SWOT

SWOT.... Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. It is safe to say everyone will have all of these factors in life and in the creative business. Working as a photographer it is helpful to address these issues in order to succeed.

My Strengths:

• Film processing, darkroom black and white printing
• Technical skills learnt including studio lighting, medium format and large format photography
• Improving on contextual knowledge which really shows within my recent work
• Essay writing
• Creative thinking, using own initiative for projects

My Weaknesses:

• I sometimes lack confidence when presenting my work or explaining my ideas to others
• My time managements skills can be less then perfect but they are improving
• I haven't managed to gain a lot of experience working as a professional, need to work on contacting agencies and photographers to do so.
• I tend to avoid exploring Commercial photography although I would like to do occasional work as a Commercial photographer to fund my own photographic work as an artist.

Opportunities:
There are several competitions that I want to enter over the summer including some from Black&White magazine this will advertise my work and my name hopefully making contacts and creating more opportunities.
There are free spaces such as empty shops and building that the council let upcoming artists use to show their work which I will try to enter my work into. This will make it possible for the general public to view my work and hopefully create more opportunities for places to show my work.

Threats:

• Money: Without money making photographic works as an artist may not be possible as I'll need enough money to complete a project and enough money to exhibit it.
• Competitors: The field of photography is hard to break in to and get your name known as there are so many talented artists and photographers out there to steal the limelight. Dedication and persistence are much needed in this line of work to stand out from the crowd.
• Contacts: Contacts are essential to getting your work shown and your name heard within the creative field and not having enough contacts can threaten your chances of success.

John Hilliard

Guest Speaker John Hilliard gave us an overview of his work from the 70's up to now. Hilliard started out as a sculptor, having been researching Keith Arnatt for the module 'This must be the place' these two artists are very similar, which is partly to do with the era they started out in. Many sculptors used photography to document their work in the 60's and 70's. Hilliard like Arnatt soon realised photography's potential as a medium. Hilliard's sculptures were specific to the place they were in so it was essential for him to document them with his camera. Eventually he realised that he was only making sculptures to photograph them and asked himself 'Why not concentrate on the actual photograph?'. Hilliard then decided to focus on photography, analysing how the photograph could create meaning. This was a major aspect of Conceptual artists using photography. Photography needed to be analysed in order to understand how it can create meaning.

The camera recording its own condition,1971

In this image there are 70 different frames showing the camera recording itself at 7 different apertures and 10 different exposure times. This use of photography shows different versions of reality which are more or less true. Hilliard liked to crop his images to make several different meanings out of one photograph.Cause of Death,1974

With 'Caue Of Death' Hilliard experimented with the way the cropping of an image can effect its meaning. There are four of the same image cropped in a different way and captioned. The body that lay by the water has the caption 'drowned', the body by the bridge 'Fell'. It is the crop and the caption which change the meaning of this image. This use of the caption was often used in newspapers to tell a particular story. The suggestive power of the caption is investigated. From previously reading 'Rhetoric of the image' by Roland Barthes it is clear how strong the power of suggestion is. Barthes explained that photographs don't have clear or specific meanings by themselves, it is the title, text or caption that anchors the image to a particular reading. Another aspect of Hilliard's work which is interesting, is how he envisages an image, which he then draws and tries to recreate. Most photographers don't know what they're looking for until the moment they find it but working with something clearly in mind is somehow more rewarding if you succeed.

Following Hilliard's talk we were given a group tutorial with him for a chance to get an opinion on our projects from one the most influential British photographer of our time. Discussing our projects with Hilliard was interesting as there were several disagreements about his advice which helpful in the end because it encouraged confidence to do what we had to do and also be able to explain why.

Olivier Richon

Olivier Richons work is slightly similiar to Keith Arnatts, they both deal with art history using the photographic medium. Richon uses the objects to explore photographic theory and art history. He mentions Jean Baudrillard and quotes "it is the photographed object, the object as image that places us as subjects" and Bazin "the complete satisfaction of our apetite for illusion through a mechanical reproduction which excludes man". With Richons work, he tries not to imitate painting and makes sure it is clear they are produced through the medium of photography with use of lighting, there is no pretence of them being anything other than a photographic staging. His work deals with many debates there have been surrounding photography and also surrounding photography as art. I have looked at his work in relation to my own project 'This must be the place' in order to understand how to reference the history of art with objects and how you can give objects a sculptural quality with the way you present, light and photograph them.

Keith Arnatt

Olivier Richon

Richons work much like Keith Arnatt deals with Still Life which inevitably links to still life painting and Norman Brysons book 'Looking at the overlooked'. Still life painting was seen as the least respected form of art much like photography. Refencing this with photography highlights the mediums status as art. Another aspect of Richons work that seems to be continuous is the use of books within his compositions, linking knowledge and art to photography.

Lecture: Post-Fordism and Contemporary culture

Following this lecture I started to think about how Post-Fordism and Contemporary culture has effected Photography and how this relates to my practice as a Photographer.
Overview of the main ideas:
Post-Fordism is the idea that modern industrial production has moved away from mass production in large factories as pioneerd by Henry Ford towards specialised markets based on small flexible manufacturing units.
Contemplating contemporary culture and Post-Fordism has been quite difficult. Within the medium of Photography it is clear that image uses and consumption have changed with contemporary culture but I would have to say now more than ever photographs are being mass produced. The image is being used as a commodity.

London January 2012

Going to London for an exhibition trip seemed like the best thing to do over the christmas break. Coming close to the hand in for the project 'This must be the place' framing, hanging, gallery space and installation was much needed research for my final print.

The context of the gallery is where my work is intended to be shown so I wanted to look at how photography along with painting and sculpture are displayed and how this can effect their meaning.

Japenese Photography and the Bauhaus

The common framing of photographic works seem to be the classic thick white border and black frame. Each photograph is contained within its own space, this works well with images that need to be set apart and focused on individually. The black frame works best with black and white photography but in some way relates the photograph to the common frame you would use in your home. After contemplating the border and the frame it doesn't look like a good option for my image. This is because I don't want my image contained as a photograph, it needs to be open as it's relationship lears more towards sculpture.

Having looked round the Tate at the photographs, paintings, installations and sculpture; framing seemed to be becoming a bad idea. The next visit was to the Saatchi gallery which became a very inspiring visit.

This sculpture reminded me of my final piece on a plinth, sculptures aren't contained in any way, they are placed with plenty of room around them.

These two photographs really inspired me towards keeping my final image un-framed because I don't want my image to have any boundaries of be contained within the space of a frame.

Manuela Barcewsci

Visiting speaker: Manuela Barcewsci joined us to discuss her work and give out tutorials. Barcewski's work interested me as she had done a piece with found objects. Found objects were a big part of my project and it was interesting how she used and photographed these objects.

These two images are from Manuela's series 'Shifting Around', 2007. Manuela explained how she set up the found objects within the studio to represent a flat surface. This idea of flattening an image before it gets printed and inevitably represented on a 2d surface strikes me as related to the nature of the photographic process. How we represent 3d objects on a 2d surface. In this respect Manuela's images become quite abstract and seem to represent painting more closely then it represents the act of photography, although this is only my opinion. Manuela's style seems to be more closely related the abstract and to painting, quite a lot of her work is can relate to minimalism. 

Interiors, 2004

 In relation to my project on photographing found objects in the studio as sculptural objects Manuela's work is quite similar. The similarities being that she constructs the image before she takes it and keeps her work quite minimal which seem to represent other art forms such as painting or sculpture. Many photographers go looking for their image where as Manuela already has in mind what image she wants and constructs it infront of the camera. This is what I find enjoyable working within a studio, constructing an image exactly the way you want it, placing objects were you want them etc.

Final image from my project 'So this must be the place'