Assignment 5 Urban Artists at Work – Submission and Feedback

I recently sent off my work for Assignment 5 – Urban Artists at Work  to Jesse Alexander for his review. Here is the note which I sent to Jesse along with the images which places it in context. My key references were Broomberg and Chanarin’s Trust, Lee Friedlander’s At Work,  and Paul Graham’s Television Portraits. 

Assignment 5 Urban Artists at Work

Feedback and Response

Overall Jesse liked the concept and much of the work but had a number of constructive comments on how to improve it and to present the work.

1. He thought that my current edit of 36 photographs was too large and that a high level of quality wasn’t maintained throughout. My thinking had been to do a large wall display of the photographs which by its nature, at least I felt, needed a large number of images.
2. He felt that the images which worked most effectively were the ones where the eyes of the artists were clearly visible so that one could see the intensity of the gaze.
3. He was concerned with the technical quality of some of the images – here the concern was that several were noisy in the shadow areas.
4. He was cool about the wall display idea and very cool on the idea of a book. He suggested that I explore the idea of another video or slideshow and also the idea of using music which has some connection with the artists. Perhaps a local band or DJ mix.

Jesse’s marked up copy of my images is below:

I have to confess that my first edit was based on trying to maximise coverage of the number of artists for the wall grid I had in mind. This did mean that some of the images I selected were a bit of a compromise. The result was that in some images the photograph was taken from further back and in others I did not present a clear view of the eyes of the artist – focusing instead on body language. On reflection I think that I do need to revisit my edit to ensure that the viewer is invited to focus on the gaze and absorption of the subjects. This is more consistent with my own work in the Museum portraits and also references the Trust work by Chanarin and Broomberg and the At Work series by Lee Friedlander more directly.

On the question of noisy shadow areas, I have looked at this again and I think it is partly because I had had to shoot at high ISOs (very low light conditions and my desire not to have obvious use of flash – the ambient light contributes to the mood of the photographs). I have revisited all of the images and am now happy that this problem has been resolved through a combination of darkening the blacks a little and applying some noise reduction. I had applied some grain to the images which Jesse suggested could be interpreted as trying to emulate film. His view is that one should ’embrace the qualities of your chosen medium’, which in this case was digital. (On reflection the idea of embracing the quality of the medium sounds like Greenberg’s mantra for Modernist art??).

In the light of the above I have now adjusted my approach to image selection and have gone back to my original photographs and removed, added and replaced a number of portraits. Throughout I have now concentrated on portraits where the eyes are visible and the eye line and direction of the gaze is clear. I have also tried to select images where there are other lines in the frame which emphasise the direction of the gaze of the sitter – for example a line on the artwork behind, the arms of the subjects glasses, the pen/pencil they are holding and such like.

I have also revisited my presentation approach. Having thought about it I believe that using a video could be the way to go. Adding music will make the presentation more atmospheric. Using video for a second project (in addition to the I am an Ironman – Self Portraits) shows a consistency of approach. I have made video. In fact I have made two videos. The first has a loud and uptempo DJ mix by Bristol based Zoon Van Snook. Van Snook played at the main Urban Art Festival – Upfest- which I attended in Bristol. I like the linkage of the music with the art but the music is powerful, perhaps too powerful and overwhelming. The second version is much more soulful with Colours by the Cinematic Orchestra as the musical background. I think I prefer the latter. The two videos which include my new selection of photographs can be seen by clicking on the photographs below.

Plans for Further Work

We also discussed my plans for further work. Jesse felt that the long exposure double portraits were a bit simplistic and inconsistent with my other work. As noted here I had already reached this view. He liked the idea of making a series based on the use of a large format camera. My thinking on this is constantly evolving and I will post again on this very shortly – later today I have my first portrait shoot for this assignment with my large format camera.

We also briefly touched upon the presentation format for the Museum  work. Jesse wondered if simply using a Museum Box for presenting work would be sufficiently distinctive – most students do this in any case. Another option I had considered in the past at Clive White’s suggestion was an index card box….I need to think about this some more.

Finally we talked about what written work I need to submit. I had been working on the basis that I would complete a 3500 work Contextual Text. However on reviewing the scope of the course notes it seems that this in not required. What is needed however is a 5000 word ‘Reflective Account’ which will included much of the references which would have been in the Contextual document. So slightly less work to do here to get to the end of the Advanced module.

Jesse’s notes on my work for this assignment an further work are shown in the pdf link below:

Greenough_K_417177_Adv_4

Reflective Account

Finally I thought I would start adding some reflective notes to posts in which I review my work. The Urban Artists project has been an interesting one. I started out with the simple idea of making a few environmental portraits of my nephew who is an urban artist and his fellow artists. This was largely my goal for my first whole day session with the group. The portraits I made were not what I was looking for. When I asked the guys to pose they became self conscious and stiff as in the portrait below:

What I found much more interesting was the intensity of their concentration on their work. This view was reinforced during the second weekend event I attended in Folkestone. I was starting to think about redefining my work away from the idea of environmental portraits towards an exploration of the gaze and absorption of the artists at work. This line of thinking was further supported by my contextual studies. I had by then reviewed Broomberg and Chanarin’s Trust work. This is an example of the type of portraits I now felt I should be making for this body of work.

The idea of redirecting my work was confirmed when I had the opportunity to photograph 50 artists at the Upfest Urban Art Festival later in the year. The event is a major gathering of urban artists in Bristol. Viewing the output from this weekend I could now clearly see the potential in a series based on ‘artists at work’. This idea was adding to and reinforcing the conceptual theme of my work which has developed around investigating ways in which photographers ‘disarm the gaze’ of their sitters, or in other words try to distract their subjects from overt self conscious posing.

So by the time I visited the fourth event – a festival called ‘See no Evil’  in Bristol – I was now very clear on what I was looking for and this proved to be a very productive event photographically.

So as can be seen from these reflections, the development of my Urban Artists at Work has genuinely been a journey. The path I have taken has been influenced by simply reviewing my own work as I have gone along, but also very much by placing my work in the context of that of other photographers and within the broader thrust of my own work as it has developed. I am still on this journey. I plan more shoots with the artists to add to and improve my portfolio and I am reviewing and pursuing options for presenting my work. I am also continuing to build on knowledge base. As an example of this, I have just enrolled onto a course to learn how to use Final Cut Pro so that I can bring my video production up to a much higher level. If I have learned one thing from all this it is that you have to get out there and make some photographs to explore what path or paths to take.