Sustainable Prospects: Week 4 Reflection

This week’s coursework focused on defining our ‘photographic DNA’ and developing a practical strategy to market our practice. We were introduced to various practitioners offering nuggets of wisdom on different aspects of practice, from how to put together a portfolio that will attract the right sort of attention, to how to market oneself and how best to make links with industry professionals.

The clichéd image of the photographer as tortured artist, a solitary figure with a singular vision, more concerned with f-stops and camera shake than conversation and handshakes, belies the fundamental importance of developing and valuing personal connections in the industry that can sustain, inspire and potentially also provide opportunities for work.

It seemed to me that all the practitioners this week were basically saying the same thing: be interesting, have something to say, be sensitive to others and the demands they might be under. Essentially, be nice!

Of course, underneath all that is the inescapable fact, that the work has to be good. Because no amount of networking can compensate for uninteresting or uninspired work.

I struggle to define myself as a photographer. This is partly, still, because I struggle to actually consider myself to be one. This contradiction increasingly obstructs my ability to progress as a practitioner and is something I need to address urgently. The ‘imposter syndrome’ is causing a big impediment!

The other thing that I was reminded of this week, is that ultimately we’re all just owners of an opinion. The course tutors and invited contributors give us various ‘dos and don’ts’, derived of course from a position of industry experience and awareness of professional expectations and requirements, but they are opinions nonetheless. The following quotes illustrate the contradictions in the advice about what the best way to approach things is at times: 

“My last bit of advice is to always throw in something extra; something unexpected. Make sure they remember you. ‘You know, that guy who made the musical ping pong table…’ Be unforgettable and unmissable.” 

Miranda Bolter, 2017

“Put together a short, emailable PDF crammed with fantastic ideas, demonstrating unique thinking and doing. Then, in real life, projects can be expanded, personal work shown, stories shared, and it all ends happily ever after.”

Michael Johnson, 2017

“Create printed marketing material. A postcard is still the most effective thing to leave with someone after a meeting. If it’s an image that really resonates, they will almost certainly put it on their wall and then you will always be there reminding them that you’d like to be commissioned. Stickers are great too, and surprisingly cheap to print. My laptop is covered in stickers by my artists. Tote bags, if you’re feeling flush, are also great.”

Helen Parker, 2017

So many opinions, so much advice, that it can be difficult to be clear about anything, particularly if you lack confidence in your own opinion about what’s right for you. But there’s no single way to reach any destination and maintaining a clear sense of individuality and ownership over one’s own practice is important also. Watching Francis Hodgson in discussion with Miles Aldridge at Photo London 2016 I was really surprised to hear Aldridge state that he avoids the work of other photographers, particularly those in his own field of fashion photography. Describing it as ‘visual junk’ he was keen to stress that he felt this was the best way to preserve the purity and clarity of his own vision. Looking at his work, it’s hard to criticise this decision…his images are certainly consistently and evidently ‘his’ – an expression of his vision. This vision is what ultimately defines one’s ‘DNA’ as an artist and so must be protected, nourished, developed and brought to its fullest expression, by whatever means the individual practitioner deems best.

Right now, as I’ve written in earlier entries, the biggest challenges to me defining my DNA and expressing my vision seem to be twofold:

1.     Having a framework within which I can develop my practice (encompassing workflow, shooting, networking and marketing)

2.     Making the mental shift from hobbyist to professional practitioner – accepting that this is the journey I am on (and actually, have been on for a while), owning it and deciding where I want to go next.

I’ll be writing more about how I'm approaching these two challenges in a little while.

References:

·      BOLTER, Miranda. 2017. ‘Advice on Portfolios: Always throw in something extra; something unexpected’. Lectureinprogress.com [online]. Available at: https://lectureinprogress.com/advice/miranda-bolter [accessed 20 October 2017].

·      JOHNSON, Michael. 2017. ‘Advice on Portfolios: Never apologise for dodgy ideas: take them out or redo them’. Lectureinprogress.com [online]. Available at: https://lectureinprogress.com/advice/michael-johnson [accessed 20 October 2017].

·      PARKER, Helen. 2017. ‘Advice on Portfolios: Don’t spend lots of money creating something with clever wizardry – the simpler the better’. Lectureinprogress.com [online]. Available at: https://lectureinprogress.com/advice/helen-parker [accessed 20 October 2017].

·      HURRELL, Mark. 2017. ‘Advice on Portfolios: Treat it like a strict brief with clear objectives’. Lectureinprogress.com [online]. Available at: https://lectureinprogress.com/advice/portfolios-mark-hurrell [accessed 20 October 2017].

·      PHOTO LONDON. (2016). Miles Aldridge and Francis Hodgson | Photo London Talks 2016. [Online Video]. 30 June 2016. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhZvA4plK18. [Accessed: 18 October 2017].

Positions and Practice: Week 9 Reflection

This week’s focus was on critical theory and how we view, analyse and discuss images. I would admit that my initial stance was one of scepticism about the merits of critical theory, as it seemed to be a discipline that largely served to exclude the uninitiated from being able to participate in the discourse surrounding works of art. While I still believe this to be true in some cases, I would say that on reflection there certainly is a role for critical theory in photography. The breadth of potential contributions to the debate around the practice of photography, as well as the analysis of individual or related images, allows for many people to access or contribute to some form of discussion around photographic work. It's also possible to argue that critical theory serves to legitimise and elevate the practice of photography from merely a leisure pursuit to something that does merit consideration and discussion as an art form. 

As we saw Francis Hodgson arguing this week, it's important to establish a common measure of photographic ‘quality’ as we seek to identify images that ‘matter’. I felt this to be an immediately challenging and somewhat troublesome idea (eg. who judges quality?). Of course, the concept of quality in photographic imagery could be considered to be largely dependent on the intended purpose of the image and also the audience to whom it's targeted. The family snapshot, the advertising image and the documentary project are all aspiring to different standards of aesthetics and efficacy and different measures of their ‘success’. That being said though, I don’t think this renders the pursuit of quality entirely futile. It still seems to me to be an ideal worth pursuing at least at the level of the individual practitioner. It surely behooves each of us to seek to produce ‘quality’ work, aspiring to reach as closely as possible the mark that one sets for oneself at the very least, even if I personally believe that a universal and standardised measure of quality is probably an unattainable goal.
 
Of course, on the other side of this argument is the risk that those who are assigned the role of adjudicators of quality end up being such a homogenous group that there's an implicit and unconscious elitism both in selection of images of merit and provision of access to them. One could already argue that the ‘art world’ is not the most inclusive or welcoming environment and by seeking to establish a visual hierarchy there is certainly a concern that it is possible for inequality to become further entrenched.

Save Your Own Damn Self

Another interesting question posed this week was whether we approached our work in a predominantly emotional or cognitive way. Reflecting on this I feel that since starting to take photographs I have largely proceeded in an emotionally-driven manner and put very little thought into things at all. One of the main drivers for pursing an MA in photography was the hope of changing this and finding a more informed basis on which to continue creating imagery that was hopefully improved by being better informed. I suppose as much as I don’t feel that my approach has yet shown much sign of this, the very act of writing this CRJ is a step towards a more considered cognitive approach.

Finally, I recently read a book by David Campany – Photography and Cinema as part of my research into the link between photography and cinema and how this might help to contextualize my own practice and help me understand how I see scenes and create images. While I can’t say that after having read this book I have a clear idea of how my own work can be considered ‘cinematic’, one thought from the book has stuck with me, that being that ‘an image could simply be narrative without belonging to a narrative’. I really like this and hope to work towards producing images with more narrative content moving forward.