This semester’s teaching on the MA has been under the rubric of ‘professional development’. Throughout higher education in the UK, a focus on students’ ‘employability’ is predicated on a largely unexamined set of assumptions about the relationship between the individual and the labour market and about economic growth and investment in human capital. ‘Outcomes and […]
Category: MA Studies
The Ashington District Star
The aim of the Ashington District Star project was “to inspire a new group of photographers and artists, of all ages and abilities, to look at Ashington today and creatively document the area and its community.” (Evaluation Report, 2015). Ashington is one of the largest towns in Northumberland and developed around its pit which opened in […]
Andrew Newman: The Great British (Part 2)
People and Power The project published as The Great British in 1979, was developed jointly by The Sunday Times and the National Portrait Gallery. Newman was invited to come to the UK to photograph 75 or so ‘celebrities’ who would, in the opinion of those making the selection, be remembered 50 years hence. Most of […]
Arnold Newman: The Great British (Part 1)
People and Places One of the most obvious weaknesses in my last project, Afon Lwyd, was the absence of people. In part, this was an honest reflection of the area, especially during the day when the streets seemed as empty as the open hills. But the towns and villages were not empty; behind the curtains, […]
Submission.
The last classroom session for AD7801 took place yesterday and we all handed in our ‘artefacts’, on time. Part of the assessment was to reflect on our experience of the projects we had undertaken. This post is largely an edited down version of that. However, what the formal evaluation doesn’t say is how much I […]
Final Edit (Part 2)
Two weeks ago, as part of a group critique, I spread out on a table around 100 photocopied 2 x 3 inch prints from my Afon Lwyd project and listened to the class’ responses. There was a range of opinions on offer, mostly positive. This process added a few images to my list of ‘possibles’ […]
Tony Ray-Jones
Although I have been Martin Parr enthusiast for a long time, until recently I hadn’t come across Tony Ray-Jones, who Parr acknowledges as one of his most important influences. In his biography on British Photography Ray-Jones’ work is described as a personalised blend of ‘compassion, curiosity and irony.’ He said of his own work; I […]
Final Edit (Part 1)
Well, this is (nearly) it. I have taken around 800 photos as part of this project and now it is time to try and make sense of them. Technically, they are better than I expected. My most frequent errors have been in low light conditions, usually because of not increasing ISO to allow more flexibility. […]
That is why all veterans cry.
My dad was the son of a war ‘hero’; a brute of a man who won the Military Medal as a private soldier and the Military Cross as an officer, commissioned in the trenches of the First World War. He was a hard act to follow but my dad did follow him into the army, […]
Huw Alden Davies
Huw Alden Davies comes from Tumble, a village in Carmarthenshire that developed in the late 19th century to accommodate the miners at the Great Mountain and Dynant collieries. Mining in the area was in steep decline by the late 1950’s and the area has struggled ever since as the rural economy has also faltered. Davies […]
