This is a follow up to my previous post where i referred to adapting a “process” mindset. I’ve been playing with mind-maps, sketching out some possibilities. I’ll share those thoughts once they are a bit more coherent.
corkstories.net is chugging along quietly in the background, there about 8 street portraits to scan and review and I’ve made some links with Cork based organisations such as the fabulous Penny Dinners Cork about building some stories. I’m also looking forward to building something with Glanmire House of Rock – a rock saturated youth club.
So there are chinks of light and possibilities on the horizon.
In the past I’ve been really poor at “shipping” projects (see Seth Godin) I’ve churned out a lot of work which sits half-completed, unseen and unloved. So I’m hoping to amend that.
Here’s Sth Godin on “quieting the Lizard brain”
So the Rethink notion has got me pondering, specifically I’m asking myself what is “right” and “wrong” with my current practice. It’s hard to see the nub of a problem when you’re emotionally invested in it, but I’ve had some insights.
- Subject- I shot a major project back in 2009-2011 of social and historical significance, and partly because of that I’ve fallen into a groove of shooting historically based projects, see here
- Format- I’ve defaulted to working primarily in B&W with a Hasselblad. It’s my safety net. It would be ok if B&W was definitively my “vision”- it isn’t it’s a comfort zone.
- I’ve overcomplicated work. I began using audio back in 2009 during my MA, I loved it. But it has now become another default setting. I set up my 8×10 camera in Cork a while back, to do some street portraits, with a white backdrop. The camera weighed about 12kg, but I added a mike to the mix.
- I’ve over-promised in commissions. I’ve only been shooting arts body commissions for a couple of years which I guess has fed into a lack of confidence in proposals. What should have been exhibitions of strong portraits have instead been portraits, and a book, and audio recordings, and still life, and a website, and postcards…. you get the picture.
So I’ve figured out some issues, the next step is a period of simplification, a period of subtraction. Richard Avedon once referred to a series of no’s in his work and broadly that’s the way I’m heading, simple light (window or 1 flash) simple equipment, paring away the fat (no default audio recordings). I don’t know exactly where this will go, but figuratively speaking I’ll be throwing a lot of cake at the wall and seeing which bits stick.
I look forward to sharing the journey of what will be a series of “grand failures”
I’ll leave you today with Chuck Close speaking about:
“Chuck Close: Advice to Artists During a Crisis”