A short summary about:
- Your experience of the week’s activities and feedback received
- Any reconsiderations to the core methodology of your project
- The forms your project/photographs could potentially take moving forward
After sharing my Electric Charing Stations zine with a small group of MA students in Krakow it was great to share the zine with a wider audience and get feedback for additional students. Overall I was really pleased with the feedback (Looking Back Activity) which confirmed to me that I had achieved the objectives I set myself for the project and I am now confident to create more zines based on the initial experience.
The In Another Shoes Activity arrived at the perfect time for me as I had been doing some research ahead of the next walks I intend to undertake along the coast of Essex. The feedback from students and Tutors was great as it confirmed I had met my expected outcomes. It was interesting that Stella suggested I should have included more of my arm in the picture which was something I did consider however when I was looking at the current view compared with the original image I made a decision to use the negative space of the Blackwater Estuary as the best place to position the original photograph as I was trying to ensure my photograph was a true as possible to the original in terms of location of capture. It was interesting how others had interpreted the brief one example that I felt was interesting was the image taking of Sophie Bradley where she had rephotographed a surfer in the centre of Reading where she lived. This has made me consider using rephotography as a technique to link my work environment in London with the places I visit along the Essex Coastline as in real life I use the commute between London and Chelmsford as an air gap between work and private life. This reminds me of the presentation Gordon McDonald gave at Krakow Photomonth on the exhibition (Photomonth.com, 2017) “The War From Here” that showed images of locations attacked by drone pilots and their home environment and the trauma they suffer from the two activities being so close together. Rephotographing would allow be to explore how I feel about allowing my two worlds to start to collide. I am considering how I can use repeat photography to combine images from the hay days Southend, Clacton, Walton and Frinton as seaside town compared with their current state where some of them are in need of regeneration.
I plan to use repeat photography to record how coastal towns look at different times of the year as trade in the main seaside towns is very season buy organising the images in groups of 4 I could explore how the seasons impact the level of activity. Similar to the work of Camilo Jose Vergara(Camilo Jose Vergara, 2017) who photographs the same businesses multiple times.
I could also use repeat photography to record how the coastal environment is changing of the duration of the MA by revisiting a number of key locations multiple times.
The use of rephotography and repeat photography with give me some additional ways to explore the relationship of time with my photography and extend the concept of time over an extended period from minutes that currently use in some images to months and years.
References
- Photomonth.com. (2017). The War From Here – Krakow Photomonth Festival. [online] Available at: http://photomonth.com/en/portfolio/the-war-from-here/ [Accessed 10 Jun. 2017].
- Camilo Jose Vergara. (2017). Camilo Jose Vergara | 4337-West-Madison-St. | 1. [online] Available at: http://www.camilojosevergara.com/Chicago/4337-West-Madison-St./1 [Accessed 10 Jun. 2017].
