CAS Assignment 2

CONTEXTUAL STUDIES ASSIGNMENT 2: REFLECTIONS AGAINST LEARNING OUTCOMES

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Though it seems to have taken me a long time, to complete the literature review in particular, I now have a more through understanding of the frameworks that I propose to use and a good understanding of my sources.

Here is my reflection against learning outcomes:

LO1 undertaken research and study demonstrating comprehensive knowledge of your area of specialisation and built a theoretical framework for your creative practice

  • I have researched widely, there was much that I researched that wasn’t written in my literature review, but it helped me to articulate in my work.
  • Taking on feedback from assignment 1 I hope that I have kept my writing tighter this time and defined terms for the general reader as advised.
  • I am unsure whether I should have been more critical of the stances/theories of my sources, but I have demonstrated how they have developed and been criticised by others.

LO2 synthesised and articulated your critical, contextual, and conceptual knowledge and understanding into a coherent critique of advanced academic standard

  • I have concentrated my literature review around objects of enquiry or sources in two areas. Firstly, methods of finding meaning in photography, largely concentrating on Semiology. Secondly around affect and effect in photography. In my dissertation I plan to apply these opinions to the landscape photography of two photographers, Minor White, and Peter Blakemore, but I hoped I judged correctly that this only needs a light touch in the literature review.
  • I created this mind map to help me to to frame my dissertation title/question:
  • I believe I have contextualised my sources and their place in my enquiry.
  • I hope I have demonstrated the relevance of my texts to the focus of my enquiry and made links between most of them.

LO3 applied your own criteria of judgement, reviewed, criticised, and taken responsibility for your own work with minimum guidance

  • I have evaluated sources as I’ve read them and returned and reread them until I have understood them.
  • I had initial guidance from my tutor, but this may have been confused by guidance from another CS tutor running our CS monthly Study group – I have tried to take on guidance from both though this may have confused my path. It will be good to have depth feedback from my tutor now before I begin writing my dissertation.
  • I have indicated in my dissertation proposal, where I feel I need to expand my research, namely with more contextual reference from the landscape work of Minor White and John Blakemore. I have also queried whether I should expand my dissertation to include the effect of audience on interpretation of meaning in landscape images, but I suspect that this will widen my research when I should be narrowing and deepening my area of enquiry. I welcome further input from my tutor on this.

LO4 selected and applied information management skills and used appropriate technology in the production of an accomplished critique with minimal supervision

  • I have interwoven primary and secondary sources, which are a mixture of Books, Journals, essays, reviews, and interviews from both physical and virtual sources. I have not been particularly successful with using the UCA library, except with Jstor.org, and need to get further guidance on this to make the best of it – I seem to be purchasing many books myself. Going forward I may need to take out a paid subscription to academia.edu and Google Scholar. I have no problem ascertaining research to read, but sometimes I am thwarted sourcing it.
  • I use Paperpile for my referencing and am compiling various reference/research lists
  • I can still build on my information management skills.
  • I have used mind maps at every stage to organise my thoughts and next steps.

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CONTEXTUAL STUDIES ASSIGNMENT 2: RESEARCH ROUND UP

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Summary of research for assignment 2 Literature review and dissertation proposal

The breadth of my reading and some of the depth will be seen in my Literature review and dissertation proposal. I have made many notes whilst reading though I don’t intend to publish them here as I wrote them as working documents for myself with page and citation references.

I will give a brief overview of the items that I researched and made notes on for later use and to aid my general understanding.

On semiology

I began with Visual Methodologies (Rose, 2001), which was a revisit of chapter 2 “The Good Eye” (looking at pictures using compositional interpretation), and chapter 4 semiology: laying bare the prejudices beneath the smooth surface of the beautiful. I also read chapter 6 on discourse analysis i: text, intertextuality and context. I haven’t research Foucault which I know is a big area as I’m not convinced it is relevant to my area of enquiry. From here I read ‘Saussure versus Peirce: Models for a semiotics of Visual Art’ (Iverson, 1986) to begin my research on Peirce and them read more widely on Peirce and then continued on to expanding my previous reading of Barthes on semiotics.

Bate (2009) was useful for background and clarity on semiology and other areas of photographic theory and history on the language of photography. I used Chandler (2002) for some clarification on semiotics.

On documentary versus artistic expression in Landscape photography

I began with Benjamin (1931) and Clarkson (2019) recommended by my tutor which were useful on the tension between art and photography. Bull (2010) as well as giving me background on the meaning of photographs also gave good commentary on photography as art. I explored more on Szarkowski on expression on photography, beginning with Mirrors and Windows (1978) which led to more book purchases and have much more material to use.

The area that I read much on but haven’t included in my Literature review were photographers, Minor White and John Blakemore. Bunnell (Cronan, 2014) and Badger (1977) suggested by my tutor were good starting places, and led to more research and material for future use. This I will use in my dissertation to give context to emotional expression and plurality of meaning in photography, equivalence, and metaphor.

I revisited Berger’s texts for background on looking and seeing (Berger, 1980, 1972), personal interpretation and aesthetics for attention, but didn’t include in my work at this stage. Another area of research that I touched on but have left for now is the affect of audience on the meaning of photographs.

The full list of texts that I have read are listed in my literature review and my dissertation proposal.

References:

Badger, G. (1977) ‘Introduction’ In: British Image 3: John Blakemore: Exhibition. London: Arts Council. pp.7–10.

Bate, D. (2009) Photography: The Key Concepts. New York: Berg publishers.

Benjamin, W. (1931) in his Little History of Photography, Die literarische Welt, (Gesammelte Schriften, II), 368–385.

Berger, J. Blomberg, S, Fox, C, Dibb, M, Hollis, R (1972) Ways of Seeing. London: British Broadcasting Corporation.

Berger, J. (1980) USES OF PHOTOGRAPHY. [Email sent to Sontag, S. 1980]. At: https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=sites&srcid=ZGVmYXVsdGRvbWFpbnxqbHMxMDZpbnRyb3RvZG9jc3R1ZGllc3xneDo0ZjVlYmEyZjk1YWUyNjdl (Accessed 23/04/2022).

Chandler, D. and Dr, D. C. (2002) Semiotics: The Basics. (London): Routledge.

Clarkson, G. (2019) Documentary evidence and artistic expression. At: https://www.oca.ac.uk/weareoca/education/documentary-evidence-and-artistic-expression/?cn-reloaded=1 (Accessed 04/04/2022).

Cronan, T. (2014) ‘Aperture Magazine Anthology: The Minor White Years, 1952–1976, by Peter C. Bunnell’ In: History of Photography 38 (2) pp.204–206.

Iverson, M. (1986) ‘Saussure versus Peirce: Models for a semiotics of Visual Art’ In: Rees, A.L. and Borzello, F. (eds.) The New Art History. London: Camden Press. pp.82–94.

Rose, G. (2001) ‘Visual Methodologies. An Introduction to the Interpretation of Visual Materials’ In: PDF At: https://www.miguelangelmartinez.net/IMG/pdf/2001_Rose_Visual_Methodologies_book.pdf (Accessed 17/08/2021).

Szarkowski, J. (1978) Mirrors and Windows: American Photography Since 1960. New York: The Museum of Modern Art.

Next post: https://nkssite6.photo.blog/2022/06/05/contextual-studies-assignment-2-draft-literature-proposal/