To be honest, my first thoughts were divided between: oh no, not this dicisive moment (DM) crack again, vs Hmm this should be easy, the street photography element. Well, both of these thoughts bothered me, why not do as the brief suggests and think outside the box (did I just use that expression?); the idea of light, a scene coming together in a visiual peak moment really appealed to me. So I started jotting ideas down in my notebook(s) letting my imagination run a bit, but trying to keep both the task and the assessment criteria in mind.
Once again the (creative) freedom that can be inferred from the brief, that of not having to tell a story, not having to keep with the HCB/Winogrand idea of the DM, and the fact that times of day, light, landscape (anything really) all have their own DM when you actually think carefully about it, made it harder to formulate any coherent idea (as can be seen from the myriad of thoughts, notes here:
Once again the (creative) freedom that can be inferred from the brief, that of not having to tell a story, not having to keep with the HCB/Winogrand idea of the DM, and the fact that times of day, light, landscape (anything really) all have their own DM when you actually think carefully about it, made it harder to formulate any coherent idea (as can be seen from the myriad of thoughts, notes here:
"I suppose I could justify ANY moment as being decisive, couldn't I?" Yeah, kinda. Not that simple though, and I needed to solidify, direct my energies into something a bit more concrete...
That was beginning to happen, I was honing in on using (my ever present love/fixation with) shadows/architecture. One of the future tasks from this course looks at taking a series of pictures of a subject at different times of day (Ex.4.2) and I thought that would be a nice idea for this project.
Whether or not I am clinging to a sense of feeling safe by sticking with what I know, or whether I am simply using what I seem to be able to do reasonably well, that remains to be seen. Hardly a mistake to use one's strenghts is it? As long as we think through it, be aware of it, and equally do not refuse to at least try something new, right? Besides, I am still at the start with all this, so a certain lack of wild experimental development on my part is understandable, is it not?
Whether or not I am clinging to a sense of feeling safe by sticking with what I know, or whether I am simply using what I seem to be able to do reasonably well, that remains to be seen. Hardly a mistake to use one's strenghts is it? As long as we think through it, be aware of it, and equally do not refuse to at least try something new, right? Besides, I am still at the start with all this, so a certain lack of wild experimental development on my part is understandable, is it not?
I was also reading a lot of different books (not just for this assignment, but more for myself and the general understanding of photography) and found some lovely examples, perhaps not of the omnipresent DM, but of some more contemporary uses of photography using sculpture, words, letters, semiotics as it were, which, I have to say, I found very exciting and stimulating.
Finally finishing Cotton's book (Cotton, 2009) I then had time to go through it again, making some notes and looking for inspiration, which I'd say I definitely found in Chapter 8 - Physical and Material (pp219-49). From Christopher Williams' very personal, fairly ambiguous, narrative to Sara VanDerBeek's idiosyncratic sculptures and finally to Shannon Ebnar's photography as a language of visual signs which I found refreshing and not as alien to me as one would expect probably thanks to my own love of language, psycholinguistics, and the spoken word.
A more solid, tangible thought spang to mind when looking at her 2010 work "Agitate".
Finally finishing Cotton's book (Cotton, 2009) I then had time to go through it again, making some notes and looking for inspiration, which I'd say I definitely found in Chapter 8 - Physical and Material (pp219-49). From Christopher Williams' very personal, fairly ambiguous, narrative to Sara VanDerBeek's idiosyncratic sculptures and finally to Shannon Ebnar's photography as a language of visual signs which I found refreshing and not as alien to me as one would expect probably thanks to my own love of language, psycholinguistics, and the spoken word.
A more solid, tangible thought spang to mind when looking at her 2010 work "Agitate".
- Shannon Ebner, Agitate, 2010
I thought I could adapt her idea, although far less sociopolitical in essence and effect. I thought of creating an acronymn, or simply spelling out the words DECISIVE MOMENT. That really didn't work and just went round in pleasant circles:
Moments
Often
Magically
Exist
Notwithstanding
Trepidation.
Moments
Often
Magically
Exist
Notwithstanding
Trepidation.
Whatever that means!
This was probably the best of the rest, but felt (and still feels) stilted, and too contrived. So I dropped that idea for a more visual construction of the letters with the hope of capturing shadows appearing to form letters that spell out MOMENT (had to drop the DECISIVE as the brief states 6 to 8 shots); each of these shots would obviously need to have been taken during some sort of DM of their own...
This was probably the best of the rest, but felt (and still feels) stilted, and too contrived. So I dropped that idea for a more visual construction of the letters with the hope of capturing shadows appearing to form letters that spell out MOMENT (had to drop the DECISIVE as the brief states 6 to 8 shots); each of these shots would obviously need to have been taken during some sort of DM of their own...
I started looking for letters everywhere, but they had to be created by a critical alignment of shadows, light, glimpses of architectural fragments to formulate the letters I was looking for (being M-O-M-E-N-T, see contact sheets below). Slowly, I began to build up the letters I needed although had some real trouble with N and O.
Looking on line and in my books I started noticing more sculptural work from photographers/artists (which has become some personal projects I am currently working on - soon to be blogged). Artists such as Man Ray's photomontages as well as Joseph Cornell's intriguing contructions.
http://web.archive.org/web/20070225054532/http://americanart.si.edu:80/collections/interact/slideshow/cornell.cfm
But it was Ebner's work that resonated (and still does!) with me and the research for this assignment. The ideas started to take shape:
http://web.archive.org/web/20070225054532/http://americanart.si.edu:80/collections/interact/slideshow/cornell.cfm
But it was Ebner's work that resonated (and still does!) with me and the research for this assignment. The ideas started to take shape:
- Second additional idea: road sign
Then, almost out of the blue and additional idea started to jump out at me: the idea of putting the 6 shots and mounting them on to a roadsign: to create a fictional road name of Moment Way. I really liked the way I could play around with the idea of the DM being just a WAY of photographing and not the ONLY way. The idea of adding grafitti with some sort of
statement regarding (my take on) the decisive moment, I was thinking something along the lines of "THE DECISIVE moment IS JUST A way" (grafitti in BOLD capitals)
statement regarding (my take on) the decisive moment, I was thinking something along the lines of "THE DECISIVE moment IS JUST A way" (grafitti in BOLD capitals)
http://www.pem.org/sites/cornell/#
http://whitney.org/www/2008biennial/www/?section=artists&page=artist_ebner
http://www.anothermag.com/art-photography/3318/top-10-collage-artists-hannah-hoch-to-man-ray
http://web.archive.org/web/20070225054532/http://americanart.si.edu:80/collections/interact/slideshow/cornell.cfm
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