Two bits of feedback within a couple of days regarding my WIP zine saying the same thing: the questions don’t work. When that happens, I always pay attention. My intention behind the questions was, rather than tell viewers what these places meant to me, to get them to engage imaginatively with the images. I didn’t appreciate that doing so was essentially another form of dictating a response, perhaps in a way that seemed rather artificial, maybe even patronising. In fact, simply having a blank page following each grouping gives the viewer pause to reflect anyway, and the groupings are, I believe, interconnected enough to communicate a collectively shared theme. Cemre Yesil, my tutor for this module, has suggested throughout I put in a piece of writing to add context (I think ‘narrative’ may be used interchangeably with this after a fashion when it comes to photography). I’d mentioned I didn’t want to get too autobiographical, but I can now see how a viewer’s curiosity could extend to the person behind the lens come what may (mine certainly does) and so a deft bit of writing, with an accent on creative language use, could both answer that curiosity without detracting from the experience too much. I hope I’ve achieved that. Certainly, it’s made me confident enough to give the zine a title, the same as my exhibition trail: Hidden Corners.

Cemre had also queried a group of images I’d used – the ‘traces’ – and I can see that without explanatory text it might seem that I’d contrived these. Besides, the group of close-ups were more to add interest and texture and were intended as imaginatively stimulating; without the questions, they didn’t fit in, and this has allowed me to put in three of the dens images I’d enjoyed and others had responded to enthusiastically. 

Cemre had also queried two other images put in to support the intended imaginative stimulation and let the collection appear deliberately open-ended. These have now been replaced with, I believe, superior images that provide more of a sense of completion.