This assignment turned out to be much more tricky than I had imagined. Considering it came from an idea I had and not directly from the brief it should have been easier. I had an aim but at times found myself going off in different directions. Having discovered that images can indeed communicate something, I allowed myself time to come back to the aim and to what I was trying to communicate. This really helped and I feel is a big leap in my understanding of photography as art.

I feel that I still have not quite communicated what I wanted to, but as with previous assignments, perhaps I need a bit more time to really work out how to do this. I certainly feel more confident that I can do this than I did at the start of the course! In fact at the start of the course I wasn’t really thinking about communicating at all. Certainly not in a conscious way.

In hindsight I wonder if staging the families would have worked out better? Of course as we are in lockdown this wasn’t possible, so using images from the internet was an option. I also wondered if I should use my own “family” photographs but I decided that this was a tricky one due to me being actually adopted in the first place and the images having their own narrative. I do have strong feelings about the early adoption processes, so it could be an interesting project.  I also feel that using anonymous images added a sense of the “unknown” to the project. This fits with the identity and stranger aspects that I am alluding to in the images themselves. There was a certain amount of randomness to selecting the images, in that I had no idea who they were or if they were people from similar backgrounds. Although it was said that these adoptions attempted to match children with parents from sillier backgrounds, I don’t believe this was always the priority so it was often a bit of a random roll of the dice both for the child, their birth families and adoptive families.

I enjoyed the assignment and learned so much about trying to communicate something (and photoshop) I didn’t have too much control over the images themselves, staging, framing, focus, tone, colour etc but just the fact that I am aware that things can be communicated through these areas is a step forward for me.

I have also been reflecting on the previous 2 assignments and have had some thoughts on the re works and what I might do to improve them. I am starting to realise that if I have something to communicate, I need to think about how I can do that within the frame, nothing should be there that doesn’t add to the image. When I look back at assignment one and two, there is so much there that doesn’t need to be or indeed things that are the opposite of what I was trying to communicate!

Tutor Feedback

Overall feedback

• Learning Highlights section is a better way to evidence your progress – the headings work well.
• Interesting approach to putting yourself in the picture through the photographs of others

Feedback based on Learning Outcomes

·       By using other people’s photographs, the work becomes more about ‘fake news’ and issues of internet privacy. This kind of manipulation brings to mind the early photo manipulations of Lenin (and others) who used the manipulation of photographic records of events to rewrite history.

·       Technically, you have some work to do if you would like these images to appear as actual representations of that family. Are there other ways to suggest a family ‘misfit’?

·       Do you want to actually suggest that the subjects are really there? If you present an obvious collaging of two images (not to the extent that John Stezaker did – https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/australia-culture-blog/2014/mar/27/john-stezaker-sydney-biennale), this can ask questions about the process of photo manipulation as well as the inherent visual connotations.

·       Relationship between photographs and memory – further research.

·       Could you use a slightly different visual strategy where you offset the ‘inserted’ character away from the family group? This would create a more subtle questioning of family belonging along with the presentation of ‘family’ through the formal portrait. These obviously staged images are specifically created to present a certain image of the ‘perfect’ family. Have another watch of the Mike Leigh film, Secrets and Lies. There is a great montage scene that shows a number of family portrait photoshoots and the false image that is created of that family through the creation of a single image.

• Could you use your research about adopted family setups to inform your practical research more specifically? Could you ask adoptees how much they feel part of their new family and use this as a guide to how physically close they might appear in the formal family portrait? Although there are no resources online, John Pym’s project how much you belong to a place was made in this way
• Could you locate your own family images of you looking uncomfortable and use these as visual research material?
• Research more family portraits in order to analyse the properties of the formal portrait – the position of the characters, the facial expressions, the body positions and language etc.

Action points

• Think about how you can apply your general research about your subject to your practical experimentation.
• Tidy up blog menus to avoid confusion!