Major Project Influences (16): Individual Images

In my logbook and blog I have discussed the influences that many artists and photographers have had on my course work and output. In some cases the artist’s influence has changed the direction of my project work. In other cases it has changed my way of thinking about my work, helped me to crystallise my ideas, assisted me in translating memories into images or hinted at how I can evoke emotion in the viewer, through the use of my text and images. These influences have been critical to the development of the project to the stage where the end point (a photo book) is in sight.

However, along the rocky road to the completion of the major project I have been influenced by single images produced by photographers whose output has otherwise often had no effect on my work. A small number of examples are highlighted here.

Jack Davison

Jack Davison is a young English portrait and fashion photographer, some of whose work appeared in an article for the December 2015 issue of the British Journal of Photography. One image (Image 1), part of a commission for ‘Garage’ magazine, caught my eye. The use of torn paper, revealing a second subject through the split in the man’s head, spoke to me of division, torn emotions, stress and the juxtaposition of two different experiences - all relevant to memories of my relationship with my mother. How and why Davison produced this image is unclear – it may have been a single photograph of an old advertisement hoarding or fly poster in which the torn top poster reveals a second poster underneath. This is not as important as the effect that the image had on me and the ideas that it gave me, some of which have been incorporated into more than one image from my (as yet) unfinished photo book, with the possibility of more to follow.

Image 1 (Jack Davison)

David Jimenez

I know of David Jimenez’s photo book ‘Infinito’ only through a few images, including one of the cover (Image 2), and a short description of the ‘mysterious’ contents that are incorporated on page 271 of Parr and Badger’s ‘The Photobook: A History Volume 3’ (Phaidon). However, the cover page did provide one solution to a problem that I had had in photographically representing the time towards the end of my mother’s life when I was spending most of my time with her dealing with her financial affairs, cooking and doing pretty much everything except giving her the emotional help that she so badly needed. The resultant image (Image 2a), which visually represents part of the accompanying text, may not be incorporated into the final photo book (I’m looking at alternative representations), but the connection with the Jimenez image is clear to see.

Image 2 (David Jimenez)

Image 2a (Martin Johnson)

Anne-Marie Glasheen

Although I didn’t realise it at the time the ‘Memories’ themed issue of the Journal of London Independent Photography (LIP; winter 2008, no.11) would prove to be very influential for my current project. The journal included an article in which writer, poet and photographer Anne-Marie Glasheen used double exposures of women from several generations of her family, against a wooded background, to represent her memories of them (e.g. Images 3a and 3b). The effect is quite ghost-like and mysterious and has been influential in my portrayal of my own family members in a number of images, although for my project I have tried to juxtapose and blend two or more photographs where there is a strong connection between each of the images. The type of double exposure used by Glasheen has cropped up on a few other occasions – wherever it does, study of the image(s) evokes memories and emotions inside me. Note that the wooded background for images 3a and 3b is the same.

Image 3a (Anne-Marie Glasheen)

Image 3b (Anne-Marie Glasheen)

John Levett

I have written elsewhere about the influence on my work of the photographer John Levett. In the same ‘memories’ themed issue of LIP (see above) he writes movingly about his relationship with his parents and, in particular, his mother. Not only was his writing (which takes the form of an imaginary ‘question and answer’ session with himself, a device that he uses rather well in his work) both moving and very relevant to my own project but his photographs, which initially appear to be rather crude and poorly exposed and presented, are actually strongly evocative of the past and his relationship with his mother. The strongest of the images, which is used for the cover of this issue (Image 4), uses the photographer’s hands to provide a human link between the artist and the photograph of his mother. A number of my own images use a similar device in different ways. This image has provided the largest influence of any single photograph for my current project work.

Image 4 (John Levett)

Major Project Influences (15): 'Instagram'

There’s no doubt that, when it comes to new technology, I’m a bit of a Luddite. This applies particularly to the use of mobile phones (I just use my smartphone for making phone calls and sending text messages, as well as very occasionally for taking photographs on the rare occasions when I don’t have a camera handy) and social media (I don’t use ‘Facebook’ or ‘Twitter’ and see no reason for doing so in the future). However, my images do occasionally find their way onto others’ ‘Flickr’ accounts (see, for example, some Antarctica images at https://www.flickr.com/photos/naturetrek/sets/72157667613083114 if you don’t believe me) and I am starting to take an interest in some of the most interesting of the millions of images that are downloaded every day onto others’ ‘Instagram’ accounts.

‘Instagram’ is essentially designed for (mainly) young mobile phone users with apps that allow them to instantly process, download and share their phone images with others via the internet. Often the mobile phone is their only camera. Many people use ‘Instagram’ simply to share pictures of family and friends, show where they are on holiday at any given time, etc. However, as one would expect from young, bright, socially aware people who perhaps have no interest in pursuing photography as a career but are full of ideas, some really creative images are appearing on peoples’ ‘Instagram’ accounts. I wouldn’t have any knowledge of this if it were not for the fact that a rash of books, featuring some of (I assume) the most creative ‘Instagram’ work around, were not appearing in the ‘photography’ sections of major booksellers.

Producing books of some of the best ‘Instagram’ images and selling them at (Waterstones) prices of £8 to £17 must be ‘money for old rope’ as far as publishers are concerned, but for mugs like me who look at and occasionally buy these books, the creativity behind some of the images is a regular source of ideas and inspiration. My work is heavily influenced by the creativity provided by others and some of the ‘Instagram’ images that I have found have had a direct or indirect influence on my current project work. Perhaps the most influential book has been ‘Insta Grammar Nordic’ (Lannoo), which features images by a variety of Nordic mobile phone users. Many of the results are atmospheric and some can have an emotional effect – the images are very evocative of the region. Several of the most interesting images have been downloaded by an ‘Instagrammer’ called ‘@KRISTINENOR’: some of her images can be found at: https://www.instagram.com/kristinenor/. Whilst a wide range of subject matter is featured it is the abstract or semi-abstract images (for example Image 1 and Image 2) that impress me. I haven’t seen the use of huge areas of dark (negative?) space, as in Image 2, before – it may or may not be original, but it seems to me to be a potent weapon in the armoury of a photographer who wishes to create a certain mood and atmosphere in their work. Large areas of light space, as in Image 1, are more commonly seen in images, but the use of a hand (trying to get in?) is again very effective in creating atmosphere, according to how the viewer interprets the image.

Image 1 (Kristinenor)

Image 2 (Kristinenor)

The idea of the photographer holding up a photograph or a photo frame, in order either to highlight a part of the subject matter beyond it or to juxtapose the frame with the remainder of the image, is not new. However, Kyle Steed (@kylesteed; www.kylesteed.com) uses the idea in imaginative ways (Image 3). His work can be found in ‘The Instagram Book’ (Ammo). John Levett (see the separate post in this blog) also uses ‘held’ photographs in his work and these influences have worn off on me, as three of the images in my photo book refer to this type of work.

Image 3 (Kyle Steed)

Other influences have been absorbed but not yet used – they may come in useful for future projects, but there is probably still time for me to develop any particularly relevant ones within the current project. One atmospheric example, shown in Image 4, was produced by Pei Ketron (@pketron; www.penelopesloom.com) and can be found in ‘This Is Happening’ (Chronicle Books). What does the future hold for ‘Instagram’? One thing is for sure: many more ‘Instagram’ books will appear in the coming months and years.

Image 4 (Pei Ketron) 

Progress Update 6 February 2017

Following my previous progress update in November 2016 I have been extremely busy, producing a new draft of my photo book after my tutor’s ‘edit’ of the 37 images submitted for my 4^th assignment had reduced them to just 9.5 (don’t ask about the half!). After a lot of hard work and research and a tiny bit of inspiration I submitted the new draft, complete this time with just 25 images, to my tutor on ‘deadline day’ (26 January 2017) as my submission for course Assignment 5. Thankfully this time the text and images met with general approval and, for the first time in 15 months, I feel that the end of the project is in sight! Of course there is still much work to do and there is also still time for me to introduce fresh ideas, replace some of the less successful images and maybe introduce one or two additional ones, but time is now on my side as I still intend to submit for assessment in September 2017. The following bullets provide a brief chronological overview of how the project has progressed between receiving my tutor’s report for Assignment 4 and submitting my work for Assignment 5:

·         I modified and rearranged the text, returning to a roughly chronological account of my relationship with my mother during her final years, adding a new section of text and then splitting the text into 20 sections, to be accompanied by 20 images.

·         I modified and harmonised the ‘9.5’ images remaining from the Assignment 4 work, to produce 10 images that I associated with 10 passages of text. These images, originally produced in a mixture of ‘landscape’ and ‘portrait’ formats, were (with some difficulty) all converted into square format images and produced in colour, 50% desaturated and mono- versions. One further image from Assignment 4 was retained, but radically altered.

·         I produced 9 new images, harmonising them with those already produced, in order to give me the required set of 20 images for the photo book. This work, which was spread over an intense period of 5 weeks on either side of Christmas, was the most difficult part of the project and involved, amongst other things, looking through my entire collection of mounted slides from 1993 onwards, picking out, projecting and photographing a handful that were of relevance to the project. All the photographic work was carried out in and around my house. I will discuss some of the influences during the production of the new images in a separate post.

·         I produced a new ‘emotions’ graph/image in (2:1) landscape format, to be incorporated across two pages of the photo book.

·         I wrote two passages of text and produced two new accompanying images on the general subject of clinical depression, to be incorporated into the photo book at a point roughly half way through the book.

·         I combined text and images in a Word document to produce a crude draft of the photo book for submission for Assignment 5.

Future Plans

Following a recent tutorial discussion with my tutor and the receipt of his Assignment 5 report I have formulated the following plan of action for the coming months:

1.       Look through every one of the 25 images, making modifications where necessary. The modifications will range from making minor ‘tweaks’ to building up the image from scratch again (all the images are composites) and in a couple of cases I will probably replace the image. My tutor has suggested changes to a few images and I am not happy with one or two others. Nevertheless, this work should not prove to be too arduous.

2.       Continue to experiment and absorb influences in order to look for ‘better’ replacement images and perhaps some new ones, which could be incorporated into the photo book by splitting some of the text.

3.       Produce a suitable cover image(s).

4.       Make minor modifications to the text, look at fonts and font sizes etc. Spend time looking at photo books in order to decide what I want to have for my final submission.

5.       I plan to have completed (1) – (4) by the end of March 2017. I will then use what I have in order to produce a ‘first iteration’ photo book, using a conventional supplier such as ‘Blurb’, in April 2017. I will also get prints of all my images.

6.       What happens next remains to be decided. I have until 1 July to submit the work for my 6^th and final assignment, and I anticipate (hopefully just) one further iteration of the book before I submit for assessment. Time frames may change, but at least I now feel confident that I can complete the course work in good time.

Reflections on Current Photographic Practice. Part 1. Portfolios of Thematically Linked Images.

It has taken me quite a few years to understand what is meant by ‘Conceptual Photographic Art’ and even longer for me to produce a portfolio of work that might be considered to fit this classification. During my first OCA Level 3 course, ‘Your Own Portfolio’, students were specifically asked, for their major project, to produce a portfolio of 10-20 images and that there should be a stated theme linking the images. Things started off well for me, as I produced a series of images of people feeding birds (including Images 1a and 1b) for a project whose initial idea was to represent the different benefits that we get from feeding birds.

                         

Images 1a and 1b: “Feeding the Birds” from my major project for OCA Photography 3: ‘Your Own Portfolio”

If I had stopped after producing a dozen or so images of this type and submitted my major project work for assessment without further ado I would probably have done ok at assessment. However, I continued with my ‘environmental hat on’ and produced a further, much more diverse set of images in which I attempted to illustrate all the ‘bad’ things that we do to the environment, thus effectively splitting the project (and portfolio) into two sections: ‘what the birds do for us’ and ‘what we do for the birds’. In retrospect I should not have been surprised by the assessors’ terse comments when I had passed the course with a very modest 48% mark. These comments included remarks that I should have stuck to and developed the portfolio of people feeding birds and that I appeared to be more interested in the birds than I was in the  photography (a bit harsh, but there is more than a grain of truth in this).

So where had I gone wrong? Firstly, I had not stuck to the remit of linking the images via a stated theme. Secondly I had been swayed by my own emotions into producing a photographic project that tried (not very successfully) to make a statement regarding something that I feel strongly about. In doing this I spent a lot of time and effort working on a project that was essentially wasted – at least as far as my journey towards an arts degree was concerned.

Bearing this in mind, how do photographic artists at the cutting edge of current practice avoid the pitfalls that I fell into and produce work that is considered outstanding by their peers? Furthermore, what can I learn from their work that will help me to produce portfolios that reflect current photographic practice (as my tutor has recommended and as the assessors will expect) and is there any way in which I can do this whilst making a powerful statement about an issue that I feel strongly about? This latter question is very important to me, because I don’t believe that I can produce ‘art for art’s sake’ – I need strong motivation to drive me.

For this post I’ll look at a handful of selected recent image portfolios by photographers or ‘photograph collectors’ whose work fits the criterion of having an obvious stated theme linking the images. All their work has been critically acclaimed and has appeared in books and/or exhibitions. The portfolios would no doubt have received excellent marks from assessors if they had been submitted as a major ‘OCA Photography 3: Your Own Portfolio’ project! What can I learn from these works? Do I like them and, if not, why not?

Chloe Dewe Mathews: “Shot at Dawn”

In her critically acclaimed work “Shot at Dawn”, which has been published as a photobook, Chloe Dewe Mathews has visited the exact sites where British and Allied troops were executed (mainly for desertion) during the First World War. Following research by Mathews and others she photographed the sites as they appeared 100 years later, at the time of day when the individuals were executed. The result is a series of landscapes, both urban and rural. Typical examples are shown in Images 2a and 2b.

              

Images 2a and 2b from “Shot at Dawn” by Chloe Dewe Mathews

A number of films, television series and television documentaries have dealt in a moving way with this emotive subject. My problem with this work is that what for me is just a series of bland and rather boring landscapes fails to convey any of the emotion relating to these horrific events that I can absorb from the other media. Perhaps video, of the camera moving towards the place of execution, followed by the noise of gunfire, might have worked. Despite the variability of subject matter (although they are all landscapes) there is a clear, linking theme between the images. This series highlights a problem relating to my own work, which I have mentioned before: it is sometimes very difficult to convey emotion or even atmosphere in a photograph. My own opinion is that this (commissioned) work has given Mathews a thankless task. However, other very different (and informed) opinions are available!

Sam Ivin: “Lingering Ghosts”

Sam Ivin’s ‘defaced’ images of UK asylum seekers (e.g. Images 3a and 3b) were featured in the ‘migration’ issue of the British Journal of Photography (BJP) in September 2016. One of the images made the front cover.

                                                

Images 3a and 3b: Sam Ivin, “Lingering Ghosts”

The idea of defacing or hiding faces of people in photographic portraits is not new (BJP recently devoted a whole issue to this theme) but here Ivin scratches out the eyes of his subjects to remove the obvious emotional points of contact and leaves images that “reflect the pain, disorientation and anger of those looking for sanctuary” in the UK.

Ivin’s work (which has been published as a photobook), whilst perhaps being not entirely original, does clearly make a political statement and there is a very obvious link between the images. I admire his stance. However, I do wonder (and this is not to denigrate his work in any way) what difference his work will make to the asylum seekers, or the system that they face in the UK. Who will buy the book? How many artists and photographers have the power to change the world through their images whilst still working within the field of conceptual photographic art? Very few, I suspect.

Katy Grannan: “Anonymous”

Katy Grannan’s portraits of ‘anonymous’ passers-by in San Francisco and Los Angeles featured in the “Out of Focus: Photography” exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery in London in 2012. All the subjects gave their permission for Grannan to photograph them after she approached them in the street. The photographs (e.g. Images 4a and 4b) hint at lives well-lived, but perhaps without much reward.

                                            

Images 4a and 4b: Katy Grannan, “Anonymous”

I estimate that about 50% of all the portfolios featured in BJP during the two years that I subscribed to the magazine were portraits of people: the percentage is even higher when considering exhibitions of photography students’ final year portfolios. ‘People taking pictures of each other’ is still a dominant topic and it must be hard to find an original concept within this field. Sam Ivin (see above) succeeds and Katy Grannan’s portfolio works well because her subjects are neither young nor fashion models but ordinary citizens, many of them elderly, ‘snapped’ in a variety of natural but characterful poses. Is this work still valid as current photographic practice? Is it now necessary to add another layer of complexity to a portfolio of human portraits? I’m not a portrait photographer, so I don’t pretend to know the answer to these questions. What I do know is that portrait portfolios are pretty much guaranteed to have a theme linking them.

John Stezaker: “Marriage”

John Stezaker has made a very successful career as an artist by appropriating old photographs from flea markets and second hand bookshops, cutting them up and then combining them to form collages. Why he does this is not clear to me, so let’s call it ‘playful’ and ‘art for art’s sake’. His work, which is generally accepted as photographic art, has won him international acclaim. He has certainly carved out a very distinctive niche for himself. His work is original, based on clear concepts and within each series there is a clear theme linking the images. As an example I include two images from his “marriage” series (Images 5a and 5b), in which publicity stills, one of a man and one of a woman, are cut and then joined together to produce weird, androgynous, hybrid faces.

                                  

Images 5a and 5b: John Stezaker, “Marriage”

Stezaker’s work fulfils all the criteria for acceptance as conceptual photographic art, even if he is not the photographer. However, as with some of the other examples featured here, I have to question its purpose. For photographic art to make an impact on me or to stir my emotions it must be both aesthetically pleasing and have a purpose, other than to be recognised and lauded for its concept and originality. Stezaker’s work fails on both counts, although I’m sure that he won’t lose any sleep over this.

Eric Kessels: “In Almost Every Picture #14”

Eric Kessels and John Stezaker have at least two things in common: they were both finalists in the Deutsche Borse Photography Prize competition and they both work predominantly with appropriated photographs. Kessels has gone even further than Stezaker for his portfolio “In Almost Every Picture #14” by using the cast-offs from portraits of bathers photographed by somebody who made a living by shooting polaroid beach portraits of holidaymakers and then punching out his sitters’ heads to put them on to badges. Images 6a and 6b are representative of the cast-offs, which have been published in a book and also featured in an article for the December 2015 edition of BJP.

                      

Images 6a and 6b: Eric Kessels, “In Almost Every Picture #14”

At first glance one might imagine that Kessels is having a laugh at our expense, but closer examination reveals that there is a clear concept here and the images are linked by a very clear theme (the hole in the middle of the photograph, the beach and the sea for starters). Also, this work features in his 14^th book along the same lines and he makes a living out of appropriating and producing this work. Using true ‘Art Speak Bullshit’ Kessels has produced a rationale for why these images are important. It will not surprise the reader to know that I am far from impressed by Kessels’ project, which also presumably took minimal effort to put together, but I cannot deny that it is photographic art.

Annalisa Murri: “Then the Sky Crashed Down on Us”

I’m going to finish this review by looking at a project that impressed me and has influenced my current work. Annalisa Murri came 3^rd in the ‘Contemporary Issues’ section of the 2015 Sony World Photography Awards with a project in which she interviewed and photographed survivors of the Rana Plaza tragedy in Bangladesh, where an 8 storey building collapsed, killing over 1000 people. This was essentially a piece of photojournalism, re-telling the story of the tragedy through the eyes of some female survivors. What made her feature stand out was the clever use of monochrome double exposures, featuring portraits of the survivors blended into urban locations, presumably at or near the site of the tragedy (Images 7a and 7b).

                       

Images 7a and 7b: Annalisa Murri, « Then the Sky Crashed Down on Us”

For me, this portfolio fulfils all the criteria for acceptance as conceptual photographic art, in which the images are linked by a clear theme and form part of a harmonious set. Furthermore, I find the images to be aesthetically appealing and relevant to my own work, particularly as they have atmosphere and provoke an emotional response. Indeed, they influenced my decision to work with double and multiple exposures for the ongoing project – I have written a more detailed article on Murri's work  in the ‘Influences’ section of my blog.

However, I do have one concern about Murri’s project. Is it exploitative? Does it help the survivors of this tragedy in any way or is it used as a vehicle by the photographer to make a living and build her reputation? Photojournalism of this kind always raises these moral and ethical issues. Even Don McCullin, whose photographs of the human suffering caused by war and famine in the ‘third world’ did so much to raise both awareness and relief aid in the west, suffered from moral dilemmas of this nature.

Final Thoughts

The six very different projects that I have discussed in this post are, I believe, good examples of current practice in conceptual photographic art. The images in each portfolio are thematically linked and form harmonious sets. My reaction to each set has been very variable, however, and this says more about me than it does about photographic art. I tend to dismiss ‘art for art’s sake’, where the message is either superficial or relates to the artist’s own philosophy, which is usually shrouded by what non-artists might call “art speak bullshit”. I am more interested by projects that raise moral, ethical and/or political issues, even when the images are not particularly interesting. I am even more interested in projects that raise these issues with images that are aesthetically appealing and/or produce an emotional response. These are the projects that I want to talk about and share with others. I am still searching for the ‘holy grail’, the project that does all these things and also changes the world for the better. If I could produce such a project I would die happy!

Does my philosophy mean that I am not an artist? I need to look at my past to resolve this issue. Throughout my working life as a medicinal chemist within the pharmaceutical industry I had the goal of trying to discover a cure for a disease or, at least, something that would improve the health of people I had never met. I never achieved this goal (very few scientists do) but at least I tried. Now and in the future I have similar ideals: to bring my art to the attention of the world and to make a difference. Of course this is probably a pipe dream but as long as I’m trying to make art I will need motivation and that motivation will not come from potentially making money or gaining acceptance within a community that I hardly know or understand. Perhaps this makes me a perennial outsider. Perhaps my aims are not achievable. However, I will never compromise these aims.

Research and Book Review: “The Photobook: A History volume III” by Martin Parr and Gerry Badger, Phaidon, 2014.

The primary output from my current project will, all being well, be a photobook. My tutor has encouraged me to study and learn from other photobooks in order to help me to choose a suitable style and format for my own book, which should conform to current practice. “The Photobook: A History volume III” is the final (?) volume in the definitive reference series dealing with the worldwide evolution and development of the photobook in all its forms. It deals with photobooks published from the late 1940s until shortly before its publication in 2014. As such, it is an important source of information both for me and for others who design, study and/or simply enjoy purchasing and reading photobooks. At first I was rather put off by the price of the book and spent some time at my local Waterstones (as close to a local photographic library as I can get) glancing through its pages. Eventually, however, I ‘bit the bullet’ and purchased my own copy.

Image 1: Front Cover of “The Photobook: A History volume III”

The book is divided into chapters dealing, often loosely, with photobooks in relation to propaganda, protest, desire, modern life, place, conflict, identity, memory and finally with books that “represent and re-present the medium”. I have looked in detail at the section ('memory') which is of most relevance to my project work and dipped into the other sections – this is, after all, a reference work that I will come back to many times in the future. The editors incorporate works by well-known and respected artists and art photographers such as Roger Ballen, Sophie Calle, Pieter Hugo, Joel Meyerowitz and Stephen Shore. At the opposite end of the scale relative unknowns have had their books singled out for attention. Photographers whose reputations have been cemented by the publication of one book (Cristina de Middel’s “The Afronauts” is a good example) are also represented here. Each chapter begins with an overview of the subject matter discussed within, together with a discussion to its relationship with the chosen books. Selected images of single pages or (more commonly) double page spreads for each of the chosen books are then accompanied by brief overviews of these books in relation to their subject matter, design and historical and artistic context. A typical double page spread is shown below (Image 2).

Image 2: Double Page Spread from “The Photobook: A History Volume III”

This reference work clearly provides an invaluable reference point in charting the development of the photobook, current trends, important and influential single books by (often) internationally recognised photographers and developing current trends in the production of photobooks. However, I was particularly interested in the design and layout of the selected works. The following generalisations are of relevance to my own work:

·         Most of the photographs are presented in portrait or square format, one to a page.

·         Where a single photograph is shown on a double page spread this is almost invariably on the right hand side. In these books the left hand page is often left blank or perhaps has just a caption for the image.

·         There is usually little or no text visible on the selected double page spreads. Explanatory text (where present) presumably comes as an introduction or preface to the book. In discussing individual works Parr and Badger sometimes indicate that the viewer is left to come up with their own interpretation of the set of images contained therein, perhaps with no more than the book title for guidance.

·         In some books the images are bled to the corners of each page and in other books the images are bled to the horizontal or vertical edges only. However, in many books the images sit in the middle of the pages, with edging of varying thickness around them. Occasionally images are spread across two pages and sometimes two or more of these production methods are used within the same book. In other words there is no favoured method for presenting the images on the page and I could not detect any obvious changes when comparing current practice with 20^th century practice.

·         A few photobooks (presumably very limited editions) come complete with very ornate packaging and even, in one or two cases, with additional objects that are of relevance to the photobook story.

Whilst the selection of the photobooks for inclusion in this reference work was subjective I am sure that this book is very representative of the styles and developing trends in photobook subject matter and design over the last seventy years, with the emphasis in the book being rightly placed on 21^st century photobooks. It is clear that my proposed book will contain far more text than these works, which is a concern, although I cannot see an obvious way round this. “The Photobook: A History Volume III” has also given me some design options. It seems that “anything goes” as far as image design and placement is concerned. My tutor, for example, favours bleeding my images to the corners of the pages whilst I am not so sure about this. However, the “A4 Landscape” image format is rather uncommon in the photobooks discussed here. As a consequence I am now planning to produce square images, which could be fitted into the book in a number of ways, whilst I am more limited in what I can do with my current mixed set of A4 landscape and portrait images.

“The Photobook: A History Volume III” provides me with much food for thought, not just in terms of designing my own photobook(s), but also in terms of how the choice of subject matter for a book can make a big impact. This book will no doubt repay further study in the coming weeks and months.

Progress Update 16 November 2016

Having absorbed the lessons following the Skype conversation with my tutor, his tutor report and some follow up contact with him after my submission for Assignment 4 I am now moving on with my project work.

I have been left with ten photo-montage images which, once they have been harmonised to reflect consistent aesthetics, colour, composition and blending effects, will be included in the final project submission. I need to produce another 10-15 images to incorporate into a final photo book. Before I start producing new images and modifying the ones that remain I need to decide on a format that will be suitable for incorporating these into a photo book. Having recently purchased (at great expense!) and studied ‘The Photobook: A History Volume III’ (Parr and Badger) I am minded to use a square format for the images, even though this will involve a fair amount of additional work on the ten images that await ‘harmonisation’. The images would then be ‘bled’ to the edges of the page in the photo book. Most of the retained images have been produced in ‘A4 landscape’ mode and I haven’t ruled out using landscape format (perhaps 10x8) yet, but must make a decision soon.

Although the vast majority of photo books contain little or no text, the written word is crucial in my story and I still plan to format the book to contain text on each left hand page and one image, which relates to the text, on each right hand page. This is the format used by Adrian Clarke in “Gary’s Friends”, a book that has become a significant influence as I have been developing the project. However, I have now abandoned the idea of splitting the book into chapters and have returned to documenting the story of my relationship with my mother over her final eleven years in roughly chronological order. The text has been significantly modified and re-ordered. Many images reflecting particular events in our relationship have been abandoned and the text has been modified accordingly. However, some events (such as mum’s falling out with her sister in law and also the celebrations of her 80^th birthday) are critical to the story. Here the text has been retained and I will need to take a new approach to finding images that represent these events but can be harmonised with the remaining images. I still intend to incorporate at least two passages of text relating to the illness of clinical depression (with accompanying representative images) into the photo book, although I haven’t written the text or decided where to put it.

One issue yet to be resolved regards a graphical representation of typical ‘ups and downs’ that mum and I might have experienced during one of my visits to her home. This was regarded by my tutor as a “keystone image” but it cannot be harmonised to fit in with any of the other images in the book. I regularly change my mind regarding what to do with this graph: my current thinking is to re-work it in (2:1) landscape format and spread it out over the centrefold of the photo book, assuming that the book is produced in square format.

Following a significant period of soul searching and planning, I now need to move the project forward. The most difficult challenge, to produce new images that are consistent with the ones remaining following my tutor’s Assignment 4 edit, will take up most of my time although I also need to spend time harmonising those images that I already have and ensuring that the new ones can be produced in the same format. Following the completion of some more blog articles, the tidying up of the text and making a decision about the shape and formatting of the images, all my study time will be devoted to these areas for the weeks leading up to and shortly after Christmas 2016.

Plan for a Future Project

During a visit to a recent exhibition with my partner I came across some work by the artist Imran Qureshi. Qureshi regularly uses coloured handprints and footprints in his work (see Image 1) and has developed his output to produce some quite complex and (to my eyes) aesthetically pleasing work.

Image 1 (Imran Qureshi)

At the time I wondered whether I could develop the idea of using handprints and footprints in my own work, with the plan of blending the prints with one image (‘image 1’) and blending the space around them with a second image (‘image 2’), so that images 1 and 2 were juxtaposed and each related in some way to the hand. I was quite enthusiastic about incorporating one or more images of this type into my current project, but felt both that any message produced by this type of image might be a little too strong and also that it would be difficult to harmonise the image(s) with those that I had already produced.

Dominant issues in my life, which are reflected in my day to day photography, are wildlife and the environment. I have now developed a plan for a future project in which the handprint or footprint represents man’s impact on the environment. As an example, a (preferably red) handprint could be blended with a photograph of a rhinoceros (I’ve got plenty of those photos!), whilst the ‘negative space’ around the print could be replaced by human activity and/or a man-made environment which relates to the illegal poaching and killing of rhinos in order to obtain and process their horn. Elephants, tigers or the many animals closer to home that are threatened by human activity and climate change, illegal or otherwise, could be the subjects of other images.

On paper at least this proposal comes closest to satisfying my need to produce work that is relevant to my major interests, has a (campaigning) purpose and yet can be considered to fall within the remit of conceptual art. I need to check that I will not be plagiarising somebody else’s idea first and it is very unlikely that I will start this work before I finish my OCA course work, but if I do go ahead before assessment I will write another blog post and perhaps include an example.

I hope that this blog post demonstrates that I am thinking beyond my OCA course work and trying to integrate the knowledge that I have gained whilst working towards my degree with major personal interests in order to potentially produce creative artistic output that carries a message – something that will be critical for me to gain satisfaction from producing any art in the future.