The end of this unit and getting ready for assessment has had added stress because the company which hosted my learning blog tried to massively ramp up my costs. I therefore had to find a new host, transfer my domain and web content and ensure it worked as expected. At one stage when I had no working learning log on either my old or new system, I was very worried. The positive in this process is that while I was waiting for things out of my control to happen, I spent a lot of time reflecting on my progress and importantly on how I presented my learning journey to the outside world of my peer group, my tutor and assessors. Gladly, I have now resolved my learning log issue and it is back up and working.
As part of this reflection, I was questioning myself on where I appear in my work and was drawn to 3 pieces of previous research I had produced; the first using the photographic exploration done by Annie Leibovitz recording the illness and death of her partner Susan Sontag, the second and third consider the health impacts related to the pain of grief and start to explore why death in western culture is pushed aside. I went on to use this research as a foundation for a chapter in my dissertation. These three pieces of research are shown at the following links in my learning log.
As I reflected on these posts, I felt that I had touched on my own experiences almost in a passing fashion. In my research into Sontag and Leibovitz, I allowed myself much more time and space to discuss my feelings and my sense of myself. This is an important thing to consider. I am not a passive observer sitting in the corner taking pictures which have little meaning to me. My work has strength and power in part because of the emotional pain and because that is part of me as a person and as an artist. If my learning represents a journey, I think I often seem to try and shield my audience from what I have gone through and am still experiencing, which results in my audience only getting to see selected highlights leading to the end destination. Is this a subconscious effort to protect myself or for reasons of cultural norms where I think we are maybe not supposed to dwell on the impacts of suffering and death? I feel that I can tend to skirt around the pain from where this project began and that an audience new to my work might take a different meaning from my work which is not intended. My tutor has not been spared the tears and the intense emotions I have experienced as I studied. These include a sense of shame and doubt, trying to relive moments and seeking a way to bring back the dead and to be a better father and person next time around. All impossible. I have also shared such thoughts with my peers, as we have built up trust and know one another, this seems to make it an easier conversation. It feels to me that this element of time and the trust from building relationships gives a different and better sense of my work as opposed to when I show it for the first time to new people. I have shared these doubts with my tutor and raised concerns over whether my project is too raw for an audience and whether they will turn away. My tutor told me that there will always be people who won’t engage with our work. However, why should we change our work to try and suit all people? Instead, we should be true to our purpose and design and carry on with the main thrust of our message accepting that my project is about the loss of a child, of grief and forgotten memory so I cannot and should not make this a nice or easy experience. Interesting that it took a long time of study and reflection, remembering that conversation with my tutor from months ago and then putting these things together. Such reflection and coming to any sense of conclusion is not always a quick thing for me.
My journey through research, reflection, creation of art, writing, re-considering and testing what I have produced using the opinions of others as a soundboard is an ongoing thing. The safe space offered by the confines of academic study will soon end but while I have these tools, I will use them. My longest-standing peer group is the OCA Scottish Photography peer group. and we have been together for many years. Before the Covid lockdown, we used to meet regularly in Edinburgh and Glasgow to go to galleries and shows and to attend tutor-led study visits. The tutor is no longer with the OCA but our group has survived. To this day, we still have Zoom sessions every month and have a meetup planned for 2nd February. I mention this as the people in this group have come to know one another and the works and projects we produce. This is my most trusted peer group. I gave a presentation of my work to them on the 25th January where I decided to try something new. Before the meeting where I presented my creative works, I sent them my dissertation and asked the group, if they had time, to read this before they saw my images. I was interested in how providing a foundation showing my research interests and my dissertation with Rebecca’s voice, to the group might impact on how they viewed my creative pieces. Some revealing feedback from them such as that my work was visually similar to what was contained in my dissertation. I would expect this but as we don’t often show our written and creative works together, this maybe not always obvious. My peer group enjoyed Rebecca’s voice saying that it provided an anchor, a voice speaking from beyond life but also down to earth and remote from academia. The group were interested in my idea that sharing my work with them was sharing death and that shared death is more supportive and speaks to me of the comfort of human interaction which might be a way to lessen the sense of the taboo. An important aspect of this presentation is that it was an exercise focused on me where I could not avoid the spotlight.
What then of myself in this process? I started this project to try and better understand my motives and explain to myself why my grief had lasted years. Can I say that I was looking for a cure or to cast off a burden? I do not feel that I am casting off grief or death and think these things will always be with me. Maybe the sense of trauma eases and the days when tears come easily are rarer but they still come. There is much that I feel that I want to try and transfer a feeling of into my creative works. My creative works on this project started with photographs of Rebecca and medical scans. I have shifted to try and express the liminality between life and death and everything such a space summons. Another piece of feedback from another student in my Scottish group was a comment on my creative work which featured 2 children, one looking back into that space and the other turning to look back at the viewer, was to ask what the children were looking at. A very good question. Were they looking back towards life or past the horizon of the liminal space where we cannot see? Does this question equally apply to me?
There is much research into grief and how it causes many physical and emotional responses impacting the human body and mind. (Zisook and Shear, 2009, pp. 67–69) What then of those who study grief and loss? Is it like Barthes looking at photographs of his dead mother and of grief being triggered afresh? My creative works also demand that my audience consider their own deaths and re-engage with their grief for those they have lost. Is this why some turn away?
References
Zisook, S. and Shear, K. (2009) ‘Grief and bereavement : what psychiatrists need to know’, World Psychiatry, Jun(8(2)), pp. 67–74.