Response to Tutor Feedback Assignment 2

Tutor report Assignment 2

Tutor feedback

Overall, my assignment was well received. It needs some fine tuning which will stand me in good stead for the critical review (assignment 4) and hopefully progressing onwards through level 5 towards 6.

"This is a thorough assignment submission Nicola with plenty of research, investigation and review. Your energetic interest in your project carries the reader/viewer along with you. I’m going to make several suggestions for development but that's because there’s enough here to work with, so please take it as a compliment and don’t forget to respond in your reflection on the tutor report." Tutor feedback Assignment 2 September 2015

Points for development

Bullet pointed from tutor comments:

• start with  Friedlander's America by Car" as a contextual frame of reference" (tutor report) which is a bike ride through the landscape.
• Add in depth reflection of Friedlander's America by Car to my Assignment
• Consider illustrating with one of Friedlander's images (could link to his work on blog to avoid copyright issues)
• Short intro- places and dates etc 
• Visual description of Friedlander's work (mention wide angle of SWC Hasselblad)
• Evidence some awareness of existing critical writing of Friedlander's series
• My response and how it relates to my work.
• Move my ideas, plans and parameters to "assignment prep" on blog
• Reshoot 3 images

Images 
"There’s a strong development through the series from the first shot of a bike in front of some graffiti to some really quite exciting images where we’re starting to feel a sense of being unstable, of flying through the landscape on this machine. For me this begins at number 3 with the obstructions right in our path, and continues on to 4 and 5 where the framing feels fresh and natural and speaks most directly to Friedlander’s work. In 6 you’re resting, which does drop the tempo of the viewing experience somewhat. It’s not a bad shot but I would like to find something more unexpected here, some subtle gesture of the body perhaps to express the idea. Then off again to Number 9 with the crazy telegraph pole and wires and no hands and then careering through 10 to a couple of more sedate images for 11 and 12." (Tutor report, September 2015).

I acknowledge the image of me map reading should perhaps be changed for one where there is momentum - in the form of an action shot. I had not considered it as breaking up the series or slowing it down. I explained in my notes that I was intending to use different parts of the bike in my images. This was to break away from what Friedlander had done so I did not feel like I was copying his idea. Friedlander uses a formula of images that work for him and I had not appreciated that by contextualising my ideas, my work could be similar without "copying". It will not be an issue to reshoot these to give the assignment a more "finished" feel. By sharing development work with a wider audience, I would get other points of view on how someone interprets a series. Having retaken 3 images, I see now that this works more cohesively as a series.

My tutor suggested that perhaps my journey worked as an imaginative one. I had not considered this idea although by the time I had finished reshooting, it was a representation rather than an actual journey. With my riding partner out of action through surgery, I spent a fair amount of time putting the bike in the back of the car and getting it back out again to reshoot, much to the amusement of several passing cyclists! Revisiting the quote I used in my blog on Marion Shoard's definition of Edgelands, I can see how this would give me a reason to portray an imaginary journey;”Edgelands are part of the gravitational field of all our larger urban areas, a texture we build up speed to escape as we hurry towards the English countryside, the distant wilderness.[…] If we can’t see the edgelands, we can’t imagine them, or allow them any kind of imaginative life. And so they don’t really exist.” Farley P, Symmonds Roberts, M (2011 p5)

Reference

Farley P, Symmonds Roberts, M (2011) Edgelands: Journeys into England's True Wilderness, Vintage