Brief
Part One: Begin your project by going out on a shoot. Submit it to your tutor with a few images selected as a potential starting point for how you can move the project forward.
Part Two: Accompany the images with a reflection on how or why the images you’ve selected may help you take the work forward. Detail how you plan to relate your practice to a particular photographic genre or which genre you took inspiration from.
Preparation
To prepare for this assignment, I made notes of what I wanted to do, what I want to represent and explore. I found this helpful as it gave perspective and direction for my work. I looked into various pilgrimages around where I live and firstly located them on Google Maps. I went to the first location and just explored and experimented with different angles and exposures. It was quite fun to take photographs without the thought of them being perfect. They are out of focus, they are overexposed and they are underexposed. But this is exactly what I wanted to explore.
Research
I started off by researching pilgrimages. I have looked at how they have been represented over time, through various forms of art. I have also research the pilgrimage I am going to use as my base. I have organised this research under the ‘Research’ tab. Here is the link:
I have looked into several artists who have definitely influenced my decisions and direction for my body of work. The artists who have influenced me the most are Catherine Opie and Marie Yates. Here is the link to the artists I have looked into so far.
Assignment Images
For this assignment I aimed to take around 30 images, but I ended up taking a lot more. I went through them and chose 30 for the preliminary shots. Here they are:
Contact Sheets
Here are my contact sheets for assignment one.
Reflective Commentary
My first assignment involves making some preliminary shots for my body of work. This has been a good opportunity to try some ideas and get a feel for my initial direction. I am looking at gender inequality. I am using a backdrop of a pilgrimage journey. When this pilgrimage was undertook, it was done by men only, but I am undertaking it as a woman. I have done previous studies into religion and thought this would be a good opportunity to bring my own experience and knowledge into my work. So my aim is to explore the gender inequality not only in landscape photography, but in a global religious, cultural and social sense.
For this initial assignment, I have solely concentrated on the base images of the pilgrimage. I thought this would be better, as if I can get the base images, I can then work on developing these into my final work along the way. I do not want my images to be ‘perfect’, I want my image to be completely different to the traditional picturesque landscapes we often see. I feel this is important as hopefully it will get the message that all is not right and will catch the viewers attention. When I was looking into landscape photographs, the majority were by men, and they were detail, perfectly composed, very picturesque, I think that is what people usually except when looking at landscape pictures. I want to portray the inequality through my images. I have thought of ways to do this. For example, I have taken blurry, overexposed, underexposed and banal images. I have also tried to taken the images looking up, from a low positions, this is to try and symbolise the unequal footing women are on.
I choose one location to do this assignment and have experimented with different exposures, compositions and positions. I feel the images have given me a chance to see where I stand. I have choice and can now see what will work for my work. I have chosen one image from each position, these are probably what I will work with. I think this image works well:
It is taken from a low position, is blurry and slightly overexposed. You wouldn’t see this type of image normally. I like the composition, with the gravestone raising up. The church stands proud, and whilst it is out of focus, it is still recognisable.
I like this image, it is underexposed but I like the framing of the surrounding trees. The sky provides the necessary light to just highlight the church. I think it is effective that way.
I like this image I took through the gate, as it gives the impression of being locked out and restricted. This is something I could work on to do with gender equality.
When I first looked at this image, I thought I would delete it but I decided not too. I looked back at it, and yes it is vastly overexposed, and the lighting is casting a motley look onto the building but the more I look at it, the more I like it. The light obscures a lot fo the scene but parts are still visible. You could say it is a banal image, but I like it, and I think this might be one of the images I use later on.
The problems I had was getting the camera level for the low shots. This was done to my methods, which I can now improve on.
I do intent to build on this. I want to use text but am unsure at the moment on what. I will experiment with various ones in a later assignment. I might make this into a collage, I think this will be an interesting approach as it could show a variety of viewpoints. I also want to bring an aspect of femininity into my images, this could be in the form of images of women in the collage. These images will be very different from the usual images we see of women in art and in the media. I am thinking at the moment I want them to be presentative of strong women. But I will continue to experiment over time.
I feel my assignment at the moment covers several genres. It is definitely covers psychogeography, as the pilgrimage is a journey which I am documenting. I also feel it would come under personal Journeys, as this is my personal journey, exploring my own spiritual journey and a journey of landscape photography as a woman.
In contextual studies I have looked at several visual cultures. I believe mine relates to postmodernism, but going further I believe it fits into the postmodern feminist category. It does have ties to poststructuralism, as I aim to have hidden message and text. It also is relevant to photography in the global age as not only is it covering a global issue, it is also published online and aimed at a global audience.
Tutor Feedback
Here is a link to my tutor’s feedback for this assignment and also my comments and how I am responding to the feedback:
Assessment Criteria
Demonstration of technical and visual skills
I decided I wanted anything but perfect images for my work as I wanted this to convey a deeper meaning about my chosen topic. I want the images to show uncertainty, unevenness and oppressiveness. I wanted to accomplish this through the look at the images. I took images that were over-exposed, under-exposed, out-of-focus, from various levels. I hope to bring these together to convey a message. I believe I have demonstrated various technical and visual skills. I have experimented with the technical aspects. I believe you can see my observational skills, compositional skills and visual awareness in my images, especially when you look at all the images I took from the site and not just the cut-down version.
Quality of outcome
For this first assignment I was required to explore a potential starting point for my work. I had already decided I wanted to follow a pilgrimage, so I decided to photograph the first location as this gave me a chance to explore and get a feel for the topic. As a result, I produced 30 images which I felt fit the brief. It allowed me to explore the site and try different techniques and methods for my images.
Demonstration of creativity
I experimented with over-exposed and under-exposed images. I also tried to capture out-of-focus images. I experimented with the perspective as well. I positioned the camera in various ways to give different perspectives for example from the floor looking up, and looking down on objects. I wanted to use different techniques and methods to bring meaning to my images. These meaning range from exclusion, uncertainty and being uneven. I believe I have been creative with my images. These are just the start, so I can build from here.
Context
I have decided to follow a pilgrimage route for me body of work. I want to highlight the inequality women face in the world, in religion and in photography specifically in the landscape genre. I have chosen this journey as this specific pilgrimage was designed for men only. So I am following the journey as a women, I am able to get a different perspective this way. I want to highlight and challenge the gender inequality.
Georgina's Body of Work 
1 thought on “Assignment One”