This was a video feedback session. It was the first meeting that we had since beginning SYP, so it was useful to have my Tutor’s feedback and advice at this point.
The details of the feedback session are in the Formative feedback document below:
A1 Submission
ASSIGNMENT ONE: SUBMISSION
GENRE SHOOT
REFLECTION ON THESE IMAGES AND THEIR INSPIRATION:
These images are first explorations of my subject ancient woodlands as a visual metaphor for my theme of community.
I began shooting with the genre of psychogeography, photographing my longer/wider viewpoint unfocused whilst moving, and stopping to shoot still and with clarity and in detail subjects that caught my eye. In this way I emulated my external and internal passage through the place. I photographed as I saw, in colour. My later shoots continued with a psychogeography backbone but certainly with an increasing less objective sight as I worked into my topic, and I began to genre hop. I was aware that I was also thinking conceptually as I looked.
I was influenced in my way of seeing by practitioners such as Minor White and Stieglitz who used the landscape to express ideas and emotions in a representational way. Contemporary landscape photographers such as Rob Hudson, Stephen Segasby, Guy Dickenson, Tom Wilkinson and JM Golding of the Inside Out collective gave me further inspiration to explore space as an internal and external passage. As I shot, I increasingly found ways to enhance the aspect of community that the subject before me spoke to me of and shot as much what was in my sight as what was in my head.
The images I share here can fall into 3 groups (there are some that overlap):
- Psychogeography/drifting
- General landscape representation
- Abstract representation
- Close up representation
From these I can reflect further about my next steps, but at this moment I feel it is towards a mixture of landscape, abstract and close up. I may dabble with constructivism and conceptualism which I will do more research into, but I’m not convinced that I need to go down these routes to say what I want to in my work. I feel I need to work more into photographic styles that I have begun to develop so far in particular, landscape in abstract and close up, and use my absorption and new perspectives to share what I am seeing and feeling.
ASSIGNMENT ONE IMAGES
Psychogeography:
______
Landscape representation:
Abstract:
Close up:
No changes were suggested by my tutor so this as posted as was my original draft, but see previous post on my reflections on the formative feedback:
Next Post:
ASSIGNMENT 1 SUBMISSION: GENRE SHOOT
Nicola South Student number 514516
REFLECTIONS ON FORMATIVE FEEDBACK
Tutor report: This was a video feedback session followed up with written feedback:
MY REFLECTIONS:
It was an extremely useful session. We looked at work on my blog. I went through the photos and explained my work, as set out in my learning log and my reflections on my images. Jayne responded and posed questions to enable me to reflect further.
I was pleased that my Tutor could sense in my images the positive and nurturing environment of the ancient woodlands. We discussed the concept behind my using the woodlands as a visual metaphor for community and I explained that I am interested in representation, different ways of seeing.
The strand that wove throughout for me was the need to get to the essence of my message/ meaning of my work, and the need to provide an entry point for my viewers so that they can access this.
ACTION POINTS:
- Form a working title to focus my photographing
- Work on clarifying the why and how of my concept
- Consider methods I could use to signpost my concept and meaning- and entry point for viewers to my implicit meaning (with or without text).
- Collect found text, academic and other on community.
- Try photographing in sets: Fungi, lichen, ferns
- Try increasingly using perspective or sense of scale to distort.
- Research the way these subjects have been represented by others
- Research Gayle Chong Kwan’s work: https://autograph.org.uk/archive-collections/gayle-chong-kwan
- Research Tree (hayward Gallery), fungi exhibitions (Somerset House), books, podcasts and films and the suggested: https://blackwells.co.uk/bookshop/product/The-Mushroom-at-the-End-of-the-World-by-Anna-Lowenhaupt-Tsing/9780691220550
- Research Wolfgang Tillmans, Edward Weston (Images and writings)
- Clarify whether I should be reflecting against the learning objectives or the assessment criteria and which is the correct assessment criteria (Contact Dan Robinson)
I’m now feeling inspired and ready to photograph and research again.
Next post: https://nkssite6.photo.blog/category/research/reading/woodland-reading/trees/
NIKI SOUTH 