Practice development

Thought for this blog I’d return to writing about my practice as I’ve just recently completed a small long-term (ish) project for the Urgent Temporality identity.

As you will no doubt have seen via the thumbnail the subject of this is the Mask.

This subject has gained more traction in recent weeks as the management of this pandemic yet again returns us to things that we thought had passed.

Adding a little background to the look of the images is the fact that I’ve been looking down (and sometimes up) for most of my photographic life noticing things on the floor, making up stories, collecting them and seeing what meanings they have. I think you can take a measure of events by the things that are discarded, sometimes these are seen with less value and sometimes things crop up that are so bizarre they demand a backstory. Before it’s said, yes, I do realise that this is known as a tried and tested photo cliché, but I do enjoy the work and stories that this type of looking brings.

The mask has become a huge symbol of this pandemic, it has raised so many issues in society. Some see it as a signifier of control and others of compliance and caring about your fellow human. The mask has become a ubiquitous symbol yet judging by the debates that they throw up, a quite controversial one. As this pandemic has bore on, I’ve noticed not the people wearing them but the masks that have been discarded, lost or thrown, their bright colours in stark contrast to the ground they now occupy. Seeing these discarded ones, I chose to see these through Urgent Temporality filter of the aims that I wish it to explore. These Ideas are centered around banality, thought, contradiction, photographic meaning and aesthetics.

At the beginning I started to see the odd one, which I photographed whith a view to showing as a singular image, this collection started to build up very quickly as time rolled on. I’ve now seen so many that they become yet another piece of rubbish to be picked up, yet to do that safely raises more difficulties. The images I made started to add up, each one adding into another one, usually you could find them grouped together, with another one just a few feet away or right next to each other as either the environment shepherded these into spaces, or as they caught on the built environment.  

As time went on the number of images I made racked up, I now didn’t think I could place these as singular pieces of photographic work. I started to see this piece as a whole collection of images, so I envisaged it as a piece where multiple images of the mask all overlaid each other to see what the distinctions and factors would be prominent. Seeing what the look would be when combined. This layering of images would hopefully show both their individual traits and the combination of the similarities. The hope was when they were combined into one singular piece, they may become something else. The prevailing thought was that this would show the ideas of transparency, transient and of depth that interested me. The ideas of layers is an incredibly symbolic one of both the UT practice in its generality and in terms of the photographic project process.

Photographic ideas and projects are quite the strange animal, most contradictory in their nature as they say the simple ideas are the best but they must have some depth, (the deeper the better) they can talk for themselves yet need words to correctly identify, they need to be singular in their purpose yet have multiplicity in their access points, they cannot be overly explained yet not under explained either. Sometime the words make an image great, yet they are seen as complimentary as the pictures speak for themselves.

Even in the practicalities of production there is contradictions of starting points, at what point do you have enough imagery, how much time should be spent on it, what is the optimal viewing format for proper evaluation of the work, and how do you know when you’ve finished the project?

I thought I will attempt to explore (discuss) the ideas, doubts and the practicalities of this here:

I made a lot of these images as I travelled around to shop, now I walk most places the making of the images is easier, but does this make them less valid? An image I make on the way to the supermarket as a travelling entity rather than a specific “I’m going to make images as part of this project” approach make either one more valid than another?

Do the compositions make for an interesting element? The mask is more often than not usually centered in the frame and with using that approach, the space around is dictated to by the constraints of its composition.

Also feelings of that this has been done so many times before, weighed heavily on this hence the delays in production. Contrasting thought to this is that hasn’t everything been done before tho?

As I went about making images I had photographed them on both of my main capture devices both the Leica and iPhone, which I intended to combine but this didn’t seem to work so well. I decided to split them into two separate pieces, think I was keeping in mind my background in photography and the old adage of editorial thinking of providing a horizontal and vertical…

As I’ve worked further on the piece I also started to think that it could possibly lend itself to moving imagery so to explore this I have put together a gif of those images to see what this could look like.. not sure of it’s validity or worth yet but makes for an interesting outlet.

Here the pieces are for a more in-depth perusal:

100 masks iPhone

100 Masks Leica

Current reflections involving ideas of worth, value and production are reoccurring adding to the already featured ones such as:

·      Thoughts on whether I’ve diluted the resulting ideas with the number of images providing a crutch of the provision of larger amounts of images rather than the production of singular great images?

·      Thoughts on graphic design skills as they are an interesting beast as I’m never sure of its artistry. I’ve worked long enough with them, but they still remain something of a cliché art for me with the result that my branding and logo-ing of projects can make everything look a little naïve therefore slanting the project in different ways.

·      Thoughts on the choice of subject matter from an originality standpoint and the interpretations of these ideas into a final piece. An interesting idea that should have been thrown or a bland idea that lacks clarity?

With all this mind I return to the reason that the Urgent Temporality brand was established and that was to put this type of work out into the world, so here it is as a completed piece, with the aims of showing development, advancement of an idea and to explore thought patterns.

So here it is.

Any feedback, thoughts or ideas please let me know.

Thank you for reading.