2019

Lynda (BC, Canada), Mark (New Zealand) and I have been meeting regularly for some time now and have branded ourselves as the “Rest of the World” (ROTW) Hangout. We all recognize the value of hangouts but don’t always find the other OCA meeting useful because of the differences in timezone. We had been hoping for more people to join us this time, given that 11 people had signed up. As it turned out, five participated—the usual three, plus Bob (UK) and Nuala (France).

No one had WIP to present, so I started things off by talking about my experience with the little exhibit I had on display in a local bistro for six weeks. I sold five of the 13 pictures I had on display, so I have effectively covered my costs and am quite please with that as a result.

I also mentioned some of my struggles around CAN A3’s self-portrait work and received some helpful suggestions from the group. I think Nuala’s work for this assignment (“Thou shalt not age”) was quite gutsy, so I may go back and look at it again.

Mark talked to us about his own prep work for CAN A3 and it sounds as though he will go the “absented-self” route. He is looking at doing it with reference to the Maori term Tūrangawaewae which indicates “the place where one has a right to stand.” Several of us made suggestions, based largely on our own experiences of being immigrants/foreigners in places where we live and the history of colonization. This will be an interesting piece to see develop.

Lynda is working through her Documentary course and having some difficulty in locating historical images of the area where she lives. I suggested that she might like to look at the National Archives collection online, check into the layers of meaning suggested by the original Indigenous place names, and also sent a link to some work done by Bonnie Devine that I found powerful during a visit to the Art Gallery of Ontario. Lynda also introduced us to the work of Diana Thorneycroft, which has a particular resonance for those familiar with Anglo-Canadian culture. I got a kick out of Thorneycroft’s humour and imagination at the service of serious subjects.

Nuala has completed a 2.4m dot-matrix scroll on the story of the Internet’s creation and is also thinking of creating a related video.

There was discussion around the relevance and outdated nature of some of the assigned readings and a concern that writing in the field is often more difficult to read than it needs to be. I think this is a common complaint about academic writing and can be put down to a few things: the occasional need and benefit of a specialized and technical vocabulary; bad writing habits; and the fact that the audience in mind is often other specialists/peers/people who control academic tenure. In other words, a broad readership is usually not in focus and, for some academics, not desired.

Bob made some good recommendations of printing paper, particularly for black and white (Pinnacle FibreGloss 320gsm) and the work of photographer Manuel Vasquez.

Mark agreed to host the next hangout in roughly a month’s time, to make sure we get it in before the holiday season starts.

Exercise—Masquerade

Nikki S. Lee (Kye-Chang, South Korea; 1970– )

Born and BFA in Photography at Chung-Ang College of the Arts, University of Korea, 1993; moved to NYC for MFA and stayed. New York University, New York, 1997–99; Fashion Institute of Technology, New York, 1994–96.
Works in both photography and film. Interest in notions of identity, particularly identity that is dynamic and negotiated through relationships.
Performance art.
Projects series (1997–2001) on sub-cultures, including yuppies, swing dancers, drag queens, hip hop fans, and senior citizens recorded with a point-and-shoot camera, wielded by a member of the selected group or a passerby.
Parts series (2002–2005), in which she appears in ‘candid’ snapshots with only parts visible of a male from a failed relationship.
Directed 2006 film, “A.K.A. Nikki S. Lee,” in which played two fictional versions of herself.
Lee’s work makes me think of what might happen if Cindy Sherman got out of the studio and interacted with people. There is just as much reliance on costume, but less so on makeup and prosthetics. But Sherman relies on creating an artificial world whose artifice is often obvious, while Lee works to fit in with the an existing group or context and draws on her resemblance to them for effect. If she is interested in confronting the viewer, she goes about it in a much subtler way.

Trish Morrissey (Dublin, Ireland; 1967– )

Combines performance and self-portraiture with photography and film.
Uses archives to explore class, family relationships, body and gesture, gender and role-play, power and control and what it means to be human.
Trish Morrissey: a certain slant of light at Francesca Maffeo Gallery in June 2018. Thirteen photographs and two films of archive material gathered about the last two female residents of Hestercombe House, a stately home and gardens in Somerset, England.
Solo publications: Seven Years (2004) and Front (2009).
Featured in The Photograph as Contemporary Art by Charlotte Cotton; Vitamin Ph, Survey of International Contemporary Photography; Auto Focus: The Self-Portrait in Contemporary Photography, by Susan Bright; Photography and Ireland by Justin Carville, and Making It Up: Photographic Fictions by Marta Weiss.

Tracey Moffatt (Brisbane, Australia; 1960– )

BA in visual communications from the Queensland College of Art, 1982. Honorary doctorate, 2004.
Uses text, collage, and set design to explore childhood trauma, Aboriginal people, and popular Australian culture.
Series Up in the Sky (1997) portrays violence in an outback town. “There is a storyline, but there isn’t a traditional beginning, middle, and end.”
Over 100 solo exhibitions.
Represented Australia in the 2017 Venice Biennale with My Horizon.
Works held in the Tate Gallery in London, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, and the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra.

Reflection

I don’t know that Lee’s work is necessarily voyeuristic or exploitative. It seems as though she introduces herself as an artist to her new groups and spends quite a bit of time with them. The whole exercise could be read as both a comment on her own identity as well as that of the group: the group has established a set of codes by which they can show belonging and identify one another (a social construction); and Lee, by adopting their identity and being accepted by the group indicates just how malleable her own identity can be (another social construction).

As for Morrissey’s request, it might depend upon my frame of mind at the moment and how she presented herself / her project. I do not usually enjoy having my picture taken, but I might go along with it for a laugh or for the novelty. And given that I take more and more pictures of strangers myself—sometimes with, sometimes without their permission—I feel that I have less and less right to deny them the same access to me. It would be hypocritical of me, so I am gradually agreeing to lower my guard. I also recognize that we live in a surveillance society and the idea that we have a veto over the capture of our image is largely an illusion. We are being imaged all the time, for all sorts of purposes, so a snap for a random photographer or tourist seems relatively benign.

References

Museum of Contemporary Photography (s.d.) At: https://www.mocp.org/detail.php?t=objects&type=browse&f=maker&s=Lee%2C+Nikki+S.&record=1 (Accessed 26/10/2019).

Nikki S. Lee (s.d.) At: https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/artist/nikki-s-lee (Accessed 26/10/2019).

Nikki S. Lee | artnet (s.d.) At: http://www.artnet.com/artists/nikki-s-lee/ (Accessed 26/10/2019).

Nikki S. Lee | National Museum of Women in the Arts (s.d.) At: https://nmwa.org/explore/artist-profiles/nikki-s-lee (Accessed 26/10/2019).

Tracey Moffatt (s.d.) At: https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/artist/tracey-moffatt (Accessed 26/10/2019).

Tracey Moffatt | artnet (s.d.) At: http://www.artnet.com/artists/tracey-moffatt/ (Accessed 26/10/2019).

Tracey Moffatt | MCA Australia (s.d.) At: https://www.mca.com.au/artists-works/artists/tracey-moffatt/ (Accessed 26/10/2019).

Tracey Moffatt :: The Collection :: Art Gallery NSW (s.d.) At: https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/artists/moffatt-tracey/ (Accessed 26/10/2019).

Tracey Moffatt – Under the Sign of Scorpio, 2005 – Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery (s.d.) At: https://www.roslynoxley9.com.au/news/releases/2005/07/10/94/ (Accessed 26/10/2019).

Trish Morrissey (s.d.) At: https://www.trishmorrissey.com/ (Accessed 26/10/2019).

Trish Morrissey | LensCulture (s.d.) At: https://www.lensculture.com/trish-morrissey (Accessed 26/10/2019).

Trish Morrissey | photoparley (s.d.) At: https://photoparley.wordpress.com/2016/09/12/trish-morrissey/ (Accessed 26/10/2019).

Trish Morrissey — Francesca Maffeo Gallery (s.d.) At: https://www.francescamaffeogallery.com/trish-morrissey (Accessed 26/10/2019).

Trish Morrissey Photographer | Biography & Information | wotfoto.com (s.d.) At: https://wotfoto.com/photographers/trish-morrissey (Accessed 26/10/2019).

Visit—Japanese photography

“Hanran: 20th-Century Japanese Photography” opened recently at the National Gallery of Canada. The exhibit was curated by the Yokohoma Museum of Art and features works by 28 photographers from the early 1930s to the 1990s.

I went to the members’ pre-screening of the exhibit to beat the crowds and so was able to take my time going over the images on display. It was something of an education for me because I have been more familiar with contemporary Japanese photographers (Hiroshi Sugimoto, Nobuyoshi Araki, Daido Moriyama) than those of the previous century. According to the promotional text for Hanran, the works in the exhibit break with the Pictorialism of early Japanese photography and begin with “the avant-garde Shinko Shashin (New Photography) of the 1930s”.

Many of the photographs, both pre- and post-WWII, struck me as being close in subject matter and approach to the images produced in the West at that time. Modernity was in full swing and there is a preoccupation with mechanization, news magazines, fashion and advertising. The photographs produced during the War itself are a departure to much of that, however, and the exhibit devotes a fair bit of space to early propaganda, documentation of the Tokyo it raids and then the horrific aftermath of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It is not until much later that the are-bure-boke (grainy, blurry, out of focus) school of photos start to appear.

And this is more of what I had been hoping to see. For me, much of the exhibit looked a lot like the photography with which Western audiences are familiar. Few of the pictures told me anything new or exposed me to a different way of thinking. If anything, I wondered if much of the photography could be read as a desire in early 20th-century Japan to emulate the West, but this might say more about my ignorance of Japanese history and culture.

All told, I was ready to learn more about the are-bure-boke approach, but that is my problem and not the fault of the curators.

A3—Early thoughts

“Drawing upon the examples in Part Three and your own research, you can approach
your self-portraits however you see fit.”

Self-portraiture is not something I have ever done, largely because I have never really enjoyed having my picture taken. Even as a kid, I would rather run away than be lined up for a camera. And sometimes I did just that (there is photographic evidence of this).

My first thoughts for A3 came to me in a bit of a flash over breakfast. If I was going to have to do this, I would do it as a challenge and try to do it up big. My inspiration was Jimmy DeSana‘s cover art for the Talking Heads album, More Songs about Buildings and Food, along with the way that David Hockney had done his Polaroid portraits. I wanted to create a composite grid image showing several aspects of my life. I reasoned that any individual is not, in fact, one thing, aspect or persona, but is seen in several facets that vary according to context, role and relationship.

I thought I was onto something, but my tutor started asking more tricky questions during our October 8 conversation: is there any part of you that people don’t know? Is there something like a place or a moment that would show a different side of you? I suggested that there probably wasn’t much that would surprise people about me at my age, but he wasn’t buying it. Instead, he encouraged me to “be extreme, either in the idea or the concept.” And then he reiterated it in his written feedback to me: “I’m thinking of your perfectly reasonable idea for the assignment and suggesting you
go in the opposite direction. For me, the job of the photographer is to make the
invisible visible, not to be subversive but to develop our understanding.”

So now I’m back at square one without an idea or a concept. I’ll have to chew on this for a little bit before trying out some ideas. They may be easier to create from a technical standpoint than a complex grid would be, but they might require more personal work to get at why I would want to create a particular view of myself, rather than another.

Growing can be a pain, sometimes.

References

David Hockney and The Camera: A Composite Polaroid Reality. At: https://www.dailyartmagazine.com/david-hockney-photographs/ (Accessed 14/10/2019).

Estate of Jimmy DeSana (s.d.) At: https://salon94.com/artists/estate-of-jimmy-desana (Accessed 14/10/2019). Michalska, M. (2018)

More Songs About Buildings and Food (2019) In: Wikipedia. At: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=More_Songs_About_Buildings_and_Food&oldid=919824330 (Accessed 14/10/2019).

A2—Tutor’s feedback

I had my follow-up tutorial to A2 on October 8 and found some parts of it fairly challenging. The meeting got off to a rough start because I was at work and our firewall did not want to cooperate with the Zoom connection—in the end, we had to settle for a phone conversation.

Technical issues aside, I found that I didn’t always have answers ready for my tutor’s questions. Some were relatively straightforward and easily answered (Why did you approach the assignment this way? Have you thought of adding more text?), but others had to do more with the concept itself. I got the sense that I had produced a credible response to the brief (the written follow-up later confirmed this), but that my tutor was looking for… more. I took away the idea that, if I was going to propose a concept then I should push it. More than once I was encouraged to be “more extreme,” both for this assignment and for what I talked about for A3. I was concerned that the A2 images are a bit mundane (and that was the point), but my tutor countered with the following: mundane images can work if the concept is particularly strong, or vice versa (ideally both).

Following on this theme, I was encouraged to look for more narrative potential within the series of images and to look for something out of the ordinary that would affect people. If the pictures were to convey a sense of alienation, then I should go for it, either with a more extreme “museum-y” approach or more sense of loss. I should continue to develop the imaginary potential of the images.

I will re-shoot A2 before I submit CAN for assessment next year. I think I can make a tighter series by swapping out some of the artefacts (I’ll drop the cutlery service add another book or perhaps a medallion), increasing the museum-y aspects (perhaps with some more descriptive text) and making sure that all images in the series are consistent (I departed from the open/shut views with the cigarette case and will fix this).

All told, a challenging tutorial but one that I am willing to take on. I usually find that I learn more from hard questions—they are not always fun at the time, but they push me to new places. And that’s why I began the OCA program in the first place.

Exercise—autobiographical self-portraiture

Francesca Woodman

American (1958–1981) photographer, largely black-and-white self-portraits.
Produced over 800 untitled prints. Numerous posthumous solo exhibitions, estate managed by parents.
Rhode Island School of Design, moved to New York in 1979 to pursue a career in photography.
Influenced by Surrealism and Conceptual Art, her work often featured recurring symbolic motifs such as birds, mirrors, and skulls. Medium format.

After viewing a lot of the images produced by Francesca Woodman during her brief photographic career, I don’t find much warrant for Susan Bright’s conclusion (2010) that Woodman’s work alluded “to a troubled state of mind.” It could be that Bright has chosen to concentrate on some of the darker images that Woodman produced, particularly those containing masks, those that blur her identity (sometimes by covering her face or by blurring herself through motion), or those containing eels.

Instead, I wonder if Bright is doing a sort of post hoc interpretation or confirmation bias with Woodman’s pictures, starting with the artist’s suicide and reading it back into her work. If one was not aware of how Woodman died it would be possible to see many of her images as the products of a young woman discovering the different sides of her personality, her sexuality and her humour. Not all of the self-portraits are cheery, but nor is anyone, all the time.

At the same time, I imagine that any viewer of a body of work is capable of doing just the same thing: starting with a fixed judgement about its meaning and then (not surprisingly) finding evidence for that fits.

Elina Brotherus

Helsinki, Finland (1972– ). M.S. in analytical chemistry, University of Helsinki in 1997. M.F.A. in photography, University of Art and Design Helsinki.
Member of the Helsinki School. Lives and works in Finland and France.
Work is primarily autobiographical. Documented infertility and “involuntary childlessness” in 2011-2015 series “Carpe Fucking Diem” and 2009-2013 “Annonciation.”

Gillian Wearing

Birmingham, (1963– ). Chelsea School of Art, bachelor of technology degree in art and design, 1987. BFA Goldsmiths, University of London, 1990.
Documents everyday life through photography and video. Individual identity, the private and the public spaces. Distorted identity, role playing, masks.
Work with strangers. Confessional art (Signs). Mock anthropology.

Reflection

My thinking about self-portraiture has changed over the last few years, perhaps as a result of the learning journey I’ve been on with the OCA. I admit that I suspected self-portraits were often a sign of narcissism or self-obsession, but I better appreciate that there can be a number of motives for using oneself as a model: the wish to explore questions of personal or group identity; delving into psychology; using oneself as a proxy for humans as a whole; or practical issues of cost or access to models (I understand that Cindy Sherman often photographs all through the night, making minute change after minute change to makeup, costumes and sets as part of her process—this wouldn’t necessarily lend itself to working with live models). So yes, an element of self-indulgence could be present in self-portraiture, but not necessarily. (Is an element of self-indulgence present in every of art? Why create at all, except for some satisfaction of the self?)

After looking through dozens of images created by Woodman, Brotherus and Wearing, I am intrigued. The three have not created Instagram selfies to sell a product, or sex, or their own ego brand, but are clearly involved in pursuing something more serious. It’s not always clear to me what that something is, but I know that I would like to see more, rather than less. If anything, I admire their vision, drive and imagination, and wonder how I might approach my own self-portrait for A3 (I have an idea already).

I am not entirely sure what the significance of Brotherus’ nakedness is. In some cases, it may connote a vulnerability or honesty in that there is no protective layer between her, the camera and viewer. Given the attention that she pays to clothing and props in many of her self-portraits, I wonder if her deliberate choice of when to be naked has an anonymising function: clothes are often markers of age, status, occupation, etc., so removing them compels the viewer to see Brotherus as a broadly representing woman/women (if sex/gender is what she is trying to convey) or simply as a human. In one interesting series, Brotherus appears clothed beside an older, naked man (identified as her teacher), while she appears naked in two images with people identified as her students—I wondered if the progression from clothed student to naked teacher implied a gradual ‘unveiling’ of the artist within, or if there was some sort of transference from teacher to student… or perhaps both.

References

Bright, S. (2010) Auto Focus: The Self-Portrait in Contemporary Photography. Cited in Boothroyd, S. (2014) Photography 1: Context and Narrative. Open College of the Arts, p.74.

Elina Brotherus (s.d.) At: http://www.elinabrotherus.com (Accessed on 2 October 2019a)

Elina Brotherus (s.d.) At: https://martinasbaek.com/artists/elina-brotherus/ (Accessed on 2 October 2019b)

Francesca Woodman | artnet (s.d.) At: http://www.artnet.com/artists/francesca-woodman/ (Accessed on 26 September 2019)

Francesca Woodman – 97 Artworks, Bio & Shows on Artsy (s.d.) At: https://www.artsy.net/artist/francesca-woodman (Accessed on 26 September 2019)

Francesca Woodman Photography, Bio, Ideas (s.d.) At: https://www.theartstory.org/artist/woodman-francesca/ (Accessed on 26 September 2019)

Gillian Wearing (s.d.) At: https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/artist/Gillian-Wearing (Accessed on 2 October 2019)

Gillian Wearing | artnet (s.d.) At: http://www.artnet.com/artists/gillian-wearing/ (Accessed on 2 October 2019)

Gillian Wearing – 29 Artworks, Bio & Shows on Artsy (s.d.) At: https://www.artsy.net/artist/gillian-wearing (Accessed on 2 October 2019)

Gillian Wearing Art, Bio, Ideas (s.d.) At: https://www.theartstory.org/artist/wearing-gillian/ (Accessed on 2 October 2019)

LensCulture, E.B.| (s.d.) Elina Brotherus. At: https://www.lensculture.com/elina-brotherus (Accessed on 2 October 2019)

Photographs tell as much about the observer as they do about their author.« (s.d.) At: https://www.collectorsagenda.com/en/in-the-studio/elina-brotherus (Accessed on 2 October 2019)

Searching for the Real Francesca Woodman (s.d.) At: https://www.victoria-miro.com/artists/7-francesca-woodman/ (Accessed on 26 September 2019)

Tate (s.d.) Finding Francesca – Look Closer. At: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/francesca-woodman-10512/finding-francesca (Accessed on 26 September 2019)

Tate (s.d.) Gillian Wearing CBE born 1963. At: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/gillian-wearing-cbe-2648 (Accessed on 2 October 2019)

My first exhibit

A bistro in my town held an open “call for artists” last fall and I decided to take along a selection of images that I had made for EYV, along with some others that I was pleased with. I had never done anything like this before, so I didn’t know exactly what to expect or how best to present my work. In the end I took along one large canvas print (24″ x 36″) and a selection of 12″ x 18″ prints in a borrowed portfolio case.

It seemed to me that many of the people who brought their work to the call had done this before and a number appeared to be well-established, if their work and preparation were anything to go by. Nevertheless, the little review committee (the bistro owner and her artist friend) liked the colour and humour in my work and left me with the impression that I had a chance of being selected. A few weeks later I received an e-mail asking if I would display my photographs in the bistro for six weeks in fall 2019.

Well before the exhibit, I made a to-do list of tasks and questions that I wanted to cover well in advance:

Do a comparison of canvas prints for price/quality
Do I need to look at alternate prints?
Short explanatory text for each image
Look into changing my e-mail address and using my domain name
Have cards printed with contact info, etc.
Prepare a distribution list to get the word out (my Facebook, wife’s FB, Instagram, Twitter, colleagues, church, local English theatre group, networks of friends and family)
Create an event on Facebook
Reminders at intervals leading up to the exhibit
Create a title for the exhibit (thematic?)
Any lessons learned from OCA people re: exhibiting work?

Two months before the opening day I created two Facebook ‘event’ invitations (one ‘private’ to directly invite friends and family; one ‘public’ that could be shared more broadly) to encourage people to come. I also used Twitter and Instagram to help drive online traffic toward the public Facebook event page.

One of the three large canvases. Also used on the Facebook invitation and small promotional posters.

The bistro provided me with diagrams outlining the two rooms where I could exhibit, along with the maximum dimensions that each wall space could accommodate. Since there were two rooms and space for 11 of my photographs, I decided to give the exhibit the theme of “Night and Day,” knowing that I could use one room for ‘night’ and the other for ‘day.’ This worked well and viewers seemed to understand the division easily.

Diagrams provided by the bistro to outline placement and maximum dimensions of works.

One month before the event I bought eight 18″ x 24″ black frames and made new 13″ x 19″ prints (matted to a “12 x 18″ window). I also ordered a 24″ x 36” canvas print to go with the two large canvases I already had, bringing the number of works for display to 11. At the same time I made two smallish posters to hang at work, one on the glass wall outside my office and the other on the cork wall of the kitchenette. I wanted to use my workspace to promote the vernissage without overdoing it—and I wanted to be sure that the people who report to me felt welcome to attend but not compelled. During this time I also used a design my wife created to create business cards (both for people to take away and to affix prices next to the photographs) and to create a small poster for the exhibit area to outline my approach to the works on display. The design was clear and mirrored the key elements on my website.

The owner of the bistro is generous and offers the display space freely to selected local artists without asking for a percentage of any sales. She leaves transactions entirely to the artist and purchaser. It was also good of her to make snack food (chips/crisps and small plates of sausage, cheese and olives) during the opening.

With the help of my wife and the owner’s artist friend, we hung the exhibit in about two hours on the morning of the opening. The hanging system the bistro uses is simple, easy to use, adaptable and very strong: it consists of a length of wall-mounted, steel ‘rebar’ with a length of chain dropped from it. Art works are attached to the chain with ‘s’ hooks and then secured at the right height with plastic tie-wraps. Once the pieces are checked for placement and levelled, the two bottom corners of each frame are lightly attached to the wall using putty.

Placement of two photographs for display.

Leading up to the opening I had two contradictory fears: the first, that no one would come; and the second, that people would come. As the day got closer I found that I had two or three moments of real doubt that I should be doing this (who would want to come to see my photographs, never mind buy them?), but I forged on. I had promoted the event to a lot of people I know and I had made a commitment to the bistro owner. I knew that someone else had recently decided at the last moment not to exhibit their work and had no intention of doing the same.

As it turned out, I needn’t have worried. Some 60 people attended the opening and a good proportion stayed to have drinks and order a meal at the bistro. I sold three pictures during the event and there is a chance that a fourth sale may be in the works. All told, I need to sell at least five photographs to cover my costs for printing and frames, so there is still a good chance that I will manage to do so (there are roughly four weeks left before I have to take down my pictures).

I am very pleased with my first foray into exhibiting and will do it again. The bistro was a low-risk way for me to get my feet wet and allowed me to bring friends, family, colleagues (and some people I don’t know at all) to a local place that means something to me. “Come for the photography and stay for the beer—or vice-versa,” may not be the usual marketing ploy for an exhibit, but it worked just fine for me. Now to sell the fourth and fifth prints…

A2—Reflection

Demonstration of technical and visual skills

I am satisfied with the results I achieved for A2.
At the same time, I think it is fair to say that technical and visual skills were probably less important for this assignment than they have been for the work I did for A1 or during the time I was taking EYV. I see this as evidence of learning for me because I have been relatively comfortable with photographic technique for some time, but this assignment was a chance to branch out into more conceptual work.
I would not want to completely underplay the place of technique, though, as it was important for me to learn about how museums use photography to document the artifacts in their collections. I have followed most of these fairly closely (neutral background, even light, attention to details, brief descriptive text, scale, consistency of approach).

Quality of outcome

Once I had landed on the concept I wanted to pursue (pointing to “unseen” family through their personal objects), it gradually dawned on me that I could ‘universalize’ the topic by presenting the objects as though they were artefacts in a museum. I think the concept holds together fairly well and that anyone who had been to a museum would be able to recognize the form of the work.
I had imagined what I wanted to achieve before I began shooting and was able to find resources that outlined the elements / techniques that help to achieve something false more… authentically.
If I were to print these images for display, I think I would keep the print size relatively small (no larger than 8″ x 12″, or so) and would use a relatively flat, ‘clinical’ or ‘scientific’ presentation—loose, rather than framed, for example, and perhaps contained in a simple folder. Alternatively, they could be printed as a section of a small, folded museum / collection guide.

Demonstration of creativity

I think that this is where most of the learning took place in this assignment. As I mentioned above, there was perhaps a little less emphasis on skill or technique and more weight on the concept behind the series of images.
I deliberately turned away from my initial idea (church buildings as a visible manifestation of faith / the unseen) because it was very quickly leading me down a path I have travelled enough. Instead, I wanted to develop my thinking and work around something that marked out a new direction (toward the more conceptual) about subjects that are important to me (interpretation / construction of meaning; understanding the place of family ties).

Context

The reflection I did for this assignment was perhaps more personal and less based on referencing a particular artist. I did, however, spend quite a bit of time looking at the techniques and conventions of photographing and presenting artefacts. I also looked for examples of artists drawing on personal objets trouvés, but this was a more difficult search. Tracy Emin’s My Bed popped up repeatedly, but most of the objects appropriated by other artists seemed to derive their power from the fact that they were not personal, from Marcel Duchamp’s 1917 Fountain, on.
In the end, I decided to strike out on my own and do the project as the idea presented itself to me: personal objects that pointed to my unseen family members, presented as museum pieces.

References

Tate (s.d.) ‘Fountain’, Marcel Duchamp, 1917, replica 1964. At: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/duchamp-fountain-t07573 (Accessed on 23 September 2019a)

Tate (s.d.) ‘My Bed’, Tracey Emin, 1998. At: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/emin-my-bed-l03662 (Accessed on 23 September 2019b)

A2—Photographing the unseen

My work covers a number of the “unseens” that I identified as I began to think about this assignment: the past, the dead, missing people and secrets. Every family has its share of those and mine is no different. I know very little about my father’s branch of the family so, over the last few years, I have begun to unearth what I can through official records and archives in the UK. If it were left only to the physical evidence left to me—that is, the few objects in my possession—I would know very little about the people who came before me.

I present images of those objects here in the way that a museum or archive might, described simply and following archival technique (Online Museum Training – Photographing Collection Items. [s.d.]). I have done this because that is how I have come to read the pieces: for me, they are akin to museum artefacts in that they are from the past, are on display and are divorced from their original context. Individually, they might be read as objets trouvés, “objects or products with non-art functions that are placed into an art context and made part of an artwork” (History of the Found Object in Art [s.d.]).

Taken together, however, the objects form a collection that I try to fit with some difficulty and much imagination into a narrative about the people who owned them. In my mind, they hint at aspects of the daily lives of my paternal grandfather, grandmother and great-grandmother over a period of some 60 years, all before I was born. Without more detail and context, however, I realise that any interpretation I make contains a lot of projection and speculation.

And that is interesting to me. If I as a direct descendant am not able to tease out much of the context and narrative of these pieces, viewers with no personal connection are free to construct an even broader range of interpretations. We might all be able to view the pieces as signs, but it is unlikely we would all agree on what they signify (Hall, 2007, p.10). Would others’ narratives about the lives of my unseen family be any more or less valid than mine?

How would I know? Would it matter?

Item 1-1. Embossed silver cigarette case. Made by Frederick Field, Birmingham. No date.

*Item 1-2. Detail of cigarette case showing embossed initials.*

*Item 2-1. Board slipcase containing pocket Book of Common Prayer and Hymns Ancient and Modern.*

*Item 2-2. Frontispiece of Book of Common Prayer with handwritten inscription, 9 January 1891.*

*Item 3-1. Cardboard booklet with commemorative sticker on cover.*

*Item 3-2. Booklet, showing handwritten inscription and Sunday School stickers, 1915–1916.*

*Item 4-1. Kodak Six-20 folding Brownie camera.* Manufactured circa 1951–1955, London, UK.

*Item 4-2. Side view of camera, unfolded.*

*Item 5-1. Wooden presentation box containing 6-piece, stainless steel cutlery set.* No date.

References

ARTifacts as ART and Inspiration (s.d.) At: http://www.SandraMcLeanArts.com/artifacts-as-art-and-inspiration.html (Accessed on 23 September 2019)

Hall, S. (2007) This Means This, This Means That: a user’s guide to semiotics. London: King.

History of the Found Object in Art (s.d.) At: http://www.artspace.com/magazine/art_101/the-history-of-the-found-object-in-art (Accessed on 23 September 2019)

Mary Mary Quite Contrary (s.d.) At: http://www.marymaryquitecontrary.org.uk/ (Accessed on 23 September 2019)

Museum in a Box – Crawford College of Art & Design (s.d.) At: https://crawford.cit.ie/museum-in-a-box/ (Accessed on 23 September 2019)

Online Museum Training – Photographing Collection Items. (s.d.) At: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUgG7HEpvyo (Accessed on 21 September 2019)

A2—Approach and contact sheets

After deciding to change direction and pursue the idea of “photographing the unseen” of history of one line of my family, I also decided to take the few items that have come into my possession as artifacts. To do this, I consulted a range of materials that outline some of the technical considerations necessary to photograph items accurately as part of a scientific or historical record. The video produced by the Australian Museums and Galleries Association Victoria ( Online Museum Training – Photographing Collection Items. [s.d.]) was particularly useful and contained a lot of practical advice.

The main technical considerations I took away were the following:

Use a neutral background. I opted for a white background rather than black because some of the objects were already quite dark and I did not want to obscure any details in shade.
Ensure even lighting around the object. Rather than using artificial light, I used a light tent with natural daylight.
Show the object from more than one angle and highlight any important details. I did this for each object and made additional exposures for inscriptions inside books and for objects kept within cases.
Include a scale to provide a way to understand the size of the object. I used a drafting scale that is marked in 1 cm increments.
Provide a brief descriptive text or label for the photographed object.

The contact sheet of the unprocessed images I took for Assignment 2 is available as a downloadable PDF at the link below:

can-a2-contact-sheet Download

References

hsscarchaeology (2015) Photographing Artifacts. At: https://hsscarchaeology.wordpress.com/2015/06/09/photographing-artifacts/ (Accessed on 21 September 2019)

Karin (2011) Museums Nova Scotia: Photographing Artifacts – the good, the bad, and the ugly. At: http://passagemuseums.blogspot.com/2011/02/photographing-artifacts-good-bad-and.html (Accessed on 21 September 2019)

Online Museum Training – Photographing Collection Items. (s.d.) At: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUgG7HEpvyo (Accessed on 21 September 2019)

Pezzati, A. (2002) Adventures in Photography: Expeditions of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. Philadelphia, UNITED STATES: University Museum Publications. At: http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/ucreative-ebooks/detail.action?docID=3441604 (Accessed on 21 September 2019)