Two Units Down Already?

As I write this post, it is Christmas 2020 which is the culmination of a tumultuous year for sure. I’ve just submitted Assignment 5 of Context and Narrative to my tutor for review and am now getting on with tidying my coursework ahead of assessment in March. It is during this final phase of the course unit that I find myself reflecting on my OCA experience so far, having nearly completed the first two units of Level 1. How has this course, and EYV before it, changed me as both a person and as a photographer?

The first thing I have noticed is how my perspective on creativity has changed. Prior to enrolling on the course, I would say that I had always had a vivid imagination. My earliest memories of childhood involved imagining stories based on whatever was happening around me. The outlet for these stories was of course school and in particular the creative writing part of our English lessons. As I grew older though, I developed much more of an interest in understanding how things worked, which usually meant taking them apart and not always being able to put them back together. My interest became studies in Engineering and a career followed for the next 30 years. When I started studying with the OCA, my engineering brain was completely confused by the concepts in the first unit. It was hard to switch off wanting to understand how a photograph was made and instead focusing on the ‘why’ – I struggled with some of the exercises where we had to practice thinking about what we wanted to say with our photographs. I initially focused much more on the technique and composition than developing my voice, but as the unit progressed I found myself thinking about what I wanted to say and worrying less if I had ‘got it right’ in the eyes of my tutors. My final assignment in EYV [1] was a very personal story of my recovery from depression, which was not only challenging because of the subject matter, but also because the initial assessment of the work by my tutor highlighted some key concerns about my reliance on the technical aspects of photograph. I learned at that point that this wasn’t a failure, but an opportunity to revisit the series and make it stronger. The re-shoot of 3 of the 10 images certainly achieved this, which made the series something I am immensely proud of.

In C&N, the concept of storytelling was where I started to find my creative side winning the battle against my logical side. Using photography to tell linear and non-linear stories was new to me, but I found the way the artists developed their ideas to be fascinating. I particularly connected with the artists who used theirselves either as a canvass for the story or as an observer or commentator on a social or cultural issue. The works of Morrissey, Brotherus and Lee were all instigators of perhaps my biggest departure from my comfort zone; to use myself as the subject of my series for Assignment 3[2]. As the unit progressed, I started to learn about the artists who had told a story through creating something fictitious that appeared to be real. Wall, diCorcia and Crewdson’s influence on my Assignment 5[3] submissions is obvious – with these approaches to storytelling, I was able to reconnect with that imagination I once had as a child.

The second thing I noticed about my progress through EYV and C&N was the way that my passion for photography had changed. Prior to study, I would regularly go looking for beautiful landscapes to photograph and stand in a field for hours trying to get a technically perfect representation of them. This meant looking for the best times of day to shoot, the best weather conditions etc and it often meant driving for long periods of time to be there when these elements coincided. If I happened to be using on my my vast collection of film cameras, the experience included preparation and processing (which I do myself) to add to the experience that I really enjoyed. Now, I find myself less interested in that type of photography. I have since learned that perfect exposure, perfect sharpness and classical rule-following composition don’t necessarily make a good photograph. If they are present but there is no artistic voice or story being told, the image is simply a document of what was in front of the camera. I’ve learned in C&N how even the seemingly simple act of documentary photography has a voice or bias associated with it; photography is in fact subjective rather than objective and in some cases dishonest. More than this, my interest in traditional landscape had diminished along with the idea of just shooting things. For C&N Assignment 2, I shot a series of images of disused and open spaces to represent the emotions of someone reacting to trauma. The series was said to be good but with lots of room for improvement, which got me thinking about documenting how these landscapes change with time as well as events in society or culture. Like David Hockney’s paintings of the same Yorkshire scenes throughout the seasons, I started to find myself walking the same routes with a camera and looking at how shops, buildings, green spaces changed over time. In some cases during 2020 that has been something enforced rather than by choice as the COVID-19 pandemic took hold of the country; government-sanctioned exercise periods restricted where I could travel with my camera. However I the limitations also introduced me to artists like Michelle Sank [4] who had adapted to the pandemic lockdown by incorporating it into her work. As someone at higher risk from COVID-19, she had to isolate from people so her series Portraits from a Distance told the story of others in a similar position to her. The images were paired as diptychs with the subject and their environment to add context to their situation, which I found interesting and very moving. With regard to shooting things for the sake of it, I discovered that I had lost interest in wildlife photography, something that I have practiced before only in an effort to get better at the technical aspects. A group of my friends are keen wildlife photographers and we have unsuccessfully attempted to meet up in 2020 to shoot wildlife at a number of nature reserves. It became clear to me as the year progressed, that I wanted to spend time with them much more than I wanted to shoot the animals. While still enjoyable, it marked a major shift in my passion for photography. Instead I am thinking about series of work around stories and life events that surround me. How can I make images that tell the story without it being so severely signposted to a meaning that the viewer loses interest? How might I use myself to convey the observer of play a part in something that might be affecting me in some way? How can I document something in a way that is more Robert Frank than my albums of holiday snaps?

The Future

At the time of writing, I am preparing for my engineering career to come to an end following being made redundant because of the pandemic. I made the decision to leave and focus on my studies because the opportunity to learn more about being an artist excites me. My longer term plan is to teach photography, first as a technical discipline for people just starting out with a camera and later as an art form once my OCA studies are complete. One of the things that I want to achieve to progress to the first goal is Associate of the Royal Photographic Society or ARPS. When I looked at the requirements for this accreditation level, I was surprised to see that storytelling through a series of images was at the heart of the assessment criteria for one of its genres [5]. I intend to take what I’ve learned in Context and Narrative and try to apply it to a panel for ARPS. This level of confidence and lack of fear of failure is all to do with studying Photography 1 as prior to this past 2 years, I would have been reluctant to try without being sure of ‘getting the right answer’.

Onwards to Identity & Place, which is the final part of Level 1 of the degree. Having read the sample from the OCA website, I’m confident that it will be every bit as challenging and interesting as what I’ve completed so far.

References

[1] Fletcher R, 2019, “Assignment 5: Photography is Simple”, OCA Blog Post, https://richardfletcherphotography.photo.blog/2019/05/31/assignment-5-photography-is-simple/

[2] Fletcher R, 2020, “Assignment 3: Self Portraiture, OCA Blog Post, https://richardfletcherphotography.photo.blog/2020/09/19/assignment-3-self-portraiture/

[3] Fletcher R, 2020, “Assignment 5: Making it Up”, OCA Blog Post, https://richardfletcherphotography.photo.blog/2020/12/24/assignment-5-making-it-up/

[4] Fletcher R, 2020, “Preparing for Assignment 2”, OCA Blog Post, https://richardfletcherphotography.photo.blog/2020/07/10/preparing-for-assignment-2/

[5] The Royal Photographic Society, 2020, “Associate (ARPS), https://rps.org/qualifications/arps/