This SDP has caused me to look at several different practitioners both old and new. The work itself has quite a few different aspects to it and kept throwing up different areas that I then looked into. From the different genres to the inclusion and form of text and memory.
The biggest type if influence was without doubt Aftermath photography. Chloe Dewe Mathews Shot at Dawn, Paul Seawright, Sectarian Murder, Joel Sternfeld, On This Site. The series Shot at Dawn, was influential in many ways, both because it included landscapes that would be quite unremarkable if not for the event that happened there and for the use of text. Particularly the type and form of text. Although I went back and forth (and still am) in trying to decide wether or not to include text, there is no doubt that this really caused me to start thinking about the effects of including text in different forms. Although her pictures were taken at the site of the events the idea of absence was highlighted for me and confirmed this for my own images. Although many of these aspects are part of Aftermath photography, Paul Seawright’s series Sectarian murder, included text relating to the murders but left out any mention of the religion of the victim. By doing this he is striving to highlight the events as murder rather than a political event. By not including a piece of information he his changing how the events are categorised. Once again the idea of including or in this case not including some text was something that I had not really takin into consideration. How powerful these actions are was quite an eye opener.
Over a period of three years Joel Sternfeld photographed over 50 infamous crime sites around the USA creating his series On this Site.
It occurred to me that I held something within: a list of places that I cannot forget because of the tragedies that identify them, and I began to wonder if each of us has such a list. I set out to photograph sites that were marked during my lifetime. Yet, there was something else that drew me to this work. I think of it as the question of knowability.
Experience has taught me again and again that you can never know what lies beneath a surface or behind a façade. Our sense of place, our understanding of photographs of the landscape is inevitably limited and fraught with misreading.”
I was concerned that people would not understand why the images were but Sternfelds work (and some comments from my tutor) helped me to re think what people might take from them and that it will be different for each individual. I can of course use codes to take them in a particular direction but what they make of them is ultimately theirs.
Another influential practitioner was Jeff Wall and in particular his images that he re created from memory, using actors and props.
It doesn’t suggest that he goes straight back to a studio and starts creating the images but
“he lives with the mental image of it, and then makes his art. “I like it that I didn’t catch it with a device. I just capture it with my own experience.” Stamberg. S (2021), Wall. J
This really made me think about the “remembering” part of my series and that there has been quite some time between remembering the original and then subsequent “remembering” over the years. Something that was interesting here is that he says he didn’t capture with a device but with his own experience. This, I believe is what I am undertaking for this project.
Project 8: Research – Images and Memory
Project 8: Research – Dates and date sequence in other work
Project 7: Research – Aftermath photography and Landscape
Bibliography
Available at: https://www.joelsternfeld.net/books/9780811814379
[Accessed 02/02/2023]
Available at: https://www.michiganradio.org/2021-12-02/why-the-photographer-jeff-wall-relies-on-memory-not-his-camera-to-make-his-art
[Accessed 17/02/2023]
OCAPhotography 