At this point you may be comfortable with your position and how you are working in relation to your chosen subject and genre. This exercise is to encourage you to shift your position a little, to take risks, and to focus on ideas or techniques that might generally sit inside another genre, or to explore the cross overs that exist.

Explore the following documents:

• Narrative and Representation

• Selectivity, Evidence and Archive

Select ideas to research, develop, and integrate into your project and independent ongoing research. Choose sections that you had not necessarily considered, but could prove interesting or helpful to your development.

Take your time to engage with all the documents and reflect on which ideas, and suggested activities will best support your ongoing work. Add evidence of the work, reading, and reflections you make in response on your blog. 

You may choose to work solidly through one document if it is of relevance or interest to your work, or you may choose to make work and produce research in response to a variety of starting points across more than one of the documents. 

There may also be ideas of interest in some of the files associated with earlier projects in this course that you have not explored, and if you want to consider them as well you can. You can access them via the Source Texts and Case Studies section.

Reading the documents suggested for Exercise 2 caused me to really think about what it is I am trying to do/say with the images. I think one of the issues is that there is more than one story and more than one narrative. The document Narrative and Representation raised the subject of the difference between a “story” and a “narrative”. My thoughts about this in relation to my images are that there are two sides to the narrative. The original events and my own personal representaion of the memories of the photographs. As Joel Stern put it
“Yet, there was something else that drew me to this work. I think of it as the question of knowability”

• Each image has its own original story
• Collectivly they form a narrative
• Each image refects something personal to me
• They are part of my story individualy in my remembering of them.

My thoughts about this in relation to my images for this project are that there are two sides to the narrative. The original events and my own personal representaion of the memories of the photographs.

If I go back to the original idea the narrative was around my memory of the photos and how they seem to project themselves like postcards when they are triggered. It was also to do with the locations being almost seen as beauty spots to those who have no knowledge of the events. (This was where the historical idea of the sublime came in). It is not important that the images are taken at the exact location that these events took place. I can be reminded of these images in any location that has some similar characteristics.

Now that I have created a few images that are very similar to what I see in my head when I remember them (apart from the title), I need to decide if this is what I want to present.

Sternfelds quote realting to his work having an invisible element is very true. The viewer has to fill in the gap between the image and his text which gives details of the murder. For my images I want the viewer to do the same but the text that they have is far less obvious so there is far more room for imagination. The text and the way it has been presented is to give a bit of a hint as to the origins of the images but nothing else.  Perhaps Im looking at allowing the viewers understanding to evolve in the same way that mine did with the original images?

The document Selectivity, Evidence and Archive highlighted the fact for me that I am remembering images that were taken potentially to be used as evidence or proof in a court of law. This should mean that these images were taken without subjective expression or deliberate manipulation. My intial and original view of the images should have been a very objective one and I can only assume that it was. I am very unlkely to see those images again so I have assume that my images are going to include some subjective impression that has evolved over time.

It seems that there are plenty of different elements to getting this work right. The images themselves, what they are and how they have been shot, the inclusion of text, how much and what information (if any) is being divulged and the way in which the images are presented. All of these things need to be right so as to add to the intended viewer experience.  Of course, each viewer will have a different experience but I want all the experiences to start from the same place. That is, an unfolding feeling and understanding that there is something more to these scenes. The viewer’s imagination has to be triggered.

After reading one of the resources suggested for this exercise (Narrative and Representation) it became clear that my images are not being presented to express a story. I want each image to stand alone to tell a story in its own right. From the feedback received it is clear that they could easily be perceived as a sequence of images creating a single narrative and although this was not what I was aiming for I wonder if this could be something to explore, rather than ignore? Could I take people down this path first, then let them know they are individual events and cause them to have to rewind and re think?