Category: Assignments

For my last assignment, I submit an introduction to my body of work, the body of work itself and an evaluation of the body of work that reflects on the whole of this module.

Introduction

I have written this introduction in the third person, on the basis that it will be taken forward to SYP as a starting point for describing and promoting my body of work.

Leeds and Liverpool is a poignant short film by Andrew Fitzgibbon featuring photographs made over two years, while walking the 127 mile Leeds and Liverpool Canal. The film’s story reflects upon the canal as a marginal but enthralling space trampled with the burden of deindustrialisation and reinvented as a site of leisure. Absent of people, the film shows the marks of humanity left by those who have claimed the water as their own. The narration is voiced by Yorkshire born actor Paul Butterworth (The Full Monty). An immersive soundtrack features layers of ambient sounds recorded from the canal, and samples of sound effects from historic archives, as well as oral histories from those who once worked the canal.

Although the canal is promoted as a place of leisure, it holds deeper interest as a complex space of many different interests: from ruins and heritage, to edgelands and urban gentrification. There are fascinating incongruities, with human culture working at the landscape and marking possession, use and abuse. Andrew sees this as the meeting of worlds within a world; the fluid world of the canal and its banks.

Body of work

For the optimum experience, please view this film in full-screen mode using headphones to enjoy the stereo soundscape. Viewing on mobile devices is not recommended.

Evaluation of body of work

I wish acknowledge the work of both my BoW and CS tutors in providing the insights, suggestions and encouragement that enabled me to reach this point. They have been an enormous support. Credit is also given in the end titles to the film.

I use the same categories of assessment criteria contained in my course materials and that I have used to self-assess my own progress throughout this module.

Demonstration of technical and visual skills

 – materials, techniques, observational skills, visual awareness, design and compositional skills

The foundation of this work is photographic image-making based upon my observations during many walks along different stretches of the Leeds & Liverpool Canal. In the beginning, the project was envisaged very differently to how it was finally realised; it was intended to be a work of portraits showing how people interact with the place of the canal over a specific 29 mile stretch between the town of Skipton and Leeds. This was revisited when I found that the idea of the canal inside my head as a populous place (like the urban city canals to which I was more accustomed) proved to be a fallacy. This is a mistake I describe in the context of my dissertation. Then, the idea was completely abandoned with the Covid epidemic, which has hit hard the former industrial towns of Northern England along the canal. The project was reimagined as a landscape work that showed the marks of socialisation along the entire 127 mile length of the canal. My CS research focused increasingly on social spatialisation, deindustrialisation and the power plays in shaping space in the context of the canal. This in turn was reflected in my image making. I believe that I have succeeded in making well composed, visually impactful images that show the canal as more meaningful than a simple place of leisure, as it is popularly represented. Also, that I have demonstrated a flexible and creative approach to the changing circumstances around the work.

The images themselves have gone through many edits to arrive at the end selection. There was a balancing act between choosing images with visual impact and choosing those that also fitted the story I wanted to tell. After many iterations, the level was found; my sequencing and editing skills and toolkit improved significantly during the process. I’m a photographer who works with RAW images rather than jpgs, so a great deal of work happens in Photoshop’s digital darkroom. Many of the images have been ‘printed’ several times to arrive at a rendering that fitted the mood of the canal and also highlighted the reflective qualities of water, to add a sense of contemplation to the images. Without going into technical details, my approach to working with images in Photoshop has become clearly defined during this module, with a set of riffs I can call upon to help images sing the song in my head.

The approach to dissemination of the images has gone through a number of iterations throughout the module. One decision I made early on was that I wanted to find an approach that would work for digital assessment and for digital sharing in the Covid world. Given a photograph is not tied to a single output medium, it appealed to make use of this characteristic. The work has evolved through straight digital prints, through a simple ebook, to an interactive ebook and finally to a film.

Enormous effort has gone into the different iterations and final version of the film, beyond the photographs upon which it is based. A narrative was written and initially voiced by myself before a chance collaboration with professional actor Paul Butterworth, who is also an OCA student. Paul visited me and we recorded his take of my narrative. Images were resequenced to echo the words of the narrative. The pace of slides and transitions was experimented with, so they beat to the slow drum of the canal. The narrative was sliced and mixed to the pace of the images. Ambient sounds were recorded on the canal and sampled from archives. I was delighted to locate the aural history recordings that feature in the film. I then practiced and learned new sound mixing skills to post-process the sounds and place them into a stereo mix. I’ve refined a whole skill set in realising this dissemination, and one that will be valuable in future projects, and allows me to combine my love of sound and photography.

Quality of outcome

 – content , application of knowledge, presentation of work in a coherent manner, discernment, conceptualisation of thoughts, communication of ideas

I feel that the final film is a high quality output. One cannot judge one’s own work but I’m please to have also received some enthusiastic feedback from viewers so far, including the poet Ian McMillan who’s words are quoted in the narrative. The film conveys the story I want to tell of the canal described in my introduction, and has the quality of a meditative wander along the canal. The images, narrative and soundtrack all come together to carry the narrative and reveal layers of meaning through sight and sound. It shows that the canal is far richer in meaning than the place of leisure commonly portrayed. I hope it will encourage people to reflect upon broader meanings of space when by the water.

For the presentation to evolve during SYP, I am considering two main areas:

• Fully developing the website that I’ve already started for SYP as a vehicle to share the film and related work. This seems to a practical way of sharing work in what looks like will be a reduced-touch world until at least mid-2021. The website is www.leedsandliverpool.co.uk. I have already started to use this as a platform for viewers who enjoy the film to donate to my local food bank if they can afford to; I hope that this will allow the work to do some tangible good as well as being enjoyed.
• I would like to produce a book of the work, using the text from narrative that accompanies the film, ideally in conjunction with one of the small alternative-placed focused publishers that I’m following on line, or through a publish-on-demand service. However, I will have to see how this plays out with costs et cetera.

Within my timeframes, I suspect it is unrealistic to run a small physical exhibition of the work given lockdown and social distancing requirements. However, there could be the possibility of a physical presence that points to the film through a QR code. For example, fliers or posters in places near the canal.

Demonstration of creativity

 – imagination, experimentation, invention, development of a personal voice

Over the course of this module, the work has gone through many different iterations and experiments; some of which I’ve described above. For sometime, I’ve been interested in work that comments on space and people’s interaction with that space. With my CS research, I now also strongly connect that to meaning and how meaning determines who belongs and who doesn’t in a place; the boundaries put on place. What I have come to accept and embrace is the aestheticisation of subject matter to draw attention to it and the voice of its story.

Context

 – reflection, research, critical thinking

There is significant research that informs this body of work in my dissertation, which is presented separately. In that, I conclude with the same words used in my film narrative, so they act as a portal between the textual research and the visual work. Below, I talk about the research specifically targeted at the creation of the visual.

While I am not enthusiastic about the term psychogeography because of its general obscurity to the majority of people, my work is situated in that genre both in terms of its making through wandering and its dissemination through a film that is a wander with a contemplative narrative. Patrick Keiller’s London is an influence, even if I just appreciate rather than enjoy that work. However, a more significant influence in terms of photography as a video production is the work of Laura El-Tantawy, the Deutsche Börse Prize shortlisted photographer. La Jetée opened my eyes to the possibility of what could be achieved with still images in film but is beyond my capability and perhaps requires the resources of a feature film.

I of course have many photographic influences but I found in making this work Frank Watson’s Soundings from the Estuary and Alec Soth’s Sleeping by the Mississippi inspiring in the way they photographed banal, marginal places, and in the quietness of their images. The quietness in images is important to me as it seems to allow more space for a viewer to reflect and find their own meaning. I also took some encouragement from the way in which Nadav Kandar works with his image files in Photoshop; when it seems only the use of film is a worthy discussion point among practitioners and critics.

Conclusion

Part-time study inevitably means a very long learning journey. Yesterday, as I finished the final rework of my dissertation, the realisation came that the journey is ending. This sometimes background and sometimes persistent, but constant pressure of effort will be no more. When I began, I had no idea of how much the learning would change the way in I see photography and the world.

Once one realises that photography is a tool that can be used in many different ways and accepts that there is not necessarily a good way or a bad way, but a way that is right for you, one’s own voice can be discovered and expressed. For me, I have learned that photography is closer to literature and music than the other visual arts. At its best, it expresses a story or emotion through a sequence of images. This is an important lesson to me, though I of course could not make successful images without the many image making, editing and post-processing skills learned along the way.

Perhaps even more important is the realisation that photography is mostly about seeing, and seeing-well requires a breadth of understanding. I have found the insights gained of different ways of thinking about the world enlightening and fascinating. The ideas of visual culture, cultural geography, and sociology have taught me how to unpick and understand meanings imposed on both people and place. These and other disciplines have become new friends.

Finally, I have learned what it takes to make a body of work; the dedication, persistence, repeated iterations and perseverance necessary. Importantly, that there is also consistent collaboration, even if not always visible, through the support, advice and suggestions of those around me.

This is a summary of the formative feedback received on A4 during a an audio/video tutorial on 1 October. The assignment submission is documented here.

Very pleasing feedback, with my tutor commenting on impressive progress and enjoying having seen the evolution of the work. Main points to consider in refining further for A5 are noted below, along with how I addressed them:

• Work further on edit to aim for a series of images that are all as strong as possible. Even go back to contact sheets to look for images that may now better fit within the overall series. This I have done a number of images being removed (including the old bridge, allotment, doll and discarded safe) and a few added in (including the pub and an old blue mini parked by the canal).
• work on the pacing so that both the slide transitions and narrative sync with the slowness of the canal. I thought of the canal as the beat to a piece of music and experimented with the timing of transitions to arrive at a new pace; slower and with more time to absorb the images. I listen back now to A4 and it seems to be racing along in comparison to the updated version for A5.
• re-sequence the images so there is a more consistent fit with the narrative. I commented that any alignment is currently coincidental. This I have done by using a storyboard approach to sequencing the images to the narrative.
• Think about how / whether to create a sense of drift/flow in the viewing experience. As well as the change of pace in the slide transitions, I’ve worked extensively on the sound track to achieve this (documented here). In summary this involved working with the stereo movement of sound (through both panning and volume) and sourcing additional ambient sounds to fill out the soundscape. The soundtrack is transformed in A5.
• Think about the lead image. My tutor enjoyed the iconic images of the rooftops/chimney. I thought carefully about this and decided I wanted to leave an atmosphere of wandering in the film – of gradually discovery, rather than directly meeting the most powerful images. Therefore, I have made some adjustments to the sequencing of the opening images (as part of the overall resquencing), but left the most iconic images to later in the film.

My tutor commented that as long as the finished work comes in under 15 minutes there would be the opportunity to present it to open calls for short film festivals etc.

I’d been thinking about having the voice-over to my video spoken by someone with a Northern English accent, ideally an actor or someone else used to speaking into a microphone. In the draft, I speak and it is clearly not a northern voice and a little imperfect in places, which some have kindly commented adds an authenticity to the work.

By chance Paul Butterworth (https://www.paulbutterworthactor.com), who is an OCA painting student posted on Discuss, looking for a photographer to take fresh headshots in return for a modelling session. I commented on his post that it’s a shame he’s so far away (Cambridge) as I’d love to do the headshots in exchange for a voice over.

After some discussion, and Paul looking at some of my work, he’s visiting Yorkshire (where he is from originally) for a short break and we’ll be doing the headshots and voice recording in my home-studio. I commented when talking to Paul that this closes a circle for me as I’d originally conceived of the canal project as mainly portrait focused – but the absence of people of interest (I didn’t want joggers or walkers in outdoor clothing) and Covid had changed its focus to a landscape based work.

Brief notes on process:

• I’ll send across a model release form that will refer to the use of photographs in exchange for voice over services. If Paul’s agent approves the photos, they’ll be used on his public profiles and credit to me.
• We’ll shoot some headshots under studio lighting and some outdoors on the land around my property. He’s also offered to model for some general shots for my portfolio. We talked about what he is looking for in the shots, which are suitable for his actor profile and I’ve also done a little research on this. In essence the face is the context for the eyes in this kind of shot – context beyond that is an unwanted distraction.
• For the recording, we’ll do several takes with various feels on different tracks. I can then pick and mix if needed. Once done I’ll split the voice-over in Garageband to align it to the video.
• I talked briefly about SYP and how having a known actor doing the voice over would be a big help when publicising the work. Paul is happy to be mentioned in this context.

This is unexpected and pleasant twist towards the end of this work and I’m very much looking forwards to it. I just now hope that the Covid-demons stay clear!

Alongside updating my short film, I’ve also been working on the small selection of images to include as still images on the microsite / make available as prints. This I did by printing possible images at A4 size and then narrowing the selection to ten (those above) that seem to make a coherent group with a variety of subjects.

I’ve also updated the microsite to reflect some useful feedback I received on the previous version. The main changes are:

• Moving all text to a single page
• Changing page heading ‘ten prints’ to ‘still images’ – this works better alongside the main ‘video’ page.
• Changing the selection of still images and their presentation. I previously bemoaned the lack of any choice of lightbox options in Adobe’s Portfolio. However, the option I used of embedding a Google slideshow lacked interactivity and viewers felt they would have liked to view the images full screen. I’ve reverted to Portfolio’s standard display to allow this.
• Added a direct link to my photography website (under development) in the menu of the microsite.

The updated site is at www.leedsandliverpool.co.uk.

I put my updated edit of the video out for comment through the level 3 email list and on OCA Discuss. Subject to a voice-over with a Yorkshire accent (I’m hoping to work with a painting student, Paul Butterworth, who’s also a professional actor) I feel that the video is approaching completion. However, there is often something missed when close to a work, so I value the input of fellow students.

I have one go per week at uploading the video to my free Vimeo account because of its size. I first watched it carefully a few times to identify and correct any obvious issues (this is now quite time consuming at 10 minutes per sitting!).

https://vimeo.com/467056610

Comments received by email and on Discuss were hugely encouraging. Unlike on previous edits, there were differing views on what might be changed or what were difficulties, and I didn’t feel a real need to address any of these as important. I think that this is a sign that the work is near done and likes/dislikes are just coming down to personal preferences. I note a few points for reference:

• A couple of people commented on the differing aspect ratios of the images on the screen and that it might be jarring. This is just down to me being a photographer who crops and is the same situation when I produce a book. However, I can understand that this situation is not usual in the film media. It is part of the photographic nature of the work.
• There were a couple of comments regarding specific sounds being too loud or that the timing could be shifted a little. In the end I’m happy with the sound volumes and it will be so variable depending on the quality of the audio device playing back the sound.

One astute observer did comment that the ‘over-lap’ of text in the end titles was distracting. I agree with this as they use the same ‘fade’ transition as the image slides, which isn’t appropriate for text. I’ll address this in the edit I submit for tutor feedback.

One suggestion (significant) from my A4 tutorial was to re-sequence the images so their timeline in the film synchronised more with the words in the narrative. Although any previous synchronisation was by luck rather than design (as the images were sequenced visually), my tutor pointed out that once it is seen, there is an expectation that it will recur and a distraction when it does not. This was a good observation, even if it means all the time previously spent on sequencing images is effectively undone!

After some reflection, I came up with the idea of a halfway storyboard – saving the narrative to pdf with large line spacing and scribbling key images against the end of phrases. This would then act as a map to direct the re-sequencing.

A copy of my pdf is attached for the record.

Leeds-and-Liverpool-storyboard

Introduction

This assignment is a multi-faceted submission. The main work is in the form of a narrated video of photographs, featuring ambient sounds from the canal. This is accompanied by a selection of 10 prints (represented on a website for the purposes of this assignment). The psychogeographic narrative that accompanies the video is a supporting work. Finally, I developed a website that houses the different facets of the submission.

The submission can be viewed online here: https://leedsandliverpool.co.uk. Please use this link to view the work.

Snapshot of contents at time of assignment

As the website and content is likely to evolve as I progress to A5, a record of the main components at the time of this submission is below. This is for the record and the website’s presentation cannot be recreated in this post.

Video

https://vimeo.com/456300102

Prints

Prose

A locked in flow moves through memories, land and time.
A world connects with a space inside my head, where thoughts wander freely.
Stumbling upon experiences real and imagined.
Layers of histories and hopes, some owned and some borrowed.

Two hundred years of time are trampled
and worn into the paths along this watery route.
The heritage of a grand project and as a dead poet from God’s own country said, ‘a gloomy memorial of place. The fouled nest of the Industrial Revolution that had flown’.

It is a hotchpotch of a space.
There are shipshape gardens and drowned shopping trolleys.
Lovers’ graffiti and the anger of the disillusioned.
Those living the grey dream, afloat 50 footers.
Those subsisting on the margins. 

There are no celebrities on barges,  and no café culture along these banks.
But there are ‘stories and songs that hang in that space between memory and water.’
There are doors that once were, land cut with shovels, relics of industry and bird song.
There are makeshift shelters, and childhood memories encrusted in rusty bicycles.

Whoever shouts the loudest claims a space. The water calmly reflects. 
It’s from Leeds to Liverpool where my mind wanders.
Through worlds within a world. Between presence and memory. 

Andrew Fitzgibbon

Quotes from poets, in order of appearance. Ted Hughes from Stubbing Wharf . Ian McMillan from Canal Life.

Self-reflection

Demonstration of technical and visual skills – materials, techniques, observational skills, visual awareness, design and compositional skills (30%)

I’ve swapped from an ebook presentation in the previous assignment to a video presentation in this one. My rationale for the change and experiments in video are documented in my learning log: Experiments in film making #1 and Experiments in film making #2: Sound; in summary the change is down to the medium specificity of video better fitting the inclusion of sound with work.

For the video, I researched various tools that would enable the video production and in the end settled on a simple solution that used Apple’s Keynote to create a video-slide of the images and then added layers of sound within Apple’s Garageband. In the past I’ve used Adobe Premiere Pro, but it is over-specified for making a simple video from photographs and the tools I used offer a simpler and streamlined workflow. Decisions on tools are documented here, Prose and exploring Apple Keynote. I obtained feeback from fellow students on the video draft, which I’ve noted for discussion in my tutorial, A4.BoW: Video draft for feedback.

The production of the video involved creative challenges and decisions in several areas. Including the selection of images for a video flow, the pace and overall timescale of the video, the timing and sound processing of ambient sounds and narrative added to the images, the development of a narrative script. The script was a significant additional work and I blogged on my approach here, Narrative – rough draft and discussion.

In addition to the video, I produced a website to disseminate the work. This was made using Adobe Portfolio by customising one of the standard themes to project and industrial/canal vibe through the typeface and colour scheme. Details are discussed here, A4.BoW: website draft for feedback, along with a summary of feedback from fellow students. I describe my technical work around to Portfolio’s poor lightbox options here, Google slide show embed.

Quality of outcome – content , application of knowledge, presentation of work in a coherent manner, discernment, conceptualisation of thoughts, communication of ideas (20%)

I believe this is a significant step from A3. Moving from the ebook format to the video format for digital dissemination has been transformational and also allowed me to indirectly introduce my own reading of the photography work with the inclusion of a narrative. I enjoyed revisiting my passion for sound and recognise that this should become a habitual aspect of my practice, which I’ve noted in my reflective journal, Thoughts at BoW A4 – sound. I feel that the website brings the content together in a clean coherent place.

There are a number of points to consider when refining the work for A5. The timing of the images / overall duration – a number of observers have commented that they would have liked longer to view the images and found themselves rewatching to take more in. If I were to extend the timing it would allow longer and also more time for quiet observation between the narrative. However, the work is already 6 minutes long and I’m not sure about extending it further. A couple of fixes will be to split the end titles onto separate slides so they are easier to follow, and to shift the narration to avoid clashes with slide transitions. Something, I’m more certain of is to work on the selection of prints presented on the website – I discuss the decision making here, A4.BoW: Ten Prints workings, but feel I need to revisit a broader range of shots to consider which might be of interest for display on walls (versus series in video or photobook).

Demonstration of creativity – imagination, experimentation, invention, development of a personal voice (30%)

This assignment is a continuation of refining a digital dissemination of a work that in pre-Covid times would have most likely taken the form of a book – as I’ve mentioned before, I’m likely to revisit the book format during SYP. However, looking for an alternative solution and eventually ending up with a video has provide a specific output that stands in its own right, without just being a record of a physical object for digital sharing. Video, I conclude can be a useful way of both showing the work and expressing my intent for it through a narrative in quite an indirect way.

Context – reflection, research, critical thinking (20%)

Lot’s of activity on my blog that can be skimmed through here. Two pieces or research that strongly influenced the video production are British psychogeographic cinema and Video — LAURA EL-TANTAWY. My work sits firmly in the psychogeographic genre and examining this helped shape my own output. At one extreme is the rambling production in Patrick Keiller’s Robinson in Ruins and at the other is Laura El Tantawy’s short and fast moving videos. The former, I’ve noted is not to my taste.

During my last tutorial, we discussed the idea of a multifaceted presentation to the BoW. My tutor suggested the idea of a small number of prints to accompany the video. I liked this idea but it has proven to be surprisingly challenging to realise.

The difficulty is that the work is not conceived to include the types of images that one might want to display on a living room wall. I realise that is not the only use of prints but in this context, I feel it should be kept in mind as a possibility. Especially if I ask people to consider buying prints.

After experimenting with a range of different possibilities, I decided on the images below at this point. I feel that using diptychs in some images helps add something of the series to the representation and that added dimension makes them more wall-worthy. There are number of images that I could use in this way from the large number I have collected (ie beyond those featured in the video) and I’ll continue to experiment with these and print, up to the completion of A5.

I’ve blogged separately about presenting ‘prints’ on the web. Having not been a big user of LR print module in the past, I found it very useful for quickly working up different layouts and exporting as web-ready jpgs. I wrote about sizing of these on my website post.

The gallery view of the images is against black for a similar experience to the website allowing the white framing to be visible. On scroll below the spacing appears off because the white framing is not visible.

Click image for gallery view

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I’ve spent too many hours experimenting, tinkering, listening, watching, recording and repeating the cycle. It’s now time to put it out to a limited audience of fellow students and friends.

The finished video will be included in a microsite that will also include a selection of still images and some text.

https://player.vimeo.com/video/456300102

The work is an evolution of the ebook format I was previously working on and I have explained the reasons for the change in output medium on my blog. Some of the feedback I received on the ebook has been used to shape the format of the video, in particular for those wanting to know more about the canal information is included in the end titles.

The technical process for making the video is noted in contextual practice and research section of this learning log. It used Apple’s Keynote and Garageband. Ambient sound recordings were made either on iPhone or Roland R-05 recorder (more effective than iPhone). Voice over recording was made using a condenser mic, interfaced into Garageband.

More information on the narrative, including the poets quoted is here.

Please leave any comments and suggestions below.

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Update – summary of feedback

I felt very appreciative of the encouraging feedback received (recorded on the blog and by email). Thank you!

Here, I note some points to take to discussion with my tutor and potentially address in A5.

• Timing of transitions. A few people commented that they would have liked longer to view images or certain images. As currently configured some images have longer on screen than others – mainly the ones that are more complex. However, only longer by a few seconds. I see the video as part of a broader dissemination presented through a microsite that allows other ways of interacting with the work. I’m not convinced that increasing the viewing time would benefit the work – I enjoy the transitory experience of video and feel it part of the specificity of the medium. It leaves me with an appetite for more, in contrast with the long film stills in Robinson in Ruins that left me feeling like I’d sat through 1 1/2 hours of 7 minute guitar solos.
• End titles. A mix of comments between the inclusion of too much information and not enough time to read the information. I deliberately placed this at the end as I’m aware that some people welcome this sort of context and others can do without. Those who don’t want it can then simply stop the video. People read at very different paces and I timed the transition at a slow read for me. I’ve also included further information on the website, so I’m not minded to make changes to the end titles.
• Image processing. One comment suggested that they found too much red in the images. In a number of images, I have enhanced colour because to my personal taste it was lacking (a product of often overcast skies in northern England). This is a subjective area but one to sound out with my tutor.
• Timing of narrative. One person felt distracted when the start of narrative phrases coincided with slide transitions. I didn’t notice this myself but can understand it being a distraction and will address it in the next iteration. Obviously any question about the timing of slides and transitions needs to first be resolved to avoid tail chasing.

The challenge with multi-faceted works is that they require multiples of work in addition to the work of photography. The time needed then seems to grow exponentially.

I’ve gone through several iterations of the prose to accompany my video and also had another exchange of thoughts with my writer friend, James Wall. The process of recording the narrative also highlighted areas that sounded fine when read inside one’s head but awkward when articulated on a recording – sometimes the combination of word-sounds or rhythms, other times the realisation that the meaning wasn’t coming across. As I worked, there are a few things that seemed increasingly important:

• Clarity, without over-explanation.
• Ambiguity, without confusion.
• Simplicity without emptiness.
• Overall, something that wouldn’t distract the viewer from the images when watching the video but would also add to the experience.

This has proven to be a difficult thing to attain, and a reminder that we don’t ‘just add another facet to our work’ – it is another work in itself to achieve anything approaching worthwhile.

A locked in flow moves through memories, land and time.
A world connects with a space inside my head, where thoughts wander freely.
Stumbling upon experiences real and imagined.
Layers of histories and hopes, some owned and some borrowed.

Two hundred years of time are trampled
and worn into the paths along this watery route.
The heritage of a grand project and as a dead poet from God’s own country said, ‘a gloomy memorial of place. The fouled nest of the Industrial Revolution that had flown’.

It is a hotchpotch of a space.
There are shipshape gardens and drowned shopping trolleys.
Lovers’ graffiti and the anger of the disillusioned.
Those living the grey dream, afloat 50 footers.
Those subsisting on the margins. 

There are no celebrities on barges,  and no café culture along these banks.
But there are ‘stories and songs that hang in that space between memory and water.’
There are doors that once were, land cut with shovels, relics of industry and bird song.
There are makeshift shelters, and childhood memories encrusted in rusty bicycles.

Whoever shouts the loudest claims a space. The water calmly reflects. 
It’s from Leeds to Liverpool where my mind wanders.
Through worlds within a world. Between presence and memory. 

Andrew Fitzgibbon

Quotes from poets, in order of appearance. Ted Hughes from Stubbing Wharf . Ian McMillan from Canal Life.

Introduction

I’ve made good progress since A2. Following up on the useful suggestions from my tutor here. I’ve reworked the theme of the work, which is explained in the foreword to my ephotobook; in summary, it is based around the canal as a world within a world, drawing on Michael Foucault’s concept of heterotopia. I discuss this in more detail here. I’ve gone on three further half-day shoots in new locations as I’ve expanded my outlook to the whole of the Leeds & Liverpool Canal, rather than the stretch between Skipton and Leeds. The contacts for potential keepers from these shoots and previous shoots are here. I’ve also explored and worked at an ephotobook as a means of dissemination in the contactless world that we will suffer for the foreseeable future. I’ve written about the challenges and opportunities of the format a number of posts under my practice-based research menu. I’m interested the possibility of using multimedia in this format, which will hopefully compensate in someway for its missing materiality.

The Work

Below is a link to an online version of my current edit of the ephotobook. Depending on internet connection, there can be a lag. However, I can provide a link to a downloadable ePub if anyone wishing to view the draft is experiencing difficulties. The book is configured for viewing on a monitor (16:9) rather than a tablet device but should be readable in the browser of a tablet also.

Next Steps

I’ll continue to shoot with an eye for the ‘world within a world’. I have a second trip into Leeds already planned and have in mind a trip to the top of the Pennines where the canal flows through high open moorland. Other options under consideration are Liverpool (with some trepidation as I’m reliably informed the canal flows through rough areas and has become a no-go zone for boaters) and Wigan (of the famous Road to Wigan Pier, which was a wharf for the canal).

I’ve had several ideas for the multimedia content of the ebook. A microsite linked from the ebook (probably created in Adobe’s Portfolio application) – I have the domain name airlandwater.co.uk, so would use this. As well as images the site could include multimedia content. For example sound and video collected on iPhone as I photograph (Adobe’s Media Converter allows iPhone files to be converted to a useable format for Indesign and website use), an interview with the artist (me), some conceptual content around the ‘world within a world’, which would draw on my dissertation. Some of this multimedia content could be included directly in the next iteration of the ephotobook but I want to avoid it becoming too busy and distracting from the sense of quiet and calm I’m conveying through the photos.

Self-reflection

Demonstration of technical and visual skills – materials, techniques, observational skills, visual awareness, design and compositional skills (30%)

Ebooks are not entirely new to me, but there have been significant technical obstacles to overcome in even getting to this stage. These centre around multimedia content and the deprecation of Flash Player which, not obviously, is used in some of InDesign’s tool set without it being clear they are legacy.

I’m pleased with the additional photographs included in this edit of the project and have some clear ideas about locations for upcoming shoots, including for street portraits in areas less likely to be dominated by lycra and blue-green outdoor clothing. I believe the photos are well observed and worked in postproduction.

The layout of my initial draft that I posted for student feedback was a little more experimental but given the quiet nature of this work, I’ve settled on a something easier on the eye. The draft also allowed me to iron out some technical difficulties with the publication that were not apparent on my own computer.

Quality of outcome – content , application of knowledge, presentation of work in a coherent manner, discernment, conceptualisation of thoughts, communication of ideas (20%)

Following A2, I’ve rethought the theme of the work. The main header Air Land Water is general but has a specific link to graffiti featured on the last image in the book – bookends. I bought the domain name for £1.20 so will used this for the microsite to be developed in the next phase of the project. The subtitle a canal as a world within a world reflects my experience of the canal and relates to Michael Foucault’s concept of heterotopia (discussed on my blog). The sense of the canal as an enclosed watery microcosm set apart from the world around it has given my work a stronger sense of direction. I think this is beginning to come through in the draft book and will be built on in upcoming shoots. The idea of heterotopia could also be the link I was looking for in CS to allow the concepts of socially constructed and contested spaces to be pushed to the background while the substance of the canal is foregrounded.

Demonstration of creativity – imagination, experimentation, invention, development of a personal voice (30%)

In different times, I would have made a paper book of this project without giving much thought to a multimedia ebook. For this project, I’m experimenting with the form (and will continue to) and embracing the touchless world, rather than making something physical and then having to represent it virtually. An approach this is more possible with photography than other disciplines. At some point in the future, I may make a physical book also.

I believe how I experience the canal and my personal interest in the canal is showing through in the work. There is a bleak beauty in the landscape and urban environments of the Leeds & Liverpool canal – it is different to many of the canals represented on popular television – and I am drawn to this and not representing it as an idealised place of leisure.

Context – reflection, research, critical thinking (20%)

Lot’s of activity on my blog that can be skimmed through here. This includes reflection on the direction of the project, research on other photographers working with water, and the practical technicalities of working with ebooks.

As well as editing my 3 shoots since A2, I’ve been back through previous images to create a long-list of potential shots for A3. I now have a total of somewhere over 1,000 images (and I don’t use burst mode). I’ve made a long list of 54 images and as I’ve tweaked the processing, it’s already become clear that a number of them are not suitable. However, I’ve included all here to help with discussions on A3.

I’ll pause further shooting for now to see what comes out of my long-list sort. After eliminating non-starters, I’ll make some small low quality prints to shuffle.

Click to view larger size

The feedback on this assignment was useful and thought provoking and has resulted in a change from a conceptually oriented work towards a more poetic direction, which I’ll discuss in my self-reflection.

I felt that this assignment was almost like a restart on BoW after so long away from making images and in the meantime, while working on CS, my thinking about the canal has been heavily conceptual and textual. I’d used the assignment to try out an idea and kick back into BoW. However, a criticism was that the concept didn’t feel sufficiently substantial and clear to support a full project and that I hadn’t treated the assignment as a staging post in developing a BoW but more as trying out a discrete idea (perhaps like the assignments in L2).

While there was encouraging feedback on some of the images, a stumbling block was the concept of showing the banal as a counterpoint to the picturesque. This was considered too binary and also that it is likely a mute point on which side of the divide individual images would sit. I can see this, now I’ve let go of my attachment to the concept. I think this a risk when spending time thinking conceptually – it often needs a flexible interpretation in practice. I’m reminded that one can’t improvise on a musical instrument by simply using scales – there is a pushing of theory to the subconscious and creation of something spontaneous.

My tutor had some useful suggestions in approach a rethink of direction:

• Consider what draws me to the canal personally and what makes it distinctive from the places around it. What aspect enthuses me?
• Consider whether it is really about a specific stretch of waterway or something more universal.
• Suggested making some small (cheap) prints of possible images and exploring how they might work together / inform further shooting. Also making larger / quality prints of key images.

Some ideas for contextual research were recommended; some writings of Walter Benjamin and other photographers working with waterways (Alec Soth, Frank Watson and Nadav Kandar).

While the assignment itself may not have jump started my staggering project, the dialogue around it has. As in so many things, it is the journey or working through a process that help understanding.

Assignment two of B0W comes an eternity after A1 – last year a business project made it near impossible for me to visit the canal. This year, the first few months were a washout then, as I was about to restart, Covid-19 lockdown. It’s not all been wasted time, as I’ve completed the contextual studies module and have my final tutorial tomorrow. This has filled my head with ideas for taking the BoW forward, which is what A2 is about.

This assignment submission includes, seven composite images, a draft artist’s statement and self-reflection.

The images

Click to view images in full screen

Artist statement (v1)

The same place, a different perspective

The canal was quieter than I’d imagined, short of people. They’d sometimes jog by in go-faster lycra or race past with bell-less bicycles, claiming towpath territory with their speed and metal. Those on boats are in private spaces, floating living rooms or holiday homes; a space where gongoozlers are suspected as if  strangers lurking in front gardens. But the 200 year old waterway carries signs of culture as it joins people, places  and times along its watery flow. De-industrialisation and ruins, relics of the UK as the ‘workshop of the world’ preserved as heritage, the signs of making-do in an absent “knowledge economy”; the sprawl of bland mass development bloating the commuter belt. Most visible of all, is the normalisation and regulation of the canal as a place of leisure.

In my photographs, I have used a series of pictures-in-pictures to disturb linear perspectives of space and to consider how the canal is shaped and contested through culture. The photographs are not objective, they contain exaggerated elements that counter popular (mis)representations of the canal as a pastoral leisure space.

Self-reflection

Demonstration of technical and visual skills – materials, techniques, observational skills, visual awareness, design and compositional skills (30%)

Use of PS techniques to isolate image elements by adding contrast and intensifying colours – particularly to the non-picturesque images. Use of PS techniques to exaggerate the picturesque in the pastoral-like images, including bringing out reflections in water.

Use of picture-in-picture design to break linear perspective (what I’d referred to as the ‘tyranny of linear perspective’ in my dissertation) and draw out conflicting narratives in the landscape. Attention to design layout to ensure consistency across image series.

Quality of outcome – content , application of knowledge, presentation of work in a coherent manner, discernment, conceptualisation of thoughts, communication of ideas (20%)

This assignment is a stage in BoW, therefore a work in progress. I’m happy with how I’m starting to visually interpret the concepts explored in my dissertation. Presentation is only images on a blog at this stage, but I’m also printing the work so I can begin to think about presentation as the work evolves.

Demonstration of creativity – imagination, experimentation, invention, development of a personal voice (30%)

While away from working on the canal, I’ve been making images with an iPhone and manipulating them with apps. This has acted as a point of departure from straight photography towards using it to express an interpretation of subjects without being overly mindful of the referent. I’m embracing the possibility of photography’s creation of a ‘new and distinct reality’.

Context – reflection, research, critical thinking (20%)

Much detailed research and contextual thinking has been a part of my dissertation work (final draft emailed separately to BoW tutor). I’m now beginning to assimilate that into the visual and package some of it into a brief artist’s statement.