Assignment 2 – feedback and more reflection

I had a very positive session with my tutor Les just one day after submitting the work online which was great. Almost immediately he asked me if I had intended for the images to be presented in that way – this threw me a little. What did he mean? There are words on each image – what words? He showed me that as part of displaying them as a gallery on WordPress I had named each image which is fine but now that name looks to be part of the image – was that look intended? Was the title part of the image? Aaaaah I get what he means. We discussed my use of the years to decay which we thought worked but if it’s to be an integral part of the image how should that information be presented – do I need to re-work the images so the message is part of the presented final image? Les showed me examples of his own work where he had included titles to help solidify the point. I got it. I said I’d go away and look at this.

My initial feeling was that these images can be dismissed quite easily as just another bunch of trash pics but by including the time for this rubbish to decay it makes the viewer think. Perhaps I do need to make it more integral and not just part of a title.

Ken Lum stood out as someone who utilises words alongside images a lot in his work. His words are often added to change the context of the image or at least look at the subject from a different angle. Would they really have said that? Are these two going to be ok? Is Dad ill? Does she really hate her job?

Whereas the work of Jim Goldberg often incorporates the actual words of the subjects as an integral part of his unflinching portraits – they give depth to a side of humanity that most people rarely see (or want to) and make you think about it. I mean really think about it. How many bad choices would I need to make to end up like this? I would bet it’s surprisingly few.

In both cases the words have a profound affect on how you perceive the image.

In my images I wanted to approach it from a factual point of view but also thought it would be worth experimenting to see if I could open it up so that the image could have it’s own voice. Below are the results of this experiment…

I have used four different methods – polaroid with hand written notes from the person responsible, same but without polaroid and also just the time to rot with and without polaroid. I quite like the stark message and look of the very first image (actually the last iteration I made) and also the fifth – I like the idea of giving a reason for why the subject is here.

What do you think works better? I’m going to add text to all of the images and then amend assignment two with the look I feel works best.

As an aside the rest of the feedback was positive with no need for further re-shoots – we had discussed and went through my ‘Scattergun’ post and I talked about why I’d decided to go with something else rather than the original images which was a useful discussion.

For Assignment 3 I’ll make sure to be clearer in how I present the images leaving Technical aspects about the shoot to a seperate blog post.

Bibliography

Brown, K. (2020) After Ditching Its Colonialist Name, a Dutch Art Institution Has Renamed Itself After a Female Working-Class ‘Anti-Hero’. At: https://news.artnet.com/art-world/fka-witte-de-with-1912540 (Accessed 21/01/2021).

LUM, Ken (s.d.) At: http://www.oakvillegalleries.com/collection/details/105/What-is-it-Daddy (Accessed 21/01/2021).

A Completely True Work of Fiction: Jim Goldberg’s Raised By Wolves (2018) At: https://www.magnumphotos.com/arts-culture/art/jim-goldberg-raised-by-wolves/ (Accessed 21/01/2021).

Aspirations – Doncaster (s.d.) At: http://aspirationsdoncaster.blogspot.com/ (Accessed 30/01/2021).

The Desire Project at the Frenchgate Centre, Doncaster (s.d.) At: http://lesmonaghan.blogspot.com/2016/04/the-desire-project-at-frenchgate-centre.html (Accessed 30/01/2021).