Week 6 – Experimental

This week I have decided to begin experimenting with different styles of imagery to see what strikes me as the most appealing. The theme for this week was sunset and the changing light. The river section I am most often found visiting runs parallel to the setting sun. This makes for some very different and […]

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Week 5 – Reflections

This week I have continued to struggle with the notion of narrative and making my images work as a set that has a structure. In this week’s webinar, I showed some of my river images and the same reaction was received. That being ‘great pictures’ but what are you trying to say. I am still […]

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Week 5 – Just Giving?

“The camera has the power to catch so-called normal people in such a way as to make them look abnormal. The photographer chooses oddity, chases it, frames it, develops it, titles it” (Sontag, 2008: 27) The use of photography to tell the story of disability is a long and controversial one. Traditionally it championed the […]

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Week 5 – The Ever Watchful Eye

Is photography voyeuristic? Alternatively, is the viewer themselves the voyeurist? To quote Swift: “When did it happen? That imperceptible inversion. As if the camera no longer recorded but conferred reality. As if the world were the lost property of the camera. As if the world wanted to be claimed and possessed by the camera. To […]

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Week 4 – Reflections

As part of this weeks course work Week 4 Activity: Viewers Make Meaning, we were asked to submit one image that summarised our current practice and then our peers would: Evaluate the surface meaning, what you suspect is the intended meaning and the possible cultural meaning of these images. Reflect on your interpretation of the image. I […]

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Week 4 – Signs

“The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled. Each evening we see the sunset. We know that the earth is turning away from it. The knowledge, the explanation, never quite fits the sight.” (Berger, 2008: 7) Images can be more than just two dimensional still frames from an ever moving […]

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Week 4 – Into the Image World

“The Photograph is an extended, loaded evidence — as if it caricatured not the figure of what it represents (quite the converse) but its very existence … The Photograph then becomes a bizarre medium, a new form of hallucination: false on the level of perception, true on the level of time: a temporal hallucination, so […]

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Week 3 – Reflections

This weeks work looked at a range of topics surrounding the reality, fiction and the faking of images. The ability for an image to be something else, other than what was shot and its ability to trick the observer was considered. This does resonate within the context of my practice. I see myself as a […]

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Week 3 – Hunters & Farmers

Winogrand once said, “You have got to deal with how photographs look, what is there, not how they are made.” (Winogrand in Diamonstein and Callahan, 1982: 181) As already seen, my working practices are varied, and for a long time, I lacked identity as a photographer. During the duration of this MA, I am finding more […]

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Week 3 – Constructed Realities

Within an average week, I look at many different photographs. Some intentionally, others I am exposed too through media, advertising and my work. The range of images varies wildly, but the percentage of those that stick with me is relatively small. For me, the images that carry gravitas are ones that showcase the living or […]

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Week 2 – Reflections

This week’s work has been focusing on the different and often similar arguments made by Barthes, Szarkowski and Berger around the meaning of the image and its authenticity. This has given me a lot to consider regarding my practice as it focuses on the emotive and the subjective role the photograph has. The ability for it to […]

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Week 2 – Further Questions of Authenticity

“Photographs are not simply different from other kinds of pictorial representation in certain detailed respects; on the contrary, photographs are not representations at all. They are the practical realisation of the general artistic ideals of objectivity and detachment.” (Snyder, Walsh Allen, 1975: 175) From previous posts, I have considered the views of Barthes, Szarkowski and Berger. I find […]

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Week 2 – A Question of Authenticity

“The realists do not take the: photograph for a “copy” of reality, but for an emulator of past reality: a magic, not an art. To ask whether a photograph is analogical or coded is not a good means of analysis. The important thing is that the photograph possesses an evidential force and that its testimony […]

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Week 1 – Reflections

I am starting the work for this module reviewing the feedback from my last work in progress submission. The work was based on the theme of autumn, and the focus was looking to capture the sense of change and serenity that accompanied that body of work. The feedback from this module includes the following comments: […]

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