Given that the two filmmakers who’ve made the biggest impact on my own filmmaking – Agnes Varda and Gideon Koppel – have both worked on installation projects (prolifically, in Varda’s case), it’s a medium that should be relevant to me. In fact, I’ve often wondered whether this wouldn’t be a better place to put some of the very slow films I’ve made like Strands, which is surely too ponderous for a film festival screening. I find it also neatly straddles the divide between photography and film, both contextually and phenomenologically. To a certain extent, I want to create works in which to dwell, to rest oneself rather than be propelled along, and an installation strikes me as an excellent medium for providing such an opportunity. 

My reason for taking this Masters had nothing to do with this interest. I had wanted to explore my visual sense, its cultural influences and – latterly – its autobiographical imperatives. I had also wanted to begin exploring how others connected with landscape visually and phenomenologically and to find ways of expressing this in my own work. I had also wanted to deepen my connection with the Pebblebed Heaths, and all of this has been in preparation for a film PhD. To a considerable extent, I’ve achieved much of what I set out to do, and in some ways even surpassed that. And so it’s little wonder that I have found myself floundering during this module. I just don’t know where to go next. 

There have been further destabilising factors. As I’ve mentioned previously, the arrival of the Sony a7siii has completely thrown me, and this has been compounded by an ever-increasing abundance of film work. A recent trip to Bristol brought me to the buildings where I studied for my MA in film – a difficult experience, but the difficulties were practical, and I found myself absolutely flying in that context in a way I never have on this MA. And with all this general vagueness, the deliberate vagueness of this photography MA has just compounded things: right now, being asked to make a specific kind of film with a set length and specific objectives would be wonderful. 

And so I have to set my own specific objectives: create some kind of video-based thing. I’ve the germ of a concept: base the work around the tiny enclosures on Colaton Raleigh Common, as these are weird places, places to dream and imagine, and so can extend the Hidden Corners ideas (perhaps referencing works like The Secret Garden, The Enchanted Castle and other examples of childhood magical trespassing) but also connecting this to the deep politics of enclosure (childhood as anarchy). Deliver both a sense of place, but an angle on that which draws on both the politics and the reverie. 

But who to model what I’m doing on? I’ve had a few ‘video artists’ recommended to me, but for the most part I can’t stand this stuff. It feels – well, if I’m being honest, it feels horribly precious and pretentious. It feels like the kind of thing you could only ever connect with if you were from the same world as the person who made them – that fine art background, with all the attendant ‘criticality’. I’m sure if you know how to read her work that Helen Sear is really good, but I don’t and – frankly – I’m not interested to learn how to. I can see this is going to be a struggle, but I’m sure there will be fellow travellers. Likewise, though much ‘video art’ is performance based, even though work such as that of Bill Viola is stunningly good (that I’d never heard of him demonstrates how niche video art is, all but invisible to most), it’s not going to be useful to me to investigate that. I’m certainly not about to put myself in my work as I just don’t think I’m that interesting as a subject, and there, quite frankly, isn’t anyone else to work with. 

Given his deep connection to the Parisian film scene of which Agnes Varda was a part, it’s perhaps little surprise that William Klein, a photographer/ filmmaker recommended to me, is one whose work resonates. His Broadway by Light, from 1958, is dazzlingly beautiful, both documentary and abstract, grabbing the gorgeousness and complexity of the world of actuality and building a montage piece that overwhelms in a way that is both aesthetically rich and highly political. I will be looking at his work further. 

And then there’s Susan Trangmar, whose A Play in Time I encountered exactly a year ago at the Martin Parr Foundation, back when the world made rather more sense. Trangmar, I can see through her work and the way she talks about her work, is someone from who I can learn a great deal. I suspect the next post from me will be exactly about her.