Week 4: Into The Image World

​Whose Meaning Is it Anyway? FORUM & MODULE SEMINAR

Post to the Forum:

• A single image / advert where you experience one of the following:
• A dominant reading
• A negotiated reading
• An oppositional reading
• Clearly state your response and provide a brief rationale as to why you responded the way you did (maximum 100 words)
• Comment on at least three other posts – do you have different readings of the same image / advert?
• Reflect on how your own work might be read / interpreted in different ways

My response:
This was an advertisement in 2013 for a drive safe campaign created by The Frontier Post to help create awareness for road accidents. I experienced the dominant reading that was the intended purpose of this advert.

The semiotics here are cleverly used to create illusion. Initially, you see the shape of a gun, with the text showing that a life is taken every 25 seconds. Once the viewer comprehends that the shape of a gun is a set of car keys with the relationship between this image and the statement showing that car accidents are a cause of death, it makes the statistics evident that safer driving is the issue.

Forum Task
Roland Barthes (1977) argues:
The birth of the Reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author (Barthes, 1977: 148)
Post to the Forum below:

• One new image from your current photographic practice, without any kind of explanatory text, title or caption
• Give feedback / comment on at least three other posts
• Consider what you (as viewer / 'reader') think is the intended meaning / intent of the photograph.
• Why?

My response:

Comments from my peers:
I believe they're trees and a path, but maybe they're not. The photo leaves me with nostalgia, calmness and an unquenchable thirst for clarity, like a half-forgotten memory of a place eroded with time. If I were to take a stab at your intention, I would say it was to resemble a feeling of a memory of a place. 
 
Wistful, nostalgic, conjours the idea of memory and things lost. Almost "hiraeth" - the bittersweet knowledge you can't revisit a place. (Sorry to actual Welsh speakers - this is my understanding of a word that can't be translated.)
 
I can see trees, with a lot of noise. More blur on the left t han the right, which would be consistent with a long exposure whilst going round a curve.
It looks like a track in front with snow or vegetation down the middle and sides. On closer inspection it looks like vegetation. as you can see fronds at the end. It might be infrared, or having heard you chat more likely pin-hole.
The view, more blurred at the bottom, has an indexical linkage to the view one might expect if one fainted and collapsed.
In an earlier week we were taught 'E. H. Gombrich ...  states that illusionistic images are not those derived from nature but, instead, are those which have been so made that under certain conditions they will confirm certain hypotheses which one would formulate, and find confirmed, when looking at the original scene.' 
Which is interesting because I doubt if I saw the original scene I would even think of the view as I collapsed
I can only guess at your intent but my guess would be you are showing us the forest holds secrets. Your blurred shot definitely leaves questions unanswered as to what we are seeing. A pin sharp, perfectly lit, shot might delude us that there is nothing left to discover if we walked down the line of sight.
 
This image is great. I love the haze static type quality that seems to overlay what I assume to be trees in nature, I sense that the bottom is a shadow, or my eyes, make it out to be a shadow, but the more I look at it, it resembles a face like a portly man with a fu manchu, and trees growing out of his head. 

Webinar
In your webinar this week you are asked to consider the intent and authorship of your own practice and how you construct your work for a presumed audience and context.
You will reflect on your peers' interpretations of your photograph and consider how you might adapt your photographic practice (visually / technically / conceptually) as a response to this feedback.
 
After the Webinar

• Consider your own work in the context of any common / disparate interpretations emerging in the Multiple Meanings? Forum

There were some common interpretations of my work referring to nostalgia, calmness, memory/ forgotten memory etc which relates to my intention.

• Is it in line with your own intent (dominant reading)?

It was pleasing to see responses were dominant readings that were in line with my own intent.

• Or do your peers offer negotiated / oppositional readings of your work?

There was some negotiated readings of my work, but this is also part of my intention to make images that make the viewer can interpret in their own way and use their imagination to dig deep into their own memories.
 
Reflect:

• Identify examples of other relevant practitioners / practices / visual material you think are successful in achieving their intent. Why do you think this is? How does this relate to your own photographic practice?

Ori Gersht was successful in achieving showing history, memory and landscape through his ethereal images using movement. I have taken inspiration from this to use within my own practice.  

• Reflect on your feedback regarding the intent of your own work and how successfully this is visually achieved

The feedback on the intent of my own work was very positive and showed that I had visually achieved that through this series of work.

• Consider your current plans for developing your practice

Michelle suggested some practitioners to look at:
Deborah Barker (In Paradiso), Ingrid Weyland (Topographies of Fragility), Helen Sear, Dafna Talmor. Out of these the work of Ingrid Weyland particularly resonated with me as through the materiality of the printed image she highlight’s the violent damage caused to nature by manipulating and distorting her photographed landscapes. I can see this as a medium I could use within my research project looking at Time, Memory and Mortality as using the scrunched-up images within the landscape acts as a visual metaphor for ‘that which has been’ and represents mortality.

Ingrid Weyland  - Topographies of Fragility I, 2019

Reflection Guidance

• Consider the ‘intent’ of your photographic practice. Has it changed?
• Reconsider the visual / technical / conceptual strategies you use to achieve this intent
• Identify any approaches / practices / practitioners that specifically resonated with you?
• Outline / summarise your independent research
• Evaluate the development of your own photographic practice to date
• Reflect on the peer / tutor feedback you have received on your current / future practice

Moving forwards:
What are your action points? Where are you going next?
 
Reflection:
I feel this week my intent has been strengthened and I have now found my ‘voice’ of looking at Time, Memory and Mortality reflecting my own experiences. I think this has given me my ‘Why?’. I now intend to stick with Intentional Camera Movement to give a focus and cohesion to my work, but will refine my work by using different strategies with exposure times, infrared, pinhole photography and layering to explore the subtle differences in the resulting images and the feelings they are likely to evoke in the viewer.

A summary of the independent research I have undertaken this week is below:
 
Movement:
Gerhard Richter - https://www.gerhard-richter.com/en/art/paintings/photo-paintings/landscapes-14/?&categoryid=14&p=1&sp=32
 
Movement through layering:
Idris Khan - https://www.saatchigallery.com/artist/idris_khan
Stephanie Jung - http://www.stephaniejung-photography.com/nature#0
 
Trees:
“Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth. They do not preach learning and precepts, they preach, undeterred by particulars, the ancient law of life.”
― Hermann Hesse,Wandering 
Tacita Dean - https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/dean-majesty-t12805
 
Constructed landscapes:
Sonja Braas - https://www.sonjabraas.com/you-are-here
Gustav Willeit - https://www.guworld.com/_plata/index.html
Ingrid Weyland - https://www.artsy.net/artist/ingrid-weyland/works-for-sale
How Photography Impacts the Psychology of Attention and Visual Processing:
https://www.popneuro.com/neuromarketing-blog/neuroscience-photography-psychology-memory-attention-contrast-symmetry-vision-perception
 
Movement, Layering and trees are all an important part of my current work, although I am growing more interested in exploring the idea of constructed landscapes and will consider this as a future direction.

Photos from week 4