Overall Comments This 2nd assignment was submitted at the same time as the first and essentially you missed the opportunity to reflect on my feedback and consider any notes/guidance and reading that I might have suggested as you worked through Part 2 of the course. While you have, to an extent, fulfilled the brief, the work you submitted is, I feel, too similar in subject matter, execution and presentation to that of the practitioner you researched, Nikki Bird. More about that below.
Assessment potential
Assignment 2
I understand your aim is to go for the Photography/Creative Arts* Degree and that you plan to submit your work for assessment at the end of this course. From the work you have shown in this assignment, providing you commit yourself to the course, I believe you have the potential to pass at assessment. In order to meet all the assessment criteria, there are certain areas you will need to focus on, which I will outline in my feedback. See my main note about research and development of ideas.
Feedback on assignment Demonstration of technical and Visual Skills, Quality of Outcome, Demonstration of Creativity
For this assignment you used Nikki Bird’s ‘Questions For Seller’ as an inspirational starting point for your own project. She exhibited found images bought from Ebay US, accompanied by texts from the seller about their provenance. That’s a good place to start, but was she the only practitioner you looked at in preparation for this assignment?
It’s a necessary and common practice to cite inspiration from, or pay homage to an influential artist, but it’s also essential that your work can be identified as individual practice and personal expression. I feel that your response to the assignment is too close to Nikki Bird’s project. I’m looking for any real difference or development in the concept, subject matter and presentation. You don’t offer any information or notes about how you set out to make this idea your own or develop the original concept into something which reflects your personal interests in the subject and theme – the huge amount of discarded, unwanted and forgotten images that can be found today.
In your notes you (need to) quote Nikki Bird, ‘(images) …which no one else bid for, with the connotation that they were unwanted by others, and therefore, had no significant value at all. ‘ Did you have an idea, a rationale, about how you would present these images, some seem to be themed, holidays, landscapes, weddings, leisure, individual portraits? Could you take that idea and develop it further; for example, the changing value of ‘hard prints’ in the digital age, or the way that digital images might meet a similar fate, or even how the memories of our lives can simple vanish? What is it about this old material that really interests you? Does it make you wonder about these people and places; could they be a source of interest and speculation about stories from history?
You do explore this in your Learning Log (Part Three), and this could be used as a part of the development material for this project. As I said in my feedback to your first assignment, this is something you need to reflect on – think about the processes and decisions you’re taking when collecting and working with this material.
It is essential that you include this reflection (using the course assessment criteria) in your Learning Log.
I’m afraid this link led me to ‘Page Not Found’ on the Blurb site. http://www.blurb.co.uk/b/8599905-the-archive OCA encourages all students, as good practice, to revise and develop assignments before submitting for assessment.
Coursework Demonstration of technical and Visual Skills, Demonstration of Creativity
You have covered the exercises in Part 2 very well and your comments and thoughts reveal a good understanding of this section. As mentioned above, some of the work here could be used to help you develop ideas for your assignment.
You demonstrate good technical skills in places using multiple image layers for example to explore the combinations of found portraits and envelopes to create a strong visual effect. I’d be interested to know more about how you, or a viewer would interpret this.
Research Context, reflective thinking, critical thinking, analysis
The assignments are opportunities for you to use research and inspiration from the exercises as a stepping stone to develop ideas of your own and explore and interpret – in this case – the use of archival material in a way that reflects your own interests and is a foundation for the development of your own voice.
There is some very good self-reflection in your Learning Log, and as mentioned above, there should really be a continuation of this into your assignment, where possible and appropriate, citing influential practice from the exercises as part of your assignment development.
I think you can see how submitting two assignments together can create some problematic issues, I have mentioned a couple of things in my feedback here that cropped up in A1 : extending your research and including self-assessment/reflection in your Learning log
The next assignment is the Critical Essay. When you’ve decided which question you want to answer and you have carried out some preliminary research, get in touch and I can offer some advice and guidance for reading. Remember to include a reflection with this assignment using the OCA assessment criteria; they won’t all apply as this is a written piece of work, but you can consider how you approached the subject, research, and structured the essay; what you learned about the subject and about essay writing and research.
Strengths Detailed and well-illustrated response to exercises in Learning Log
Good use of Blurb for book archive (although I can only see the thumbnails)
Focused, although limited, background research for assignment
Areas for development
Evidence development of original work if using another practitioner’s work as an inspirational starting point.
For this assignment, you are asked to produce a series of related images that use a readily available online archive ( or archives ) as their starting point or subject.
Make a small book for this assignment, using proprietary software, to be viewable online. In your book, you may use a selection of images from primary sources ( your own images ) and/or secondary sources ( images found online and/or scanned from other sources ).
Think about a theme for your book and use the references provided throughout Part Two as inspiration. Your book should contain a minimum of 12 double sided pages and can contain text is you wish, of simply a collection of images.
Provide a link to where your tutor can view your book, and provide a few double page spreads as still images.
Research
For this assignment, I was inspired by photographer-artist Erik Kessels and his work with found vernacular images and his photobook series’ In Almost Every Picture, and Nicky Bird with her series Question for Seller.
Erik Kessels photobook series’ In Almost Every Picture, archives found amateur photographs and photograph albums that were discarded or unwanted. He would usually find these unwanted photographs online via selling sites, flea markets or from friends and other contacts.
Kessels highlights the throwaway society we have gradually become, regarding photography. “These days, we’re all editors. We take photos to share, not to keep.” Kessels
Installation shot, Erik Kessels, 24 Hrs in Photos, 2011, FOAM, Amsterdam.
His installation for 24 Hrs in Photos, shows the vast amount of images that were uploaded onto the photo sharing website Flickr, within one 24 hour period. These images would have only been destined to be viewed on the screen, then vanished into the digital ether and may never have been seen again. However, Kessels had them all printed out and pilled up in the gallery room, to highlight the enormity of digital photography online and to show us that with this amount being uploaded online daily, how can we possibly focus on just one at a time. How can we choose just one or a handful of images that are taken, and decide that they are ‘special’ enough to be archived within a photograph album or photobook.
When asked about his feelings towards Instagram and the vast amount of images were are seeing daily, Kessels replies “The platform is fantastic – it’s free, and so much more democratic. We’re exposed to more photography before lunch than people in the 18th century would see in their lifetime.” Kessels
During an interview with Tim Clark, on the vanishing photo album, Erik Kessels talks about how we only tend to keep roughly 8 photograph albums within our lifetime and explains how peoples life journeys can be seen moving through each album. We can see how towards the end of the 7th and 8th photograph album, we tended to stop taking photographs, simply because we don’t have the time, or peoples lives became boring to the extent where the everyday was no longer exciting enough to photograph. We experienced the highs of our lives, but once they had been and gone and once the one of a kind holidays or experiences had been experienced, the types of photographs that were being taken had changed and the amount of photographs taken also slowly declined, until none were taken to be stored in these albums. Digital photography and the ease of sharing online became more popular.
“Family or personal photographs are now taken to be shared with everybody whereas in the era of photo albums they used to be much more private….We used to be the designers of our photo memories, not just someone who makes a slideshow on a computer. We don’t even have them in albums anymore. The function of a photograph has shifted completely…It’s extraordinary to think that photo albums have only been in existence for roughly one hundred, and now they’re virtually dead.” Kessels
Photographer Nicky Bird and her series Question For Seller also explores the archival of unwanted, found photographs.
Question for Seller, The First Purchase. Nicky Bird, 2002-2007.
This series originated from her interest in unwanted family photographs that appear on eBay, to be sold to anyone who wants them. Bird purchased several lots of these photographs, “which no one else bid for, with the connotation that they were unwanted by others, and therefore, had no significant value at all.” Bird then sent the seller of these photographs a message asking “How did you come across the photographs and what, if anything, do you know about them?”
“…Their replies, however brief, are as important as the photographs they are selling – sometimes alluding to a part of a discarded family history, or the everyday, where personal photographs have long since lost their original meaning.” Bird
After receiving her responses, Bird combined them with the photographs and gave them a meaning once again. On Thursday 1st February 2007, At 7pm the exhibition, which comprised of photographs purchased off eBay, were sold as lots starting from 99p to the highest bidder. At 8pm online bidding closed for the unique ‘family album’. Question for Seller enabled the audience to purchase, participate, and engage with two questions: what is our relationship to the past, and what is the value we ascribe to it?
Assignment:
When I think of photographs and photograph albums, I instantly think of hard copies, photographs that you can hold onto and look at. I myself own several photograph albums, but as Kessels mentions, they stop at a certain time and I unfortunately haven’t continued. I suppose in a way, I was surprised to see that I was taking more digital photographs of myself and my friends and family, and archiving them in digital photo albums on my phone or external hard drives, rather than printing them off and archiving them in photograph albums. It worries me somewhat, because as mentioned previously, can I trust digital archival 100%. I would be distraught if anything happened to my digital photographs, and in a way, this research and assignment has taught me that I should continue printing my photographs and archiving them in photograph albums.
Another reason I admire photograph albums, is because they hold so many memories. Being able to open a photograph album and look through photographs that have been lovingly archived, shows that the person cares about those photographs and they obviously care about the people within the photographs. Many people write the persons name, the date, and sometimes where they were taken, underneath the photograph, which enables the person looking at the photo album, to know who the photographs are of. It helps future generations of family to pin point certain family members within a photograph.
Caring for my Grandmother who had dementia, opened my eyes to how important photographs are, especially hard prints. They help bring back memories and stories that we may have temporarily forgotten. They help you remember, they help you relive that moment that was captured. You can talk to friends and family about events in your life that you have lived and show them a photograph of that specific moment. My Grandmother enjoyed holding onto photographs whilst looking at them, rather than looking at a photograph shown to her on a mobile phone. Her house had many photographs in frames, some of them with names written to help her remember, placed in different rooms, so she was able to see family photographs at every turn, which comforted her in a way.
Erik Kessels 24 Hrs in Photos, shows us that just like hard prints, digital photographs can also vanish and be forgotten about. How then, can we live in a modern digital age, where we only tend to take digital photographs, but archive them in a way that protects our photographs and archives them in a way that we can stop our memories vanishing. Digital photobooks are an ideal place to start, as companies offer the service of printing hard copy photobooks that have all of your digital photographs printed in them. A new, modern version of a photograph album.
I always wonder what will happen to my photographs in several decades time, where will they be, will my family hold onto them, will they look at them and talk about them, will they keep them or like these photographs I purchased for these assignments, will my photographs be discarded too. It is quite sad when you think about it, because these photographs mean everything to me, and I would hate for them to just be discarded. However, in say 200 years time, no one will be around to talk about my photographs, they won’t be able to tell my stories or events that I have photographed. To someone, they will just be photographs of someone or something that was taken by a stranger (Me), all those years ago.
I often wonder how the people within these discarded photographs that I purchased, would feel that their photographs, all of these years down the line, have been discarded by their family in someway or another, and are now in possession by a stranger, me, who doesn’t know them. I want to get to know them, I want to find out more about who they are and to hear their story, because I only hope that someone can tell my story someday, when they hold onto my photographs. I think that by knowing their story and telling it someway or another, that person never dies, they live on. You can honour them by still talking about them and their lives.
Taking inspiration from Kessels and Bird, for this assignment, I have decided to focus on the old, singular and job lot photographs I purchased from eBay, at the beginning of this course. I originally purchased them because I was hoping to cut and paste several of the portraits together, similarly to Stezaker and Lundwall, which I have done in Assignment One and Assignment Two.
As I know nothing about these photographs, and who they are of or where they came from, I want to find out more about their history and the story behind them. I want to find our who they are of, when, why and where they were taken, can the sellers give me any more information. I want to archive these photographs and make them into their own photobook, to give them a meaning and a purpose once more. I want to make sure that they are never unwanted or lost ever again.
I purchased these sets of photographs from several different sellers, for different prices and each auction ended on different days. There wasn’t much information provided by the sellers, about the photographs, in the standard eBay description section. The only descriptions generally used were ‘Old vintage photograph of a lady taken in 1940/1950.’ or ‘Job lot of old photographs’.
I decided to go back onto eBay, and ask each seller the same question, regarding the photographs I had purchased from them. Below is the message I sent to the sellers;
“Hello. I recently purchased old vintage photographs of yours. I’m using them for my photography degree assignment, (similar to photographer Nicky Bird and her project Question for Seller), and I was wondering if I could ask you where you got them from and what, if anything, do you know about them and where they came from. It is completely fine if you don’t know anything about them or their history, but it is interesting to find out how people come into possession of old photographs. Many thanks, Kind regards Chantelle 🙂 “
I was fortunate enough to have received a reply from all but two of the sellers, explaining their history, who they were of and where they were purchased.
Question for Seller provided new meaning for old, found photographs. She archived photographs that would have either been discarded or lost forever. Her archive wasn’t already in existence, rather, Bird bought these unwanted photographs from eBay, in order to create her own archive of unwanted photographs.
Therefore, my assignment for ‘The Archive’, will be based around producing my own online photograph album – photo book, archiving the photograph lots I purchased on eBay. I will re-photograph the photographs myself, in the bundles that they were purchased in from their seller, and I will include the replies from the seller, on the opposite page of the book.
When I began this assignment, I was hesitant at first, as I was unsure what to focus this assignment on. I knew that I had a large selection of found photographs that I had purchased for my previous assignments, but I didn’t know where to begin. I had previously researched Erik Kessels and Nicky Bird, so I began by going over my research and researching a little more into their use of found images and archiving them.
As mentioned above, I wanted to find out more about these found photographs that I had purchased. I wanted to know their story and archive them in a way that gave them a voice and a meaning again. I was fortunate that most of the eBay sellers responded to my message asking for any information about the photographs. I don’t think the photographs would have had the same meaning or message displayed on a digital photobook, if they didn’t have these captions next to them explaining what or whom they were of.
I am really happy with the final outcome of my online book. I wanted to keep everything simple and straightforward, with the photographs on one side and the replies from the seller on the opposite page, facing them.
This was my first time using BLURB, and I found it a little difficult to understand at first, but I managed to make the desired book that I wanted.
I will wait for my tutors feedback, to see if there is anything he suggests, in regards to my final book, and any changes I may need to make.
Chantelle Grace Photography 