Put A Frame On It.
From the series The Glass Between Us.
Contextualising your work as a photographer is of prime importance. The Thames Valley Study Group met on Saturday and this topic of conversation rose its head more than a few times.
The problem is photography is a slippery and diverse medium where some work may, and others may-happily-not, contain a concept. The ones that do contain it have no strict formula, which means that working out how to obtain that all-beguiling meaning can be an extremely fretful task. Sometimes work begins with an image and the concept has grown from that (see artists such as Martin Parr or Paul Graham), or sometimes the concept is the starting point and the images are based around that (see artists such as Taryn Simon, Sophie Calle, Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin). Sometimes the photographs are made and the concept is subsequently pinned on it to varying degrees of conviction by curators, galleries or even the photographers themselves. Either way, the desire to produce ‘meaningful’ work can often seem like the most paralysing barrier to actually doing so.
So what are we to do?
As I’ve tried to work this out for myself I have come to realise that the best I can do is to listen to my instinct, or allow myself to follow threads. Secondly, it is important to contextualise the work or put a frame on it. In other words two things are at play in the making of conceptual photography – our instinct (our subconscious) and our minds (our rationale).
Following Threads (Listening to my instinct)
I have made work which evolved from a single picture. The concept was formed by continuing to make the work in order to figure out what it was my subconscience was up to. Examples of this are The Glass Between Us and Disrupted Vision. The images came before the final concept but once I figured out what I was doing the work took on a greater interest for me and I was able to write about it from a genuine standpoint rather than having to go to artybollocks.com.
It may feel fraudulent to write the intro after the event but sometimes our instinct knows what it’s doing and we ought to just take note and catch up with ourselves. The most important thing with this approach is to keep asking questions. For me each question led to a greater understanding of what was pulling me in that direction and enabled me to go further with the idea than the original picture would have allowed for.
Putting a Frame on It (Adhering to my rationale)
At other times I knew what I wanted to do but I had to work really, really hard to make the photographs do it. Examples of this are Edelweiss and Will you still love me? Here I had some rules and ideals that I wanted to achieve through each series. I had these clear in my mind and during shooting and editing I kept asking myself if the work held up to my aims.
Actually I think the best work is a combination of the two things working in tandem. Asking questions, following that instinct and continually thinking it through.
14 thoughts on “Put A Frame On It.”
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I wonder if the two approaches you discuss can really be separated; are they not both part of the same flickering consciousness?
Artybollocks sublimely reflected one’s view of the cultural dynamism so relevant to much of the miasmic interface between art as it is, and art as it is pretended to be. One revelled in its jaunty hint of rebelliousness, and yet tender slight against the genre that is so full of meaningless psychobabble as to be impenetrable to all but the most pompous of commentators, such as myself.
All work of any merit is a process and evolves over time (however short). It seems remarkably arrogant or closed-minded to imagine that the purpose that one sets out with will not alter as the work takes shape, indeed, as work is a mixture of exploration and research, it can be argued that it must evolve and alter its meaning and purpose. I would always recommend the (re)writing of an introduction after the fact, the initial version is a proposal, the final version reflecting the actual outcome.
You know i think Peter has touched on my problem with “intention”, as discussed in the thread about Crewdson. I personally am very uneasy with having too fixed an intention at the start of making any work as I like to leave things room to develop and to try and work out what my intention is, as described by Sharon, through the process of making the work. Also what would be the point of making work to fit an intention when you hadn’t reached a point of fully understanding all the ins and outs of the work, those things that come into consciousness while you research and make it.
The idea of having an intention, imposing it on the work and then judging the success of the work based on how closely they matched…that was has been really bothering me. I’m not sure if I maybe misunderstood some of what was said in the Crewdson thread in that regard. But anyway its reassuring i’m not the only one who doesn’t really know what they’re doing until after they’ve done it.
I think it is important for students to practice making proposals at the beginning of any body of work if only to prepare themselves for later life in the world of grant applications etc. where a proposal is needed needed; but also to give some framework within which to make the work. Pure intuition is rarely satisfactory or even a reality(whatever the free spirits out there might claim!) but neither is a rigid adherence to some a priory formula, at least not in the world of Fine Art.
What about where you know there is an end but you don’t know how to get there other than hope that by ‘doing the work’ it will, hopefully, find a way? I think that is where I am. I have a strong feeling that something will turn up in a number of projects that I have underway, but I can’t accurately frame what the end result will be, look like or mean….
Exactly. If you have something you can call a project then there is a proposal,” I intend to[…]” the outcome is a product of this project not a pre-ordained artefact, “[…]the final form will emerge during[…]”
Do you see?
through a murky haze
… or a glass darkly!
… creativity emerges, it is not a done thing !?
As a student on the MA Fine Art programme with the OCA, there is room to ‘play’, in fact a whole module about exploring within your practice. This resulted personally in outcomes that were never expected, however, there was still a plan of intention to be written at the beginning, but this was a plan to set out some rules and boundaries so that you didn’t go off on massive tangents.
It really helped me not to have to attach meaning and theory to what I was doing straight away and the work I produced gradually fell into place with what had gone previously.
I personally think there can be too much theory and concept that can stifle your practice. The great photographers and artists didn’t get us to where we are now without the element of play – see where it takes you.
I think you are right to a point there. Once you start over thinking everything it might have the tendency to all become a bit fraught and dull.
As someone who came to the OCA photography course as a former business manager who trained originally as a mathematician I’ve always tended towards the rational approach, working from instinct was never favoured in my former life.
One of the greatest challenges I’ve had progressing through the OCA courses is learning to keep things open, and to be more comfortable with ambiguity. This applies not only at the conceptual level for major assignments but also at a detailed level for individual photographs.
I have taken to heart this sentiment expressed by Paul Graham: ’Art isn’t about providing answers, is it? It’s more about the questions – asking thought-provoking, unexpected, unarticulated questions’ (from interview with Gillian Wearing from the 1996 book Paul Graham published by Phaidon).
Not sure if I am able to operate in this way yet but I’m trying.
Sharon I think you describe the way all things come into being, there appears to me to be a parallel to my other life in business change, Programmes of work tend to come into existence in two ways either led by a vision or by evolution in the first the vision is constructed around a per determined strategy and in the second a bunch of un related projects coalesce into a programme because they have shared goals. The parallel seems to neat to be a consequence, in our work as “artists” it seems to me that these are the logical possibilities for the genesis of any idea, and what you describe is the artistic process. As mentioned by others the power comes from blending the methods to give flexibility to the idea. This is where the business example departs a little as in that arena we try to fix what we are doing so that budgets and work can be planned and assigned and change control applied to prevent over runs etc. You may say that when you start working on a brief for photography the same applies, however for those of us trying to develop that elusive voice those constraints may be of less importance. The interesting parallel here is that I tell my programme management students that no matter how the idea starts the all end up vision led because the key is to develop a vision in both cases. So if you body of work begins because you took an image that sparked an idea it’s the idea that is key to completion. So however you develop the idea the work and the intro I feel that they are all part of an iterative cycle, it is of no major concern where you join the circle or how many times you go round or in which direction, the most important thing is what comes out at the end. Hence there is no need to work out if it was I fact the chicken or the egg that came first. A very thought provoking article thank you for sharing Sharon
Thanks Stephen, Yes I think you are right, as long as you join the circle it doesn’t really matter! Hope you are making good progress, looking forward to seeing it!