Category Archives: Photography 3.1: Practice and Research

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)

 

Tutor feedback #5

Tutor feedback for my midpoint review took the form of a video chat.

We had general discussion on some ideas I have had on my practical works.  I made some suggestions on how works might be displayed but tutor feedback was that I shouldn’t be concerned with audience participation and feedback at this stage of unit. My work needs a more definitive experimentation path where I explore different ideas, record my thoughts and as required revisit these ideas and repeat the cycle.

One interesting thought was the idea of not forcing my thoughts into the space reserved for someone else’s loss. It is ok for me to explore my own loss but I should steer clear of the sense of vulgarity or lightheartedness when dealing with others.

We spoke about the concept of good death and bad death where a bad death is one which is badly managed and uncontrolled. Of the changes in western society perhaps with advent of NHS and perhaps earlier at start of industrial revolution when families started to move to towns and cities from their rural homes and where births and deaths started to move out of the home. Death in particular started to be managed by professionals whereas before the family would have washed and dressed the body. In the context of good deaths and bad deaths, a child’s death is not appropriate or normal. It can therefore be seen as a bad death. I wonder here about the past when infant mortality much greater than it is today and how the ‘normality’ of the death of a child was seen. Is the death of a child such a fundamental thing that it doesn’t matter if this was a more common thing in the past?

It feels that now the first half of course done, the next half will involve more. More in depth study, more reflection, more practical work and review and reinterpreting that work.

One suggested piece of reading material from the month’s meeting;

Allan Kellehear, A Social History of Dying, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).

More detailed actions involve summarising progress in unit so far in relation to learning outcomes and practicing the literature review and why the ideas contained in my chosen sources are important to me.

Midpoint review

When I applied for level 3 and explained my areas of interest and potential project, I had no real idea of what was involved at level 3 study. I think level 3 feels radically different from previous levels. Every student comes to the start of level 3 having been taught certain skills in level 2 and before in level 1. These skills include critical essay writing, research for essays, reading skills as well as skills specific to the subject of photography, capturing images, seeing and imagining the image and the craft of photography as well as selection and presentation of your work. The difference in level 3, I think, is that at its core I think it is about teach self-reliance. There is no strict brief nor is there coursework which builds towards a series of assignments and then an assessment. Instead, there is a broad outline setting out a framework based around a project plan, a literature review, a proposal for a piece of written work all based around my own choices of research and creative works.

I started on the journey towards level 3 in my final level 2 unit on Digital Image & Culture. Here I used my final 2 assignments to start to build towards where I am right now, creating test pieces and thinking about potential outcomes. In level 2 and at the start of level 3, I had a vague, less than solid idea about using medical scan images and putting back a sense of the individual shown in these photographs yet unrecognisable as a medical subject. My research in level 3 has looked at many things and I know that if I write these down will seem like a random collection of thoughts even though there is meaning and purpose behind my choices, and given that a meaning and purpose might not be immediately obvious even to me at the time I studies these themes. I looked at abstract forms and symbolism surrounding death along with metonymy looking at the written work by Geoffrey Batchen, on why there seems to be a human need to capture images of those about to die, about the medical view of death and of life flashing before our eyes, related to this I thought of the words of a medical professional I spoke with who told me that the emotional and scientific aspects of their job were compartmentalised, this led to the idea of boxes. The boxes surrounding death, graves, coffins, gravestones and more. In turn this led backwards to death symbolism. As part of this I looked at ancient stories about plants and flowers associated with death. I looked at memories and the past, history, melancholy. I researched the difference between the death of a child and the death of a parent and I looked at Barthes idea that a photograph is a prelude to a death. My most recent research has built upon my earlier work looking at Barthes and has been on how death is portrayed within visual art.

 

In all of this at times I felt lost, that my ideas were pushing me in random directions as with the wind. It felt out of control and random and I worried about losing sight of where I had come from and with no certain destination in view. Should my research feel so random?  I wonder if what I have in my mind isn’t a single idea of how my creative and written works will pan out further into my journey at level 3, but is actually more than one work around which I can spend many years working either as part of future studies or outwith the realm of academia. Why should a theme as vast as that of our own mortality be expressed by a single project? I am aware here that the idea of a visual art projects with a defined start and sudden end provides an echo of the move from life to death.

My key themes and big questions will coalesce more as the unit progresses but at this point in time, I have the beginnings of some useful thoughts.

At this stage in my learning journey, I think a key idea is of the idea of a memory box. That is a box or container of ideas, mementos and memories designed to give an experience of life after we are dead. The box does not contain the dead person, it is a gift from the person about to die to the living. The box in itself and what it contains is a symbol or series of symbols. I am interested in whether this box should be open or closed. Should the visual art of the contents be on full display or as is case with human thoughts, hidden? As some of my thoughts in this course come from a physics perspective, a corruption from an idea in quantum mechanics sense might be that the contents of the box can be different things as long as the box remains closed and we do not know what lies within and what state those things might be in. It is a space of multiple possibilities which only coalesces into a single meaning should the box be opened. Does this idea start to bridge idea of how death is experienced by the dead person which the live person can never know?  I was struck in my studies on Batchen that he explored a dressing mirror which had an image of a dead person in one panel. I wonder on this idea of the mirror as it allows me to introduce the audience to be a part of that memory box and so to question their own mortality. I can vaguely envisage a work where the audience looks into a box where different images are shown and the viewer looks through one image to the next with final frame in box being a mirror designed to place that person into the death/memory box. I do not know yet how this might work, I could perhaps print on perspex so each image is see-through and forms part of the next image. I could also do this digitally so that each image switched on and off in sequence.

A different idea I am attracted to is the idea of a graveyard as a stage. I recently went to see an exhibition on van Gogh and while the exhibition itself did not interest me; I was intrigued by some of the ways the artworks were displayed. One of these was a top-down projection onto the floor. I immediately thought of a grave. The idea links to idea of constructing a virtual graveyard. Could I create a digital walkthrough graveyard or bring a kind of pop-up graveyard to a gallery space?

A third idea is about fragmentation. I explored this in a test piece but was unhappy with result and more importantly for me, how this work made me feel. So, I might revisit this but try and understand better why I didn’t like this work and what I can change.

Although these ideas have a 3-dimensional real tactile element, I still wonder about my original medical scan images and whether I use these as symbols of death like skeletons as seen on gravestones. In next few months I would like to further explore and produce some test pieces looking at the ideas of a memory container and of a stage.  I would also like to search for other practitioners to see if anyone else worked in a similar way.

This review asks for key sources and to list 2 which are most important to my understanding of my project so far. I think the Geoffrey Batchen work, Forget Me Not: Photography and Remembrance. Even the title of this is so interesting with idea of hat we leave behind hoping to be remembered in some way yet at same time the idea of remembrance being for the living and not the dead. My second key text is Barthes and his work Camera Lucida. I have chosen this in part for second part of book which is about Barthes trying to find and keep a hold of a perfect image of his recently deceased mother. This work is immensely helpful to me for another reason which is that so many other academics and key thinkers reference Barthes which creates a gateway for me in my research to access multiple other linked resources.

 

For the next 6 months of this unit, I can see that my plan will have much more detail, drilling down to show more specific tasks and activities. More development of my ideas as they shift from being abstract towards more of a tightly controlled and indicative of my direction of travel. There is specific learning I need to do for example to prepare me for the literature review which is something new to me and looking at proposal for my written work.

Project plan review #5

Last month I revised my plan based on what I have learned about course structure allied with my progress to date. This month as my main point of focus has been on a midpoint review, I have left aside the plan with my intention to update it for second half of unit after this midpoint review. However, I have been thinking about how my planning should evolve over second half of this unit.

I will refine plan using the improved structure I introduced last month as I recognise the second half of unit is less broad in scope and delves deeper into my subject in terms of research  as well as more refined thoughts about my creative works and trying to have more links between my practice and my theory and with the work of other practitioners.

In addition I will build some trials and drafts of the literature review and dissertation proposal into my plan. So far in first half of unit, I been working at an even pace producing an assignment every month. I have planned for this but as my plan has some slack in it, I might take some time out at tail end of summer for a break. This might be useful as time for further self-reflection on my progress and a chance to pause and think about my project and my direction.

Reflective commentary #5

My work was slightly different than previous months and in addition to continued research this month has had a focus on the half-year review looking at progress to date, looking at where I think my project might lead me and the interconnectivities between creative practice and research.

My research this month led me to look beyond the ideas of Barthes and his assertion that a photograph is a precursor to death and to look at the ideas of what is meant by death, how different deaths might impact us in terms of whether we knew the dead person, if they were a stranger to us or how their social background and cause of death might impact us. I started looking at this to try and better understand how death is portrayed in visual art. This research might be something I return to as the subject seems vast but also very interesting.

I also looked at Myths, Emblems, Clues by Carlo Ginzurg but hit a brick wall as so far been unable to locate the original source of a reference in an argument about origin, memory and history. “Written culture had for a considerable period of time attempted to give a precise verbal formulation for this body of local knowledge that was without origin, memory, or history.” which Ginzburg tells us comes from a similar argument in Foucault’s Microfisica. So far, I have been unable to locate this in the original but maybe, in part, it is because I am finding Foucault difficult to comprehend and to access or maybe Ginzburg accessed the original in the original language?

 

As part of my midpoint review, I have been considering my creative test works and trying to make sense of what I have done and where I am heading. At this stage, the areas I find most interesting are in considering the graveyard as a stage. I have ideas around transposing this stage to a gallery setting. Also, an idea about using objects as memory devices I first say in Batchen’s book showing a dressing table mirror which been adapted with a photograph so the person sitting using mirror would see this image every day. I wondered on idea of death symbolism including the medical scan, photographs of my daughter and more contained within a box where end panel been replaced with a mirror. I can vaguely envisage how this might work with images printed. My creative work is missing some more concrete links to my research and to other practitioners working in similar field or in similar ways. I will expand on this element in coming months. I did a previous test work on fragmentation and although the idea still interests me I was unhappy with my execution so this might be something to revisit.

In Project 6 next month my initial step will be a revision of my plan for the next half of unit in addition to further research and looking at literature review.