Losing things is about the familiar falling away. Getting lost is about the unfamiliar appearing.
Rebecca Solnit ‘A Field Guide to Getting Lost’ 2005
‘This question of whether something is fact or fiction is a reduction of the bookends with which we live our lives’
Walid Raad Infinity Award 2016
‘Woman Living Lost’ looks at processes of perception, creativity and becoming open to risk-taking and the unexpected. It develops interlinkages between subjective and objective narratives and explores different ways of combining illustration and photographic images and text.
Narratives of Place. Psychogeography.
‘Lost Reflections’ is a body of creative visual work that explores interlinkages and overlaps between the ‘bookends’ of my personal responses to places and events and a more political ‘voice’ and activist approach to social and environmental documentary. Focusing on particular places and times, the projects explore the multiple layers and perspectives of subjective experience and the creative process of selection and framing particular aspects of reality from the continual flow and combination of realities seen, heard, read and researched.
Reflecting on creative interlinkages and overlaps between multi-layered internal and external ‘realities’ is my way of clarifying questions and ways of living in a beautiful but confusing and often distressing world. And inviting the viewer to do the same. It is also my way of becoming more aware of inevitably subjective perspectives on ‘reality’, discovering new ways of seeing things and expressing emotions so they free me to act.
‘Lost Reflections’ is a body of ongoing work initiated in Open College of the Arts Visual Communications level 3 module: Advanced Practice.This includes new work and bringing together photo series from Assignments 2-4 to experiment with different forms of documentary narrative: Photo Essays, cartoons, photobooks, moving image, animation and interactivity. Continuing to explore and experiment with ways that style and technique affect the interpretations, how narratives are created within images and between images in a sequence and the potential role of text in contextualising/ complementing/ questioning the image.’Lost Reflections’ is a body of creative visual work that explores interlinkages and overlaps between the ‘bookends’ of my personal responses to places and events and a more political ‘voice’ and activist approach to social and environmental documentary. Focusing on particular places and times, the projects explore the multiple layers and perspectives of subjective experience and the creative process of selection and framing particular aspects of reality from the continual flow and combination of realities seen, heard, read and researched.
Reflecting on creative interlinkages and overlaps between multi-layered internal and external ‘realities’ is my way of clarifying questions and ways of living in a beautiful but confusing and often distressing world. And inviting the viewer to do the same. It is also my way of becoming more aware of inevitably subjective perspectives on ‘reality’, discovering new ways of seeing things and expressing emotions so they free me to act.
Much of my work is concerned with ‘alternative documentary of place’ and communicating ‘visible’ and ‘invisible’ dimensions of:
- Whose place? different perspectives and interests. Looking particularly at what might be meant by ‘the female gaze’ and ‘multiculturalism’
- When place? places change over time – even over a few seconds short term, long term, historical perspective and layers – St Ives has a long and colourful history going back to ?? times
- Subjective perspectives: exploration and deepening understanding over time and ways in which other people have translated what they see into images, including St Ives artists
- Imagination: how I want things to be and why. Selective erasure (eg cars and rubbish bins). Simplification and expressive representation.
I am interested in different forms of documentary photographic narrative: Photo Essays, photobooks and moving image. Continuing to explore and experiment with ways that style and technique affect the interpretations, how narratives are created within images and between images in a sequence and the potential role of text in contextualising/ complementing/ questioning the image.
COVID-19 restrictions in many ways shaped the direction my work in this module took
Cambridge where I and my family live is an area of rapid economic and social change. I have lived in the same house – between travels abroad – since 1984. I have had periods of local activism, absorbed with growing children (and accompanying dogs) and times when work commitments were paramount and left little time to observe what is going on locally.
I now finally have time to think back, reflect and think where next with life. My local area is also an important place where I can freely experiment with the present – being sure that I can follow wherever discoveries lead, learn from the more ‘unhappy accidents’ and develop my creative skills and workflow without the pressures of time-limited visits.
Mythologies of the past.
I am also concerned with looking forward – nature conservancy, sustainable agriculture and re-wilding.
The River Cam is part of a longer term body of environmental and social documentary work in different media about ‘Cam Edgelands’ that is central to my practice going forward. There is a potentially important local audience and market for physical images: photographic prints and art prints in different printmaking media, photobooks and sketchbooks eg as part of submission to Cambridge Open Studios, and more socially-interested Cambridge residents and tourists. As well as on-line presentation, interest from Cambridge Camera Club and other creative networks in Cambridge.
Because of COVID restrictions I was unable to do any new work 2020-2021 because of the very runners exercising along a narrow towpath. In this project, I focus on taking stock of my existing photo series of the Bridge taken 2009-2019. I started with a free brainstorming of what I thought were potentially the most interesting images and angles that I could use – with some processing in Lightroom and/or Topas AI and/or DxOFX and/or Photoshop to improve technical quality. This led to an initial ragbag of images that did not have coherence in themselves, but sparked ideas on a number of very different narrative approaches requiring different styles and processing.
In order to make my narrative explorations more systematic, I use the Creative Prompts from this module to push my different narratives in divergent directions as Photo Essays with different photographic styles and narrative structures for audience feedback.
I aim then aim (for assessment) to combine these together in some way as different sections in a publication and/or (if I am able to get audio on location over the summer) as a moving image work.
Bridge Underworlds
Portfolio 1: ‘Bridge: Visions from the Underworld’ consists of a Photobook (PF1) and solar plate prints (PF1A) about the ‘Under World’ of the A14 road bridge over the river Cam in Cambridge. Colour and monochrome documentary-style images of human interactions with the built environment are combined with my own framed slices of reflected graffiti to pose questions about beauty and destruction of social edgelands. It is part of a wider ongoing body of work about ‘Bridge Edgelands’ consisting of photography and photography-based printmaking (photoscreen and solar plate). My work on the Bridge is in turn part of an even wider interest in ‘Cam Edgelands’ linked to discussions about ‘Edgelands in psychogeography and visual documentary.’Bridge’ revisits landscape print-making, presenting a series of four A3 screenprints in the context of discussions around psycho-geography and ‘Edgelands’. The ‘grunge’ style so evident in the photoscreen prints is then applied in SilverFX to a series of documentary photographs of the Bridge and its Edgelands (further developed in 5.2.1 Bridge Edgelands).
Bramblefields Chronicles
‘Bramblefield Chronicles’ is an experimental photography and animation project experimenting with creative DSLR/iPhone photography and video capture and processing and how together with sketchbook work this can form the basis for animated narratives.
Linked to future possible volunteer work with Cambridgeshire Wildlife Trust and local school next to Bramblefields.
Bramblefield year experimental time-focused DSLR and iPhone photography through the seasons (September 2021 – January 2023)
Pumpkins sketchbook and illustrated plan for children’s book from IS4 (February ISA4)
‘Beasts of Bramblefield’ draft video and animation based on existing and new footage?? December (MIA4/5)
Anywhere Road
‘Anywhere Road’ brings together three documentary photography and video explorations of life on the street where I have lived since 1984 – one of the very many peri-urban semi-detached housing estates of upwardly mobile residents in UK.
Although they are about the place where I live, the fragmented nature of the place and my own circumstances within it mean that this is an ‘outsider view’ in some ways more than my understanding of places I have lived in other cultures. I starts to disentangle some of the underlying ontological and representational issues inherent in the process of ‘documentary’ itself – partly a sociological dialogue with the writings of George Perec and Marc Auge, visual documentary of Laura Grace Ford and video of Frances Alys.
Fragments Walking : I start with my own subjective journey through the place with experimental iPhone video clips of the process of walking along the road, seeing fragments of my body, sounds and events around me. (MI3 project).
Layered Appearances: I go on to look at the externalities of appearances: the ways in which people assert their identity through their house fronts and gardens and building work, concreted drives for multiple cars for ease of ‘tidy maintenance’ and to avoid vandalism isolation. And particularly issues of privacy and loneliness – shutting out and protecting property. I construct collage and photomontage of photos since 2014 of how houses, gardens and objects on public view have changed and what can and can’t be said from these appearances about the life of inhabitants.
Happenings in No-Place a web gallery/photobook? of creative photography images that explore how these everyday private images can be manipulated to create anonymised images that raise questions about everyday ‘anywhere/anytime’, traces of unknown dramas and ways of coping in what is quite a sterile environment. They also present glimpses of beauty in the present: changes with the seasons, light and shadows, reflections, colours and the occasional appearance of people, pets or wildlife.
Related projects:
Teetotal Street, Hagg Wood, Cambridge Wildlands Bramblefields, Aldeburgh