Assignment Four – planning and preparation

My planning and preparation for the essay required for this assignment divided itself naturally into three areas:

• Research into image analysis and essay structure
• Research into my chosen image
• Research on the planning and writing of an essay at first year undergraduate level.

Research into image analysis and essay structure

In order to keep this post fairly concise, I have written separately on this topic and my thoughts can be found here.  I also found the following books useful with regards to thinking about image analysis:

• ‘Camera Lucida. Reflections on Photography’ by Roland Barthes (1982)  London: Jonathan Cape
• ‘Context and Narrative’ by Maria Short (2011)   Lausanne: AVA Publishing SA
• ‘Reading Photographs: An Introduction to the Theory and Meaning of Images’ by Richard Salkeld (2014) London: Bloomsbury Publishing plc
• ‘Semiotics: the basics’ (2^nd ed.) by Daniel Chandler (2007) Abingdon: Routledge

Research into my chosen image

I began by carrying out an initial analysis of the image based on parts of a checklist provided by OCA in the Level Two photography course ‘Progressing with Digital Photography’ (Freeman, 2011) as a basic structure in order to look objectively at the photograph. This analysis can be read here.

Looking deeper into the image, my research material mainly came from books and the internet and these have been listed either as direct references or in my bibliography.   I was very conscious from the beginning of the importance of using reputable sources and was pleased to find Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Modern Century written by Peter Galassi in the library.  Galassi is the former Chief Curator of Photography at The Museum of Modern Art in New York and organised exhibitions with Cartier-Bresson for MoMA in 1987 and 2010 so I was comfortable with his credentials.  Indeed this book became the central point of my research.

It was serendipitous to be able to view Juvisy first-hand at the A Decisive Collection exhibition of Cartier-Bresson’s work held at Beetles + Huxley gallery in London in March.  Physically seeing the print made me much more aware of its quality, its details and tones and I was able to stand back both physically and metaphorically from it and consider it in conjunction with the earlier research that I had gathered.  I found it also helpful to view it in context alongside Cartier-Bresson’s other work.

I soon discovered that Juvisy had a lot of substance and scope for my critical review and found that my research spiralled off into different areas, from leisure to politics, from paintings to picnics.  Whilst much of this research was not included in my essay due to the word-count limitation, I feel that it has benefited me both with regard to this assignment as well as for my studies beyond so I will record it, albeit in note form, in a separate post on my blog.

Research on the planning and writing of an essay at first year undergraduate level

Whilst I am used to writing reports and papers, albeit in purely factual form, as part of my job, I soon realised that both preparing a critical essay and writing it to the required standard was not going to be as easy as I initially thought it might be.  I very quickly found that I was creating a growing heap of notes detailing my research which if I could see could end up out of control if I was not careful and be difficult to collate.  I therefore decided to stop work on the assignment for a week and get organised.  I borrowed an arts study guide from the library which helped a great deal, both with making/collating notes and managing the writing process as well as with the art of essay writing. Although this did delay my assignment submission, this additional learning has been extremely worthwhile and I consider it to be time well spent both for this assignment and for my future studies.

The course notes suggested that we read Singular Images: Essays on Remarkable Photographs (Howarth, 2005) as a guide to the level of critical analysis that is expected by the assessors and I found this to be useful as to the style of writing to adopt, even if the book is rather difficult to get hold of (I ended up with various chapters downloaded from the internet as well as a couple kindly provided by a fellow student).

Another suggested read from the course notes which proved useful was an article on essay writing published online by the University for the Creative Arts (UCA, n.d.) which covers aspects from developing your research area through to presentation and format.

References:

Barthes, R. (1982) Camera Lucida. Reflections on Photography.  London: Jonathan Cape

Chambers, E and Northedge, A. (2008 )  The Arts Good Study Guide (2^nd ed.)  Milton Keynes: The Open University

Chandler, D. (2007) Semiotics: the basics (2nd ed.)  Abingdon: Routledge

Freeman, M. (2011) Photography 2: Progressing with Digital Photography

Galassi, P. (2010) Henri Cartier-Bresson: The Modern Century.  London: Thames & Hudson Ltd

Howarth, S. (ed.) (2005) Singular Images: Essays on Remarkable Photographs.  London: Tate Publishing

Salkeld, R. (2014) Reading Photographs: An Introduction to the Theory and Meaning of Images London: Bloomsbury Publishing plc

Short, M. (2011) Context and Narrative.  Lausanne: AVA Publishing SA

University for the Creative Arts (n.d.)  Essay Writing [online].   Available from http://community.ucreative.ac.uk/index.cfm?articleid=12239  [accessed 13 April 2015]

Book Review: ‘Reading Photographs: An Introduction to the Theory and Meaning of Images’ by Richard Salkeld

‘Reading Photographs: An Introduction to the Theory and Meaning of Images’ (Salkeld, 2014) published earlier this year is the latest addition to the Basics Creative Photography series, a growing stable of very useful books published at first by AVA Publishing SA and now by Bloomsbury Publishing plc.

The book provides an introduction to the theories of representation, identity and visual analysis, applying these to the field of photography, and covers a wide range of topics from semiotics through to identity, gaze, voyeurism and aesthetics with some interesting discussions.  Unsurprisingly, Salkeld also looks at the age-old debate of whether a photograph can be considered as representing the truth.

The book is easy to read with each chapter divided into bite-size chunks and is well illustrated, with images provided both by the author and other photographers.  Following the style of some of the other ‘Basics Creative Photography’ books, each chapter ends with a case study, which on some occasions here is accompanied by questions for the reader to consider.  Salkeld is Senior Lecturer in the History and Theory of Art and Photography at the University of Gloucestershire [1] and this does come through both in his delivery and the questions that he has set.  He is adept at delivering both sides of the arguments that he presents but I think that the book would benefit if he offered his own opinions also on occasions.

This book is deliberately aimed at those with little or no knowledge of reading photographs – in essence it is a primer – and as such it gives a good easy-to-digest grounding in many of the basics. I enjoyed reading it and feel that it has been useful in many ways.  However, as a note of caution, I wish that I had read this book prior to starting the Context and Narrative course (as I had originally planned to do) rather than part-way in as I am already finding that I am looking for greater depth in some of the topics covered by Salkeld.  This is not a fault of the book, just a point to be aware of if you are considering whether to purchase it.  Indeed, as an introduction to the theories and analyses around the reading of photographs it provides invaluable basic summaries for the reader as well as lots of jumping-off points (including a lengthy bibliography) for further research.  Whilst not a superficial book I’ve also found that its easy reading style has given me the confidence to tackle more complex texts on the subject matter.  It is definitely a book that will stay in my library as I can see myself returning to it when looking for research direction.

References:

[1] Insight – University of Gloucestershire Richard Salkeld (online). University of Gloucestershire. Available from http://insight.glos.ac.uk/academicschools/dad/staff/Pages/RichardSalkeld.aspx [accessed 14 October 2014]

Salkeld, R. (2014) Reading Photographs: An Introduction to the Theory and Meaning of Images. London: Bloomsbury Publishing plc