The creative works which come out of my external facing projects are very different from those in my self-directed project. When working on my own, I am free to set my own timescales. When working with others, we need to learn to work with one another, to find a suitable process and importantly, to adapt timescales and deadlines to things which are out of our direct control. These are some of the practical considerations. Set against these potential challenges is the possibility of pushing work in unexpected directions.

The work in this post comes from my collaboration with Deborah Humphrey who is interested in words and photographs. She is a student with the OCA.

We started by exchanging some emails and sharing some work to set the scene of what this collaboration would be about and how best to communicate with one another and how to share works and then develop future works. We arranged a Zoom call which helped a lot with gaining a sense of the other partner, their interests and inspirations.  From these contacts, we decided to share some works and to find some pieces which interested us and then to adapt then and re-share. The works below show our collaborative works to date.

Deborah was interested in intentional camera movement. I took her images below and added text in different ways although am less sure how successful these ideas are.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I also worked on some video where I attempted to recreate a sense of an old silent film with elaborate border and text reading End. I was concerned that this piece was too obvious and left the audience with less to mull over. Part of me wondered if the video of the book pages in the breeze worked better with no text or fancy border?

The final piece in this sequence used my experience of working with Deborah and the use of words to adapt one of my images made from a found photograph of a small child.  I made the image below to respresnet memory. I have scuffed and tried to age the photograph of the child. The original image came with text so I have reused this highlighting the text to appear as if it underneath original photograph and shown through a torn corner. The text is shown underneath the photo but underneath the text is more text. I have tried to create a sense of something hidden, maybe of a secret. Is the child Don or has there been a discussion and a previous suggestion been overwritten yet at same time not fully erased.