A3—Tutor’s feedback

I received my tutor’s feedback in writing for this assignment. I appreciate the circumstances that made a video / audio conversation difficult, but I find that a live exchange is much more effective for learning than reading a response in text. A live chat lets me ask whether I have understood properly and to ask questions—the back-and-forth exchange can be quite quick. Text does not really allow for much conversation and it is possible to read too much or too little into a sentence or two of commentary.

In spite of all that, the feedback was helpful although it left me scratching my head at first. R. writes that “visually I’d like to see you take this further” but, when you think you’ve already taken it farther than you’ve been before, where do you go next? So, I had to chew on his words a bit more:

Contact sheets too small: I’m not sure what the problem is, because they seem to expand to the same size as the sheets I’ve posted before. I’ll check. Nice to hear that they “look like aesthetic objects in their own right,” though. Perhaps I should just have submitted the contact sheets! (I’m kidding, of course.)
Location uninspiring: fair enough. Our back room doesn’t always inspire me, either, but I needed somewhere to work in the evening, out of the cold. I also agree with not cutting off my feet, smoothing out my shirt and making sure items like electrical outlets are not visible. These are all legitimate points about the imagery and I got too caught up in the fact that I was pushing myself to do a self-portrait and approximate dancing.
R.’s next points were very helpful to me as I reflected on them:
- “we’re looking for something visually improbable/unknown.”
- “Can you take your iPod out somewhere? The figure in location has so much potential, a lot of people are working on this at the moment. You need to choose your location with care, it’s hugely important what you, the photographer, see in it. It’s not a backdrop, the relationship is between the figure and the environment.”
And his assessment of areas for development really caught my attention: “Think visually, I feel you’re emphasising the ideas more than the visual realisation at the moment.”

I thought this last point was particularly fair and that visual payoff of my work was not as effective as it could be. If I hadn’t told you that I was disliked having my picture taken and that I was afraid of dancing, you would not have known it from the four images I presented. After thinking about all this, I decided to go back to what I wrote in my presentation of A3 and a single phrase caught my attention: “…ask me to put music and movement together in front of other people and I turn white with cold fear” (https://alancandn.home.blog/2019/11/19/a3-rethinking/).

It occurred to me that “I turn white cold with fear” is not just a vivid description of a feeling, but of an image, and that is the picture I need to show the viewer.

And so I have re-shot A3 to tell a more effective visual story, keeping in mind both my narrative and the need to draw on an interesting context that supports the narrative.

Hangout—12 December 2019

Today’s hangout was well-attended, with nine people participating for the full discussion and a tenth arriving for the last moments of the meeting. There were two major points of discussion:

AF was concerned about the possibility of self-plagiarism after a discussion with his tutor. Is there a chance that returning to themes or motifs may amount to an inappropriate use of one’s own work?

The consensus was that self-plagiarism was only a real danger if one submitted the same, or substantially the same, work for more than one assignment or course. In fact, tutor CS mentioned that it might be possible to go too far the other way by doing something completely different for every assignment and never really developing a body of work.

I am not overly worried about this, but I must admit that I have approached many of my assignments for OCA as a chance to try something new. My aim hasn’t been to aim for coherence but to use at least the Level 1 courses as experiments to see what I do and don’t like. If I don’t experiment now I may wind up producing much the same type of images that I have for years. We’ll see where this goes as I get ready to take on Level 2 early in the new year.
ES raised the topic of cliches and tropes, and what the different terms meant for our work. The other terms that she raised (such as “synecdoche”) were familiar to me from my studies in rhetoric and have been popping up in some of the theoretical readings we have been asked to read. The rhetorical terms are useful as shorthand but I wonder if we sometimes run into difficulty as we transpose them from the written/spoken word to a visual language. It seems to me that theory and technical language are only useful insofar as they allow us to understand, but they should never be allowed to get in the way of effective communication. They should follow the process of making art, rather than controlling it.

I volunteered to host the next hangout session on January 12, 2020 and have set things up on the OCA website to allow people to sign-up and identify their topics for discussion.

Hangout—2 December 2019

Eight of us participated in this Forum Live discussion (CW, AK, AF, JC, KA, SS, NM and me) and it was good to see some new faces.

The first item of discussion was SS’ wish to find a way to better photograph his pencil drawings from a sketchbook. He wanted to be sure to capture not only the correct nuances of shading and line depth/blackness, but also something of the texture and tone of the paper itself. This led to a number of suggestions (and a bit of a tutorial) about how to use a histogram to adjust curves and black/white/gray points to achieve desired results in an image.

AF presented some WIP for a project tentatively titled “I am still here.” The work comprised a series of photographs that were taken on a neighbourhood walk, almost a return to EYV’s Square Mile assignment. Participants viewed the images and made suggestions about sequencing and how it might be important to provide the viewer with some context for understanding them, given that the individual photographs depicted fairly mundane settings. Although some pictures have interesting compositional elements, it won’t necessarily be clear to others what the photographer had in mind. AF himself wasn’t entirely clear on how to pull the images together, although the resonances with his childhood were apparent (he has lived in the same neighbourhood all his life). CS thought the work had potential and suggested including an artist’s statement, with pairs of images playing off one another.

There followed a question and response from KA, who wondered whether using film would be acceptable for her next course (first at L2?). The answer was a clear ‘yes.’

The group decided that it would be good to meet once more before Christmas and then again a month later. The next dates are December 15 and (tentatively) January 12.

All going well, I will try to have most / all of my CAN A4 essay ready for the Dec 15 discussion.

Exercise—Elliott Erwitt

Erwitt’s dog picture has been cropped in such a way that the viewer is placed at eye-level with a chihuahua. If this image is not a crop, then the photographer must have placed his camera on or near the ground. The startling thing about the photograph is the gradual realisation that the leftmost pair of legs belong not to a human, but to another dog. This now means that the head of the larger dog is actually above the photographer’s line of sight, not at all the regular point of view.

I don’t know that the image is necessarily ‘saying’ anything, beyond being a visual joke, but it might suggest something important about relative position or status: you may be bigger than some, but you might still be someone else’s ‘small dog’ in life.

Viewpoint is everything.

Reading—The Aesthetics of Affect

My tutor suggested this reading as part of the feedback I received following A2. It is not an easy piece to navigate, but the argument seems to run as follows:

Contemporary thinking about art has neglected its aesthetic dimension and has not sufficiently taken into account its special nature of being both “a part of the world […and…] apart from the world” (O’Sullivan, 2001: 125).
The interpretive frameworks of Marxism and Deconstructionism have viewed art from two poles: a historical approach based on the time of the work’s production (Marxism) and an ahistorical approach that views the work with little or no regard for its creator or origins (Deconstructionism).
Although each approach has something to offer, both locate the import of the work in reason while “[a]rt, whether we will it or not, continues producing affects” (126).
By “affect,” O’Sullivan does not mean something transcendent—or “beyond experience”—but something “immanent to experience”. Rather than being carried out of oneself, one is involved in “an event or happening” (126–127).
Art invites us into a happening by showing us things we would not, or could not, otherwise perceive. A simple way of doing this is through the use of technology, such as very long or very short photographic exposures. More profoundly, O’Sullivan (referencing Georges Bataille) asserts that art functions as a “mechanism for accessing a kind of immanent beyond to everyday experience; art operates as a kind of play which takes the participant out of mundane consciousness” (127).
In this way, art does not invite us to a transcendence beyond ourselves, but works “to switch our intensive register, to reconnect us with the world. Art opens us up to the non-human universe that we are part of” (128). Further, art is “[l]ess involved in knowledge and more involved in experience, in pushing forward the boundaries of what can be experienced (130).

Response

I wound up enjoying O’Sullivan’s article once I had had the chance to digest it. I think that there is a lot to be said for mounting a defence of “affect” as a way to approach art (how does it make me feel? does it bring me something different or new?) given that, for many people, there is an expectation that we will think our way through it (where does it come from? how does it mean? what does it signify?). I think that this may be particularly true in the developed world and that we may have cut ourselves off from other or more complete ways of appreciating the art around us. It seemed a little ironic to me, though, that O’Sullivan makes such a cerebral appeal for the importance of feeling.

I was also surprised by the extent of the religious language and metaphor in the text, from the contrast of transcendence and immanence to the use of terms such as “sacred” and “incarnation.” I imagine that many readers might either move past these quite quickly or categorize them as “spiritual, but not religious” (as the common expression goes). For someone with academic training in Christian theology, however, much of the language O’Sullivan uses has particular resonance and it would be interesting to map his usages against those of a theological aesthetics.

Without having time to do that now, I will limit myself to one question that occurs to me: if we follow O’Sullivan’s emphasis on the place of affect, is it necessary to make such a sharp delineation between immanence and transcendence? For example, if we are to take the concept of incarnation seriously (and it is O’Sullivan who raises it), Christian theology sees it as the very place where immanence and transcendence actually meet—in the person of Jesus.

I don’t expect at all that this is how O’Sullivan will develop his thought, but it is suggestive and meaningful to me. I will likely return to it in my thinking as I work through the OCA program.

Reference

O’Sullivan, S. (2001) ‘The aesthetics of affect: Thinking art beyond representation’ In: Angelaki 6 (3) pp. 125 – 135.

A3—Reflection

Demonstration of technical and visual skills

I am satisfied with the results I achieved for A3.
The technical and visual skills required to realise these images were a little different from what I have done with other exercises and assignments. Most important, I was the subject, so I had to work to ensure that I would remain in focus while moving around in front of the camera. I accomplished this in a few ways:
- by setting the camera on a two-second timer to give me enough time to get in front of the lens;
- by setting the aperture on the lens (f/8) to give sufficient depth of field;
- by using a gel-coloured flash, remotely-triggered and fired into a reflective umbrella to freeze motion; and
- by ensuring that there was no ambient light in the room, which meant that the flash was the only source of light.

Quality of outcome

I am pleased with the results I achieved, in that they represent well what I had in mind once I landed on my concept / approach.
The images are sharp; I had enough exposures to give me a good selection of photographs for the series; and the colours from the gel-covered flash gave some extra dynamism to the images.
The four images I chose for the final set also compliment each other well in terms of movement, position of the subject, and the colours chosen for each.
If I were to do this again, though, I might look at letting a little ambient light into the frame and dragging the shutter. This would introduce more movement into the frame, but it might take away from the over all effect.

Demonstration of creativity

The creativity for me in this assignment does not lie in the techniques required to produce the images. Taking pictures with a flash in an umbrella is not that complicated, once you get a feel for what you are doing.
Instead, I believe that the creativity lies mostly in the desire to use the assignment to support some personal growth. I realise that a fear of dancing—coupled with a real dislike of pictures of myself—may seem trivial to some people, but it is significant for me. (I am guessing that many of those same people might run from speaking opportunities, while I have little difficulty addressing hundreds of people.)

Context

The reflection I did for this assignment continues the direction in some sense from A2 (which I will almost certainly rework in light of the feedback I received from my tutor), where I looked at issues of personal identity through a collection of artefacts.
In A3 I have again turned to personal exploration, although this time the imagery involves me directly rather than a series of proxies.
At the beginning of the feedback I received from my tutor in response to A2, he included the following quotation:

‘If I throw a stick in one direction in a field it does not mean that I am obliged to
retrieve it like a dog. If I throw a stick it is to eliminate or exclude this direction, to
feel free to research what is not indicated yet.’
Tomasz Wendland (2008)

I interpreted that as encouragement to resist following my initial leanings for A3 and to open up a new range of possible directions by deliberately turning from familiar things. Looking at my self as the subject of my photographs is something that I have never done, so being pushed was good for my growth as a photographer (and perhaps as a person). Rather than taking on a self-portrait in a relatively distant or even impersonal way, I decided to tackle a discomfort and a fear head-on.
I have also been glad of the opportunity to explore more personal topics in what I hope has been a positive way. Everyone faces challenges in the course of life—some much more so than others—but it has bothered me that so many personal artistic explorations seem to be negative in nature. I think I would have real difficulty sustaining a personal project that focused on the negative and I would also be reluctant to share it with others. I want to grow and I am usually better fed turning outward and forward, rather than focusing inward and down.
This does not mean that I cannot learn from and appreciate the work of artists whose work is darker—it just means that I may not want to follow their examples.

Reference

Wendland, T. (2008) ‘THE UNKNOWN: That what I say is not what I mean’ [Ph.D. Dissertation] Dartington College of Arts, University of Plymouth. At: https://pearl.plymouth.ac.uk/handle/10026.1/2796 (Accessed 24/11/2019).

A3—Self-portrait submission

This self-portrait is a departure for me in a number of ways. Challenged by my tutor to reveal a side of myself that might be surprising to people who know me, I decided to accept the challenge in a way that I hope might be positive for me.

I am not at all a shy person, but there are two things about me that most of my acquaintances do not know: 1) I have run from having my picture taken since I was a child, and; 2) the thought of dancing in front of others puts my stomach in knots. Although I have loved photography since I received my first camera at the age of 12, there are very few pictures taken of me since I was a teen. And, although I love music, I have avoided social situations where there was even the slightest chance that I might be expected to dance. I have been particularly ashamed of the fear of dancing and am aware of the fun that I have likely missed because of it. And I know that my wife has probably paid a price, too.

I have always been taken by Ilse Bing’s famous Self-Portrait in Mirrors, 1931 and originally thought of using her approach both to look out at the viewer and to reflect on my own self-consciousness. I soon realised, however, that I did not want to continue to focus on my feelings of embarrassment but to push myself beyond them and bring two difficult things in my life together. I could have produced a self-portrait that showed the feelings or impacts associated with a fear of dancing, but I wanted to resist and do something more positive for myself. It would be a series of images me having fun moving to music and be much less formally composed than Bing’s image. And if dancing turns me white with fear, well, I would counter that with coloured flash in keeping with all the colours expressed in music.

So my series is not about looking back or even about justifying or exploring where I may be now, but more about who I aspire to become. Less someone bound or shaped by fear, and more someone ready to look forward and grasp a challenge. My self-portraits are not the artful pictures of a youthful dance master like Mickael Jou, but the clumsy first moves of a middle-aged man.

I am under no illusion that this is the end of the matter, but it is a small step.

A small dance step.

References

AnOther (2016) Uncovering the Critical Influence of Photographer Ilse Bing. At: https://www.anothermag.com/art-photography/9266/uncovering-the-critical-influence-of-photographer-ilse-bing (Accessed 23/11/2019).

Dance Self-Portraits by Mickael Jou • Design Father (2015) At: https://www.designfather.com/dance-self-portraits-mickael-jou/ (Accessed 23/11/2019).

Ilse Bing. Self-Portrait in Mirrors. 1931 | MoMA (s.d.) At: https://www.moma.org/collection/works/44571 (Accessed 23/11/2019).

Mickael Jou (s.d.) At: https://mickaeljou.com/?og=1 (Accessed 23/11/2019).

A3—Rethinking, approach and contact sheets

After discussing a possible direction for A3 with my tutor and being encouraged to show a side of myself that people might not know, I went back to the drawing board.

I have to admit that it took some time to identify a new path. To my mind, it is a fairly rare thing for someone in middle age to reveal something new about themselves. Family, friends and colleagues have had years to get know me and the chance to surprise them becomes less likely the more time goes by. Nevertheless, it dawned on me that there might be one thing about me that would surprise people: my terrible fear of dancing. I have a reputation for being a competent, confident person who remains calm under pressure and thinks well on his feet. I am not shy: I am comfortable leading large teams, teaching adults and speaking in front of hundreds of people. And I absolutely love music and I feel its power—when I’m by myself. But ask me to put music and movement together in front of other people and I turn white with cold fear.

So that would be it. But I wanted to do it on my own terms: rather than making a self-portrait just about fear, I would do a series on where I could get to. I’ve been ashamed of this long enough and resent both the way I have allowed it to make me feel and the fun I’ve missed out on.

I decided to do a series of me dancing and even looking a bit silly as I enjoyed music on my iPod. I would incorporate colour and use flash to freeze my movement. I darkened the room so that the flash would be the only light and give me greater control, both of the exposures I want to use and to strengthen the effect of the gels on the flash. I had originally thought of using a single exposure or perhaps of blending a number of exposures to give a greater sense of movement but, in the end, I opted to go with four exposures—one from each of the different coloured gels I had used.

Here are the contact sheets from the series I took:

Exercise—Self-absented portraiture

Maria Kapajeva

Born Estonia, lives and works in London
BA in Economics, University of Tartu; BA in Photography at The University for the Creative Arts; MA in Photography at The University of Westminster.
Fellow of HEA, teaches at UCA (Farnham)
Cultural identity and gender issues within historical and contemporary contexts.
Works with stories and histories from collection of vernacular photography. Also works with video, installation and object-based art.

Nigel Shafran

UK, 1964– .
Photographer and artist. Work exhibited at Tate and the Victoria and Albert Museum. Worked as a fashion photographer in 1980s before turning to fine art.
Publications include Ruthbook (1995), Dad’s Office (1999), Edited Photographs 1992-2004 (2004), Flower’s for ___ (2008), Ruth on the phone (2012), Teenage Precinct Shoppers (2013), Visitor Figures (2015), Dark Rooms (2016), and The people on the street (2018).
” In photographing everyday elements and details, Shafran captures something of the fabric of our lives, the background noise that usually goes unnoticed, but which shapes us and our fate” (Everyday beauty, 2018).

Response

Yes, it did surprise me when I saw the image from Washing Up in the course manual that the photographer was a man. There is no reason why a man should not take such a picture, but I think it is fair to say that women photographers have more often taken pictures in the home, especially those connected with domestic tasks or rituals.

I am not entirely sure how to answer whether gender contributes to an image, except that I suppose it must: perhaps not so much in the choice of subject matter or technique, but more in the way that every creation springs from a context (the artist as a gendered creator) and is viewed within another context or narrative (the viewer as a gendered interpreter). I don’t think that this automatically determines the intent or the understanding of a work, but it would be hard to deny the presence or influence of gendered constructs.

The line of questioning in the course manual could serve to underline that viewers of the images may make certain assumptions about the person who created them and the situation within which they were created. Perhaps. What is more interesting to me is how humans are present to us in the things of their lives and in the way they order them. (Is it a clean kitchen? Is it orderly? What kind of food is prepared there? What social standing might be implied by the setting? Are there other clues as to the people who live here?) The setting is the stage of domestic life and it invites speculation about the actors who set the scene and perform there.

So yes, these are interesting still life compositions. I am naturally curious about other people and how they live. What are they telling me? How are they like me? How are they different from me?

References

Everyday beauty with Nigel Shafran (2018) At: https://www.bjp-online.com/2018/05/shafraninterview/ (Accessed 11/11/2019).

FK Artist – Maria Kapajeva (s.d.) At: https://fkmagazine.lv/2016/09/22/fk-artist-maria-kapajeva/ (Accessed 11/11/2019).

Interview with Maria Kapajeva (s.d.) At: https://ostseemag.com/portfolio/interview-maria-kapajeva/ (Accessed 11/11/2019).

Maria Kapajeva (s.d.) At: https://fastforward.photography/people/maria-kapajeva/ (Accessed 11/11/2019).

Maria Kapajeva | (s.d.) At: http://www.mariakapajeva.com/ (Accessed 11/11/2019).

Nigel Shafran (s.d.) At: http://nigelshafran.com/ (Accessed 11/11/2019a).

Nigel Shafran (s.d.) At: https://frieze.com/speaker/nigel-shafran (Accessed 11/11/2019b).

O’Hagan, S. (2018) ‘The photobook about homelessness – without a single rough sleeper’ In: The Guardian 11/12/2018 At: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2018/dec/11/photobook-homelessness-rough-sleeper-nigel-shafran-people-street (Accessed 11/11/2019).

Watch: BPB16 Nigel Shafran in conversation with Francis Hodgson (2017) At: https://photoworks.org.uk/watch-bpb16-nigel-shafran-conversation-francis-hodgson/ (Accessed 11/11/2019).

Exercise—Childhood memory

I have chosen to recreate a memory of something that happened to me when I would have been about eight years old. I was with some neighbourhood friends and we were rolling down the sides of the drainage ditch that ran behind our houses. It was late fall, so the ditch was dry and full of grasses and weeds.

I decided to go everyone one better and rolled backwards instead of forwards, only to find myself stuck at the bottom with my feet in the air and the zipper of my jacket stuck to the skin of my throat. Any movement pulled on the zip fastener and cause it to bite deeper into my skin. So I lay there until one of my friends was able to get my dad to come and help me out.

Children get into these sorts of scrapes all the time, but what stayed with me was the sense of how time slowed as I waited and gazed up at the sky through my feet. And the mix of feelings: the zip hurt my neck and I was afraid to move, upside-down and disoriented, a bit panicky but calm and observant all at once. I have since felt that unreal mix at other times of crisis: panic and calm, urgent action and slow motion.

I created this image fairly literally, but these are an adult’s legs and feet, not a child’s. And I believe that the image (and the experience behind it) point to the disorientation we can feel on two levels, both physical and emotional: our world has been turned on its head.

I decided to give the image a title because that has often been my experience—in the midst of disruption, help is coming. It is rare to be completely alone, but the hard part is being patient while waiting.

The photograph does resemble my memory in many physical respects, but the most important part for me is the feelings it summons and the upset perspective one has. I think most viewers, even if they had no sense of the story that gave rise to the image, would recognize that all is not well with the figure who belongs to the legs and feet. If anything, the picture could be seen as a capture of someone who is in the middle of falling, with a blank sky and the hint of a roofline above.