I am going to prepare an Assignment
Five submission to my tutor before the
end of September. I don't think that
will necessarily be the end of the story - I can envisage further development
before going to the March Assessment session - but I have six images at a stage
where they can be submitted for feedback.
They are below; and there is background on what I've been doing in these
previous posts:- http://stansocapwdp.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Assignment-Five. (And,
please note, the intended outcome is large prints.) (I am aware that one has a different coloured background!)
Assignment 5 - 1
Assignment 5 - 2
Assignment 5 - 3
Assignment 5 - 4
Assignment 5 - 5
Assignment 5 - 6
As the previous posts explain, the
brief for this assignment is to photograph an event - planning,
photographing, processing, and publicising, in a photo-journalistic/documentary
context. I have chosen to stretch that
brief somewhat - producing my own response to a significant sporting event of
Summer 2013, the Ashes Series of Test
Matches between England and Australia.
The 'process' has been as follows:
·
The
original images have come from a wide range of sources - second hand books; newspapers; Google image searching; Flickr; a
specialist cricket site; even my own living room (Image 4).
· Each
of my six images started as a 'rough', before assembling the version seen here. In some cases, the original image (cut from a
book, say) has been used; but in many cases the original has been
re-photographed and re-sized, to scale in with my assembly. Most have been cut in some way, with a craft
knife.
· These
'assemblies' (feels like the right word to describe what I've done) are
deliberately 'transparent' and even a little crude in places. (I refer to
Letinsky, Blalock, Stezaker etc, in the other posts.) They have been lit (using 2 studio lights) to
try and emphasise the 'cut and paste' aesthetic; and then re-photographed to
produce a large-file digital image of the assembly, as it appeared in 'my
studio' (don't actually have one - but that's the principle).
· As
well as processing ready to print, some have had subsequent 'pixel' processing
(moving, cloning, deleting etc), partly to improve the image, but also to quite
deliberately confuse the eye in the detail.
· I
have printed each at A3+ (13"x19") for submission to my tutor. (Worth saying that I am not 100% sure about
my own printing & need the feedback on them now. I may subsequently have to go for external
printing - and I might even consider pushing the size larger again for
Assessment submission [If I can get away with it!])
I have also taken the opportunity to
reflect, again, on what this is all about!!
Reflections that I will share here ...
· The
projects origins lie in my Assignment Four research of contemporary still life
photography - specifically the likes of Laura Letinsky and Lucas Blalock - but there
are also, clearly, links to John Stezaker's combining of found images to make
something new, something that says something different.
· The
images are, of course, in response to a brief.
I think there is an element of subversion - subverting the implied
notion in the course notes that 'professional standards' = getting one's
photo-journalistic work published in the media.
But hopefully it is a creative, thoughtful and imaginative response to
the notion of photographing an event.
[The 'event', one might say, was my sticking together a few scraps of
paper. Or, am I photographing a series
of mythical events that never really happened?]
· There
is also intended to be some 'real' response, beyond the hint of intellectualising
above (and below). The images do
actually illustrate social and historical change. Image 5 has a highly 'posed' Australian
batsman (from the 1880s, as it happens) looking somewhat overwhelmed by the
ways in which the game (the world?) has changed by 2013. And it is also my intention that this
bringing together of images from all sorts of sources (and times) might suggest
some reflection on the ways in which today's photographers, faced with image
saturation, can respond to events. It
has certainly occurred to me that one might produce similar responses to
current affairs at all sorts of levels.
· Then,
perhaps returning to the intellectualising, I am trying to explore the layers
of image-making - prints of paintings, copies of old photos, colour prints in
books, to internet-based imagery, TV pictures, graphics, and then digital
manipulation. And, in the final prints,
(and partly in response to the Letinsky prints I saw at the Photographers
Gallery), I am interested in the surface of the photographic print - what can
we do with that flat surface? what depth of visual impact can it generate? I'm not so sure I will get there on this
final issue - but the exploration is part of the point of the project.
So - a submission to my tutor by the
end of the month; probably, I will share these images in the OCA Flickr group,
too; and I may still look at producing two composite portraits - the archetypal
'English' and 'Australian' cricketer. The
course brief also asks for evidence of 'marketing' the work. It's not at that stage yet - but I should
probably give it a go.
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