Assignment 5: Photography is Simple. My Approach
Brief
“The final assignment is an open brief. Take a series of 10 photographs of any subject exploring the theme ‘Photography is Simple’. Each photograph should be a unique view; in other words, it should contain some new information, rather than repeat the information of the previous image.
In your assignment notes explore how you think you’ve answered the brief.”
The notes for this also include the statement
“For now, though, you should just feel comfortable with your subject. It should say something about you and, in the end, you like it!”
My Subject
I had started thinking about this for some time, before I started this course, however over the last few months I have developed my ideas a little more.
Searching for images of the “Peak District Landscape” for Exercise 4.4, made me aware that many of the images appearing in a Google search portray the landscape of the moors as an idealised wilderness with little reference to the influence of man in managing the landscape as we experience it. The first two pages of images appearing in the search are these:
I note that the lighting is uniformly bright and colours appear to be enhanced. The scene includes what might be considered stereotypical features of the Peak District such as colourful heather, outcrops of rock, millstones (the characteristic rock is Millstone Grit). Inclusion of farming references are confined to a few sheep, well tended fences and gates.
There is no reference to the extensive mining and quarrying in the area; to the grouse shooting for which the moors are managed – the grouse fed, and the heather burned to provide food for the young birds; to the collection of water for a supply to the large conurbations nearby.
My aim is therefore to produce a set of images which include reference to some of these aspects of the landscape; to show that the moors are not a wild wilderness, but managed and not all the features to be found are conventionally attractive.
My Influences
My main influence in these images is the work of Fay Godwin. In particular images such as these show man-made structures in the landscape.
However her series “Our Forbidden Land” also show man-made structures in the landscape, they are less conventionally attractive and show a particular aspect of the British Landscape, such as:
Similarly the work of photographers such as Robert Adams, and others in the exhibition “New Topographics: Photographs of a Man-Altered Landscape” show the landscape as it is, not how we might imagine it. For example
While the subject matter is different I am trying to achieve an appearance of the image more like those images, than the highly processed landscape images I found in my Google search. The other element I tried to incorporate was a suggestion from my tutor to achieve a “flat” appearance of the images, with uniform lighting across the image.
Photography is Simple
The brief for this Assignment is to explore “the theme ‘Photography is Simple’.. each photograph… should contain some new information
It should say something about you and, in the end, you like it!”
The subject matter I have chosen is important to me – I enjoy the landscape in all its forms and appreciate that what we experience is a result of how it has been used for hundreds of years. It is this theme I tried to explore in my first assignment, The Square Mile. So I think the assignment does say something about me.
It will be simple because I will be making the images on walks, not all of which have been with the express purpose of getting the images for this, instead I will react to the landscape as I see it. I will therefore be using simple, compact and light photographic kit that I can carry easily.
References
References to the works cited in this post are found in my separate post “References”
Andrew Procter 