This week I watched the recordings of quite a few lectures either from the Falmouth face 2 face event or the guest lectures. Highlights for me were Gary McLeod’s guest lecture where he spoke about his background and how his practice evolved from college to PhD. I really liked the body of work HMS Challenger, which involved using rephotography and collaborative approach to produce his final works. McLeod explains how his work progressed from changing apparatus, returning to the site capturing in a repetitive form and using a website/workshops to work collaboratively. I thought it was really good idea how he got individuals to visit the areas that were associated with the subject and photograph it, sharing all images and participates making montages out of the images.
This then leads into the lecture McLeod gave at the Falmouth Face2Face event which he discusses rephotography. McLeod talks about all the different concepts of rephotography and popular artists and platforms that use this style. Different ways in which artists achieve this could be physically holding older photograph in the scene, a pairing of images from the then and now, blending images together (think its called ghosting), overlapping images creating a montage or even using a ipad with ‘then’ image included physically in the scene.
I really do like this style in general, I think it is an effective way of producing works that convey passing of time whilst visually seeing differences or similarities. McLeod also poses the question how long do you have to leave before returning to capture 10min, a year? I haven’t really thought about before but quite right it will always be rephotography as you can’t retake that photograph from the same time but will it show a difference? Which I guess leads back to why/what your intent is.
Next lecture featured Mark Klett and Bryon Wolfe, they discussed their early work right up to recent. Each body of work utilizes the different technologies that were available at the time and noticeably you see a progression in concepts in how to produce and work with original photograph. I like how they work through concepts with the approach that when they have completed and produced the work, they eagerly look to see what else can be achieved in the relation to space, view and technology. I enjoyed this lecture very much and will do a separate post on their collaborative works because I think it will inform my practice.
I watched through the majority of lectures and it was nice to see fellow peers give their FMP presentations, great to see the progression and where they up to. The most interesting point that stuck out to me, as you can probably see from above is rephotography. I have no idea why I dismissed this style, I knew there wasn’t much imagery from an airfield perspective but I haven’t experimented with it at all. I have been thinking about moving my work to focus on the buildings themselves. I will revisit what imagery actually exists of the control towers, hangars and runways, I think I would like to make montage using original photographs and see where it takes me.
References
Klett & Wolfe. (2019). Klett & Wolfe. [online] Available at: https://www.klettandwolfe.com [Accessed 12 Mar. 2019].
Falmouthflexible.instructure.com. (2019). Log in to canvas. [online] Available at: https://falmouthflexible.instructure.com/courses/249/conferences [Accessed 11 Mar. 2019].
McLeod, G. (2019). HMS Challenger — GARY McLEOD & OTHERS. [online] GARY McLEOD & OTHERS. Available at: https://www.garymcleod.co.uk/new-index [Accessed 12 Mar. 2019].
Critical Research Journal 