Assignment One - Final Prints for Submission

Time to round off things with some final blog posts in here.  Firstly, I want to record the direction I've chosen to take with the Assessment submission for Assignment One.  As discussed with Jesse, I am going with six images from the 'Tied' project and I am submitting A4 prints that I've produced myself.  I've also mounted them on card myself - using spray-mounting.  As will become clear, I've gone through all sorts of twists and turns for my Assignment Five submission, and eventually gone for professional prints.  That has partly influenced my decision on this assignment.  I kind of feel that it is good, at some stage in the submission for Assessment, to demonstrate what I can do printing myself.  Spray-mounting has proved reasonably manageable for A4 prints, so I'm happy with this outcome.

Assignment One - Assessment Submission (from 'Tied')

The second major topic of discussion with Jesse was the nature of my assessment submission for Assignment One.  My impression is that he would be perfectly happy with me submitting some mildly revised and re-edited versions of the images I sent to him back in May 2012; but I shared what I had been doing with the 'Tied' project, and he agreed that the work is 'interesting' and that I will submit a set of prints from this series, as a 're-submission' - "Entirely by your own choice".  I think the latter phrase was more an indication that I was voluntarily doing more work rather than a hint that I might be wise to leave well alone!  He did, quite rightly, encourage me to 'contextualise' this new submission in writing (coming up below); also to think about the sequencing (also coming up below); and to go with the simple 'deletions' on their own rather than the diptychs and triptychs.

My last post on this subject did do some contextualisation, but here is a more considered attempt to set out where these images come from and what they are about.

·     They do originate in a documentary-style interest in the phenomenon of the knotted strings, ropes and wires that adorn and fix almost every field gate in the neighbourhood - and indeed beyond this neighbourhood, as I have subsequently observed.  That idea alone had, and still has, potential for an interesting and visually effective set of images, which also have potential for broader, metaphorical readings - as hinted at by my title 'Tied'.

·     Working on that project and considering its presentation, I found myself thinking more about the 'craft' and 'process' of the image-making, and more about how others might read my presentation than about the subject and my intentions.  I spent time, for example, pondering what form of light would work best for these images - not untypical for this form of documentary/landscape work.

·     In parallel, though, I was researching and reading for my Assignment Four essay on contemporary still life image-making - the work of Lucas Blalock, for example; his use of post-processing and manipulation but also, coincidentally, the presence in his work of loops of tubing and other materials.  And I had also seen, for the second time, Mishka Henner's Less Americains, in which he has digitally removed parts of the Robert Frank images 'Les Americains'.  As Henner says in this interview, he was "... questioning the nature of photography and the nature of documentary photography".  He also says "I realized I was actually creating something new".

·     That led me to think about alternative ways of moving forward with my 'Tied' project.  Instead of the 'traditional' approach of getting the lighting and other 'craft' aspects right, were there deeper questions to be explored by, for example, taking Henner's lead and, in my case, deleting the very subject I had set out to photograph.  (Perhaps also worth adding that I began the process of selecting the string in one of the images as preparation for some other form of processing, but the idea of deletion partly grew from that.)

·     The six images presented all involve the deletion of the string or rope that was 'tied' to gates, fences or whatever in my original photograph.  In one case, the deletion has even gone a stage further, 'revealing' something that was not present in the original. The outcome is certainly something different from the original.  There are clear echoes of what was there before, but the images are now, potentially, also reflecting on the photographic process - the layers of influence of the photographer, the issues about truth and reality, for example.  Some of them open up new 'formal' ideas - the deleted subject seeming to come forward in the composition, as though it was a paper cut-out.  But there could be scope for new meanings and metaphorical readings.  Does the series raise questions about 'absence'?  Might there be reference to the gaps in life, missing aspects that we long to fill?  Chiefly, I have been interested by the ways in which this processing and manipulation (which has required considerable time and care!) has 'rewards' in evoking new and potentially more complex images than the original 'documentary' project might have revealed.

So then to the question of sequencing; how best to lay out the set of six images that I have selected for submission?  I have actually laid out two different sequences below - with quite different intentions.

The first format might be described as my Formal Sequence, ordering the images in a manner that seeks some formal progression of shapes, composition, framing, etc.  Here it is:

 

The second sequence could be referred to as a Narrative Sequence, and picks up on my idea that altering the images as I have opens up the possibility of more complex readings.  Without commenting specifically on any particular narrative, I present the following option.

 

 

 

 

This is quite an interesting comparison, for me, and it takes me right back to some issues in my own mind at the very start of this module, which have been partially but not entirely resolved.  I have, I would say, become very interested in what I might term the 'intellectual' exploration of photography, maybe at the expense of its 'emotional' potential.  That dilemma was troubling me, to an extent, as I started out on PwDP, but the 'intellectual' choice seems to have suited me well as the module has progressed.  It is, I would say, where I headed with Assignments Four and Five, and where this 're-make' of Assignment One has led me - until I look at the second sequence!  That could very well be read at an emotional and personal level.  I will make a choice between these two before sending in my submission - but I note that the dilemma is still not entirely resolved as I contemplate Level Three!

 

Assignment One - "Tied" Revisited Again

Back in June, I did some work on a Project that I tentatively titled "Tied".  It was linked with Assignment One, and I blogged about it here - http://stansocapwdp.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/tied-project-derived-from-assignment-one.html.  What started as a documentary-style project about the methods used to tie field gates in my immediate area - albeit one with symbolic possibilities - became, like many projects that I've looked at lately, more about the process of producing photographic art than about the subject matter (albeit, that subject matter remains in place).  I did more work on it at the time but then got sidetracked into other things.  Since these images might well form all or part of my final submission for Assignment One, I've been back to it again in the last week. 

Reflecting on what it's actually about, rather as I did with Assignment Five: 

·      It certainly stems from a documentary-style interest in this phenomenon of tied gates and an inclination to record them.

·      But, finding myself thinking about whether the subject would be better photographed in sunlight, even light, low sun, or whatever, I came to realise that I was actually getting (overly?) concerned about the 'craft' aspect of the photographic process - as much to do with what others might think as it was to do with my own aesthetics or interests.

·      This coincides with the Assignment Four research on Still Life and the transparent image processing of Lucas Blalock (who, by coincidence, often includes rope, hoses etc in his images).  I began 'playing around' with the images in Photoshop, leading (and some Mishka Henner influence to be acknowledged here) to the idea of completely removing the very subject I'd set out to photograph.

·      In some cases, that processing went further, highlighting the strings, ropes etc in different ways.

·      Finally, with one image, where, as one would expect, the string passes out of sight behind a gatepost, I came up with the idea of 'creating' an image of what couldn't actually be seen in the original image.

·      And so, the images have probably come to be almost entirely about the presentation of any subject matter in a photographic image.  They deal with the issues of truth and reality in photography, and with the layers of influence and decision-making in the process of making photographic images - in a not dissimilar way to my series for Assignment Five. 

I've been thinking about how they might be presented and have explored the idea of combining different version/stages together.  There are four examples below.

Tied 01

Tied 02

Tied 03

 

 

Tied 04

 

Presentation needs a little more thought & I would need to process some of the other images in a similar manner, but I'm quite interested in the way these explore, and maybe question, the extent to which photographic image-making plays with truth and reality.  Maybe?



"Tied" - a project derived from Assignment One

So, following the advice of Michael Atherton, my tutor, myself, and everyone else, I have been progressing a project that I began to play around with way back in February.  It's a derivative of the first assignment of the course, when I photographed the immediate surroundings of the Holme Valley, a somewhat rugged, rural theme, with an emphasis on the less immediately attractive aspects of this neighbourhood, the 'make-do-and-mend' approach to the tough life of hill farming.  A theme that has been attracting my attention, ever since I did that project about fifteen months ago, is the use of all manner of strings, wire, rope, electrical cables etc to fasten field gates.  It is absolutely endemic; almost every gate is tied at least once and sometimes several times.  Apart from the potential for a quirky set of interesting images, I saw the symbolic potential, in the 'make-do-and-mend' context, and also the metaphorical potential in a series entitled 'Tied'.  I already have about twenty different images, all taken within ten minutes walk of where I live (hence the derivation fromn Assignment One - Neighbourhood).  Here are just a few.

I find it an interesting project to progress, maybe as a final version of the submission for Assignment One; but I've been giving some thought to how the subject is best photographed.  The light, in all the above, is sunlight, creating its usual high contrasts, which doesn't work too badly at a purely aesthetic level in these examples, but would a softer, diffused, more even light be more appropriate, I ask myself.  That set me thinking about what I'm doing and what I'm trying to achieve - no surprise there, given my recent obsession with thinking! (Too much?)

The project is motivated, at least in part, by my interest in the way photography renders the insignificant significant.  These bits of string, wire, etc, are of no significance until I create a series that imbues them with symbolic and metaphorical purpose; and I'm proposing that I choose a most appropriate time of day and light, to say nothing of the choice of camera, lens, aperture, framing etc, etc.  Then I'm proposing to process my RAW files and present a series of images that maximise the chance that my reader will 'get it'.  Nothing new in any of that - and studying Barthes will remind me that, even after all of that work, the 'Reader' is the one who will interpret.

Which led me to want to comment as much on this process as on the subject itself - it's that 'thinking' getting to work again.  Which led me to explore another possibility.  What if I remove the insignificant aspects that I am trying to make significant?  What if I take them out of the image altogether?  What will that look like? What might it say?  So here is one I prepared earlier ...

Shades of Mishka Henner's "Less Americains", of course; but I find it interesting.  What about a book of these images with the 'cut-out' bits available at the end - as 'cut-outs' - so that the viewer can get involved and put them back together again!!  That would be plain silly, of course!  Hm!

 

Exercise: Revisit Assignment One

I’ve spent a little bit of time on this process over the last 2 or 3 weeks – looking at the original brief, the images I submitted (and those I didn’t), the notes I prepared and the feedback from my tutor.  I’m confident that my submission for assignment was, at least, a personal portfolio of images.  I took photographs that I wanted to take, with subjects, framing, etc that were of interest to me.  In the notes submitted I refer to quite a range of concepts/themes – stone, dilapidation, history, ruggedness, absurdity, survival, adaptation – and all of those are present in the submitted images.  What I didn’t do, looking back now, was narrow that down to a common theme/concept and explore that through the images I prepared and chose.

The feedback was broadly good – a strong collection of images, a critical investigation of the area, good observation and commitment, conveys the atmosphere, good editing – and so on.  But there was a comment that my tutor ‘would have liked to see more focus on one of the strands’, followed up in a subsequent exchange by ‘articulate the motivations behind your images a bit more ...’.  So, once again, it seems to be a case of trying to get more focus and direction.

Thinking about it, there could have been two ways of doing that – 1) essentially have taken the same images but then edit with a strong focus/intent; 2) do more research and thinking up front, choose a theme, then go out and take photos that reflect it.  Seems to me that either could be acceptable.  The first is along the lines of Anish Kapoor – letting the ‘spiritual’ speak through the artist in the creative process & then the ‘reader’ reconnects.  In fact, these are not mutually exclusive.  My ‘personal portfolio’ for Assignment One was, probably, more akin to the first, but reflecting on the assignment now presents an opportunity to use that process as the ‘research’.  What concepts and themes do I see now, when I review the longer set of images from which I made my choice?  What appeals to me and seems to speak about the local area in a voice to which I best relate?  What, in fact, do I want to say about the area?  And what sort of edit does that produce? What new images does it make me want to capture that further the theme.

I’ve spent some time doing just such a review.  There were 35 images in my long list, from which I selected 15 (probably too many) for the submission.  I already had some prints of the submitted ones, but I’ve printed off the others and been shuffling them around, re-selecting and, I guess, re-reading.  It seems to me that what I want to say about life in this corner of the Holme Valley (and I always intended to focus the assignment into a very narrow geography – bit like painter George Shaw in my earlier posts & his images from within a couple of hundred metres of where he grew up) was/is:

·         Life is tough;

·         Life is absurd;

·         Life is rarely pretty;

·         But we can make something of it.

And, of course, those are ideas that apply to life in general, not just the Holme Valley; universal concepts that are as much about man and his struggle to survive as they are about me creating images that evoke the neighbourhood where I live.  And the ‘making something of it’ is as much about my images being the ‘making’ as it is about documenting what others have ‘made’.  Bringing the techniques of the sublime landscape image to a shot of a pig farm is, in itself, a metaphor for man making the best of his lot.

So, where does that leave me in reviewing my images for Assignment One?  It informs my edit of the images that I’ve already taken and it provides direction for me to continue to create images that will add to the portfolio.  It provides me with a focus, when I’m out with the camera, locally; and I can continue to add/develop, so that by the time I submit for assessment I have a more focused, more clearly directed set of images for this assignment.  It’s something I can continue to work on over the months to that stage – and beyond, of course.

Assignment One – feedback & thoughts

I’ve had some positive feedback from my tutor on the first assignment this week, plus some pointers for improvements.  The key comments that pleased me were:

·         I seem to have successfully conveyed the atmosphere of the place.

·         My shot of the pig farm is seen as particularly strong (which sounds like a piece of irony in itself!); composed in a traditional landscape style; feels deliberately ironic; like a landscape painting or a photograph in a pictorial style.  That’s good; I want to present the ordinary and mundane in a manner that makes the viewer sit up and take notice & I quite like the notion of the ‘sublime’ pig farm.

·         My blog seems to be working well.

·         And my images are close to his own interests – which pleases me because it makes me confident that they will be viewed in an interested but critical fashion.

There are of course some further suggestions for improvement and development.

·         The series explores different strands and perhaps I could have focused more specifically on one.  Actually, in many ways, this series is more focused than the last time I put together a series on the local environs.  I have followed highly specific themes in the past e.g. ‘Stone’ for one of the Landscape assignments.  Essentially, the message is not to compromise my own interests for the sake of the brief, which is good, and consistent with what has been coming across from OCA.

·         The feeling is that some of my shots of stonework don’t add much to the series – though a recognition that I have used detail shots to provide some rhythm to the narrative.  It’s actually hard to make any images around here without stonework; it dominates, and that’s why it is so prevalent in my series.  He refers to the feeling of claustrophobia, and that is linked to this theme as well.  I can see how it might feel ‘over done’ but I also know how stone and stone walls dominate this landscape, whatever the scale.  My own tendency to focus on it is, I guess, a kind of emotional reaction; and there is also, perhaps, some metaphorical link I could make ... if I could just find it!!  Perhaps my response to this point, and to the previous one about focus, should be to photograph even more stonework ... push it ... explore it ... obsess with it ... and see what I discover ... about myself??  (Get ready, readers, to be bored out of your tree with stone! Stoned, even?)

·         The last shot in the series (the layers of stone walls), interestingly, is ‘pretty and has a decorative quality but lacks critical edge’.  That is a particularly interesting reaction.  I quite liked that shot and didn’t find it pretty; shot in an attractive light, perhaps, but for me, it said hard and gritty, a metaphor for the layers of history that are laid across the land around here ... and it also felt like a kind of barrier, a stop, a dead end for the narrative.  I don’t mind that it came across differently to him; we put our images out there and viewers will read them as they will; but the very different reading of this one is certainly interesting.

There were a few other useful suggestions about, for example, incorporating a ‘contact sheet’ of all images from a shoot into this blog; and perhaps taking another look at this collection to make a more personal selection (back to the focus and concentration on a theme).

He also encourages the use of a tripod, which I did quite a lot when completing the Landscape module and, latterly, for portraits in People & Place.  I think I quite enjoyed the freedom of handheld on this assignment.  The key point being made here, I recognise, is that I shot quite a lot in relatively poor light & ISO100, which has meant that several of the original images were somewhat underexposed.  I’ve been able to process them OK (Oh yes, one more positive there ... ‘processing seems to be fine’, which is a great relief.  I’m getting there.); but getting a more ‘accurate’ initial exposure with the tripod is perhaps preferable.  That said, I think I’ve felt more personally involved, if that makes sense, wandering the local lanes, unencumbered with too much equipment.

So – encouraged by the feedback; have noted some points for further thought; now time to move on.

Assignment One Submission

I have completed the shooting, processing and notes for Assignment One and submitted them to my tutor today.  The following includes extracts from the notes submitted plus a few other comments and the selection submitted.

The images have been created over a two month period from 25^th February 2012 to 24^th April 2012.  All are taken within approximately ten minutes walk of my home, in keeping with the assignment title ‘Your own neighbourhood’.  The outings have all taken place between around 10am and 17.30pm, and I have deliberately worked in varying light – dull/overcast and brighter sunlight – though in the latter case I have not worked in the middle part of the day when contrasts can be very harsh

I’ve done the submission a shared Dropbox folder, the first time I’ve used that approach (seems appropriate for this course!).  I’ve also gone a bit overboard on the submissions, I suspect, uploading TIFFS and High Quality JPEGS.  I shot over a hundres images in total, at about 40 different ‘locations’; but from that I pulled out 35 images for a ‘long-list’.  In line with earlier comments on here about this assignment,  I have tried to allow the personal, emotional reaction to motivate my original creation of images and to inform the selection of these 35 ‘best’ outcomes.  There is some variety of style in the 35 – again, a deliberate attempt to not restrict myself.

However, when making the final selection from the 35, I have sought to achieve greater consistency, and several images didn’t make it for that reason.  There are some obvious themes, such as the stone and the moss; but also, perhaps, ideas about history, brokenness, makeshift, decay, man & nature.  I think some images might be reminiscent of the landscape work of Jem Southam, which has always interested me, but they also relate to the George Shaw’s paintings that I discussed earlier. There is a deliberate order to the images, based loosely on three ideas – a degree of narrative progression; a degree of light progression (not entirely consistent, but present nonetheless); and an element of rhythm in the orientation (portrait/landscape).

I decided against the use of text.  First and foremost, I didn’t feel comfortable with the quality of the words that I had come up with in the earlier post on here – a bit too much like greetings cards, as I said at the time.  With a lot more work and thought, the idea could work, but it seems excessive to pursue it further on this assignment, so I have worked with a more straightforward photographic sequence.  Here are the images.

Overall, I am pleased with the outcome and satisfied that it does represent a personal but interesting and accurate reflection on the immediate neighbourhood in which I live.  Of course, if I had set out to document the character of the area in its broadest sense, then it would have been a different set of images, with more people and events, for example; but I see stone, dilapidation, history, ruggedness, absurdity, survival, adaptation, and that is what I have tried to represent.  Man is present in every one of these images, even though there isn’t a single person actually shown.

I still have plenty to learn from the technical point of view and some images might benefit from further processing and/or may have been done better at capture.  Perhaps fifteen is a lot of images to submit and I should have edited further.  I did, actually, but came back to the fifteen that seemed to tell a more thorough story. So, generally, a satisfactory outcome but there is scope for criticism in the detail.

Assignment One – update

This course and its blog have taken a bit of a back seat over the last few weeks because I have been working on my final assignment for People & Place.  That is progressing well, with the shooting due to be completed this week.  Things have not been entirely idle on the PwDP front, however.  I did have two or three sessions out and about with the camera a few weeks ago; and there are a few ‘contenders’ for the assignment submission.  I have also, in line with the approach on the People & Place assignment, been wondering whether text might have a role to play.  Don’t want to overdo that angle of course, but I have at least been playing with the notion that titles, with short individual supporting comments, might work for the ‘Your own neighbourhood’ theme.

I have tried to go along with my plans for a more personal representation of the neighbourhood in which I live, and here are one or two examples of what I had in mind.

The Dark Side

This is the dark side of the valley and sometimes, in winter, the sun can seem a long way off.

Absurdity

When the light is beautiful, it illuminates every

Dilemma

Which way to go – more sheep or more development?

Seeing something special

Colour, texture, rhythm, contrast - all around us, wherever we look

Uphill

Sometimes it feels like everywhere is uphill - either that or you're on the way down!

They’re just ideas and I may not use them, but I’m quite taking to this image/text combination.  I would need to be very careful not to end up with something resembling the cryptic greeting cards genre, and one or two of these may be heading that way, perhaps all of them!  However, it’s some food for thought and I’m partly logging it here to record some progress on the assignment.

Something unexpected in Walsall – and then it’s ‘Go West’ – but still on Assignment One

It’s almost two weeks ago now that we went, with friends, to the New Art Gallery, Walsall.  It was at my instigation, having seen a write-up of a Martin Parr exhibition of images made in the Black Country, in BJP.  That exhibition comprised four large colour prints and two slideshows running on small iPads!  Hmmm, it was beginning to feel like an embarrassment.  The gallery has an extensive collection of busts by Jacob Epstein, plus a miscellany of paintings by contemporaries, and contextual pieces about his life.  Interesting, but it wasn’t especially inspiring for the group.  There was Zarina Bhimji’s film ‘The Yellow Patch’, being premiered in partnership with the Whitechapel Gallery – stupendous photography, but we only got to it late & could only watch half!  Oh dear!

Fortunately, there was something else, within which I found a real source of unexpected inspiration.  A special exhibition, spread through three rooms, it was entitled ‘There is a Place’, with six artists featured and varied media, including paintings, drawings, prints, etc.  The title gives a clue as to why it might link with this assignment.  ‘There is a Place’ ‘... brings together a group of artists who explore our psychic connectivity to landscape...’ so reads the supporting leaflet, ‘... seemingly generic urban and suburban views which, on closer inspection, have the ability to evoke personal and collective memories.’  There it is, just what I’ve been thinking about for the assignment – ‘My neighbourhood’, from a personal perspective, but in a way that demonstrates its generic character as much as its individual exceptions.  There were, as I say, six featured artists, but one in particular must be singled out, for me; and I have to admit I had not heard of him before, despite his having been shortlisted last year for the Turner Prize – more fool me!

His name is George Shaw and this exhibition included 2 or 3 of his paintings, of which there is a good selection here, and a series of twelve etchings entitled '12 short walks'.  There is also this article about him, written interestingly by Sean O’Hagan, who writes on photography for the Guardian.  His paintings are created using Humbrol model paints, and they all feature scenes within a half mile radius of the family home in which he grew up, on the Tile Hill Estate in Coventry, as do the 12 etchings.  He takes, he says, thousands of photographs as he walks the area, and the painted images are created from those that keep ‘nagging away’ at him.

I really like his choice of subject matter – the ordinary and the mundane, made significant by his memory and his work, remaining honest to its ordinariness, yet as O’Hagan puts it ‘alive with possibility, aglow with resonance and suggestion.’  His paintings are beautifully crafted, subtly coloured (the Humbrol) yet retaining a vibrancy, in what he fully acknowledges is a pictorial style that he was using when learning art in his teens, but to which he has returned later, rediscovering an enthusiasm for painting that seems to have deserted him following art school.

He seems to be capturing the ordinary moments lest he/we let them slip by.  ‘If I hadn’t made these paintings,’ he says, ‘they would still be circling round somewhere ...’ Thankfully, for someone who clearly has a respected place in contemporary art, the work is unpretentious, highly accessible, and both engaging and rewarding for the viewer.  He says that he tries to paint images that the Professor of Fine Art could discuss with his (Shaw’s) mother and neither would be condescending to the other.  Excellent – and what a lesson for any photographer or artist who bemoans the shortage of subject matter in an urban environment.  Anyone studying OCA Photography 2 – Landscape – please look!

So, what a turn-up!  No sooner do I start on a module entitled ‘Progressing with Digital Photography than I find inspiration in a painter, and one who says ‘sometimes I look at my work and its conservatism shocks me.’

But it doesn’t end there, because the next stop is a photographer who, so far as I am aware, has never used digital – certainly not for any serious works anyway – and who works exclusively in black and white.  Coincidentally, Sean O’Hagan has recently written an article about him, too, it’s Robert Adams.  I mentioned him in the previous post, a photographer renowned for his ‘sense of place’, a phrase that crops up in the article above, but to whom I havn’t ever paid particularly close attention.  The truth is that, when I’ve come across his images, as one does regularly, I have never felt inspired, never enthused to look further.  The ‘sense of place’ label makes this a good context in which to take a closer look, and I also note that Yale University Art Gallery has put together a big retrospective called 'Robert Adams: The Place We Live'.  The links and co-incidences begin to mount up!  So, I’ve taken a little more of a look at him than I had done before.

Actually, I’ve found myself comparing the two – Robert Adams & George Shaw!  It has proved to be an interesting exercise in thinking about an assignment that relates to ‘place’.  Clearly, both demonstrate a strong interest in ‘place’. Both create images of the ordinary and the mundane, and both invite the viewer to see more.  Their low-key, ‘neutral’ style of presentation has similarities, and although in different mediums and quite different styles, both have chosen to present their images in what might be described as a rather outmoded fashion.  Shaw’s pictorialism could be at odds with many contemporary artists and Adams’ black & white images feel more in tune with the FSA in the 1920/30s than cutting edge 21^st century photography.  One difference, it seems to me, is that Shaw’s subject matter is intensely personal to him, whereas Adams is working on a broader, bigger stage, dealing with ‘political’ issues in a sense.  The photography is certainly personal, but the purpose and subject seems broader.  Whilst both certainly examine ‘change’ in the landscape, Shaw seems more accepting of the change.  Where Adams, despite the beauty and craft of his images, seems genuinely anxious that we realise what we’re losing, Shaw, again operating at a personal level, seems to accept that life passes and things don’t stay the same.  Of course, Shaw starts with the urban environment.  His ‘nostalgia’ (and that might not be an entirely fair word to use) is for the urban, man-made environment in which his early memories were made, whereas Adams (and again you could say, nostalgia, but it doesn’t seem fair with him either) concern is much more to do with the natural world, and man’s impact on it.  I tend to feel that Shaw’s painted images have more ‘realism’ about them than Adams’ photographic ones.  On the face of it, one might say that Adams’ images are simple representations of what he sees – but of course they aren’t.  For a start, he is far too intelligent an individual for that anyway, but the use of these beautifully toned black and whites, in which he is openly concerned to present with an eye for ‘beauty’ seem to ‘nod’ backwards in time – or they do to me, anyway.

And that is where I seem to struggle with Robert Adams.  I can’t seem to relate to, for example, relatively recent images of damaged leaves, which are presumably intended to draw the viewer’s attention to an issue that is current, yet which suggest to the viewer that they might have been created 60 or 70 years ago.  A key difference between these two artists, for me, is my personal reaction to them!  George Shaw seems to speak directly to me and touch something deep, whereas Adams leaves me feeling cold.

At which point, I can draw conclusions, hopefully, that will help in my thoughts about Assignment One.  (I’m tempted to say – that I should paint my neighbourhood in Humbrol, but that would be plain silly!)  These are relatively simple, and even somewhat circular.  I will create seemingly simple images that observe the mundane and everyday in a ‘realistic’ manner, but which seek to speak at a personal level to the viewer, who will feel a sense of the place where I live, but perhaps also feel a sense of the place where they live, too.  Actually – good idea to have all of that in the back of the mind, but what I really need to do is get out and make some photographs, ones in which I feel personally interested because I want to make them!