6th February 2020
Not sure where the time has gone since my last submission to this. Oh yes completing both assignments and researching how to write my dissertation and the odd day panicking that I couldn’t find a subject for my CS.
I still haven’t had any feedback from my BoW so I have chased several times to the point where I think I will need to contact the OCA Support team. I have pushed forward and completed a second shoot at the location and made contact and spent around three hours with a local couple who have been married for 53 years. Rob lived originally in Wellington and would go fishing in Ngawi and just fell in love with the place – ‘there’s just something special about it’. Rob is Mr fix-it and we spent some time in his man-cave which was full of stuff, ‘if man made it, man can fix it’ he told me. His long-suffering wife helps out at the local school (well local is over an hour away) and loves just ‘pottering’ as she puts it. The images I took were of them in their happy place. I tried to capture them and their environment. I have decided that the images will be black and white.
Work towards my dissertation and research progressed with working through the book by Bryan Greetham and trying to link mental health, rural NZ and my Body of Work. I started with a few mind maps to try and form ideas as I waited for the feedback from my first assignment:
The interest in photovoice and the techniques used and applied came from my last module in Documentary level 2, but I couldn’t really see how to apply it to my Body of Work or create a new angle. My next attempt has narrowed the subject too much and after raising my concern with my tutor we talked it over via skype and he has helped me to consider new angles and take a step back from just the New Zealand position:
My next few weeks which will focus on pulling together the work for my Literature Review will be based around the broad subjects of:
- Representation – how does it work mimesis (reflection) v construction (‘constituent’ process / circuit of culture) Stuart Hall (1997)
- Power relations – semiotics to CDA (Critical Discourse Analysis) of images/photographers/artists with reference to Michel Foucault (what is not shown).
- Ethnography ‘sociologists with cameras
- Authorship – ‘who ‘speaks’ presses the button style,
- Case studies of artists.
I also need to:
- Make notes on Chapter 8 Rose Visual Methodologies – Discourse Analysis
- Berger, J. & Dyer, G. 2013, Understanding a photograph, Penguin Books, London, England. and Berger’s About Looking which outlines (page 41) Strand/Bresson dichotomy and approach – decisive moment v historic moment portraiture (similar to Alec Soth).
- ‘Aesthetic Documentary’ – the contemporary concern with integrating these two previous ‘splits’ in approach between a strait reportage humanist approach and the more pictorial influenced concern with the medium. Look at the work of the following on their websites and research other material:
- Misrach, R. (2019). Interview: Richard Misrach with Peter Brown | Houston Center for Photography . [online] Available at: https://hcponline.org/spot/interviewrichard-misrach-with-peter-brown/
- Mosse, R. (2013). The Impossible Image : ‘The Enclave’ [online] Available at: • https://vimeo.com/67115692#
- Photo therapy -the ‘artistic’ discourse of photographers such as Jo Spence:
- Jo Spence: Work (Part I) SPACE, London1 June — 15 July 2012
- Jo Spence: Work (Part II) Studio Voltaire, London 12 June — 11 August 2012
29th February 2020
So the last few weeks have been frustrating and stressful. After contacting my BoW tutor back in November when I started and hearing nothing (as per previous posts), I had been chasing, then contacted the Support Team out of pure panic as I didn’t want to fall behind. Yippee contact was finally made and I submitted Assignment 1, then radio silence! After five weeks of chasing we finally agreed to complete a review over video call. I sat on the call for 45mins without the tutor turning up. Enough was enough so I called the Support Team and wrote to request a new tutor as this was obviously not working. After an internal OCA review were, I had to submit evidence, three weeks later I finally received a name of a new tutor, however looks like I have jumped from the frying pan into the fire as the level of responsiveness is about a good as the last one. I suppose you say that just as bad as I promised to post something here every two weeks and so far, I have failed.
On the plus side I have been working on my CS literature review and after falling down several rabbit holes which reading several other posts seems to be the norm and being told by my tutor to slow down and stop rushing I finally feel as if I have some clear areas to start reviewing and forming some notes on. My tutor set me a number of challenges which I have started and these can be seen in my research section of my blog – there’s a lot to work through, and I’m thinking that this may just take the two years I was hoping that it wouldn’t.
Another plus I completed a second photoshoot at Ngawi, with an amazing couple who have been together for 53 years – their secret for a happy life? Move to a special place and don’t stress over the small stuff (one out of two isn’t bad!). Despite the lack of engagement from my new tutor I will continue to submit Assignment 2 and see what happens, hopefully in my next post I will be able to report a positive turn of events (don’t hold your breath).
Michele Usher 