Documentary Photography Project (2nd year project)
The foundation of this project, for me, was to consistently base my project on ‘Documentary photography’. This is the main aspect that stayed reliable throughout the year. Whilst referring back to my proposal, which defines my earlier thought process, my preliminary idea was to focus on British Division and researching media’s perception of separation between the North and South. This idea came from my findings at the end of last year, to which I looked at Martin Parr’s Postcard project. Articles such as Picturing Poverty, Documentary Fictions and Disastrous Documents fueled key aspects of my idea. Following this Chris Killip, Humphrey Spender and Simon Roberts were some photographers that I looked at help me visualize my project.
After a month’s of research I began to question some aspects about my projects, for example, ‘there could be a social contrast between either sides of the country, but what are these indications and more importantly how would I photograph them?’ Of course this project would be a lot easier if there was a physical line drawn the divide the two sides, but there isn’t! Eventually I discovered that there wasn’t really that much division, it was no more than sibling bicker. As these thoughts were going round in my head, I’d already begun taking images. I started talking pictures where I live, that reflected the beach, but that was me trying to recreate Simon Roberts work which ultimately wasn’t what I wanted from my project. So I began to travel between the North and South, back and forth to London. I started by making a diary of my journey and taking snapshot’s on my phone that I could later look at to understand my travels. I wrote down key words that consist of monotone, industrial and boring. Subsequently, I traveled a few times but eventually I was advised to look at the work of Paul Graham. By uncovering Graham’s work I was able to comprehend to his ideas and finally become inspired about motorway travel and the link between the country. I carried out research with the following titles, Motorway Culture, Traditions of Travel and Car Culture. My project began to excel.
I then started to understand Paul Grahams work, his approach to his presentation and his use of colour. How could I create my own communication?
In terms of images, I also considered William Eggleston, John Davies and continually Paul Graham. Eventually I concluded that what I found most interesting about the
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motorway was its lack of personality, and the relationship we have with the surrounding land. How can I express and communicate how I feel about the motorway, and how much depth would it have? About halfway through my journal I wrote this,
‘By taking images of truck stops I am exploring a realm of travel that hasn’t been a part of my 21st century life (the digital revolution). The experience most people feel when they travel on the motorway is frustration, anger, boredom, claustrophobic and sometimes scared. But how does this impact us as human beings? Realistically we glide over the motorway and we cut through British landscape? How much land do we realistically have that hasn’t been impacted by the industrial revolution. The way in which we glide over something reminds me how our current generation have a screen over everything, very little is reality anymore! Facebook, news, motorways, services, Skype, supermarkets and fast food co-operations are just a few ways where there is no personality, no experience and no conversation. By taking pictures of truck stops I am able to show personality and a time that once was, whilst also considering colours and aesthetics. How often is someone friendly or talkative when you visited corporate services? Why would the staff care, they wont make any more money buy being nice. Alternatively are people too involved in what’s on Facebook to care? Again, its another screen where you observe and read about other people’s daily life experiences. Over priced goods are another thing we seem to tolerate, why are service stations allowed to charge so much for so little? Is that the price you pay for convenience? Due to government control, motorway café and truck stops aren’t allowed to be advertised on the Motorway’.
Often throughout my journal I have wrote down ideas, sometimes there are just words but other times they cant be large expressions that I’m feeling. Ultimately I had to make that journey.
After I had taken all my photographs and edited them down to my final images I began to think about the order I would display them, due to the fact I took them towards a diaristic approach to get a good understanding they needed to have order and structure. To explain my project, I added a quote, which I feel, seems to summarise my understanding well.
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‘Motorway Travel is thus doubly remarkable: it avoids, for functional reasons, all the principal places to which it takes us’. (Marc Auge)
Throughout my book I have made a pattern, which consists of an image on each page, but on the right hand page there is a different image of the motorway, so that when you are turning the page you get a traveling and motion experience. When I took the images I was moving so they are slightly blurred, but I like that about them because it gives a better sense of motion. However on the left hand page, I wanted to create a holt on the journey, so these images are the places I visited to represented disappearing personality. By changing the scale of my images I was able to create more impact on the ‘stopped images’, and the moving images I made smaller so they would look more like slide of an old projector as you turn the pages, either fast or slow. I included this as my introduction to my book.
‘At the beginning of my academic year I started researching the notion of documenting the cultural indication of a division between the north and south of England. After establishing this was a insignificant assumption I progressed to the idea of travel and the connection between either ends of the country. The motorways. Paul Graham participated in a large amount of my inspiration because of his project ‘The Great North Road’, to which he demonstrated all aspects of my primary interests and investigations. After endless reading it was time for me to put words into practice, so I began to travel and started to understand the motorway as a process. At the time I took a diaristic approach to my notes and photographs, and began to think more about the experience of traveling, equaling I also wrote down some key words whilst on the M1 which consist of monotone, industrial and lonely. As a result converting this concept was challenging, however eventually I was able to come up with a translation to my thoughts. Subsequently I researched certain titles which academically fueled my creative opinions, for example, Motorway Culture, Traditions of Journeys and Car Cultures. Equally I was also thinking about aesthetics and how I imagined these images would look, so I observed William Eggleston, John Davies and continually Paul Graham. After I arrived halfway through the year I realised that the experience of motorway has a correlation to modernity. Similarly, by entering the digital revolution, the direct social relationship within culture has essentially been replaced by a screen. For example the way
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in which we frequently communicate is different everyday, if its not a phone it’s a computer, fundamentally human interaction has depreciated. The connection we have with the motorway is a comparable interaction to our current society; whilst we soar over our landscape we experience a cover over reality, correspondingly a similar association to our personal social networking. Finally, I felt the best way for me to communicate my ideas were to photograph cracks within the motorway system, for example to highlight any existence of personality and how successful it is in our modern civilisation. I also wanted to juxtapose these images with mundane snapshots to build a sense of motorway mobility.
My editing, content and the sequence of my images should reflect and annotate my research and understanding of the motorway’.