Sunday 17 November 2013

Assignment 1 planning (part 2)

The subject: The Market

Some questions that need answering:
  1. What do I want to say about the market?
  2. Why do I find the market so interesting?
  3. What are the key elements of the market?
  4. Should it be lots of elements of one market or vise versa?
  5. Are buildings/stalls integral to the atmosphere or purely a backdrop?
  6. How do I fully communicate 'the market' without words?
  7. If I need words to communicate, how do I use them?
Some thoughts on the matter:

I think people watching is the reason the market is so interesting - the interactions and the bartering; lots of mini events playing out in front of you all the time. That said, it would take a significant amount of pre-visualisation and luck to take enough 'mini-event' images to create a reasonable portfolio for this assignment.

In general, I don't find watching people shopping (in shops) as interesting. This may be because it feels more intrusive; whilst markets tend to be more crowded, they also feel more open. Similarly, when a market is finished and everybody has gone; the space feels lonely and expectant at the same time - possibly the lingering ghosts of previous generations... (Walton would have a field-day!) Does this mean that the stalls help create the atmosphere?

I believe this portfolio will require words, however, I'm not sure of the format these words should take. A simple caption, whilst a little boring, may suffice; but an interview (or anecdote) from the owner (as per John Londei's book Shutting Up Shop) would be much more interesting, if not insightful.

Thus the words will have a direct bearing upon how the images are presented. Captions are simple enough to add and the images could be presented in the blog. Whereas, anything bigger would really need to be presented in 'book' format - careless layout could have a negative impact on the relationship between the words and the photographs.

In terms of delivery, the course notes state that we need to submit 10 unmounted quality prints. One for discussion with my tutor.

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