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.