Collaboration project final images

These are the final images produced for the Week 4 collaborative project with Julie Dawn Dennis and Michael Turner. We each contributed images and the composites, each of which contain at least one image from each member of the team, were created using Photoshop. There’s a description of the motivation for the project, the process and source material here. My personal reflections are here and some of the images I contributed are here. The inital inspiration for the project came from the work of Susan Derges.

 

 

Images for collaborative project

Each member of the team for the collaborative project created source material images from which to construct the composites. One of our themes was the relationship between nature and self, and we initially intended to create an imaginary place from images from our own locale. We also wanted to experiment with forms of image making. For five of these images, I shot into pieces of wood and tiles that had been painted in black gloss (inspired by the work of Jorma Puranen).

 

Triptych

Exploring how I can get different forms of images to work together. In each case the central image is predominantly text or diagram (though, in the graffiti, for instance, there are both textual and diagrammatic elements, but maybe not immediately perceived as such).

(Re)visiting Roding Valley Park

Following discussion with Paul, Vincent and Clive in the Webinar last week (Friday 15th), I took at couple of trips back to Roding Valley Park (henceforth RVP). The  images present here focus on the creation of public spaces beneath the roads. I have incorporated found objects, maps and texts, and paid attention to the interface between the concrete (purposefully altered by humans with graffiti) and the relatively neglected natural environment (incidentally altered by humans). I am trying to convey as sense of the place in the daytime. There are technical and visual issues to be addressed (for instance, around lighting and dynamic range). I’ll follow up to explore in different lighting conditions. I have also made binaural audio recordings which I want to incorporate alongside the text and images. The sound from the roads is a key a feature of the experience of the spaces explored. I am also experimenting with the presentation of the images in triptych form to try to explore the play between text and image, regulation and disorder, human activity and environment.

The seduction of the sublime

It’s my last day in Newcastle this year. I took a cycle ride around the harbour at sunrise – the first day for a while that it hasn’t been overcast and/or raining. Unable to resist taking photos, against every intention. Such is the seduction of the sublime. Whatever, I’m going to miss this in Ilford … Watch this space for a conceptual turn.

 

Newcastle Beach Ocean Pool

I work in Newcastle one to two months a year. If I can, I try to swim in the Ocean Pool two or three times a week, usually in the morning. Not possible this year, but I thought I’d take a few photographs after work. The day/night transition was forced – it’s winter and it gets dark at around 6.00 pm.  Weather and time allowing, I’ll explore some more. And, maybe, at Mereweather just along the coast – the largest Ocean Pool in the Southern Hemisphere.

Roding Valley Park

This ‘park’ comprises of interconnected, overgrown and largely neglected spaces running alongside and beneath three major roads in East London. Daytime activities are mundane, nighttime activities furtive. A defining feature, and a key challenge in giving a sense of the place, is the noise from the roads, which, resisting visual and material boundaries, sweeps across the surrounding urban areas. My intention is to explore the relationship between visual, audio and textual (re)presentations in conveying a sense of place and the transition/transformation from day to night. Initial images are relatively banal.

A possible direction for development is to place work from this context alongside subsequent studies of similar ‘non-places’ and ‘edgelands’ in other places where I currently work: Singapore (where these spaces are developed by the post-colonial state as ‘green connectors’ for exercise, leisure and urban farming) and Australia (where colonial overwriting of traditional conceptions of land, access and ownership is opposed by Aboriginal communities). The very different conceptions of space of the government in Singapore and Aboriginal people in Australia both present a fundamental challenge to practice and discourse relating to public space in the UK.

Singapore Street Portraits

These images are from a 2017 project exploring moments of quiet and introspection in the densely populated high tech city-state of Singapore. Focusing on the busiest central business and retail areas, some also capture moments of anxiety. This was my first attempt at this kind of street portraiture. Whilst instructive, it reinforced my concern about the convert, and potentially dis-empowering and intrusive, nature of this approach. Future work of this kind would be more collaborative. I’m posting these to explore use of galleries in this blogging environment.