Demonstrate the use of technologies, methods, practices and processes related to my subject.
I first engaged with other artist / students in my level 2 studies when working on a piece about a relative whose life I attempted to track from the meagre facts I could find of his life. I engaged with a textile artist, a graphic artist and a student. We never met but were able to produce shared works with a level of depth and insight very different from working alone. When I proposed a shared project in 2023 with fellow photography student Caroline Black, one of the first points of reference between us was to understand the background to one another’s projects. Caroline told me of her work dealing with fertility through looking at the forest, at folklore, at the spirituality and ancient beliefs tied in with life in such places. One interesting thing Caroline told me was that trees shared resources. In a forest canopy, their branches and leaves had to allow space for their neighbours to get enough light and their roots intertwined but one tree could not be greedy and take more than a fair share of nutrients from the soil. Within this idea, the trees made space for young saplings and for trees which are sick. This was a startling idea and made me think about the very concept of artistic collaboration; of working together, finding synergies, learning from one another and sparking new ideas because of the sharing, of people being bound together who have always achieved more as a group rather than as an individual. In a way my studies at 3.2 have been frustrating as the dissertation took up so much time and effort and impacted on the time I would like to have given to more shared work. Helen Rosemier and I were also set for some collaborative work but so far this not materialised simply for practical reasons of where we both were at the time and how much time we had available to us. I have come to realise that time is an important thing in my art. I cannot often make snap decisions and need time and space to think about different ideas. In terms of collaboration, the time in building relationships is very important and can be considered a key part of the process of sharing. I hope that having made a start with collaborative partnerships this year, I can expand on these. I say I but of course I mean we.
I have always thought that the ideas brought to the table are the most important thing in collaborative work. I have not spent time considering sharing my process and how I create my work. Does this also have a place in the sharing process? Maybe it should and I have missed something here. At the end of this year of study, I sat down and started working on a website to act as a portfolio for my ideas and creative works. I thought that this would be a crucial thing I would need in 3.3 and beyond acting as a gateway to myself whenever I reach out to others with requests for help, proposals for shared work or more. Again I have not thought to include my process in this web presence and maybe I should.
Therefore, this brief document to outline the practical considerations in my work although this begins with a little thery around truth and the photograph. I made a similar post about my artistic process. I made a similar post on my creative process but this concerned itself with more a flow of ideas and focused heavily on the physical and tactile side of my work rather than what happens at the computer.
I ended that post by saying, “Each part of my project work doesn’t always follow the same process. Sometimes I spend longer on the computer manipulating photographs. As my project is trying to create a visual sense of the liminal, I feel that it works in the digital realm” which feels like a good starting point for this description.
Firstly, my work, whether self-directed or collaborations with other artists is not about representing reality. Having said that, the relationship between photography and reality is not fixed. Do any photographs, whether today or in the past, ever represent an absolute truth? Geoffrey Batchen claims that with digital manipulation so easily accessible and with the growth of AI, can any of us trust what we see in photographs to be true? He answers his own question, “traditional photographs—the ones our culture has always put so much trust in—have never been true in the first place. Photographers intervene in every photograph they make” A photograph could be said to be proof that something once existed rather than anything to do with truth. Modern digital tools allow us to create images which are no longer based in reality and take away the sense that some part of the photograph once existed in front of the lens. Batchen claims that all photographs are simulations of reality and that the difference between digital and traditional photography is no more than the “signing of signs” (Batchen, 1994) Barthes writes in 1977 just as digital photography was invented but before this was commonly used, of a press photograph as a message which can change according to the text which surrounds the image and even by which style of publication the photograph appears in. He claims that the photograph is at one and the same time a “message without a code”. (Barthes, 1977, pp. 15–17) seen as the analogue of the image yet also, “the photograph analysed offers us three messages: a linguistic message, a coded iconic message, and a non-coded iconic message.” (Barthes, 1964, p. 36)
My work is a conceptual way of engaging with what I perceive as realities surrounding the liminal threshold when applied to death. Thus photography is the ideal medium for such work. Batchen discusses what photography will be like in the future. I re-use one of his quotes from this essay but twist this to suit my own needs. This seems to present a good idea of what my process is about, “Like a ghost, this photographic apparition will continue to surprise us with its presence, long after its original manifestation is supposed to have departed from the scene.” (Batchen, 1994)
Now that I have explained the foundations of my practice, I will discuss my use of technology, my methodologies and processes in creating my work.
I use my own photographs whether taken using normal light or infra-red. To these I add found photographs such as old album photographs that I buy online and sometimes Unsplash images. The ones which most interest me are of people and especially children and how they engage with the camera being pointed at them. I am interested in the stories of these lost children, most likely many of them are dead. I don’t know who they are or what became of them. I then experiment with different ways of constructing my images. Layering different elements from different photographs, whether using things cut out manually using a scalpel, burnt elements, physical things such as ash, or using digital cutouts. I then add textures, text, graphical elements. Finally, when my image has a basic structure which I am happy with, I start to rip away at the exposure, the range of tones, colour balance and contrast in sometimes quite brutal ways. The treatment of my work and the removal of basic things which might be thought of as ‘normal’ or ‘acceptable’ provides me with glimpses of the liminal and the deep discomfort and unease in this space. I have been experimenting with different ways of framing my work and the presentation of stills with video and, in future works, with sound.
I look for inspiration wherever I can find it. Other arts sometimes can be found who produce work which gives me that wow moment and who inspire me, not to copy their works but to use elements of what I see. Some of Scottish artist Katie Paterson’s work is very interesting. I love how she diversifies and isn’t constrained by a single form, recording sounds of melting glacier or in considering the surface of the Moon and of the re-imaged surface of a record reflected in the light. Brilliant stuff.
In these two works by Paterson the surface of the Moon and of the record what interests me is the texture and play of light and shadow. I look to implement similar Moonscapes or artifical layers which are more than just a background in my own work. In the second piece, although this a mazazine cover, the user of words interests me in how it down and, in this case, why I feel it not successful. Ed Ruscha did some lovely work using text around the word End which is very inspiring. I have tried some work in this area and have experimented with use of the words, ‘The End’ in a video piece as part of a collaboration. Ruscha’s work is on a different plane to mine.
I have recently come across the work of John Baldessari and his ideas on the space between people and objects.
This is very influential for my work going into 3.3 where I imagine the points in life which are photographed set against those that aren’t. For example, a child photographed playing then nothing survives until a photo of them in old age. What of the space between these two points? The space between is vast when compared with what is captured. Imagine then the people who lived before the camera invented or who came from parts of society early photographers ignores. For them the white space in between becomes all. A fascinating idea to bring into my work.
References
Barthes, R. (1964) ‘The Rhetoric of the Image’, in Image – Music – Text. New York: Hill and Wang, pp. 32–51. doi: 10.2307/2515419.
Barthes, R. (1977) ‘The Photographic Message’, in Image – Music – Text. London: Fontana Press, pp. 15–31.
Batchen, G. (1994) ‘Phantasm: Digital Imaging and the Death of Photography’, Aperture Archive, Available at https://issues.aperture.org/article/1994/3/3/phantasm, Accessed 2024-02-04