Category: About

on to pastures new

The results for the Autumn Assessment came out a little over a week ago now (on the 15th December) and I was pleased (and not a little surprised) to get 75%, a notch down from Digital Image and Culture. The marks are no longer broken down into sections, but the feedback was comprehensive and obviously personalised:

‘You showed astute and perceptive research, writing and contextualisation throughout; perhaps best evidenced in assignment 4. We thought that although you worked hard on the research and analysis, you seemed at times to lack confidence in your conclusions, where you could be more decisive.

You also underestimate your own voice: in your folder 5, you mention style and distinctiveness. Your voice is also what you have to say, via your work. Ask yourself; is it worth saying? Does it have a wider resonance to others Do the projects get this idea/concept across to the viewer? Does the presentation method enhance, or obscure, what you are trying to say? We think that you satisfy each of these questions in your assignments (and many exercises). Your presentation often augments stills with sound and spatial arrangements. These combine to elevate each project above a regular series of images. Not only are these methods effective, but they are considered, discussed and validated in your accompanying text.’

I find the bit about ‘lacking confidence in my conclusions’ interesting. For most of the module, I think I was wrestling with not really enjoying what I was doing as much as I had thought I would. Gradually I had come to see that I was not really interested in making good, single images anymore but could not find a way to bend the genre (or the module) into something that would allow me to move beyond the point I had reached by the end of Digital Image and Culture. When it came to wrapping the module for Assessment. I realised I liked a lot of the work that I had made, but was not quite sure how it answered the questions asked by Landscape, Place and Environment. I found it quite hard to bring everything together in terms that fitted the specific learning outcomes for the course. Anyway, I must have come closer than I thought.

Now it’s time to move on. I have three and bit years to complete the degree following the new study pathway and the three new courses that replace Body of Work/Contextual Studies and  Sustaining Your Practice. I’ll need to focus hard and keep going, resisting my tendency to wander off to look at interesting, but not strictly speaking relevant areas of investigation. This was also noted in the feed-forward part of the Summative Assessment:

Looking towards level 3, we suggest that you carefully consider the scope and scale of projects: managing these from the outset. Keep updating an ‘artist’s statement’ of what the project conveys and how you intend to achieve that. This will help you keep on track, without adding elements that could spread your efforts too broadly, rather than concentrate on the objective(s).’

I’ll do my best! You can see how I get on, over here: https://chirgwin3.com/

why landscape, place and environment?

at the start of the module…

Gerry Badger, in his book accompanying the 2007 BBC series The Genius of Photography (I think – of course, I can’t find the exact quote now, when I need it – I need to work much harder on making notes) defines three constant strands of photographic subject matter: people, objects and places. In earlier modules, I have systematically dealt with photographing the first two. I have turned my camera on people (Identity and Place in particular) while much of my work for  Digital Image and Culture was concerned with picturing objects (stuff) and using the resulting images to depict a version of myself as I moved through the world.

wood

However, I have always seen myself a primarily a photographer concerned with place. This is the course I’ve felt I have been working towards during the first two levels of study at the Open College of Art. So what do I want to get out of it?

  • I want to up my game technically: apart from too many of the photographs I’ve taken recently have been a bit snatched, with the real work taking place later. I’d like to get a bit more exact here, a bit more considered. I should get into the way of putting a camera on a tripod and taking my time. I’d like to get a bit better at printing (even if there will still be no physical element to the assessment, when I get to that point); I’d also like to put a lot more thought into digital display – many more people will see my work online than will ever be able to see nice large prints, even if the assessors can…

  • I found the experience of working on a single, body during the second half of  DIaC extremely satisfying. One of the most attractive things about Landscape, Space and Environment was the sixth assignment, worked on and developed throughout the course; I signed up for the module a day or so to late to have this formally enshrined in the course, but – as my tutor pointed out at our initial (virtual) meeting – there’s no reason why this cannot be incorporated into the idea of a self-directed project (assignment 5).  

  • Over the past six years, I have developed a fondness for working in a more conceptual way; there is usually an element of self-referentiality lurking within my work now. This is no bad thing, and providing the work is personal, something people can identify with, rather than drily cerebral; people should want to look at the pictures and to take pleasure from them, rather than simply do work on an exercise of decoding them. I don’t want to lose this aspect of my practice.

  • I’m hugely aware that making a picture that even comes close to capturing the experience of standing in front of a view (and I’m becoming aware of the difference between a view and a landscape) is a very hard thing to do.  I want to increase the likelihood that a photograph I take in a location manages to catch some of the charge of whatever it was that made me stop and take the picture in the first place. Of course, this does not mean that I want to return to taking single good, pictures, but I would like to make each part of a series work a little harder, a little better.
    trees

In earlier modules, I have based at least one assignment (and a fair bit of coursework) per module, around places; these projects have been among my most successful work. So, to bring this post to a close, here are some starting points for this journey through Landscape, Space and Environment:

 

 

 

 

about me

portrait of the artist as a photographer

I was born and grew up in Orkney and, after after attending university and then  living and working in Glasgow for a decade or so, moved to London around the turn of the century.

I have been here ever since, working and getting older.

When I was forty-one, rather too late to be of much use as the basis for a radical career reset, I had the blinding epiphany that, for as long as I could remember, the action of putting things together linked pretty much everything I had enjoyed doing and had been good at. Lego, Airfix models, ideas, stories, people and things, building stuff, seeing what went well with what – all of them involved some degree of construction. This facility for assembly has underpinned most of what I have done to earn a living since leaving university, but has only occasionally resulted in something I would describe as self expression.

Then, as I reached the end of my forties (a good decade professionally, as well as personally) I decided I wanted to spend the next decade or so developing something for myself, rather than for the benefit of my employers…

I’ve been taking photographs since I was ten;  I’d been aware of the OCA’s photography degree for some time, but had never quite got round to it. So, 29 days after my 50th birthday, I signed up for The Art of Photography (ph4TAoP) and now, six and a bit years later, here I am…

If you’re interested in how I got to this point, my earlier blogs are here:

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