Author Archives: Richard Dalgleish

Tutor feedback #7

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.

Progress review against learning outcomes #7

I started to review my progress against learning outcomes last month and so will continue this so as to map progress from now until end of unit.

Photography 3.1: Practice and Research (PH6PAR) Learning Outcomes

LO1 – Examine your emerging practice through a considered body of self-directed work

Last month I stated that my research, written works and creative test pieces were developing in pace with my emerging practice. I said that my work wasn’t polished at this stage.

All I would add to what I said last month is that I have spent time creating further test pieces and writing on my motivations and creative choices. This continues to build my body of self-directed creative pieces and the writing which goes along with these works adds to my sense of trying to better understand my emerging practice.

LO2 – Apply relevant research methods and subject knowledge to test, inform, and develop your work.

Last month I stated that I wasn’t trying to force the direction of my research and was allowing the different strands to pull me in whatever direction matched with my interests. I continue with this same approach.

LO3 – Present informed connections between your research and practice interests.

Last month I mentioned that I felt there was a gap or mismatch between my research and practice interests. I have made a conscious effort this month to try and record more of my thoughts around my creative works. At this stage I didn’t attempt to link these thoughts with detailed research outcomes.

LO4 Articulate your creative ideas and critical thinking using suitable communication methods.

Last month I commented that I was comfortable with articulating areas of interest, ideas that interest me from my research and creative works and with interpreting my creative impulses. As I said, I have made more of a conscious effort to write about my creative choices. More detailed methods of articulating such thoughts likely to be made in form of a video presentation which I will prepare before the end of this unit.

Project plan review #7

Last month I revisited my plan and focussed on how to shape my planning for this second half of the unit.

This month I have updated and further refined my plan using the same logic as I used last month. I recognise the second half of unit has different emphasis from the first half and so my tasks are more specific and relevant as opposed to some of my more general planned tasks at start of this unit. I am very relaxed about my plan at this stage and do not anticipate much in the way of further major changes between now and the end of this unit.

One other thing I did as regards planning was to check in with OCA Learning Support to check whether the change to OU from OCA might impact future project timelines. This is more for the continuation of my planning for 3.2 and 3.3 rather than for right now. Learning Support told me that assessment and progression been looked at and a similar mechanism to that in use by OCA been agreed. I will be able to apply for 3.2 at same time as am preparing work on this unit for 3.1 assessment. One other change is that in August 2023, the 12 years limit for an undergraduate degree changes from 12 years of enrolment to 12 years of study. If any extra time due at that point this will be applied automatically.

Here is updated image of my plan.

Month 7 plan

Reflective commentary #7

This month my time was spent in designing and creating several test pieces building on previous creative works and the feedback given on these.

I want to pen a few thoughts on what motivates me to create my works. In part this is due to a cathartic sense where I try to understand myself better and work through the strong emotions related to death and loss. I wouldn’t describe this necessarily as a healing process but would call it an understanding process. I don’t believe people are healed from the experience of mourning but instead learn to accept and cope with this. Mourning in a way is learning about death and loss. More specifically related to my own personal experience of loss, my work contextualises my own sense of loss set against societal systems and norms surrounding memory, death, loss and remembrance. I would like to go to heart of this sense and look at death in childhood but I know that the closer I get to heart of my own sense of loss, the more painful this will be. As I work through this learning and developmental process, I have thought and discussed with my tutor about how others might view my work and how painful it might be for an audience. Am also conscious of whether I wanted to tell my story for the benefit of others or whether my work is purely for myself. This seems an appropriate question at this stage given the feedback on literal or philosphical work and how others might view a piece. Is my work for myself or for others? I think for me, as a photographer and artist, the stories I try and tell and the questions I ask through my visual imagery are expanded by the interaction with an audience. The audience has the breadth and capacity to take my work in unexpected directions as each person might think or react differently. The bond between the artist and the audience has the potential to create waves that resonate out from the centre. I do not know how much time I should spend considering the audience at this stage in my research and in creation of test pieces. Maybe there is no right answer but if this bond is a part of my creative practice, then awareness is no bad thing as long as I don’t allow myself to be too influenced by it at this time.

One theme which cropped up in my test pieces this month as I was thinking about literal and more philosphical work was the simplicity or complexity of my work. Not just in terms of meaning but, as this is a photography degree, also in terms of the visual choices I make. I have a sense that a more simplistic visual piece has, or can have, a stronger impact but at same time does the message it conveys work the same as a visually more complex and intricate work? Beyond this idea of complex, simple, literal and philosphical is a sense that my work will deal with emotionally challenging subject matter and maybe it is that I should focus on instead of worrying too much about audience reactions. The subject matter and research drives the creative choices and the audience are something very distant.

I don’t want to be too dismissive of my work but I feel a little dispirited about my test pieces this month. I feel they are interesting but they have a limited emotional challenge to them. I have a strong negative feeling right now around my chosen area of study and my response to this. Having said this, such feelings are normal for me within my creative process although maybe this project produces bigger peaks. Periods of doubting myself, negativity and producing ideas which I think are lacking in value are opposed at other times with positivity and a sense of purpose. Maybe embarking on such a potentially dark project which so tightly connects with personal feelings of loss and doubt and questions of my own worth, then such extreme feelings can be understood.

Tutor feedback #6

Tutor feedback for my assignment 6 took the form of a video chat.

I spent time this month on my first attempt at a literature review so received tutor feedback on that attempt. My literature review was based around a section of Barthes Camera Lucida. I didn’t attempt to review the whole book but instead focussed on his ideas which was similar to the background and reason for my own research.

I was advised not to embed other sources into my treatment of the original source. Instead keep the treatment of sources separate but after I have discussed each source it is appropriate to also discuss where they converge or diverge from previously discussed sources. If the source extends the previous source’s argument, then this is something you can flag up at the beginnig of the subsequent source’s treatment before elaborating on the particulars of the source.
Trim my detail on biography of Barthes’s family and instead be brutal in summarising. A simple statement along lines of “Barthes’s life was been framed through loss” is sufficient to give context around Barthes and his attitude to death.
Crucially, if I spend too much time (and word count) there is less space left to consider the theory.

I also received helpful feedback on my creative test pieces. One important point which struck me was that some of my work seen as being literal and some more philosophical. Literal work allows less space for the audience to form their own ideas and opinions and to make their own sense of my work. My tutor described this as beginning and ending with the description of the idea. This isn’t always something I find easy as there is an element here about losing control and of ownership of the ideas behind my work.I will make a conscious effort to consider this literal/philosophical divide.

Progress review against learning outcomes

This was an idea from previous feedback session and I think is a good one. It provides an opportunity for me to return to the basic outline and aims of the unit and then stop and think about what I have done so far and to summarise my progress so far in relation to learning outcomes and to think about what I can do better.

Photography 3.1: Practice and Research (PH6PAR) Learning Outcomes

In general terms, I feel that my understanding of the terms knowledge, understanding and application have shifted many times over the course of my studies. This is a good thing as it implies deeper consideration of my areas of study and of the basics of learning.

LO1 – Examine your emerging practice through a considered body of self-directed work

My work on research, written works and creative test pieces is developing in pace with my emerging practice. It is far from polished and at this stage, I have no clear or definite idea of where exactly I am heading.

When I started this unit, I thought I had that clear and definite idea of my level 3 project but the more I research and practice and stop and think and then research and create more test pieces, the more different questions occur to me and different paths of research. Quite apart from the terms of this course and any assessment, I am learning, through my work, about myself. There was always going to be a very emotional and introspective element to my chosen field of interest. I increasingly feel through trying to understand the fields of death, symbolism, loss, grief and memory, very close to my own personal relevation and better understanding of a crossroads in my life when in space of 3 days, I lost my mother and then my daughter. I realise now that I didn’t even mention my mother when I was articulating this project. Strangely it was as if there was a gap in my head. In my research this is an important idea around loss and the impact on the living.

LO2 – Apply relevant research methods and subject knowledge to test, inform, and develop your work.

My research is developing. I have not been trying to force any set direction in my first half of course. Instead, I have been researching areas of interest. There is a feeling that the research drives me rather than me driving my research. My analogy would be allowing the wind to take me where it will. I do feel that there is a gap between my research and how this relates to and informs my creative attempts and the development of my practice and areas of specialisation.

LO3 – Present informed connections between your research and practice interests.

I mentioned that I felt there was a gap, or maybe a mismatch, between my research and practice interests. I think about these but need to be more definite and organised about recording my thoughts and plans. It not so much a failing with what I have done so far, it just an area that I can improve upon looking forwards. I thinbk as I approach my research and creative works in more depth in this half of the unit, these connections will become defined. I am aware of this so will make a conscious effort to think more on these connections as I work. Crucially, I need to force myself to bring some of my research back to foundation that this is a photography degree. I therefore need to conduct my research thinking of my themes of things such as death, loss and memory through the prism of photography.

LO4 Articulate your creative ideas and critical thinking using suitable communication methods.

I think I have been articulating areas of interest, ideas that interest me from my research and creative works, interpreting my creative impulses using a variety of techniques and am comfortable with different routes on how to communicate these interests.

I have identified areas I can work better, or in business speak, work smarter particularly in recording my thoughts, the links between my practice, my research and including a feedback loop, by which I simply mean trying something, reviewing and then trying again.

As the first month in second half on unit, I have tried to look in more depth this month especially around my creative works, my initial attempt at a literature review, my revised plan and my expanding list of sources which interest me. I will be interested to receive feedback on these things to see if my conscious attempt to shift my energies are moving me in the right direction.

Project plan review #6

This is start of second half of unit following first half which was punctuated with midpoint review. It feels to me almost like the unit has two parts. This second half of unit needs more tightly refined research and creative works made with a purpose and then reviewed and revisited if required.

Last month I focussed my energies on the midpoint review so this month have revisited my plan and how my planning for this second half of the unit should evolve.

I have refined my plan using the improved structure I introduced a few months ago. My changes recognise the second half of unit will have different emphasis from the first. I have changed my milestones to make them more relevant. At this stage have not expanded my tasks for month 6 into month 7 and beyond and will look again next month to see if am happy with my plan’s relevance to my work.

Here is an image of my revised plan.

Reflective commentary #6

This month my work was a little different in feeling from previous months which took up the first half of this unit. This is first month of the second half of this unit.

I have produced some creative works, I have had my first attempt at a literature review. As I was working on this has opened up some new sources which are very interesting within the confines of my research. In addition I have tried to summarise my progress in unit so far in relation to learning outcomes.

I am currently reading the following source material

Death, Ritual and Belief by Douglas J Davies
A Social History of Dying by Allan Kellehear
Family Frames: Photography, Narrative and Postmemory.

In addition to these I have been looking at the following sources but in less detail than the 3 books above.

Hold Still: A Memoir with Photographs by Sally Mann
Visual Methods in Psychology: Using and Interpreting Images in Qualitative Research by Paula Reavey
Myths and Legends of Flowers, Trees, Fruits and Plants by Charlkes Skinner

Creative works. As I was laid low with Covid and have not been out of house much I adapted my process to construct some work on the computer using my own photographs and some found images of gravestones and altering these. I was interested in expanding on my previous creative works and to explore some of my ideas using both known burials where the gravestone is clearly marked and also unknown burials where gravestone has decayed and I do not know who lies there. The ideas of memorial stones being cared for or forgetten and left to decay has a strong link to human memory. I have introduced text and layered known images and unknown images of people into my constructed images and have attempted to age and weather known gravestones to imagine them as forgotten. I have also been experimenting with using the symbolism

Barthes Camera Lucida

I have read book before but had just skimmed over part 1 as I had felt part 2 was more relevance to my research so this is a more holistic view of this written work which I feel is needed as a pre-cursor to my literature review.

This book was written after the death of Barthes’ mother in 1977 and published in the same year as the death of Barthes in 1980.

It is split into two parts. Part one deals with the ideas of what photography is while part two explores history and time and the search for the essential essence in a photograph.

Part one

The thing which the camera captures is something that only happens once and can never be repeated yet when we look at what has been captured in a photograph it is the subject we see and not the photograph. Barthes speaks of the feeling of amazement looking at a photograph of Napoleon’s brother and his feeling of wonder that the eyes he could see in the photograph had looked at the Emperor. He speaks of nobody else sharing his amazement and him forgetting all about this. “life consists of these little touches of solitude” (Barthes, 1981, p3) Barthes tells us that the photograph is invisible. He uses the term referent, or in other words what the photograph refers to and signifier which relates to semiotics or the study of signs. The photograph is rarely distinguished as being different from what is represented in the photograph. To determine the photographic signifier, the audience must reflect or be in possession of prior knowledge to allow for this secondary action. Barthes tries to understand photography saying that a photograph can be the object of three practices, or three emotions or three intensions; to do, to undergo and to look which map to the activities of the photographer, the audience and the target of the photography. He calls these The Operator, The Spectator and The Spectrum of the photograph. Each of these experiences the act of photography differently, the Operator sees first hand or at least through a viewfinder (or these days through an LCD screen), the Spectator is removed for the immediacy of Operator through the action of chemicals and printing while the Spectrum is on the other side of the lens. More that this, Barthes introduces idea of photography being a return of the dead. The spectrum or eidolon speaks of a spectre. He writes of having his photograph taken and feeling compelled to pose as if for the lens he becomes a different version of himself, an object. That object can be seen as death so the photographer must try to avoid the capture of death. “Death is the eidos of that photograph” (Barthes, 1981, p. 15) I take this to mean that the frozen expression captured by the photograph is as of death.

Barthes speaks of taste and preferences in photographs and what he likes and doesn’t and that these likes can be shifted by mood. In considering likes and dislikes, Barthes speaks of a specific image reaches him and he feels animated and in turn animates the photograph. An interesting thought that in being engaged by a photograph it is given life. At the same time, he speaks of the grief and pathos of which the photograph is made from or contains. The photograph for purely sentimental reasons.

Barthes wonders about the duality of some images and wonders why he is attracted in a ‘polite’ way to some images. He speaks of studium, which returns to his semiological approach using the term stadium by which he means historical, social or cultural meanings extracted by analysing signs. In the works he quotes by the photographer Koen Wessing taken in war-torn Nicaragua he points out the contrast of nuns and soldiers. “They expressed the dignity and horror of rebellion, but in my eyes they bore no mark or sign : their homogeneity remained cultural: they were scenes.” (Barthes, 1981, p. 25) He contrasts the studium with the punctum which is the prick, the photograph which grabs the attention whether by shock or emotion or for another reason. Barthes produces a fascinating glimpse into what he means by studium and punctum in relation to a photograph of Lewis Payne.

Alexander Gardner, 1865, Lewis Payne

Payne had tried to assassinate the Secretary of State. The photograph shows a young handsome figure seemingly relaxed but wearing manacles. This is the studium. The punctum is the fact that Payne is in his cell waiting on his execution.

He goes on to say that a good photographer might be better at looking for the photographic shock and in trying to reveal something that was hidden. Barthes has an idea of what makes a photograph interesting to him and mentions that “the photograph becomes ‘surprising’ when we do not know why it has been taken” He questions the motive and what interest behind the photographer’s choices saying that what was once notable, by familiarity, becomes less notable. (Barthes, 1981, p. 34)

Barthes tells us that if the photograph is outside meaning then to signify meaning the photograph must take on a mask. However, society mistrusts the meaning contained within photography and might want a less harsh view, surrounded by noise. Barthes explains that he does not mean the effect of a photograph but it’s meaning. Many photographs miss this summit of meaning and instead stop the viewer and make us think. “Ultimately, Photography is subversive not when it frightens, repels, or even stigmatises, but when it is pensive, when it thinks.” (Barthes, 1981, p. 38)

Barthes then move on to mention that photography is the ghost of painting and returns to his theme of death. He says that photography has a sense of the theatre with its cult of the dead, whether the face with makeup seen in Chinese or Indian theatre or with the masks in Japanese theatre and that “photography is a kind of primitive theatre, a kind of Tableau Vivant, a figuration of the motionless and made-up face beneath which we see the dead,”(Barthes, 1981, pp. 31–32)

Part two

In the second part of the book, which I initially assumed had more relevance to my project, Barthes describes the death of his mother and of looking for her essence in photographs left behind. He writes of his feelings that none of the photographs spoke to him, “none seemed to me really ‘right’: neither as a photographic performance nor as a living resurrection of the beloved face.” (Barthes, 1981, p. 64) He discovered a photograph taken in 1898 of his mother when she was aged 5 next to her brother posing at a Winter Garden. Interestingly, Barthes sees this as a personal photogrph and while he describes it in some detail, he does not reproduce the work. This is interesting to me that the photograph remains unseen.

“The photograph was very old. The corners were blunted from having been pasted into an album, the sepia print had faded, and the picture just managed to show two children standing together at the end of a little wooden bridge in a glasses-in conservatory, what was called a Winter Garden in those days. My mother was five at the time (1898), her brother seven. He was leaning against the bridge railing, along which he had extended one arm; she, shorter than he, was standing a little back, facing the camera; you could tell that the photographer had said, “Step forward a little so we can see you”; she was holding one finger in the other hand, as children often do, in an awkward gesture. The brother and sister, united, as I knew, by the discord of their parents, who were soon to divorce, had posed side by side, alone, under the palms of the Winter Garden (it was the house where my mother was born, in Chennevières-sur-Marne).”(Barthes, 1981, pp. 67–69)

This very idea of describing a photograph and explaining it has a certain power. We are used to the idea that a photograph contains a 1,000 words yet reversing this and forcing the reader to imagine this scene rather than to see it, speaks to me of the sentimentality which Barthes associates with that image.

To Barthes this photograph contained the prick that tweaked his psyche and reminded him most of his mother in terms of her expression, the honesty of her pose and the capture of her personality. His sense that here was a photograph which spoke to him of a time and a place that his mother and her brother were present. Barthes’ sense in the apparent truth of this photograph and ultimately the truth of photography itself. Barthes write, “I had understood that henceforth I must interrogate the evidence of Photography, not from the viewpoint of pleasure, but in relation to what we romantically call love and death.” (Barthes, 1981, p.7 3) Barthes does not reproduce this photograph in his book as he claims, “It only exists for me. For you, it would be nothing but an indifferent picture, one of a thousand manifestations of the ordinary” (Barthes, 1981, p.7 3)

This is an interesting concept in relation to my project. I choose to show the indifferent which has personal meaning to me and whether or not the audience can find their own meaning from my work, that is out with my control. To use the language of Barthes, “Henceforth I would have to consider to combine two voices: the voice of banality (to say what everyone sees and knows) and the voice of singularity (to replenish such banality with all the élan of an emotion which belonged only to myself.” (Barthes, 1981, p.7 6) The photographic work I will create in my future using the past images of my son and daughter at the most basic meaning, shows that my daughter and my son once lived and, as I write this, that my son still lives. Move forward in time and, should my work still survive, then myself and my subjects and my work will all be of the past, and will all be dead. How then, to find a way to convey the relevance this work has to me and to pass this to my audience? This idea echoes a topic I discussed with my tutor about graveyards and commemoration. Only through living relatives or people who remember the deceased, is there a sense of who this person was. Only then is there a specific reason to visit their grave or to care for the grave marker. One the link to the living is broken, the grave is of an unknown or forgotten person. It seems to lose meaning. Physically without anyone to care for it, the grave deteriorates and often the words on the tomb stone might erode and vanish as do the buried remains. The memories which go with the physical remains and the grave with its memorials slowly vanishes. Barthes speaks of the idea of the immortal photograph. “The loved body is immortalized by the mediation of…..alchemy.” (Barthes, 1981, p.81) This idea of the immortal photograph, of showing something which must have existed at one instant in time is interesting to contrast with the idea of medical photography. If I photograph a person in a particular landscape, then I can say that person lived and was there in front of my lens in that place and time. However, if a radiologist photographs the inside of that person’s head, there is no sense of who that person was or is nor of where the image was captured. I cannot even say if that person was alive or dead when the scan was captured. We cannot recognise an individual from a medical scan and as for place, it seems to be a homogenous “room in a hospital” completely indistinct from any other space within that hospital or any other hospital. It is stripped down photography that in many ways has become meaningless other than to specialist medical practitioners. My work, in attempting to bring life to such scans and to give the scans emotions, a sense of gesture and the personality of a real person and also, however briefly, of my own personality which will endow my work with my own feelings perhaps including my grief, loss, humour and many other things, is perhaps a simple project around putting a sense of time and place and who back into these works. It is interesting then to look at any artwork and consider how much of a sense of the artist comes through. Does an artist need to stand beside the audience and explain? How is audience reaction to an artwork changed with no input from an artist, often because they might be dead? Is an audience reaction any less valid without input from the artist?

References

Barthes, R. (1980) Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography. Vintage Books.

Garner, A (1865) Lewis Payne [Photograph] Available at https://lostmuseum.cuny.edu/archive/lewis-payne-1865 (Accessed 22nd March 2022)

Project plan review #6

As the start of second half of course, I feel a more detailed and in-depth plan was required so I have spend some time reviewing and revising my plan.