Working towards my critical review, I’m answering the following questions posed on my current module. 

How do you critically articulate the intent of your photographic practice (verbally or in writing)?

This is something that’s radically changed over the past year. I’ve spent much of my academic life clearly demarking my critical writing from my creative output. I think this has been a mistake and a lost opportunity to create something much more coherent – and potent. Studying the essay film, and the essay form more generally, has been the catalyst for this. Essayism permits a hybrid intermixing of styles: according to Aldous Huxley, a formidable essayist, describes this ‘personal investigation’ as existing between three poles: ‘…the personal and the autobiographical; …the objective, the factual, the concrete-particular; and…the abstract-universal…The most richly satisfying essays are those which make the best…of all three’ (p. 84). Curiously, this very closely mirrors Robert Adams’ discussion of landscape photography: ‘Landscape pictures can offer us…three verities – geography, autobiography, and metaphor. Geography is, if taken alone, sometimes boring, autobiography is frequently trivial, and metaphor can be dubious’ (p. 14). Also central to essayism is a tentativeness, an incompleteness, a depiction of the act of thinking through which invites rather than closes down debate (Rascaroli, 2017). After many years ignoring my emotive, personal responses to the world in favour of the cool logic of the critical, it has been a joy to return to subjective response and use that as the starting point for criticism, rather than treat it is an embarrassing burden. It has returned critical activity to the realm of play. 

How is your photographic practice critically, visually and contextually informed?

My response here is connected to the previous one. When I head out with my camera, I usually have in mind things I want to explore and think through; my photography, from the planning stage to the sequencing, is itself an act of criticism. For example, on my last shoot, I wanted to explore the military ruins on East Budleigh Common, and consider how they have been reappropriated by conflicting users – graffitti artists and The Bat Conservation Trust – while remaining under the ownership of the Army. Doing so, I thought through ideas of impermanence, conflict, subversion, and also felt the weight of distance between my own artistic activity and that of the graffitti artists. Was I being voyeuristic capturing their decaying art, or was I responded to it and extending it artistically? Probably both. 

When I go out, I immerse myself in a place: this is something referred to by other landscape photographers such as Ansel Adams, but I suspect is also commonly found among street photographers. To an extent, I lose myself in experience, allow my surroundings to act on me and coax responses from me: the external world has an agency which I believe the apparently one-way model of ‘the gaze’ does not consider. Rather, there is a dialogue between myself and the external world: through my photographs, I shape it, while it in turn shapes me. I test out my ideologies by identifying subjects that allow me to consider them and see what comes back. I rarely take pictures that I could have foreseen. Finding expression for this blurring of boundaries between self and environment is a central concern of cultural geographers who study place and landscapes by drawing on phenomenology, such as John Wylie. It has been foundational to my filmmaking for the past year and, without my quite realising it, has shaped my photographic practice similarly. 

It’s hard to consider how my practice is visually informed. It’s rarely a conscious choice. Certain photographers create work that chimes with my own intentions and I immerse myself in the experience they communicate. Increasingly, I am finding the means to evaluate such work critically, as evidenced throughout this journal, to understand my responses to it, and to consider what I believe is being communicated. It’s rare that I take a shot that quotes another photographer consciously: I have a ‘Fay Godwin’ view of a tree that I’m very fond of shooting under different atmospheric conditions, and I’ll sometimes square off a shot looking down at surfaces in a vaguely Stephen Shore-ish way. And I have always taking shots which I believe have picturesque or sublime qualities; the only difference is that now I understand the heritage of these. 

How do you reflect on your photographic practice (e.g. editing / research etc) in order to progress it (consider successful and less successful work)?

I reflect in three ways. Firstly, I expose myself to photographers whose work I believe I can learn from, especially work which I can see is reaching for similar ideas or effects but which does it with vastly more sophistication and polish. Secondly, I go out and take shots. Again and again and again. I try new things, I develop and refine old things. Lastly, I review my work and consider it first on its formal and technical merits, and then I will consider if it is communicating or suggesting something worth caring about – an idea, a mood, a narrative.  

In what professional / viewing context should your work be seen in. why?

I’d like to see my work in galleries, photobooks, because that’s where the photographs I like and aspire to are found. I’ve an idea to work up my commons project into a text-led book, but this is still in the development stage. I don’t think I’m yet at a point – or if I’ll ever get to a point – where any of this is possible. Besides, I wouldn’t even know where to begin. I’ve no idea who’d care enough about my work to help make that happen. This is probably a question best left unanswered until after the next module. Frankly, it intimidates the hell out of my. Why should anybody care about my work when there are so many great photographers out there still struggling to get noticed? 

Adams, R. 1996. Beauty in Photography (Second Edition). NYC: Aperture. 

Huxley, A. 2017. Preface to The Collected Essays of Aldous Huxley. In N. Alter & T. Corrigan (eds.) Essays on The Essay Film. New York: Columbia University Press. pp. 83-85.

Rascaroli, L. 2017. How The Essay Film Thinks. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 

Wylie, J. Landscape. 2007. London: Routledge. 

I’ve looked at the idea of truth from a number of angles over the years. I’ve looked at realism in the novel, taking in, ostensibly, foundational realists such as Dickens and subversive historiographic metafictionalists such as Rushdie. My conclusion was that the novel, whether realist or not, aims to represent an ironic impression of truth in which the author is always implicit, whether intentionally so or not. I’ve looked at different models of documentary truth, a battlefield of authenticity still arguing with itself over whether the fly-on-the-wall objectivity of ‘direct’ cinema is ever possible – or even relevant in a postmodern age. My own conclusion is that any documentary ‘truth claims’ are found not in the material itself, but in a contract, whether explicit or implicit, made with the viewer as to the relationship to truth being presented. Through market research and psychology I’ve studied the age-old antagonism between qualitative and quantitative data and thus the merits and problems with empiricism – and psychology’s current and growing ‘cultural turn’ through social constructivism. Crucially, from the perspective of truth and photography, it’s worth noting that even a basic understanding of cognitive psychology utterly destabilises any notion of ever being able to directly perceive an objective reality through the sense (contemporary physics increasingly proposes that there is no such thing anyway). Indeed, the ‘naturalness’ which we assume is inherent in looking at a flat image is anything but, as demonstrated by the length of time it takes blind people to ‘learn’ to interpret them should their sight be restored. 

In other words, ‘truth’ is a slippery, ideologically loaded term. There is, of course, a cultural expectation that persists even in the era of deep-fakes, that photographs tell the truth, even if it’s only the faintest echo of a truth. It’s my belief that this isn’t something inherent in the medium itself, but rather something that has grown up alongside it in the ways it has been deployed to support scientific, legal, journalistic assertions about ‘truth’ in the specific era it did. I would thus caution that denoting photography as being, or being believed to be, more truthful than any other form of image-making – including textual descriptions of images – is thus culturally-specific. In an era saturated with photographs, it’s difficult but worthwhile considering that painted portraits, for example, were as much freighted with ‘truth’ prior to photography’s invention as photographic portraits were afterwards. So, my answer to the question ‘what kind of truth can photography offer us’ would be: any kind of truth one feels like making a claim for – so long as one sets the terms of that claim or understands the terms implied in the contexts in which one permits one’s work to be viewed – and then fulfils them. 

I believe the photograph is different to other forms of visual representation, though I believe the degree of difference varies with the process and form of the image. Take, for example, evidentiary photographs such as passport photos and compare them with one of the few remaining circumstances where drawing is evidentiary – the courtroom. Both are perceived to be highly objective, and whether forced facial expressions, flash lighting, or use of shading or pencil colour, these are accepted as elements of each medium which transcribes a ‘reality’ onto a flat surface for scrutiny. In both cases, light has entered through a lens – the photo booth’s, the courtroom artist’s eye – and a process has been initiated for this to happen. In neither case is the implicit subjectivity of authorship considered relevant. And yet in the courtroom drawing, the artist is omnipresent. We know that this artist was sitting in this chair, saw this scene with their own eyes, and used their hands to make those lines. In a photograph, regardless of how objective or subjective it is viewed as or intended to be, there is an implicit surplus, however slight, which escapes the control of the artist: to some extent, the image that we see was recorded by a machine and no conscious decision was made by anyone about it: it was a direct relationship between a primed mechanical process and the light available to it. However much the process or the available light might have been manipulated by human agency, there will always be a surplus which escapes. 

Take, for example, Warhol’s screen-prints: Warhol is understood as ‘author’ of these images (even though he frequently didn’t make the prints himself). They are exhibited as ‘Warhols’ and the identity of the original photographer negated: the process is overtly one of paint and paper and the human hand is everywhere present. The Marilyn photos themselves are understood as fictionalised to a certain extent even before Warhol’s intervention – as icon of beauty and gender, she has a cultural meaning that Warhol accentuates – and understood as staged glamour shots. And yet there persists, deliberately, a mechanical surplus which escapes any intention to interpreted, and the screen prints are careful to retain the faintest echo of this: they remain photographs. Had this been a painting of a photograph, however faithful, the mechanical chain would have been broken – although, and this is crucial, the painting would have to be ‘understood’ as a painting, and not a photograph. It is this ‘understanding’ of the photograph’s unique quality of mechanical ‘surplus’ on which rests the cultural meanings of photographic ‘truth’ and makes possible the myriad strategies and games of communicating the photographic image. 

Even in the era of deep-fakes, I don’t believe any photograph can escape questions of veracity – even if it positions itself to argue against this, whether tableau, digitally enhanced, in the gallery or used for publicity. Public scepticism might be more attuned to it, but there remains a contract of truth between photographer and viewer, even if that truth is as basic as the photograph being a photograph and not another medium. 

• Where I am now is discussed in posts below. I’m experimenting. Learning. Growing. And just beginning to think about where – other than IG &I FB – my work might find an audience. It’s exciting but still – necessarily – vague.
• The nature and intent of my practice is discussed in posts below. I’m a landscape photographer – I guess – but I like working in abstractions and details. I want to evoke the sensory experience, idiosyncracies, politics and history of the places I visit. I want to draw critically on established approaches – e.g. the picturesque, banal details a la Shore – and harness them to my thematic intentions.
• At the moment, my work is consumed here, on IG, FB and that’s it! I’m hoping conservation charities will find a use for my work for promotion or evidence, either online or in print, and I’m interested in using my work in academic settings – whatever those are, and this is something I need to explore. I think my end goal is a book in which writing plays a crucial part. I’m currently investigating ways of turning my M5 motorway bridge project into a book. Early days, and I’ve no idea about format, audience, cost, or collaborations. These are all things I’m exploring but don’t really have anything worth discussing here.
• My practice is interwoven with film work, and it’s possible I’ll be doing some filming on the commons I’m focussing on currently – possibly for money. I’m interested in the possibilities that photography opens out that film doesn’t, especially the very different experience of time through the two media. As an online project, of course, these two could co-exist. I’m interested, too, in interrelationships with text – also having a background in writing. I’m exploring works that chime with my own interests, such Joel Sternfeld’s sparse but eloquent text in On This Site and Campagna Romana, John Kippin’s Cold War Pastoral, which is interwoven with essays, and Dominick Tyler’s Uncommon Ground, a hybrid work that perhaps is closest to what I want to achieve. Critically, I’m embedding myself deeper in the traditions of landscape art through Andrews’ Landscape and Western Art, nature writing through Robert MacFarlane’s Landmarks, anthropology through Matthew Engelke’s Think Like an Anthropologist, critical geography through Doreen Massey’s For Space, and photography through Geoffrey Batchen’s Each Wild Idea. When I finish Batchen’s book, which I’m loving, I’ll write up a separate post reflecting back on it – as will I be reflecting in greater depth on my reading and photography research elsewhere in this journal.

Andrews, M. 1999. Landscape and Western Art. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Batchen, G. 2002. Each Wild Idea. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.

Engelke, M. 2017. Think Like An Anthropologist. London: Pelican.

Kippin, J. 2001. Cold War Pastoral. London: Black Dog Publishing.

MacFarlane, R. 2016. Landmarks. London: Penguin.

Massey, D. 2005. For Space. London: Sage Publications Ltd.

Sternfeld, J. 1992. Campagna Romana. New York: Alfred A Knopf Inc.

Sternfeld, J. 1996. On This Site. Göttingen: Steidl.

Tyler, D. 2015. Uncommon Ground: A word-lover’s guide to the British landscape. London: Guardian Books.

I’m in the process of discovering the dimensions and uses of my practice. By dimensions, I mean the formal style, subject and tone of my work. Within the broad genre of landscape photography, my practice presently incorporates the abstract, the sensory-impressionistic, the unsettling, the picturesque and the documentary and I feel this needs some refining and focussing to bring these elements together, or by eschewing one in favour of another. I have a clear preference for bold lines but am developing a deeper engagement with texture and am in the process of learning more about colour, through experimentation and research, to help develop a more coherent, distinctive personal style. I am continuing to photograph commons and am deepening my relationship to the Pebblebed Heaths in East Devon and with Tunbridge Wells common. I also continue to photograph when walking elsewhere to train and develop my eye. My 18 month engagement with Exeter’s M5 bridge feels to be in its closing stages, other than to record seasonal events such as snow or the reeds in flower.

By uses, I mean the outputs for my work. I am presently developing ideas for my M5 photographs and believe a book with a strong written component would be the best end product, with an accompanying exhibition. I’m getting ideas and support from my network and considering how I might apply for AHRC funding for this. I’m in the process of setting up a 3 month project with Devon Wildlife Trust to provide material to promote Exeter’s Valley Parks, and which may include film as well as photography. I’m also in discussion with Pebblebed Heaths Conservation Trust, who manage Devon’s newest National Nature Reserve and will be launching as such publicly in May; our interests in sense of place exactly coincide and whether or not funding might be available for my work, the timing is fortuitous. I am also acquiring a working understanding of the principles of anthropology and learning how photography is used in ethnographic, especially sensory ethnographic, research beyond simply providing accompanying data or illustration.

In short, 2020 looks to be an interesting year for my practice.