Topic 1: ALL THE GLASS WE CARRY

Take away from watching topic presentation:

Photography is always storytelling
Photography and meaning in photography is personal both to the maker and the viewer/consumer and this meaning can shift and slide for both continuously as Barthes ‘the photographic message is a continuous message’ (1977:18).
The photographer can’t predict how their story will be read. They must put it out in the world and let the images tell the story. Soth suggests one makes work in the knowledge that someone else will look at it but to hold on to one’s purity of intention (McLeod). A slightly contradictory message but one that underlines the importance of intentionality and trusting that if you put meaning in the work it will be in the work.
Photographs don’t have to be true to tell a story. The example of Christina de Middel’s The Afronauts (2012) holds particularily true here. A project that was about African space travel but was shot elsewhere. Much like feature films depicting fantasy worlds or exotic locations can be shot in studio back lots or more humdrum sites doesn’t detract from the story making. Photography, when not presented as pure-documentary is permitted the same flexibility. Indeed, I have been flexible with the truth in some of my work. Learning this here I frees me of some of the associated guilt. Enjoy the story!
WHAT MATTERS TO ME IN PHOTOGRAPHY? This is what matters the most, not what others think of it or how it is read/seen. Make it, trust it, let it live in the world. I can’t control it’s life.
‘Listen to yourself. Think aloud. Have the courage to name what those germinations are.’ - John Akomfrah
Photographers are aware of their work and their methodologies. They are reflective and communicate this through talking about their practice. Writing is good, but talking is better. I found this when I recorded a voice over for my trailer video. I made a few short notes then spoke unscripted about the work. There’s an economy of communication with speaking and I feel that the subconscious is better at working out what one means through verbal rather than written expression. I will incorporate this more into my reflections by recording my thoughts.

Chris Finnegan 2022. Making it Home (trailer)

Work this topic:

The start of this module coincides with us buying and starting to renovate a new house. This is a 1950s semi that is a solid structure but in urgent need of modernising.

I enjoy thinking about this term in relation to cultural history and tacking it on to the act of re-imagining a house that to most regards was functional as a living space. The desire to strip out the old, returning the house to a tabula rasa, and to build our own vision of home is of note. There’s an analogy here with the impetus behind Modernism. A distrust of the past. A reticence to hold on to traditional characteristics and the necessity to move things along, to progress.

These ideas are running through my head as I both work on the house and make work about working on the house. I haven’t quite put my finger on the essence of this development of my research project but that’s fine. I’m trying to trust the process and let the reasons come from the making. In that respect this is a research led practice.

Essentially I’m interested in how building a home (I use the word building in a loose term meaning creating rather than fabricating from the ground up) can provide opportunities to make photographs and enact creative actions. I have several methods of doing this. Firstly there’s photography as a recording apparatus. I have been photographing the house and it’s contents since we first got the keys. This method is focused on the things, the spaces, the light and the surfaces of the building as it moves from being someone else’s home, to a building site then back to a home.

The second method is that I use the objects of the work (e.g. tools, debris, rubbish, artefacts) as material for making temporary structures or installations. These are usually seen inside the building, shot on location with this context evident in the images. The process of change and becoming will be identifiable through the surfaces seen around these constructions.

A third method has arisen from completing the video trailer for this topic. I filmed my completing of tasks such as removing kitchen cupboards, tiles and carpets so that I could add them to my trailer, cutting them with footage of me photographing arrangements of objects. However, these have become a valuable visual document of these tasks and add to the still photographic methods outlined above. They document the time taken rather than a single splice of time in the process. Therefore they are a more accurate record of these tasks. I have begun experimenting with editing these, overlaying sections of action so that sound and image are layered, condensing these activities into shorter sequences. I feel that time has become an important element here.

I have been thinking of Bruce Nauman’s filmed performances as I make these. Nauman focus on the activity rather than the outcome interests me. Nauman also uses time as a key element in his work, stretching and compressing it and challenging us with it.

Nauman 1999. *Setting a Good Corner (Allegory and Metaphor)*
Available here.

‘where you could control the length of the film or videotape or activity by having a specific job. You began when the job started; and when the job was over, the film was over.’

(Nauman. 2001)

I have also been taking still images from the start and end of processes. These can, in my opinion, be seen as an example of repeat photography albeit over shorter stretches of time seen in the examples provided in this week’s topic.

I have begun to develop an extension of this process through the use of in-camera multiple exposure. These are layered recordings of stages of a process. Like the video work these can be viewed as a compression, or at least a laminating of slice of time. I’d like to explore this further.

Having watched the tool box video about appropriation I used Google Streetview to ‘visit’ all the houses I have lived in since birth. This was an interesting activity as it made me think about the notion of home, and my history of homes. There are 16 which is much more than the average of 11 homes in the UK (found via a quick Google search). I can’t help but also see this collection of screen grabs as a compression of time; nearly 40 years of living. Navigating virtual streets I was aware of my nostalgia for my own past and also the wave of memories which came through looking at these places. I was also aware of the act of photographing them using this method. My framing was limited by the positions available in the software and for some of the properties I couldn’t get close enough due to them being down private lanes. The resulting photographs are a mix of clumsy captures and estate agent-ready facades.

Finnegan 2022. All the places I’ve lived in (1982-2022)

DE MIDDEL, Cristina. 2012. The Afronauts. Self published.

‘“Setting a Good Corner”’. 2022. Art21 [online]. Available at: https://art21.org/read/bruce-nauman-setting-a-good-corner/ [accessed 14 Jun 2022].

Module Toolbox: Weeks 3&4

Ed Ruscha Response