Assignment 5: Some Reflections
I have presented my images in a previous post, and will consider here how I have met the brief “Photography is Simple”.
I set out with the aim of presenting images which depict the use of the landscape of the Peak District moors and show that as I experience it, not an idealised version such as those I found in my google search. I tried to show images in the same way as Fay Godwin or Robert Adams and others might. I made the images intending to present them in colour rather than monochrome as these photographers did. Thus superficially the images look very different.
For example this image, Crowden 14, to me, depends on the colour of the rusting metal contrasting with the surroundings, and in monochrome does not make that point as well.
However overall when the images are shown in monochrome, there is a resonance with the work of the photographers which influenced me.
The simplicity of this assignment is however probably not immediately visible to the observer. The images were made in response to my own reaction to the environment with little specific planning as I did not know what would catch my attention as I walked. On two occasions I was accompanied and did not have long to capture the image so it was a more automatic process during which I used accumulated experience both technical and artistic for the composition.
Each of the images shows a different aspect of man’s influence and use of the environment – in that respect I think each image is a unique view and contains new information.
Personal Reflection
One of the main learning points I have drawn from this assignment, is not so much about photography itself, but about how I look at the world around me. I think I started this process with the first assignment in this course, which made me look at where I live and how that is a product of its history and changes of use over years.
I think this is illustrated with this image from that assignment which shows a moorland stream, against which a cotton mill was built and then on the foundations of that, modern flats.
It is this process of looking at how the parts of the environment create the whole which has begun to influence me, and, I hope, my work.
Those parts of the environment which build up into the whole may be due to changes in use over time, as was the case in my “Square Mile”assignment; or its use simultaneously for different functions, as is the case with these present images.
Another point on which I have reflected is that my assignment notes for this assignment are much shorter and less wordy than for any of the other assignments. My initial reaction to this is that I have not written enough or considered enough research and background reading. While this may well be the case, I am very conscious that I was trying to make this “Simple” and by so doing make my images more spontaneous and automatic, drawing on the influences and experience I have gained over this course in a more subconscious way. I think this relates to my concern which I raised with my tutor that my work is not so visually strong and does not always fully express what I intend as well as I can express it in words. My previous assignments I have had a lot of ideas which I have expressed in writing, and this is not reflected in the quality of the final images – I think best exemplified by “The Decisive Moment”.
In the end I am very pleased with these final images, I think they do indeed show what I intended and I would hope that I am moving towards better representing my ideas visually rather than verbally.
Andrew Procter 