Assignment 4: Tutor Feedback

Hmmmm....

"I think that you have made a good effort to produce a portrait of Munchen. You have decided not to follow slavishly Frank’s style in favour of developing your own. This is a stiffer more formal style that perhaps suits the subject well, but I feel that while you have good technical skills that have developed during the project and have produced a good set of images, you have concentrated on images of things - the rather stereo-typical portrayal of different types of people - rather than produced images that convey feelings; feelings about the people of Munich or the feelings, emotions that the people have and their situation. This is the biggest difference between your work and that of Frank’s Americans."

Damned with faint praise!  And fair comment, but one that I struggle to respond to.  I have a growing realization that in my heart I am a landscape photographer, or rather someone who seeks meaning through the photography of things rather than people.  The images are stiff and formally composed, but I am rather stiff and formal.  My work is as a business analyst, I spend my days collating data and trying to establish trends and discover opportunity.  I am very much not a people person, well not without some help.  I think this reflects in my photography.  Unless I am specifically invited to engage with my subjects through a formal request such as a wedding or an event, I am not comfortable getting into people's faces.  I can do this, but it is not a part of my person.

In another comment Simon makes the following observation:

"You have used your visual skills well to work within the ‘no photography on the street’ culture of Munich. The set presents a somewhat distant, detached observer’s view - rather like the ‘outsider’ viewpoint that Frank has in the Americans. I’m not sure if this was a reflection of your discomfort of working close up to people or a matter of necessity given the prevailing attitude to photography in the street. Whichever, you might want to think about working on your skills in a more close up environment using a wide angle lens and getting in close. This will present quite a different feel to your images and involve much more engagement with your subjects."

Sadly a little of both.  At events I am happy to work in close, especially when dealing with someone who is in effect modeling for me, but on the street, no!  There is a very good reason that I have alluded to before that there is no street photography in Germany.  It is illegal! And what is more people know it is.  I took the following photograph yesterday, nothing special just working some ideas around Assignment 5.  However, the reaction of the man is very obvious, he saw the camera.  I can only take photographs of people if they are genuinely unaware of the camera and remain that way.  Even posting this image now and the others on my blog means I have in effect broken the law.  It makes for a very difficult challenge in working this specific course.  I am nervous about this, I am invading people's personal space in a manner that Germans find extremely intrusive and even aggressive.

Overall, there was no challenge to any of the photographs and I do think that I have met the brief acceptably, just not in as emotionally engaging a manner as I could have done.  Frank was indeed much closer to his subjects and certainly less risk averse than I am.  The odd thing about this is that I enjoy street photography, and in a different country might make this more part of my work, however, I simply cannot in Germany.  I fee that I have stretched things as far as I can before getting into serious trouble, either a violent reaction or the Police.

Technically the photos were fine this time and I did learn a lot from Simon's input on assignment 2 in terms of the crop and the framing.  The B&W conversions worked well.  In terms of image quality or rather quality of outcome, I succeeded, but the comment was clear that perhaps the images are too refined too sharp, they lack any emotion.  Again I buy this and accept my limitations.  Finally on the topic of creativity, there is some good feedback

"You have obviously given a lot of thought, time and effort to this portrayal of the people of Munich. Your images have an air of subtlety in their rendition of such a varied mix - I like the book ending images with their inclusion of “Munchen”, the deft humour of the “no photography” signs in ‘artist’, the timing of ‘transvestite’ with the broom making contact with the hand adding depth to the image beyond the more obvious allusion to the differences between the protagonists in the image."

However, the final paragraph again hints at the lack of engagement

"Your work seems to be more a drawing of a stereotypical image of the ‘types of Munchener’ rather more in the way that Di Corcia does in his staged imagery. So a question for you is consider is how much you want your style to become consciously an amalgam of the styles of Frank and others like Di Corcia."

Simon also suggests that I look at Cindy Sherman, Jeff Wall and Gregory Crewsden, ironic as I got a similar comment from a previous tutor when doing People and Place.  Guess I am in a certain grove, for good or bad.

Unlike the previous 2 photographic assignments, where there was substantial commentary around each image, there was no suggestion to change or replace any of the images in this set.  I will take that as a sign that I was not so far from the mark, at least in the sense of presenting a set of cohesive well thought out photographs.

I am now left with the final question, what do I learn from this assignment and where next.  I guess the most obvious learning point is that I am not a people person and that photography of humanity is not for me,  I started this course with trepidation about whether it was the right thing to do.  This assignment reinforced the conclusion that it was the right thing to do, but the learning is negative rather than positive.  I can do this, but my heart is not in it.  Thinking back on Landscape and the commitment I made to that course, I just do not get the same vibe here.  Landscape was a pure joy and continual learning process and a feeling of self expression that I have never achieved in any other work I have done, including my Ph.D. in Physics.  I did this course on the advice of my tutor for Landscape, he felt I needed to broaden my experience and that the alternate, PWDP would not teach me much that I do not already know.  The advice was sound, but it has been a painful process.

I now need to make a decision about the final assignment.  I think the suggestion that I should get closer and more personal with my subjects is not going to happen. I plan the opposite, to go with my intuition and step away from the person and consider the environment, i.e. to work the final assignment as an exercise in Social Landscape, to take what I have learned from Social Documentary and Landscape and combine them in a single piece of work that investigates the German street.

What I colclude is that the version of Social Documentary favored by this course, i.e. studies of people, is not my idea of how society should be documented.  This person centric view seems more orientated towards documenting the human experience of society, versus a document of society.  I am more interested in how environment shapes or reflects society rather than how people shape society - that is what makes me a Landscape photographer rather than a social photographer.