Begin by browsing the Source Texts and Case Studies and make notes of at least 5 broad themes you can identify that interest you. Identify at least 2 source texts or case studies that you can work through to help develop your own practice and have these ready to support your Project 4 work. List other possible broad themes that you think could have potential for yourself, your peers or other practitioners that interest you.
Make notes in your learning log.
You can also share ideas with peers in the Mapping Territories Forum.
Response
My idea of exploring communication as a broad theme (Exercise 1 [1]) led me to consider the further themes that overlap the idea. My starting point was the way that communication has evolved in recent years, with the advent of mobile phones, messaging platforms and social media. This led to the first broad theme of ‘Technology’. In moving to a more digital interaction, I was interested in the way that we communicate with each other and how that had changed. Personal engagements are influenced by who we are, where we fit into a social or familial hierarchy. This led into the broad themes of ‘Identity’, ‘Family’ and ‘Relationships’. I realised also that we are surrounded by information that instructs and prohibits our behaviour, most of which are technology agnostic, that is they require no expert knowledge beyond our way of reading (visually, braille or audible) in order to be effective. Our engagement though, is ultimately driven by our willingness to consume. My final theme is around ‘Rebellion’.
Reading the Source Texts and Case Studies, I selected “Look at Me! The Representation of Self” and “Documentary Depictions and Dilemmas” because they cover the central aspects of what I am interested in. The former deals with representation of personality both as the artist sees it, but also the ideas of projecting a persona, something that is highly relevant to the online world of imagery. The latter deals with the historical shift from straight representation of a scene or event with a view to revelation or social change, to the photographer guiding the narrative according to their perspective. I thought this to be particularly relevant as my ideas communication and its impact on our seeing the world around us, also beg the questions “Does it matter?” and “If there is no noticeable harm, does it matter?” I want to pursue this later in my SDP.
Reviewing the Source Texts
I used Padlet to map the key learnings and messages from the two source texts. They can be found at:
“Look at Me! – The Representation of Self” https://oca.padlet.org/richard5198861/ca380ho1gq6cgndc
and
“Documentary Depictions and Dilemmas. “https://oca.padlet.org/richard5198861/j8sxcdq8ybngzxl3
Conclusion
The first conclusion from this exercise was that my broad theme of Communication does indeed span the 5 other themes that identified. There is a strong theme of change in how we engage with each other and the wider population, which is contiguous with the attitudes of the photographers who pioneered documentary. Their intentions evolved from straight reporting and furthering the idea of the camera being a tool, to growing a conscience and becoming both reporter and advocate. The photographers who wanted to reveal poor living conditions or human rights violations, broke the conventions. It’s no surprise that these photographers were unaffectionately known as ‘muckrakers’ owing to their deliberate attempts to let the viewer into an aspect of humanity to be ashamed of. The emergence of the mass observation and curated stories of the 1930s could be argued to mirror the broadening collective of modern media outlets that push specific narratives across the internet, furthering a confusion over what is truth. The ‘truth’ of the photographic representation in the mid-20th Century became less important than the tactic to present or shock the audience. In a parallel with the idea presented in “Look at me…” that Big Brother created an apathy in the audience with regard to the ‘reality’ of reality television, the full context of stories such as the migrant sharecroppers or the people of the Bowery in New York, was no longer important – just as long as the editorial was ‘broadcast’ Similarly with Cindy Sherman, Jo Spence and Rosy Martin, we had serious assumptions about contemporary and generational female identities challenged by the artists acting as other people. With both genres, external context such as our preconceived ideas of a culture or gender, our memories of how things used to be and our recognition of ‘progress’ are increasingly introduced into our reading of an image when stories are being told instead of relayed.
For my theme, I will need to consider how to home in on the core messages I want to convey. This exercise has allowed me to gather my thoughts about the various aspects of communication as a theme and, most importantly, how I react to them.
Richard Fletcher OCA Photography Blog 