UT- Single image?
UT Blog – Single Image
As everyone knows nearly anyone who teaches anything has had to make the shift to teaching online as part of Covid19 lockdown procedures. My part was that I had to adapt the last few classes I was teaching and move them online, with differing degrees of success but as part of that it started me off thinking about what it does and what I can do with it.
One of those realisation was all the lectures I’d like to have done but for one reason or another hadn’t had chance to do, like for example my own personal A2Z of photographers, so here I am researching who would fit into it, there had been some changes from my last musings upon this, some new ones have been added and some taken away. During the course of this research I tried to find a single image that sums up say Diane Arbus, Lee Friedlander and Zana Briski (yes I’m taking either name..) to show what they mean to me and to others what their work is about…
It could be difficult, e.g which Cartier-Bresson image would you show? His early work, his India work, his British work? They are all fantastic examples of the medium, further thought I decided that it was his decisive moment phrase that I needed to show the importance of and use an example of this, 2 come to find but I plumped for
Derriere la Gare Saint-Lazare, Paris, France 1932
(Coincidently this is one I tried to revisit previously, it’s also another session that I didn’t have time to present!)
But then you look at photographers with a wider spread of work like Joel Meyerowitz for example and which one do you pick? Or how about if you’re looking for one that sums up Anna Fox or Paul Graham? Such bodies of work, such a difficult decision, so as this thought process progress’s you start to reflect on how it translate to myself, which leads onto:
What single image I would want to represent me???
Reflecting on my work, I’ve been so many different types of photographer, produced so many differing types of work, which image would sum me up..
Club? Studio? Music? Portraits? Documentary? Events? PR? Street?
My practice has changed so much into what it is now that I’m not sure what represents me completely….a set of images maybe but not sure about a single image, I couldn’t find one that summed up all of my work for all time.
I think this feed into a larger question about what legacy you want to leave behind, I always felt that my archive would have some value to someone but not in my lifetime, I never won awards, never got widespread applause and always have felt that I never got that ____ image (another lecture I have planned!) so which images to use, hopefully the lens of nostalgia will be kind and my images will be used to some effect (hoping my kids could benefit from them)
The question of the legacy of my work is in general a compelling thought process, both personally and for others I imagine, it needs a little work and time to formulate a definite but I’ll see what I can come up with, it was at one time an idea for PHD…maybe.
Now back to that research..
Thanks for reading