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:

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.

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—Further thoughts

As I began to work through the concept and subject matter of Assignment 2 I had thought of doing something in connection with the unseen nature of faith. The impetus for this was my memory of a passage from the New Testament.

I planned to use churches as tangible evidence of faith and the persistence of religious belief. I wrote that “[…] few signs of faith are more publicly apparent than the sustained investment of time, energy and money in places of worship.” I still think this is the case and it may be an idea that I return to, but I quickly found myself going down a familiar path of photographing buildings… at night.

Part of some initial work for Assignment 2. Not ready to do this again.

Although I was pleased enough with the initial images I made, I do not want to produce something close to work I did for EYV. In the image above I’ve got warm light streaming from the church’s windows into a sky of blue and I could have developed this theme/concept across a range of local churches. But I’ve already got that t-shirt.

So, I’ve turned my attention to some of the other “unseen” items that I listed as I was doing my initial thinking for A2. And it occurred to me that it might be interesting to develop a theme that has taken up space in my mind for the last couple of years: the largely-unknown (to me) English branch of my family. Most of my immediate relatives on my father’s side are dead, and there were not many to begin with. I have spent hours following up leads on Ancestry.com and, more recently, in the London Metropolitan Archives.

Apart from genetic traces, however, my father’s line of the family falls into the “unseen” category: dead, in the past, missing people, broken relationships and, inevitably, secrets. I still hold to what I wrote earlier: ” it seems to me that ‘photographing the unseen’ is usually going to involve some kind of proxy for the thing that is absent.” The proxy in this case is the limited number of items I have that used to belong to my English grandparents.

These items are not treasured keepsakes or heirlooms, but are everyday items that hold a curiosity for me. I don’t think that I have a lot invested in them emotionally, but they are pointers to some aspect of my origins. In that sense, I could look at them as artefacts with a certain, perhaps scientific, detachment. Individually they point to something about their owners’ interests and activities, but how might they be interpreted if they were displayed as a museum collection? What might some future archaeologist make of them? What narratives might the samples suggest, if they were all that a researcher had to reconstruct the lives of the people who owned them? I’d like to ponder that.

A2—Initial thoughts

Rather than wait until the assignment is upon me, I started my thinking ahead of time for A2 “Photographing the unseen.” A few times of reflection on things that are unseen led to the list below, although I am not pretending that this is exhaustive:

Emotions
States of mind
Spiritual world
Buried cities
Dreams
Hopes and aspirations
Talent and potential
The unborn
The dead
The wind
Microscopic life (can be seen, but not by the unaided eye), atomic particles
Physical health, disease
Electricity
Time (past or future)

Much of the animal world, most of the time
Things camouflaged or concealed
Objects in the dark
Sites that are off-limits
Works that are banned or censored
Missing people
Broken relationships
Secrets
Lies
The ‘disappeared’
People and names written out of narratives and records, whether deliberately or through forgetfulness / neglect

Along with these thoughts, the title of the assignment itself (“Photographing the unseen”) reminded me strongly of a verse from the New Testament: “Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen” (Epistle to the Hebrews 11:1). As I thought more about faith being “…the evidence of things not seen” it occurred to me that the writer of this passage is suggesting that the faith held by people points to spiritual realities. The acts and behaviours (not just beliefs) of believers are offered as evidence (not proof) of a particular God.

I wanted to explore this further, because it seems to me that “photographing the unseen” is usually going to involve some kind of proxy for the thing that is absent. Something visible must point to what is not visible. Perhaps this is similar to the way that scientists look at black holes: by definition, black holes do not emit light and are therefore invisible, so we learn about them and gather evidence through observing the effects they have on their surroundings.

This line of thinking holds for the entire list above of things we cannot photograph. We cannot see any of them directly, but we must often infer them by indirect evidence.

In the case of religious faith, we can observe acts, rituals and objects that communicate the confidence of believing communities. And if we gather evidence of the unseen through their surroundings, few signs of faith are more publicly apparent than the sustained investment of time, energy and money in places of worship. A church building does not prove the existence of God, but it does show that the people who build churches have faith in “the unseen.”

This needs more thought yet, but my “photographing the unseen” for A2 may involve the role of churches as signs of faith in our built landscape.

A1—Reflection

Demonstration of technical and visual skills

I am, for the most part, happy with the results I achieved for A1. I think that there is still room for improvement in the composition of some of the images, however. My main concern was that there would be enough pedestrian traffic in the frame to provide the desired blurring effect during the time the shutter was open. Next time, I will also pay more attention to the background of the images.
Even with a 10-stop filter, I found that exposure times could be shorter than what I was after, depending upon how bright the sun was. A uniform set of overcast days would have been ideal. I could have had much longer exposure times at night, obviously, but I did not want the assignment to become a ‘night photography’ exercise where ambient lights and colours might distract from the desired effect on the pedestrians.
The 10-stop filter also created some challenges around the white balance of the RAW images. Although the filter was not cheap and was fairly neutral in terms of colour cast, it was not perfect. I matched the colour balances of the individual long- and short-exposures as best I could, but it is not perfect. If I use this technique again, there are probably a few things I could do: post-produce the final images in black and white (perhaps this is why Titarenko opted for monochrome); take more time with colour balancing in my editing software; and/or do additional test shots of each scene with a grey card to help ensure accurate colour rendition.

Quality of outcome

I had a good idea of the effect that I wanted to achieve before I began shooting and, for the most part, achieved it.
I am happy with my conceptual approach and believe that I have expressed it effectively, both visually and in my documentation on the blog.
If I print these images for display, I think I might do so as a more obvious set of diptychs: not just side-by-side as a series of images with similar backgrounds, but as a set of diptychs with two pictures printed on a single sheet of photographic paper.

Demonstration of creativity

It is always tricky to speak of one’s own demonstration of creativity, but I think that I brought a slightly new twist to the brief of ‘two sides of the story.’ From my scan of other OCA student blogs, it appears that many achieve their ‘two sides’ by changing the camera’s viewpoint or by altering the subject matter from frame to frame. I decided to play with the dimension of time without altering the viewpoint or subject matter and I think it has been effective.
If it is any indication of my satisfaction with the results—not complete satisfaction, but pleased enough—I think that I would like to return to this approach again where appropriate for later work, whether for the OCA or for myself. I wouldn’t simply repeat what I have done here, but try to improve my technique (see above) and push the concepts further. There is still more for me to do with the effects of time and our perceptions of it.

Context

As I discussed with my tutor when I began CAN, I already had a rough idea of the approach I wanted to take with A1. My research, particularly of Titarenko’s work helped to focus the visual approach to my work: I could see that limiting the exposures to a few seconds created more interesting images than my original idea of having people disappear entirely through extremely long exposures. I did try this for some of my earlier attempts and thought that the results were a bit boring and could possibly confuse viewers (“Were people really there, or are you playing games with us?”).
The discussions by Rutherford and Campany were also helpful to me in terms of better communicating the original concept I had in mind and setting it within an ongoing discourse about the ‘reliability’ of still photographic images and their impact upon our perception of time and truth.