The assignment asks us to reflect on what kinds of subjects might be seen as un-photographable and how we might go about portraying them using photography (around seven ideas), with the objective of developing one of those ideas into a visually consistent series of 7-10 images. Here are my reflections:
- The five senses: sight, hearing, taste, touch, smell. You could photograph somebody actively performing a sense, e.g. a person sniffing something or walking with headphones on, but you could not photograph the sensation of experiencing the sense. For instance, you would not be able to photograph what something smells like - you can only photograph the thing itself and hope that the viewer can imagine the smell.
- Emotions: happiness, sadness. You could photograph somebody's expression and hope that their face shows emotion, but can you really capture what they are feeling? Can a photographer capture their own emotions? In addition, the emotion conveyed also depends on the interpretation of the viewer. For instance, I could capture a desolate landscape with mist and a lot of negative space, which one person might interpret as me feeling sad and isolated, but in actual fact, I would feel happy in such a scene, so it's relative. The Dad Project by Briony Campbell is a very poignant example of a piece of work that has captured strong emotions in photography.
- Anticipation: how would you capture anticipation? You would have to set a scene so that it was obvious what was about to happen next? How would you show photographically what you are anticipating?
- Fear: you could capture fear by the expression in somebody's face, but can you really capture fear that you as a photographer are experiencing? How would you show your own sense of dread, sickness, shakes?
- Dreams: dreams are a unique and subconscious experience - each person's dreams are individual, personal and not seen by other people. They could however be reconstructed in photography as a narrative, but I don't think you'd be able to just go out and photograph a dream, you'd have to stage a scene and be creative, possibly even surreal.
- Needs: hunger, thirst. Again, you could capture another person's hunger or thirst, but not your own. You'd have to photograph things that conveyed the concepts of hunger and thirst.
- Wonder: how do you capture the wonder? Is it seeing something amazing for the very first time? Could it also be applied to something sinister? Sure you can photograph the thing or the scene itself, but how do you capture the reaction of wonder. Is it excitement (or even trepidation) in response to a situation? Is it more ambiguous than that? Is it a state of confusion?
This will be an unplanned exercise, as the images will need to reflect spontaneity to convey the excitement and discovery. I will be participating in an intensive seven-day street photography workshop with Maciej Dakowicz, so there is also the element of excitement of working with a photography hero and learning new techniques. I have no idea how this is going to turn out as a finished piece of work! All I know is that it will be in colour :)
Sunday 23 November
Once I'd completed all the exercises and set about finalising my assignment submission, I wondered about the inclusion of text. The Assignment instructions did not ask for text or captions, and my feedback from Assignment One was that I did not need the captions in that particular context. BUT a lot of the work that we did for Part Two was about text and the relationship between text and image. Would it be an error to omit text on that basis? Did I want to guide the viewer into a reaction or did I want the photos to speak for themselves?
I searched other students' blogs for ideas, and came across Malcolm Burton. He did use text to accompany his images for this assignment, but I felt that for my purposes it would give too much away and not leave enough ambiguity.
That decided, I realised that the images needed to speak for themselves and that I wanted amiguity. Wonder by its very definition is ambiguous as it is not about certainty, so I therefore needed to preserve that concept. The whole subject of wonder is interpretative and I did not to guide the reaction to individual photographs but more to take the reader on a journey - like peeling an onion - I wanted to strip off layers. What I did do though was to include a brief introduction to set the scene by attempting a meaning of the word itself. Fingers crossed.....
In terms of executing the assignment, it happened as I'd predicted: completely right-brained. I did not plan these photographs, they were selected from my overall portfolio produced in Varanasi during the workshop I took part in. I did have the subject matter in the back of my mind while I was there but I was not consciously shooting for this assignment. I then selected the photographs afterwards using the usual star system in my software for editing. The pictures I selected for this assignment are the best of those I considered illustrated the theme metaphorically and I also aimed for similar colours and tones (cool, apart from the orange in the first one chosen to punctuate the start of the journey and the wonder of every new day). I put them together in a sequence of what you can image is the start of a positive experience of wonder, through to confusion, looking in to another scene from the outside (but not really being able to see what's going on), followed by a sense of alarm, and then on to something more sinister, ending with possible fear.
See here for my submission.
References:
- Campbell, B. (2011) The Dad Project [online] available from http://www.brionycampbell.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/The_Dad_Project_Briony_Campbell.pdf [accessed 11 October 2014]
- Maciej Dakowicz available from http://www.maciejdakowicz.com/ [accessed 5 October 2014]
- Burton, M. (2014) Context and Narrative Learning Blog: Assignment Two - time goes faster as you get older available from http://malsblog322.wordpress.com/2014/11/01/assignment-2-photographing-the-unseen/ [accessed 23 November 2014]
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