20th March 2020
Well as you can imagine its been a stressful few weeks at work due to the Coronavirus worldwide pandemic so my course has been sort of left to one side as my day job working for the District Health Boards takes front and centre priority. That said I have managed to finally meet via the joys of internet my new Body of Work tutor (5th March) where we reviewed both assignments 1 and 2. Received some positive feedback which was reassuring and some helpful tips and guidelines on how to progress, not sure how successful that will be considering the situation of lock down. I need to up load all my images that I’ve already taken and detail why I have rejected them which I will do in my Work in Progress folder.
In order to progress the human aspect of my work I have drafted a letter to be issued to the local residents of Ngawi and I hope to get a few more volunteers from this. A copy of the letter can be seen in my Work in Progress folder. I plan to issue round sixty letters. If this is not successful then I will contact my original couple for possible other connections in the area.
My tutor also recommended researching more into the importance of ‘place’ and the work by Berger and Mohr which I will add to my Body of Work, Work in Progress folder. The recent tutor led forum discussion (17th March), covered the subject of synthesis and how our Contextual Studies and Body of Work were linking, I have to admit it was a relief to hear other students being in the same position as myself or they had come through the other side. At the moment I don’t feel as if I have a clear direction for either parts of work. I keep flitting from one to the other and not really getting anywhere, but whilst listening to the two guest speakers I managed to formulate a few ideas of areas to progress with my Body of Work and ideas for future shoots. Gained some great advice around peer and portfolio reviews and how I should start to gain these early on in my journey to final submission. I’m glad I’m not the only one that is nervous about presenting work to others and professional photographers, but the more you do the more you learn and refine, but it does seem you have to careful on who you select – may be a hard lesson to learn.
23rd March 2020
I have spent a few days catching my breath and trying to get my head around the current world situation on COVID-19 which is affecting more and more countries. At the moment although New Zealand has cases it still hasn’t had any deaths. The country is preparing for a complete lock down and the PM is due to make an announcement this week on the move to a total lockdown which will result in everyone but essential worker working from home or businesses closing.
On a slightly more productive note I completed some more research for my Body of Work project around the importance of place and how this will relate to my location of Ngawi. The work by Mohammadmiri, Marzieh (2018) really resonated with me when he used the work by Thomas and Cross (2007) who argued that place is not solely based on a geographical location but also on the ‘integration of relationships and interactions’. On my trips to Ngawi and my discussions with the couple from Assignment two it became very clear how they thought the location was a very special place and how the small core of residents protected it from ‘outsiders’, often taking the law into their own hands and dealing with issues as any emergency services are over an hour away by road.
24th March 2020
So today New Zealand moved to Alert Level 4, which has resulted in the move to working from home for the majority of the country. No time scales have been given as yet but there’s discussion this will be for at least four weeks and so there has been panic buying. At the moment dur to the fact that I have till 2023 to complete my Level 3 course I’m not too worried about not being able to get out and shoot my location or post my request for volunteers, I will concentrate on catching up on my Contextual Studies research, course work for Body of Work part two on chance and trying to find any on-line talks and presentations.
25th March 2020
The start of the new norm. I have decided to continue to rise at the same time and spend my usual time before and after work up-dating this part of my studies and working on my research and course work so that I’m ready to hit the ground running when the restrictions are lifted.
To start with I looked at the work of Larry Sultan an American born photographer whose best-known work was based around his family ‘Pictures from Home’ (1992). This ten-year project captures all aspects of family life and coincides with my research on place. Sultan’s parents’ home was their ‘place’ with a lifetime of memories – some good and some bad. Sultan’s images were raw and emotional capturing aspects of their private lives which I’m sure most people would find uncomfortable. Although I liked the work, I think I want the images I produce for my Body of Work to be personal but show the struggles they face with isolation and their ability to cope especially as their livelihood is about to be stopped.
The images I took of Rob in his shed for Assignment Two were in a similar vein to that of the work of Adrian Salingar who photographed teenagers in their bedrooms – their personal place, surrounded by their memories and items that are special to them. Rob’s happy place was his shed and I think you can see that in the images, he’s relaxed and he’s happy to talk and explain everything that goes on in there. It was full from floor to ceiling in stuff, but everything had its place and he could locate and tell a story about every tool or piece of material. It would be great to have more examples of this, hopefully the letter drop will be successful and I can find more ‘happy places’ of the residents of Ngawi.
26th March 2020
I had been keeping note of my attendance at various on-line groups within my written log and I suppose I should also add them here as I usually get some valuable information and ideas from either listening to others experiences or when I discuss my progress there always seems to be someone who has read or noticed something usual that would help.
The forum highlighted a number of possible projects in a similar theme to mine and so I did more research. I have included further details and a more comprehensive write up in my Work in Progress file. I really enjoyed the work by Julia Johnston who documented the people of the West Coast of the South Island of New Zealand. They seem the closes to the residents of Ngawi. In a similar way to the images I have taken she has captured them in their place. The mood of the images are very different to those of mine, but still captures the aspects of isolation. Unlike my images these are colour but the tones are soft and muted.
I have continued to work through the large quantity of research papers for my Contextual Studies. I have to admit some are hard going and I’ve had to read them several times in order to grasp the meaning and context. At times I have been lost and a little bogged down and going off into many different directions, so I have decided to organise the articles and books around four main areas:
- Representation
- Power Relations
- Ownership
- Ethics
Hopefully this will help me focus a little more and I will see some progress and not just reading without direction.
Michele Usher 