the possible smell I think I will set up two, one in the field at the back of my house and the other in the garage.  The next challenge is sourcing the cray.

17^th / 18^th April 2020

I seem to be really maximising my use of the on-line resources during this lock-down.  Logged into another interesting but at time difficult to follow presentation and question and answer session by 1854 Access with Peter Funch.  A Danish born photojournalist who is currently in lock-down with his family in France.  His work includes ‘42nd & Vanderbilt’ a study of human nature at its most basic, the comedy of human routines.  I did realize that a large portion of this work is created, taking multiple images that have the same theme and then stitching together in Photoshop.

20^th April 2020

Dialed into the fortnightly ‘Rest of the World’ forum.  Great opportunity to support others through this difficult situation.  Some great ideas for podcasts and on-line groups to explore.  One was with Rachael Talibart on ‘Finding your voice’ (link can be found on my Exhibitions page).  I need to start work on the comments from Assignment Two and producing literature review for Contextual Studies.

I was sent a link to the SheClick group by one of the members of the rest of the World Forum on it was a talk being held today by Rachael Talibart on ‘Finding your Voice’, something I’m finding hard to do and really need to work at, try and experiment more.  Rachael is a former lawyer turned professional photographer based in England.  She is best known for your beautiful portfolio of images called ‘Sirens’ which are the most amasing images of stormy seas.  The presentation was simple and to the point.  She gave five points of advice; Persistence, repetition, inspiration, observation and production of a portfolio.

She has returned to the same place each year, knowing that she will return she concentrates on getting different aspects, looking for the small things, finding a unique way of telling your story.  I think this is what I’m doing wrong with my body of work, expecting to nail the images in one visit, as soon as this situation is over I will return to Ngawi on a more regular basis, and probably stay the weekend.

 

22^nd April 2020

Another in the list of presentations from Access but this one from my documentary photographer Martin Parr.  I have followed Parr’s work for years and think that he has the ability to show a place/location/situation to its fullest extent (warts and all).  The introduction of colour into documentary at the time was frowned upon at the time but for me this just add to emotion and mood of the image.  His approach seems to be to revisit a location and explore and this is something I really need to do with my Ngawi project.

Link to presentation:

https://access.bjpsubs.com/1854-presents-martin-parr-4kzm/?utm_campaign=Memberships%202020&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=86553277&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-_hSWT2vDvudfAZD0huj9Fi5IF_IomtG48vhi5dPCB19DWtg9aA3JnoLxunN3bGglt56x-t7p_WUUPSh8zmgHuwN9pLEg&_hsmi=86553277

 

23^rd April 2020

As I mentioned on the 20^th April I linked up with the forum called SheClick which promotes the work of female artists and photographers (not just available to women) and decided to attend the online talk by Morag Paterson: ‘An Abstract Journey’.  Its an area of photography I have experimented with but never really progressed.  I don’t think its an area I could use for my Body of Work although perhaps under the right conditions it could result in the right mood.  A lot of her work is co-signed with her partner and their website can be found here: https://www.leemingpaterson.com/.  One area I did find interesting was her work on Solargraphs so looked up the process and have decided to give it a go – watch this space!

[YouTube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_gpbDQHe2Q]

 

24^th April 2020

Logged into the Documentary Forum, great opportunity to see other students work and give and receive feedback on work.  Whilst discussing my progress one of the other students recommended I look at the work by Sirkka-Liisa Konttinen – Byker Project book/film and Knut Stokmo, which I have subsequently done and placed under my Work on Progress for Body of Work as they are good examples of similar projects to mine in how photographers have recorded communities.

Like most of the other students the current situation is not easy and for the most part I’m lucky in the fact that my end date isn’t for some time but as previously said I’m thinking of other possibilities for subjects.  I have managed to get some studio lights made up from old metal lampshades (black with white reflective interiors – added some LED lights) and an old wicker cray pot which I want to sit in the background, the main problem I’m having is sourcing the cray, so trying other avenues and points of contact for that.

26^th April 2020

I have to admit I have been putting off the task of drafting and submitting my Literature Review (Assignment Two for Contextual Studies) for some time.  I produced an initial draft by dropping summaries of each of the articles and books I have reviewed into a series of headings which I thought would work.  This resulted in over eight thousand words and the thought of trying to reduce this to just two thousand was for me a very daunting task.  Well after several hours, lots of coffee and frustration with both myself and the imposed word count I managed to submit my draft to my tutor for review late on the evening of the 27^th April.

I’m not a natural writer – unless its technical stuff or legal for work and so this part of the course I do find difficult, frustration, but also very interesting as its giving me the opportunity to explore and probably go down far too many rabbit holes and flood my brain with too much information.  Trying to record it all has been something new and remembering where I’ve put it – I’m usually a very organised kind of person, but I’m finding with this current lockdown situation I’m getting flooded with information, even listening to photography podcasts when I go for a walk.  Maybe while the draft is with my tutor, I can take stock and re-plan.  I still need to complete the comments from my Body of Work Assignment Two.

28^th April 2020

On the 23^rd April I mentioned exploring the possibility of setting up and having a go at doing a Solargraph and last night after getting my hands on some photographic paper I managed to produce two possible pin hole cameras to be left in position for one to two months. I will post the results once I’ve scanned them, so if you are reading this and my work has finished please scan ahead and see the results.

Raw material: cans, pin and tape

Paper loaded and ready to place in location

Internal Location

External location