17/03/2021

As I worked my way through C&N part three and continue through part four, I have started to realise that even though I have not had the tools or the understanding to deconstruct images, a great deal of the time I have actually taken from them what the author wanted me to. I have been thinking about how I viewed images before taking any courses in photography and up to this point and one thing I asked myself was, how long do I spend looking at an image? In the past it was probably not very long (depending on the image of course). I spent very little time looking at photographs that I “didn’t like the look of”. I am now questioning why I “didn’t like the look” of them and beginning to realise that for many of them it was because they were meant to evoke or elude to uncomfortable feelings. Images that I spent more time looking at were those that evoked feelings of comfort or were intrinsically “nice to look at”. This includes all the codes, subjects etc. that I am beginning to understand. It is also starting to explain why perhaps a subject matter that is not particularly nice, such as war, can be constructed or presented in a way that is not immediately uncomfortable or upsetting. This can be extremely powerful in its ability to bring two opposing feelings in quick succession. I still want to create images that are “nice” to look at and I am beginning to realise that I have to work out what this means and think more about what I want an image to say. If its nice to look at then fine, if its not then that is fine too as long as everything in it contributes to the meaning and is not there just because it’s nice or its not or a just didn’t see it.

I would sometimes discount an image as being “rubbish”. Maybe some of them were, but I now believe that there were many that I just didn’t understand and that made me feel uncomfortable or evoked feelings that I didn’t like, which I translated as meaning the image was bad rather than evoking bad feelings.

I have to admit that Jeff Wall’s Insomnia is an image that I saw a long time ago and hated. I remember thinking how bad the lighting was, how unsettling the figure under the table was etc..etc… It jarred. It did everything it was meant to.

For some of the assignments I have done in the past and in particular Assignment 1 of C&N, I realise that I need to “construct” images. The more I learn about deconstruction the better equipped I will be able to “construct”. I guess the main thing is to work out what it is that the image should be portraying and construct it in order to say it!

I need to find some examples to include in this post!