RESET

I made a final attempt to get back into the normal run of this course, working on Project 24, "using an auto focus lens (optional, dependent on your equipment)".  Then I realized the inanity of what I was doing, running through a series of "How To" exercises that could suit a GCSE photography course, but really should have no place on a degree level study pathway.  The course is old and has been replaced, for very good reason.  Looking at this project and the remaining ones I see no value at all in completing them, even with a creative spirit of lets turn this into something different.  So I am making a call and deciding to focus my time on the remaining three Assignments.

I accept that this might not look good at assessment, but I am gaining nothing and becoming increasingly frustrated with the course material.  In fact, I am hoping that getting real and putting my creative effort into the assignments will pay dividends and subsequently make up for any possible loss of credit due to my rebellion.  I also wish to finish the course by the end of the year so that I can start 2014 with the new level 3 courses and a renewed enthusiasm for my photography.  At my present rate of progress it'll be another 2 years.

This leaves discussion of what I plan to do with the 3 remaining assignments and what I want to accomplish with the remainder of this course.  Assignment 3 is pretty much decided, an essay on Robert Frank.

Assignment 4 is then programmed in, although I want to think about this a little.  Is it really a foregone conclusion that I must create photographs in the style of the man I write about?  I have already been working on this assignment for a year and have amassed some good material, I am just not sure this is where I want to go with my work.  Frank is an important and influential photographer, his work changed photography more than any other (opinion, that I will try and expand on in the essay), however, his working model and method are not at aligned to my own.

As I mentioned in my last post, my visual interests are more in line with Shore and Sternfeld than Frank, each equally interesting as social commentary but adopting a very different viewpoint and style to Frank.  I find myself more wedded to the observational style of Shore standing back and studying the world around me, than I do Frank's more involved approach.  having said that a practical compromise might be to complete assignment 4 as given, using the material I have already developed and then work assignment 5 from a different perspective.

Here is my current proposal:

Assignment 4: In the style of Robert Frank: Take a look back on the work I began a year ago to develop a parallel concept to Frank's The Americans, a study of the people of Munich, largely at their leisure.  This would continue my B&W work for the course.  Most of the material exists, so this would be an exercise in edit and sequence, developing a narrative for the set.  If this does not work, then I would have to work something new and rethink.

Assignment 5: Richard Strauss Strasse:  Here I want to deviate from the human interest obsession of the course and develop my own view on German life.  My goal from the very earliest stages of studying with the OCA has been to use Munich as the subject for my photography.  I want to use my photography to help me understand the city and the people that live there. This does not need to be portraits of people doing things, it can also look at the cultural signifiers that decorate the landscape, where people live, where they work.  To that end I propose a study of a typical street, a block from where I live.  In some respects this would be a different take on the one acre assignment from Landscape, but with a deeper look into the cultural and societal elements that make up the street.  Also rather than viewing this as an event to be photographed in a day or so, I want to spend time developing the concept.  I have easy access and could shoot there for a few minutes every day, choosing different times, weather, days, gradually building a conceptual basis for the study.

Assignment 5 as stated above would help me back into the style and content that I find myself most interested in and want to develop further as I progress to Level 3.  This course has pushed me towards subject matter and methods that rather than helping me to develop has pushed back my creativity and understanding of photography.  The in close approach, making the person the subject is something I can do, I get stuck doing weddings every now and then, so I do get it, it is just not of any artistic interest to me whatsoever.

I need to develop as a photographer, and am prepared to risk a bad mark for this course to do so.  The alternative is to abandon this course and start again with something else.