Assignment
Three is entitled ‘A Photographic Commission’, and the ‘brief’ is, in essence,
to come up with an area of interest, in response to which your tutor will brief
you for a ‘commissioned’ piece of work.
This follows a series of projects, written pieces, research etc around
photojournalism, the photo-story, page layouts, and so on. Knowing that I was about to visit Paris
Photo, I suggested this as a topic; but my ‘brief’ is more or less non-existent
– my ‘take’ on it, a ‘self-directed’ assignment. That’s fine; I’m not complaining; but I do
have to give it some thought and do some planning. Otherwise I’m in danger of falling into the
same situation as Assignment One. My tutor
did point me in a couple of directions – Martin Parr’s work at art fairs and an
arms fair (including images in his ‘Luxury’ series) and Nick Cunard’s images of
Crufts, which are here.
This latter work doesn’t do a lot for me, actually, and I’m not sure how
closely images of a dog show relate to Paris Photo – but it does make me
reflect on the possibility of a slideshow outcome; of which more later.
The Parr
work is a bit more interesting, albeit difficult to ‘pin down’. I haven’t looked at the ‘Luxury’ book and am
unlikely to be able to get a sight of it before going to Paris next week, but I
have dug out a few examples, via the Internet, with images from art fairs. This is a good example – typical Parr
use of vibrant colour; a ‘clashing’ image; wit and observation; and there are
others in similar vein. Then there is
his visit to an arms fair in Abu Dhabi - here.
There’s a longer collection of images on the Magnum site, but these show
keen observation of ‘decisive moments’ and visually interesting
juxtapositions. He did, as the Magnun
set shows, take plenty of ‘simple’ photographs of people and things, but his
own edit for the blog selects those that work most effectively. So, what I take from Parr’s work is that I
must look for visually interesting images – juxtaposition; colour; visual puns;
and so on.
Of course,
one aspect of this is to consider what will be the eventual outcome. Is this photo story for a magazine, a
newspaper, me, a photographic journal, an art publication, my friends and
family, my tutor, OCA, fellow student, Uncle Tom Cobley? It seems unlikely – not impossible but
unlikely – that a weekend colour supplement would be running a photo story on
Paris Photo, unless I can find an angle that would be of interest to that type
of publication. It isn’t the sort of
story that one would find in a travel magazine such as National
Geographic. Another factor to consider
is that I have not yet had time to complete the exercises & projects – but since
several of them are about layouts, they can be done afterwards, providing a
create sufficient variety and flexibility of images. My inclination is to have two different, but
no mutually exclusive, ideas in the back of my mind as I visit the show and
make my pictures – a photo story/essay for a magazine publication aimed at
art-based professional photographers and students who might be interested in
what the Paris Photo 2012 was like and might be wondering whether they should
go to a future event; and a slide show presentation that is Stan’s take, Stan’s
response, Stan’s expression of his experience.
It shouldn’t confuse my thinking too much to have both possibilities in
mind, and at the same time, it leaves enough scope to create meaningful and
personal images of the show.
I have had
one or two other practical issues in the back of my mind as well. What happens if there is ‘no photography’ at
the show? So, a search on images from
Paris Photo 2011 reveals some You-Tube footage, which not only helps me prepare
by getting an impression of the atmosphere but also shows individuals taking
photographs. As far as I can tell,
therefore, that isn’t going to be a problem.
My second practical issue has been ‘which camera?’. The DSLR would be
OK, if perhaps a little obvious when looking to take discrete photographs, but
the D80 isn’t great in low-light, indoor circumstances. It’s acceptable, but one has to use
relatively slow shutter speeds or put up with significant noise. My Ricoh compact is certainly very discrete,
very handy to carry around, and I’m used to using it in all sorts of
circumstances – but it suffers even more from the low light, high ISO noise
problem. Problem solved – I’ve invested
in a Fuji x100. Haven’t left myself an
awful lot of time to familiarise myself with it before next week, but I’m sure
I’ll cope. A new toy!
So, off to
Paris on Monday and we’ll see how we get on!
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