Statement of Intent

Between 1989 and 2001, I worked for a UK police force as a criminal analyst. During that time I viewed hundreds of crime scene photographs. Some of those images have stayed with me and even now similar views trigger their recall. They challenge the idea of the picturesque landscape and urban photography whilst hinting at the historical dark sublime.
These images are not the more graphic scenes as one might expect, but the relatively banal, and possibly even picturesque images that hide the real story.
I remember these images due to their unfolding slow presentation of the events, leaving the imagination to piece the story together like an unwanted nightmare.
For some of them, I did see the original location often a long time after the event. It is the original photos, subsequent triggers and in some cases the original location that make up the memory that these images have been created from. 
It is the memory of these original images that I am re-creating in this work. As individual images they represent an event. As a series they are a metaphor for this type of crime, representing the steps from the beginning to a place of no return to the end of the crime and in every case the end of a life. 
The memories will undoubtedly change, but they are my current personal memories of these original photographs and are therefore to an extent biographical in their differences from the original. They are also a testament to the victims in such that they are not forgotten.

I have made the decision not to include the statement of intent in the book. I want people to initially experience their own feelings and emotions and not be influenced by knowing details of the reasons behind the work. I have added some information at the back of the book relating to when I first viewed the original images, when they were taken and when I took the images included in the book.

Gallery of Final Images

Video of physical photo book

Digital flip book presentation link:

Digital Book presentation

Final SDP Padlet link:

https://oca.padlet.org/janet522497/project-10-final-sdp-n3wcb20uptyhlxgn

This unit was set out in a very different format to that of the level 1 unit I had just completed. It took me a few months to work out what the differences were and how to best study. There was a great deal of reading and although I am a lover of research and enjoy getting stuck into any new subject I did find the amount of reading very challenging. We were advised that there was not need to read everything in depth but at this level its hard to make a decision about what to concentrate on and what to skim. There seemed to be quite a bit of optional work hidden in the exercises as part of each project and there was some repetition in that many of these exercises had come from previous units. It was less structured than previous units but as it was my first level 2 unit, this wasn’t unexpected. There was great peer support from a regular fortnightly zoom meeting organised by students. I had regular feedback from tutors although I had to continue with the next project before receiving the feedback on a couple of occasions due to OCA time restraints. The changes that are currently happening in the organisation have made the process more complicated but I’m assuming these will be ironed out in time.  I had some great feedback and help from tutors but I do wonder sometimes if they realise where some of us are on this journey and that we really may not understand what they are saying sometimes! It would be good if they could bring themselves back to our level and explain things in a non academic way! I really enjoyed this unit and the opportunity to see a project through from start to finish has been a great way to help my creativity.

LO1: Compare the theoretical features, characteristics and histories of different photographic genres.
I undertook more research in this unit than I think I did for the whole of level one. Partly due to the amount and partly due to my interest in the historical aspects of photography and genre and genres in general. My research into the sublime gave me an insight into something completely new.

LO2: Deconstruct a given genres’ conventions and create visual material informed by that knowledge.
Looking at both landscape (picturesque), Urban, Aftermath and Crime scene genres I wanted to challenge the traditional landscape with the addition of something darker. Using a lesses sterile crime scene genre with andscape both natural and urban.

LO3: Produce new visual work informed by your research.
My research into the historical sublime, contributed to the creation of the images with the addition of a slightly less picturesque and more sterile image.

LO4: Analyse the wider global contexts surrounding contemporary image making.
Although there seemed to be a great deal of material to get through on this unit, there is no doubt that it helped me to get a much wider view of image making. Looking at a wide variety of other practitioner and also at what inspires them has been very helpful in my ability to create meaningful images.

Brief

1. Self Directed Project (SDP) Reflection and Evaluation

Write an entry in your learning log (maximum 400 words, or a 3 minute A/V presentation), reflecting and evaluating what you’ve learned during this final section of the course.

• What have been the photographic challenges you have faced or overcome?
• What aspects do you feel you have most enjoyed, and where are your biggest achievements, or the areas where you feel you made the most progress?
• How did your critical review develop your analytical thinking?
• Which elements of your self-directed project were the most challenging, successful, or surprising?
• Which elements of the project failed? Why was that?
• Did you leave those elements behind or did you incorporate parts of the failure into your working methods to embrace the things you discovered?
• What themes have surfaced through peer and tutor feedback, and how have you responded to these?
• What genre conventions or innovations informed your individual project ideas and towards resolving your display or exhibition strategies, formats and decisions?
• How did your project 9 peer showcase presentation go? What did you learn and what or how might you alter or build further on this — either now or in future?
• Which aspects of your learning and creative practice you’d like to develop further in the next course unit.

Self Directed Project (SDP) Reflection and Evaluation (Link)

2. Reflecting on your wider learning in this unit 

Reflect on the whole unit journey you have taken (all 10 projects). Use the unit learning outcomes and assessment criteria as a guide (350 words or a 3 minute A/V presentation).

Students often find they learn something new about their studies by looking back in this way. It can encourage a deeper understanding of some of the more ambiguous aspects of learning and help you get a sense of what sort of learner you are.

At various points in the course you will have been checking your work against the Assessment Criteria (Stage Two) under three headings of Knowledge, Understanding and Application and the Unit’s Learning Outcomes (LOs) below. You can cross-reference these as a framework to evaluate where you would place yourself, and where you think your strengths and weaknesses are and areas to develop.

Reflecting on your wider learning in this unit (Link)

Project 10: Final SDP (Link)

Although Im not sure how aware of it I was at the time, the biggest photographic challenge was creating an image that was a mix of “Crime Scene” without the sterility and Landscape. I believe this was a big move for me towards creating images that actually said something.

I really enjoyed the “process” I had quite strong opinions about what  wanted to produce and it was only when I started going through the various processes that things started to change and evolve. One idea that I had at the beginning was to produce the images in the style of postcards. This did not pan out but might be something I come back to in a later unit.

The critical review was invaluable. It wasn’t something I enjoyed but made me really start to understand more about how images can be created and their effect on the photographer, sitter and viewer. It was something I found very difficult but looking at the images at a very basic level then working out what these things might mean has been very useful in my ability to analyse both my images and other practitioners

Realising that I couldn’t really control what the viewers thought or felt about the images was something I accepted at first and then came to realise was in fact a plus. I wanted the images to be seen as individual events and spent quite a lot go my time trying to find ways of doing this. I then realised that the images together also had something to say. Letting go of this idea to try and control what viewers thought or felt was so helpful, and partly down to my tutors advice. It allowed me to see that the images were indeed far more than just my creation.

I think I need to look closer at the images produced as “crime scene’ photos and treat them as a genre in their own right. I also want to continue my research into the historical idea of the sublime which is where I started further back in the unit.

I found peer reviews extremely helpful and hadn’t realised how different peoples views could be of the same images. It was also a great exercise to boost confidence and gain insights into how the images came across to people who were new to seeing them. It was during one of these that I realised how much people what to link images together when presented with a set. It took me a while to realise that this was not a negative aspect.

One of the biggest aspects of image making that I learned through this unit was relating to text. I hadn’t really considered how much text can change what an image portrays. I thought of text as being just an explanation or title. What is absent in the text can be the whole point of a set of images, as in Seawrights Section Murders, the font used as in Shot at Dawn by Chloe Dewe Mathews and wether the text is part of the actual image or a separate piece of text.

Allowing the process to evolve rather than fighting it will help me to be more creative. I had a firm idea of what I wanted at the start and found it hard to let this change and evolve at times. When I did it worked out very well but I wasted time fighting the process.