Pre-hangout post for OCA Nov study group

Here are my pre-hangout questions. I've put them at the top of this post and before my explanation of my work for ease of reference during the hangout:

• Do I go with physical pyramid shapes or prints; or both?

• The title of the work is currently 'Unnatural'. 'Target Practice' has been suggested by the Brighton crit tutor Clive White in reference to a story I relayed from the biography. The title is dynamic and engaging but 'Unnatural' more fits the ethos of the dehumanised nature of the work.

• I like the idea of bigger physical pyramids (3 feet high) but am concerned about the logistics and costs?

The background to the work can be found here:

For my BoW I'm working on making constructed imagery to reference the treatment of Homosexual men that were incarcerated in concentration camps during WWII. I have done some tentative research and read a biography of one of the men published in 1972. From this starting point I made some constructed imagery, printed them out and began to fold them into triangles. I then re-photographed the physical triangles, placing them on a tiled effect background. I liked the fractured nature of the folded images. The triangles now present only parts of images (particularly the body parts) and this fits with my idea that in order to oppress people they first have to be dehumanised. I have also tried to isolate the triangles by photographing them against a 'clinical' background.

For more background there is a link to my assignment 1 here and a selection of images below:

assignment 1

Notes:

• I've had feedback from my tutor with some very useful points of reference to follow up and some further reading which I am about to undertake.
• I've finished the biography of the concentration camp survivor and this has thrown up a number of new images so I made some sketches.
• I'm also torn between the final prints and the physical triangles. The triangles are more tactile and I've also (since reading the biography) been thinking about making other shapes and creating an installation.
• The OCA crit at the recent Brighton Photo-Biennial was also useful. Clive White suggested the triangles would look good in a much larger physical form (about three feet high) and could imagine the viewer moving through them in a gallery space. I really like this idea and I agree that the tactical nature of the physical pyramids (as opposed to prints) is very appealing to me.

Update:

The session went well and the allocated hour went very fast indeed. Apart from the tutor Peter Haveland there was one other student (John Umney) beside myself. We discussed John's thinking around the curation of a contemporary landscape exhibition he will be putting together. I found Peter's suggestion on how to approach this very informative.

I presented my triangle work (the current working title is 'Unnatural' and may end up as 'Target Practice'). We discussed the problem of the re-photographed images looking flat as prints. They come alive as physical folded objects and this is very much in line with my thinking too. I am constantly drawn back to the physical pyramids/triangles; so much so that I hardly ever think about the prints now. We talked about size and scale of the objects themselves and the possible outcome for exhibition. One option that was suggested by both Peter and John was to use video to record the triangles in a space. By moving the camera around, the physicality of the objects would be much more apparent than in the prints. This is a very interesting idea; one that I hadn't quite reached in my own thinking at present as I am more consumed with just making more images at the moment. I will definitely experiment with video to see how it comes out.

I was also asked about the meaning behind the tiled backdrop for the print version of the work. I explained my thinking on this although how the work is read and perceived by the viewer will have different readings.

I found this session productive and will definitely join up to more hangouts in the future.