Evaluation

As this project nears its end, I have been looking back at it and trying to reflect on the aspects of it I’m happy with and those that I am not. Initially I jumped right into the project really engaged with the potential ideas and my research, eager to create a great piece of work. I think as the project developed I was initially against it changing from my initial idea, however I have let it flow and develop into something very different that retains the same core ideas as I set out with in mind. I saw London as a faceless melting pot of the world and wanted to communicate that in the subway, a perfect place to exemplify this notion, however I instead took to the streets and began to do more experiments with movement and the distortions it created on people, being a visual manifestation of the passing of time on human beings. The abstract physicality of the movement also allows them to be open to interpretation which was something I was very much aware of and something that was crucial to the audiences reception of the images aesthetically and thematically. The main idea with this project that I wanted to convey was the facelessness of the city and how it dehumanises people into just ghosts of themselves.

I have tried to unify all of my decisions into making the images cohesive thematically, allowing every element to work together, much like in a film. For example the use of black and white to create colourless and more shadow focused images, high contrast to bring out the shadows but also the figures presented in the images, the printing on matte paper to absorb light rather than reflect it as though the images are consuming it and even the placement of them together in a triptych to tell a story. All of these decisions and more were made to contribute to the finished prints that I am overall happy with. The project wasn’t all perfect though of course, I was at times very disillusioned and perhaps even disinterested with where the project was going, battling the change but also feeling that so much more could be done but being told by Julian that I had enough, this was difficult to hear because my way of working is to perfect things. In my background in film this is a little more beneficial but I have learned on this project to embrace the beauty of imperfections and allowing a project to develop naturally. I have understood from the very beginning of the project that it is about the journey rather than the destination, that was never an issue, I think the issue was that I was not always interested in where the journey was taking me, at least initially. Luckily I really dove into the project despite of this and allowed the themes I’d explored to cross over as it developed and the project is stronger for this from and it also saved my interest in it from waning too significantly. I think that as time went on and my project strayed so far from what it originally was I was very disheartened, even lamenting to Julian that I just wished to be making a film. I overcame this by taking the themes and ideas that interested me originally about the subway, i.e. the facelessness of the city and the effect a place has on people and applied it to my project to rejuvenate my interest. Over the past months I have been developing a script I have written and working to get it made, I had to learn to juggle both tasks alongside each other which wasn’t always easy but in the end I got much better at.

I would have liked to have taken more photos in the first few weeks of the project, doing mostly secondary research and seeing as I had never done street photography if I had started earlier I could have been more proficient by the end of the project. However this did still happen, I learnt a lot about taking photos on the streets; not just technically but also in a visual way. It’s nice looking at the progression of the project and especially my field work and seeing how I went from the very vague Oxford street images to the more focused Hyde Park images, finishing with the London Bridge images that will be displayed. I am happy with my constant research that I have tried to uphold on this project, reaching 50 blog posts but in a way that hasn’t felt forced, my genuine interest in the project has fuelled it but also my tenacity to create a good piece of work. Struggling with the limitations of photography has been challenging but fun, trying to communicate an idea in a single image or series of them is something I’ve not really dabbled with at all, usually having sound and image within a film as well as the art of editing. I think at times this felt like a hinderance but is also a blessing as it allows for more abstract ideas to be represented, my biggest worry with the final prints is that people will not have a emotional reaction or even understanding of them and what they represent as my work will have been for nothing. I feel, with a film you have a little more of an idea of how it’ll be perceived but with these photos I honestly have no clue. I don’t want people to say “yeah they looked cool” and that be the end of it because it shows they have had no response to it at all and that would be crushing.

I would like to have taken many more photos, exploring verticality more, discovering recently some great steps at Wembley Park which I am going to take pictures at in my spare time. Julian had to keep convincing me that what I had is enough and not to go overboard which was such a strange notion but I can see why he suggested it. He didn’t want me spreading myself too thin with the project, I think his understanding of photographs and their method of communication has been insightful and he was trying to teach me that my photographs need to be focused and to stop worrying about saying everything or even anything with them. My confidence was really tested on this project, I do not consider myself a confident photographer and the spontaneity of street photography was daunting, I think this is what prevented me from going out in the initial few weeks, wanting to just research as much as possible to be prepared. What I learned however, was that the best experience was simply to go and take photos without worrying about it, quickly I adapted and utilised things my research indicated but also my own creative flare. I wandered the streets of London, exploring new places, and it was enlightening and felt like a great physical part in my project, but also an element of control over it which is really cool. What I mean by this control was that as the project went on and I fine tuned each element and had a good visual idea of what I wanted and how I would get there; and then I went out and did it. I wish that at the beginning of the project I had gone out and explored more to be inspired by the spaces I was in, perhaps having completely new ideas that I could develop, the spontaneity being a really interesting concept.

Overall I am happy with how my project turned out, I have learned so much about photography, photographers, printing, artists and just being out in the world taking photos on the fly; seeing subjects everywhere and developing my eye. I think timelessness is important to the piece as it is reinforcing a message of a cycle repeating with the ghosts of the city endlessly marching. With this in mind I am disappointed in some of the end results because when you see trainers it contextualises the images whereas just black formal shoes it creates a timeless effect and I think being mired in a timeless place is a really interesting place for the project to be in. I would like to fine-tune and develop that idea in the future by creating images that have no indication of a time period. Next time I would like to play around further with triptychs and to be more confident at the offset so I don’t waste time and can really utilise the entire length of the project. I am proud of the effort I’ve put in and the finished result and hope that I have met the brief by exploring the complex idea of a city and its effect on its inhabitants. I look forward to the next project eagerly, hoping to explore completely new ideas and develop new skills as well as push the ones I have begun to nurture.