Speaking Photographically

Week 10 Webinar Reflecting on Practice

Week 10 Independent Reflection

My independent reflection leaves me in a mild state of shock. This passion I call photography, turns to obssession and if sustained becomes unhealthy. We all go through it and for me I have to recognise the onset and start to de-commit in order to restore or maintain life balance.

So after an intense period invluding catching up from the Falmouth visit whilst the course ran on, I got up to date, more so in the previous 8 weeks but engaged a bit less with the material content of the course to address my perceived shortfall in finished work. The 140 injury photographs had resulted in a dozen or so images and I needed more for the portfolio edit. That is the main assignment score so cant be left to chance.

I’ve taken. time to engage over the ElliotHalls Amsterdam – Falmouth University blog collaboration and done some Peer to Peer engagement – a great way of progressing.

As I turn back to the course and the option of making a video I reflect on the images made this week. They address the strange translation of injury into landscape – don’t ask, it happens when I apply intuition to my work and it serves to address the intent of memories faded. The results created with consistency of method I find magical as I work groups of images that go together. As my work is compared to painters and to Mark Rothko I become increasingly aware of differences of constraint. The painter can paint from floor height to ceiling height especially in the context of art as an experience and make as many marks as is necessary. My work where it involves injury on a small scale, doesn’t adapt to microscopy and now matter how expensive the camera resolution is the known limitation. My this week work I am happy with as being highly imaginative and connected to intent but at a small scale. The creation of depth with appropriate perspective I am amazed at getting. Enlarge the images and they break down, first taking on a style akin to a cartoon filter effect, which is far from my direction.

Also, in fine boomerang fashion I’ve listened and followed taking others perceptions onboard and got visually consistent images which with more polish would be fine, yet there is a but. I’ve gone into a fog and have emerged at a place that wrong for my intent. The sombre mood of Rothko style work for me parallels only the motivation for my doing my work. The outcomes I want are colour. They lived their lives (in the past in the Great War) in colour but we represent them in black and white. I have always had the intent of a perspective of a coloured past. The other pillar of my work is a celebration of life and that definitely demands colour and vibrancy. I maintain my bond with them but celebrate freedom out of their sacrifice.

Week 10 Activity Positioning Practice

Week 10 Presentation Pictures Like Poems

We listened to Jeff Wall in a gallery surrounded by his work, talk in reflective mood. This wa in the form of a video that interleaved his thought about his photography with the gallery team working hard to set up an exhibition.

Here are some observations I made from this, although on a second viewing / reading. On the first viewing, with no introduction, I had wondered who this stranger was until around 5 minutes in I realised we had seen some of his constructed images earlier in the module.

Wall has an interest in painting photography and cinematography and discusses art. He is able to objectify the photograph and at the same time objectify people within the photograph.

He avoids talking in the inclusive style preferring to exercise his own voice. He creates a reference between the photograph and himself and leaves it to the reader to accept the parallel experience.

He relates to the enjoyment and liking of good work. And he talks occasionally in an instructional manner.

Also, he creates a benchmark in photography of the snapshot to which all other photographs must compare. Then he references the idea of straight photography to which he relates the constructed scene.

He’s concerned with happenings and often as accident, through his involvement in the slow process of making. He has an interest in participation and involvement and relates this to scenes that relate to existence or that which existed. 

He considers the love of imagery and in the practical dealing with things, observing them and liking them. He has a concern for appearance. He perceives the world as a set of relations either created or found in which there is the dynamic changing of content over time.

He expresses a resistance to fixed beliefs and to conformity and seems to entertain elements of doubt concerning uniqueness, complication or complexity and idealism.

He has a wide interest in art which he studied at school as art history and yet somehow did not become an art historian. Wall does not believe in the old in photography only in a contemporary interpretation.

He is concerned by causal aspects of photography, such as the photograph as illusion, in the looking through, as well as the effect of accompanying text or indeed its absence. He also relates causally to photography in its making and the resulting feeling of confirmation that he is observant the happiness that he gains.

Week 10 Module Leader Sessions

These sessions have to be the highlight of this course module. Contact time is very impressive. The first session is usually difficult being so early in the week with the work still to be engaged with yet it does provide context for a quick start. I fell over this week on scouted ahead to the Jeff Wall reflective. He’d not featured on on my known list and it took 5 minutes to realise he was the photographer who likes to construct snap shots if I may put it so bluntly. Although Wall is an esteemed academic, in my usual manner I resist placing photographers of pedestals.

So that is not to say I could not or on second viewing learn from his unique experience and insights. Such is the delight of this quick start to the week’s study.

In the next session, I gained from numerous reminders over key information designed to assist our success on the course.It is hard to overstress the importance of this as otherwise the online delivery and engagement falls off into the abstract.

The last session is my favourite and easier to enjoy as by then I will have prepared and engaged in Tutor sessions. As we are able to engage with our own and another Tutor, I gain a great deal of insight and see much more work of others. This is so important to my development and hopefully I can give insight to others. Having been through this readies one to participate here and begin to reflect on the week gone by and its learning points.

So thank you all.

Week 10 Forum Evaluating Practice

Week 10 Speaking Photographically

Week 9 Resources Enter the Academy

I’d got on with my reading and kept switching the theme from advertising, to politics and propaganda to the interpretation of oil paintings. That was quite a breadth of material, and I’d love to be able to just sit and read and read and read. Well actually, yes I have been regularly dipping in and out of one reading or another.

Week 9 Webinar Contexts of Consumption

Here, if I talk from experience of my part in 2018 group exhibitions.

[A] Identify and research a real-life group exhibition that you feel your work would fit into.

I was part of a group project from the outset. Although I’d expected a book I hadn’t contemplated the exhibitions. In the charge of experienced hands it was a great group experience.

[B] What is the curatorial intent of the exhibition?

People and events on specific routes through London. It gained significance as the Grenfell tower disaster happened on our shift. So too did the terrorist action on London Bridge where the public were run over and hacked by weapons. The next event was much more of the every day, the project we shadowed delayed so substantially the contemporary nature of the work was dented. You could never plan for all these events. It was a good 6 months or more of effort but we worked at incredible pace. That was amazing, I still have to pinch myself.

[C] Why would your work be included in it?

As major contributor there was one reason. Being invited by the editor to spend the day shooting and lunching with him must have also helped. Being a willing partner in other accompanied shoots helped team building and helped gain recognition.

[D] How would the reviewers relate your practice to the other works shown?

Reviewers included Zelda Cheatle, Martin Parr foundation and others then Chloe Dewe Mathews. By proxy I was told about the power of recognising a situation and capturing it being a powerful thing. Some images, even though not my best worked because in a book you have page matching and the editorial intent could be recognised.

[E] What is the most appropriate means for the public consumption of your work?

Book, taster exhibition and full exhibition wth opening night were all appropriate. Other surprises included my written work being included in a journal as an individual amongst other group member entries. I think that happened twice.

I attended two tutorials. In the first I was able to gain something that allowed me to enter the second better prepared.

Week 9 Independent Reflection

[A] Who writes interpretation material for galleries / museums?

[B] What do you notice about this voice or voices?

[C] Does it speak to you?

[A] Curators (and others not stated here at the moment)

[B] It is all upside and why not. Given the power to curate, why pick bad work?

[C] The material may or may not speak to me. I’m broad minded enough to patiently listen and apply interpretation. I don’t seek out all of the material all of the time. I might opt for preserving original thought and bypass the material and read it afterwards having gained personal experience. If I was leading a group to an exhibition say I’d be honour bound to do the homework and read the materials to be able to handle queries or to garner interest. If I was securing funding to attend I’d have to do my due diligence and read the materials.

Week 9 Module Leader Office Hours

Another very valuable week of support to those who could make it. Contact opportunities are full time equivalent.

Week 9 Independent Reading Contemporary Cultures of Display

Week 9 Independent Reading Contemporary Cultures of Display

[A] How do photographs acquire value and meaning?

[B] Is ‘art’ separate from society?

[C] Is contemporary ‘art’ photography different from earlier forms of ‘art’ photography?

Sadly I cannot engage with this fully as the reading link leads to a library meta dataset of information about the book but certainly no download link – tried another browser still no luck.

Let me try without the resource.

[A] I covered most of this in the preceding section. Repetition of task is detected.

[B] Art exists within sections of society and at any point in time may not be displayed and copies as illustrations on books or catalogues could serve to remind. Art can’t be read without reference to society or culture. It can be looked at and looked though or be ignored especially if it is not noted for its popularity. It’s just that it may not always be accessible. Propaganda art is going to be out there in the faces of the public in some instances on the side of political campaign buses.

[C] Yes Contemporary art photography is different to earlier forms. It’s intent may be more defined in order to distinguish it in a sea of images. However, time may need to pass, I usually say a hundred years from now, for the latent meaning to become more fully apparent. Contemporary work may also now be digital something not invented in time for earlier forms. Earlier forms will have had a chance to be exposed to exhibition and commentary by curator or critic. Contemporary work may be waiting its day.

Week 9 Introduction Enter the Academy

[A] What is ‘art’ and who has the authority to decide what is ‘good art’?

[B] Do we place value upon these artefacts? How and Why?

[C] Is photography ‘art’ or the ‘plastic verification of a fact’ (De Zayas, 1913)?

[A] Marshall McLuhan is my go to source for the definition of Art and sometimes incorrect attribution goes to Andy Warhol. “Art is what you can get away with”.

For me going back to this week has given me a tough lecture to crack. 

I watched the recording several times over. I got almost to the point of parsing each sentence to follow what was said. Maybe I’m tired, maybe too many distractions from the current week forum based on the videos we created. I entered a fog. At at some point I’ll emerge from it.

An earlier piece by different author was also a challenge and in the end I read the last paragraph then progressed step by step to the first page and remarkably it engaged me. Perhaps that’s it. Not every lecture will have the same relevance to individual practice.

[B] In my independent reading and at another week of the course I did dive into art and value. I can relate to that as a parallel to the lecture. Works of art gain cultural value through ownership which makes then causes access to become scarce. With equal works of art say by two different authors one may gain acceptance in the gallery world, the other not. Politics of the art world can determine selection and hence value. Once a work makes it to the gallery walls and is in the company of other work or even just the space of the gallery then importance is assigned. Even provocative bad work can find it’s place and as in Damien Hirst’s work the public may be astonished at what gets displayed and so are by now used to good and bad in their perception. But, once there, the work gains something that makes it desirable to art buyers.

In Hirst’s case his cheeky chappy repartee allows him to survive onslaught and in such a disarming way. Every piece of art is going to have its detractors, so realising this the artsist can be easily forewarned or forearmed. In emerging generations where they have grown up through school much more as co-collaborators a group can easily form around a work and free discussion and a common creed can act to strengthen the work against opposition just by being ready with the argument and a healthy disrespect for formality or formal argument.

[C] As for art or plastic, the answer is straightforward. Photography is both. Let’s pin down a single piece or body of work and answer that. Even then, there is all the ambiguity of contexts and reader experiences. Photography as a subject is now such a wide thing it resists being pigeonholed.

Responses & Responsibilities

Reflection (this paragraph is due to move to the relevant blog post)

With work piling up fast again I’ve pressed ahead this week. At Week 5 I’d finally got organised over the coursework finishing on a Friday rather than the Sunday (or later) and this left time for reading activity. I do need to do more research into Mark Rothko. Attendance at the FFTheLivingImage took 7 days out of my schedule and put me behind again. Week 6 work I’ve only part covered at present. The tactic adopted is the simple one of keeping up to date with the current (live) work and go back to earlier sections of the course and catch-up. The pressure is on with a video due to be made for Peer review in the short term. Not mentioned is Week 7. It was reserved for Tutorials which I engaged with and wrote up but probably need to revisit for some finishing touches including doing more i.e. re-issuing the draft Critical Review.

Week 8 Resources and Responsibilities

A quick read ahead of Benjamin (Benjamin, 1982) has helped to distil something of the theme and intent of this week’s study.

A particular element of my portfolio project continues to be authenticity. Therefore it was with interest I read, “the Revolutionary strength of Dadaism lay in testing art for its authenticity.  [ibid, page 23]. This gives me some comfort as a starting position.

I also take note in nourishing my work in respect of technical progress in reading the claim that, “… intellectual production cannot become politically useful until … competence … has been surmounted.” [ibid, page 24]. A direct interpretation might be of photographic technical competence, but it runs much deeper. As a photographic author it is necessary to understand the production quality of work and be able to do a lot more than simply represent, instead take control and change aspects of the methods of creating imagery and as a means of instructing other authors of the same.

This takes something that runs deep in my work and places it front and centre more in the realm of the political or of propaganda. 

If I take a first stab at this interpretation it would be that in much the same way as our Jewish friends are committed to never letting the memory of the Holocaust die, then the same with my work, the loss of dear ancestors, who remain alive in living family today should not be forgotten. In a way the raw outpourings of the Scottish people and then decades of silence of hidden loss, the gaps I refer to, makes ongoing memory a challenge and so my works effort. My work transmits beyond centenary commemorations of 2014-2018 and lives with descendants just as mitochondrial DNA passes down to them.

Such loss and sacrifice and the brave deeds must be remembered with each new generation and whilst we celebrate our lives, we should not allow world events to take such a turn in the future. As sure as history repeats itself then that is the eternal risk.

Finally from this reference, and I had had not expected such a reading to be so transformative, I quote and reflect upon a referral, “The excellent Lichtenberg said: ‘It is not what a man is convinced of that matters, but what his convictions make of him’”[ibid, page 27]. By such process I need to ensure that my work on this MA Photography course leads me to exercise voice through my transformed photographs as abstract expressionism and in intent through art as an experience. 

We, I in particular should do and create within my sphere of influence and make work that helps to ensure successive generations remember. This is not too dissimilar to how painter Rachel Howard (Howard Rachel, 2018) draws attention to the repetition of mistake from Christ’s crucifixion through to torture at Abu Ghraib supporting the doubt that we will ever learn.

Bibliiography

Benjamin, W. (1982) ‘The Author as Producer [IN] Thinking photography’, in Burgin, V. (ed.) Thinking photography. London: Macmillan.

Howard Rachel (2018) Repetition is truth via Dolorosa. Edited by A. C. Beard Jason. London: Other Criteria Books. Available at: newportstreetgallery.com.

Week 8 What Can Photography Do

Week 8 CRJ Independent Reflection

Week 8 Activity Aesthetic or Anaesthetic

The particular body of work that aims to convey a particular message and that is relevant to my practice has to be:

Rachel Howard Repetition is Truth via Dolrosa, Newport Street Gallery London – exhibition now closed.

The work at first is of Catholic significance, in using the journey of Christ along Dolorosa carrying the cross to the site of crucifixion on the hill at Calvary. 

The visual language of the paintings immediately resonated with images I’d abstracted from Photographs and had posted online and part included in my submission to Falmouth University for this MA Photography course. In showing my images to Olympia who worked there, she was amazed by the similarities of paintings and abstracts. Conversation continued about belief in God, attempts by a dark force to frustrate work and how this work was my life’s mission. Very heavy indeed. An interesting diversion over an ongoing series of coincidences. Coincidences which threatened my engagement and continuation in photography continued into my first two modules of this course.

The paintings of Howard are intended to influence the audience and those in political power. The work addresses repetition of inhumanity first directed towards Christ and then towards prisoners of the US tortured at Abu Ghraib. 

The work in exhibition was successful in its metaphor for the twelve stages of the cross as the viewer is required to walk from one large scale painting  to another traversing rooms as if retracing Christ’s footsteps. This may become more apparent afterwards if b=not at the time. The reference to Abu Ghraib is through the vertical lines on the paintings sometimes descending to a painted area representing the box used in torture.Those tortured were required to stand on the box, wear a hood and had electrodes attached to sensitive areas of the body.

The paintings are light and airy and have a sense of the impending. You imagine the artist doubts whether humankind will ever learn from mistakes through repetition of cruel behaviour as if part if human nature and human history.

With the backing of Damien Hirst (they both attended Goldsmiths College University of London), Howard’s  work takes on additional significance given the installation work Hirst is known for: including cutting mother and calf from nose to tail for one exhibit at the Tate Modern and doing roughly the same with a shark in a tank. This theme of butchery resonates strangely with Howard’s work. 

It was possible to walk into the gallery and leave without effect, but for me, as soon as the enquiring mind engaged and the communication began the work transmitted. Then my own work was cast in the shadow of Howard’s intent and so much so that I wrote to the gallery afterwards. More follows.

Week 8 Presentation The Environment and the Eye

Week 8 Independent Reading Good Intentions

[A] The main ideas/points/arguments you think Sischy makes about Salgado’s work?

[B] Whether you agree or disagree with this view and why?

[C] Any issues raised that apply to your own practice?

[A] There is a blatant dislike that serves to sour our appreciation of Salgado. [B] As we learned elsewhere, the Galleries and Curatorial system self serves in its selection of work that drives artists/photographers to make work that they would publish. There is nothing said by Salgrado that one can take in and decide upon independently. It is the mission of Sischy to taint Salgado with the choices that the Gallery system has decided upon. In allowing his work to be managed by the Gslleries Salgado has put his trust in their discernment. It seems clear that his trust may have been mistaken.

[A] There is a theme in Sischy’s argument that a Brazilian photographer has no or limited right to represent other nationals. [B] That is an opinion I could agree or disagree with independently, case by case.

[A] There is an undermining of Salgado’s work as being restricted to the type of magazine that no longer has any appreciable sway in the modern world in which television prevails. With such reduced demand it would seem that Salgado is ideally positioned to swamp the market.

[A] The beauty that the photograph is often referred to as creating and is present in Salgado’s work is deemed to create indifference.as anesthetisation leads to anaesthetisation of feeling. [B]Well this of course is the exact thing that television has been found to do. Through passive engagement, and lightness of touch on thought processes television which has taken over paralyses the viewer who simply stares back at the screen.

[A] Biblical themes are seen to enter Salgado’s work. [B] This is no more than the photograph being a window on the photographers soul. Why should Salgado be less immune to this than any other?

[A] There is a challenge that depicting suffering can be read in the light of God’s will, implying and so it shall be that people shall suffer.

[A] Salgado is criticised for being a symbolist rather than portraitist. [B] We have not been shown visual examples of Salgado’s work for this to become apparent. I can accept it as true and yet keep an open mind. 

[A] / [B] Salgado’s work is self-directed, and how wonderful and liberating that can be. It is then judged as anesthetisation as opposed to reportage, If it were to be reportage then for this level of work surely there would be a sponsor, a commissioning editor and a picture editor. By which definition reportage is manipulated and controlled by others in return for a payment. IT is hard to blame the photographer for the direction their personal projects take.

[A] Salgado’s work of people is likened to the language of Landscape photography of the picturesque rather than portraiture. [B] There is one equality in photography and that is light and the use of light. If used incorrectly a poor image may be created of little consequence. A good light is beautiful wherever it falls in this world. And so to make a photograph that communicates a god 9beautiful light is a necessary thing.

[A] Comparison is made with other photographers, smith and Hine. It appears that some reservation is retained over Smith’s work and Hine is applauded for the outcome of Child Labor Law changes.[b] There is by metamorphosis an implication that Hine was responsible for the change, yet how true is that really?

[A] Sentimentalism is said to be apparent In Salgado’s work. [B] Surely that is something resolved between the photographer and the viewer and not to be tainted by the critic? 

[C] My work could be deemed as naïve if it wanted to change the world especially as there is no track record of experience in such weighty matters. What started out as a dedication to family and has the possibility to pass down generations including those yet to come may have some credence.

[C] My work could be deemed to contain items of revulsion, as after all that is a part of my punctum, in making the work worthwhile. There is a delicate balance within pieces of my imagery. Largely the photograph containing revulsion is highly disguised and distracts and may be seen as introducing beauty. However, there is trace and so the mind can focus on the mixture rather than pure anesthetisation. 

[C] Biblical themes did begin to enter my work and in particular the sign of the Christian cross was often apparent. I realise now that I had been open to viewing such images and in the subconscious and using intuition the cross did start to appear in my photographs. A case of seeing what you want to see. I feel this is now tempered and a level of self-awareness has since developed that counters an increase in iconography.

[C] Whether my work is iconographic or not, I can’t say. It is certainly metaphorical but I’m not sure that is at all the same thing.

[C] My own work may have a sentimentalism, but such is the nature of remembering, communication of lost messages across the decades and the family as audience. Perhaps others may view such in the light of their own family experiences.

Week 8 Module Leader Sessions

These sessions have expanded beyond their original remit to include reviews of the work in the current week, crits, practice session and special lectures e.g. the series to date has include The Gaze Part I and Landscape photography.

This has to be one of the greatest value adds of the two year MA Photography course Informing Contexts module. Not all students attend maybe concentrating hard on work and family commitments or doing individual research.

Week 8 Forum An Agent of Change

Photography in concert with other forms of communication including video, military recordings and media conferences, interviews and reports brought the US to a ceasefire after the Highway of Death destruction and killing in the retreat of Iraqi forces from Kuwait occupation.

Whilst shocking subject material should be censored, we have become so accustomed by exposure and it is increasingly more difficult to shock. I’m remined of the extremes of creating shock in which Marina Abramovic stood naked before a table of implements at a gallery in Belgrade and invited the audience to do whatever they wished to her.. She walked away dripping with blood and tears. On another occasion she carved a communist star into her abdomen. We are so immune to shock it takes such extremes of Performance Art to induce shock in an audience.

Week 8 Introduction Responses and Responsibilities

[A] What images provoke a sense of responsibility for you?

[B] How do they achieve this?

[C] Are they merely propaganda?

Another difficult reading with an accompanying barrage of questions. Here are answer to the headline ones.

[A] Not an image but a series of factual reports for me are what caused the nation to reject Prime Minister Tony Blair and his government as dangerous incompetents and thus they were voted out of power. Perhaps the exercise of restraint after the Highways of Death (Highway 80 and Highway 8) killing of a retreating column of military said more than actual raw images of horror.

[B] Having proven the power to destroy a military force then afterwards holding back on killing showed a greater humanity.

[C] Whilst many images are propaganda as discrete soundbites, they do fail to shock as hinted at constantly throughout the video lecture. Many younger members of society are probably immune to destructive forces by exposure to war video games. Players get to experience the excitement and feeling of power, and of camaraderie when in opposition to an enemy. They “die” using up one of their lives. Older generations may remain silent. In other words, different demographics have different values and responses. 

Returning to the question: propaganda or not? I couldn’t say. Media profit yes. Filling that eternally emptying broadcast bandwidth with something new, yes. I’m reminded of the phrase “Drop the Dead Donkey”. 

Week 6 Resources: A Sea of Images

I started reading Mythologies by Roland Barthes and found interest in a chapter on Blind and Dumb criticism and have been pleased to start listening to an allied BBC production on 21st Century Mythologies for Omnibus. (Conrad, 2014)

Bibliography

Conrad, P. (2014) 21st Century Mythologies – Omnibus, Part 1 – [object Object] – BBC Sounds. Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/b04wy810 (Accessed: 24 March 2019).

Week 6 Webinar: Power Corrupts, Absolute Power Corrupts Absolutely

Okay, so this is an accepted truism, and while it might not be absolute, there is no shortage of corruption highlighted by the media. Insofar as the webinar was concerned, I was still away visiting the University and also saw no online invitations, but I may have been distracted in materiality and physical location with others from the course. I need to return to this to give it justice. I’ve recorded much already below, and it covers the example points proffered, but not wholly or exclusively. As I detect the possibility of repetition, I have to leave this and jump back to Week 9 or risk the ebb and flow of falling behind and catching up. I continue to organise and act to keep the course under control, for surely it needs it. I sense students as well as staff feel the pressures of this all year round commitment and still somehow find an overall life balance.

Week 6 Independent Reflection

Reflect on:

• Any ideas that particularly interested or challenged you.
• Whether or not your ideas have changed.
• How you assess ‘intimacy and distance’.

I’m challenged by the insistence on the West being a homogeneous entity as my opening position. The assumption of homogeneity gives a false realism and an impression of greater dominance than truly deserved.

The main change for me has been in paying attention to the past and raking up ideas of life in a former time left almost forgotten. Oddly, my project intent bridges across many of the middle years in which for example the magazine of the week has operated.

I’m not sure about intimacy and distance as I’ve yet to locate/relocate the quote. It is probably a graphic and not a text item. For me to process it is best to have all written presentation included as text. I’ll revisit the slides but there is a time penalty involved I cannot afford at present if I am to keep up / catch-up after time at the University as the course rolled on. As you can see I’m not a fan of texts being fragmented and showcased at different levels of storage particularly for a course with online delivery. I cry for modernisation which will not/cannot be realised, I guess.

Write a brief summary in your research journal, taking into account:

• How your practice may (or may not) be seen as adhering to a specific ideology.
• The potential impact of this given the subsequent meaning and reception your practice might attract. From whom?
• Any power negotiations within your own practice.
• Your practice in the context of other visual practices and theoretical points.

The ideology I adopt is that of connecting with my ancestral relations where I can still reach across living memory to those affected by war but who remained silent as now I realise gaps of people and lack of outpouring over loss of which I’m now aware. As a member of a diaspora and with direct familial connection I feel a certainty in describing my cause if it may be so called.

Already the work in both parts, a written narrative of academic standard and a visual work of growing independence, there is a drawing together of family divided and now a translation to a new generation. In this act I can gauge the degree of connectedness and discern the level of male cultural identification as opposed to biological inheritance. In the sea of images there is a place for narratives and art as substitute for pure dry historical record and especially as we live in a visual age.

There is again a certainty or solidity within practice that this work will endure with or without the MA Photography course, and I state this as plain fact rather than a rejectionist view. If I change practice, rather than sustain practice it will be a natural development from doing too much of the same and desire for change which I sometimes relieve by continuing to shoot on a broader front. The course MA Photography creates tension both helping along the professional development of practice which is much appreciated yet also through constraints and rules about production, best work that may have been completed by now becomes highly constrained by a set of production rules, which I go along with. Such is the educational awards system. It is not a complaint, more something to negotiate and a reason to be patient over and allow time for development to be realised. A shorter sharper intense MA of 9 months might have been more compatible with my practice. Nevertheless I aim to listen and absorb as much as possible for as long as I can sustain focus. No-one said this course would be easy and I would not want it to be, especially for true practice development. For those with an eye on value then how can we complain at receiving two years of full time education packed in so? There is a lot to be commended and challenges to be sustained.

In terms of other visual practices there is now a long known thing of my work being likened to paintings. Despite the differences we are familiar with, the one gap I have to be aware of is that painters can paint a floor to ceiling canvas as an art experience making as many small marks as they wish, but as my photographs are of miniature scale, the camera quickly runs out of pixels and so I adapt my work and introduce AI lately and other photographic techniques around lighting and microscopy at times to help maintain resolution at the art as experience painterly scale. Also, work on bodily glow is better presented much more effectively as light emitted rather than reflected. Later finding 20 light boxes for exhibition purposes could be a constraint on optimal presentation. I wonder if the university would help a campaign to have emitted light presentation methods in the IoP gallery space for example? The work at least demands wet C-type print methods.

I rapidly approached the point of obtaining enough photographs by widening scope from trauma to non-exclusively photographing physical memory through retention of contact pressure marks on the body – no injury required to record bodily glow and still connect to the past as physical manifestation. At last progress. During the quieter Winter months less was happening due to physical inactivity, I suppose. Now at the present level with 140 photographs from Week 2 to 7 and only a handful pressed into production – done to meet critique timescales and weekly webinar reviews. There has now been an advance in the digital darkroom. There is a form of mass production of groups of like photographs constructed into one massive image file at the start. With consistency in light during taking and application of identical processing steps across the set in digital processing I now work on five images at time. I got to this after using film and developing and scanning it at Falmouth. I’ve adopted the trial for digital. This could conceivably expand to 20 images at a time, and keep within file size limitations. This constitutes a new preprocessing step. The composite image is then divided back down into individual 5 x 4 tiles for crafting to be applied. There is less control at this stage, at present, as creative direction is taken from reading each image, but collocates start to abound. As I learn the craft even more and refine the outcomes to my intent I should find my preferred style and obtain the required edit. In retrospect I needed more to find consistent sets of images than fuss over handcrafting each stage of each image. So now white balance as one step is for the composite rather than individual images. Whilst technically there is a measurement difference, across images of consistency, there is little to argue and besides the final stage of crafting creates wide changes in direction of final appearance.

I only wrote so much on this point as it is a recent innovation in my practice that produces results and overall there is a freeing up to lend time to the creative processes standardising steps that adapt to standardisation without compromising work. At a simple level too I have gained control over storage and workflow and even have introduced discipline into auditing image heritage and end use. At the start of the course with fewer images they were easier to control informally, but as the enterprise has grown, so discipline and control have become necessary especially around deadlines.

This is still only a stage in the ongoing practice development and even now my original intent to layer in appropriate glyphs has begun to happen. There are some exciting decisions to make as I proceed towards image and text narrative. Currently I use call and response captions for effect. Now visual scope increases.

I should not forget the value add from the course most recently of advertising practice influences and as yet I do not know what more there is to follow in influential course content in the next 14 weeks duration, not to mention advances though ongoing crits.

Whether all this answers the question directly posed above or not, I am pleased to have been triggered into writing all this down as it marks for me personally a significant progress and I can now challenge and adapt my creative and production ideas.

Overall, I am pleased to be able to sustain balanced effort between learning and doing, continually making new examples of work within practice, and not forgetting to keep on shooting photographs across multiple genres as a way to sustain and remain motivated.

Week 6 Activity: And When I am Formulated, Sprawling on a Pin

I don’t have any problem with Grundberg particularly. 1988 is now a long time ago in relation to change in the world. In those days, no worldwide web, no globalisation, very little competition and very expensive air travel. It takes some focus to remember how it was, By then certainly, we had an Open University and so a growing empowerment of working people who before were excluded by class.

As I wrote in my blog, modern day Britain is an integrated multicultural society, more so than ever before. As such I see variety and am not inclined to be pressed into pigeon holing individuals by place, by race, by gender or religion. Also, of the 195 countries English is the most rapidly adopted language but even then only 1 billion in a world population 7.56 billion. What I’m saying is the West as such is not a dominant whole as we like to think but is an amalgamation of many things: many countries, languages, cultures. Amongst these remain cultural tensions like between nordic countries and that’s just one example.

Also as blogged, I have been in a highly visual state and need a break right now before piling back into creative image production, especially when catching up after a period visiting the University for workshops and weekend symposium as the course rolled on uninterrupted. I choose not to turn up unsettling images that lie best forgotten for me for now. 

Week 6 Presentation: National Geographic – Representing, Re-Presenting, Reproducing

We talk of things National Geographic in much higher terms and language than the natural level of the matter itself. It seems therefore to be a concern relating to Western consciousness. 

I neither flicked through nor read the National Geographic preferring to listen to articles of the digital subscription and then voted by not renewing. It was maybe for me a source of language experience. How I decoupled from the visuals is dumfounding now as a photographic student. 

As for moving pyramids together then simple lens choice does this anyway, so why question positional adjustment by other means? Editorial intent seems to be what is found objectionable. For me my photographs are steered in the direction I pre-visualise and see. I am in control of my work, it is not left to the camera to fully determine.

The expression used by Baudrillard appears contorted or overly clever in processing a double negative as a positive. Such is the power of logic. The meaning could have been obscured by further layers of logic and result in the same assertion i.e. that the simulacrum is true. In line with Barthes Punctum, here I might suggest a new term the Stimulacrum. Don’t ask, as the well-intended comment will likely result in a long explanation (of book chapter proportions?). 

Britain is a well integrated multicultural society, and as such it is difficult for me to imagine non Western people. The assumption of a Western people in its own right is not intended to deny people their heritage. In the worlds 195 countries, the fastest growing language, English, has only 980 million speakers. I do not perceive a Western dominant entity. I believe it true that genetically I may have greater similarity with people of Oriental descent than near neighbours of English descent. By such I resist being led into pigeon holing others as the lecture appears to insist.

National Geographic Society policy, I would view as a laudable objective. To maintain such would require constant and strong leadership over the decades and involve a level of editorial process that was formal and effective under publication deadlines. I think if you run such a complex venture then ideological control is going to be a constant challenge. If the drift was so immense why wait over a century to take issue with pictorial content. Besides change in the world is a constant and so perceptions from last century may have been suited to the audience and culture then and it would have been impossible to predict future intolerance. Magazines are largely disposable in public hands and destined for the waste. So to refer to the 1976 edition cannot be a norm as only major libraries would hold the copy and then it would be displayed mostly to an individual on special request. Is it in the past and time to move on?

As for my work, I make little of power relations but feel the pressure building to adopt such. If I were to liken loss of my ancestors to the means of Jewish communities in keeping alive the memory of the Holocaust, of which I have no problem, then in the background you could argue for my work, that I keep alive memory of the Scottish cause in the Great War, it being another mistake of self inflicted loss we must avoid. In representing a national cause if that is what my work takes on then as part of the diaspora I have a natural voice for this work. In truth we are talking about background influence and family as the initial audience.

My work being in the abstract is non representational. It is more a human biological connection down the generations that will terminate as females of the line, no longer happen to be born, as dictated by factors such as chance or through a preponderance of males.

Abstract expressionism is used to parallel narratives and so continuation of the gene is what is paramount.

How anthropology relates therefore is tricky. Are we to assume that subjects photographed object and hand unspoken complaint over to the west to wrestle with and tie itself in knots?

As for the exotic, do we reckon the subjects themselves believe they are exotic or perhaps the are merely down to earth folk? How do they view western photographers, maybe with excitement, enjoyment and fun? How wealthy are the visitors really? They can maybe afford to stay a while but the residents of the lands can stay indefinitely. And who is to say with all the complaint about modern living that the subjects by comparison experience a simpler, less stressful existence.

Surely in the West we are the ones slaved to society?  

The stereotype I detect is expressed as academic or informed language. I’ve taken a turn away from the visual for now having been so immersed of late. Insofar as seeking out objectionable material, I prefer to let any such images rest for now. Also, I find a lot of roads lead back to American culture, again which I choose not to engage with, out of choice.

The May 1985 cover photograph of the Vickers Vimy is interesting as the aircraft depicted has a single prop, whereas the original aircraft had wing mounted props. I’m sure there is a rational explanation.

Week 6 Independent Reading: Decoding National Geographic

When the significant shift in a magazine’s presentation of photography has a timeline hidden a mixing in an archive presentation in a gallery, this act obscures progression. When aesthetic choices are made in curating an exhibition it then falls short compared to the presentation of that properly researched. This in critical context then undermines the value of the work. in the Grunberg article  (Grundberg, 1998)There is a sense of the development of photography from black and white into the era of Kodachrome colour. At the exhibition at the V&A Museum of the RPS Archive collection there is a display that demonstrates by example the impact of the development of colour film in. a series of works that pop. The colour work is consistent and beautifully coloured almost as a croyon colour effect. I have a film camera loaded with some right now and am looking for an opportunity to shoot the roll and get to experience what it can do. I think this connects with my practice as parallel practice that informs the main body of work emergent. 

Grundberg (ibid) indicates advice on curation regarding curatorial practice in particular over using archive photographs. When we create a Final Major Project FMP, we will be faced with the possibility of selecting archive work previously unpublished.

If I disagree with Grundberg, it is probably over the ease with which he adopts a popular mass culture perspective categorising American’s as having set charateristics especially over the consumption of coffee table magazines. He also engenders national competition indicating the Europeans did a better job over the Images of Bamum curated by Geary. Presumably there is a veiled point design to cause the US establishment react to consistently produce top notch work.

Another point affecting my work is the edit, being able to mix two themes of commemoration with celebration of life. They collocate but differ in photographic style.

Bibliography

Grundberg, A. (1998) ‘A Quintessentially American View of the World – NYTimes.com’. Available at: http://www.nytimes.com/1988/09/18/arts/photography-view-a-quintessentially-american-view-of-the-world.html?pagewanted=all.

Week 6 Module Leader Sessions

No Module Leader session rather a face to face critique was attended during the Falmouth Flexible Living Image week and weekend Symposium.

Week 6 Forum: Are You Drowning Yet

Reflect on the contexts which are open to disseminate photographs today, eg, print portfolio, book, magazine, Internet, zine and gallery.
I’m inclined to think outside of the box and have learned various approaches beyond the traditional contexts which have been the subject of an earlier module assignment. Also, to reduced repetition here is something new.

Virtual Environments 

[A] 3D virtual environments

[B] 3D social environments 

[C] Stereogram

[D] Interactive environments 

[E] Pop up exhibition

[F] Model making

[G] Textile print

[H] Clothing

* Provide specific examples to support your comments.

[A] The possibilities scoped and cost and availability of tools have been checked out.  
[B] As is my want and based on previous experience I have reentered the 3D world in Second Life. This is with the intent of creating a visual space for visual experience. Other viewer options have been experienced. 
[C] For materiality 3D stereograms and cardboard viewer from the London Stereographic  Company (of Brian May fame) work well enough. 
[D] The context allows detection using sensors or interaction between exhibit and smartphone. 
[E] Model making is another material approach. Instead of having to attend a gallery a folding miniature gallery space might be created but linked to an electronic device and /or a set of prints.
* Evaluate their success or failure.
[A] Image quality image problem and fiddly so not for all.[B] Proven by the Victorians and a personal favourite of mine, this is a great way of inducing visual exploration. Instead of the eye resting it is free to roam directing gaze at will picking out detail.

* Outline how each context might ‘assign new meanings’ to the work.
* Identify and reflect on ways in which this might inform the optimal context for viewing your own practice.
Comment on the posts of your peers throughout the week as you consider the content of the presentations. Continue to refine and evaluate your own practice and prepare for the webinar.

Week 6 Introduction: A Sea of Images

What ‘ordinary’ images you make.

Being pedantic here I’ll answer in full knowledge of the difference between made images and photographs.

Amongst other things the eye has become trained in seeing the mundane. Especially unique passing scenes not to be repeated and subjects taken from a different perspective. Ordinary pictures are the preserve although not exclusively, of the smartphone. With a DSLR camera it has the power to remind to make something of deemed significance or art.

An ordinary image though, would start out as more or less any photograph without title, captioning or hashtag or other material context. To each individual reader a fleeting personal meaning perhaps yet what of making common, where author intent is tuned into or partially tuned into by the reader. Most images start out as ordinary yet through the application of effort, those kept images those ordinary images for which there is some projected intent, through refinement and planned development and imagined context they become transformed and start to leave the realm of the ordinary.

How important a ‘mass existence’ is over a ‘unique existence’.

Who am I to judge the multiplicity of readings? Mass existence helps make common, and as cultural references develop they allow us to start communicating. Unique seems desirable but can place the work as other or niche and the work lend itself to adverse criticism, notoriety, an example of poor practice, that to be avoided and best not replicated.

Much changes over time so with mass existence there seems to be an implication of the contemporary.

How a reproduction can reach us in ‘our own situation’ today.

In a multitude of ways and in newly evolving ways.there

Whether or not you recycle and reproduce any cultural myths.

Is it still possible to be original?

How is it possible to know completely, and how self-aware are we? I’ve tried hard and no matter how hard, inevitably a discovery is made and so one learns not to be disappointed. Areas of taboo may be ripe for “exploitation”.

As much as ego drives originality discovery can readily prove the new idea to have been replicated elsewhere. There is scope for originality through technological innovation – at least that is my hope.

Gazing at Photographs

Resources: Gazing at Photographs

Week 5 Webinar: Seeing Through Photographs

Week 5 CRJ: Independent Reflection

Week 5 Activity: Of Mother Nature and Marlboro Men

First to list these Landscape photography female role models:

Astrid McGechan, Cheryl Hamer, Marianthi Lainas, Margaret Soraya, Susan Brown, Fre Hocking and Morag (Mog) Paterson an Intentional Camera Movement ICM specialist from Castle Douglas in Southern Scotland who I met briefly back in November !

Resonance (or otherwise)

Ideas from the above resource that resonate. Rather than resonate actually,  some of the content I found to be quite shocking. Here are some examples:

The nexus of the following: the major museums, art history, the art market and the loop of acceptance by photographers combine to deliberately cut out representation by women,  formally stylise landscape work when there are detractors, and they exercise power to push aside photographers for political reasons.

The way the landscape marks former inhuman actions such as through a monument to miners, gunned down by the Colorado State militia intent on squashing a strike. 

The way capital is made of the land has created a major force whether that is with regards energy or making of places such as Disneyland for the tourist trade.

I’m not sure how disingenuous the argument of viewing the landscape as a dynamic environment people use the land rather than the land being a primeval site. Planning of land use for feminist purpose and the reconsidering of land for women to use other than simply for going shopping was another example.

Female reproduction leading to perspectives of women as nature does seem dated. 

Some of the language categories were interesting in terms of power: Public | Private | State | Government and in terms of aesthetic: Noble | Picturesque |Sublime | Mundane

Select an image:

I’ve selected the following image from Adbusters #142 The Metameme Insurrection from library.fxplus.ac.uk from within the Advertising Subject Guide. I hold no personal opinions about the subject of the campaign, the image being selected for the loud visual language that is readily apparent. Along with the text it makes a very tough point.

Activism is about as far removed from my ways as it is possible to get. This meme however right or wrong in intent, certainly does jar.

The whole thing looks highly political, and is full of the macho thing we read about in the resource above. Whereas that discussion related back to the 1920s Western Cowboy films and occupation of the land and male control over the landscape since, here we have a modern reference of counter-hegemony.

Week 5 Presentation 2: Just Giving?

This topic is about other and likely to cause debate for the simple reason that in society we are biased towards people like ourselves. We feel safer, more secure and confident (less stressed). We tend to be simply more at ease in the company of those like us:

• same race,
• same belief system,
• same gender,
• same intellect,
• same politics,
• same profession,
• same wealth,
• same power, and so the list goes on.

Enlightenment can lead to richer relationships, understanding and cohesion, but maybe this requires effort. One of the factors that defines human intelligence is laziness. We are driven to find easier ways that require less effort. Part of how we evolved.

It is being naturally human then to opt for an easier / lazy outlook and fall into feeling more comfortable with like people. This may have its dangers as without counter-hegemony groups can go on accepting leadership towards the mass polarised movement and the events we see unfold on the world stage.

Fairness

When basing societies on the principle of fairness, then some individuals are stronger than others, and should help the weak, some are richer than others and so should help the poor e.g. through taxes.

Given this is how society is organised then institutions are formed to provide this balance, but in doing so there is the so called transaction cost. Whilst I see this an overhead for example in monetary term, there are also the inefficiencies faced those in need of finding the help required.

Charity Organisation- as actor

At this point, my thought turns to the parties discussed in the presentation. The charities are institutions in their own right, and so introduce further transaction cost. To me this indicates inefficiency of the state institutions as far as the weak and poor finding the support that is needed and indicates a degree of lack of measurement and lack of planning. 

This argument is saying that high transaction cost in the state provisioning and is met by charity by introducing further transaction cost. This next point as example is a bit different as legal powers are involved but serves to emphasise a point. If the police forces upon whom we depend for public safety were not able to execute their remit, then it would not be tolerated if vigilante groups set themselves up to take policing into their own hands. I’m not too happy with that connection, but hope the point translates. Even so, we learn of examples where vigilante groups operate or operated.

The presentation narrows the discussion to people of disability and probably does so as the topic is likely to generate a range of emotional responses alongside informed argument. 

As a strategy it may be valid to decompose societal inequality down by case. 

Advertising Agency – as actor

As for the ad agencies, they demonstrate how clever they are at their practice. Across the strategies they use we see an evolution of strategy and style. It is interesting to see how the minimalistic form has become more prevalent. In the case study, they are just agents of the Charities and so again area main contributor to the transaction cost. No matter how good they are we are talking about wastage.

Moral Dilemma (and excuses?)

Do I turn my back on those in need, certainly not. I’d begin with creating a strong environment for family to thrive in. In a sense this is one step towards alleviating the wider problem. Would I turn to those nearby, the elderly and recognise when they have times of need if I could make lives easier by offering some assistance from time to time? Yes. Do I gamble? No, but occasionally I will contribute by paying for a lottery ticket. Again though there is a transaction cost, of the Lottery Fund. My preference is to fund centrally like this as an additional level of tax, rather than evaluate individual charitable requests. As charitable causes go, much bad press is printed these days, over exploitation of power or misuse of funds.

Established Research in Giving

There was some post-doc research done at the University of Southampton to that analyse different social media strategies based on individuals as network nodes. Research was designed to optimise charitable campaigns/increase revenue. After receiving an online presentation on this work I did get to visit the University for further presentation and exhibition of the work. Southampton pride themselves on having on their staff, Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the Worldwide web. Their motivation for conducting social media research becomes clear.

Maybe, there is a sense of moral idealism in the above response. Also, as a lifelong advertisement rejectionist (as far as that is possible), I’ve only recently become open to advertising, Will I change and start lashing out donations left, right and centre. Hmm, let’s see. Sadly, for now I’m in the advertising space out of self interest to learn how to make my practice sing. Maybe influence will become unavoidable.

Week 5 Presentation 1: The Body and the Land

In passing, I register having seen one of the Course Leader’s published Husbandry photographs that use the foil of viewer seeing back of person looking into a rural landscape. So now that much is explained in the presentation. What remains is a question about the presence of fabric draped across a. wall in the middle distance. If I were to use imagination, one reading might be about the landscape dressed as female attired to match the man who is gazing. Is that it?

Learning of the work of Helen Chadwick and nature images created from swabs of intimate body parts then I hold out a bit more comfort towards the acceptability of my own images of trauma and healing of the body.

Do we continue to imagine the land as a female “other”?

In a source below there is an assertion of frequent lapses into cliched and obsolete discourses of landscape, gender and identity

Can you find examples of this, or find exceptions?

As asserted below there is a tendency towards gendered expression of land amongst American-Irish film producers. In trying to find exceptions, I’d look towards history and earlier times in Scotland where a clan chief might well be a woman, or in early England where for example Boudicca ruled. This highlights a different era with different power base giving hope of finding exception. Amazon warrior women once ran their society, so again potentially different perspectives on gendered landscape. Interestingly these examples bind race into the discussion and are somewhat historical in context.

Summary

Whilst I’ve been mostly unaware and automatically accepting of the norn regarding gender descriptions of landscape, it is clear from independent research that there is a history to the topic even going back to ancient times. Also, there are feminist issues at play. I find from my research that there is widespread coverage in conferences and through many publications. From this sea of references it is sufficient at the moment to pull out some example phrases and the name of a conference or practitioner

Notes

Some thoughts on the topic:

… frequently lapses into cliched and obsolete discourses of landscape, gender and identity and is redolent of American-Irish …

Thoughts on landscape and  gender, expressed through romanticism and poetry. Written about alongside race and identity. There are texts on gender and power in the landscape.

From Unframed Landscapes: Nature in Contemporary Art | NeMe

“Feminism in general, and ecofeminism in particular, have brought a new understanding of how gender has shaped the ways in which we see the environment. This has involved drawing attention to the ubiquitous binary coupling of women with nature and men with culture. Landscape art is deconstructed as mastery over nature that is evident in the rules of perspective and the stress on viewpoints for representing nature. Eco-feminists aspire to move beyond dualistic thinking and to establish relationships based not on hierarchy and domination, but on caring, respect, and awareness of interconnection.”

And

“The contemporary understanding of landscape includes the sense of it as ‘an ideological tool shaping the way in which we envision and construct the natural world.’ This aspect of landscape can be traced in the areas of gender, class, national identity and the exercise of colonial power.”

Historic connections between the landscape and women are studied by Dr Helen Damico.  Damico has made important contributions to the study of women in Old English and Old Norse literature. 

The topic has been addressed by a conference organised by the research project “Representing and Sensing Nature, Landscape and Gender” (Academy of Finland). (Gender, Nature and Culture (May 20-22, 2010, Helsinki, Finland), 2010)

Catherine Harper creates art connecting landscape and gender

Bibliography

Gender, Nature and Culture (May 20-22, 2010, Helsinki, Finland)(2010). Available at: https://call-for-papers.sas.upenn.edu/cfp/2009/10/29/update-gender-nature-and-culture-may-20-22-2010-helsinki-finland (Accessed: 25 February 2019).

Week 5: Module Leader Sessions

Week 5 Forum: Fascinating Looks

Gazes in visual culture might be explained as being derivative of: an infant gaze of survival; adult gaze of reproduction. 

Within my practice it is difficult to pinpoint how the gaze fits in, as the processes of the digital darkroom obscure the original photographic content of which trace is present in colour, shape or form. This is perhaps an example of a veiled gaze. In this image the gaze is out into a form of landscape. This image is based on impressions, the body as “photogram”, in which the physical world is imprinted.

Other gazes are cognitive and priming: reading emotion into words, seeing through by reading between the lines, looking into the soul in empathising, or reading ahead of thought process. Some of these have a visual element? Perhaps there are many other gazes when committing to memory or when casting back to living memory and so on. These “gazes” relate to the viewer making an interpretation of my practice. There are intentional hidden levels of meaning which with contextualisation may become apparent to the viewer.

So, my photographic work is based on metaphorical representations. Gaze is related to making meaning whilst exploring the images.

I wrote a bit more explanation about this within a section of the CRJ titled “Week 4 Module Leader / Group Tutorial” at this link

Week 5 Introduction: Gazing at Photographs

Alpern in her so called anthropological study, and despite her openness with the viewer (and critically not with the subjects), is actually spying on folk in their partial attire, recording elicit behaviours and in one image kissing with a client who is possibly recognisable.

You do wonder if all this doesn’t whet the desire in Alpern, creating excitement over what she might discover. Given her vantage point and frequency of visits to her hidden location, was she being opportunistic? What if she recognised a client as a relative or as a public figure? There was a game of chance unfolding and an excitement – it could all suddenly go beyond her ability to control. 

As for the posed question over the inquisitive stare, this could be tricky. The photograph is a still so any stare within the scene will linger for always. The evidence of rudeness might be the reaction of the person being viewed and any shift that occurred in body language or posture. There is the role of the photographer present in the scene taking the picture whilst mediating and exercising a controlling influence. 

As for the viewer of the photograph they can look at a still for as long as they wish and nothing will change unless they are engaged in detailed analysis and make a series of observations. What may happen is the viewer may undergo a physiological reaction over whatever is depicted in the still.

In life, a stare that lingers may be deemed rude if the slowing down to look results in a fast startled reaction. There may be a sudden transition from slow to startled response of the person gazing. By now both parties become fully aware of the situation and a consequent reaction will no doubt play out.

And regards when representation becomes fetishization, this may be a different matter. Hall in Representation (Hall, 2013, 258)discusses the fetish in terms of cover, or of both looking and not looking. I’d previously understood the subject in terms of applying special properties or powers to a representation that really did not exist.

If we take the former definition from Hall, then you could argue that Alpern was engaged in both looking and not looking and so was exhibiting fetishization.

Bibliography

Hall, S. (2013) ‘The Spectacle of the Other’, in Hall, S., Evens, J., and Sean, N. (eds) Representation. 2nd edn. London, [England], p. 258.

Constructed Realities

This week a change in writing style is introduced in order to mix conversational, style with the more academic reflective and critical methods. The keynote entry appears in the Week 3 CRJ: Independent Reflection title below and serves as both a description but more importantly a reminder to use more formalised approaches

Week 3 Webinar: The Theatre of the Photograph

My own photographs as constructions and as potential fictions:

Photographs and images I prepared for this week’s webinar showed place connected, alongside cultural references. Sources of intertextuality were demonstrated; the arrival of Christianity being one, the romantic poetry of Robert Burns in the same place another. This is foundation thinking applied to work and in part reserved for future making. This part defines narratives relating to my work on those taken from these lands.

An ancestral theme runs with wound and repair identified as injury and repair in the contemporary. This is guided by common mDNA as the source of  life’s glow and leads to an IR styling. I manage to obtain this in the digital darkroom.

Memories of home is a fiction deliberately introduced as dreamlike images representing fading memories of those ancestors caught in battle. Wounds today, captured in terms of healing and bodily glow are abstracted into these landscapes, then layered with trace of wound or healing. In the same, darker landscapes created are viewed as imaginings from war.

The purpose is tied to personal experiences, as child become adult, pondering on gaps: missing humankind and unexpressed feelings of loss. Such were not conveyed to the child yet now more is recognised and understood. 

Originally aimed at the audience of family, as descendants and diaspora we reconnect in our common heritage, of place, our culture and experiences with others passed who were left to heal. Family is reunited in identity. Sign exists of influence spreading to the next generation.

Tasks

Weak image.

Last week I detected a strong reaction to an image on Falmouth (on Instagram) with purples and pinks. For that I stand guilty. Since then we have been exposed to learnings of photograph as construction, with an accompanying sense of persuasion. For my imagery this was a Rubicon already crossed. A week later, perhaps audience may be more accepting. Work still has to be good. I now experiment with impressions and as always I’m prone to fail and sometimes succeed. 

I did, trauma/healing, life as bodily glow last module and now include impressions – those marks we bodily capture that then fade. Work on bodily impression continues as that experimentation is not yet evolved. It is a linked endeavour with healing and glow. The work provides continuity when wounds become less. 

The same image was questioned as decorative. 

In review my portfolio was viewed, and I agree the initial images have a stronger link to wounding.

Nature of construction:

As demonstrated in the webinar and as mentioned above, construction is not staging but rather one of layering. For wound, trace is layered with landscape abstracted from the same. Both layers are indexical of the wound. For wound I also imply, glow and now in this module impression. 

I think I’ve given my statement of intent, above and shown the strategies. I could shorten, make more concentrated language to describe intent. I view other writing opportunities this week so will hold back rather than repeat repeat.

Improvement of practice.

Through the current week’s studies, I can apply renewed vigour to the push pull within images and become more aware to use method intended or even accidental to draw in the viewer – not being explicit as always and now allowing signs with an intent of triggerring cognition. 

How I convey something of my theme to the viewer will undergo a continual transformation for different points of consumption developed.

Juxtaposition is intended as a next step; juxtaposition of type, of poetry of symbols, as sharp contrast to defocussed imaginings already portrayed in the imagery.

Technical improvements made this term include the use of flash photography to overwhelm environmental lighting for consistency of starting image. 

Not dropped, simply not taken forward this module is the use of a microscopy element. Last module microscopy was not always practical. Adoption was trialled for improved print resolution. An alternative I am trying is the use of advanced software that performs image scaling. My work is that of a digital worker and so trace of the process may be acceptable for me, in so far as it does not overwhelm the images created. 

Week 3 CRJ: Independent Reflection

Reflection in one definition (Reflective and Critical Writing: Falmouth Flexible Photography Hub, 2019) requires: Description (short), Interpretation (most important / useful / relevant and Outcome ( what was learned, how impacts future)

Bibliography

Reflective and Critical Writing: Falmouth Flexible Photography Hub(2019). Available at: https://falmouthflexible.instructure.com/courses/249/pages/reflective-and-critical-writing?module_item_id=19729 (Accessed: 9 February 2019).

Week 3 Activity: False Indexes

I hope that the authenticity of practice shines though.

Let’s find some direction. Starting with the title, it appears to give an oppositional reading. The reason for saying, is that in this week’s work I feel we were to be persuaded not to view the constructed even heavily constructed image as faux, where truth is expected of the lens and camera in capturing the  photographic record, yet notwithstanding this we know of the myriad adaptions of photographer and selection of image within the larger setting including what, and why now.

Next up, Hutcheon showed great clarity in viewing the matters we have here to discuss though interpretation of the metaphor of Farmer. I mention this as it is implicit, failing to be mentioned in the Activity text.

So, we are talking through the metaphor of Farmer yet even then we must allow for work that crosses over to or shares within an implied dichotomy of Hunter, the opposed metaphor. In fact, these are not opposed as we have seen, but may become shared in practice by different artists as a device or as expressed through a lens of critique.

As for objective and subjective aspects of practice, then yes, I will choose here the role of Farmer when making abstract work. Intertextuality is strong as written narrative of publishable academic quality, exists and informs the work. There is poetic reference too of landscape. As accident or coincidence, the land is where Robert Burns lived out his short life and is proximate to the legendary site of St Ninian’s landing and subsequent introduction of Christianity to southern lands. No shortage of intertextual references exits. The scope for intertextuality is so strong and yet remains to be fully exploited, but surely in time it will be.

Ancestors from their homes, found themselves overseas, and several were transported in war to other lands. Subjectively imaginings are created of homeland as remembered from afar. The objective returns based on site visits and photography of places hardly changed since those earlier times. These home imaginings intermingle with others of theatre of war where kin perished or survived only as prisoner.

The objective nature of biological connection stamps the greater visual impact in practice through wounding and healing then and minor injury and healing in the contemporary but visually abstracted. The subjective re-enters as connection is made to those who were lost, who were never mentioned to self as child. Gaps of human existence and unexpressed loss established as data and records and now they are remembered. Early communication to child completes as adult. I learn of them alongside the lives of kin

The technological and creative exist in practice occur as technology leveraged in the interests of the creative. This happens through technical trial and skill development and with a willingness to follow a photograph in whichever direction it naturally will go. With increased experience, a degree of guidance can be imposed, but is of uncertain outcome from the start.

What could have been dichotomy becomes a blend.

Context of viewing is expected to strengthen these relationships. Yet to be resolved, indeed planned and created, is a guiding hand an invitation to the viewer in any context supported. Viewer ultimately make their own sense from the abstract perhaps recognising the signs laid there.

In a sense, this work is so founded and heartfelt that what really matters is deeply personal as family reunited, a diaspora strengthened in identity and re-united. Already impact has spread to a new generation.

For the wider audience to whom this work must ultimately be taken through MA Photography studies, I can only express belief, that they will discover an authenticity of voice. I express hope that the wider audience will at once gain viewing pleasure in the visual nature of the artifice and even seek out the intended layers of hidden meaning. Such constructions as exist within layered abstraction may push and pull the viewer and be causal in their further reading of the images.

In view of this then the short answer, yes, it must become increasingly important to me and others within family and other families who can identify with this work.

Week 3 Presentation: Hunters & Farmers

Such a hard to read but wonderful piece to break through.

Heavily or obviously constructed images is the starting premise and we land up surveying a whole area of work/endeavour/employment in photography. And such promise in return. As poetry exceeds sentences then poetic images exceed the intertextual references.

From my Practice or even my photography in general that witnessed or witnessed through the lens by the camera is not the memory retained by the mind’s eye and so I proceed to simplify distractions and tune into the content captured intuitively or retake the image or at first take several photographs with intent on placing distractions into the background. The tripod can be important here as long exposure can simplify. I would aim to do this as Hunter and act more as Farmer in abstracting images choosing amongst and taking forward those selected to new worlds that reflect on the past and memories of home and bridge 100 years into the past.

In practice, creating narratives had not been considered through constructions, well other than text or poetry. I should consider visual construction from this point on. How as yet I do not know, but there is the challenge to imagination.

At the end of this, we may take Brecht’s advice and remind ourselves a picture is not real. And yet, suspend reality for one minute and make gains. The Practice is going to keep me much more busy than I ever imagined.

Having seen progression in the abstract work of a fellow student (RR) who introduced mixed media and use of signs, in a textual/visual lexicon. Now I understand the development this student made and perhaps now have a glimpse into their development path.

Week 3 Module Leader Sessions

Week 3 Forum: Subjective Traces, Spaces, Faces, Places

The constructed photograph shows the photographer in each case this week as true to themselves, unless of course someone forced them to make constructions. Rather unlikely at least for the work we have seen. In a totalitarian state an artist may be leant on. Others would no doubt rebel or go overseas and rebel. 

In terms of audience and lie, does the audience really include me as a direct consumer? For me it is happenstance as far as the originating photographers are concerned and happenstance again that through this MA Photography course that their images have been taken together with the others in this context. In other words, images perhaps considered marginal may become tarnished by the company they now keep.

As for fiction in photographs and in the examples, we have been shown, there is the photographer and the extent to which the  mind’s eye is at variance to the detail a camera captures in a photograph. Depending on how good a photographer, they may spot the deviation and have to reshoot or amend, or if really experienced anticipate and make an accommodation and possibly still amend.

My interpretation of the world is personal to me as it is for others. My work was with computer program generated images before ever getting a DSLR camera. My eye is/was for line, shape and form taking in physical perspective. I learn more now of the beauty of light – the exposure triangle, and light. 

Genuine natural thinking and freedom of expression in personal projects is the aspiration. Religion had a go at breaking down the doors last year – that was a surprise. Things got very heavy for a while. Fetishisation was to be avoided.

A self-conscious adjustment to style resulted in adapting to empathy over logic.

Early commercially oriented work is based around art, artist promotion, craft sales and collaboration.

A composite created for competition was a rarity at the time. That image continued to do rather well. 

Another piece, Inner Light it was suggested be put forward to the London Salon – maybe one day. 

Exhibit A a print abstract of scene with the rusting remnant of a push along scooter was a flop. I,t had an intentional hidden meaning related to a transport map. Something about the print though reminds of Eggleston’s – trike.

Where are those image files …

Week 3 Introduction: Constructed Realities

When considering the photograph many I see presented are of travel and wildlife – particularly one’s I see in competition. Sometimes it appears that the photographer in terms of the psychology, is trying to make a statement: look where I have been, look what I have done and look how closely I achieve similar results to those I openly admire and emulate.

What is not shown is the personal expense and days of travel involved in getting a series of these emulations. Not seen is the getting up so early, going out in the dark with lighting in uncomfortable conditions. Nor is the exposure to danger and reliance on a guide with a rifle who helps stage the scenes and offers protection.

Given this investment, there is going to be a bias no doubt against staging and manipulated photographs, at least we might imagine so?

We are asked to take travel and nature at face value, admire the person for their display of wealth and ability to emulate accurately the work of others.

If I look at the images, I’ve seen today, the presentation apart, They were on social media, where constructions were apparent to a number of degrees, from collage to photographer imposed vantage points etc. In the press there was a mixture of imagery that actually was rather disturbing: the banker frustrated in joining a bank, depicted in harsh monochrome with background colourized.

Then the successful female investment analyst who’s sketch treated image was placed in the context of her marriage and having children when she ought to have returned to the US – shocking.

The story of the company that had no ferries that won a government contract for ferries depicted the minister responsible collaged with a company logo as background – so constructed to strengthen the storyline.

The photography was marked as Agency rather than photographer.

The work in the presentation we viewed is in an Arts context of photographers as raised on a plinth, making a name for themselves, or simply making their way in the world.

As students of photography, I guess we learn to associate with the them and hope to gain commercial success such as through agency.

If I address the posed question of why this now? In my practice the answer is in several parts. The memory from a hundred year history theme and events will diminish completely as those who can still touch that past diminish themselves. Timing is key to preserving proud narratives that would otherwise be lost within records and data.

The work began as dedication for someone elderly. It is timely now to act.

Timing also relates to the MA Photography course – not using work shot between terms, using shots made since the first day of term, shooting progressively at 10 hours per week as each week progresses.

An aside triggered here is that of a course with digital delivery being matched with digital productions by participants makes sense. This averts a return to materiality. 

Many of the presentation examples of constructed work, I can isolate myself from by arguing, who am I to interfere in someone else’s “contract”? Between photographer and whoever commissioned the work. I likely wouldn’t have come across their work and so the only purpose left is to establish a general position regards making of new work. Take each case on it merits perhaps. 

The presentation attempts to enlighten and persuade? If we assume the acceptance of naturalism by the intended posrgrad audience perhaps some we benefit from accepting a wider view of what is acceptable. For the digital worker creating abstract imagery that Rubicon has already been crossed.

Important to current practice is learning the ability to create narrative. Noting earlier in this module how we naturally learned to interpret the surface of the photograph to the extent we no longer realise that transition. Add to this audience acceptance of the visual language of cinema then the viewer brings such readings to a new work. Strategies other than cinematic reference exist, and can be exploited in support of narrative such as sound, music and poetry.

In response to Eggerton’s trike, my catalogue contains a piece titled Exhibit A. Here I take visible signs of dirt and rust, beyond Egglestone’s trike in my portrayal of a push along scooter. As is often the case the representation made is abstract and there is a level of intentional hidden meaning relating to a transport map.

In terms of push/pull created in the viewer from overtly staged photography, this probably isn’t a concern in my abstract work, where there is no prospect or intention of trying to trick.

The subject of photographic trick in terms of warning, does appear in writing in the parallel area of clinical photography. (Nayler, Jeremy (Institute of Child Health and Great Ormond Street, Hospital for Children NHS Trust, 2003). This is a useful warning as it concerns medical photography and potential misrepresentation of progress in curing disease.

An emerging theme from the presentation in reading between the lines, is one of propaganda, and/or political bias. A viewer not using cognition, in lacking critical awareness might look through presented images and simply accept what they see.  

In the world of painting in a talk about Turner’s landscapes (and seascapes), at the Tate Britain, it was noted that work was created for prospective markets, and space would be incorporated for the eventual buyer to request additions, for example add more sheep to represent a better representation of wealth. The additions would be made by a spot painter rather than Turner himself. An aside really, in his latter years JMW Turner liked to work quickly and made work that was much more abstract and incomplete as he experimented with outcomes and style.

The presentation asks about the Alfred Krupp portrait. Here is my response. Krupp had been brought to justice we gather and was now pursuing the dream of wealth even if by keeping others employed on marginal wages.

In terms of acceptance of Constructed realities, there are no doubt many levels of complexity involved. Some images may be easier for the viewer to recognise quickly and identify with. For example, the carte de visit portrait could be straightforward to interpret. In the example of Kiss where landscape is collaged and obscures, it contains a strong sign to the viewer of deliberate image manipulation. If the kiss is shown in lesser explicit terms, it may be more readily bought into, as in Barthes on pornography, (Barthes and Howard, 1980). In Kiss, if the landscape is seen to obliterate (which I don’t think happens in the example), the obscuration might work against the image for some.

The theme of ambiguity leading to narratives, is readily acceptable to me where my intention is to enable this, if only the viewer is triggered to wonder about it.

Masterson seems to prove a happy medium to those who might be sceptical. Natural images he notes were presented at exhibition with a minor amount of digital manipulation in some. So that’s okay then. All done in the name of good or consistent aesthetics. Is there a slightly specious tone? More can be at stake for work of notoriety.

My practice uses natural images of an almost clinical nature, where the colour and form is lent to the abstraction process for transformation into something colourful and new. A trace of the original is retained. The work is motivated by a consistent cause. Intentional hidden layers of meaning are incorporated. Should a reviewer seek extra depth, then it can be found. The work is a product of the authentic. Viewers have responded to the aesthetic and style and some recognise simple themes Context is consistent at the present as the images are shown on screen with similar presentation as images of prints in a book format. But, as the context develops as this course is expected to demand or enable, then creative thought is to be exercised. It is still early days.

A viewer is invited to read the images and from toned down titling etc start may be guided. A darker subject is presented in terms of healing and is a celebration of life’s force. Presentation is of new new work and in time ought to develop in consistency and direction.

Bibliography

Barthes, R. and Howard, R. (1980) Camera lucida: reflections on photography. London: Vintage.

Nayler, Jeremy (Institute of Child Health and Great Ormond Street, Hospital for Children NHS Trust, L. (2003) Clinical Photography: A Guide for the Clinician, Clinical Photography: A Guide for the Clinician. JnPostgrad Med. 2003. Available at: http://www.jpgmonline.com/text.asp?2003/49/3/256/1145 (Accessed: 8 February 2019).

Week 2 Webinar: Seeing / Taking / Making

I’m a day late arriving here as the Webinar took place yesterday. 

As I am overtaken and had barely just begun image making, I was only able to respond verbally in the Webinar. However, as I said elsewhere I put down my books and did some initial image making that has now been posted and sent out as well. Having comprehensively discussed my practice and the theories we have learned I now detect a level of repetition, well at least in terms of the seemingly retrospective nature of the task.

Now I am able to refer to my Development Project as written up here.

Week 2 Activity: Further Questions of Authenticity

Week 2 Activity: Further Questions of Authenticity

My own position on really real is an interesting one in terms of the course and the other students. Given the dichotomy and the way moral views polarise for and against manipulation, I have to say I understand the argument yet, at the same time feel an immunity. 

This is me yet again, on a trajectory from post processing in digital where I worked with computer generated images before ever moving to DSLR camera work. I have principles to uphold that I take from being a professional in my main career work that I choose to impose. This is without reaction to other photographers who so often seem less sure of their position whilst they may wish to criticise my work – I don’t know. 

In my image work, it all starts with Authenticity and a subject I feel deeply involved in emotionally. So much so, that it calls for a break from time to time. The themes involved reach across the whole of my sentient life and an upbringing in another culture. My work uses metaphor and intentional levels of hidden meaning to represent a set of consist themes.

The work is Abstract Impressionism and Conceptual and the results take on different meanings for viewers. A parallel that is present that I try not to major on that serves to obfuscate would be the work of Clinical Photography and aspects of Biology pertaining to inheritance.

My pictures, I do try to make unique and whilst others work may be likened to mine the theme and the detail and so on can be discerned.

As always my work proceeds knowledge of theory such as that of Snyder and Allen, but I am open to ideas and especially if it helps validate my work. I’m more than happy to learn of their ideas and find them palatable from a perspective of Constructivism. I wonder where their works leads and I envisage a path that leads to Propaganda it’s recognition including in political and commercial areas the former I definitely would not wish to engage in.

So key points around vision, of the Fovia and the 150Hz jitter of the eye, and all of the lens based perspective etc, makes sense. So does the separation of subject from image  and if allowed how image transparency leads to suspended interpretation, a loss of cognitive meaning and dangers associated with accepting ideas as given.

I have two or three main readings I would reference at present in this area; (Barthes and Howard, 1980), (Sontag, 1977)and (Sturken and Cartwright, 2001).

And saying that I have gained some new perspectives on theory from (Barrett, 2010)and (Berger and Dyer, 2013).

As my work proceeds ahead of learning these theorists ideas, to some extent I have to retrospectively quote key points.

To make life simple, let me consider the one main idea at present. That would be that of Indexicality, that is described at present as a causal relationship. When I first learned of this 6 months back now, to me Indexicality was from Philosophy, a means of describing something in a way that was unique to it, in this case photography. For photography, this might be mechanical image making, light chemical processes and so on. Then from this the development of ideas of Studium and Punctum. This is all from Barthes (Barthes and Howard, 1980). The latter, Punctum as I interpreted it was missing from my early Close-up and Conceptual mix of photography. I had a moment where everything came together: persistent wounding of ancestors, minor trauma in our daily lives and rules of Biology for tracing back to specific others and then to the narratives of their lives. Their absence left gaps and now those gaps are filled. I make abstract images that create a genuine punctum and in my work I layer in a sense of landscape presence – the place we would have met, then as image further low key cultural reference to the use of tartan – as mode of dress, as uniform as symbol.

The peculiar nature of the photograph for me arises from the digital sensor being filtered to prevent IR detection, yet partial detection can be processed into a representation of glow that shows up in many of my images.

I decided to include in my Contextualisation of Practice Blog the requested completion of the Critical Review Development document.

Bibliography

Barrett, T. (2010) ‘Principles for Interpreting Photographs’, in Swinnen, J. and Deneulin, L. (eds) The Weight of Photography. Brussels, pp. 147–172.

Barthes, R. and Howard, R. (1980) Camera lucida: reflections on photography. London: Vintage.

Berger, J. and Dyer, G. (2013) Understanding a photograph. London: Penguin Classics.

Sontag, S. (1977) On Photography. Penguin Bo. Penguin Modern Classics.

Sturken, M. and Cartwright, L. (2001) practices of looking: an introduction to visual culture. New York: Oxford University Press.

Week 2 Presentation: Is it Really Real

Week 2 Presentation: Is it Really Real?

Reference reading and video 

[A] The importance of indexicality for photography.

[B] The iconic, indexical and symbolic characteristics of the photograph.

[C] How these ideas and visual practices inform your position on a presumed photographic veracity.

Within

[D] Do photographs hold more veracity than paintings?

[E] Which of these representations of Las Meninas do I find most authentic?

[F] Is this aesthetically/contextually specific?

[G] Why?

[D] Yes to a photographer photographs do hold more veracity

[E] If I consider myself a follower of Picasso and I would appear to be from my last assignment submission then of course I would be biased to Picasso’s representation as it allies to my practice of Abstract Impressionism.

[F] The context is side by side comparison on a monitor so both. There will be a loss of texture without the materiality

[G] I’m biased by my practise and preference as my work is often compared to art.

Baldwssari’s image looked like a scene of crime phot with the hand giving scale to a bullet

In my practice there are abstractions and imaginings. Colour a dominant red naturally fits with the theme. The layering always refers to landscape and doubles as a cultural representation of tartan even if sometimes vague or missing and if present low key in terms of presence.

Can I accept Snyder and Allen’s critique of the visual model of Icon creating truth and us learning to see as a camera? No, not exact agreement. We see as we see and we have learned how a camera represents. If we treat the photograph as transparent then we lose something of what is available to us and we have suspended belief. 

As for expecting the photograph to be iconic, then if it can be viewed as such it make our experience simple snd straightforward and require less interpretation.

In my practice my originally intended audience should get-it and yet still impose their own iconic interpretation, as I witnessed. The interpretation may diverge from the authors intent and even if  an author’s intent or titles guided interpretation. Right now the importance is how it affects the making as I am in early stage development.

  I leave it to the media and regulators to decide what is shown regarding the burning pilot.I guess you want to read the image as propaganda and make an interpretation, like we were as bad in the past, and yet hope the image might be constructed.

Transforming into a kind of painting is my natural intent. 

Subjective choices are addressed to the author of an image, but whether or not they are conscious of such choice is another matter. Personally, my trajectory took me along the path of image manipulation before using a DSLR camera. I do not suffer the same pains of many others of moral conscience and I am settled with this for as long as I do not make political point/propaganda.

In context there are guidances and rules, and sometimes laws and cultural aspects which the originator of the image should be professionally aware of by being given some briefing, and test perhaps but it is for the organising bodies or end supplier to determine for themselves. I am not responsible for them and their actions.

Indexicality is important for discussing photography. In releasing a shutter Indexicality is not necessarily in the mind of the photographer other than they might be making an image in a style they have seen and accepted in the past. Photographs originally constructed may serve as a model for another photographer to emulate. 

Technically, all photographs within reason are constructed – an image of a dark room looks dark so has no construction until the light level allows something to be discerned.

I construct in a way that retains trace, and from which saturation and flow are processed and then by layering I introduce a consistent theme like landscape (or tartan).

Regards the Mandarin spoken it is more opaque to me as I have not learned the language only some epistemological aspects of its construction.

I take Snyder and Allen’s comments as a positive assessment and particularly as this is conveyed in a scientific manner I am used to consuming. My work may have fallen down against the analysis and would have perhaps had to have stopped, if it were not for an authentic approach, I took in the creation of my abstract art images. I perhaps was aware of the moral dilemma many face in presenting work so have been guided by such interations.

The iconic, indexical, symbolic photograph is in a modern age the preserve of the critic who selects amongst the outcomes of media portrayal in the main.

I’m good over my practice, and I would never knowingly create propaganda and hope images I make are enjoyable to look at and allow the viewer to take from the work as much as they like from aesthetic thought layers of meaning if they stop awhile and look.

Week 2 Independent Reading Photography vision and Representation

As a strategy with the current reading (Snyder and Allen Neil Walsh, 1975) I decided to jot down rough notes, where these are not for the reader of this blog, serving as a means of distilling out some reminders of the content, to trigger discussion in a task that follows in Canvas VLE.

Independently reflect on:

[A] Any key ideas you agree or disagree with.

[B] Whether or not photography is a unique medium or if it has conventions it shares with other forms of representation.

27 pages 27 points

144 Naturalism

145 Painting versus Photography

146 As documentary are the photographs true

147 Surreal with nudes in a scene. Visual peculiarities reminds viewer s looking at a photograph. Physical reality versus not gaining perfection

148 Photography closely related to art but different to traditional art. [A]

149 similarity between camera and the eye. Lens characterisation

150 Choice of equipment and how image made. [A] if public take snaps maybe not aware, but photographer would be.

151 The equipment and position. Comment about accidental firing of image.[A] Wrote recently about accidental firing.

It is about light physics not the subject. Subjects do not contain images. [A] True of my practice.

152 Moment in time, staying still and one eye. 

The fovea and 150Hz – [A] Ah I wrote about this in module 1

Difficulty matching image to vision.

153 The rabbit duck figure. JM Cameron Alice Liddel photo taken below eye level.

154 Photo of rowing in lilies

155 JMC photo of Alice

156 Static dry goods image versus movement. Muybridges horse photo. We have learned to read fuzziness as movement. [A] With motion vision the spinning wheel appears to move backwards in video.

157 Maybe not hypnotic powers of the photographer. [A] sometimes a respectful and engaging personality is helpful.

From elsewhere photography akin to poetry or more so, music as a slice from a continuum.

Portrait and Landscape artists I’ve seen in action, painting, use tablet / iPad photographs as a reference to perspective or to recall elements that moving into and out of the scene etc.

P158 Photo finish camera

P159 ibid a trick photo also IR colour allocation so question of truth [B] not sure painting would be like this at all though not impossible if artist referenced the camera

P160 Exposure on face is correct but second person in the blacks

P161 ibid then for shaded face [B] a unique limitation of basic photography partly solved by exposure bracketing  

P162 Rules for exposure [A] probably true for video as photography, but an artist could paint the perfect picture.

P163 Constraints [A] burdensome and strict.

Search for universal theory like Szarkowski instead show overlaps and difference between presentation in each medium. 

P164 [A] The Kodak clinical photography manual ought to be a parallels to my practice.

Also see clinical photography guide (Nayler, Jeremy (Institute of Child Health and Great Ormond Street, Hospital for Children NHS Trust, 2003)

P165 [A] What is acceptable for taking photographs varies for acceptable results and that varies. James Dean at Cal’s grave demonstrates a number a wide number of critical approaches can be made.

P166 Photographer (Stock) probably had an idea of how he wanted to photograph Dean[A]

P167 Previsualisation must have taken place and the photographer known what kind of image to make. The scene is not one you would encounter normally in real life. [A] According to Barthes is the image appears contrived it loses effect. (Barthes and Howard, 1980)

P168 The photograph can be assessed on its own or in relation to other photographs, its subject matter and conventions it shares. [A] The contrast may bring out more meaning.

P169 Arnheim The documentary value of a photograph is not just determined Authenticity – Correctness – Truth. We should ask, who made it, what it means [A]

Bibliography

Barthes, R. and Howard, R. (1980) Camera lucida: reflections on photography. London: Vintage.

Nayler, Jeremy (Institute of Child Health and Great Ormond Street, Hospital for Children NHS Trust, L. (2003) Clinical Photography: A Guide for the Clinician, Clinical Photography: A Guide for the Clinician. JnPostgrad Med. 2003. Available at: http://www.jpgmonline.com/text.asp?2003/49/3/256/1145 (Accessed: 8 February 2019).

Snyder, J. and Allen Neil Walsh (1975) ‘Photography, Vision and Representation’, Critical Inquiry. Available at: https://falmouthflexible.instructure.com/courses/202/files/37216/download?wrap=1.

Week 2 Module Leader Session – Alumni

One presentation I saw was of portraiture with mask then as face markings then another presentation was of photograms of bee material as a contact method. From these if it is possible to follow we arrive at body contact/impression.

I attended the latter part, and watched the earlier part as a recording, such were the demands on my time (and still growing state of organisation). I comment on the work of the two Alumni who actually attended and presented rather than the three invited who didn’t all make it.

In two areas I’ve learned. The second first were the ideas around CRJ. I really get the necessity and have tried hard to improve structure of my own CRJ. Time permitting I still have to go back and read the alumni blogs which I will have previously read as I did this when locked out of the very start of my course. However, no excuses, I still have to relook at their CRJs. I can tell my needs concern some kind of workshop on the mechanisms available in WordPress. The Lynda.com resource we have has helped but I have no time for full immersion on aspects relating to web design.

in terms of the first aspect covered the actual projects self portrait and photograms, I gained something from both.

The former started as mask then moved on to painted marks in face, In my abstract practice I photograph bodily healing and minot trauma as such provides a place for the eye to rest. However, in the absence of trauma I can still photograph for bodily glow. At this point I changed concept to the metaphor for early photography. I had rested against something and it left a trace upon my body, this being read as metaphor for photography. It was still showing life’s glow, an after image of the object. This is my response to the marks placed upon the self portraits.

For the photogram, I find it quite indexical of photography and again my capture of after glow and the trace of the item making the mark is analogous to the placement of bee related objects on photo paper.

One the one hand this seems fanciful but does open a line of endeavour from my bodily parallel to photography. Metaphor and analogy are strong themes in my world.

Week 2 Forum: A Question of Authenticity

In Camera Lucida (1980: 89) Roland Barthes states that ‘In the Photograph, the power of authentication exceeds the power of representation’.

The question at first is telling but not necessarily too complicated to address and here we are reading this in the context of a semi-nude construction of a centaur and that has been devised to sway the discussion, surely.

So, given the photograph contains a trace of what was present (and perhaps is now from a philosophical standpoint is now dead), the photograph could without cognitive effort be taken at face value for what it is. This of course can be one the one hand a simple loss to the viewer who losses the opportunity to engage. On the other hand photographs used as political instrument of bias might simply be accepted as true.

Post modernists might take the modernist approach of Barthes as seen in other photographers work and use it as a springboard to make a post modernist point and this could be agreement but expressed as a montage or collage or as the example of Witkin the Centaur.

Authentication means there was scope when the photograph was made for the artist to give a modernist representation of what existed before the camera and no framing adjustments or lens distortions were used to deliberately mislead. It wouldn’t stop this happening in the reading by the viewer as that depends on what they bring, their culture and the time in which the photograph was read.

Representation, I used to see as the photograph being a most perfect portrayal or the best that could readily be obtained as a likeness to truth. Now I shift towards Barthes inferring that the image could be made in a way that is not the true thing we see but perhaps a metaphor for something else. Mapplethorpe’s flowers are about sensuality.

Any such photograph to which Barthes statement might naturally refer, and not the contrived one of the centaur placed in plain view of the question, we need to consider the context and then taking the centaur we cannot suspend belief. We know there is no centaur just separate images processed into one and no doubt taken at different times, so not a true photograph.

For my own practice it is highly metaphorical in intent and in presentation but still remain true to several key factors. An image in my portfolio is a trace. It does extract glow our eyes do not readily see and in doing so lifts colours. Sometimes shadow has a guiding effect in tonality in the end result and I have been known to control colour if consistency is required across a group or make separate groupings of like images.

Barthes

Week 2 Introduction: The Index and the Icon

Definition (and I’ll try not to reference using wikipedia in future): In semiotics, linguistics, anthropology and philosophy of language, indexicality is the phenomenon of a sign pointing to (or indexing) some object in the context in which it occurs. A sign that signifies indexically is called an index or, in philosophy, an indexical. Link

[A] What sort of ‘truth’ you think photography can / might offer.

[B] How this might differ from other forms of visual and written representations.

These musings relate to inqury [A] and [B] above.

From Berger (Berger, 2013) et al. Photography offers a truth insofar as the lens can capture the image. The subject and image are two entities. One writer Nadar wrote of Balzac’s “vague dread” of being photographed as it would detach and use up one layer of the body  (Sontag, 1977, p.158)

In the case of Barthes, (Barthes and Howard, no date)none of the photographs of his mother sufficed as acceptable representation except a single image of her as a child, in which that younger face showed a kindness that he remembered seeing in her as his mother. The image seemed heightened by the presence of the brother alongside and parents standing in the background as soon they were to divorce.

In my abstract practice, the photograph contains the trace and after work in the digital darkroom,  with post processing, the art retains the trace, unlike the painting where the association is less or non existent.

Photographs carry more credibility than other kinds of images and especially require interpretation (Barret, 2010)

Photojournalistic and I certain contexts (competition) wildlife (doing something) photography almost entirely relates to the truth, again insofar as the lens is able to represent it and the picture editor or judging panel are able to enforce their moral standpoints. 

For reel film, inspection of the contact sheet, will show a more complete scope so surrounding images corroborate the truth. National Geographic require their photographer to hand over the whole card from their camera. Newspapers require JPEG images as having greater tamperproof ability.

Contextual specificity was mentioned above for wildlife photographs entered into wildlife category  competitions.

[C] What sort of “truth” do you think photography can / might offer?

[D] Is this different to other forms of visual and written representations?

[E] Is this contextually specific?

[F] Ane any aspects of this important to your practice?

The following musings relate to inquiry [C] to [F] above.

Compared to a text, a photograph provides a representation and the meaning may alter according to the crop applied. A text or writing on the same subject may be limited in how much information is conveyed and would largely depend on the reader recreating a past like image in their mind. The photograph provides a new instance of such images and so is more capable of discerning a more exact feel for what existed. 

My practice relates contemporary images right back to the same genetic ancestors over a hundred years earlier and without ever having seen them. The truth here relates to a) ancestor and person being correctly linked to family line and b) their being a true birth parent linkage across the years given that where secret adoption or surrogate mother situation may have occurred for example, these would break the narrative bond. 

However, the process of identification across a century would still hold as strong an emotional bond, for me, and may vary by individual if they identify less with the past and have less concern for the future of their daughter and daughters sons – this relates to my reading of gentic connections.

Bibliography

Barret, T. (2010) ‘Principles for Interpreting Photographs’, in Swinnen, J. and Deneulin, L. (eds) The Weight of Photography. Brussels, pp. 147–172.

Barthes, R. and Howard, R. (no date) Camera lucida: reflections on photography. London: Vintage.

Berger, J. (2013) ‘Understanding a photograph’, in Berger, J. and Dyer, G. (eds) Understanding a photograph. London: Penguin Classics, pp. 17–21.

Sontag, S. (1977) On Photography. Penguin Bo. Penguin Modern Classics.

Week 1 Informing Contexts?

[A] Demonstrate how your work emphasises the characteristics of a particular case study;

[B] Note how these case studies may not fully represent the full nature of the photograph within context;

[C] Demonstrate that certain characteristics are more / less important to your own practice within its intended context.

Identify the inherent characteristics and contexts of the ‘photographic’ nature of your own practice. I reference the case studies (Cosgrove, 2019)

The inherent characteristic my practice is that using photography in the onward creation of a higher level representation as Abstract Impressionism. Elsewhere, I confirm the work is Abstract impressionism as opposed to Abstract Expressionism which exploits contemporary anxiety.

My photographs contain a trace the camera sensors detection of our bodily low and in some cases the repair process from minor trauma provides a source that creates some Image structure – something for the eye to rest upon. There is no direct image of trauma and no one is hurt deliberately in the making 

In reading the case studies, this week, I can relate to all three cases: with Swarkowski I’m happy to accept the analysis of photographer, but I do wright elsewhere, but I feel with the advancement of technology the analysis does need updating; with Shore, there is a Focus on the photograph and yet there is overlap with Szarkovski – again with less criticism and before I find this analysis also interesting and useful. 

[A] However, the case that really excited is the exhibition “What is a Photograph” curated by Carol Squires. Whilst criticism can be aimed at Squires for not actually answering the title of the exhibition and, for example there is no digital content, that did not put me off. For me what really mattered where the ideas of the contributors, who focused on the making and in particular by over painting photographs I felt there was a commonality of purpose with my own practice, where present and, with the latest Digital software, I have to perform destructive editing. By the time I make print I feel those correspondence between Squires exhibition in the making of my own work.

There are aspects of this generally that address the question can this be allowed? Is it photography? For me, it is the kind of work I want to make, as noted I was very excited. When I learned of the criticism over the curation I applied a brake immediately and almost stopped any further thought if my work would not be accepted within an MA Photography course for not being photographic – only being photographic in the initial making.

[B] It is due to the digital nature of my work, the post processing in the digital darkroom combined with the constraints applied to argument/thinking of Szarkovski, Shore and Squires, that sets my work apart.

[C] The characteristics of Photographer / Photograph apply to my work at the initial making stage. My photographs though are non pictorial, they are not perspective views and do not attempt to meet traditional photographic making characteristics. I tend to work more with light and exposure, with hidden levels of IR detected by a camera sensor and I have in mind what cannot be seen necessarily at all or be seen easily by eye. I bring this out in digital processing. Also, my work is design around intentional hidden levels of meaning so this although not mentioned as a characteristic is another element of the photographer as opposed to photograph and is important to me in the creation of work.

I can relate to the idea of the subject and the image, the banal being made beautiful by the camera as discussed by Sontag (Sontag, 1977)

Cosgrove, S. (2019) Week 1 Presentation: Photography, Photographies : Informing Contexts PHO702 18/19 Part-Time Study Block S2, Falmouth Flexible. Available at: https://falmouthflexible.instructure.com/courses/202/pages/week-1-presentation-photography-photographies?module_item_id=17124 (Accessed: 1 February 2019).

Sontag, S. (1977) On Photography. Penguin Bo. Penguin Modern Classics.

Photography Photographies

This is my blog post on Photography and Photographies topic. Subject first tackled Szarkowski. Here I connect with my practice and attempt to answer posed questions.

My work transforms minor everyday trauma into art. So that which is before the lens creates a photograph which is separate to reality and then in post , the glow that our bodies emit is processed.

The first characteristic I would add is that of the accidental photograph taken by a person who has a camera and normally decides when to use it.

Another characteristic I might add (and I’m keen to explore in the background) is one broader acceptance of the therapeutic interpretation of the photographic.

Different end points or destinations for my work would likely call for adaptions. In a gallery or as an installation moving stills and sound may be effective. If published in an e-Zine this might equally allow moving image and sound. At first a book seemed to be how to publish my work, a book was the original intent, and the suggestion has returned. In that case I’d work more on the call and response titles in my portfolio. All these actions are a means by which the viewer may engage with the images and the connection with the ancestral past.

Mechanised production of the photograph (Szarkowski, 1980)for me becomes mechanised capture by mechanical and electronic means. It is the electronic is key for me as it is what allows creativity through the digital darkroom.

Szarkowski concentrates on the nature of the photograph and what he defines are taught in beginner and above photographic workshops.

Szarkowski seems to me to constrain the scope of his endeavour when analysing the photograph. He differentiates the photograph from a painting, but I’m aiming to create art. Either my work is moving away from the photograph and into a realm that might quickly attract criticism. I enjoy my work so wont easily be swayed by adverse opinion.

Szarkowski is set on promoting photography. I wonder that motivation he has. Could he be self serving ? or acting out of a sense of duty. Counter to his analysis my work is concerned with freedom of expression of ideas and of feelings. Photography for me is a means to an end.

I’m not opposed to Szarkowski’s analysis and in fact I’m quite interested in the presentation of his analysis. Maybe I’m happy with a dichotomy of views.

In respect of Szarkowski’s work time has moved on and by now I’m sure he’d have revised and republished. He may have acted as a Modernist but we have since moved beyond this witness the Industrial Modernism and expansion of technology. 

The most popular camera on Flickr is the smartphone. Nowadays influence is not so much academic but is with the marketing department of the technology firm. Scope for photography is greater for smartphones especially in having storage and distribution including via connection to social media. There is a whole new area of study around social analysis and psychology as photography proliferates.

Szarkowski took an informed view in creating his work and that has to be admired. But it is time for a revision with wider scope and new concepts. 

The idea of the invisible picture must have altered somewhat, from the time of film photography as digital cameras, including smartphones provide image live view as well as a histogram. As processing is immediate there is often scope to take a picture again.

Barthes is mentioned with regards the perceptual relationship. When I take a photograph I may retake or edit it to accord with the mind’s eye. 

Szarkowski considers the limitation of the frame yet even in this a modern 360° camera will take in the all-round view. I mention this as it challenges the constraint.

I did take issue at Szarkowski describing work as pretentious failures. To me it sounds like tableau work opposes his ideas of the photograph so he uses a put down. 

In thinking about the photograph my own thoughts turned to the camera obscura. I use this in comparison to the photograph. In doing so some of the effects of the camera fall way, such as image blurring or freezing. What then remains are perceptual effects. This might be red and white hoops on clothing looking pink. Other effects might be colour being misread in a field of other colours. The eye also automatically adjust for White balance. Therefore perception is important to consider.

Where Szarkowski claims that the photograph cannot have a narrative, to me it seems that groups of photographs can. My practice contains narrative and has signs. My work is symbolic and metaphorical.  Also comment where Szarkowski notes Sontag’s belief on photography being able to create beauty even from the mundane, then in my practice too the quite unusual photographing of trauma can indeed lead to beautiful imagery.

Where framing has been identified I go along with it. And in fact I did try to alter the hard frame into more of a spy hole effect in my recent work, but have more to do.

Where time has been identified, I relate to this not so much as the moment in which I take the photograph so much as I take to opportunity to record minor damage in the present in order to relate it back to the past, across a century. I do this for purposes of identification and in order to close gaps in communication.

In terms of blur my images do capture this in terms of DoF. I don’t photograph as a practitioner would in the medical field and I’m unlikely to get fully sharp images. In fact the blur adds to the abstraction.

I enjoyed the comment on Viewpoint and the use of balloon flight to enable overview images to be made. What I picked up from this was how political considerations enter into photography, that being something I do not press.

In the discussion about detail, I look at my practice where detail is not so important as a lack of detail. The images I produce glow and just as the suns light can create effects, such as crepuscular rays and blue light and sunrise and sunset aesthetic, you do not and indeed cannot see the details of solar flares or other surface activity.

Where a level of detail helps is where a minor wound creates some structure that guides the viewers eye and allows it to settle.

If were to attempt to add to the list any characteristic I felt missing from Szarkowski’s analysis I might add: hue/saturation and exposure/shadow/tonality.

Shore and the Nature of Photography in retrospect in part is dichotomous with Szarkowski and also shares characteristics (Frame and Time).

Shore places emphasis on the photograph:

Physical – Depictive – Mental as characteristics.

Szarkowski focusses on the Photographer: 

The thing itself – The Detail – The frame – Time – Vantage point as the traits.

As described by Shore, I tune into the world as it might be seen as a photograph.

In terms of the physical photograph. I do now print, but did resist this in terms of wastage, cost and struggle to control the image on paper.

Week 1 Forum: Where Are You Now?

This section allied closely to the development of my practice / Project and so is blogged in the Week 1 Development Project here and within Canvas (our VLE) here where I also respond to other Students practice.

Week 1 Introduction: Photography – The Shape-shifter

Within this Post on photography– the shape – shifter I provide my comments and take the three questions below and code them throughout my text

[A] context of practice

[B] Means of consumption

[C] How practice received

My practice is that of a digital worker operating in post within the digital darkroom. My practice could translate to 35mm film at the taking stage off my photographs. The processing I do perhaps works better at slightly lower resolutions with regards the software used.

[A] my practice falls into the category of the public display of private photographs. The work originated within family, was intended for family, is appreciated and understood by them. and so on. [B] The whole endeavour has changed, becoming much more externally focussed to the extent that initial discussion took place with a museum with interests related to the narratives. This is greater than just the book originally intended. It could also be delivered online.

[C] The Life’s Glow part of the practice is likely acceptable to the viewer. The related part that gains abstract focus from minor trauma could generate unwelcome responses of seeing somewhat weird ! or as disgusting skin photography. However, the message is that the genes that power the cells that effect the visible repair process are the genes that reflect back a century. Such things haven’t harmed the development of the work of Damien Hirst, so perhaps there is scope for progress with my practice. 

The practice might benefit from being worked in Black and White. I have been practising the skills, but the whole thing is styled on colour saturation and would lose its identity. It is just that at times I wonder if the saturation is too much and perhaps needs to be toned down. I’m immersed in it so maybe I’m more sensitive to this.

[C] There is potential shock value to my work. That was me responding to the course in terms of having learned about studium and punctum. 

[C] If my photographs were to make it in a museum, then potentially there is a shop that might sell prints? Even without such commercial sales, there is a question about how my work would sit alongside the sorts of goods a museum shop sells. This could cross “contaminate’ and either build the context or as in some of the Benneton adverts go awry, if I have no control over associations.

[C] Whilst there is no Pieta or like element in my work, the ideas have received religious comment. Once in the setting of the Howard exhibition (Howard Rachel, 2018)and second time with a Pentecostal Pastor Prince I met at a War Museum. This concerned more the making of the work but did include viewing of the early stage abstracted images. It did seem that the work was inspired (by God might be one reading – if that were so it is quite haughty in respect of my intentions).

[C] There may be some read across between area of medical science around DNA and the study of Dermatology. 

[C] There may also be a nod towards the Evolutionary Debate and Creationism. However, my work spans only 100 years not the evolution of mankind.

[B] There seems to be secondary scope for my work to be used in education in the context of Genetics teaching? If used in a museum the intention would be to address an audience of learners.

Shape-shifting would be a natural outcome of presenting my final work in different contexts. The effect would be down to a matter of taste.

As mentioned Damien Hirst has set the stage and sustains public comment in areas where I see our types of work overlap.

If my work gained onward distribution e.g. to a newspaper or journal then IO feel the editor would have responsibility for preventing any clashes of content. 

[C] I performed digital manipulation before ever owning a DSLR camera and so for me work has always had a baseline of manipulation. In a way that’s how I attempt to create art. However, I realise the moral debate in some circles. However, I remain true to my subject matter to maintain authenticity. Where this becomes tricky is from a curatorial standpoint if I did not maintain a proper trace between source imagery and the narratives so linked. 

To communicate narratives I have to make some creative choices. Examples might be the incorporation of diptychs as a visual substitute for the text narrative that was created.

There are medical parallels to my work, not least starting with the conditions under which photographs are taken. The medical profession has methods, training and equipment for capturing best image. I have to work in an informal context and sometimes almost need an operator to capture trauma depending on placement, lighting et.

In a museum context a military historic theme would impinge on my work. There is a Great War background so that should remain compatible. I could hamper my taking the work out to other contexts, other audiences.

In terms of creativity, I may chose a layout that does things like, challenge the existence of the frame, insofar as that is possible. Carey has achieved this with some of her work (Barry Tim, 2016)using Polaroid push / pull techniques resulting in surfboard images.

[C] If my practice quality continued to improve (bearing in mind this latest phase is 3 months in the making) and I accepted an Editor / Editorial team challenge to publish in their journal, that might work, given the audience of Contemporary Photographers. This would be less risky to manage than  newspaper. 

When I look at the work of Benneton, to me it is clear from Toscano being moved on or moving on tht a limit had been stretched too far in their advertising subjects. Whilst individual images might stand, I feel the problem becomes one of aggregation and association. Pulling one advert can no longer resolve conflict if it is a wider attitudinal problem. 

In as much as such weighty things of mediation and the slipperiness of images and how this could impact on my own work, I’m afraid that without this MA Photography Course, I would have remained naïve and become a lamb to the critics slaughter.

Barry Tim (2016) Aesthetica Magazine – Interview with Ellen Carey, Poet With A Lens, Les années 1980, Centre Pompidou, Paris, Aesthetica. Available at: http://www.aestheticamagazine.com/interview-ellen-carey-poet-lens/ (Accessed: 21 January 2019).

Howard Rachel (2018) Repetition is truth via Dolorosa. Edited by A. C. Beard Jason. London: Other Criteria Books. Available at: newportstreetgallery.com.