Tutor feedback for my assignment 7 took the form of a video chat. This feedback was a little delayed because I was away with little in way of a phone signal.

This month I spent a lot of my time working on creative works which in themselves are based on previous test pieces. This isn’t so much what I might term a production line approach producing a series of similar pieces with the same starting point but instead is iterative with each review and reconsideration of my creative test pieces being less broad or unfocussed and going into greater death for a narrower chosen target.

I was surprised by comments from my tutor this month that she saw how I was writing and thinking about my work was more knowledgeable and reflective. I find this sort of feedback invaluable and I often cannot see such shifts from my own perspective. Have I expanded on my knowledge due to my research allied with what I want to achieve from my creative works? Maybe, on reflection the answer is yes but as the shift is gradual, when in middle of project work it can be hard to detach myself and offer up such an overview. I will go back in my notes and look to see if how I write has shifted from when I started on this unit to now.

Another very useful piece of feedback was asking what or rather who, my work is for. Is this just for myself in which case could my work stay on my computer unseen by anyone other than myself? If this is the case then why am I doing this course? If my visual work has at its heart, the communication of ideas for whatever the reason this might be, then this relationship between the creator of the work, why I create it, what I want to communicate and to what audience is important. My own work is for the purpose of learning and understanding and self-healing. Indeed, is all visual art based around this idea of the communication of ideas or of emotions? Even as am aware that in the future I need to consider my audienceat the same time, right now, it is relevant to consider that photography as a visual medium has communication at it’s foundation. Communication implies a message from one person to a recipient or audience. As my own project deals with a fundamental fact of death which we will all face, this communication of my ideas to my audience feels crucial to my work. So, how I present works at this stage in my 3.1 study which involves preliminary test pieces and research, is a core factor even if it is too early to target a specific audience at this moment.

We discussed my practical works. As I write about these, I wonder if I made too many? It didn’t feel like that at the time to me, it these tests were, in a way to me, different facets of the same idea. I specifically mentioned that I had tried to take on board comment from last month about the literality of some of my works which and I will quote here from my tutor as this seems very important, “work is literal because it begins and ends with the description of the idea. Other work is much more philosophical; it is the latter that should always be the focus.”

We started by considering a piece I created using an island on which Princess Diana is buried. I wanted to explore the idea of the changing use of the space through time with this becoming a water park. Feedback was that this piece wasn’t effective as once again was too literal although it had elements which could be developed such as the whirlpool which I saw perhaps as a 3-dimensional form into which time and memory drops. One comment which stuck with me was question of whether my image was specifically about death or remembrance. Maybe too much going on. Helpful for me to consider the simplicity, or apparent simplicity, of my photography here.

Next, we spoke about a work which was more successful in the communication of ideas, a memorial bench with figures from a found photograph placed as a transparency behind the bench. Interesting to consider the placement and presentation of ideas on the photographic page and how the elements of an idea work in a visual sense. My tutor suggested this is an idea I could expand upon with thought that it almost touched upon idea of ‘ghost’ photography.

I produced some photographs which I didn’t develop into concrete ideas. One of these was a found photograph I found on Instagram of figures posing beside an open grave with emojis and text across the page. I thought image was interesting as it seemed to make little sense to me and this tension attracted my attention. My tutor mentioned the social phenomenon of how we commemorate loss and of the performative element of why some images are made. I was interested if I could make use of such an image without changing it. If this was used as part of typological works of similar pieces then yes as long as any distinguishing names or usernames were removed. Another image I didn’t use was that of a ground radar scan of a graveyard showing unmarked graves. This had potential although perhaps once again in typological form showing other such images.

Last month I produced a work based on the grave of Karl Marx. I developed this idea considering the grave of another famous person, Conrad Roentgen who discovered x-rays. I had worried that this piece was too simplistic but was interested to hear my tutor suggest, stripping even more from image so it becomes a series on x-rays of plants and that the references to Roentgen not required and even an x-ray viewer not needed. Flowers and plants have an association with death and the death imagery of skills and bones on graves always reminded me of medical scans, where my research first started. Interesting then this idea of stripping image making back to a simpler form that asks questions.

My final image this month, I constructed using a mirror and a grave and introduced a shadow of myself as I took the photograph which acted as a pseudo body underneath the turf. My tutor thought this idea had merit and could be developed further.

The general feedback was positive and in particular my image of the bench and of the image using the mirror. I will think some more on these before I produce works next month.

Feedback based on Learning Outcomes

There was a further workshop on learning outcomes when I was on holiday so will watch the recording of this session and produce an update on my progress against the learning outcomes for this unit for next month.

Action points

Produce this summary of feedback meeting.

Continue my work on practical pieces spending time to consider analysis of my image around why I find this worth presenting and how it related to the themes of my project.

A further draft of my literature review.

In addition to continued work on:

Review of my project plan.

Review recording of workshop for learning outcomes workshop part ii.

Work on reviewing my continued progress against the unit’s learning outcomes.