Identity and Place – Part Three Assignment: Mirrors or Windows

Brief

Choose ONE of the following:

‘Mirror’

Choose a community that you’re already a part of. It could be your child’s nursery or your regular gym class, but it should be something that takes up a substantial amount of your interest and time.
Create a photographic response to how this group informs who you are as a person.

What aspects of this group or community reflect on you?
What do you share?
How does it function as a mirror reflection of who you are?

‘Window’

Use this opportunity to find out about a community that you don’t know much about and tell their story. Get to know them and talk to them; learn by listening and understanding.
Your aim here is to become an insider. You’re beginning as an outsider so it is important to choose a group that you can spend a lot of time with. Negotiation skills and respect are intrinsic to working well with your subjects and are invaluable skills for your development as a photographer.
Be clear about your intentions and involve your subjects in the process in order to obtain the best results.
What window into this world can you access through your role as a photographer?
In either case you can create as many pictures as you like but, in your reflective commentary, explain how you arrived at the final edit. The set should be concise and not include repetitive or unnecessary images. Be attentive to this aspect of production. Spend some time researching how other photographers seem to edit series of works. There’s helpful advice on editing and sequencing in Maria Short, Context and Narrative (2011) Lausanne: AVA Publishing.

Some questions to consider are:

What order should the images be shown in?
Are there too many repetitive images?
Do you need to let go of earlier images because the project has changed?
Are you too close to some of your favourite pictures and they don’t fit the
sequence?
Do you need to re-shoot any for technical reasons?
Are there any gaps that need to be filled?

Send your final series of images to your tutor together with your reflective commentary (500 words) on this assignment.

Assignment Three Research and Planning

I chose the community in which I live, which consists of wide-open green spaces and water ways with playgrounds for children, small independent shops and restaurants and other services such as doctors and dentists. I don’t know many people in the community which is think is often the case these days, but I do know my immediate neighbours and some of the people that work in the shops that I use on a regular basis.

This community is a mix of high-, middle- and low-income households but I would guess that if the whole area or ward that it would come under was scrutinised then the majority would be middle to high (not including students).

During my research and planning, I looked at a definition for the word Community and came up with:

a social group of any size whose members reside in a specific locality, share government, and often have a common cultural and historical heritage
a locality inhabited by such a group

and would say this is quite close to describing this community.

I tried to put a caption on each image to indicate the connection, but I found this extremely difficult. I went back to some of the questions from the brief instead and answered them in a more general way.

What do you share? We share a love of outdoor spaces and nature, which is evident by how well these areas are looked after and how much they are used. This is also the same for the small shops and services which seem to be thriving and thankfully all survived the lockdown. There is a shared love for things quirky and artistic! Examples of which could fill a photo book by itself!

How does it function as a mirror reflection of who you are? I am very independent, and I have come to realise that this small community is very independent too and has everything it needs for the people who live in and around it. There is a strong sense of family priorities, a love of nature and looking after the environment. These are things I would very much see in myself.

Final Images