Research report

BA (Hons) Photographic Arts

Module: 2PHO627

RESEARCH REPORT FORM

This should be a summary of and a critical reflection on your research process so far. You should try to give the reader a sense of the process you have been through - your journey, your thoughts and decisions along the way and what has informed the choices you’ve made. Try to be as honest and as critically reflective as you can.

Please extend boxes as required (length 1000-2000 wds)

Name           

Madalaine Nevzat

Major Project Title

(Or working title - how and why did this title develop?)

For my pilot project I chose the title of ‘XII’ meaning twelve, as it was the age of my sister as I was photographing her; I want to carry on this theme for my Final Major Project and for my working title I will choose the youngest and oldest age of the girls/women that I am going to photograph – e.g. XII – LXX (if the ages were twelve to seventy). I originally chose this as my title as I felt that age was very important within my project, particularly at the age of twelve, many changes from childhood to adolescence begin to happen; therefore, I feel it is important to carry on this theme. As I have chosen to broaden my subject for my Final Major Project, to photographing a range of ages instead of just adolescence, I feel that the development of my work will be parallel to the development of those that I am photographing.

Research Methods

(What methods have you used during this phase of the project and how have they helped you develop your ideas and inform your major project proposal?)

My main method of research when I first started the project was visiting many different galleries and exhibitions, to draw inspiration from current, as well as older photography work. I firstly visited the National Portrait Gallery to view the 2013 Taylor Wessing Photographic Portrait Prize, which I found greatly inspiring for my pilot and major project; I found two pieces of work there by photographers, Patrick Fraser and Ilona Szwarc, that have helped inform my project both aesthetically and conceptually. After visiting this exhibition a second time, I was fascinated with another piece of work by photographer Dorothee Deiss, titled The Twins, which won fourth place in the competition. The photographed pictured elderly identical twins laying together on a bed in their bathrobes; this photograph gave me the idea of stretching my project further from adolescence and expanding it to photographing all different aged women within the theme of ‘transition’.

Once I had a rough idea of my project title and what it was that I wanted to photograph, I visited a very relevant exhibition at the Photographer’s Gallery, titled ‘Home Truths: Photography, Motherhood and Identity’. Viewing this exhibition really helped to inform my ideas for the project; I felt the theme of the work was very similar to my own and I took inspiration from the ideas, as well as aesthetics, especially from a photographer named Fred Huning.

I used the university’s library facilities a lot for this project, searching through books and the online library catalogue for relevant visual, conceptual and contextual references. I found this facility extremely helpful, as I was able to spend time flicking through as many books as I needed, drawing inspiration from the style, technique and sequencing of other photographer’s work. The internet was also a major resource for my research, however I find that I gain a lot more knowledge by physically looking through a book or exhibition, therefore, whenever I found a photographer that I was interested in online, I would use the library to search for their book, which I was then able to take home and read.

I also visited the British Library to look at books that were not currently available at university. I found this facility very helpful as it gave me an opportunity to view the books of photographers that were very relevant to my project, such as Melissa Ann Pinney and Jocelyn Lee; however, I found it very different to a normal library and the downside to this research resource was that I had to request the books that I wanted to view 48 hours before visiting as the library doesn’t provide them on shelves to browse through freely. This meant that I had to organise and plan my visit a few days in advance and also know exactly the material that I wanted to view.

I also searched the websites of different culture and photography magazines/archives such as Feature Shoot, The Guardian, Magnum photo etc,

and visited many bookshops to flick through magazines, books and journals to take inspiration from other artists.

Pilot Project

(What have you achieved through the development of your pilot project/s? What have you learned from the process? Identify the main concepts that might direct or drive your major project.)

Through my pilot project I feel that I have gained a greater understanding of the documentary style of photography; I discovered that I must constantly be observing my subject in order to capture the perfect photograph, as in documentary photography, that moment can never be recreated. I feel I have learnt a great deal about lighting and it’s importance in documentary photography, as large lighting kits cannot always be set up, especially when shooting outside on-the-move - therefore it is extremely important to shoot at the right time of day and capture the daylight perfectly.

The main concepts that I feel I will take from this pilot project to drive my major project is the idea of ‘change’ and ‘transition’; I really enjoyed researching, studying and photographing females and documenting the physical as well as psychological transformation from childhood into adolescence, but I also want to expand this further by photographing a larger age range of women, and their ‘transformation’.

Audience and Context

(Has a consideration of Context and Audience made you think about your project in a particular way? Have you been aware of the histories, conventions and audience expectations of particular contexts? Have you considered different contexts and how have you responded to them?)

When initially starting my project, I knew that I was interested in creating a body of work that would be suitable for the context of ‘page’, however, as my project has developed and I have researched more into the conventions and audience of different contexts, I feel that my work would also work well, if not better, in the context of ‘wall’.

When I was taking my photographs, I was constantly thinking of which shots would work well together on the wall and how they could be presented in an exhibition. I really like the style of diptychs within the same frame on the wall, which is what I wanted to create for my own work. Although my final prints were framed in quite a small frame (10x8”), for my Final Major Project I want to work with really large prints such as the size of A1 as I feel the detail that you get from printing this large is so much more rewarding and complimenting to the photographs.

I also experimented with the context of ‘page’ for my project, and although I prefer my photographs within a gallery environment, I also feel that they would work well within a book form. Exhibitions do not last forever, therefore I feel that the context of a book is vital when it comes to photography, as it provides a physical existence once the exhibition is over, and makes photographs more accessible to people all over the world and not just within one gallery space.

Production and Presentation

(Discuss the production methods you have been exploring through your pilot project. What effects do these different approaches/ visual strategies have on the work?  What choices have you made in the refinement of your visual approach and why? Is the approach you have chosen effective in communicating your ideas to the identified audience?)

For this project I chose to shoot on a medium format Fujifilm rangefinder camera, as I knew I wanted to shoot on 120mm film but I also wanted a camera that was suitable and not too heavy to carry around for documentary style photography. I feel that detail that medium format film gives really compliments portraiture work and gives much more detail than 35mm.

I chose to present my work as diptychs in the frames as I feel that the images tell a story when paired together, as well as a whole new narrative when together as a collection. I presented the photographs in quite small frames because I want the viewer to have to lean in and examine the photograph to discover and unfold all of the different aspects and suggestions that I am trying to convey. I refined my images down to 6, as I feel it is these images that portray my idea the most effectively.

Visual References / Bibliography

(List the key visual and critical references you have explored during the research process. Discuss how useful these references were for the project and what you learned from them).

The key visual references that I have explored during this project, was the work of Jocelyn Lee, Melissa Ann Pinney and Hellen van Meene. I also discovered the work of Lillian Birnbaum much later into my project, but I still feel that her series titled ‘Transition’ links to my own project greatly. I found the essays that accompanied the work of the photographers listed above in their photographic books to be very interesting and helpful within my own research and ways of photographing.

I also studied Roland Barthes ‘Camera Lucida’, particularly his chapters ‘The Winter Garden Photograph’, ‘The Little Girl’, and ‘The Family, the Mother’. I found Barthes opinions interesting, however, I also felt the urge to challenge his views and disagree with a lot of his statements.