Assignment Five Feedback

Written feedback

Job done, Luke! You’ve made really good progress throughout the unit, have worked diligently, been full of ideas, and always keen to launch yourself into the deep end. While everything hasn’t always worked out entirely satisfactorily on a visual and communicative level, this is to be expected at this stage, and, at its best, your work is rich, thoughtful and full of potential. The political dimension that runs through your work means that there’s a really agreeable level engagement to what you’re making, and I’d fully expect you to kick on and produce some really good work over the coming units (and beyond).

This here assignment is, for me, quite a tricky one, with students often taking a kitchen sink approach to the image they create and overloading it with ideas and meanings that aren’t always communicated by the photograph alone. While the inclusion of a graphic design element shows your versatility, it did add a note of confusion, especially when I was unable to access your accompanying text. When I did, I found plenty of interesting and worthwhile material, particularly when it came to the inspiration and influence, but not a whole lot to cut through this and take a more focused attempt to what you were trying to communicate with the image. Amidst all the talk of Crewdson and the It Follows film, I think your presence has been slightly lost here, which is odd – it’s a really striking and ambitious image that is evocative and extremely eye-catching. To more effectively harness it, I think you need to give a bit more thought to how you’re using text to frame it. Why are you making such an explicit connection to the film? Does the meaning of the image come directly from it? Is it an homage? Or is it primarily intended as an homage to Gregory Crewdson? If so, I think you’re underselling yourself: this is a lovely image to end what’s been a good unit for you, Luke, so put the clutter to one side and have the confidence to let the photograph be its own – and your – thing. The response from the model, the rural British location, the clothes she is wearing – think about what these add up to and signify and let them map the direction of the image’s meaning.

Getting set for assessment is the main thing, but the advice here is simple: pick only your strongest work on the unit and give the assessor/s a clear and imaginative overview of what you’ve been doing. Keep me posted, stay in touch, and best of luck!!

On the video call, Andy started by praising this image and saying early on that this one should be submitted in the upcoming assessment. He advised nothing really needs to be done with the image itself as that is complete. I need to completely re-frame it. Downplay the IT Follows and Crewdson link and use these as the springboard for the idea as this picture has an awful lot more to say. Suggestions for re-working how I write about this picture:

• Myth of the village
• Britishness and gender
• Change the title and come up with something more evocative.
• Alien quality
• Talk more about the process as opposed to the inspiration.
• PDF distracts from the picture with this one so just present the picture.
• What do people need to know when they see this image? Is the title enough as its quite semantically charged. Write about this and how it could be read by viewers in many different ways. Re-read Chapter 4 of Richard Salkeld’s book.
• Is the subject in the picture a prisoner, victim of abuse as they appear in distress. The reading would be very different if she was wearing a formal suit for instance. Why is she in this village? The mind may likely jump to the most obvious conclusion of why given what the subject is wearing which does not fit with the traditional notion of the small English village.
• Take another look at Philip Lorca-DiCorcia Hustlers
• Larry Sultan – Picture from Home. Tragic thing that he actually died before his parents.
• Write another post about Crewdson, what I like or don’t like (static subjects in particular) or add to the existing post on him.
• Another thing that came out was off the subject of this picture but of work on Instagram in general. Adding hashtags makes some pretty big differences and I have found Andy mention of ‘film’ photography usually boosts my meagre posts. Film photography fetishised on Instagram.

Action points

• Get this picture printed professionally. I often hear how important it is to get your work printed, and I think I want to see this picture as a physical picture.
• Picture originally began life as a homage, inspired by Crewdson and It Follows but as the editing process has unfolded and have reflected on the image, its become something else. The differences