Assignment Five Self-directed project

"Nothing......is more extraordinary in Britain than the beauty of the countryside. Nowhere in the world is there a landscape that has been more intensively utilized - more mined, farmed, quarried, covered with cities and clanging factories, threaded with motorways and railway lines - and yet remains so comprehensively and reliably lovely over most of its extent. It is the happiest accident in history" (Bill Bryson, 2015)

A theme of this module for me has been the marrying of an enduring interest in the astonishing variety of the British landscape - how the human and the natural sit side by side for the most part in harmony despite often well publicised local protestations to the contrary - with that of photography. Bryson enunciates more eloquently than I, but his sentiment accords perfectly. 

The apotheosis of the extraordinariness is Britain's network of National Trails, 21 walking journeys totalling 3,029 miles along some of the finest and most varied scenery you could hope to see. I have walked six of these, and am currently walking the 870 miles of the Wales Coast Path over about three years, not yet recognised as a NT but characteristic of those that are. One section was used to describe a journey for Assignment Two. Encouraged by the course notes to look for a subject closer to home, the bizarre folly of William Champion was the focus of Assignment 3.

I had no preconceived ideas for Assignment 5 but an empathy arose with Bryson's thoughts as I walked Offa's Dyke Path, ('ODP') the 177 miles from Chepstow to Prestatyn that actually follows the dyke for only about a third of its length. It is a good subject, but to do a 'journey' again seemed to be a repeat of A2; there was a need to incorporate more of what has been learnt during the course, and to focus on a more narrow, more consistent theme. Tutors have commented on this in previous Assignment feedback. Feedback from A3 included that there is a 'sense of ticking off these things' in the collection of icons in Champion's gardens; feedback from A2 was to make a more consistent presentation. 

Looking back at the proposal written in December there is a lack of focus (perhaps hardly surprising when one's mind is distracted by the serious illness and subsequent death of a son a few weeks later) but I did note the use of narrative, that becomes the focus this Assignment. More specifically, the Assignment examines words within the images to generate messages in three distinct ways:

• direct - the obvious ; the directional, the informative;
• indirect - the contextual; the implied; the understanding;
• subliminal - the poetic; the mystic; the inviting.

Three groups of five images are utilised to demonstrate the above. Words are evident in all bar the last, that has special quite deliberately situated mystic message perhaps saying more than any other. 

The inspiration for this project comes from several sources:

• Semiotic analysis, specifically the work of Barthes (1964) who extended the Saussurian linguistic distinction between signifier  and signified  to imagery, establishing the principles of denoted (literal) and connoted (symbolic) messages. Barthes own writing included also the linguistic message as a third element although commentators (e.g. Howells and Negreiros, 2012, p118) frequently discuss only the binary distinction. Barthes (ibid, p37) identifies text as helping 'to identify purely and simply the elements of the scene'. This anchorage serves to 'fix the floating chain of signifieds in such as way as to 'counter the terror of uncertain signs'. It is unlikely that the people who placed the way markers for ODP were aiming at countering terror but the function of the words and messages in the direct group of images fit with the concept of the literal message; those of the other groups with the concepts of signifier and signified;
• The importance of narrative to add meaning and coherence to a set of images. As mentioned above, this was an area of development. There is an intended irony that the  the words are part of the subject; the narrative arises from the semiotic analysis;
• Spontaneity. Short (2011, p129) sets out how she would spot something on a photographic shoot and 'make a mental note to look again for it in the future'. One one assignment, she noticed a freeze mark on the back of a horse she was photographing, and thought this symbol would make more sense in a collective of similar images of branding on other horses. Similarly, this project did not start with and intention to use words as a subject, rather the concept developed as examples appeared. The consequence is a portfolio containing material that is a by product of a journey, rather than the story being the journey. The downside of this approach is an inevitable lack of technical consistency. Short (ibid) had to use a variety of light, frame sizes and angles for her project; I have endeavoured to maintain some limited consistency with focal length but practical considerations (notably the physical constraints of where one could stand in a couple of the images, and the differing light conditions) mitigate against;
• Richard Long's Text in Art (discussed and referenced in Exercise 2.5) is the ultimate in visual representation of words. His work is nothing to do with photography but a lot to do with landscape and its representation. Long represents the other extreme to Bryson; his apparent love of the landscape is enunciated in juxtaposing proper nouns with descriptive adjectives. Long's (and Bryson's) evocative approach deliberately eschews imagery in favour of imagination. This assignment endeavours to use imagery to evoke a range of outcomes, from the basic notion of 'this is the path', to a world of imaginary possibilities; 
• There is a link beween imagery and other art forms that photography can explore further. I set out an example in a post discussing Sorted books..

The aim having been set, the choice of images was less easy. As said, this was a project that evolved. The alternative of selecting a subject, then photographing it, was used in Assignment 3. That approach runs the risk of 'finding what you are looking for'. An alternative that appealed for a journey based project was to use distance as a marker for where to take photographs. This acts as a constraint to avoid the problem of self selection. Mellor (1997) took three years to photograph the British coastline every 50 kilometres from a similar perspective. As Wells (2012, p273) observes, part of the interest of Mellor's project was that different regional histories emerged as an unintended consequence of the process. Power (2005) carried out a similar project by visiting the outer edges of each of the 56 pages of the London A-Z. Again, the realisation that the project was about social identity, evolved within the process (Wells, ibid p274).

The project is small enough (and thus accessible for printed imagery) that a justification for the choice of images is possible. This is available on the web presentation; undoubtedly, there is a high degree of subjectivity about whether the images and the groupings thereof 'work' in the way intended; there were candidates that would have demonstrated subtly different messages. But the idea is not to be comprehensive, simply engender thoughts about how we use words as part of our message within imagery. 

As a critical self evaluation, it can be argued that the project is contrived, an inevitable consequence of post hoc subject choice. But all projects are contrived in some way or another - those photographers who seek to demonstrate a subject or concept have a priori prejudices and preconceptions. And what photographer has an idea, goes out to photograph it, and returns with a blank film or an empty SD card?

Are the distinctions made real or not? Yes and no, is probably the only answer. The narratives for each image make the case, but there are alternatives. The problem with classification in artistic subject-matter is a lack of objectivity that mitigates against simple classification. A case could doubtless be made for each photograph to be included in another category, but that is too an inevitability of the process.

As regards the technical qualities of the images, using a tripod is logistically impossible in these circumstances - this is a journey of discovery not one of predetermined outcomes. And choosing a theme by self discovery means not choosing the 'best' pictures nor ones that fit a consistent technical model.

The images are all printed and submitted for comment. The contact sheet is set out below as a cross-reference and grouped as explained above.

The Artist's Statement is presented as a separate post. The digital presentation is below and is an integral part of the Assignment as includes explanations and rational for each image:

References:

Barthes, Roland (1964) Rhetoric of the Image in Visual Culture: the Reader (1999) Evans, Jessica and Hall, Stuart (eds). SAGE. London.

Bryson, Bill (2015)  The Road to Little Dribbling: More Notes from a Small Island. Penguin. London.

Howells, Richard and Negreiros, Joaquim (2012) Visual Culture 2nd ed. Polity. Cambridge.

Mellor, Kate (1997) The Island. Quoted in Wells, Liz (2012) Land Matters: Landscape Photography, Culture and Identity. Kindle edition.

Power, Mark (2005) System of Edges.  Quoted in Wells, Liz (2012) Land Matters: Landscape Photography, Culture and Identity. Kindle edition.

Short, Maria (2011) Context and Narrative. AVA. Switzerland.

Wells, Liz (2012) Land Matters: Landscape Photography, Culture and Identity. Kindle edition.