4 Apr 2011

about me

The following 10 images aim to show the development of my style and technique in the past year, beginning with Image 1 and finishing with Images 7, 8, 9 and 10 which relate to the area I would like to research at post-graduate level.

Proposal

Current practice/area of interest: 
Which aspect(s) of your selected MA subject are you specifically interested in.

My interest is currently focused on combining the approaches of psychogeography with those of photography. I am fascinated by our emotional response to the environment, as individuals, especially within our city centres. This led me to the field of psychogeography. The two main strands within this are of course psychology and geography .I am especially curious about psychology, and the often hidden world of our minds and how we are affected by the structure and changing shape of our urban environment.

What I would like to achieve in the MA Programme

I envisage finding creative ways of photographing different areas of our city centres (perhaps combining these with written observations.) In particular areas which are being, or will be re-developed. I feel strongly that by experimenting with a visual representation, this can connect with our imagination, encouraging us to see the environment differently and ask questions. I am also interested in involving other other people (for example artists and other volunteers). I understand that this approach is a starting point and would look forward to attending master classes, generating debates and considering interdisciplinary links within this programme, to best help me realise this.

How I will achieve this

I tend to take my images using film (rather than digital) and am eager to experiment with this and alternative methods. I have already created cyanotypes (included here) and would envisage using, for example, albumen and lith prints, where appropriate to my work. These processes tend to take more time than with digital imaging, and realising ideas can benefit from gradual processes.

Resources

I anticipate using the darkroom, analogue cameras such as medium format and a safe space to mix chemicals such as those used to create cyanotypes or albumen prints.

Where I aim to be 5 years from now and how my MA studies would contribute to my ambition?

In the past few years I have chosen to return to study so that I can realise myself creatively; a shift away from making a money. Ideally I would like to have reachred the point where I can exhibit my work within galleries, perhaps collaborating with other artists and expanding on current ideas which will inevitably have evolved and changed. A further plan is to set up a professional studio to create portraits using predominantly traditional and alternative techniques.

Image 10


Images 10, 9, 8 and 7 show some initial results from my current end of year project which aims to represent Leeds city centre using a pscyhogeographic approach. I have looked at an area of Leeds which will soon disappear (it is to be re-developed), and I have tried to re-create this visually: the images aim to convey something transient and fading.In the final presentation of these images, I will be combining them with some notes, made at the time. (see accompanying text to Image 7, for an example).

29 Mar 2011

Image 9

Image 8

Image 7

Thursday 10 March 2011

No camera today, thought I'd make notes anyway. Waiting for film to be developed, 1 hour processing.

'Once upon a time in a magical land of beautiful shoes' ... a girl stands waiting, hair troubled by the blustery wind, short, choppy, styled. She's petite, possibly oriental. Small bright red cardigan, clasping a patent bag, also bright and twice the size or more of her petite frame. She smiles stepping into the main area of the high street and greets a friend. Wind. Balloons. Red and bright green. It's lunch hour 1.03pm. Blue sky and sunshine fades in and out of fast moving thin clouds. The pace of the people is fast, purposeful, in all directions crossing each other. I'm looking into an arcade from a coffee shop. A man walks by holding a basket ball, he begins to bounce it, somehow out of place. The weather has been erratic all day. A fine rain now decends, blue sky remains. Behind me I hear excited chatter from two women in a language Im not sure of. Possibly Eastern European. I hear intonation I vaguely recognise from my trips there. A girl and a boy walk past, hand in hand at a slower pace. She points in the shoe shop.

Image 6



Images 4, 5 and 6 were taken on colour film and cross processed. They form part of a book I created of a road trip to Yosemite national park, California. I chose to cross-process my images for my own experimentation and to present a more unusual view of this area. My images varied considerably from preserving a certain beauty to conveying a sense of the journey. I experimented with slow shutter speeds and the results helped me decide to use this approach for my current psychogeography-related project.

Image 5

Image 4

Image 3


IMAGES 1, 2 and 3 are all part of the set 'Portrait of a Ballet Dancer'. For these I created abstract portraits which focus less on ballet and more on the time in-between dancing and aim show something of the dancer's character. Image 1 (above) is a cyanotype (scanned) which I produced last year using digital and traditional methods. I have included Images 2 and 3 to show the differences which can be achieved in post-processing from one shoot. I chose to convert Image 2 into black & white and for the whole shoot I used 'red head' lamp with coloured gels (seen in Image 3). Since originally, cyanotypes were used to make blue prints for buildings this may be an apt approach (for the architecture of a city) to explore further.

Image 2


Digital work in the studio. A portrait of a ballet dancer.

Image 1