Understanding Visual Culture

I sent my last assignment to my tutor today which marks the (almost) end of my journey with DPP. In celebration (!) I have enrolled on my next and last level 1 course, Understanding Visual Culture. This marks a major departure for me as the course is purely academic and theory based. At this point in my development however I feel I need to kick start my theoretical knowledge. Also, because the course requires a great deal of research and writing I hope to become more comfortable and disciplined about putting my thoughts down in writing. I feel excited and motivated by the final flurry of activity I have experienced completing DPP....hopefully I will be able to sustain this through the course.

UVC Blog

Assignment 5: Personal Project

“What the Photograph reproduces to infinity has occurred only once: the Photograph mechanically repeats what could never be repeated existentially.” 

Roland Barthes, 'Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography'

Unlike other assignments, notably assignment 2, I have known for a long time what subject I would tackle for the final assignment of the course. I was inspired by an article in the March 2013 edition of 'The British Journal of Photography' about photography in children's books particularly reading about Alec Soth and his collaborations with his own children. I thought this would be a fun way to end the course to do this myself and for months have talked to my three children about producing a story book together. We discussed the story, the look and I encouraged them to write scripts and story board. Then at the time we started shooting the images and experimenting with Photoshop things changed because my Grandmother passed away suddenly.

The practicalities of dealing with a family members death took up the majority of my spare time and I was not in the right frame of mind to work on the storybook. On an evening I found myself thinking through memories of my Grandmother and considering the relationship we had. I had been asked to speak at the funeral and was finding coming up with something extremely difficult, I found myself facing complex emotions when thinking about my grandmother, not all of them positive and this played heavily on me. I started looking through old photographs on my computer which dated back as far as 2002 when I got my first digital camera. I started looking for prints from earlier than this but could not put my hand on any although I knew they packed away in the house somewhere. I asked my mother to do the same and she had a similar problem, however, she did manage to find around 50 prints and I found myself viewing these in a much different way now that my grandmother had passed. The photographs carried an emotional charge for me and I found myself drawn to images that I probably would have discounted earlier. The majority of pictures were 'badly' composed or had exposure problems, I found myself looking closer at a number of pictures on my computer that had not made it into my selects when I first edited them. Why was this? Was it because I was looking at the photographs through the prism of grief or had my way of seeing altered in recent months? I was certainly aware that I was becoming more interested in less conventional approaches to image making but how much of an effect had this had on me? Typical with family snapshots a lot of the images were posed and taken on special occasions - birthdays, Christmas, weddings. I realised that I was attracted to the more natural looking pictures, they seemed to show more truth (as I understood it) because often the people in them were unaware of being photographed or had not been given time to put up there defences, pose and smile.

In a strange coincidence I had also recently finished reading Roland Barthes 'Camera Lucida' after being encouraged to do so by my tutor. The book had sat on my shelf for some time and I had mentioned to my tutor that I was trying to build up the courage to tackle it, his comment was that although Barthes could be "prickly" in places it was worth persevering with. My first impression was that the book was much different than I expected - I did not think the tone would be so personal and I found myself engaged. The writing felt accessible but poetic and dense at the same time. Sometimes I found myself understanding exactly what Barthes was asserting and at others I was perplexed. I realised quickly that the book was something I would need to come back to many times again to gain a complete understanding and allowed the words to seep over me. The sections that deal with the death of Barthes mother and his search for her essence in old photographs struck a chord with me but I did not expect to be doing the same thing myself - not that I did this with images of my Grandma in a conscious way, it just seemed to happen. Without really realising what I was doing I had collected a number of images together, I found the process comforting. I then began to wonder if I would do anything with the pictures, I would probably have some new prints made I thought. I cannot exactly remember when I decided I would use some of these images for this assignment rather than make the photobook with my children that I had long planned to do. It just suddenly seemed like the right thing to do - I felt compelled to produce something, maybe it was the feeling that the act of doing this would be some sort of catharsis. As I have discussed throughout the course, particularly in relation to assignments, I am often full of self doubt and have to really push myself at times to produce the work for the course. I would say I am a private person and certainly not someone that would turn the camera on themselves in the way Nan Goldin does, certainly none of the work I have produced for any of my OCA courses has been about me, and here I was about to produce something completely personal without a shred of self doubt - quite the opposite, I would say I was compelled to do it.

I remembered about 'The Dad Project'  by Briony Campbell which was a work that had a tremendous effect on me when I came across it some time ago. I identified with it because I went through a similar situation watching my Grandfather slowly die six years ago. The thing that impressed me most was how personal the piece was and how Campbell used the project to deal with the grief of her father dying from cancer. The project is harrowing and does not shy from the grim reality of the situation and yet is also uplifting. The final image is of Campbell as a child wearing her Dad's coat, shoes and hat and is a poignant and fitting conclusion. The captions work in harmony with the images and read more like diary entries rather than explanations of what is happening in the photographs which is fitting since the piece is in itself a diary of her Dad dying. My opinion of captioning images has been changing of late, previously I believed captions should be brief and not influence the viewer into how they should read and image. Now I am beginning to understand how words can and images can work together to enrich the viewing experience rather than detract. I recently visited an exhibition by Lorna Simpson and who uses writing extensively in her work to great effect, the words do not lead the viewer about what to think but rather enable you to question what it is you are viewing. For example, one work 'The Car' (1995) the reading of the piece is transformed by the words which accompany it, the scene changes from a seemingly innocent even boring view to take on a charged, illicit and seedy feel.

So now I had an idea of what I wanted to do, I photographed the prints I had been given by my mother and began the selection process. Unlike other times when I have selected images I was unconcerned about composition and exposure, in fact, in hindsight I probably selected some images because they were issues with them. My only guide to selection was that something should be in the pictures to prick my attention. I then wrote a short a few sentences to go with each image. I did not really know what I would write but I found the process to happen quickly and organically, some words were from the eulogy others were thoughts I had in my mind but had not been able to articulate aloud. I wanted the words to sit alongside the images but when I did this the text seemed at odds with the photographs. Intuitively I copied and flipped the photographs before lowering the opacity by 50% and overlaying the text. For me this adds an element of distance between the viewer and the pictures, you are made aware that what you are  looking at has been selected for a particular effect. Flipping the images is also slightly off putting, I find myself looking between the images and being made explicitly aware that this is a picture I am viewing; a representation rather than a truth.

Finishing writing about this assignment I feel a sense of conflict that on the one hand I am glad this is what I chose to do and on the other I have gone too far out on a limb. It is completely outside of my comfort zone to produce work like this and I doubt I would have been able to do this at any other time because of how close it was to my Grandmas passing. I am shocked at how compelled I was do this and the sense of drive I had - this is not a typical feeling, usually I find bringing everything together a long, drawn out process. And yet, with this project which is deeply personal to me I found the images and words coming together quickly and organically. Truthfully, I am far too close to the subject matter to be objective and I am unsure of how the images will be read. I hope it will be seen as being genuine and heartfelt but worry it is maybe too indulgent and sentimental, Barthes never shows the reader the 'Winter Garden Photograph' the photograph of his mother in which he found her "essence" and discusses at length in 'Camera Lucida' he says, "it exists only for me. For you it would be nothing but an indifferent picture." A sobering thought as I send this assignment in, I guess only time will enable me to look back and decide whether the images here have any meaning for anyone but myself.