Reflections on the Week 3 Task
WHAT I WROTE
PHOTOGRAPHY ON THE BEACH
How do you feel when you make your work?
Feelings
When I leave home for a photoshoot on the beach at sunrise with my dogs, my surroundings will be dark and quiet. As we near the beach, the dogs will know where we are and become excited. I’ll pick up on their anticipation.
On the beach I’ll be excited too. The light changes very quickly from darkness to pre-dawn, dawn and then sunrise. There may be reflections of the clouds on the wet sand. Often I will paddle. The movement of the sea depends on the phase of the tide and the wind speed. My dogs will chase any birds on the sand. All of these elements, light, sea, birds and dogs, are in constant flux and I enjoy trying to capture the essence of the dance. My senses are heightened, I’m in the moment, I’m happy.
How do you physically engage with your materials?
Planning and working
I’ve been doing this so much that I can quickly plan for the session and then be in the moment when I get to the beach. I want to have an idea of the light beforehand, so planning means, checking the weather, wind speed, the tides and times for sunrise and sunset. I’ll do this planning the previous evening. Depending on the tide at sunrise, for example, I will choose which beach to visit. Some beaches are narrow, or inaccessible at high tide.
If I want to make long exposures or panoramas, I need to make sure I take a tripod, maybe a tilt-shift lens and filters. For detail work, I’ll take a macro or telephoto lens. If I’m walking some distance, I’ll take a light camera with a wider lens to shoot mainly vistas.
REFLECTIONS
Post session reflection
Take some time to discuss this experience in your research journal. What have you taken away that will support your critical thinking and writing process in the future? How has this exercise broadened your understanding of the possibilities for writing in relation to practice?FROM THE TASK FOR WEEK 3
I didn’t cover work in the studio or photo editing in my post. If I continue with the ‘wallet’ theme, these will have to be considered. As will writing and its role in the work. I don’t know how much writing would work in a ‘fine art’ theme. I already have loads of memories arising directly and indirectly from this wallet, but can I fit them into something cohesive?
I’m quite used to writing about what I’m doing from my previous work life and I find this reflective writing very useful, particularly as I haven’t settled on a theme for this work yet.
I think I could write more than I’ve done above, and show more work, if I were to continue the photography on the beach themes. The idea of the work being a performance, a dance, could be portrayed through blurred images, intentional camera movement (ICM) and abstracts.
FOLLOW UP TASK
Investigate the following links and identify:
- an artists’ interview
- an artist talking about their work
- writing as creative work
In your research journal compare and contrast these different forms of writing, thinking about the nature and purpose of the writing.
This is a bit of the first (an artist’s interview), but mostly the second (an artist talking about their work). Is there a difference?
The work is interesting in that the artist makes paintings using mundane objects to relate to ‘the black experience’ in Britain over recent decades, such as invisibility, lack of understanding and disdain. I’m not sure what the event reported in the Guardian that triggered the silent treatment at Lords was (match fixing, betting?), but it doesn’t matter. Would a ‘white’ team have been treated in the same way?
https://www.serpentinegalleries.org/art-and-ideas/get-to-know-jennifer-packer/
This is also a bit of the first (an artist’s interview), but mostly the second (an artist talking about their work). The artist mentions two black women, Beonna Taylor and Sandra Bland, who died unlawfully at the hands of police in North America and her feelings about these tragic events. She also mentions the everyday objects she saw as she looked at photos of the raid on Beonna’s apartment.
I feel ashamed of my first reactions to this video. Male, pale and stale! I took the artist as someone who was trying to use the “Black Lives Matter” movement as a platform for her own black, feminist agenda to benefit her art. Fortunately I looked her up, saw some more videos and realised she was a well-travelled, articulate and established artist who considered all her work as political.
https://north-coast.space/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/perec_readings.pdf
PEREC, GEORGES, ‘AN ATTEMPT AT EXHAUSTING A PLACE IN PARIS’, WAKEFIELD PRESS (2010).
This is a review of the article in the title, where the author sits in a Paris square on separate occasions and notes all the everyday happenings there. It is an example of 3, writing as creative work.
First of all I learned two new (for me) words:- ‘infraordinary’ and ‘endotic’. These describe the banal, commonplace happenings or articles in our everyday life and how we often overlook such things and concentrate on the exotic or the sensational. The article asks us to look at more mundane things, maybe as most of our lives deal with the mundane. Why are they not examined more closely? On page 3 we are asked to , “Make an inventory of your pockets, of your bag. (YOUR WALLET?) Ask yourself about the provenance, the use, what will become of each of the objects you take out.”
This part really speaks to me as the themes I’ve suggested for my project really fit with the article’s suggestions i.e. taking a close look at a commonplace article (e.g. my wallet – coincidentally this was carried out by Perec around the time my wallet was being used) or an everyday event – walking the dog. I am excited and re-assured by this article as it implies that my potential themes could be worthy of following up as research projects. (Do the last two sentences say the same thing? Am I too excited?)
