Introduction

I have now had feedback on Assignment 5 ‘Photography is Simple’ from my tutor, which was in both verbal and written form.  As always, the feedback was very constructive and pointed out the areas that, with more consideration and the benefit of hindsight, were fairly obvious to me.  In this post, I address the feedback about the assignment itself and my thoughts about how it relates to my original intentions.  However, a significant part of the feedback was related to the limitations of my research which I also agreed with.  I look at some of the recommended contemporary artists working in the genre of portraiture in a separate blog post [1].

Feedback on my Images

I think I already knew which of the images was the weakest and it was confirmed in the feedback as Seven.  Although the photograph is well composed and lit, the hand could belong to anyone. The elements that I intended are present, but the whole image says very little about me.  When I re-visited this photograph as part of the set, I concluded the same and when reflecting on the period I was working on the assignment, I was probably least happy with it.  I plan to use the additional learning from my expanded research to re-shoot Seven before submitting for assessment.

My tutor thought that the strongest photograph in the set was Five which is one of the two images showing my love of outdoor swimming.  I intended this image to lead from the shots about the difficulties I’ve experienced with my mental health and showing a much stronger man in an almost heroic pose.  However, my tutor saw something different in the image which was more about being revealed from inside the protective wetsuit.  He particularly liked the fact that although it is clearly me, the composition has me looking away from the viewer.  He was complimentary about the technical achievement with the image as he was with the rest of the set.  I realised on reflection how well the image creates opportunities for multiple interpretations and that without the contextual narrative that I included, how different they can be.  My favourite image from the set was Four where I am pictured with my wife.  During our discussion, we agreed that this image worked well within the set in a similar way to Five, but that it was also an example of the critical feedback that the set was perhaps limited to the conventional (low key lighting, black background etc).  I believe this to be a fair comment.

Overall, the feedback was the that the collection of images was “a well considered set” and that “they all work well individually, if in a conventional way, and as a series”.

Limitations in Research

It has taken me a while to appreciate the feedback on my research, primarily because I felt at the time that I’d done everything possible to address the brief.  My initial reaction to our discussion that I had only researched the photographers that I appreciated or admired was, ‘isn’t that what inspiration is – taking something you admire as the basis for your work?’   If I’d previously researched all of the photographers that have been recommended in the feedback, would I have not just been inspired by one or two of them instead?  Of course, on reflection the answer is simple – I’m being pushed to demonstrate the beginnings of my own perspective or vision on photography and use my skills to say what I want to say.  There are few genres of photography, painting or sculpture that test this more than portraiture and I believe that was the point of the feedback.  I had chosen this challenging genre – now what am I going to do with it?Another difficult point to accept was that despite my best efforts and discomfort from being the subject as well as the photographer, I still relied on my technical knowledge to make the images stand out.  This was brought home to me by a comment that my tutor made during our call – you’ve demonstrated that you understand photography as a process and have a relationship with the camera where you know how to get a result from it.  Where are you going to take your photography next?  It was backed up by a comment that I could continue to strive for the perfect landscape, but would that progress my photography in an artistic way?

On reflection, I greatly appreciate these two observations and was reminded of the importance of the points in two discussions since the call.  The first was when talking to a colleague of mine, who was kind enough to give me some feedback on the assignment before I submitted it.  I was concerned that the course was having the effect of making me resent photography rather than build on my passion for it.  He likened it to his recent return to playing the guitar and the jazz group that he joined that is run by his tutor.  One of the pieces he was given to work on was going to come up in a future group session, so he learned and practiced it until it was ‘note-perfect’.  When he turned up to the session, his piece was incorporated into a jazz jam that was entirely improvised, meaning that there was no clean point at which he need to start to play and no structure to how it fitted in with the rest of the group.  Despite his best efforts, he’d missed the point of playing how he wanted to play; instead falling back on his technical understanding of the instrument.

The second conversation was with the local picture framer who has done a great deal of work for me over the past couple of years and who is going to prepare my assessment prints.  He made a comment during our discussion about mounting my assignment works, that my previous work always looked good with a particular selection of mount cards etc.  It dawned on me that his comment was naturally all about the tonality of the images, which have to date been predominantly black and white.  Was this the comfort zone that my tutor spoke of?  He asked me on the call why I tended towards black and white and I didn’t have the answer – it certainly isn’t because of some notion that it looks classier or more traditional, but there is something I love about it.  Rather than explore that, my realisation was that for the assignment I simple stayed within what I like and am comfortable with.  When considering the feedback that I had limited my research at the start of this post, I realised that we need examine the artists and works that we don’t resonate with as much as we do the ones that inspire us.   This is pretty common with other areas of learning and development, so I’m uncertain as to why I hadn’t realised it sooner.  However, it is something I will be working on as my learning progresses.

Other Feedback

In the written feedback a couple of other points were made:

“I think one telling comment from you notes is; ‘…many of my acquaintances see a confident man, while those who know me really well know that the opposite is often the case.’, which is perhaps not what you wanted”

I was a little confused by this observation initially as the original comment was made about the Who am I? slide that I orally presented at work.  My observation was that the images on the slide were snapshots of events in my life that were intended to signpost the icebreaker discussion, rather than reveal anything significant about me.  The images in the assignment though were trying to portray a conflicted man, one that is confident and professional and one that has been recovering from problems with his mental health for a number of years.  On reflection though,  it is external context that helps shape the viewer’s perspective on the work which I realise I had provided with the accompanying notes in the assignment.  When I showed the images to my friends and colleagues, I got a sense of what happens when that contextual information is not present and I was happy to listen to their different views.  On the subject of social media, Nan Goldin summed up the effect of its permeation into our lives during a in interview for an exhibition of hers in New York [2].  Speaking about a social media manager:

“She asked to see something on my phone; some paintings I’d done.  She went like that (swiping motion) and I so said ‘You didn’t look at them’.  ‘I saw them’.  Then I realised that’s how people look on Instagram…and I don’t want it”.  I’m not happy that that’s how people look now.  You can’t look at something in a microsecond.  You need time to look at things”  – Nan Goldin, talking to Lanka Tattersall, MOCA.

This resonated with me with regard to this assignment, because I believe that the images need to be looked at carefully to derive any meaning from them.  One thing that I noticed when showing them was how long people spent studying every element in the frame.

“Finally you write: ‘Photography itself is simple, but it has little meaning unless those relationships between photographer, camera and view are in harmony with each other.’ This could be disputed, technical supremacy is one thing, but pushing the boundaries of the medium is another, the latter is about experimentation and developing the potential language. The viewer mediates through their own experiences and understanding and this might differ considerably from the artist’s intention”

I completely agree with this feedback.  Rather than consider it a mistake in my assessment of the relationships between parties, I tried to reflect on why that made sense to me at the time.  I believe it to be a symptom of my falling back on what I know; the technical element of the image.  Pushing my photography by challenging the boundaries of the medium is how I avoid the stagnation that he referred to in our conversation.  In answering the question ‘where do I go from here?’ I believe the answer is to keep trying.

I have elected to re-shoot a  fewof the images from the assignment before formal assessment.  Ideas are beginning to form as I write, but it is clear that I need to keep challenging myself to leave my comfort zone.

References

[1] Fletcher, R, 2019 “Looking at Contemporary Portrait Artists (post Assignment 5), OCA Blog, https://wordpress.com/post/richardfletcherphotography.photo.blog/1420

[2] 2018, MOCA, “Nan Goldin in conversation with Lanka Tattersall”, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2XrWPdJIBg

 

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