The Brief

Think about the images that you made for the Assignment of Project 2 and redesign your approach as a collaborative project. How could you re-photograph that community, but collaboratively? 

• Write out a 2 page project description and, using the headings outlined in the ‘Terms of Engagement in Collaborative Practice’ section as a guide, design a plan to approach this collaborative project.

Include consideration for the ethical questions raised in this section. 

Spend some time reading how others have adapted projects to be collaborative.

Introduction and Overview

For.Assignment 2, I photographed a community of volunteers that carry out landscape maintenance for the Malvern Hills Trust, whose aim is to preserve the natural beauty and wildlife habitats within the area. The volunteers generally meet every week, depending on the nature of the work that needs doing. The attendees vary both in number and attendance, depending on their availability. I attended a session of bracken clearing and dam building during early summer.

I concluded at the end of Project 3 that the shoot was not at all participatory in nature, beyond gaining consent. The resulting series was aesthetically ‘observational’, in a street photography style. The subjects were aware of my presence, but didn’t engage with me the camera at all. It was my intention to document the work that they collectively did, rather than tell individual stories, so perhaps it isn’t a surprise that their level of input to the work was limited to simply ‘being my subjects’. I spent time briefing them about my intention to document the work of the Trust and ensured that they were comfortable with my shooting the project, and I spent time chatting with each of them during the shoot. These conversations were aimed at making them more comfortable and gaining an understanding of what motivated them to volunteer.

Intention and Benefit 

In collaborating, the intention would first have to evolve to be more about the contributors and their motivations for volunteering for the Trust. All of the artists in Project 3 spent long periods of time with their participants, building trust and getting them interested in telling their stories. The first change to my project would be to attend multiple sessions talking to them and listening for the details that may be the basis of the project. Unlike the work of artists like Luvera, Houston, Lixenburg etc, I would not be representing a part of society that is mis-represented or persecuted in some way. They are underrepresented though, with most Malvernians not being aware or appreciating the contribution that they make. I would focus the benefits on the celebration of the volunteers themselves, as well as publicity to attract more volunteers to their cause.

Equipment

I’m drawn to Luvera’s use of a mixture of disposable cameras and loaned equipment with the participants in their projects. As the group only generally comes together for the volunteer days, the use of the former or a similar technology could be limited to that timeframe and wouldn’t include much context beyond, in contrast with Luvera. I would consider getting them to wear high resolution video cameras (if they could be borrowed), to film their work in a ‘found footage’ style. The series would also benefit from particpatory portraits, which could be shot during breaks in the work. Success would depend on the level of co-operation.

Agency and Co-operation

The subjects didn’t see themselves as being the subject represented, instead being part of the story of the Trust volunteers. To include the participatory element, the conversations would need to focus on the individual and their place in the group. They all shared the love of being outdoors, so this would be the starting point of discussing representation. They were mostly retired people, so we would address the stereotyping of retired people within our culture; holidaying, playing bowls, spending time with family. I would establish whether or not they wanted to challenge these ideas through their very physical volunteer work. As Houston and Luvera did, some form of review at the end of each shoot would help steer the direction of the pictures.

Ownership and Consent

Consent was covered well in the work for Assignment 2, but I believe a longer term project gives the participants more time to consider their position on consent. During our discussions, they all wanted to know what specifically I was gaining from the shoot. In this context, ownership would need be reconsidered particularly if participatory portraits are created. My consent form calls for the subjects to waive their rights over the images, which would clearly have to be updated.

Co-authorship and Credit

Similar to the topic of ownership, the shared credit for the series would also change. If I’d published the previous work outside of of the context of my studies, I would have credited the Malvern Hills Trust as the organisation I was working with. However, participatory work could introduce the contributions of the volunteers as co-authors, requiring an update to my consent form.

Outcomes and Audience

I think the outcomes for the work change in step with the stories being told. For example, a counter to the traditional ideas of retirement would incorporate the physicality of the work, while a ‘recruitment drive’ for the volunteers would major on the sense of achievement and the visual signs of familiar geography, landscape genre and the natural world. What I would definitely consider is the audience. The original intent was to highlight the work of the volunteers, so exhibiting the work as posters around the town, or a published article in a local magazine (Cotswold Life, Worcestershire Life etc) might be more appropriate than a formal exhibition. These formats would support my initial ideas of how to represent the team and the individuals.

Aesthetics

As with Luvera’s work with the homeless, I would include multiple formats for the images to include more formal portaiture and landscape styles. I would still work in a street style because I think it lends itself to representing activity. I would also combine quotations from our conversations with the images, to add further identity context. I probably wouldn’t pursue multimodal research as with Luvera and the Calais project, because of where I would present the finished work.

Reflection

The key takeaways from Project 3 are the emphasis on balancing the power of the camera with the power of the subject, and to invest the time with the subject(s) before a single image is made, to better understand what their story or representation might be.  Photographers bring their own preconceptions to a project, which in straight documentary terms, shapes the narratives within a social, political, or cultural context.  However, here we are bringing the subjects into positions of creative power, to help challenge misrepresentation and offer alternative narratives.  Photographers such as Anthony Luvera and Scott Houston make the point that the work put into research, gaining feedback, and building trust is as important as the resulting images.  This is a long way from merely asking someone if they consent to being photographed by a third party, who has some ideas of their own what the story might be or how it should be told.  For this assignment, I had many ideas about how it could be more collaborative, but the main element that was missing was time.  I would need many sessions with the community from Assignment 2 to adopt such an approach.  Luvera and Houston approached their subjects as social and cultural outsiders respectively but put the work into validating their initial assumptions with the direct help from their subjects. Luvera’s approach of encouraging them to make pictures with him, first teaching them photographic skills, shows a non-judgemental of his homeless subjects, which brings them into the work.  Houston’s editing sessions at the end of each shooting day, where the people of the community help edit and guide the sequencing, shares the sense of ownership with them, again gaining high levels of trust.  Both approaches build on the community photography movements of the 1970s, which sought to represent under or misrepresented communities within the mass media.  I’m already adopting the ideas of actively listening, developing ideas, sharing and accepting feedback in my SDP, and have already run into issues that make a collaborative approach vital to its success. A member of the community group that I’m interested in has deliberately warned off other members, because she fears my intentions for the project.  That fear has caused reluctance to even engage in the initial discussions of how we might collaborate.  How I approach the engagement will be crucial in moving forward, so Project 3 has come at a fortuitous time.