photographic theory

Distribution and dissemination

| Meg

Throughout my MA I have explored the idea of the ‘process’ of work, creating collages and photographs without identifying much thought or need for the end product. Now, coming to the end of my independent project I realise that period of my practice was in fact simply a focus into the exploration of process, and I had not yet considered the work in its final or cumulative stages at all. Instead of disregarding the end product all together, I would have been better understanding my own process of working and exploring a subject first, using my practice as research.

Garden Book Club started its life as a way of me translating nostalgia from old books and magazines into a new contemporary, sometimes absurd and humourous works that forged its own natural pattern with plants and their relationships with people. At first, I struggled to pin down the reasoning behind the work and was unsure of its place in my practice, but as the struggle subsided it was much easier to work and concentrate on being creative, with the research questions and themes coming directly from the pieces rather than me forcing them upon the work. The Create show in May was a working milestone for my practice, as I managed to show my collage through the form of a handmade book- another area I have toyed around with for much of my MA. Seeing the success of the book and its reaction from an audience, my next decision was how to move Garden Book Club on for the independent project. The work I was producing for GBC were all separate elements. I had video, collage, print and book work. Although tied together with the obvious content, they all seemed to exist as individual works. It was tying these parts together that was tricky for me. Used to producing series’ of photographs, or singular collages, it was difficult to imagine the work existing in any other way. Linking these things together in an overall ‘performance’ by creating an imagined club was the most exciting and enticing option for me creatively. Publishing as Performance (2014) examined the role of publishing practices through the notion of the performative. The easy access to web and print publishing has expanded the relationship of publishing to dissemination, and it is this ease that has enticed me to take part in this new form of the performative. Perfomance is instant, but also carries a continued outreach. I wanted GBC to have a similar impact. Accessible to people who weren’t just gathered in a gallery for an opening night, but rather have the project brought to them as an emergent identity through published material. New research questions and problems such as how will the reaction be measured in an uncontrolled environment, the ‘finished-ness’ of material distributed in such an overall way, and the new meanings it finds along the way.

The decision to create a newspaper as a vehicle for GBC was a simple one. Many of the books and magazines used for creating the collages came from an era where such things were subscribed to by post – often, the subscription cards were still held inbetween pages of the books. The idea of a book is distributing a certain message or narrative to an audience, but the GBC book’s coverage was limited by cost and reach. Being only available to buy online from one website and a select few bookshops at a cost meant that the work was only reaching so far. The natural next step was to freely distribute the work with a much further reach, and with entirely different content, giving a new audience chance to take part in the project. Inspired by mail art, performance and pataphysics, the idea of a newspaper representing the club written by a character created from one of the main collages came about. In large towns and cities, free newspapers are often distributed and discarded, some copies read by many whilst others are discarded straight away. Some stories may leave an impression on a reader, be torn out and kept or simply ignored. It was this anonymity and unpredictability that I craved from the project, not knowing what the papers would amount to once left in situ. In the same way that the books’ owners would not have known their once prized, well thumbed and earmarked pages would end up in a project some 30 years later. The idea of a newspaper rather than a magazine or book came down to a couple of things. As aforementioned, I wanted the newspaper to hold a certain amount of anonymity and slot in just as an evening newspaper would. If I had chosen a magazine or book, the end product may have been more obvious as a newcomer, or prevented people from picking a copy up due to fear of cost or existing ownership. A newspaper also holds aesthetical value to me, with it being a traditional print process- giving a nod to my analogue photography and collage methods. It is recognizable to an audience; most people are familiar with holding a paper and how it is read. It is this contrast with the unusual or unexpected content that I like, the disassociation between the two elements, and people trying to create that connection. Size was a factor; to print a book of this size would not have been cost effective whereas a paper begs to be of a larger size traditionally giving me more creative scope with the design process.

Where to distribute the newspaper was a tough decision. The newspaper is part of an imagined mythical gardening club, ran by an overprotective, blunt and sometimes obsessive character who emerged from a collage. Already with a book published, a website selling GBC merchandise and an active Twitter page, I had already created a world in which this character lived. The questions I had to ask myself when deciding on distribution and content were things like ‘is this going to be an art thing, or entirely a gardening newspaper?’ ‘Am I going to end up tricking an audience into participating in something that doesn’t exist if I go for the latter?’ ‘What happens when different types of people connect with the paper?’ It was difficult, but the answer came when creating the content. Bordering on the absurd and surreal, the articles were subtly changed or entirely rewritten, with some facts becoming false and the language intensified leading the audience to question what they were reading. The articles are peppered with collage and illustration, suggesting that the paper does actually serve a different purpose rather than being directed towards a gardening audience. Taken from online forums, books and magazines, the questions and words used in the pages form a whole new realm of collage for my practice where a whole new document has been produced from (mostly) existing culture. To reflect the content decisions and to expand reach of the project, a mixture of locations were chosen. Local coffee shops where reading material was often available and shared were first on the list. I had frequented all of them and often had picked up a well-read newspaper in there. I hoped the new publication would follow suit in these places. Some art-book and magazine shops in the area and further afield were also targeted. Selling a similar type of item, the free newspaper seemed to compliment such purchases. Garden centres seemed an obvious choice, and one where an entirely different audience would be reached. Botanical Gardens were also on the list as some of the photographs were taken at Sheffield and Glasgow Botanical Gardens, and the subject matter fitted in well there. I think of them as halfway between a gallery and a garden centre, if such a comparison exists?

The GBC newspaper has already generated some local interest even before its initial distribution, with local magazine One & Other expressing an interest in writing an article on the book and mentioning the newspaper within it. This will hopefully encourage an audience to seek out the newspaper, an element of hype almost. The newspaper contains both the GBC website and the email addresses. On some pages, the content actively asks the audience to participate by sending in photographs and letters. If any of these things are received, it will form the basis for the next issue of the paper. Ideas for the future include a subscription service, and also a locked members only content website where readers of the paper can access exclusive content online, pushing the boundaries of this mythical club even further. The character ‘running’ the newspaper is planned to become even more real and prevalent, with an actor being selected to front issue launches and video roles.

Bibliography

Derrida, J. 1998, Archive fever: a Freudian impression, University of Chicago Press, London; Chicago, [Ill.].

Publishing as Performance, (2014). http://www.phdarts.eu/Programme/Spring2014/PublishingasPerformance

Roland Barthes, “The Death of the Author,” in Image Music Text, trans. Stephen Heath (New York: Hill and Wang, 1967).

Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” in Illuminations, trans. H. Zohn (New York: Schocken, 1963).

Ulises Carrión, “The New Art of Making Books,” Kontexts no. 6–7, 1975.

Guy Debord, The Society of the Spectacle (Paris: Editions Buchet-Chastel, 1967) trans. Ken Knabb (bopsecrets.org: 1992);

Dear Images: Art, Copyright, and Culture, eds. Daniel McClean and Karsten Schubert (London: Ridinghouse, 2002).

Allen Ruppersberg, “Fifty helpful hints on the Art of the Everyday,” in The Secret of Life and Death (Los Angeles: The Museum of Contemporary Art, 1985), 113.

Third effect: When sense becomes nonsense

| Meg

Roland Barthes wrote in his seminal book Image Music Text:

As for the other meaning, the third, the one ‘too many’, the supplement that my intellection cannot succeed in absorbing, at once persistent and fleeting, smooth and elusive, I propose to call it the obtuse meaning. The word springs readily to mind and, miracle, when its etymology is unfolded, it already provides us with a theory of the supplementary meaning

Working with the everyday and generic found photographs, in itself doesn’t cause much concern for interest. However, with the collage works I have most recently received feedback on, the same comments kept coming up. People commented on the fact that the collages were humorous, playful, sometimes a little dark – but they were not entirely sure why as the imagery used was already familiar to them. Separately, a catalogue photograph of a plant is indeed just that, a photograph of a plant. A photograph taken from a bowling technique handbook is under most circumstances, quite a dull image. When paired together, these original, intended meanings still exist but a new, third meaning comes into play. This is the case for a lot of photographic images that are presented in an art context. William Eggleston took a colour documentary photograph of a tricycle from a low angle. I know what the purpose of the trike is, a child’s play thing, and I can understand why Eggleston chose the subject matter for its colour and shape, a nod to childhood and nostalgia perhaps (the obvious meaning). Portraying such a photograph in a gallery at, say, 3ft by 3ft rather than the 6×4 prints we are familiar with in albums, opens up the audiences’ mind to search for a third meaning where they can look beyond the intended narrative and begin to unravel the photograph for themselves. For me, the trike photograph in question not only makes me recall a memory of falling off a trike quite similar and putting all my bottom teeth through my lip, but makes me think of the trike’s owner. Where was he when this photograph was made? Was Eggleston aware of the owner or was it seen in passing? Had he in fact fallen from the trike and sustained the same injuries that I did? Okay, so attaching memory to a photograph isn’t quite what Barthes had in mind for the third meaning but my interpretation of the photograph has taken place because I am presented with such familiar information removed from its original context, in turn creating a third meaning. If you were to see the same image in a family album in the loft, you would probably glance past it as quite a banal image. Documentary photography that seems mundane and dull actually possesses a strong will to draw the third meaning from its audience, enabling them to look round the subject matter, behind the imagery and into the supplementary meaning, due to its more obvious stature to start with.

John Walker writes about the ‘third-effect’ meaning in his essay Context as a Determinant of Photographic Meaning in relation to text and image within advertising. Having a strong image and adding a carefully selected pun or witty comment can entirely change how the audience views the advert- creating a third meaning from the juxtaposition of the two elements. Habitualisation of elements of life, reinforced by the media and messages we receive make us feel conditioned that things that happen do so through a natural order of things.

When this natural order or tacit knowledgeis disrupted, the mind creates other solutions, other meanings. The collages I create do just this, people should be familiar with plants, and with imagery of people from the past yet they are not familiar with the juxtapostions that the collages become, making them an object of the absurd, turning sense into nonsense. Creating an artificial world is something that photography and art excel at, and begs authors and audiences over and over to question what they think their reality actually is or whether it actually exists in imitation, reflection or stark contrast to our ‘non-artificial’ world and the relationships between. Filip Hotovy discusses the notion of photography’s reputation for representing the real, which was once it’s key selling point. We look at photographs and see a moment we insist on believing that has happened- a connection to the non-artificial world at some stage in time. However, this means we discard the immobilised objects and faces, discard the fact that the world is not in fact black and white and that the photographer’s intentions were intended to be innocent. Where does the realism lie when all this is removed from the interpretation? Contemporary photography has addressed this through embracing the artificial worlds that it can create, leading to a boom in collage and manipulated imagery from Broomberg+Chanarin, Stezaker, Henner and Gordon taking over centre stage from the likes of Capa, Frank, Arbus and Friedlander.

Studio Crit

| Meg

I have included some photos of the latest studio critique that took place. I curated my space to display some of my latest work and reference points.

Book or Wall? Exhibiting Photography and Collage

| Meg

Dutch photography critic Ralph Prins (1969) describes the photo book as

‘An autonomous art form, comparable with a piece of sculpture, a play or a film.’

The photo book has been a fundamental means of expression and dissemination since some of the earliest practitioners pasted their images into books where sketches would have once sat. 19th century photography’s place was the library or the archive, as it was seen as a tool for making and recording rather than an art form in its own right. In this archive would sit many prints and contact sheets, as well as photo books. When photography was seemingly accepted into the mainstream art world, these photo books were then pulled apart and separated into gallery worthy prints. Photo books have the potential to be much more far-reaching than exhibitions, and can continue long after an exhibition has closed.

I am interested in exploring the value that a photo book holds as an object, as an art piece, or how it can form a vehicle for exhibition or transporting work to a more general audience. An avid collector and admirer of the photo (and artist) books, I am very much inclined to agree with Prins’ grand statement placing the photo book’s value up there with much loved and well established art forms. When presented on their own, photographs may not work as the creator intended. Many photographers shoot work imagined as a series, rather than a singular image. Photographs may lose character as things alone, but can become the words, sentences or paragraphs forming this ‘dramatic event’ called a book, where their message can be translated in a strong and bold manner (Badger, 2004).

 From a pragmatic viewpoint, photo books need a number of elements in order to make them work as an object in their own right, or indeed give succinct reason to why they are presented in such a way. The work inside the book should be able to work as a ‘concise world’ (Gossage, 2002) as well as be complimented by intricate and detailed design decisions to encourage an ongoing interest. After beginning my research into this area, I began to think about what it was about photo books that I loved and why I was insistent on presenting both my photography and collage work (Ducks Nanny, Paradise, Garden Book Club) in such a way, right from the making stages.

Photography viewed in galleries excites me, but at the same time is a little daunting. It seems almost too serious to have your work framed and placed in an empty white space. When visiting shows, I more often than not get annoyed with my own reflection in the frame glass whilst attempting to press my nose up to seek out detail. Photo books do not fill me with this annoyance or feeling of daunt. More often than not the extra detail (or no detail, in some cases) presents me with new information about the ideas of the photographer and how they really want to show off their work. Colour choices, images, text all play an extra part in the photos that are offered up in a photo book. Photography is a mass medium, and one that is exploited each and every day. Photo books manage to carry this mass medium at the same time as embracing both technical and aesthetical aspects of the character. They are tactile objects designed for handling, for owning, for putting on your shelf and reading for reference whenever you see fit. This separates exhibition and publication for me- as nice as seeing shows is, I always want to take them home and remember them forever. Ask me about a show I didn’t manage to get the catalogue for… I won’t be able to tell you much about it. You are encouraged to handle photo books (how else would you read them?) something highly frowned upon in the gallery setting, where barriers or glass often set you apart from the work.

Through my exploration of the history of the photo book as an object, I found that artists in the 20th century embraced cheaply made, easily distributed photo books as a way to free themselves from the ‘deadening of museum culture’, a trend that has continued on and has become an option for replacement of the standard photography show. Photo books can be seen to bridge the gap between the aesthetic and the contextual, linking art directly with the mass medium.

Most contemporary photographers use both exhibition and photo book (of some description, whether it be catalogue, zine, magazine or artist book) to disseminate their work and ideas. At some point in the making of a project, they will ask the question of book or wall, when considering the execution of it overall. In a field where there are countless outputs for work, the final outcome will affect the making of the work to some degree, with photographers gearing their style and project towards huge mural style prints, or using lo-fi technologies with the intention of photocopying their prints into a limited run zine, Daido Moriyama style (Tate, 2012). By deciding these factors, practitioners are also affecting what type of work it will be, whether it will be geared towards a high end commercial gallery or unlimited fertility through production of a book.

The collage work I am producing at the moment begs the question of display. Printed too big, the work becomes advertising. Printed too small, the technical aspects of the pieces are sometimes lost. I have always enjoyed the transferability of a book: between people, between places and making people talk. Presenting my photographic practice as exhibition has always posed issues, as I feel the actual outcome never really meets the expectation of desired outcome in my mind, whether it is due to financial or space restrictions, or time restraints imposed by deadlines. As aforementioned, photos can often be lost as singular images (although sometimes their effect is more powerful alone) and by presenting my current practice as a photo book; it becomes a much more strong and constructed project as a whole. In previous blog posts I have discussed my work being more concerned with the process than the outcome, and by producing a photo book I have managed to encompass both elements by being entirely in control throughout, and being satisfied with the outcome at last.

Badger, G., Parr., M. (2004). The Photobook: A History volume I. London: Phaidon Press.

Gossage, J. (2002). As cited in Parr, M., Badger, G., (2004) The Photobook: A History volume I. London: Phaidon Press.

Prins, R. (1969) In conversation with Cas Oorthuys, quoted in Bloom, M., Suermondt, R., (2002) Photography Between the Covers: The Dutch Documentary Photo Book After 1945. Fragment Uitgeverij: Amsterdam

Tate Gallery (2012) Daido Moriyama Printing Show. [online] http://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-modern/music-and-live-performance/daido-moriyama-printing-show accessed 6th May

Ways of Remembering

| Meg

Berger (1978) begins his essay Ways of Remembering by examining what was before photography. He concludes his examination with the answer of the faculty of memory. I struggle to remember a time where the world I live in wasn’t recorded through a camera. I expressed myself through the designated arts curriculum at school, but often made photographs at home without really thinking too much about it. This was growing up in the 1990’s where photography was most definitely the norm and very much embedded within the family home. He talks about a photograph as a trace of a memory, it only holding whatever the lens captures at that very second, a set of appearances. There is no background to the image, as with memory. Memory fails to examine the events around a particular event, just a set of appearances, just like the camera (you probably never imagine what is set up behind the photographer, or slightly left of the frame, do you?) Berger goes on by looking at the usability of photography and why it is so popular. He states:

The photograph offers a set of appearances prised away from their context and therefore their meaning, because meaning is always a question of process- meaning lies in narrative, meaning is born out of development and process.

This particular thought made me consider my collage works. I often find it difficult to express any type of meaning or reasoning to why they were made. Why did I choose that particular book, to cut out that image of that particular houseplant and pair it with a black and white image of a woman with a considerable amount of pubic hair? I have no hidden narrative in creating this collage, no moral to convey to an audience, so perhaps the lack of meaning is born out of the process itself. I am removing it by overworking it. Collage is prising photographs even further away from their original context. I am taking photographs of which I have no idea on their original existence, I know nothing about the woman with the pubic hair, and I know nothing about the house in which the houseplant is kept. These images are then cut, thus removing any remaining meaning and context they were holding onto, and pasted into a mixture of other appearances, finishing with a transparent image with no attached meaning.  This transparency leads to a communication with my audience. I don’t need a meaning or a message to communicate with an audience, just the practice itself. The ‘violence’ of process as Berger puts it, destroys meaning. In relation to this point, I looked at the featured image of this post in more detail. A plant of some description, placed on a modern surface. To me, that plant holds resonance, a reminder of a trip somewhere, a fun day where that plant stopped me in my tracks in order to record its very being. An exact recording of an event, yet it holds no relevance to anyone except me, or perhaps anyone who shared my fondness it for it whilst visiting the National Media Museum. A viewer can then attach their own meaning to it, as mine is completely removed in the eyes of a new audience. The violence continues, in the public photograph severed from life when it was taken. By discovering this, I have relaxed the boundaries I had imposed on myself for making work in a particular way, and in turn been a lot happier and a lot more confident in the results.

Berger metaphorically compares the systematic use of photography with the all-seeing eye, which saw to judge. The recording of all events judges nothing, yet they still exist to do so. This thought made me question why I photograph the everyday in such a banal and unorganised fashion. Do I record unconscious thoughts around me in order to forget? To take in every event and discard the ones I don’t wish to store photographically and mentally? I link this idea back to the notion that we are no longer living in the now, but actually more obsessed with living in the past or future. Mass consumption of imagery has provided us with a basis where we shoot now, and look later. A time starved generation that are conditioned to believe they cannot live in the now.

Photographs can have context created for them, and in turn achieve their purpose. Berger states that the better than photograph, the fuller the context that can be created. The photographs I use were not taken by me; does this mean they are void of context? I believe it may be the case in the first instance, as the imagery is in fact not my own. In choosing that particular image however, brings it into a new context, a new meaning by curating this tiny little exhibition of existing visual culture every time the glue dries on a page.

Berger, J. (1978). as cited in  Evans, J. (1997) The camerawork essays, context and meaning in photography. New York University Press: New York.

Camera Work

| Meg

In the introduction to The Camerawork Essays (1997), an article from the magazine written by Susan Sontag (1974) is quoted:

 

A capitalist society requires a culture based on images, it needs to furnish vast amounts of entertainment in order to stimulate buying and anaesthetise the injuries of class, race and sex… The camera’s twin capacities, to subjectivise reality and objectify it, ideally serves these needs and strengthens them. Cameras define reality in two ways essential to the workings of an advanced industrial society; as a spectacle (for masses) and as an object of surveillance (for rulers). The production of images also furnishes a ruling ideology. Social change is replaced by a change in images. The freedom to consume a plurality of images and goods is equated with freedom itself.

 

After reading this quote, I began to try and use it as a lens through which to examine my own practice. In particular I wanted to ask the question: whether or not I consider my photographic practice to be defining reality as a spectacle or as a tool for surveillance? At present, my photographic practice is mainly collage. This is due to the fact I was becoming dissatisfied with the photographic results of a good (good in my head anyway) idea and months of planning. I was unable to communicate effectively with the results. I have however, carried on shooting images whenever I see fit to do so.  One of the main reasons of my dissatisfaction is the constant pressure for an image to look a particular way, or fit into an ideal photographic trend at that time; and being familiar with specialist publications and exhibitions, I began the inevitable comparisons to canonical photographers. Through collage, the photographs I use had already been taken and published (spectacle-for the masses) yet I am making choices to reshape their original use to convey them in a new way, in a new era. In so doing I recontextualise the image, giving it new meaning. Is this considered as surveillance of past era through the reexamination of existing culture, or still for the masses, in this case, the audience that will view my practice.? I am still inclined to go with the latter, as I am striving to produce new things for an audience, not with the intention to analyse their original context or purpose.

 

The freedom Sontag mentions in the quote is a capitalist freedom- a freedom to consume images and goods. I question whether this is a healthy freedom, or whether my idea of freedom fits into this particular ideology Sontag sets out? This article was written in 1974- a time where imagery was restricted to print and display. The freedom of consuming images takes a very different stance when thinking of it in the now, a time where the Internet produces hundreds of thousands of images every day. Has this freedom Sontag talked of become greed? Or is the meaning of the image completely lost through this mass consumption? It restricts me more artistically than providing a photographic freedom to share and connect. The sheer amount of photographs available in today’s society is almost unbearable to think about, with artists and photographers having to shout louder than ever before in order to get work noticed amongst the sea of amateurs and budding professionals. It has forced me to back out of the entire process. This pollution of imagery has been brought about for a number of reasons. Sharing images has never had so many platforms- most social media sites have the ability to upload photographs, as so specialist sites such as Flickr and Instagram. There is an abundance of image making technologies available, spreading far and wide, with a huge majority of people owning a smartphone containing a high resolution digital camera, giving them the capability to shoot and upload anywhere and at any time.  What effect does this have on the artist or photographer trying to penetrate such a crowded image bubble? It is a particular issue for me, as I feel particularly alienated by the whole thing. It has meant a clear rise in the popularity of the printed photo book, with artists and photographers rebelling against the pollution of images by organizing book launches with limited copies available to collectors and likeminded people. Photo ‘zines have also seen a rise in popularity, giving a cheaper and quicker alternative for artists to display their work in a more lasting and effective manner. The reasons for my backing out are simple- I need to separate my practice from the abundance of imagery that is available, in order to give it chance to communicate with an audience in the intended way. If my work is uploaded and left, I have no control over reproduction, quality or layout if the work was to be then used elsewhere. I am a huge believer in experiencing the now, rather than digitally recording for later. I interpret this as visiting a space with work on offer to view, to converse about, rather than to fall into a sea of flat imagery that will quickly be forgotten. Although this all sounds quite negative, overall I think it is a good thing for the artist. It makes me work harder to go around the norm of sharing online, and makes me think a lot more about how my work can be presented or published in an alternative way.

 

Shooting with analogue techniques, I am less than hasty to start plastering my photographs all over the Internet, due to the original intention of the technique used. I have purposely chosen to use a film based technology, so creating digital images from my work is nearly always a documentation tool rather than overall creation of the document itself. However, when creating collages, I still have the compulsion to share them instantly. I cannot work out why this is just yet either. It may be the fact that the majority of imagery shared on websites is generally not collage- therefore I do not face such a drowning effect as I do with my photographs. In John Berger’s (1978) Ways of Remembering examines the private and the public photograph. The private being a photograph that continues to hold its context in the same way it was taken, and the public photograph being one that is disassociated completely with the time in which it was captured.  Sharing my photographs freely changes their usage dramatically. I have no control over how people view them- making their context invalid at time of viewing. Swirling the Internet, images become hugely isolated from not only their original concept, but often the photographer who held that concept.

 

Evans (1997) goes on to talk about the cultural strain that photography quickly came to experience, for having access to making beautiful photographs of the everyday simply wasn’t enough. It quickly was becoming embedded within the everyday, and now it is difficult to comprehend a time when a person with a camera wasn’t the norm. The portrait became a way we established ourselves as people, and ‘posing’ to capture your best traits was completely routine. I likened this to the now, in the way of the ‘selfie’. A Facebook generation is growing up with a set of beliefs that encompass taking instant digital bizarre angled photographs of themselves to present their personalities on the Internet. It is a far call from the beautiful organised portraits that would be printed and hold pride of place in the home. Evans talks about the set of conditions that different categories of photographers impose on themselves, whether you class yourself as an amateur, a fine art photographer, or a photojournalist. These labels dictate the work the photographer produces, and somewhat restricts their artistic output. Here, I penciled in the margin- what label and what conditions do I live by as a photographer? I hoped I didn’t do these things, but I quickly realised I did and was guilty of stereotyping and judging other categories. Having had a ‘fine art photography’ education, I class myself to be included in this category. What conditions does this mean I live by though; surely a fine art photographer is unrestricted in their work? For me, it means I search for context within my photographs, construct them with thought and try and produce meaningful work in series. I take inspiration from existing artists and photographers and try and avoid editing my images to keep them as ‘honest’ as possible. By exploring this, I have rapidly realised how restrictive this is to my work and probably how it has come to a huge stand still, as I am living to unreasonable boundaries limiting my creative process, and therefore limiting me as photographer.

 

Berger, J. (1978). as cited in  Evans, J. (1997) The camerawork essays, context and meaning in photography. New York University Press: New York.

Evans, J. (1997) The camerawork essays, context and meaning in photography. New York University Press: New York.

Sontag, S. (1974) as cited in  Evans, J. (1997) The camerawork essays, context and meaning in photography. New York University Press: New York.