Conclusion

During this project, I have explored the notion of change and how this change ignites memories. I have particularly focused on this concept of memory when producing my own work. I started this project off with the mindset of documenting the changes happening within the area I grew up, this idea was influenced by lectures on the urban landscape, photography in the city and also by my own personal life and how the world is changing around me. Originally producing work of the construction sites that have surrounded my hometown due to the building of a new tram line, and focusing on how it has ruined the places I remember playing so happily as a child, I decided through extended research and advice from my tutor and fellow students that these images were too direct, too obvious and lacking in originality. After researching more concepts and artists in order to gain a better understanding of what I wanted to highlight, and drawing upon influences from sources such as George Shaw and Richard Billingham, I have produced work that highlights my memories of the places I grew up, photographs of how wish to I remember this place rather than how it is changing. Rather than viewing the destruction as a negative point, I have come to view it as a positive, using it to provide me with cherished memories of my hometown. The images I have created in response to this idea provide a rose tinted view on my memories growing up as a child. They portray nostalgia and provide the viewer with the idea that this was a happy place. This is important to note because memory is something that we have control over to a certain extent. I have both positive and negative memories of this area but I have chosen to take on a positive mindset when creating my work because we tend to want to remember and cherish the happy times and push the not so happy memories to the backs of our minds.

Overall I am pleased with how my final images have turned out. I used 35mm colour film and a 35mm Pentax K1000 camera to create the work I have produced throughout this term. I did this at first because my ideas began with documentation, and 35mm cameras are particularly popular with photographers who make documentary style work. After changing my ideas of how I wanted the project to evolve, I decided it was important to continue to make work in this way because it provided a personal involvement with the images I was creating and it also taught me to take time to think about my photographs before I make them, particularly when thinking about structure, composition and exposure. Using the colour darkroom to produce these images was an important factor in concluding my project, as it provided me with a way in which to physically engage with my work and the memories it provides me. It also gave me complete control in how I wanted my final images to look and helped to improve my technical skills and become more confident with using these skills.

FINAL IMAGES...

These images are all scans of my darkroom prints made to present as my final images.

Darkroom test strips

More images based on my previous research and ideas...

These images, all taken by myself, are all ones that I am pleased with. This is mainly because at this point, I have undertaken a lot of research into ideas and concepts, as well as the different ways in which other photographers have portrayed these concepts through their work. I have analyzed what has gone well and what hasn't, and have also been given much feedback over the previous weeks of where my class and tutor feel my project is heading. I have combined these influences to help me produce this work and to gain a better perspective on how I wish my images to highlight certain ideas. The result of making images at this time of day (which I have continued from previous images) is particularly effective here. It has created a sort of nostalgia, a rose tinted view on my hometown. This is important to note because my project is based on memory, and while there are good and bad points to this area , it seems (after discussions with my friends and my fellow students) that many of us tend to take this rose tinted view when looking back on childhood memories- we tend to chose what we wish to remember which would usually be a mostly happy time and this use of lighting highlights this idea. I believe the composition in these images has improved a lot in comparison to my previous works too, as these images have become much more structured. This to me suggests that when looking back on my memories playing in this neighborhood as a child, it is clear and precise- there are certain places that I distinctively remember and want to cherish, therefore it is these places that I have photographed. Obviously memory is a difficult topic to discuss, as we can never remember every little thing that we have ever done or seen, and many memories are fairly vague and distorted. This is why I have chosen to photograph particular places that mean something to me, places that I hold dear to my heart and remember clearly, although photographing a distorted memory could be something I look into after this project, in comparison with the works I have produced here.

Although I am happy with these images, more so than my previous ones, again there is still room for improvement. I now need to start thinking about my final piece which will successfully present my concept through my photographic works during the final critique. To do this, I really need to analyze here what my tutor is always asking; "what went well, even better if". I have already discussed what I believe works well in these images, namely composition, colour and my choice if lighting used. However, there are small details that need to be refined for my final piece, in order for it to impact my viewers in the way I would like. Firstly, I need to be careful of exposure. This lighting works beautifully when shot correctly but I need to be careful of colour casts and aiming my camera towards the sun, as this can cause blue reflections that imprint on the negatives and onto the prints. I also need to be careful of the images becoming a little too repetitive- there is no point in me narrowing down my images to 4/6 if they are all conveying the same thing. Similarly I need to start thinking about the layout and relationship between different images and how I will set them out. In particular, after practicing shooting both portrait and landscape, I have decided that it needs to be one or the other because having both when laying the images out collectively denotes the impact on the viewer and to put it bluntly, is not effective. I think I will continue to use only images that I have taken through a landscape viewpoint as I believe in comparison to all of my works so far, these are by far the strongest. They also provide me with a further focal range, meaning I can focus more on certain aspects of the image whilst others are slightly distorted and blurred- linking to the idea that memory is never truly clear.

George Shaw

Paintings from his home town estate in Coventry:

"A postwar council estate on the edge of Coventry, with trees, grass and loads of woodland just beyond. The last built-up area before the countryside took over. I don't think it has ever left me, that sense of possibility and familiarity and possible danger lurking out there somewhere beyond. I haunted the place and now it haunts me."- George Shaw, in an interview with The Guardian in February 2011.

British painter George Shaw is recognized for his simple yet extremely realistic paintings of his hometown in Coventry. The scans shown above are all examples of his work. I originally began to look into Shaw's work after a seminar with my tutor and fellow students. After showing them the work I had produced so far, they instantly recognized the similarities between my own photographs and Shaw's paintings. When I researched Shaw, I was quite surprised at just how similar these works are, and even more so the concept behind them. Shaw makes paintings of his hometown of Coventry, and in particular the Tile Hill estate in which he grew up in the 1970s. It is interesting to me that this is exactly the same concept I have taken for the project I am working on this term, except instead of painting, I am making photographs. I like this work, perhaps because of it's similarities with my own ideas, and because of this, it means I can understand to a certain extent Shaw's intentions and feelings behind creating it. Although this is not a place I know, or will ever know, I somehow feel close to it through Shaw's paintings, it is almost as if I am recounting a memory. This memory may well be a memory of the place in which I grew up, as many if not all of Shaw's paintings of this place show a surprisingly similar estate to the one in which I also grew up. Previously, I have mentioned Barthes idea of the "punctum" as an image or part of an image that wounds you, and only you. This work is something that does this to me when I view it, it seems so personal to me and yet I cannot explain what the exact thing it is that affects me so much. It would be interesting to see how someone else views it from an outside perspective, would it still reignite a lost memory with somebody who did not grow up in an area similar to this?

I find all of these paintings interesting, not just because of their concept, but because they are so realistic. When I first came across them, I thought they were photographs, the amount of detail in them is incredible and the scenes depicted are something that is so simple, so normal in everyday life that it is almost as if Shaw has captured a glimpse of reality, a glimpse of the truth as photography is argued to portray. This is something I will continue to explore in my work, and particularly that this work has shown me just how effective an ordinary scene can become with the right amount of detail and use of composition.

A practice shooting in the golden hour...

These images were all taken by myself during a recent walk around my hometown. Instead of "going in all guns blazing" so to speak, with the end result being extremely direct and completely not what I wanted to portray, I decided that I would take a slow walk around the place in which I live, and take my camera with me. I wanted to remind myself of places that hold memories for me and remember the area as it was rather than focusing on the destruction. Change is not always a bad thing, and in the long run the trams will probably benefit the community, it is only now while everything looks so bleak that everyone is feeling angry towards the building work and disruption within the area. So, after taking into account all the influences from my previous research, this is the outcome..

I am actually pleasantly surprised with the results of the shoot, as it feels it is becoming much more personal and definitely heading in the direction I would like. The effects of taking photographs in "The Golden Hour", that is (here) when the sun is beginning to set, (although it could be during sunrise also), have cast beautiful shadows within my images and the neutral tones of pinks, beiges and browns are somewhat interesting, providing a mutual link between each image through it's colour pallet. This is important because when it comes to deciding which images I want to present in the final critique, I want them to look right next to one another, I want there to be something that ties them all together to make it connected and therefore have a stronger impact on my viewer without being too repetitive.

I think there is still an improvement to be made here, but this is possibly the point of my work that has made me really start to believe in my project and my change in direction. I particularly like the landscape photographs because they work well together, and perhaps the photograph of the construction sign is a little like the "odd one out". I believe it denotes the impact that the other photographs have on the viewer, particularly because it has been taken from a different angle. It also seems a little to similar to my previous images that were too direct in showing the destruction within my area, and not entirely based on memory like the others are. I must take this into consideration when I produce my next set of photographs, as I need to begin analyzing how they look as a set rather than individual prints in preparation for my final critique.

John Davies

DAVIES 1983, Agecroft Colliery, Salford

DAVIES 1983, Slag Heap, Murton, County Durham

DAVIES 1983, Allotments, Easington Colliery, County Durham

DAVIES 1983, Easington Colliery, County Durham

DAVIES 1988, Reddish Vale, Stockport

All above images are the copyright of John Davies, and can be viewed at http://www.johndavies.uk.com/

"I am not so much interested in entertaining an audience or providing vehicles for escape but in delivering a highly crafted detailed image conveying a sense of reality. A reality that shares a recognition of aspects of urban living. But importantly, making images of a landscape that attempts to question our acceptance and perception of the inevitable consequences of living in a post imperialist society and within a post industrial landscape". -John Davies, November 2011. This can be viewed at http://www.johndavies.uk.com/abiog.htm

The images above were all taken by British landscape photographer John Davies. Davies is known for his work documenting the landscapes of Britian and in particular, their relationship with industrialization and urban life. Davies is one of the photographers I briefly researched way back when I first started this project. I particularly liked his works on Easington Colliery because they highlighted perfectly how a landscape is changed through the process of industrialization. Even though I am no longer making work directly focusing on the changes and industrial building work happening in my hometown, the reason I have looked again into Davies work is because it is important to note how I got to where I am and where I may be heading with regards to my thinking processes and creating work. The starting point of my project this term was the notion of change, city landscapes and in particular documenting what could only be described as destruction within the area in which I grew up. Similarly, these images taken by Davies document an urban way of life in a way that represents a landscape environment.

Davies' work around industrialization, and in particular the images above, have been a strong influence on my thought processes because they represent, in my mind, places that I remember from my own hometown right from when I was a little girl. The power plant for example, is just one image of many that creates a strong memory of the power plant near my home, a place I used to stare at with awe and wonder as a child. Similarly, and even more interestingly, Davies "Slag Heap, County Durham" taken in 1983 holds an almost uncanny resemblance to how the building works within my area currently look like. These images have provided a place for me to view the notion of change, past and present, without literally being photographs of my memories.

Davies has taken all of these images from above, looking out onto the landscape or down the hill onto the housing, buildings and other industrialized views. It is important to note here (as previously discussed) that this is a subjective view, removing the photographer from the landscape and detaching him/her from any form of relationship he/she may have forged with this place. After looking at the images I have reseached, the images I am beginning to produce and in particular taking into account how my idea has changed, I believe that it would work better for me to continue to take my photographs in a way which sets me right in the heart of it. My idea is based on my own personal memories as a child growing up in this neighbourhood, and therefore in my opinion it would make no sense to take a subject view on the matter, as this would only take away from the whole reasoning behind the project and it's personal representation of myself and my memories.