Exercise 3.6: ‘The Memory of Photography’

This exercise summarises and draws some conclusion on Bate’s paper The Memory of Photography (Bate, 2010). Photography and its relation to human memory Bate’s document discusses the relationship between photography and memory.  In particular he discusses whether or not it helps or hinders one’s recollections. His paper is titled The Memory of Photography and he begins […]

Photographer: Luc Delahaye, History

Delahaye began his photographic career as a documentary prhotographer and in that role, won three World Press Photo awards and the Robert Capa Gold Medal for reportage twice (O’Hagan, 2011).   Looking at the images he took during this area, they are shocking in their directness of capturing the consequences of war.  Fig. 1 is an example.  […]

Exercise 3.5: Local History

Stroud’s industrial heritage is rich, the town is famous for the production of cloth helped by its five valleys and rivers that were used to drive the mills. One of the main areas that the industry focussed on was Chalford (Industrial Heritage | Visit the Cotswolds Stroud District, n.d.). In fact, “From the 1500s until the […]

Photographer: Paul Reas, Flogging a dead horse

Paul Reas’ Flogging a Dead Horse (Reas, 1993) is a collection of images that portray the British Heritage tourist industry.  This is an industry that sells itself as  providing a view into the past, onto the heyday of Britain’s industrial revolution, and its Empire.  This industrial era has now gone, and so we have an industry based on […]

Exercise 3.3: Late Photography

Review of Campany, Safety in Numbness This exercise reviews Campany’s essay “Safety in Numbness: Some remarks on the problems of ‘Late Photography’ (Company, 2003) Campany’s essay uses Meyerowitz’ collection Reflections of Ground Zero, a set of images taken in the aftermath of the New York’s 9/11 as the basis for his analysis but his discussion points […]

Exercise 3.2: Postcards

Postcards The postcards shown below are all captured from the internet after searching for “Cotswolds Postcards”.  I do not have any of my own postcards and, seeing as I live in the area was interested to see what the results would be.  The main site I found was Zazzle which is where these images come from (Cotswolds Postcards, […]

Exercise 3.1: Reflecting on the Picturesque

What is picturesque?  For me it means something that warms my heart when I look at it, but this is not an objective statement, so something more precise is required.  Earlier in this course in Exercise 1.3 I collected a set of paintings from the 18th and 19th century and then found photographic images that were of a similar […]

Assignment 2: Post Submission Reflection

Technical and Visual Skills Aspect Ratios – In response to Adams’ Summer Nights Walking (ASX, 2010), I shot an earlier exercise in square format.  I was hoping to achieve a focus on the key subject of the image and I found that this worked for the exercise but not so well for this assignment where I found […]

Assignment 2: Draft Submission

Artist’s Statement Outside Stroud’s town centre lie the edgelands, its five valleys dotted with weaving mills, canals and other relics of industry-past slowly decaying, curiously becoming more picturesque as time marches on.  These valleys, the landscape, continue their journey, nature reclaiming what it never really gave up.  Go further and you will find the true countryside, this is where Toadsmoor Valley can be found, […]

Photographer: Edward Burtynsky

Burtynsky has created a number of different projects each of which is a typology of a different industrial scene shown within the surrounding landscape.  His website (Photographs — Edward Burtynsky, n.d.) shows these collections as individual typology collections that include Water, Oil, Mines and Quarries. Each collection is strict to its typology.  It would have been possible […]

Exercise 2.6: Edgelands

We were asked to read the chapters Power and Wire from Edgelands (Farley, P. and Roberts, M.S., 2011).   Wire Of the two chapters, Wire for me was the closest to bringing to life Edgelands, an area that marks a boundary between town and countryside marked by a “cross-hatch of wire”.  The chapter talks of wire acting […]

Exercise 2.5: Text in Art

Write down 12 – 24 brief observations during a short walk or journey by some means of transport A walk in Toadsmoor Valley Back in an hour Go this way Gate after gate Guided by wires Or penned by wires? Protecting the unspoilt or spoiling? A house, another house, and another Another gate Glimpses of […]

Photographer: Pieter Hugo, Permanent Error

Hugo’s series Permanent Error is taken in Agbogbloshie and area of land outside Accra, Ghana (Hugo, 2010).  It is an area where discarded computer equipment is disassembled and broken down into their base parts.  In Hugo’s words it is a “dark and dirty monument to the digital age”. When I first looked at Hugo’s images I was […]

Photographer: Frank Watson, Soundings from the Estuary

Watson, a Senior Lecturer in Photography at Westminster University (Watson, n.d.) has produced a number of sets of images that portray the relationship between man and land and in particular, ‘the spatial relationship between landscape and architecture’ (ibid.) Whilst studying LPE this is a topic that I have become very interested in.  His series Soundings from […]

Photographer: Alec Soth, Sleeping by the Mississippi

I researched Alec Soth’s Sleeping by the Mississippi (Soth, 2004)) and in particular his interview by Schuman in See Saw Magazine (Schumann, 2004). Quotes given in this piece are from that magazine article. The first thing that strikes me when I look at the series that whilst it is inspired by a journey along the […]