Marks…

Marks

Even though I’ve been producing work and doing stuff I’ve just realised that the bounce back from the MA has taken a little longer than expected, the writing side has been a little lacking shall we say and here we are in middle of September edging closer to October,

Why is the middle of September important you ask?

Well that’s the approx. date for when I’ll receive my final overall marks……2 years of work condensed into a single mark…..all those words, images, sweat, blood, tears all down to one classification, wow.

Rewind a little for those who don’t know, I stepped backed into education with my MA 2 years ago, having previously done my HND and BA in the 1990’s with the way that education was set up a little different, being mean to help you prep for ten real world was a favourite that I heard a few times…

With the flip side of that being that throughout that time (and in fact all throughout arts education) it was said that:

“…the mark’s not important“

“…where you place isn’t that important”

“…it’s more what you produce”

But what happens though if that’s not quite right?

While, of course, I agree with all of those who suggest that marking art, photography etc is very difficult and how can you accurately mark such pieces? I realise that I only up agree with this up to a point.

Is not the possession of a mark a great way to judge how your work is received, a great leveller condensing the qualities of the work into quantifiable areas, a place where you can see what a group of qualified people see in your work, in relation to other pieces of work submitted and a handy rateable end result.

Through my change in path from working photographer to teaching photography I’ve seen first hand the marking process and learnt about marking structures, fluidity of marking and how it works.

It’s an interesting idea to mark an art form; art is such a personal endeavour and producing work is so subjective, that how can you mark it? If you apply it to established work would an Arbus rate higher than a Winogrand or vice versa, how would you mark a landscape over a street image etc etc etc..

So I’m here waiting for the mark that will validate me or confirm or propel me onwards or downwards or…. Well what will it do??

Thinking about the marking process and taking my final project for my M.A for example…

The aim of the work was to make very straightforward imagery of certain spots along a route discovered by a lockdown emergency, drawing form the new Topographical approach idea of image making the images, the final results could be said to be quite boring and non-descript. This ideas behind this approach was to examine how we perceive images, topography of places, how spaces exist when photographed and time we see them (amongst others)

It may be needed to factor in that part of the influence behind this work was the restrictions that Covid19 imposed on the world around this time and the effect it had on so many aspects of life. If lockdown had not have happened then I imagine a very different set of images being produced.

The audiencing of the work is another factor and i mean this as in not being able to show the images in a “real” form to many people has had another impact. Bit of backstory here is that at the beginning of the project I felt that the performative nature of shooting film had a part to play in the production of the work so as such I shot the urbanscapes on medium format (as well as digital, iPhone, polaroid, digital polaroid, black and white negatives and colour transparencies….etc)

Now I’m not sure if you’ve seen them but medium format transparencies are a thing of beauty to see in real life, they don’t have the overawing nature of 5x4 or the “..what the..” effect of a 10x8 transparency, they have their own very distinct and beautiful form..

So not being able to show that to people has left a part of the audiencing of the work unfulfilled; the images have been scanned and have only been viewed (especially in view of marking them) on a screen, this has to have an affect on the work, doesn’t it?

I’m unsure how they are seen in actuality as a printed medium.

Does this matter?

How do you comparatively mark those in relation to say another set of “wow” images?

How indeed?

Another problem that has recently arisen is that it’s become quite a performative and didactic piece that consist of interactive dialogue surrounding the work that is seemingly best done vocally…..so how do you show that in a group setting ?

I have to work out how to present it either in screen form or in an exhibition, both very different and both with obstacles to overcome.

I have ended up with a set of 9 images with 7 different parts to each image, by my maths that consists of 63 parts that can be shown individually in a group, as moving imagery or as single grouped together or as well just about any way really, bit of a headache and a conundrum.

I’m sure you will see the results on here and hopefully I’ve done well but you never know until the mark comes out, but any way does the mark really matter?

Thanks for reading.