PHO710: Positions and Practice, MA Photography CRJ Topic 3: Authorship and Collaboration
TASK: Form a small team within your cohort (2-6 people) and devise a simple ‘micro project’ that you can develop and complete in a few hours, over the course of a couple of days.
Collaborators: William John Keelan, Ian Robson, Iris Tusa, Graeme Thompson, Robin Wynn.
We tasked ourselves to produce 3/5 close-up images each. Each image to be 1:1 format, with the addition of a creative constraint aimed at establishing the essence of a given colour, red, green, or blue, for each shot to further inform our derives and their relationship when combined. The meta layout to be rectangular or square combining all images from each contributor. Images can be rotated to help balance the composition. The final piece was intended to be a 40” x 80” print.
The quotes are the individual contributor’s intent, the final collaborative composition of images is the outcome.
‘Abstract/macro images based on derelict buildings or man-made impacts to the coast/seashore...the additional constraint of using primarily red/green/blue to inform our images led me to look at the colourful beach huts on Bude seafront.’
Ian Robson
‘Up close of forgotten buildings or structures that fell into disrepair and nature is taking them back (by plant life or the weather)...removing the identity of the subject and allowing the viewer to view this as an abstract painting rather than a recorded still life…the idea of utilising our environments of the shore and docklands.’
William John Keelan
‘The jungle or the sea eats everything in the end. There are also the ghost-town buildings that have been lying empty since lock down… A pre-rationalised essence of a red, green, blue theme to give us something to guide us and help balance the final patchwork’.
Robin Wynn
‘The expression of the visual ponders on the movement of form and colour, the movement itself. For it relates to our own interior movement…we are looking for an organic connection between different spaces’.
Iris Tusa
‘Was over the wall and down at the Thames the other day, found some wonderful bits of old glass that I thought may come in handy for playing with light one day…there is quite a lot of weirdness down there and I see great potential… interested in borderlines…derelict buildings’.
Graeme Thompson
The final piece has multiple layers of co-authorship, with the originator of each image its ‘author’. Our initial point of collaboration was a group brainstorm, followed by sharing our image making, and then in collectively combining the images. The narrative of the final image represents our working together to create an outcome that is greater than the sum of its parts.
‘We look at the world and see what we have learned to believe is there. We have been conditioned to expect.. but, as photographers, we must learn to relax our beliefs’. Move on objects with your eye straight on, to the left, around on the right. Watch them grow large as they approach, group and regroup as you shift your position. Relationships gradually emerge and sometimes assert themselves with finality. And that’s your picture’ Aaron Siskind (1903-1991)