We got our results this week from the March assessment so this will be my final posting for this module.
I was quite pleasantly surprised with my grade (65%) as I honestly thought that I would not do so well. It seems that my Context component has gone up which means I’m getting the hanging of comparing my work against current contemporary practice: “Awareness of an excellent breadth of contexts and debates supporting your growing personal and/or professional knowledge and understanding”.
Overall remarks by the assessors were also very positive:
A very well organized and competent submission, which demonstrated close attention to detail with regards to presentation. The assessors acknowledged your positive response to tutor feedback throughout the progression of the module, especially in relation to research conducted into relevant practitioners and the reworking of specific assignment components (Assignment 1).
There was also evidence of an excellent level of engagement with regards to the research conducted, which clearly had a positive impact on the creative output developed for each assignment. It was considered that you did push yourself in relation to what can potentially be considered a challenging module, which should therefore be viewed as a really positive step towards further study at Level 02 of the programme.
I am more than happy with this outcome. It seems that I’m working in the right direction. My thanks to my tutor, Moira Lovell, for all her encouragement and pushing me beyond my safety net.
For those of you who have been following my progress in the Identity & Place module, thank you for your support! Please feel free to continue to follow my photographic journey. My next module is Level 2 – Landscape –https://lyndakuitphotographylandscape.wordpress.com/ .
Thank you for taking the time to evaluate my work.
My learning log is online and can be located at: https://lyndakuitphotographyiap.wordpress.com/ . The blog is in descending date order (standard blog format), however, I have arranged the assignments so that they can be viewed in consecutive order. Each assignment’s post begins with the assignment, followed by the tutor feedback and my reflections and ends with any revision/rework that I have done as a result of the tutor feedback.
To access each assignment, tutor feedback and any revisions done, please click on the assignment number you wish to view at the top menu as indicated by the arrow in the screen shot below and you will be able to scroll in consecutive order.
My research is accessible by going to the submenus under Research and Reflection on the menu at the top of the blog as illustrated below. If you prefer to view my Research and Reflection without going through the submenus, then please just click on the Research and Reflection button to access the posts in descending order (standard blog format). Research relevant to each assignment is mentioned in my assignment write up and is hyperlinked to the relevant posts as well.
Included in this package are:
the contact sheets of the initial submission photos for assignments 1 – 4. Contact sheets are clearly labeled on the back of each sheet.
Final prints for each assignment:
five (5) prints from assignments 1;
five (5) prints for assignment 2;
ten (10) prints for assignment 3;
fourteen (14) prints for assignment 4 and
fourteen (14) prints for assignment 5(total of 48).
Prints are clearly labeled on the back of each print.
all five (5) tutor reports. Electronic copies of the tutor reports have also been uploaded to my assigned Google Drive and are located under Tutor Reports, clearly named in the following format [Lynda_Kuit_512863_Fedback_Assignment_No_IAP.pdf].
one (1) supplementary physical learning logs which I have mainly used for inspirational images and gallery visits.
Please note for assessment purposes that I have only uploaded the tutor reports to the Google Drive. Everything else is located on my blog.
Looking back to my first postings in April 2016, I realise how far I have come. I have now completed level 1 and am moving on. This course was not an easy one. It was challenging – approaching people on the street to take their photos was something of a mental block for me, which I actually found rather disconcerting as I have done this before quite successfully during a local photography school course that I attended quite a few years ago. Maybe I was just out of practise, or maybe as one ages one loses the gumption to approach people. This was one stumbling block for me but I eventually overcame it. It was all just in my head really. Personally I had a rather bad year of it as both my parents passed away within eight months of each other and that threw me off balance quite a bit.
I attended a lot of exhibitions during this course, ranging from Picasso to Harry Callahan, Lewis Baltz and Walker Evans and local Canadian photographers. I even managed to get in two exhibitions in London on a stop-over on the way back home from South Africa and was able to meet two fellow students as well.
This course, I think in retrospect, was uncomfortable because subconsciously it made me look within myself and all the assignments do reflect aspects of me – from body image issues to women in the work place to the multicultural student population I work with each day to my neighbourhood. I have certainly grown in my photographic outlook, my opinions on art in general, not just photography has changed quite dramatically. I find myself questioning work more than stating a like/dislike for it, although I still have a long way to go to be fluent in my critiques.
I discovered ambiguity during this course and my tutor stressed it so much that it is on the forefront of my mind when making work and find myself looking for it in the work of others. If nothing else this has been an invaluable lesson.
I’m hoping to carry forward all the lessons learned during this module to my next module and to keep the momentum going and build on this foundation for Level 2.
Look back at the themes we’ve examined relating to place and our presence within it. What areas inspired you most?
The culmination of this course is a self-directed assignment where you have free rein to choose a subject that relates to any of the material discussed in the course. You may have gathered skills and insights through the projects that you want to revisit or you may have been inspired by other ideas.
The only stipulation is that the final outcome must represent a notion of identity and place that you are personally inspired by. Make sure that your work is visually consistent, relevant to the subject matter you choose and holds together well as a set, both visually and conceptually.
Think carefully about your editing decisions.
Which images need to be there?
Which ones repeat other images?
Are you holding on to a favourite that is no longer required?
Do you need to re-shoot anything?
Aim for a coherent set of no more than 15 pictures, accompanied by a reflective commentary of no more than 500 words.
Mother Nature played a role in making me change my initial idea that I had for this assignment. Forest fires, which are still burning about 300 km away from where I live, and a stubborn low pressure belt, were responsible for dousing Vancouver in a dense cloud of smoke for about two weeks, reducing visibility and rendering the air quality twice as bad as that of Beijing.
I have always been fascinated by the type of stuff that is thrown out in residential alleys and I began to think about the throw-away society we have become. As I went through my own neighbourhood photographing this project I started to wonder if there would be a difference in the rubbish that is disposed of in alleys in low/middle and high income neighbourhoods. As I reported in my planning post update, due to the crazy housing prices here in Vancouver there isn’t really any low income area (my research was confined to residential single family dwelling areas and not to apartments blocks). Interestingly the objects discarded in the “low income” area were of better quality than those in the upper middle income suburbs. While I was doing my research on the throw-away society, Thompson’s Rubbish Theory was suggested to me by a fellow student, Morris Gallagher. I also looked at photographers Andrew Ward and Dewald Botha, both who have photographed furniture on streets and alleys (please see my further comments about these two photographers under Context below).
Michael Thompson posits that possessable objects have some value, while those having little or no value, i.e. rubbish, are largely invisible. There is a system of valuation at work here, even though we might not be conscious of it ourselves. We can only understand rubbish in relation to the categories of transient and durable, which make up the visible and valued objects in society.
Consumer goods come off the production lines and make their way into our lives; their value declines over time and the goods reach the end of their finite life span. These are the transient objects. The durable items are those that have increased in value and have an unlimited life span, such as an antique dresser.
But there is another category that lies between these two mentioned above and that is rubbish. The rubbish category is not subject to the “same control mechanisms of the valuable and socially significant categories of transient and durable” (Parsons, 2007: 390). It is a very flexible category and provides the means of transfer for an object from transient to durable.
Once a transient item has been consigned to the rubbish heap, it serves as a reminder of bygone fashions or technology, past routines and habits and past ways of living, revealing the temporality of daily life. It sits there waiting to be rediscovered or recycled via the secondhand shop, or jumble sale (if there is potential) at which time the item makes its way to the durable category and is reabsorbed into society again, the consumer hoping he/she has picked up a valuable antique for a bargain.
‘These objects are disconcerting because they are located at the end of a temporal process which, caught up in the cyclical rhythms of daily habit, we were not even aware was occurring. Amidst the leftover material of daily life, we encounter the unsettling evidence that routines have histories’.
(Moran, 2004:63)
We only notice rubbish when it is in the wrong place. ‘Something which has been discarded, but never threatens to intrude, does not worry us at all, but rubbish in the wrong place is extremely visible and embarrassing’ (Parsons, 2007: 391).
The social status is ever fluctuating. That chair one ‘discovers’ in the secondhand shop was similar to the one your parents/grandparents owned. Our memories rise to the surface, and we claim the recognition of the item. The discarded objects all represent the routines of our daily lives and these routines have histories and memories of the duties performed by them and their erstwhile owners.
Is it not the material things we tend to gather that reveal so much about ourselves? Are we the yuppies who have a constant need to be in the height of the latest fashion or perhaps we are the ecological tree huggers who need to recycle and repurpose everything we come across or do we fit somewhere between these two extremes?
To me personally this series also speaks of lost opportunities. Before emigrating to Canada, I personally held regular garage sales in my mother-in-law’s garage in South Africa and sold items ranging from secondhand clothing, to furniture to car parts in order to raise money towards our emigration to Canada, thereby facilitating the transition of items from rubbish to durable. I can only shake my head at the complacency of Canadian society who take for granted the cheap prices of most consumer goods on sale in the stores. It is pretty easy here to buy a new washing machine out of one pay cheque and have money left over for essentials. Not so in South Africa where such items were usually purchased on hire-purchase plan or one saved for about 12 months before one could afford to buy the item cash. Society has lost the culture of fixing things that don’t work, preferring to toss the inoperative item without even investigating as to what the problem might be, sometimes as insignificant as a loose screw or wire. If we all paid a little more attention to the items while in the transient stage, our landfills would be a lot emptier.
Demonstration of technical and visual skills (materials, techniques, observational skills, visual awareness, design and compositional skills)
On the whole I am happy with the images. I would have loved to reshoot fig 09 as it is a bit soft as I took it on the way to work out of the car window as we were turning the corner (no I wasn’t driving). Unfortunately by the time I came home that same day the sofa was already gone. It is such a quirky image that I felt I had to include it as it has its own little narrative – the sofa placed close to the bus stop, on the edge of a park modelled after the Champs-Élysées at a busy four-way intersection.
I tried to keep the tones as consistent as possible, but the smoke haze which hung around is clearly visible in some of the photographs rendering the sky a yellowish/grey tone. But instead of detracting I think this seems to emphasize the invisible setting of the rubbish.
I relied on natural light in this assignment and made a few contrast and clarity adjustments in LightRoom. It seems that I have created typologies for two other assignments in this module and have finished it with another one. I’m obviously drawn to creating some sort of order.
Quality of Outcome (content, application of knowledge, presentation of work in a coherent manner, discernment, conceptualisation of thoughts, communication of ideas)
Even though I had a bit of a false start to this assignment, I think that my ideas and thought processes flowed fairly well and I was able to do very interesting research into this Rubbish Theory. This subject, photographically, holds lots of potential for expansion as I mention below.
Demonstration of Creativity (imagination, experimentation, invention, development of a personal voice)
As I mentioned above, this project was not my initial idea for this assignment. Please refer to my planning posts (Assignment 5 planning and Assignment 5 – Planning call for peer review, Assignment 5 – Back to the Drawing Board) for my first workings of this assignment. Assignment 5 – Idea 2 – Life is Scrap details my initial thoughts on this current project, while Assignment 5 – Something to Consider explains one of the tangents I had. Assignment 5 – Planning Update details a few more thoughts I had as well as some feedback from my peers, which can be seen on the various posts in the comments sections. The feedback that I got from my peers was on the whole positive and I was reminded to refine my angle (I had only presented a very broad outline of what I was doing at the stage when feedback was requested). I believe I have communicated my idea well through my images and supported it with my narrative above. While I was working on this assignment ideas for off-shoots from this assignment were constantly popping up and I may very well take up one or two in a later module or for a personal project. I could launch an investigation into garage sales/secondhand shops; the homeless people who push shopping carts around picking up rubbish to exchange for money; the landfills and so on – all outside the parameters of this assignment, but lots of food for thought for the future.
Context (reflection, research, critical thinking)
In preparation for this assignment I looked at the following photographers (my detailed remarks can be found on their pages):
Dewald Botha – social context of abandoned sofas and chairs in China
Julia Nathanson and Mariko Hino – different approaches of photographing alleys – fun, light-hearted and colourful vs contemplative and muted tones
While Botha and Ward have concentrated on sofas and chairs for their projects, I have concentrated on the items I found that still had some usefulness (a mixed bunch of objects). Items that might potentially make it out of the rubbish category and find their way into the durable category. I did not move the items that I found, as Ward did, but chose to photograph them exactly where their owners had placed them, and tried to include as much of the surroundings as physically possible, given the limited space in an alley. I feel my images do not contain the sadness that permeates Andrew Ward’s work, nor do they reflect the communal ambience of Dewald Botha’s set, but they do have their own identity which seems to convey a demand for attention.
Research
I watched a vidcast by Ted Forbes, listed below. The in-depth write up is on the page linked below.
Moran, Joe (2004). History, Memory and the Everyday in Rethinking History Vol 8. No.1, March 2004, pp. 51-68
Parsons, Liz (2007). Thompson’s Rubbish Theory: Exploring the Practices of Value Creation in European Advances in Consumer Research Vol 8, eds. Stefania Borghini, Mary Ann McGrath, and Cele Otnes, Duluth, MN: Association for Consumer Research, pages: 390-393.
Bibliography
Thompson, Michael (2003). Time’s Square: Deriving Cultural Theory from Rubbish Theory. Innovation: The European Journal of Social Sciences, Vol. 16, No. 4, 2003 pp 319-330Save
Apart from some tidying up and getting ready for the March 2018 assessment, I am done with Identity and Place. My final posts here will be my usual note to the assessors and my assessment results. I’m moving on to Level 2: Landscape – and am really quite excited about the course. I’m hoping my mojo has a revival and that I can bring lots of creativity to the new course. So far I’m having a good feeling!
I had my tutor feedback today via Skype and I am elated! No revisions! So pleased about that. My tutor’s feedback is below and my comments in italics.
Thank you for assignment 5.
This is a playful, and well-considered assignment. You demonstrate strong editing skills and an eye for the [extra]ordinary.
So pleased to hear I nailed the editing on this assignment. I do feel as if everything came together in this assignment.
The feedback in is note form. It is in support of, and in addition to, the verbal feedback that you received on 7 September 2017.
Please find your feedback set out under the usual headings.
Demonstration of technical and Visual Skills, Quality of Outcome, Demonstration of Creativity
We discussed your work in terms of being well observed; everyday; [extra]ordinary , that is, making use if photography’s ability to transform the mundane; playful and sculptural (found sculptures).
We chatted about reading about the mundane and everyday (please see research section below).
We spoke about the work of Richard Wentworth on the Caledonian Road.
I really like Wentworth’s work and will definitely be looking at this during my Landscape module.
Your wonderful anecdote about the sofa! From this I linked to the Tate interview with Peter Fraser (“I can smell a photograph”). I recommend watching this. Fraser is, according to the Tate, ‘obsessed with the small details in life’. So relevant. I am revelling in your discovery of the things that may go unnoticed, or may cause us embarrassment. I would like to commend you here on your research into the writing of Moran and Parson’s).
Will definitely watch the Peter Fraser interview. I really enjoyed doing research on the ‘Rubbish Theory’ and found it quite fascinating really.
I introduced you to Eric Oglander’s Craigslist Mirrors (2014) features photographs of mirrors for sale. The problematic reflective surfaces provide strange, accidental and humorous interruptions.
I’ve just had a very quick browse on the internet and already I have a couple of ideas floating in my head for ideas in the Landscape module. Thank you for the recommendation.
I think this has been a good assignment for you. A solid introduction into the Landscape course.
I agree totally.
You demonstrate strong editing skills.
Thank you.
We discussed fig.09 – you mentioned this as being soft around the edges – I can’t see this softness on the screen, but if it is overt, when you print it, and jarring in relation to the rest, I recommend do take it out before assessment.
I will do that for sure. I will do a large test print to see if it is noticeable.
We discussed presenting this in book format. You mentioned Blurb, over handmade.
I was thinking about making a book for Assignment 4, not this one.
We discussed the pro’s and problematics of this.
You agreed to have a quick look at the Blurb PDF once I have put it together. I just need to shoot two images for the front and back cover and then I will email you the link.
I love the idea of a collaboration with English academic, and creating stories from this. You may find the collaborations between Ian McMillan and Ian Beesley interesting.
I’m quite excited about this collaboration. Gudrun Dreher, the English professor has already written three stories to accompany the green sofa, the office chair and the mirror images. So far there are a few connecting threads between two of the stories and I’m curious to see how she will tackle the remaining photos.
I recommend researching MMU special collections – for handmade books (this is more a reference for the future, if you find you fall in love with photobooks).
Noted. Hopefully I will be able to access the collections from Canada.
We discussed prints and cohesiveness in terms of printing.
Coursework
Demonstration of technical and Visual Skills, Demonstration of Creativity
You are working through the coursework and evidencing it on your blog. Well done. I particularly enjoyed your response to ‘Absence and Signs of Life’. I could see a connect between this and assignment 5.
You evidence your research and analysis on your blog. Well done.
I would like to see more of an engagement with writing on the mundane and everyday – David Campany can help you here. Please see Suggested Reading Below for photographers mentioned during our Skype conversation.
We discussed moving the contents of your ‘Research and Reflection’ tab into your assignment work, for a more joined up blog. You really want to show the assessors how you make sense of this research as you are working through assignments.
I will have a think on how to best structure this. There is a discussion on the OCA Coffee Shop forum about the structure of items under ‘Research and Reflection’ which I will also use to guide my changes. I will have enough time to effect this change before assessment.
Suggested reading/viewing
Context
I recommend looking at the work of Richard Wentworth and critical writing on his practice.
Keith Arnatt – photographed waste; beautiful; still life.
OCA alumnus photographer, Dewald Botha’s Please Sit body of work is “an exploration on the social context of abandoned sofas and chairs, mostly in Suzhou, Jiangsu Province, China” (Botha online).
In contrast to Andrew Ward’s work where I found a thread of sadness running through his work, I find the opposite in Botha’s series. For the most part the abandoned chairs and sofas in Dewald Botha’s series have been repurposed. They seem to have a clear role to play in watching the world go by. They are positioned strategically on the side walks, outside shops and verandas in a very communal way.
From ‘Please sit’ series by Dewald Botha (2014). Image reproduced with kind permission of the artist.
With the exception of a few images where the sofas are literally on the rubbish heap (perhaps waiting to be rediscovered as some of them are in quite good shape) the majority of the items seem to have found a secondary purpose, even if it is as a bicycle stand or clotheshorse! Some of the chairs featured rather make me think of the scruffy wing-back chair that is used at the Street Cars dispatch office in Coronation Street – down and out, scruffy but still loved enough to be used outside to watch the world go by.
A strong sense of involvement and neighbourliness runs through the series and is evident and locked in in the final two images of the blurb book – the heap of sofas juxtaposed with a claimed sofa being carried away on a rickshaw bicycle, representing hope.
Andrew Ward, is an L.A. based photographer who performs a public service to the community (although this isn’t the main thrust of his photography). He photographs abandoned sofas in Los Angeles. Originally from Dublin, he relocated to L.A. to work in Hollywood as an assistant director.
Upon finding an abandoned sofa, he pushes and shoves it into a better position, photographs it, returns it to its original position and then reports the sofa’s location to the city for pickup via a smartphone app. The photographed furniture pieces provide a bit of a visual history of the areas that he drives around in.
The Sofas of L.A. by Andrew Ward
“Although they’re inanimate objects, there’s a certain amount of humanity to each one”.
Andrew Ward
Ward tries to photograph on overcast days in order to get good colour satuation and tones from the old furniture. It seems that he either moves the sofa right up to the curb and photographs from the middle of the street or right up against the wall – I’m guessing the sofas photographed backing the walls were taken in alleys or parking lots. The project is a typology. Some of the photographs are presented in a grid format on his website which makes for interesting viewing as these images give hints as to the surroundings where hedges and fences provide a clear delineation that seems to emphasize the exclusion of the abandoned sofa. There is something rather sad about this. We catch glimpses of the house or property behind the sofas and wonder about the identity of the owners. There is less of an identity attached to the sofas that are positioned up against the wall, but maybe more mystery. It feels as if they have been kidnapped and crudely discarded in some alley far away from their “home”. There is just something very jarring about seeing a very ornate, obviously once expensive French settee standing in an alley. To me these sofas feel more abandoned than the ones on the sidewalk.
The Sofas of L.A. by Andrew Ward
These pieces of furniture that once enjoyed a private life behind closed doors, and could probably have countless stories to tell if they could, are now relegated to the public eye to be scrutinized, ridiculed, picked over or abhored.
So I’ve spent the last two weekends trying my poor husband’s patience (he was my driver on this project so I could quickly hop out of the car and take my photos and not worry about parking/blocking traffic and so on). We covered the middle – higher income neighbourhoods where I live (North Vancouver city & district), the lower income neighbourhoods on the other side of the harbour (Vancouver Eastside) and the high income neighbourhoods of West Vancouver. Now while I do refer to the low-middle-high income neighbourhoods, the reality of the housing market in Vancouver, Canada is that there is no cheap, affordable area to live in, unless one ventures out into the rural areas. The average house price in my neighbourhood (North Vancouver) is CAD $1.8 million, while the average house price in (West Vancouver) is CAD $2.7 million and the overall median house price throughout the Greater Vancouver district (all the municipalities) is just a little over CAD $1.0 million.
After scouring the alleys and streets of West Vancouver the last two weekends I was so disappointed to come across absolutely no furniture or other items in the alleys. I guess the by-laws in that municipality are extremely strict, or else the rich people pay to have their throw-away furniture removed for them.
The most common item that is thrown out is chairs (by that I am including sofas as well), followed by appliances. That being said, I’ve gone through my images and come up with two scenarios that I can present: 1) chairs/seating in any condition or 2) items that could still be useful with a repair or slight makeover (based on my quick inspection when I photographed the items). So I’m putting this out to my peers to see which theme chimes best with them – chairs or usefulness?
Chairs #1Chairs #2Useful #1Useful #2
Bibliography
Metro Vancouver sees fewer home sales and more listings in July [online] Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver. Available at: http://creastats.crea.ca/vanc/ [Accessed 20 August, 2017]
Lynda Kuit Photography - Identity and Place 