LPE Preamble

[ spellchecked  6 Nov ✓ ✘] †

[2Nov21] The course material arrived today, just as I was running out of Part 1 - just part 2 of Exc. 1.5 and the Assignment left to do.

There are a few items in the Preamble that need attention, but most of is it is a repeat from earlier courses.

Course Summary

There's a useful summary of the course -

Part One: Beauty and the Sublime introduces you to key aesthetic debates around the sublime and the beautiful, exploring Pictorialist beginnings and popular approaches to landscape as a genre.

Assignment One: Produce a series of 8 photographs that convey your own interpretation of beauty and/or the sublime within the context of landscape.

Part Two: Landscape as a Journey explores locomotion as practice – the art of walking, psychogeography, mapping and road trips, tracing their application through contemporary and historic practices.

Assignment Two : Produce a series of approximately 12 photographs that are made on, or explore the idea of, a journey through a landscape.

Part Three: Landscape as political text considers various documentary and conceptual approaches within the depiction of landscape that question power, the act of looking, politics and memory.

Assignment Three: Within a series of up to 12 photographs, explore a landscape, or a small part of a landscape, which you believe to have some kind of significance. The objective of this assignment is to engage with the question of how a ‘space’ becomes a ‘place’.

Part Four: Landscape and Identities considers perspectives o n the interpretation of landscape via a r ange of contemporary practitioners who ask questions of the landscape framed by; nationality, class, gender, race and sexuality.

Assignment Four: A 2,000 word critical review on a topic of your choice.

Part Five: Landscape and the Anthropocene explores the origins of environmentalism and the changes in our environment caused by human activity. The role of the photographer as an advocate is analysed as is the power of imagery to affect change.

Assignment Five: Self directed brief - creation of a body of photographic work that explores a particular place, type of space or environmental theme relating to your understanding of the landscape genre.

Part Six: Preparing for assessment gives you space and time to reflect upon tutor feedback and refine the work you have created w ithin this unit before submitting it for assessment.

Assignment Six: Pre-assessment review with your tutor, an opportunity to discuss the presentation of your work.

Box A
self portrait, early 1990s
First shown in C&N

Preamble Exercise 1

What do you want / need from the course unit?

At Level 2, the course unit aims to develop your ideas and practices by providing a deeper sense of contexts you are working within, and for you to further explore how you can creatively and critically respond to these. Level 5 is very much about deepening your approach, so it’s a good starting point to consider what you might want or need to develop, based on your learning journey so far. For example, are there areas you have already explored you are now keen to develop further, areas you would like to expand upon, or study skills you would like to improve on. Write a short paragraph or around 5 bullet points identifying what you want and what you might need from the course unit.

To help support your learning it’s also useful for your tutor to get a sense of your own creative and learning background, your expectations of the course unit, motivations, and any other information you‘d like to share. Write a short paragraph or 5 bulletin points highlighting what you’re bringing to the course unit.

[6Nov21] Biography first. Here's what I wrote for C&N. Not much bio offered for I&P.

My current thoughts, I am —

• old (born 1954, the same year as Cindy Sherman);
• Welsh working-class by origin;
• regret, with hindsight †, having studied economics at Southampton in the 1970s rather than photography at Newport (where I was born and my father was a governor of the art college). Tish Murtha would have started when I was in the third year;
• sceptical;
• less mobile than I would like and my speed of thought and speech have suffered too.
• I enjoy studying for degrees. When nearing retirement age, I took a law degree, fully intending to put the world to right and address social wrongs — that didn't happen, though I volunteered for several years at Citizens' Advice and later started an advice charity with some ex-CAB colleagues. I started the OCA photography degree because I have always enjoyed the process and wanted to be pushed in directions I would not go unprompted - in this case (unlike the LLB) I am under no illusions about where the study will lead.

† on the other hand, I would probably not have met my wife, had my family and retired at 54, so no real regrets.

Course expectations

• Unmoving landscapes are a natural subject for me. I lack the speed for moving or rapidly changing subjects.
• I am inclined towards the urban rather than the rural, both because I find it more interesting (visually and in other ways) and because it is more accessible.
• I expect the matter of Voice will come up. I am not sure whether this is real or whether it matters. I believe that all practicing photographers (and footballers and police-persons, for that matter) develop a natural, self-suited approach to their work that becomes ingrained and perhaps recognisable. I am not sure that a course such as this with widely varying targets is best suited to voice development, but this can be argued both ways.
• I am undecided on the matter of associating text with images. My natural inclination is for short, factual, contextual titles where the artist considers them helpful (in some intentioned way) to the viewer. Last night I read Misrach ‡. I am contentedly in two minds on this.
• But, essentially, I take photographs, I enjoy being driven towards new subjects, confronting technical matters, learning about the theories surrounding the craft, encountering the work of other photographers.

‡ From Misrach, 2020, p.34,

most of the folks [in Misrach's first, 1970s, artists' salon] included language prominently in their projects as a way to draw attention to the often-invisible impact language has on images. I responded by taking the opposite approach. With the night desert work, I decided to remove every single word in my book: book title, essay, captions, page numbers. The final book is driven solely by images, and the photographs speak for themselves, without and influence - directly or indirectly - of the written word. Misrach, 2020, p.34

Approach

I described my approach in the Blog on 30th July 2021 during I&P.

Why photograph?

This question was first posed to we students in the C&N Preamble. I came up with a workmanlike response at the time and this was replaced in May 2020 (see the blog) with this

To produce a visual representation of something that merits this attention in such a way as to do the subject justice.
All these judgements are necessarily subjective and and the terms deliberately ambiguous. me

Eltham Park Station, c.1908
img: Sleep, 2006, p.76

On the About page I take this idea and beat it to death.

The pleasing and straightforward May 2020 version is still accurate, but not the whole story. For I&P Asg.5 I am working on a then-and-now of where I live using ... in old photographs -type books for comparators: my commitment to the project was wavering until I found this c.1908 image of Eltham Park Station, now closed, on a road that was on my route to work for 20 years and is now surrounded by housing.

Garry Winogrand is reported to have said,

I photograph to find out what something will look like photographed.
…
For me the true business of photography is to capture a bit of reality (whatever that is) on film…if, later, the reality means something to someone else, so much the better. Garry Winogrand, quoted by Leo Rubinfien, in an interview with Alexander Strecker, 2013

And this morning, thinking of the quote, I wrote

I go to see what something looks like, or just encounter an item or event, and sometimes record it to be able to remind myself and in case someone else might be interested or amused.

That is why I take photographs and in doing so I aim to produce a visual representation that does the subject justice and in describing this process I use terms that are deliberately ambiguous.

All that is true, but now it is unpleasingly inconcise, so back to the drawing board.

Sleep, D. (2004) Images of London, Eltham. Stroud: Tempus.

Strecker, A. (2013) Garry Winogrand: Behind the Legend [online]. lensculture.com. Available from https://www.lensculture.com/articles/garry-winogrand-garry-winogrand-behind-the-legend [Accessed 30 July 2021].

[8Nov]And here's another Misrach quote.

I think of photography as a form of pointing, a way of saying to the viewer, "Look at that!" The aim is not just to show people what it's like to be in a certain place; it's also about creating a visual construct that makes the viewer consider larger issues. Misrach, 2020, p.66

Assignments

[8Nov] I explained my approach to the presentation of assignments in the introduction to my I&P FinAss submission.

I have gradually come to terms with digital submission and my approach has developed through I&P. I believe that the assignment submission (at least the online version, available to the public) should be a complete entity in itself and thus should comprise the brief (perhaps shortened), an introduction, the images and the reflection. All four are necessary for a coherent piece of work and although the contents of the assignment introduction are available in the diary / blog, an uninformed reader alighting on the web page should not be expected to hunt for important contextual information. This development can be seen through the five online assignment submission pages (links: Assignment 1 - Assignment 2 - Assignment 3 - Assignment 4 - Assignment 5), some of which were reworked.
Similarly, students' responses to the tutors' feedback is significant. I find that I sometimes fail to express myself precisely enough in the assignment introduction and reflection and therefore have to clarify my meanings and intentions following feedback. I have gradually refined a process of annotating the feedback (links: #1 - #2 - #3 - #4 - #5). introduction to my I&P FinAss submission

Learning logs and Exercise 2 Setting up your learning log

[6Nov] I'll describe my approach to web sites overall here.

• Largely on the grounds of control, I prefer to build my own web sites. I have done this since the last century.
• I do not seek visitors or pursue Search engine optimization (SEO). I enjoy labyrinthine web sites and approach visitors by stealth. I have built this site to cover all of my degree and interlink the units as appropriate.
• Structurally, LPE is what the viewer will currently see.
  • There is a Blog which comprises diary entries throughout the course.
  • Notes are made on each part of the course and there is a page for each Exercise.
  • For every Assignment there is a series of pages:
    • Development (effectively the Assignment Log).
    • Contact sheets
    • Submission
    • Feedback, with my responses added
    • Rework or Essay, in response to the feedback
• But this would never do for the Final Assessment process, so each year I also build a simple, clean Wordpress site too. Here's I&P.
• And each year, following my tutor's suggestion in C&N, I write a book about the course that I print and bind myself. I am working on the I&P book now,

Managing your time, incl. Exercise 3

Depending on your circumstances, you might allocate time in different ways - a day a week, an hour a day, larger blocks of time such as weekends or holidays, or a combination of approaches.
Ask yourself the following questions?
● How much time you can allocate to study each week?
● What is my most/least productive time of the day?
● How well do I manage time?
● What is a realistic schedule to undertake Part One (around 80 learning hours) and when might you set your first deadline?
Make some notes in your learning log and discuss your schedule when you talk to you tutor.

Box B
OCA email 2 Nov

[6Nov] On Tuesdays and Thursdays we look after my grandson. Apart from that (other than daily visits for the next 3 weeks from a District Nurse for my IV antibiotics, see Blog), I'm free to work and play.

I'll wait to see what my tutor suggests on timing for the Assignments. The OCA Welcome email stated, "Students must …send in an Assignment every 4 to 8 weeks" (OCA email 2 Nov).

Preamble Exercise 4

Identifying resources

Prepare a list of the equipment and other resources you might need to use. What do you currently have and what might you need to get? Don’t worry if you don’t have everything now, there’s plenty of time to build your resources as you progress through the course unit and degree. If you’re not sure of what you need, then prepare a list of questions to ask your tutor.

[6Nov] There is nothing needed that I have not previously acquired for earlier courses, other than a few books.

Box C
Hello fellow students

Preamble Exercise 5

Saying hello to your fellow students

[6Nov] done, 6Nov 15:00.

Box D
Hello tutor

Preamble Exercise 6

Say hello to your tutor

[6Nov] done, 6Nov 15:28.

LPE Preamble References

Alexander, J, Conroy, A, Hughes, A, & Lundy, G (2019) Landscape, Place and Environment [LPE]. Barnsley: Open College of the Arts.

Misrach, R. (2020) On landscape and meaning. NY: Aperture.