I’ve really enjoyed working with the team on the Wellcome Trust live brief. The brief was to create, as a group, a series of personal responses to the theme ‘Climate and Health’. As we’re all very different, both as people and as photographers, we chose eco-anxiety as that meant we could keep things personal, manageable (i.e. covid-friendly). I’m happy with the image that I made and, given some team problems and a real lack of time, we did the best with what we had. 

First a word about group dynamics. Our team kept things friendly, co-operative, accepting and non-confrontational. It was always enjoyable working together. I have a temperament which often means it falls to me to become the leader, and as much as there was a team leader, I guess it was me – though Tanya and Jasmine also steered and arranged things. I spotted issues in the way we were approaching the brief, and I also felt we needed to be putting more work into our images, but I didn’t say anything about that. It’s more than likely that other team members were also holding their tongues – including about what I was myself overlooking and misunderstanding. This lack of pushing for what we wanted was picked up by Peta, and that was interesting. My reason for not becoming more of a leader, and speaking my mind more is, purely and simply, because I know so, so much less about photography than anyone in the group and there’d be absolutely no point in being more assertive – only to get things wrong again, and again, and again.

Second, a word about Peta’s feedback, both before and after the pitch. Peta had talked about making things more urgent, more personal, though she didn’t say which images she felt needed to be developed. This cuts right to the heart of why it’s pointless for me to pursue stills photography – if her comment was directed towards my image, which is quite possible, then it echoes Cemre’s feedback that my work lacks criticality – the image does not stand on its own, does not communicate by itself everything that needs communicating. When added to her – and Charlie’s – comment that my introduction was too wordy, this demonstrates that I’m just not understanding what photography – at least contemporary photography – is supposed to do: communicate using a visual language. 

I can go still further with this. It’s wholly possible that there’s one fundamental reason that I struggle with engaging with this course, connecting my practice with the theory that’s been presented, participating in webinars (including having anything whatsoever to say about quite a few peers’ work), and seeing ways that my images might have a home beyond this course and Instagram. It’s the same reason I can’t understand what everyone means when they talk about the narrative of a series and I just can’t see one. It’s simply that I am not, fundamentally, anywhere near as visual a person as I’d thought, and I’m nowhere near as visually literate as, well, everyone else. So my work doesn’t communicate everything I want it to. Fine. I get that. So I don’t know how to use images to do that. OK. Fine. And no-one’s going to teach me or give me the regular support I need to learn, because that’s not how this course is designed. I get that too. I don’t really belong here. That’s obvious. So – where does that leave me? 

The word, both spoken and written, has remained throughout of paramount importance to me. It’s a huge strength, a huge area of expertise, adeptness and I’m passionate about the word. I want it to be part of my practice – not just an addition, or an adornment, a stylisation, or a feature – but an indivisible part. It HAS to be there in my practice – not to embrace that is perverse, like cutting off a limb. And through the spoken word, video has the completely different potential of including both word and image in a unified experience – image and written word, even when it’s a subtitled video, creates a break as the eye moves between the two. I’ve embraced that. I’m good at that. And I’m not letting go – for THAT is where my criticality lies, THAT is where the communication occurs that the image alone cannot deliver.

This week, there’s all kinds of great stuff going on with my film work. I’m going to stay with this. It connects me to the world, it’s something the world wants, and best of all, it comes completely naturally to me. For the first time, I’m considering that, most likely, my stills photography really is never going to have a life beyond Instagram. This being the case, I’ll be pushing as hard as I need to deliver a film for my FMP.