Statement Of Intent

Statement of Intent

Project Pitch

Working Titles For Final Major Project

Living With Myself

Family Archive

Looking For Myself

Introduction

The work I produce centres around two main themes.

• The photograph as an object, the development of technology and how this change effects the photograph as a physical ‘thing’.
• Personal and Family photography – the demise of the family album and the personal significance of the pictures we take.

I also have a great interest in and am always seeking to understand why it is we ‘take pictures’, this is something I explore through ongoing research and experimentation. I not only take this inspiration through photography theorists, but also from first-hand accounts, study of a range of subject matters and spiritual teachings.

My latest project, ‘a certificate of presence’ was produced using my own family photos and I consider this my most successful work to date. I believe it was successful because I began to work in such a way that allowed me to express myself and my ideas in a way that resonated with my audience.

The project from start to finished involved extensive research and experimentation. It was an artistic exploration and personal investigation into personal issues such as grief using my childhood photographs. This project marked a significant turning point in my work and elevated my understanding of photograph and also of my own work.

A Certificate Of Presence was the work I produced that I feel touched on the way I want to work in the future and explores the themes that I am interested in photographically. The work I am proposing for my final major project will be an extension of my previous project.

Proposal

For my final major project I intend to extend my working practice to continue to explore ideas of personal identity through family archives and images.

I will be looking at and experimenting visually and using theory to explore my historical family archive of ancestry. The archive has been carefully researched and collected by family members of which I will begin to collate and bring together.

Initially I am beginning to digitise these artefacts, which not only contains old photographs but letters, coins and cards. I am already beginning to get a real sense of my family history and as a result, of where I have come from.

The end result of this project at present is unclear, as it will be based on the experimentation and findings from research. I know that I will produce images or photographs either digitally and from film or even from other historical processes, such as wet plate, that will be able to be exhibited in some way. The results from the project may be suitable to be made into a book which could sit alongside my exhibition.

I understand that the ideologies of identity are complex, which is why this project will be personal to me but by still communicating to a wider audience by hopefully allowing people to reflect on their own personal family history and photographs.

This project has huge potential for a large amount of experimentation and research. There are many different directions and approaches I could take with this project, I have many ideas based on the research I have done so far. Based on these ideas I will experiment with on a trial and error type basis and order to find the best method in which to communicate my ideas. There is potential to experiment with historical processes or order to comment on and challenge the idea of the photograph as an object the indexicality of the photograph.

Research

In past projects I have drawn a lot inspiration from the book, Camera Lucida by Roland Barthes, and in particular the idea of a photographs indexicality. These theories and themes will continue to be explored through my current work.

“…because it was a photograph I could not deny that I had been there” Barthes (1981:85)

Research into classical and contemporary research has elevated my understanding of photography and continues to develops my work into what it is today.

I will continue to explore the photograph as an object and the motion that digital photography loses the indexical trace that a physical analogue photograph holds, through research and experimentation.

“Digital photography challenges the belief that photography is representative of reality. But have viewers’ perceptions shifted in relation to theoretical discussions? While digital technology affects the theoretical notion of the photographic index, these theories overlook the appearance of the image and the social applications of transparent lens-based media.” Corey Dzenko

From the initial research I have done into others who have produced work based on similar themes, I have found that many contemporary photographers have done a lot of work around removing parts of their family imagery. By removing parts of the images they are challenging the notion of memory and loss in their family album; however, in the context of my project this type of approach would not work with my ideas. I will use a lot of experimentation to explore this. When we view our images I believe that we add to them and that we bring ourselves to the images, removing parts would almost be like removing myself from the images and the concept.

In a recent essay I have written I began to question why people photograph and we archive family photos, I learnt a bit about how the mind works and took spiritualist ideas about living in the present moment and began to understand that that is why we take pictures, in order to hold onto the past and keep it in the present moment. These are ideas I wish to continue to develop and apply to my work.

Further Readings and Inspiration

• Daniel Palmer – Emotional Archives
• Taylor and Francis – Photography, Archive and Memory
• Catherine Liu – Photography, Autobiography, Modernity
• Roland Barthes – Camera Lucida
• Corey Dzenko – Analog to Digital: The Indexical Function of Photographic Images