19th of June 2019
Genre Hopping
At the beginning of Part One, we discussed genre as something that creates expectation and, arguably, provides a frame of reference for the viewer. But if the boundaries between genres are blurred, how useful is genre as a concept? Or does it’s usefulness lie in providing something to subvert or react against? Now that you’ve reached the end of this part of the course, spend some time reflecting on the significance of genre in the creation and consumption of photography. You may find it helpful to refer to David Bate’s helpful summary, referred to at the start of Part One.
“A Genre helps to organise and structure particular types of meaning” (Bate, p. 4). Organising by genre is helpful in analysing an image, it helps to understand its path, it’s context and even its narrative. Being able to recognise a genre is useful in many ways. But the problem is that genres are flexible, they mould and evolve over time so become difficult to categorically label. According to Bates, genres each have a function, by noting these we can analyse and understand it, “different genres, have different functions” (Bate, p. 5). To me, genres are important for labelling and analysing the image, not so much when creating it. You don’t really start out to make an image and think ‘what genre should I make this into’, you have an idea and produce, it then fits into a genre or several. Genres are so diverse, and blend into each other, sometimes they are difficult to recognise.
Bibliography
Bate, D. (2016). Photography: The Key Concepts (2nd edn) London: Bloomsbury Academic, pp. 4-7.
Georgina's Body of Work 