Challenges, Plans and Fantasies

I began reading with alacrity and enthusiasm when I signed up for the course.  Typically the pace I started with leveled out and then dissipated so this week I have read very little and feel a bit guilty.  I do console myself with the fact that I have begun to tackle the exercises and assignment for part 1 of the course, and even started taking some photos.  And although I say I haven’t been reading I have in fact looked at other student’s work and blogs this week, which has been interesting and challenging. 

Looking at other people’s work has helped on one hand because it provides guidance in the form of examples; but it has probably done little to calm a growing sense of uncertainty about what I’m doing on this course. 

During my initial reading phase I read in Graham Clarke’s The Photograph, “In less than 60 years then, the photograph had changed from being the privileged domain of its early progenitors to being one of the most accessible and accepted means of visual representation.  It was the ultimate democratic art form…” and I was struck by how relevant this statement sounds now. 

Over the last few years the onset of digital photography has meant that is easier and cheaper to learn to take photographs than ever before and just like me there are millions of people studying and trying to set up businesses as photographers.  I have read that there are too many photographers in training, that there will be more photographers than required and in any case it is becoming easier and easier for people to take decent photographs themselves. 

I love the idea of democracy and am not fond of the notion of elitism of any sort.  But I also know there will be for some time to come people who feel they can’t take good photographs and as long as they exist there will be a need for professional photographers.  But none of this stops me from thinking about what am I doing here and why?

It’s incredibly difficult to find the available headspace, never mind the time, just to fulfill the requirements of this first project. 

What I am finding is that I HAVE to plan.  I have generally just gone about taking photographs with very little planning, occasionally stumbling across things almost by accident as I discover and explore.  I like that.  But I am going to have to be a little more disciplined, systematic and thoughtful which I know is a good thing but I hope I don’t lose some of the positive creativity I hope I’ve been enjoying.  This will be a new way of working for me.  I understand from reading fellow student’s work that it is usual to have shot lists and objectives and plans.  So I guess I’m heading in the right direction and that this will help me with the way I work.

I’ve also been thinking what is it that interests me about photography and I'm not entirely sure it’s the photography as a thing in itself.  Instead I believe it might be the things that photography can record.  I am very interested in people, relationships, perception, cross-cultural differences, social development and how we interact as individuals and in groups; for me it is all of those things that are deeply fascinating but which photography can capture so wonderfully, enabling us to take note in way that we might not otherwise do. I guess the fact that photography is democratic makes it possible for me to explore those interests through this art rather than any other. 

I think about the fantasy I mentioned in an earlier blog, one I had before I’d even discovered that I could no longer embark on the BTEC in photography I planned about three years ago, about how I had this crazy, flighty, far off fantasy about going on to study photography as an art one day. 

Fantasies are very useful as they allow you to look at the possibilities without wasting your time or hurting yourself or anyone else before either dumping them in one’s mental bin where some fantasies belong or in some cases finding yourself making those fantasies a reality.  The fantasty of studying this art has now become a reality and reality is always filled with challenges I guess – and that’s how it feels right now.  Quite a big challenge indeed.  Not only the time/headspace aspect but also this thing about finding my ‘artistic voice’.  I can’t help worrying – what if my artistic voice is really horribly crass and not worth finding at all!?! 

With that in mind I’m trying to think creatively about the projects and assignment.  It’s hard!

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I've popped a photograph of one of my children up at the top of this post.  I guess because I'd written about Sally Mann and Oliver Hill previously who both took photographs of children.  And because taking photographs of my own children, like so many others who become obsessed with this process, is really what prompted me to start recording life so, so avidly.  I took a whole series of these photos of my son on the sofa arm by the window where he loves to stand and will probably use them for the cropping exercise.

Do I know why I have started this course?

My children 

  

Blog No. 2

It has a been a week since my first blog and I have been thinking a great deal about what I hope to get out of this course, prompted I’m sure, by a growing sense of panic about HOW and a WHY?

Not only is the time management aspect more than a bit of a worry but I have briefly looked at other learning blogs and also begun to read the text that arrived with my OCA folder and dipped into one of the reading list books about composition.

I'm no Shirley Valentine but it's nevertheless daunting to read blogs that come across as scarily academic, and to read examples of assignments, that at this point in time are almost meaningless to me.  And as I read about Diane Arbus' "Identical Twins" and “A Family on the their Lawn one Sunday in Westchester”, in particular, I can't help but feel overwhelmed, intimidated and extremely lacking.  

As I write, however, I am becoming conscious of my life-long habit, one which I believe has held me back or at least prevented me from taking risks in the past, of allowing my Walter Mittyish fantasies to somehow dominate and stifle any growth and exploration.  In other words I can only do what I can do, and develop in my own time at my own pace – but the pressure to live up to grandiose and nonsensical internal fantasies (ludicrous expectations) makes that all but impossible.

I must remind myself I'm certainly used to reading, and have enjoyed, relatively academic texts about subjects other than photography during the last few years so even though a part of me feels woefully uneducated, and unprepared for this course, I am utterly capable if I allow myself to be who I am at and in the moment. 

As far as WHY goes I recall that I have often stood with people in galleries staring at prints, perhaps in a collection nominated for an award, or curated in world famous galleries, and wondered what on earth I was missing.  “That's fantastic”, a companion might have said in awe and I have more than occasionally thought, “really????” – what is it about that that is so fantastic, and why can’t see it?”  I’d like to have at least an informed inkling, and be able to agree or disagree based on a semblance of knowledge rather than feel simply out of my depth.  

(That's not to say that I can't and haven't appreciated work in my undereducated state.  I'm fairly bright and creative, and can and do respond instinctively to images.  And despite the exhaustion most parents of young children experience, I am certain I still possess some level of cognitive activity!)

But that’s not the main reason – being able to feel ‘clever’ in a gallery isn’t really a reason (or is it?)   Why HAVE I taken on this task, given myself an achievable but possibly punitive goal when I already have an extraordinary amount on my overburdened plate?

I want to take better pictures. 

Surely this would happen anyway with experience (as advised by the tutor of the extremely helpful but comparatively shallow – and I don’t mean that pejoratively - PI course I took last year).  Instead of spending my precious and limited time reading about photography and its history, contextual relationships, science background and theory of composition, light and the rest of it, shouldn’t I be sitting on my business Facebook Page, which I routinely ignore, and promoting myself?  Because I have this last year believed that the overriding motivation which has led me to take risks that I would never have taken in the past has been about making a living: about saying to the world and my ex-husband in particular, “I can look after myself and my three children and I can do it well!!!” 

My economic well being is certainly a consideration and having a job that might fit in with my desire to be an available mother is another.  To feel less undereducated too.  But clearly there is something other than that at work here.  Otherwise I would be on that dreaded Facebook page offering competitions and other hooks to draw potential clients in rather than sitting here writing this blog and planning to read a few more pages of Graham Clark’s, The Photograph afterwards.  Or, rewinding a few months, I would have attempted to go back to work in the City with a guaranteed salary when my life changed so dramatically and I rudely discovered I needed to reach a point where I might earn some money for the first time in 10 years.

The truth is I don’t actually know why I’m doing this course.  It seems a good thing for me to do, despite the fears.  All of the above is driving me, of course, but mostly I’m very pleased to be doing it (although truth be told I've not really done anything yet - except read).  And maybe that’s enough to know for now.  To know that I am pleased. (And a little bit scared!)