Introduction
Now that I have finished studying
for my final photography degree course I am in a position to reflect on all
that has happened since I enrolled with the OCA as a student and embarked on my
first level one course (“The Art of Photography”) in the autumn of 2007. In
this blog post [which accompanies the post reflecting on the genesis, evolution
and completion of my final project, “I Am Not There”] I’ll take a brief look at
the highs and lows, successes and failures of my studies and evaluate how I
have developed as a photographer and as an artist since I started out with the
OCA ten years ago. I’ll finish by looking to the future – how can I use the
knowledge gained during my studies to develop my own photographic practice?
The
Past – Course Work
When I started out in 2007 I had
little knowledge of conceptual art and wasn’t even aware of the existence of
conceptual photographic art. I had no understanding of words and concepts such
as ‘postmodernist’ and ‘semiotics’ and assumed that ‘fine art photography’, of
the type practiced by, amongst others, landscape photographers such as David
Ward, was true photographic art. Photography was all about techniques and
aesthetics for me and the OCA level one courses, in particular “The Art of
Photography”, didn’t entirely dispel my beliefs. I enjoyed these courses and
got good marks. However, the course readers and my background research had
started to introduce me to new concepts in modern photographic art. I similarly
enjoyed my level two “Landscape Photography” studies, which introduced me to
the work of Fay Godwin. For the first time I started to realise that there was
more to photographic art than aesthetics and good technique. I also appreciated
that, like me, Godwin was a very driven person – she used her photography to
make political points and to benefit causes that she passionately believed in,
such as ‘the right to roam’. Having completed four courses in four years and
got good marks for all of them things were set fair. However, I struggled on
the second level two course (“Progressing with Digital Photography”), not being
helped by having a very unsympathetic tutor who severely eroded confidence in
my photographic techniques and equipment as well as in my creativity. The
course took two years to complete. By the time I embarked on my first level
three course (“Your Own Portfolio”) I was beginning to realise that I had
entered the world of conceptual photographic art, but didn’t really understand
it. By now I was attending numerous photographic exhibitions and was
subscribing to ‘The British Journal of Photography’, in an effort to learn much
more about contemporary photographic practice. I went through a period of being
bemused by the photographic art that I was seeing and reading about and also of
dismissing as irrelevant any photographic projects that did not appear to have
an application or serve a purpose. This proved to be detrimental to my main
project work, which changed as my study progressed from being a portfolio of
related images (as it was supposed to be) to a photo essay on an issue that I
felt strongly about. The assessors didn’t take kindly to this diversification,
resulting in a disappointing mark for the first half of my degree. Again the
course took two years to complete. Things have improved during this, my second
level three course. After several years I feel that I’ve finally gained a basic
understanding of conceptual photographic art, and I’m cognisant with current
photographic practice. I’ve also managed to introduce some of the concepts
inherent in current practice into the course work and I’ve used knowledge
gained from previous studies to develop what I hope is a distinctive style. Again
this final course has taken two years to complete but on this occasion I
deliberately avoided trying to hurry the project along, in order to ensure that
I avoided the many mistakes made in the past. Maybe I can now consider myself
to be a true, albeit still somewhat naïve, photographic artist.
The Past – Studying
For me, studying for a degree by
distance learning has carried one major advantage and one major disadvantage:
both have become more and more apparent as the degree course has progressed.
The Advantage: I have been
able to carry out the course work in my own time and at my own rate. Work could
be fitted around holidays (some of which have been for three or four weeks) and
tutors have been very flexible when I have asked for extensions when submitting
assignment work. A lot of my work has been carried out at times of day or times
of the year that most ‘conventional’ students would consider anti-social. As a
general rule my studying has consisted of relatively intense periods of
activity followed by periods (days, weeks, maybe a month) when I have been
largely inactive. I have been able to fit my studies around my social and
private lives. As I am a pretty independent, yet strongly self-driven person
this method of studying has fitted in well with my personality.
The Disadvantage: distance
learning can be a lonely process! Whilst the OCA encourages contact with tutors
and other students in a variety of ways, this cannot be and never will be the
same as having day to day contact with teaching staff and other students. On many
a weekday morning I have been studying at home and have been unable to come up
with a single creative thought. However, when I have visited art exhibitions
with my partner the ideas have often started to flow. My partner is about to
enter the final year of a six year part time degree in fine art at London
Metropolitan University. I envy her the regular interactions with other
students, even though she only goes in to college perhaps twice per week. What
ideas might have been generated if I (a mature student) was interacting with
the bright minds of students less than half my age and familiarising myself
with their project work as well as my own? Of course I have visited the blog sites
of other OCA students working on the same courses as me, but I do feel that I
have suffered because of the lack of regular direct contact with other students
- an inevitable consequence of distance learning.
The Present – What Have I Achieved?
At school I had no aptitude
whatsoever for artistic subjects and quickly left them behind as I trained for
and entered a career in science. However, my job did require creative input
and, over time, I started to develop an interest in the arts and became a keen
photographer. Photography became a passion following my retirement and when I
started my current studies with the OCA in 2007 I was setting myself a
challenge – to obtain an arts degree which would complement the science degree
that I had obtained over 30 years beforehand. Of course I also hoped to improve
my photographic skills, broaden my repertoire and develop my creativity.
Ten years later I believe that I
have (assuming I achieve a pass for the current course) achieved all these
targets. In addition I have been able to gaze through a previously shuttered
window into the true world of conceptual photographic art - a world that I did
not even realise existed ten years ago! Understanding this somewhat rarefied world,
which is occupied by my tutors, other academic staff, art students and a
limited number of fully professional photographers, has been particularly
challenging but ultimately rewarding, even though it has extremely little
overlap with my main photographic practice in wildlife photography, which has
been developing alongside but largely separate from my studies.
More than anything, the
completion of my degree course has proved that I still have the desire, determination
and commitment to both set myself tough targets and to reach my goals, however
long it takes! I hope that I will continue to have the drive to do this for the
foreseeable future, although I will never again try to take on something as
difficult as a full degree course.
The Future – How can I use the Knowledge that I have gained?
At the age of 62 I have no need or desire to
develop a career in conceptual photographic art. Furthermore, as I have
indicated both above and in other blog posts, I am unable to reconcile the need
for everything that I do to have a purpose with the concept of ‘art for art’s
sake’. However, the research that I have carried out for this and earlier
courses does suggest a way forward. I am passionate about wildlife and both
saddened and angry about the way man is damaging the environment and bringing
about the extinction or near extinction of species ranging from the very small
to the very large (killing elephants for their ivory and rhinos for their horns
are two obvious examples). The knowledge gained over the last ten years puts me
in a much better position to produce both photo essays and portfolios of work
which will highlight the destruction caused by man’s desire to dominate the earth at
the expense of all other wildlife (and, in some cases, his fellow man). I have
already drawn up plans, described in a separate blog post (Plan for a Future Project), to produce a
multi-media portfolio of work based on these ideas. I haven’t considered how I
will market this work, once complete, but the knowledge gained during my course
work when studying the practices of other artists should be very helpful in
this regard.
I don’t have a crystal ball to
see how my practice will develop in the future. However, I will continue to try
to use my cameras and my computer hardware and software creatively to develop
ideas and produce results, until the point where I can no longer hold a camera.
I will always be very grateful to the OCA for providing me with such a great
knowledge base as a foundation for my future work.
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