Following my final feedback session with my tutor I wanted to document and reflect on my exprience working on assignment five and the key things I have learned from the assignment.
Background
Often with assignments I find it difficult to come up with an idea or theme that I want to photograph and which fulfills the brief. In this case I had an idea about producing a series that looked at old peeple living on their own. As my father and my mother-in-law, who are in their late eighties and early nineties respectively, both live on their own and are reatively close by I knew there were people who would be willing to be photographed. I also looked at some Office for National Statistics data to try and understand how many older people live on their own and discovered that there were roughly twice as many women as men. At this point I thought about producing a work that reflected that by producing a series with father, my mother-in-law and one of her friends so that the final work would contain a ratio of images that reflected the overall split in male/female over 75 single person households.
Although this felt like quite a neat idea, I was not really motivated by it and due to covid had reservations about it. On one level, despite the male/female ratio synergy, it did not feel particularly engaging as there would be only be five or six images of each individual and on a practical level it felt wrong be photgraphing people who were trying to limit their social contacts in order to minimise their chances of catching the virus. As a result I did not make much progress and as the deadline for submitting the assigment was approaching I decided to photograph the fuel shortage.
Initial submission and refining my idea
In my feedback session with my tutor for the initial set of images I submitted for the assignment it was clear to both of us that my submission, although satisfactory, was not a particularly personal project and in the session we discussed the research I had done on photographers producing work on ageing and some of the photographs I had already taken of my father. In the discussion with my tutor about ageing parents it became clear that my original idea was too broad, that I had become too hung up on the idea of the male/female household split and that the way forward was to concentrate just on my father. This approach had two advantages, it was much more personal and it was much easier in terms of access and managing risk. Having decided to return to my original idea I looked again at my initial research and was really struck by Philip Toledano’s Days with my Father.
Photographing my father
Photographing my father was straight forward with no technical issues. The biggest challenge I faced was in terms of my status as a photographer; was I an insider or an outsider? Thinking about it I was reminded of a quote by Gerry Badger about Diane Arbus in an article from 1988, Gerry Badger wrote:
I would say, rather, that Arbus’s view was from both inside and outside. She certainly maintained the artist’s crucial detachment, that of consciousness and intent. There is, however, enough evidence to conclude that, like many of her subjects, Arbus stood in the world somewhat ‘precariously’, perfectly situated to empathise fully with her sitters.
Gerry Badger – Phototexts, 1988 reproduced on American Suburban X
I think in the end I was both and insider and an outsider, or perhaps neither. The more time I spent photographing my father, and realised the impact his very limited sight has on his life, the more callenging it was to maintain a sense of detachment, and I realised that much of his behaviour that I find frustrating is due in large part to his inability to see. However, looking at the series overall I think that it strikes a balance between empathy and objectivity and that overall it shows a degree of kindness towards my father but without being saccharine.
Presentation
As a result of my slow start to this assignment I did not give any thougth as to how I would present the images before I started photgraphing, beyond thinking that I would display them in a gallery on my learning log. However, looking again at Philip Toledano’s work I felt that the series would benefit from the addition of text to provide context and so I sent my initial submission to my tutor in the form of a presentation. My tutor pointed out that this was not effective as the text was too prominent and, as many of my images were landscape format, the images were too small.
To address this I decided to try presenting the work in as a stills video without any text but with a narration instead. In theory this resolved the issue of the text dominating the images but did not address the issue of image size. The challenges of presenting the work in this way were that I had no experience of creating a video and I did not have any video creation software, these shortcomings became evident when I discussed the presentation with my tutor. Overall my tutor felt that the video did not work particularly well for a number of reasons, the lack of narration, the ill-conceived use of transitions and the excess of background with portrait images. Whilst it would be possible to correct these issues given time, I do not feel that I have the sufficient time prior to assessment to achieve the level of proficiency I would need in order to make a successful video presentation.
Learnings
I have learned a lot from this assignment, in partcular: concept development, research and presentation.
What has become clear to me is that my ideas for work develop over a period of time and therefore I need to start thinking about projects much earlier. It would be easier if my concepts for work were fully formed from the outset, but recognising that this is not the case; and that I need time to develop and refine them, is a step forward for me. As a result I am already thinking about the topics for the remaining assignments to give me the maximum amount of time to develop ideas.
I also learned that it is not an issue to not fulfil the brief to the letter. I was initially concerned that I did not have fifteen images as stated in the brief, however, I feel confident that it is better to have fewer images rather than pad a piece of work out just to hit a specific number.
In think this assignment is the fist one I where my research has had a clear influence on the work I produced. Although I have been trying to increase the amount of research I have done as I have progressed through the course, I feel that this is the first assignment where I can see a direct link between research and the work I produced. It is also the first time that I enjoyed the process of research itself rather than feeling that it was separate from the creating images.
The final learning from this assignment was to think about presentation from the very beginning. Ultimately, I’m not happy with the final presentation of this assignment, I feel that the work would have been enhanced by the addition of contextual information but I do not have the skills to present the work in a way achieves this without distracting from the images. If I had thought about this earlier I might have had time to learn more about video creation or I might have come up with a different format for presenting the work
Sources
Badger, EG @ (2012) Notes from the Margin of Spoiled Identity – The Art of Diane Arbus (1988). At: https://americansuburbx.com/2012/07/diane-arbus-notes-from-margin-of.html (Accessed 23/01/2022).
Documentary, Fact & Fiction 