Tutor Report Reflection Assignment One I can appreciate what my tutor said about moving away from the initial brief. I did think about this as I was deciding what to do for my first assignment and I think using different images may have even been a more simple way of my message being communicated. Perhaps,…
Exercise How does Bryony Campbell’s The Dad Project compare with Country Doctor? What do you think she means by ‘an ending without an ending’?Make some notes in your learning log. When I view Country Doctor (1), I am instantly drawn by the way the photos look like still from a movie. The story of the Country Doctor’s life…
Exercise All three of these projects are examples of personally driven work but they become universal when we can relate to the feelings they present by visiting our own personal histories. Which of these projects resonates most with you, and why? How do you feel about the loss of authorial control that comes when the…
Exercise The aim of this exercise (and Assignment Two) is to encourage you to develop metaphorical and visceral interpretations rather than obvious and literal ones, to give a sense of something rather than a record of it.. Choose a poem that resonates with you then interpret it through photographs. Don’t attempt to describe the poem…
Research point Examples of relay in contemporary photographic practice include Sophie Calle’s Take Care of Yourself and Sophy Rickett’s Objects in the Field (see interview in the Appendix to this course guide) where clashes of understanding or interpretation work together to create a perhaps incomplete but nonetheless enriching dialogue between artist and viewer. Look these pieces up online. Investigate…
Exercise Cut out some pictures from a newspaper and write your own captions. How do the words you put next to the image contextualise/re-contextualise it? How many meanings can you give to the same picture?Try the same exercise for both anchoring and relaying. Blog about it. In his essay Barthes (1) used an advertisement in…
Exercise Look at some more images from this series on the artist’s website. How do Pickering’s images make you feel? Is Public Order an effective use of documentary or is it misleading? Make some notes in your learning log. Looking at these images (1) certainly gives a sense of unease, the streets are empty and almost post-apocalyptic…
Exercise Instead of using double exposures or printing from double negatives we now have the technology available to us to make these changes in post-production, allowing for quite astonishing results. Use digital software such as Photoshop to create a composite image which visually appears to be a documentary photograph but which could never actually be.…
Exercise Read the section entitled ‘The Real and the Digital’ in Wells, Liz. (2009) Photography: A Critical Introduction (4th edition). Abingdon: Routledge, pp.73–75. You’ll find this on the student website. Does digital technology change how we see photography as truth? Consider both sides of the argument and make some notes in your learning log. My Notes: Digital…
Create at least two sets of photographs telling different versions of the same story. The aim of the assignment is to help you explore the convincing nature of documentary, even though what the viewer thinks they see may not in fact be true. Try to make both sets equally convincing so that it’s impossible to…
