Project 5: Photography, Assignment 5: Narrative, The Book

This is the open accordion book. I’m not sure that this is at all the sort of thing the assignment had in mind, but it was such a relief and joy to stick my fingers in glue and pick up pencils and draw. Photography is all very well, but I just stare at one little screen then I stare at another bigger screen. I can’t get my hands on a digital photo. I think part of learning is learning what I’m not, and this project is showing me that, while I love taking my own photos and using them as a resource in my creative process, I’m not a photographer. For me the photograph will not often be the end product, it’s a tool on the way to making something else.

There is something too pristine about a photo. Only with time and much handling will it ever have a frayed edge or torn corner, and that’s only if it ever leaves the digital world. Most of my photos are bits of code, not something with a physical form. By subject matter a photo may show the messiness of life, but it will be contained within a geometric shape and it will have a glossy finish. Photos may mimic ‘the eye’ - though whose eye that is I’m not sure; it may be a closer depiction of reality than any other medium can create, but in its essence it is not real.

So I messed things up a bit.

Some of these worked better than others. I particularly like the girders, as these most closely resemble my initial idea of extending the lines beyond the frame to see where they end up. I enjoyed adding the more organic forms too, though in some, particularly in the one with the arch, the blossom ended up taking attention from the image. Ordinarily I wouldn’t mind this, but this is, after all, a photography assignment. Probably folding the photos wasn’t the idea either. I just couldn’t bear those sterile grid compositions of unphysical patterns of light. 

Reflecting on this elective, I enjoyed most the exercises on composition, especially the exercises on line. I found least appealing all the technical reading I had to do. I had to keep going and reading academic theology to stop my brain going into shutdown! I am not at all keen to continue to another photography project. I don’t have any joy or enthusiasm left for technical photography. I appreciate that learning techniques and settings will, in time, give me more versatility in the use of my camera, however, I wish I could go back to a vis comms project and regain my sanity before embarking on another photography elective. I have looked ahead at projects 7-10 to give myself some hope that there is a point to continuing this course, but at the moment I don’t feel it. Still, I’m now halfway through the unit, which is an achievement in itself.