Creative Media Production: Reflection

 This term we began with the Object Lesson which was about exploring an idea and maybe trying something outside our usual comfort zone.  My object was a postcard by Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin (2012) called Alias which was like a negative with a red filter.  I was quite excited about this project as I had the idea of drawing with photographs and ended up making a reverse drawing photographically of myself and my son when he was small.  I call this 'Mother and Child' (circa 2006) as that is when the original photograph was taken.  This was a short project (just a week) but it was good to do something really different using different processes and materials. 

The final outcome above I quite liked, the idea of just the reverse image, the trace of us.  This trace of a memory that now remains.  In terms of the process, this was all about the process from the simple tracing to the development of this piece and that was most enjoyable.  The outcome is perhaps not something I would frame or add to my website but with more development perhaps it could be.

The second project was a photographic portrait project. We had practised in class natural light and studio portraits and studied text about portrait photography, the text we studied was from 'Photography' by John Ingledew (Second Edition 2013).  We looked at the portraits/self-portraits chapter.  I very much enjoyed exploring the Helmut Newton image; "Self portrait with Model in the Hotel Bijou", Paris, 1971.  My own project was inspired by the images of Sunil Gupta's 'From Here to Eternity' (1995), I really was taken by these images as it was illness from HIV and clubs he used to visit (which look in the images abandoned or closed down). 

My idea was to create a similar concept, so I photographed doors that meant something to me, and these were to be paired with self-portaits.  Normally, I might share stories about these but there are multiple meanings to me, and like Gupta I want to keep these stories private.  The diptychs are for the viewer to connect, make meaning. 

These images if I had more time, I would have taken the actions again as I thought they could be improved.  The doors were exactly as I had wanted. The concept works for me and I was personally very happy with the concept outcomes.

The final project was the chapbook, and I had more trouble with this than any other book I had created.  I started with an idea which I quite liked about an old man with a secret from the cold war and the I liked the writing of the first chapter but after this I felt that I was not getting the chapters right, the second chapter I actually dropped entirely and changed the third chapter to the second chapter then wrote another third chapter.  After all this, I was still unhappy with the outcome. I felt the story did not flow as it should and that I should have started with the woman in Canada as this, I felt was far stronger than from the viewpoint of the old man.  

Most of the stories I have written previously, I was desperate to write more and more.  This story I felt needed scrapping and starting again, and the only thing I would save is the woman, Mika, as I had ideas about her, her life and creating another story, a better story. I comforted myself that it cannot always be a success and obviously, we learn much more from failure! So I would say this story failed, and next time I will spend more time structurally considering whether the story will hold up and making sure that there are real resolutions to the many questions that I poorly answered here in this narrative.  

I don't want to end on a negative, as I have learnt more from this than anything I felt was good.  In my reflection on Digital Arts project I was very positive about these.  For Creative Media this term I lacked something and it did not come together, next term I will be working much harder on a tighter theme and spending much more time testing and planning.