I went into my first residency with an open mind, and as few preconceived notions as I could. I wanted to be surprised. It worked. I was. I never imagined that I could discuss my own work so much in just ten days, and form so many new opinions. When I enter AIB, I was pretty lost; not sure what direction I wanted to go in, or even where I’d really come from. There was certainly a bit of a dark cloud hanging over my head, and I wasn’t entirely sure what to do about it.
The answer, it seems, was pretty simple. Critique. Through my many and varied conversations with the people I met in the program, I began to develop a greater understanding of the work that I had already produced, and the work that I still desire to create.
I had a variety of formal and informal critiques with may other students and faculty during my first residency. Each offered suggestions that I may never have thought of myself. The advice that I received was often conflicting, though, and sometimes hard to wrestle with. Throughout the course of the residency it was suggested to me that I both cease shooting with one particular camera (my Holga) immediately, and also that I continue and do nothing but Holga images. People seemed equally passionate about both.
Many people also suggested that I experiment more with scale and surface, suggesting that there is a battle in my work between surface and content that content is losing. Some people said to focus more on either black and white or color images, but most felt that I should keep exploring both.
I was also advised strongly to think about the post production portion of my work. People seemed to see that I understand composition, and urged my to think less about it. They said to hone in on developing/manipulating my images in a way that would somehow help convey what I am trying to say. Most people seemed to think that I should push further toward abstraction, but there were some that felt that would not achieve what I was trying to say. This was one of the main points that many people cam back to over the ten day period.
The other concept that came up time and again had to do with my choice of subject matter. All of my photographs were of one place, Winthrop Beach in Winthrop MA, and the people I spoke with were split right down the middle. The two factions that arose were composed of those whom felt that I should leave and explore different places, and those whom believed that I still had work to do at Winthrop. Again, there was equal passion in each argument. From all of this I came up with several possible directions, and many ideas about things to explore.
I guess there is no beginning, so I will just start in what seems like a good place. I plan on neither abandoning my Holga completely, nor using it exclusively. I will, instead, continue to use my Holga camera, but with greater caution and the notion that I will most likely eventually move away from it in the future. That particular camera can make creating abstract images almost too easy, and I do not want it to become a crutch. With that in mind, I am going to find some other cameras to shoot with that will produce a very different type of feel.
To continue in that vein, I am also going to do a lot of experimenting with the post production part of my work. I really want to try and abstract my images more, and to pull my subject matter out of context. To achieve this, I want to try creating multiple images in the camera, but also digitally altering my photos in an effort to abstract them more. To make this work well, though, I am going to have to experiment with a wide variety of printing surfaces, and consider ramping up the size of my images as well. Resolving the battle between content and surface will be key to my efforts this coming semester.
Now, the issue of subject matter. In the battle between leaving Winthrop Beach or continuing to explore it more, I plan on staying. At least for now. There is still so much there for me to explore, and Winthrop beach acts as a source of inspiration for me. A lot of what I have been doing there so far has been about working things out; simply going through a long process. Now I feel that I have gotten so much out of my system, satiated some of my compulsions, that I can really start to get down deeper under the surface in the place I am photographing.
One bit of advice that was truly consistent throughout the residency, however, was simple: Try It. If I have an idea that I think might work, or an experiment that I want to try out, then the simplest thing to do is to just try it. One of the greatest crimes we can commit against ourselves is to censor our ideas before we even try to express them simply because we think that a given idea might not work. This semester is my chance to really take a lot of risks and experiment a whole lot. I plan on doing just that.
When I went into my first residency, I only had a very vague idea as to what I wanted to do with my work, and was very unclear in what direction I should be heading. Each critique, however, helped to take another chunk off of the large idea that I had, and by the end of the residency I had a much more thought out plan.
I plan on checking out the following readings, artists and any exhibitions I find as well.
Readings:
The Poetics of Space-Gaston Bachelard; On Photography-Susan Sontag; Walking-Rebecca Solnit; The Invisible Dragon-Dave Hickey; The Ongoing Moment-Geoffory Dyer; On Beauty and Being Just-Elaine Scarry; Camera Lucida-Roland Barthes; The Edge of Vision: The Rise of Abstraction in Photography-Lyle Rexer; Landscape and Memory-Simon Schama; The Contemporary Photograph-Charlotte Cotton; Kant’s theories on beauty; Art on Paper-Volume 13 No5 May/June 2009; Original Copies: The Photograph in Zero Dimensions
Artists:
Hiroshi Sugimoto, Henry Hornstein, Shelburne Thurber, Rocky Schenk, Richard Misrach, Ellen Gallagher, Joel Meyerowitz, Lewis Baltz, Stephen Shore, Candida Hoeffer, Christopher Williams
