Feeling contained

As I mentioned in my last blog the sense of being horribly exposed was beginning to really get to me and I thought quite hard about whether or not to make this blog private or not. I know we are encouraged not to do so in some advice when we first sign up.  And I was reluctant because I do enjoy sharing my work.  But there is very little sense of being contained on this OCA course, for me at any rate, and since what we are meant to be doing here is learning and exploring I think it's important to feel that one is protected in some way.  I am more than happy to share my blog with fellow students that are interested and have said so in a FB group.  And if I were able to mitigate the feeling of dangling, precariously, without any protection or something to hold on to and still be able to explore, take risks and head off in new directions then I would probably change it back to a public blog.

The work I have just submitted feels incredibly risky and dangerous to me.  Maybe it isn't though.  Maybe I'm just massively over-sensitive.  Is it a complete pile of horse manure, have I got it all totally wrong or is there something there that works or has potential - which is what I'm looking for at the moment?

I am not sure how I feel about it all.  I think some of the images may be interesting and evocative in the way that I wanted them to be.  But I would probably ditch some of them too and rearrange what is left - but without feedback I am totally lost about where I would go next.  And the longer I go without any feedback the bigger the vacuum into which hideous doubts and deep concerns flow.  I do feel a little like I bared my soul in a way, albeit perhaps in a manner that lacks experience, and to have done so and then be left wondering whether I've gone completely awry or am at least heading in the right direction feels ... not very nice.  Learning online this way has so many benefits but it also have huge drawbacks.  Feeling horribly separate is one of them and I'm not sure it's addressable.

On another note I have been wondering quite a lot about the Flickr page where I post all sorts of things regularly - perhaps nothing which feels quite as risky as the assignment images I have just submitted although I did post two of them - and not even the ones I feel are most successful, perhaps because I am so incredibly unsure.  Some of what I post are silly little things I take on my phone which I then play about with in Snapseed.  They're nothing.  I don't even think of them as photography but they are lots of fun and I enjoy doing them.  I get good positive feedback for them in some cases.  And I constantly want to say, 'what these???'  Today I realised they are a bit like the Pictorialism photographs I have looked at and read about that were all the vogue towards the end of the 19th century and right up to the 1940s in some cases, as photography struggled to accept itself in it's own right, comparing itself to and emulating painting.  From what I understand Modernism was the next thing in photography and in the end I get the sense that Pictorialism became rather a pejorative word. So it seems strange that these little Snapseed images are relatively well-received by the small but active group of regular Flickrites I am connected to.  I don't even know if I like the ones I post myself and just do it for something to do, because I feel compelled to for some strange reason.  I have of course been influenced by other such images I've seen on Flickr and elsewhere.  Today one of the people I follow, Michael Szpakowski, posted an article he wrote in response to an art critic, James Elkins, who was according to Michael, somewhat derisory in his recent book about Flickr condemning it as 'tedious' and 'kitschy' which indeed it it at times.  (I've not read the book and do feel I ought to before I in turn condemn him for outlandish elitism and snobbery!) I thought it was a very interesting article.  I remember reading on the OCA forum that much of the work on Flickr was derivative  - and I would agree some of it probably is - as is mine; how else is one meant to learn?  But Flickr is also - if you find the right groups and people - a fantastic, democratic and incredibly active, vibrant forum for people who are interested and passionate about making images with or without Photoshop, Snapseed, or whatever other tools modern technology offers.  It seems to me that Pictorialism grew out of a time when the camera was new technology and this second (is it second or merely one subsequent of many) wave of creating photographic images that look like paintings comes at time when we are all trying to find out what to do with this incredibly easy to use technology that keeps coming our way.

Before I go I have also been chatting with student on FB whilst writing this and a private blog is being discouraged - however, until I feel there is some sense of containment coming from somewhere I think I have to have this in place.