Topic 1 Week 2 summary

Artist Rae George working in her studio. She is looking down at a table and preparing paints to use on a portrait.

Webinar with Michelle Sank

Great webinar with Michelle Sank plus Brian O’Callaghan, Sinead Le Blond and Lisa Sadler this week. Lots to talk about and research into and great looking at seeing how others are at in this early stage of the module.

I talked through some pictures I took of a subject in the gap between this module and the last one [need to sign this off to show] and discussed how much I got out of the portrait sessions where I didn’t really have a relationship with the person and let them lead the session (I’ll return to this once I get the permissions signed off).

Michelle suggested I look at metaphor and symbolism in paintings, in particular:

  • Society and position
  • Objects
  • Also look at backgrounds, formatting (black and white possibly) and performance in photographs

Things that immediately came to mind were The Ambassadors by Hans Holbein (as Brian had made his own self portrait version of it) and the Arnolfini Marriage by Jan van Eyck.

She also gave me a big list of photographers to look into:

  • Brian Griffin
  • André Kertész
  • Cartier-Bresson
  • Avedon
  • Alec Soth (might get the Magnum course as a few others in the cohort have raved about it)
  • Jillian Edelstein
  • August Sander
  • Otto Dix
  • Jenny Lewis

The key was to look at the people who inspire you and then read around it. Also go read more Roland Barthes and Walter Benjamin.

First portrait session

My first photo session for this module was with Rae George. She is a painter friend who has just completed a Masters in Fine Art at Leeds whose current work looks at The Maker, The Model and The Muse. The aim for this session was to work together on both our aims to see what we could get out of a collaborative session.

We talked a great deal about symbolism and metaphor in painting and Rae gave me some good reading references to look at (see below) as well as some visual references like Artemisia Gentileschi, Frida Kahlo, Maggie Hamblin and Jenny Saville. We also compiled references in Miro and Pinterest mood boards before we started.

As this was an initial session, it was a good starter but I didn’t really have any explicit objectives other than it being something to get going on. For the next few sessions I definitely want to have more targeted ideas and objectives – even if I don’t end up doing them.

From group feedback another habit I want to shake is I still make things that look like promo or advertorial pictures.

Recommended books from Rae:

MCCORMACK, C. 2020. Women in the Picture: A Feminist History of Art. London: Icon Books.

BORZELLO, Frances. 2018. Seeing Ourselves : Women’s Self-Portraits. Revised and expanded edition. London: Thames & Hudson.

HIGGIE, Jennifer. 2021. The Mirror and the Palette: Rebellion, Revolution and Resilience: 500 Years of Women’s Self-Portraits. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.

Image examples (view image in new tab to see full picture):

To do

  • Set up more photo sessions
  • Topic 2 discussion reading and research
  • Finalise SCONUL access at York St John’s and other libraries (had a quick visit at St John’s this week to have a look at the catalogue and library itself)
  • More research into portraiture in paintings – some museum and gallery visits on the cards

Upcoming

  • Museum and gallery visits (to be confirmed) – looking at portraiture
  • Barry Lewis RPS talk

Reading

ALPHEN, Ernst van. 2014. Staging the Archive: Art and Photography in the Age of New Media. London: Reaktion Books.

COTTON, Charlotte. 2004. The Photograph as Contemporary Art. London: Thames & Hudson.

GILLANDERS, Robin. 2004. The Photographic Portrait: Techniques, Strategies and Thoughts on Creating Portraits with Meaning. London: David & Charles.

DODD, Savannah [host]. 2022. ‘Anthony Luvera: On collaborative representation. The Photo Ethics Podcast [online]. Available at: https://www.photoethics.org/podcast/anthony-luvera [accessed 5 October 2022].

COLBERG, Jorg. 2016. Understanding Photobooks: The Form and Content of the Photographic Book. New York: Routledge.

ZOO, Alice. 2022. ‘In Defence of Portraits: On compassion, containment, and the irreducible other.’ Interloper. Available at https://interloper.substack.com/p/in-defence-of-portraits [accessed 5 October 2022].

SMITH, Zadie. 2019. ‘Fascinated to Presume: In Defense of Fiction’. The New York Review. Available at https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2019/10/24/zadie-smith-in-defense-of-fiction/ [accessed 5 October 2022].

CRESSWELL, Joanna. 2022. ‘Kavi Pujara chronicles life along Leicester’s Golden Mile, a stretch of road he once called home.’ 1854. Available at https://www.1854.photography/2022/09/kavi-pujara-this-golden-mile-martin-parr-foundation/ [accessed 5 October 2022].

One response to “Topic 1 Week 2 summary”

  1. […] into second session with Michelle with a broad mixture of different cohorts. Off the back of the previous practitioners she recommended in the previous session, she also mentioned looking at placement, clothing, performance, lighting, controlling the process […]


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