ASSIGNMENT 2: REFLECTION AGAINST ASSESSMENT CRITERIA

Demonstration of technical and visual skills

I went out looking and ready to shoot. with great curiosity, it was like looking with new eyes with a heightened awareness. It is possible that having been in hibernation my viewing was naturally enhanced.
Observation was everything to me in this project. I searched to find examples of economic scarring, that were accessible to me, and with time constraints with businesses able to open in 10 days, I made the most of every opportunity, looking carefully and at details.
I wanted to present images that a viewer would feel they’re looking themself rather than viewing a photograph; so once I found a subject I moved around a lot experimenting used framing, perspective, and depth of field to construct an image that showed only what had caught my attention.
Interestingly I have since done hardly any cropping, maybe just a bit of straightening on one or two images. I used the framing as I shot to control what I show the viewer.
I believe that each image has enough elements to communicate its own individual narrative.

One thing I picked up between assignment 1 and 2 is that when you’re feeling stuck or constrained it’s important to do work that’s meaningful for you.
Though “Economic scarring” is a concept, I was concerned whether it was abstract enough for the brief. However I felt strongly that this was something that needed recording, I could feel the scarring on this landscape myself when shooting and needed to share it; so I may have taken some licence form the brief but hope to anchor it by the way it’s presented.
I think there is also some discernment in the work because I stayed away from obvious Covid19 signs and clichés, though this introduces ambiguity and may mean that overtime there is some discontinuity,
Intention is important; I feel a huge concern for the future, especially the next generation and this brought an urgency to capture what I was seeing, and yet I had to combine this with patience to get it right.
I hope that these images will give the audience something to reflect on; I believe that they each show a sense of something not quite right, and I feel that this gives most some punctum.
When editing and forming the series I hope that the signs and symbols in the images along with the way I’ve presented them anchors my concept.

I was firm in my concept from the outset but kept my options on the style of the outcome fluid.
This was useful as I had taken on board so much photographic stimulus whilst in lockdown (mainly via zoom) that it gave it time to seep through me as I photographed.
Though I went out for my first shoot with the idea of using a surrealist style, I went with the flow and followed my instincts and my work developed its own style.
I have committed to my intuition this assignment, where normally I question myself and am not so confident in using my own style.
I had been keen following photographer talks such as Anna Fox to try some “FRICTION” (fact and fiction) but the only construction I needed here was in shaping the audiences view.
This was fortunate as something else I heard from photographers and the coursework across these weeks was the importance of integrity, and I’d managed to keep my photography honest.
I feel I have exercised my creative muscle.

This was a very reflective period in my life, with so much changing all around me and this naturally carried into my work.
I engaged many times with students as usual but with wider networks as well, curtesy of zoom; in fact too much came to me via my laptop portal and in the end I had to call a stop to extra research and learning, so that I could post it and my work and my assignment.
I have digested and reflected on much extra research as well as the directed and my knowledge base has broadened considerably.
Hence the context for the concept here is current and topical but my thought processes behind the work has been broad.