This week involved a micro project where we formed small groups and photographed around a theme. From the discussion forum we formed a group that drifted towards Absence (as we all submitted similarly themed pics to the forum).

Our original absence idea formed around Sinead’s picture of clothes scattered on a sofa and after some discussion we decided to work on absence portraits.

We each created an absence photo and sent it on to the next name in an alphabetical loop (Brian -> Me -> Sam -> Sinead -> Brian…).

This week’s exercise was great fun (especially since this was the first week doing some course specific photos)  and I think we all agreed that we’d love to do another one. I’d certainly like to add more collaborative elements into my practice and there’s plenty of opportunities to do so over the next couple of years.

Post exercise and while we were looking at the results and discussing the methodology behind it we came up with a few talking points:

• For some, the differences between collaboration, appropriation and plagiarism became clearer and for others the grey area between them increased – Richard Prince’s work was a particular sticking point.
• Although there was some initial hesitation on how we would recreate an image from an original due to time and space constrictions, this became part of the enjoyment of the challenge.
• Collaboration as a term is enormously broad and not just about direct communication and interaction. It takes many forms – some clusters of collaboration defined in Photography Consists of Collaboration: Susan Meiselas, Wendy Ewald, and Ariella Azoulay can involve the subject being many levels removed either through political or historical reasons (like in Meiselas’s own work about Kurdistan).

My day job as a designer in an agency is all about collaboration – it’s very rare that I’ll work on a project entirely by myself with no input. For me, outside of work, photography has always been a solo pursuit in a sense that it’s something I do in a quiet time. Looking back I’ve never directly collaborated with others with my photography in recent years – in that I’ve not discussed or worked with other photographers or writers to make a single piece of work. But there have been many occasions for indirect collaboration at various levels:

• When I worked at a Students’ Union I ran a program for photography volunteers to photograph gigs where I acted as editor before we published them online.
• When shooting work for clients there’s an element of collaboration and input from them where they can direct what they want out of a session. This wildly varies as some feel that they have to have some input while others are quite happy to let me go in my own direction. I always try to draw out what we both want from the session so that everyone is happy with the results.
• When photographing events, there’s always an element of performance where people are quite happy to wave, jump or scream towards a camera.

References

This week’s essential reading:

AZOULAY, Ariella. 2016. ‘Photography Consists of Collaboration: Susan Meiselas, Wendy Ewald, and Ariella Azoulay’. Camera obscura. 31, 187–201.

See also:

Welkom Today: On Collaborative Practice in Contemporary Photography