The taught modules of my MA have finished and it’s time to see if I’ve got anything to say. For the next 6 months I’ll be working on my Final Major Project and the first step is to find one single theme to work on. I need to answer questions like:
why me?
why photography?
why now?
For me, the main discussion I’m having with myself is who is my project for? Is it for me, is it for a particular audience? Early in the MA we were encouraged to look at the triangle formed between the photographer, the photograph and the person looking at the photograph. I had never really considered what happened to my images once I put them out into the world. During the MA I think I veered too much towards privileging my audience over myself and for my FMP I want to indulge my own muse and see what she has to say.
The first step was to make a “pecha kucha” presentation to outline FMP ideas. This is a formalised slideshow of 20 slides that automatically advances every 20 seconds. It forces you to include only the absolute essentials and helps you find out what you really want to say. Watch mine here:
The feedback I got was that this is a good start but is still too broad so I plan to focus on simply the journey of a rose. It’s Valentine’s Day in a couple of weeks and all the roses that will be bought in supermarkets and petrol stations were picked in Kenya last weekend. Right now they are in a refrigerated container being shipped to the UK, dipped in silver nitrate, treated with hormones and still carrying pesticide residues. They will exist in suspended animation until their heads fall over in a vase in a corner of someone’s house somewhere. How did this disposable, embalmed parody of nature come to represent romantic love?
And how will I do this with my camera? I don’t know yet but I have been encouraged to trust the process.
This is my own “impossible image” made, in Photoshop, of tulips, chrysanths and dahlias. The wallpaper is also fake, and made from the “subverting capitalism” project I did earlier in the MA.
Edit March 2023: due to surgery I’m pausing my MA for a term. It will pick up again in June 2023.