There are numerous images, but they tend to be limited in
terms of presentation and imagination. Please don’t think I am inferring that
the images a bad in any way, on the contrary, some are quite stunning.
In addition, I feel a bit “pot calling the kettle” because
my existing market images are effectively the same. Referring back to my tutors
email images of market stalls and stall holders will not suffice for a level 2 course;
so, how do I "push my images further"?
I was at the gym last week and watching music videos, I say
watching because I left my headphones at home – big mistake. Nonetheless, it
was interesting, because I actually watched the videos (probably for the first
time) and the lack of sound created a very different experience. For the first
time I had to make sense of the videos with only the song title and the artist
or groups name. One of the new videos was Go Gentle by Robbie Williams and I
was fascinated by the way the director used slow-motion to emphasize what was
happening.
Having now listened to the video, I can honestly say I
didn’t come close to guessing what it was about; but the video does very
cleverly support the lyrics. However, I’m still not quite sure about the pirate
ship or the captain’s outfit…
Also thinking about photography in terms of speed,
documentary and pushing the boundaries – I was reminded of the Eadweard
Muybridge galloping horse experiment and whilst it wasn’t slowed video it was
movement captured by a rapid sequence of still images. Quite revolutionary in
its time and absolutely accepted as documentary evidence that a horse does have
all four feet of the ground when galloping.
Why am I talking about this? I suppose it relates back to
Exercise 3 and Jose’s question about what makes a document. Inevitably, context
and meaning were going to come into the discussion as well as the key question
about whether a single image can stand alone as a document. Each time I think
about this I find myself reverting back to the definition of ‘a document’.
George Georgiou (British photojournalist) has had numerous
exhibitions and regularly presents two images on a single page - see The Shadow of The Bear. Interestingly,
these images are not necessarily sequential or even immediately related, but
support the photo-essay in GG way of conveying the information.
Going back to the Robbie Williams video, I find a degree of
similarity between some of the slow-motion clips and the Turks 1 exhibition
photographs.
Historically, the best images I have taken (feedback from
previous tutors) are the images that make the viewer think. These have tended
to be images with a number of possibly related, or possibly not related,
activities happening within the images – hence the requirement to think. Normally,
my images have titles and captions as part of my write up for assignment submission,
thus my context is provided by me for my images; the viewer can then use or
ignore this information at an individual level.
I’m not quite sure why I’m obsessing over this, perhaps too
much philosophy and contemplation? Since this is a documentary course, do my
images for this assignment need to be more poignant than anything I’ve done before?
Back to my tutor’s feedback and ‘image pushing’ so the answer must be yes. Time
for more obsessing…
No comments:
Post a Comment