Category: Coursework

It won’t be a surprise to anyone who has read my earlier posts that I’m going to rule out the achievement of objectivity (though not, necessarily, the seemingly enduring, constantly thwarted, human desire for objectivity/truth). All our knowledge of and engagement with the world is mediated (we know the world through our somewhat idiosyncratic, unreliable and partial senses (and our culturally coded interpretation of those sensations), and we convey and explore that knowledge and understanding through words, sounds, actions, images and other means, each of which adds its own texture to what we are attempting to (re)present. So the issue for me isn’t whether an image, for instance, is subjective or not, but rather how it is subjective, and to what effect. And, of course, as artists we can, and many do, use images to explore our own subjectivity. Through these explorations, and through dialogue, interaction and engagement with others, we construct and reconstruct what we take collectively to be true. As research by Dan Kahan and colleagues indicates (for instance, Kahan et al, 2017), it is curiosity not certain knowledge that enables us to remain open to other perspectives and remain open and dynamic in our interaction with others.

‘individuals who have an appetite to be surprised by scientific information—who find it pleasurable to discover that the world does not work as they expected—do not turn this feature of their personality off when they engage political information but rather indulge it in that setting as well, exposing themselves more readily to information that defies their expectations about facts on contested issues. The result is that these citizens, unlike their less curious counterparts, react more open mindedly and respond more uniformly across the political spectrum to the best available evidence’ (Kahan et al, 2017: 198).

The point in relation to the topic of this discussion is that, even in disciplines in which expectations of certain knowledge are high (science), the ability to accommodate uncertainty, the unresolved, the inexplicable and the open-ended (all issues that have been raised in relation to constructed images in photographic art) has positive effects. In the interests of getting this post done, I’ll explore relevant images and post these in the version in my CRJ as soon as I get time.

I think it goes without saying that, from this and previous posts, the context in which an image is circulated and read will influence how an image is interpreted, and will shape the particular interest that the reader has in the image. In my own work I am moving to use a variety of modes of (re)presentation and engagement, and the settings/contexts in which this work is presented is paramount.

I’m just reading George Szirtes’s (2019) The Photographer at Sixteen, which recontextualises family photographs in a narrative which moves from his mother’s death back through her life, creating complexes of meaning in their relationship to his text.

References

Kahan, D, Landrum, A., Carpenter, K., Helft, L. & Jamieson, K.H. 2017. ‘Science Curiosity and Political Information Processing’, Advances in Political Psychology, 38(1), 179-199.

George Szirtes, G. 2019. The Photographer at Sixteen. London: MacLehose Press.

If we accept the proposition that the meaning is created in the reading of the text/image (a key premise of semiotics and phenomenology) then it is not tenable to think of a photograph as lying. As Richard Rorty, like Peirce grounded in American pragmatism, but with a dusting of late Wittgenstein and continental philosophy, states:

‘Truth cannot be out there—cannot exist independently of the human mind—because sentences cannot so exist, or be out there. The world is out there, but descriptions of the world are not. Only descriptions of the world can be true or false. The world on its own—unaided by the describing activities of humans—cannot.’ (1989: 5)

Of course, photographers can construct images with the intention of deceiving, and others can use images for purposes for which they were not intended. This aspect of human agency relates not to epistemology (what counts as truth) but to ethics.

The disqualification of Jose Luis Rodriguez from the 2009 Wildlife Photographer of the Year award is grounded not in the artifice of the image but in the (knowing or unknowing) breaking of the (tacit or explicit) rules of the game: it is not that the photograph lies, but that the photographer transgresses in depicting a trained rather than wild animal.

If the making of meaning lies ultimately with the reader, then the maker will seek more effective modes of transmission (if they have a message to convey, or an intention to realise). And photography will constantly thwart the desire for a neutral relay (as all modes of communication must, but the disappointment in photography’s failure is amplified by the anticipation of indexicality). Construction can act as a means to enhance the possibility of the achievement of intention. Jeff Wall’s reconstruction of a fleeting observation in ‘Mimic’ amplifies a passing racist gesture.

Jeff Wall, Mimic, 1982.

Peter Kennard, through the use of montage (the most overt form of construction, maybe), sees himself as ‘researching reality’ which ‘involves ripping photographs out of their context to bring the perpetrators of war and poverty slap bang into the same space as their victims’ (Kennard in Read and Simmons, p.vii), thus challenging the viewer in their meaning making.

Peter Kennard, Prevent Street Crime, 1983.

These, and the constructions featured in the presentation, create scenarios designed to enhance the engagement of the viewer through a variety of means (for instance, incongruity within the image, resonance and dissonance, the evocation of the uncanny, the exploration of the imaginary). They are fictions in that any two dimensional rendering of the world at a moment of time in a particular material or digital form is a fiction, with variation in the strength, quality and integrity of intention, awaiting reanimation through the engagement of the viewer.

In my own image making I tend to seek incongruity, in the ironic juxtaposition of the natural and the human, for instance.

Or rendering settings in unfamiliar or incongruous modes (the coal port as romantic seascape).

Or through the juxtaposition of images in grids, triptychs or other configurations. All constructions and fictions of sorts; small steps on the way to enhancing the potential of the images to focus and amplify meaning through the engagement of the reader, with a long way to go.

References

Rorty, R. 1989. Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Read, M. & Simmons, S. 2016. Photographers and Research: The role of research in contemporary photographic practice. London: Routledge.

How I address the questions posed for independent reflection depends of which aspect of my photographic practice I take as a principal focus (given that my project proposal has three distinct forms of image making). Over the past week I have had the opportunity to gain insight into the lifeworlds of others through their own images (at the Shed Life meeting). Interpretation of these is predicated upon the co-creation of a shared context and language. It also requires a creation of mode of communication of the outcomes that is mutually comprehensible, and accessible to an audience. These kinds of images do not speak for themselves, but rather give us insight into a lifeworld, to be mediated by not just images but also different levels of accounts, from different perspectives. In this context, the image acts as something to talk about. The image being held by one of the group members below shows (according to him) his wife, who died in 2014, and himself at home at Christmas. Irrespective of what it might be taken to represent or authenticate, or how if might be read semiotically by another viewer, in this context it acts as an artifact, with strong emotional charge, to talk about and stimulate dialogue.

The images produced for the second level of the project (co-created images for campaigning) are read in very different contexts (public rather than intimate, for instance) and provoke a very different type of interaction. Likewise, my own personal image making is read in very different contexts (including the pedagogic context of a higher degree programme), with very different forms of dialogue about and interpretation of the images.

One major development this week is advancement of my thinking about photographic images as artifacts, provoked by visiting the UCL museums, collections and galleries with students, and thinking about ways of writing about images (including fictional accounts and imaginings of the ‘life-course’ or trajectories of the objects: I’m reminded of Tim Hunkin’s ‘Secret Life of …’ series, and Cornelia Parker’s work focusing on Freud’s chair, and Peter Stallybrass’s (1998) piece ‘Marx’s Coat’).

Cornelia Parker, Marks made by Freud, Subconsciously (macrophotograph of the seat of Freud’s chair), 2000

The lecture by Helen Chatterjee on the ‘Psycho-social significance of objects’, and the accompanying paper (Solway et al, 2017) which surveys research into the different ways objects have been used in interventions relating to, for instance, physical well-being, mental health and homelessness, has given me a range of ways of thinking about the use of images as artifacts (as well as images of artifacts). I’ll explore this over coming weeks. It also relates to my deeper engagement with the work of Cornelia Parker. As she notes in her interview at the Bethlem Museum of the Mind, her own work pays particular attention to the qualities of the materials and objects with which she works, noting that Marcel Duchamp ‘annexed objects in order to convey meaning’.

The focus of the relationship between people and objects, and the use of images as objects, enables me to relate my photographic practice both to other areas of artistic practice and to discourse and practice in other disciplines, in the humanities, natural sciences and social sciences, and in particular areas that, in recent years, have taken a ‘material turn’.

References

Parker, C. 2018. Objects of Obsession. Interview at Bethel Museum of the Mind, London. Video available at https://museumofthemind.org.uk/objects-of-obsession [accessed 08.02.19].

Solway, R. et al. 2017. ‘Material objects and psychological theory : A conceptual literature review’, Arts & Health, 8(1):82–101.

Stallybrass, P. 1998. ‘Marx’s Coat’. In P. Spyer (ed.) Border fetishisms: material objects in unstable spaces. New York: Routledge, 187–207.

‘The poverty of photographic criticism is well known. It stands out against the richness of photographic production and invention, the widespread use and enjoyment of photographs, and even the popularity of photography as a hobby. To end this poverty we do not need more philosophizing about photographs and reality, or yet another (this time definitive) definition of “photographic seeing,” or yet another distillation of photography’s essence or nature. The tools for making sense of photographs lie at hand, and we can invent more if and when we really need them’. (Snyder and Allen, 1975: 169).

I’m certainly in sympathy with the conclusions drawn by Snyder and Allen. In scrutinising what might be considered distinctive about the analysis of photographic images, they argue that there are questions that can be asked of any photographic image that are specifically photographic (relating, for instance, to the technicalities of the production of the image) and generic (questions that can be asked of any artifact, for instance relating to its use within a specific context, or its aesthetic qualities). In the concluding paragraph, above, they shift the responsibility, or at least the locus, for analysis away from the other disciplines and practices which happen take photography as an object, and place it within the field of photography itself.

Coming to photography, as an academic field, from another field (sociology), I’ve been surprised that intellectual canon is dominated by texts produced by people with little enthusiasm for or affiliation to photography. The highly personal nature of Barthes’ (1981) Camera Lucida, and the consequently idiosyncratic and backward looking choice of photographic work, obscures the greater contribution that, for instance, his semiotic concept of myth (Barthes, 2009; first published in French in 1957) might make to analysis. Sontag (1977; 2003), similarly, takes photography as an (arbitrary) instance of cultural practice, and produces an analytic account which, it could be argued, sits outside, and is sceptical of, photographic practice (which is wide-ranging, complex and evolving). Derrida, who has also written specifically about photographs and photography (eg. Derrida, 2010) exemplifies the issue.

‘It is true that only words interest me. It is true, for reasons that have to do in part with my own history and archaeology, that my investment in language is stronger, older, and gives me more enjoyment than my investment in the plastic, visual, or spatial arts’. (1990 interview with Peter Brunette and David Wills, quoted by Gerhard Richter in Derrida, 2010: xvi).

Like Barthes, and Sontag, and others who have come to constitute the, somewhat masochistic, canon of photographic cultural theory and analysis, Derrida’s principal interests, and affiliations, lie elsewhere. And hence, their analytic engagement with photography is opportunistic and partial, and lacks commitment to the development of a strong, conceptually sophisticated, field of photographic theory and analysis. This lies at the heart of the ‘poverty of photographic criticism’ identified by Snyder and Allen, and their claim that we should invest less time in agonising over questions of ‘photographs and reality’, and desist from taking up the concerns of, for instance, philosophers for whom photography is an apposite example deployed in pursuit of a broader set of questions and interests. Rather, we should celebrate the complexity of photographic practice and collaboratively draw on the wealth of cross-disciplinary theory and empirical research, not just that which names photography as an object, to push forward our understanding of photography and enrich and advance our practice (as Mick has done by drawing on the organisational learning theory of Chris Argyris and Donald Schön (for instance, Argyris, 1993; Argyris and Schön, 1996), in his CRJ post on for this activity). This enables us to take greater control of photographic discourse, form inter-disciplinary partnerships, respond to challenges and opportunities presented from within and outside the field and develop more constructive and dynamic relationship between theory and practice (praxis).

My own theoretical roots lie in the post-structuralism of Foucault, De Certeau and Derrida, the sociology of Bernstein and Bourdieu, and the socio-cognitive theory of Vygotsky and Luria. In addressing the development of my own photographic practice in this programme, my thinking has taken a more materialist turn, mirrored in an interest in the use of photography by multi-disciplinary artists, such as Cornelia Parker and Danny Treacy.

Parker explores the qualities of materials in the making of images, and reflects the breadth of interests, vision and experimental orientation (embracing theory, empirical investigation and serendipity) of the pioneers of photography, such as Fox Talbot.

Treacy describes himself as an ‘artist working with photography, incorporating elements of sculpture, performance and exploration’. His image making encompasses urban anthropology and the making of artifacts with found objects and materials. He emphasises the process of creation of art works, which convey a strong sense of entanglement in the world (rather than any attempt to represent). He explores marginal urban places, similar to the settings I explored in the first module.

Both explore the ‘peculiar’ nature, or affordances, of photographic image making. I’m hoping, over the course of the module, to extend my own practice in this direction.

References

Argyris, C. 1993. On Organizational Learning. Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell.

Argyris, C. and Schön, D.A. 1996. Organizational Learning II: Theory, Method and Practice. Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley.

Barthes, R. 1981. Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography. Translated by R. Howard. London: Vintage.

Barthes, R. 2009. Mythologies. Translated by A. Lavers. Revised edition. London: Vintage.

Derrida, J. 2010. Copy, Archive, Signature: A Conversation on Photography. Edited with an Introduction by Gerhard Richter. Translated by Jeff Fort. Stanford Calif.: Stanford University Press.

Sontag, S. 1977. On Photography. London: Penguin Books.

Sontag, S. 2003. Regarding the Pain of Others. New York: Picador.

Snyder, J. and Allen, N. W. 1975. ‘Photography, Vision, and Representation’, Critical Inquiry. 2(1): 143–169.

‘In the Photograph, the power of authentication exceeds the power of representation’ (Barthes, 1981: 89)

Barthes appears to be acknowledging here that, whilst meaning is produced in the reading of the text/image, different modes (the photographic image in this case) have different meaning potentials. Ascribing ‘power’ to the image (an inert object that is brought to life, or not, by human agents in its use and reading in a particular context) seems to be misplaced (it might be a mis-translation, I suppose, or just a careless, or personal rather than general, use of the term). If meaning is created in reading, then any potential (to be read as authenticating or representing) must have social or cultural roots – the potential cannot be materially inherent in the image (in the same way that the meaning potential of a word cannot be inherent in its sound, a fundamental principle of the structural linguistics on which Barthes’ work is founded). Barthes’ account is of its time and highly personal. Mythologies (Barthes, 2009) gives a clearer sense of the value of Bathes semiotic analysis, by presenting a number of virtuoso analyses followed by an exposition of his method; Camera Lucida (Barthes, 1981), in contrast, principally gives us insight into Barthes as a reader of photographic images, at a particular point in both his own biography and at a particular moment in the social and technological history of image making and cultural analysis.

As other’s have pointed out, claims that photographs authenticate (this image presents evidence of, or a trace of, the existence of the object) or represent (this image stands for the object) are equally compromised. Barthes, and others, effectively address representation. The prevalence, and cultural acceptance, of CGI and digitally altered images (in western cultures – we should keep in mind differences in the status of photographic images in other cultures, for instance the taboo on photographic images of the dead in Australian aboriginal cultures) raises questions about the potential of photography to authenticate.

As image makers, we are also readers of our own (and others’) images, but with the agency to shape the form and content of our images, and some of the contexts in which they will appear. So we produce and position our images in full knowledge of the fragility of realisation of our intentions in the ultimate readings of the image, alongside an understanding of the shifting technological, cultural, social, economic, psychological, political, environmental, and so on, contexts of their reading and circulation. And this makes us more sophisticated image makers, and provokes us to engage with dynamics of the contexts in which our images are produced, distributed, read and re-configured.

I’ve written earlier about Barthes and related issues elsewhere in my CRJ (with more to come) and project proposal, so have kept this contribution deliberately short(ish).

References

Barthes, R. 2009. Mythologies. Translated by A. Lavers. Revised edition. London: Vintage.
Barthes, R. 1981. Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography. Translated by R.Howard. London: Vintage.

Over the past week I have continued to develop relationships and links relating to my proposed FMP. The Thames Ward Community Partnership summit on Thursday provided the opportunity to make images to feed into the work of the group and to make contacts with community groups for project related work (eg. JustMap, Creekmouth Preservation Society, Shed Life and the New View Arts Project). My images were used in the visual presentation that ran during the evening. I also attended further Object Lesson sessions, including some work on writing about objects at the Grant Museum.

The webinar with Michelle helped me to think through how, over the course of this module, I might link these two strands of my work. In the exploration of the relationship between individuals and groups and changes that are taking place in their communities through regeneration, objects clearly have a part to play (both in exploring experiences and aspirations with participants, and in making images, and making artefacts from/for the images). 

Karen Knorr’s Academies series (1994-2005) covers very similar settings to the university galleries and museums. She explores the dominance of the western aesthetic, whereas my interest is more in the roots of the collections in eugenics and colonialism, and the attempts to moderate (or even atone for) this through public engagement (for instance, in the use of the collections in social prescribing and other well-being related initiatives). One possibility would be to attempt to bring these different interests into the same visual space.

Knorr does this through digital manipulation in her most recent work (for instance, in the image above from the Metamorphosis series), though has in the past, as in the Academies series, used taxidermy (noting the effect that photographs appear to bring these animals to life, as Sugimoto observes in his waxwork and diorama series). The lighting of these settings is clearly key, and I want to look at the lighting used in 19th Century painting, from the period in which the museums were founded (Tom Hunter has explored painterly lighting schema, referencing Friedrich’s window motif through the use of the window as the principal source for lighting an interior, in his Persons Unknown series in Hackney).

This would form a link with the Riverside work through the issue of regeneration, place, identity and well-being. I want also to ‘reverse’ or mirror the settings, and make related images on the estate, reinforcing the link through objects, materiality and touch. This clearly relates to the material turn in photography discussed in relation to Squiers’ exhibition this week, and to my intention to work more with prints, not just digital images.

I’ve also been exploring Cornelia Parker’s use of photography, making a further link to materiality, but also to precariousness and experiment. I’ll post more about this and other artists, such as Danny Treacy, who work with both photographic images and artefacts, over the coming weeks.

Where did the week go? The task asks for a brief commentary, which is good news given the increasing length of my CRJ posts (and everyone’s, by the look of things). I’m very comfortable with the idea of multiple ‘photographies’ shaped by contexts, agents and interests (in the same way that writing can be a device for everyday supplementation of memory through to great literature, and is, like photography, being transformed, displaced or supplemented, by digital technology and automation/AI) – see earlier post here. The Szarkowski and Shore case studies are interesting in understanding the development of the field of photographic practice, and in positioning our own and other work within the field. The Squiers case study is of greater contemporary relevance, and for me most helpful in thinking about the development of my own work. Of the three, it is the only one, I think, that grapples with how to move beyond the aspiration for a unified language whilst maintaining the possibility of fruitful dialogue between photographic forms (and other forms of art practice).

I’m working on three levels for my project: (i) using photographs by others to understand their lifeworlds, (ii) collaborating with groups to create images for advocacy, (iii) producing my own multi-modal response to situations. I’ve been thinking about what it is that I am actually producing in doing this work. For (i) I am producing a methodology (a way of working with participants and their images). For (ii) I am producing images and a strategy for their deployment. For (iii), my focus for this module, I think I am producing artefacts, and seeking to bring together different media. This resonates with the stress placed in this case study of the materiality of photographs. Digital images are just a step on the way in the work I am doing. Thinking about questions of change (in places and environments) and multiplicity of experiences of and relationships to this, the kind of layering that Welling is doing in his Multichannel Works series is interesting.

Placing stress on materiality supplements, rather than erases, other forms of photographic practice (earlier forms, and contemporary and emerging digital forms). King (quoted in the presentation) is right that the exhibition is partial in addressing the question of ‘what is a photograph?’, but wrong, in my view, to expect an answer to the question. The exhibition leaves the question open (in its partiality) and invites responses that can maintain the dialogue and enhance the dynamism of the field of photographic practice. My own expectation is that an exhibition should not promise or offer closure, but should offer us more, not less, to think about, engage with and to be excited by.

Anything new to add? Maybe recognition of the utility of a more sociological perspective on photographic practice (see CRJ post here  – contains a few sentences which, I think, address Johnson’s and King’s issue about what they perceive as a backward looking tendency in Squiers’ exhibition) and non-western perspectives on photographic image making (see CRJ post here ). And always to keep in mind ‘what is theory for?’ alongside asking ‘what is photography for?’.

Intent. I am doing the masters programme in order to learn, develop my photography, and start to build a more coherent, informed and engaging body of work. My initial interest was the visual exploration of the relationship between the natural and the human in marginal urban places, leading to two series of images: Newcastle Beach Ocean Pool and Roding Valley Park.

Whilst doing this work over the course of the first module, I became increasingly interested in the impact of urban regeneration, and in particular understanding and facilitating community engagement and benefit from the rapid changes taking place in east London. This gave rise to three series of images focusing respectively on urban regeneration in Hackney Wick, Ilford and Barking.

A related set of concerns also emerged, around the privatisation of land, social infrastructure, and restrictions on access to, and use of, spaces and places for the public. Research into the three artists for this activity, alongside image making around the Barking Riverside development, have given rise to a concern for more fundamental environmental issues relating to the impact of urban development, which will be the focus for my work for this module.

Choices. For my project, I have proposed three levels of image making: (i) images made by residents as a way of exploring their lived experience and aspirations; (ii) collaborative image making with resident and community groups for influence, advocacy and change; (iii) my own artistic response to the impact of urban regeneration and the possibility of positive change for residents and communities. Over the course of this module, I plan to advance all three aspects of my practice, but will focus particularly on third (my own artistic work) for this and subsequent activities. In this area I want to be able to continue to experiment with forms of image making and dissemination, and explore how this relates to other modes and media (text, sound, video, artefacts). In carrying out research on the three photographic artists chosen for this activity, I have raised questions about my own practice and considered areas for development: see my more detailed posts on Hiroshi Sugimoto, Fay Godwin and Naoya Hatakeyama.

Godwin’s work has most clearly influenced my own. Despite focusing on urban rather than rural settings, and working digitally in colour rather than in monochrome on film, my mode of working and forms of image are similar. I walk through and explore the landscape, and take photographs in the landscape rather than of the landscape. My images tend to concentrate on the meeting of the natural with traces of human activity, and have increasingly highlighted the privatisation of land and issues of access and surveillance.

Others have commented that these tend towards the deadpan aesthetic of the New Topographics. I want to explore my relationship with Godwin’s work further by making some images in the urban settings I am exploring using monochrome film and square format, to get an embodied sense of what is entailed in this way of working and how this impacts on the forms images produced. On the campaigning side, I am continuing to explore the increasing privatisation of urban spaces and the restrictions placed on public activities (including making photographs – Godwin became particularly concerned about the restrictions imposed on photographers by the National Trust, and what she saw as the increasing regulation and control of our heritage).

My engagement with Japanese photographers Sugimoto and Hatakeyama is more recent and developmental. In both cases, I have attempted to understand and position their work in relation to contemporary theory, for instance post-humanism, as well as understanding the theoretical, cultural and visual influences that have shaped their work (particularly interesting as Sugimoto trained and has worked mostly in the US and Hatakeyama trained and has worked mostly in Japan). Both address issues relating to time, history and the future. Hatakeyama’s work is most closely related to my own, and I am interested in developing the idea of excavation and the relationship between extraction and urban development, rising above and sinking below the landscape and projection into the construction of the future. Also, the question of the differences between stopping time (through the act of photographing) in the processes of destruction and construction (the photograph by necessity strips away any direct sense of temporal directionality in creation/destruction; in Hatakeyama’s work, each is dependent on the other). From an analysis of the work of both artists, I have much to learn about how to establish coherence within and between series of photographs, and ways of achieving conceptual clarity.

All three artists combine text and images, but in different ways. In all cases, text and image are not intended to explain or embellish each other, but to achieve different things (and therefore to supplement and enrich each other in the achievement of the objectives of the projects). Unsurprisingly, given earlier posts (here and here), none of these artists make any claim to storytelling or the construction of narratives. Godwin’s work was initially geographically organised, and latterly according to social and political themes relating to the land (disseminated predominantly in books). Sugimoto’s and Hatakeyama’s work is organised as distinct parallel and successive series, some open ended, which are disseminated predominantly through exhibitions and the gallery system, with some photobooks. Hatekeyama notes that his first solo exhibition looked like a group show, and has stated that creating a distinctive visual vocabulary is key objective in his practice.

Strengths and limitations. I have produced a number of images that I am happy with visually and technically (see examples and links to series above), and have explored different ways of presenting these, for instance as grids, in triptych form and as a sequence with text (see below).

Each series has had a clear core theme, but the work to date has lacked a distinct conceptual basis, and therefore the growing body of work lacks coherence and a clear sense of visual, methodological or theoretical identity. Each of the three artists I have explored have achieved this sense of coherence and identity in different ways. Godwin works by walking through the rural landscape seeking images where signs of human activity are overlaid on the natural landscape creating a dialogue, and sometimes tension, between the natural and the human. This engagement with the landscape became increasingly political, and the organisation of images centred around themes like agribusiness, habitation, ownership and heritage. Each of the series produced by Sugimoto has a strong rationale, visual style and conceptual base (see earlier discussion). The series do not relate directly to each other (though all are produced with a large format camera and images are presented as large monochrome prints). Each series is related back to an evolving artistic vision, which includes work in other disciplines (for instance, architecture). In Hatakeyama’s work there is a clearer conceptual link between series, around the synergies and inter-dependencies of (destructive) extraction in rural areas and (constructive) urban development. This has been extended in his most recent work which focuses on the rebuilding of a city after natural disaster. In his writing, he is able to relate his work to current and antecedent movements in the visual arts, and chart the development of the work through his journals. Both Sugimoto and Hatakeyama are interested in the foundations of photography, and produce work that is related, in different ways, to the work of the pioneers of nineteenth century photography.

Over the previous module I have produced a range of types of images, and, in particular, have wanted to develop a greater personal engagement, for instance through portraits.

Whilst I have been satisfied by the images, I have found it difficult to integrate these with the major body of my work.

Plans. Over the course of this module I want to develop a stronger conceptual base for my image making, and be able to position my work more effectively in relation to other traditions and approaches. I am familiar with contemporary theory in the social sciences and humanities (and have, some years ago, taught social semiotics) but need to develop my knowledge in the visual arts. I am currently exploring Flusser’s work on photography (2011, 2000) and also his writing on the city (2005) and the notion of ‘home’, which relates closely to my interests (for instance, in addressing feelings and experiences of displacement in regeneration). I can build a theoretical and methodological bridge between different levels of image making in my project by drawing on Abbott’s (2007) critique of narrative and his argument for the development of a lyrical approach to social research, and Sinha and Back’s (2014) approach to engaging participants as co-creators in the research process (which includes the use of photography). At the heart of this is further cultivation of links with community groups and projects over the coming months to lay the foundations for my FMP, and a programme of image making which will feed into my work-in-progress portfolio. I have learnt from the previous module that, with a tight timescale, it is important to have a relatively narrow focus for the production of images for the module work-in-progress portfolio. For that reason, I plan to focus on the environmental, rather than the social, aspects of my project, and to take the opportunity to experiment with forms of image making and presentation whilst developing greater conceptual clarity and theoretical sophistication. I am also working on a project relating to physical and intellectual engagement with artifacts in museums, galleries and archives.

References

Abbott, A. 2007. ‘Against Narrative: A Preface to Lyrical Sociology’. Sociological Theory 25 (1): 67-99.

Flusser, V. 2011. The Gesture of Photographing. Translation and Introduction by Nancy Ann Roth. Journal of Visual Culture. SAGE Publications, 10(3): 279–293.

Flusser, V. 2005. ‘The City as Wave Trough in the Image Flood’, Critical Inquiry 31(2): 320–328.

Flusser, V. 2000. Towards a philosophy of photography. London: Reaktion.

Sinha, S. & Back, L. 2014. ‘Making methods sociable: dialogue, ethics and authorship in qualitative research’. Qualitative Research 14(4): 473–487.

Resources

Fay Godwin

Drabble, M. 2011. ‘Fay Godwin at the National Media Museum’. The Guardian. 8th January [online]. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2011/jan/08/margaret-drabble-fay-godwin [accessed 30.12.18].

Fowles, J. 1985. ‘Essay’. In F. Godwin, Land, London: Heinemann: ix-xx.

Godwin, F. 1985. Land. London: Heinemann.

Godwin, F. 1990. Our Forbidden Land. London: Jonathan Cape.

Godwin, F. & R. Ingrams. 1980. Romney Marsh and the Royal Military Canal. London: Wildwood House.

Jeffrey, I. 1985. ‘Introduction’. In F. Godwin, Land. London: Heinemann: xxiii-xxix.

Jeffrey, I. 2005. ‘Fay Godwin: Photographic chronicler of our changing natural world’. The Guardian. 31st May [online]. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2005/may/31/guardianobituaries.artsobituaries [accessed 30.12.18].

National Media Museum, Bradford. 2011. Fay Godwin: Land Revisited. Exhibition. 15 October 2010 – 27 March 2011 [online]. Available at: https://www.scienceandmediamuseum.org.uk/what-was-on/fay-godwin-land-revisited [accessed 30.12.18].

Sillitoe, A. & F. Godwin. 1983. The Saxon Shore Way: From Gravesend to Rye. London: Hutchinson.

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Naoya Hatakeyama

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Hiroshi Sugimoto

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