My initial thoughts on the course is that it a strange mixture. On one hand, it is unstructured, allowing the student great freedom to research what they want and to work on course as they want and to produce their own timescales. On the other hand, the course presents a very structured form with the 10 assignments. So, apologies from the outset if I have gone off at a tangent and produced work and started research and dipped in and out of any potential coursework.

My reason for my chosen approach for this initial assignment is that I felt my project needed a starting point or a ‘line in the sand’. My work in Digital Image and Culture dipped quickly into attempts to work out the physical creative side of project with less time for reflection and research.  Maybe I was using my work as a way to avoid thoughts of my children’s illness and my daughter’s death. At the start of Photograph 3 I felt that needed to complete some actual works I could look at to help me, at least in part, to resolve my feelings and allow a firm foundation as I push off and explore potential future project works. My choice for this initial work was based on my research into other practitioners who have dealt with cancer and death through their art including one OCA Photography student who I reached out to and exchanged emails with. I was inspired to complete a 2-part retrospective work which I thought would be a good starting point for Photography 3 alongside the test works I started in Photography 2- DIC. I didn’t start these works from nothing but was still a lot of work. I hope that with this grounding, Photography 3.1 will settle down to a less frenetic pace for me.

The thinking behind my 2-part introductory work is that when Rebecca died, I was left with access to her social media, computer and mobile phone. At the time this allowed me to search for some of her music choices for her funeral. This also gave me access to all her photographs, art works and images she had saved. I thought about this and how this tied into the idea of the self that I have looked at in previous units. Instead of Rebecca being voiceless or anonymous and being missing from the visual record, I had an opportunity to show her as she saw herself, although I do admit that this is based on my interpretation of what she might have wanted as, of course, her work might have always stayed private had she had the choice. I didn’t edit her images but used all the 870 or so images from her phone and constructed a slide sequence. I chose the time each slide was viewed and the gap between each so that the audience could see the images and these not in an incomprehensible blur but at same time so that these passed very quickly. I looked at different ways of transitioning between one image and the next but in the end chose a simple cut without any fancy graphic tricks which would have distracted from the message of her images and of the pace I was looking for. For the second part of this work, I then contrasted her view of herself and her life with my own view of the same period. This is a smaller piece of work and so contrasts hers as it can be viewed at a slower pace. There is maybe a connection here between the pace of these two works and the pace of life. If the end of life is in sight, then does time run quicker and conversely if we don’t know when end might be doe life run at a slower pace?

These works are shown on my website/blog page.

In addition, my blog shows my project work relating to medical scans from Photography 2 all in the Portfolio Menu.

As well as work done looking at project plans, critical essays or dissertation, timelines and looking at reflection and at my practice, I have begun in a small way to look at areas of interest. These are details in my blog under the Research Menu. My two initial pieces of research been on “Why is there a need to take photographs of the ill, the dying and the dead?” and “The Dying Brain”.

In this section I also revisited some work I had looked at in previous units including on Memory and the idea of Melancholy which I have started to revise and have added to this menu.

In my coursework part of blog, I have looked over course notes and produced some work on the different models used to help with the reflective process. I found this very interesting but have to admit that this is something I will have to make a conscious effort to build into my practice as a regular thing until I get to point where I no longer have to think about this.

I then spent some time thinking about my practice which isn’t something have ever done before. I think my practice been something that happens around me, almost in a way as a background task which I don’t think about so this was interesting to think directly about my practice.