This weekend I am attending an OCA North student meeting, part of which is a group critique session. I am going to take along a selection of my current work in progress for discussion. It will be interesting to do so with a cross-disciplinary group – I think under half of us are on photography pathways.
To this end I recently sorted through my 800+ photos taken since Assignment 4 and whittled them down to 28 that I think could be candidates for the final series (which I envisage will be 12-15 images).
I’ve printed them out and have been experimenting with sequencing and juxtapositions, and sorting them into vague groupings. I also decided to test them out on my wife, who very kindly sorted them into her favourites and non-favourites. Some decisions are emerging, I think. But I’d still like to take the opportunity to bring them to the critique session to get a wider set of views.
The basic question I’m planning to ask, after a brief contextualisation, is:
Which, if any, of these images evoke a sense of forgetting (or forgotten-ness)?
I’m interested in feedback both on individual images and categories of subject matter.
The longlist
Here’s the full current longlist. I’m still shooting so it continues to evolve, but as a snapshot of where this is at I think it’s fairly representative. There are a handful of images from Assignments 3 and 4 in there too.
Comments welcome from any readers!
(click on the first image for a slideshow of bigger pictures)
Rob Townsend 
I like the new images very much, especially the bricked over doorways and boarded up shops. The first image I think is my favourite. It reminds me of Finn Slough in Vancouver which is a forgotten Finnish fishing community. I also like the nature reclaiming man-made spaces images – very powerful message there. I find the glove and shoe images less impactful. Hope this helps :-)
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Thank you, yes it does help. I’m not ready to let go of my gloves yet though! 😜
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I think the two overgrown images – the bench (3) and the street sign (18) are the most likely to evoke something left behind but no longer quite accessible; of the gloves, the wet one (13) evokes the most pathos for me. I like the empty window (is this a known signification, used in the 19th century btw? like broken pillars etc) in the Page And Barnes picture (14). Not sure if they evoke ‘forgotten’ though – more like ‘going’ or even ‘half-forgotten’ or maybe just ‘almost gone’ or ‘just out of reach.’
Have you tried them out on someone who has no idea what you’re getting at to see what they think is being evoked, without prompting?
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Thanks, good feedback. I’m not currently thinking of showing the work in progress to anyone unschooled in my intent, largely because I had an epiphany recently that it’s not a ‘puzzle to be solved’ and that ambiguity / room for interpretation is perfectly fine :-) Also, the images will be presented alongside accompanying text fragments, and there will be a title for the series that should give the viewer some vague ‘bumper rails’ within which to interpret the images. So it doesn’t worry me quite so much as it used to whether people ‘get it’ or not, which is quite liberating!
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“I had an epiphany recently that it’s not a ‘puzzle to be solved’ and that ambiguity / room for interpretation is perfectly fine” – super! I wonder if a peice of narrartive prose written by you – a kind of rambling meander through your mind as you try to recall something (but without any direct references to particulars in the images) alongside would work nicely, even if just an exercise. Some evocative and well-taken images there. There’s a definite ‘hum’ of existence.
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Oh I do like ‘hum of existence’ :-)
Good idea on the rambling prose exercise. Might try that…
Cheers SJ
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