Film Dev Time
Got in nice and early, parked up the car and walked into the Uni with Euripides having a good chat on the way. Once in I spoke to Dan and he told me that the colour chemistry was renewed s should be good again now.
I’ve got my roll of Ilford HP5+ that I shot in Birmingham on the trip to the exhibitions mentioned in this previous post
Selected the Paterson tank for use with developing my 35mm roll, checked that it all fit together and locked up tightly. .
Go into the film loading room to load the film from the canister to the Paterson tank but there are no scissors. I looked around the different rooms to see if there are any scissors anywhere but none anywhere. A quick trip to the shop and £2.15 lighter I’m back with a brand new pair of scissors
Into the loading room again, film is removed from it’s canister and now in the tank and then into the processing room to develop.
Mel from level 4 was in the processing room and I talked a bit to her about her experiences so far and helping each other to get on with the developing.
Whilst doing the developer in the tank and turning over four times every minute Paul from Level 6 shouted for some help so I went and got Euripides before ringing for a first aider. Martin the technician is a first aider so was looking after Paul and he went upstairs.
Tutorial
Then back to the film and placing it into the wash process for 20mins, leaving it there whilst I headed up to MK204 for my tutorial with Sylvia.
I showed her some of my recent shoots, of the Shirehall and the factory where I work. She liked some of the photos and said she was excited by some of the images I’d shown her.
We talked about my work and that I’ve been there for 34 years and how when I started all these buildings were there and just a place to go, but now with my recent job change I’m now responsible for the buildings and the structure of the factory.
Some of the photos were shot after hours when it was dark outside and I was using odd sources of light on a stair set or coming in through a window to create a strange capture.
I discussed also that I capture some short videos of lights flickering, and the raindrops on the yellow tray, as well as recording soundscapes in different places and Sylvia said she loves soundscapes. She loves to use them in exhibitions and that I should consider a soundscape if it’s something I’m interested in, which it looks like I am, or I wouldn’t have recorded these things.
The connection to my work is a subject that kept coming back up and Sylvia thought it might be worth pursuing.
The talk of liminal spaces, including these photos of liminal at first glance don’t seem to fit but in the journey of my life, over the last 34 years I’ve changed from being a 16year old apprentice with a weird attitude to being a senior manager at the site and this is a huge transition for me.
I will need to talk to my manager to see if there are any issues with me hanging around in the dark taking photos, as long as I’m being safe it should be ok.
This is an avenue I will be looking down in the future and Sylvia is obviously happy for me to continue.
The trip to Tokyo was mentioned briefly and I’m planning on gathering some good images of dimly lit by neon spaces etc as well as some rain soaked streets but this isn’t part of my project plan for this module at the moment.
After the tutorial it was back downstairs to take my negs from the wash, put them in the wetting agent, then in the drying cabinet for 30 minutes when I wrote up the notes for this tutorial. Once I’d removed them from the drying cabinet, I cut them and placed them into the sleeve then made my way over to a mac connected to the Epson Scanner where I proceeded to scan the images onto my OneDrive.
Afternoon Seminar
We started off the afternoon session discussing the Birmingham trip and how Noah, Ieva and I had enjoyed some of it and how some of it had been a bit of a challenge. You can read my thoughts on the exhibition in the post previously linked. Sylvia asked us to discuss the following areas: Layout, Narrative, Themes, Presentation styles, Labels, Accessibility, Anything else?
On the topic of photo trips Sylvia mentioned London trip next year, 23rd January trip to London to photographers gallery. Daido Moriyama: A Retrospective will be exhibiting there at this time amongst others so it should be good. It’ll be getting down there on our own and then wandering around before heading home. It’s only a couple of days after I get back from Japan so I might be feeling a bit tired and jetlagged, we’ll see.
Critical thinking
We were to consider “The personal is political“
We talked about the work of Jo Spence and how this might help us understand critical thinking.
Sylvia mentioned that when essays are marked, critical thinking is considered to be not overly descriptive and reflecting on the evidence to create an argument.
We spent a few minutes watching a short video on critical thinking. Video: Study Skills – How to think critically, by BBC Learning English on YouTube
One of the useful parts of this short video was ways that topics could be introduced, and some sayings that might come in useful.
- There is evidence to suggest that…..
- It can be argued that……
- This supports the conclusion that…..
We would watch a video by HENI talks and then another, “Beyond the family album”
We were asked to consider the following question as we were thinking about her work..
What can we learn about engaging in critical thinking through the work of Jo Spence?
Self portraits used to neutralise the effects of photographs perpetuating stereotypes.
A video was then shown to the group: Heni Talks, Jo Spence: The Feminist Photography
- Cultural sniper as she was alone in a big society
- Photographing other people to make a living from it, was a question that was raised.
- Gaps and absences from family albums showing ideal images
- Bertold Brecht work inspired her with commentary alongside the pictures
- Patients rights work
- Picture of health work
- Spence’s final project was whilst she was ill with leukemia
- To attempt to represent the unrepresentaable
- Are we trying to make the photo do too much work?
- Or is it doing what I want it to?
- Family albums, patriarchal view of the family
- Big question: what point of view are you taking the photo from?
- Resisting patriarchy, self representation, memory, nostalgia, isolation,
- The photo has its own life once it’s released into the world.
- Photographs about photographs already existing archive.
- What can we teach others though our work?
- Whose gaze is the photo from? My factory photos, are they for anyone else?
- What are the larger questions that are being asked by the artist?
- What is the potential of photography? Spence believed in the emancipatory potential of photography
- Her work countered the idealism of previous imagery
- Why was Spencer’s work so influential?
- What relevance does it have for the development of your own practice?
We watched another documentary from Channel 4 Nina Kellgren 1988 documentary about Jo Spence
Opening up the family album episode 2
- “A puppet forced into a certain image”
- A woman dealing with a loss of photos
- Woman who got to 34 and then discovered her father died after having a 30 year affair with another woman
- No ultimate truth, you can only trust the surface of the photograph
- Photography shows surface detail, not what lies behind, needs something else to flesh out the detail.
- Loss of photos was like losing her mum again
- Useful to connect to the people and the culture in the photograph
- Photos from an adult point of view and a patriarchal pov
- Absences, power relationships
- Violent father forcing them to have their image taken correctly.
- Taken to establish a reality that didn’t exist
- A mask of the family.
- Lack of knowledge and fear is where a lot of fear comes from in childhood
- A woman was able to see her father in herself and allowed this to control her own temper so she didn’t react like her violent father would
Jo Spence used photo therapy to revisit her own history and helped herself to come to terms with the past. She said that we should draw upon the history, don’t ignore or hide it, use it to improve in a positive way.
Semester 1 Week 9
For next week we need to consider what we’ve talked about this week.
Also we are having a short presentation of each other’s essay plans.
Bring in plans for Semester 2 essay on your word presentation from each person
Create a short presentation lasting 5 mins
Semester 1 Week 10
Sylvia mentioned that this week will be surrounding the topic of “photography of space” using both “Interior and exterior”
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