Here are the two sets of summary comments in regard of the last year work modules that determine the classification of my photography degree. I think it’s worth spending a bit of time reflecting on these.
The comments resonated strongly with my own feelings. In fact in hindsight I think I took too little time on Advanced and its overlapping with Your Own Portfolio meant that it took second place to that work. In that module I was fully engaged – indeed engrossed in its process and outcome. However at the time I didn’t realise this meant that Advanced was taken second place. Yet now when viewing them I can see it.
The images presented for Advanced are competent and achieve their aim but I have failed to imbue them with “me”. For example, I could have experimented my landscapes and concentrated much more on contrasting my domestic setting with social ones and I could have experimented with labels, words and language on and within the frames, extreme processing or montages. But I didn’t do any of these things.
I also think that I did not spent enough time and energy considering the outputs and production values. All my images were presented as prints and I defended this in my log at the time but now can see that I should have taken more time exploring other forms of production and even when presenting the images as photos I defaulted to semi gloss paper for all submissions whereas I could have experimented with lots of different approaches.
Conclusion
I have enjoyed a wonderful, wonderful journey with the Open College of Arts. Indeed photography has given me a voice in a medium that I can use to express things in ways that would otherwise remain closed and buried, as well as broadening my knowledge and horizons of other artists.
This feedback stands me in good stead for the MA – I plan to use it to remind myself now and then of what to do. Try things without necessarily having and end product in mind, experiment with production values and the end product, and above all generate work from a personal perspective rather than falling back on convention and habit.
To that end this will be my first post in the MA Fine Arts Digital Plans category. A new journey begins…
anomiepete 