23rd September 2025: Today was officially the first week back on the Level 6 part of the BA Hons Degree in Photography at the University Of Wolverhampton. We were to be in MK202 this morning until 13:00 for a session with Gavin, out new tutor for the module that I was taking.
Arrival
Arriving at the room like a big swot I was first in with 15 minutes to go, set up my laptop and checked the OneNote was all up and synced ready. Then a young woman came in whom I recognsied from Thursday last week. After introductions we chatted about what we had been doing up until this point, she has come from finishing her Level 5 at Walsall college.
The rest of the group arrived in dribs and drabs and then Gavin appeared too to begin the first session of this year. There are apparently 22 students in the Level 6 group now. We would be having an introduction to the dissertation task and an explanation of what is required, followed by a trip to the library to check out some books and have a look around. After this Gavin asked to see me for a short tutorial session about what I would be planning to do.
Giveaway
Gavin and Euripides then started distributing copies of a book called The Printing Room: From Where I Speak. It’s a risograph printed limited edition collection of works by local, to the Black Country, artists expressing themselves in only ways people from the Black Country can. Ill have a read through it over the next few weeks as Marley Starskey Butler is in there as well as Polly Brant and Leah Hickey.
Diss
Opening with a meme, Gavin fired up the slidedeck.
How do you like to work?
The first question was how we prefer to work and everyone has a different preference for the work that they do, some like music, some silence, some in a busy area and some not.
Gavin said that there will be one to one tutorials and we should all have had one in the first 4 weeks.
Someone raised a question about the topics allowed and the answer was: Dissertation must be about photography, but not necessarily linked to the exhibition project / practical work that is being carried out.
Writing Method
Some people prefer to auto-write, and just scribe down tonnes of ideas and words then edit it at the end. Some prefer to edit line by line and have everything controlled reasonably well but Gavin warned that this method has a risk of not keeping an eye on the larger picture.
Some students prefer to write on screen, some on paper, some put it together in their head and then commit to a keyboard. All are correct methods as long as you are creating something.
Structure of the Dissertation
There are a number of slides for the structure and what is required in the dissertation so I won’t copy all of that here. Some of the more important points were;
- Preferable to have 2 or 3 chapters with subheadings rather than 12 chapters with subheadings.
- Mention of PEE Point , Evidence, Example
- Critical thinking is important. Question what you think of the text, and why you might disagree or agree etc..
- Word count of 5000 +/- 10% (Min 4500 or Max 5500)
- The dissertation covers Learning Objective LO4 in the list of marks for the module. It does not count for all of the marks, the practical components of the module also make up the majority of marks. This will include a journal amongst other things, but we’ll find out more tomorrow in the next half. That will be in Part II post.
- Hand in on the 9th December before midnight
Dissertation Ideas
After thinking about the dissertation for a while over the holidays I had come up with a list of possible topics:
- Why do I like brutalism?
- Is concrete ugly?
- Benefit of photography to architects?
- Benefit of photography to tourism? Is it bad to overload social media and get too many tourists?
- What is responsible street photography? Ethics versus laws etc
- Its not illegal but is it right? Street photography?
- Benefits of street photography? Documentary? Evidence?
- Cameras used for documenting assassinations
- Looking into old family photos after death of parents
- Making images of dead people?
- Photography around Death?
Effective Reading
Gavin has given us a list of reading works that we can take away from Canvas and come back next week with some thoughts and observations.
There are a number of works and whichever I select to read, I’ll write a short review of in another post.
Library Session
Gavin took us over to the library, meeting with Tom Hicks the head of the library on the way. We had a task to search the library catalogue for Print Books only and type in the subject we were interested in and the word photography. From my list of dissertation ideas above I searched for “Death Photography” and was presented with some irrelevant responses but two I checked out after a quick skim through.
Secure The Shadow – Death and Photography in America, Jay Ruby
From paintings of people post mortem to photographs of people and at funerals.
Portraits in Life & Death , Peter Hujar
Portraits of real people and then others of avant-garde people who have died, and have been kept in the Palermo catacombs.
Small Tutorial
After lunch, I hung out in the basement and chilled, getting on with writing up these notes and also starting to read one of the texts Gavin suggested about the most photographed barn in the world written by David Allen and Agata Handley.
It was discussing that the Moulton Barn exists in that spot only for tourists to take pictures of, and that the tourists exist there only to take pictures of the barn. It referred to the barn as a simulacrum, a copy of a copy with a loss of fidelity.
There are another 18 pages to read yet so I’ll include my notes in a future post.
When Gavin arrived he pulled up a chair and we had a chat about a zone I’ve produced that I gave him earlier this morning. The Nihon Echoes zine, he said was great and said he preferred the black and white images as they worked as a set, but the colour images were a little more sightseeing type of images. I can’t fault him with this assessment, some of them do come across as more of a snapshot.
Ideas
After looking at some of my ideas, as listed above we discussed a couple of artists:
Wolfgang Tillmans – https://www.tillmans.co.uk/
Iain Sinclair – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iain_Sinclair
Sinclair has created a London Orbital Film where he walked around the M25 route and photographed and documented the area beneath the giant loop of motorway.
After talking about the death topic and how it relates to the recent periods of grief for Mum this year and Dad in 2023, Gavin sounded a bit concerned about going too deep into the grief side of it and suggested that I maybe explore more the links between grief and space left after a death.
We discussed a possible career after university, in Photography, and I said that I saw no real changes from my day job for a while, but I was interested in a niche market of Funeral Photography before I started the degree course. He suggested that I might be interested in this not just because it is photography but also because it might help grieving relatives with the documenting of these ceremonies. I know for me having photos of the guests at the crematorium helped me to understand who had been there on the day and look back upon them with fond memories of the times that were spent.
Gavin suggested that rather than simply a number of photos of my parents throughout their lives, instead images of the events that lead to the funeral and memories of people, objects and places that make up the whole essence of the person in question, whether it is my mum or someone else. He mentioned Wolfgang Tillmans as a person who captures many details of still lifes as well as pictures of people. In terms of a video I would say that we are talking about the “B Roll” or context. This might be a photo of the newspaper that she used to read every Saturday or the clock in her room that is no longer seen by her. Ive a few of these type of contextual shots that might fit the bill.
Next
Tomorrow I return to Uni for the introduction to the Practice side of the module then find out how much of the practical side of this I will need to do, considering I’m not necessarily preparing work for the Degree Show, as far as I know. This will be written up and available as soon as I get home tomorrow!!
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