ILLUSTRATED RESEARCH PROPOSAL

PHO710: Positions and PracticeMA Photography CRJ

May 31

Finnegan 2022. *Home Report* (cover detail)

I’m happy with the end result of this assignment and feel that I’ve done a good job with this first proposal. It was quite a bit of effort to put together and at times I found it extremely challenging to corral ideas into a concise and clear form.

My wife and I are in the middle of buying a new house and the design of the proposal was in part informed by some of the documents we have been provided with by engineers, estate agents and solicitors. I think I successfully achieved a quasi-bureaucratic style with some design flourishes. The design was also informed by my research into American Conceptualism and the legalistic documents associated with the work of these artists (Diack 2020).

I was eager to see what this proposal looked like physically so I had it printed and bound at a local printers. I chose the spiral binding as another signifier of a functional official document. Even thought the document is laid out landscape I decided to bind it along the bottom edge. This was to best make a feature of the coloured index card detail design at the top of each page. This element was again inspired by Conceptualism’s appropriation of bureaucratic apparatuses, with Victor Burgin’s 25 feet two hours (1969) specifically as a reference.

Although the binding works to suggest a card file or filofax it leaves the reading of the document slightly awkward.

DIACK, Heather. 2020. Documents of Doubt: The Photographic Conditions of Conceptual Art. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

BURGIN, Victor. 1969. 25 feet two hours. Available at: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/burgin-25-feet-two-hours-t12961 [accessed 31/05/22]