After a week loading up on material from Arles and trying to assimilate that the week felt really heavy at first. An exhibition, a workshop and a book whilst keeping the project work in progress moving along. All falling in to place. The three surfaces will work with material from the project or around it. The exhibition ‘States of Mine’ will explore metaphor pictures for my own state. The workshop ‘Truth and Beauty’ will explore these ideas in photography. The book or zine will be ‘I have thoughts’ and will use words with the images I have so far to tell a story.
I have worked through Susan Bright’s Self Portrait in Contemporary Photography. See separate post. This work along with a book called Reality Hunger by David Shields has immersed me deeply in to what is the ‘self’. So much so that I had the wonderful experience of questioning if I exist this week! The photographs I am taking are entering me in to a real dialogue about me. There is therapeutic benefit from looking at images of myself and beginning to see how my own thoughts are not real and solid like a surface but just something I construct. It is not easy to construct more helpful thoughts but the photography is helping the process.
Great session with Laura Hynd today and James Bellorini. I explained how my project is forming in three parts at the moment. Images of me that show my surface state or share it with a metaphor to represent internal state. Close up and personal…see below. The playful exploratory third bit is to photograph things that appeal to me in the moment as an extension of me. The image in the bottom right of the below is an example.
Making the bottom left image was a massive experience to overcome personal resistance. Laura had shared her ‘Letting Go’ work and it took a while to build up to taking the image here. I noticed all my own personal constraints. In Figueres seeing the Dali Museum I was in my hotel room and noticed the light hitting the curtain and thought this would be worth a go. It was almost like a fight to allow myself to have a go at this.
I now see this image as a beautiful representation of a human body. Mine. I like the light and the composition and I am very comfortable with this image now. I was tentative about bringing this in to a webinar but Laura and James were the right support for that.
For the playful bottom right image James pointed out the similarity of tonal quality of it with top left eye. Also we picked out the crease and its linkage to the middle right. So already some possible connections as connectors or separators are forming.
I have a place for my exhibition and go to talk with printers on Monday about printing the work. The big consideration I have at the moment is how much of a briefing to give viewers versus letting them make up their own minds.
Great week….but feels like time is passing quickly.
Categories: Coursework, Surfaces and Strategies