I have now submitted this work to my tutor. I must say that I very unsure of what his comments will be. The work is a little more experimental than I have normally have presented. That said to establish one’s voice as a photographer I think one has to take some risks…
A pdf file of my tutor notes can be viewed here:
Assignment 3 I am an Ironman self portraits
Were I to show my portraits in an exhibition I would present them in three grids of 10 photographs. Each grid would include the portraits from the same period of the training and would be captioned with a quotation from my training diary from that time. The quotation provides some context for the viewer, but is not too prescriptive, and the use of the grid presentation invites the viewer to compare the portraits and reinforces the repetitive nature of the training. I presented the portraits this form to my tutor. The final images are below. I have included the title and caption for each.
February – March 2012 – Building the base
‘The race seems a long way off. Will I get there? Feeling so out of condition and overweight’
June 2012 – Ready to race?
‘Am I ready to race? Not feeling as strong as I usually do. Lets hope I stay injury free’
August 2012 – Struggling on
‘Recovery from Frankfurt painfully slow. Have lost some condition. Louisville is going to be a slow one’
photo-graph 
Catherine
August 16, 2012
Interestingly, as this is different periods of training, I found myself looking for changes in muscle definition which I think I can see. the colour and shape of the different outfits also adds variety. On the latter, I’m interested in the ‘repetition’ theme, which is matched by the portraits. I wonder if that’s why I was looking for ‘differences’.
Keith Greenough
August 16, 2012
It is very useful to see how people view these portraits….thanks for the comments Catherine…
Anonymous
August 18, 2012
A really interesting set Keith. I find it fascinating how your response to the camera changes both within and across the sets. In the beginning you seem quite stiff and don’t look at the camera much. The ‘race-ready’ set are in general much more confident-looking and open, while in the final set you do seem to be finding things hard going (in general – there are some more upbeat images also).
In your notes you say that you are surprised by your appearance – I have to say that these are not flattering images of you (I too was surprised when I first saw them). You do not look as old in person as you appear here.
Trivial, but I also can’t help being impressed by the range of training gear you have. It’s quite reasonable given the intensity of the work you do but I’m still impressed that you don’t seem to have worn the same outfit twice in any of these. Possibly that is intentional – it may be that you have edited down from a much larger selection and consciously decided not to wear the same clothes?
Keith Greenough
August 18, 2012
Thanks for the comments….not sure if your comment was anonymous because you said I looked old 😉 The truth hurts!! Seriously though I found your comments very helpful. The portraits were not intended to be flattering..nor were they intended to deliberately show me in a bad way. They were simply intended to show me as I looked after my workouts. I did not say so in my covering notes but I think this series is part in response to the way in which successful athletes are portrayed these days in the media – all dolled up with lots of make up, flattering lighting, and plenty of Photoshop enhancement. The cult of celebrity has pervaded sports as it has just about every other part of our society. Kids looking at these ‘celebrity’ sports people photos could just get the impression that becoming a sports star is a bit like becoming a celebrity on the numerous reality shows – fame for nothing….In truth is involves lots of repetitive, hard work!
As to the clothes. Yes I do have lots. The photos also show me in training clothes from three different times of year with different weather occurring in each period. However, I did want to make sure there was no doubt that each of the sessions was a different one….sadly I had many more outfits which I did not wear.
Eileen
August 19, 2012
Hi Keith – Eileen again. I hadn’t realised I was posting as anonymous – thought I’d seen the little icon with my details on it. Important point of clarification: I didn’t mean to say you looked old – I was responding to your statement to that effect. ; -)
I think that the camera isn’t really neutral and always has some point of view – because it’s an extension of it’s user. Portraiture that doesn’t set out to be flattering can be positively unflattering. I think one has to work quite hard to fabricate something that looks very close to a facsimile of the face/version of the person that most people would recognise – you’d have to undo some of the camera-ness of the image. You might habe to have some with averted gazes, and to cut down on resolution – few people see that sharply – and so on. I think it’s a really interesting exercise, to try to be neutral or at least not obviously tricksy. I’m increasingly attracted to unadorned representations of things in my own work, for a raneg fo reasons. I do think that this is conceptually one of the most interesting aspects of photography – the closeness to the referent. Not much is making sense to me in my own work just now but I plough on.
I do think this has come together really well – it’s a fascinating set.
Keith Greenough
August 20, 2012
Thanks again Eileen….thought it was you…i think my liking of photography which is ‘straight’ is precisely that it plays to photography’s real strength – the accurate representation of what is in front of the camera. Yes there is always scope for photographic mediation – time, viewpoint, framing, lens choice etc but this can be handled with care.
The straight imagery of photographers such as Alec Soth, Mark Power, Joel Sternfeld, Stephen Shore, Rineke Dijsktra and others who shoot in this vein is what I am really getting the most from at the moment. Many of these photographers refer to August Sander and Walker Evans as influences…