Format Festival Task

FD Photography Year 2 – Format Festival Photographer Case Study

Task: In advance of our trip to the Format photography festival on 24^th March you are going to develop a 200 – 300 word case study of a photographer exhibiting in the festival. The festival website lists over 80 photographers http://www.formatfestival.com/exhibitions. Look at the work and statements of several and choose one who ties in with the critical frameworks you are exploring in your essays. Last week you were working on a specific blog post allotted to you as an opportunity to extend your engagement with critical positions you were exploring in your essays. Develop your analysis of your chosen photographer’s practice engaging with this position and using it to examine the work of your chosen photographer.

Aim: Examine the work of a photographer featured in the Format festival through the critical frameworks you investigated in your previous blog posts.

Process: (1) Go to http://www.formatfestival.com/exhibitions and look at the work and statements of several photographers featured at the festival. (2) Consider the critical framework you were exploring in your previous blog post and choose a photographer who you feel is working with these ideas, or whose work could be analysed in relation to them. (3) Conduct a more extensive examination of their oeuvre using the internet. (4) Consider the key concepts that drive the critical framework you are thinking through. How can their practice be comprehended in relation to it? (5) Choose a particular photograph and draft an analysis of it. (6) Show it to your tutor for feedback, amend and post it on the internet.

Skill set: By undertaking this task you are – (1) focusing your awareness of a particular theoretical models (2) Developing your ability to analyse photographic images through this theoretical model. You should apply the skills that you have developed here and in your previous post to the development of your essay.

Outcome: A 200-300 word blog post analysing the work of a particular photographer featured in the Format Festival, in relation to a chosen critical framework.

Positioning Statement Task

FD Photography Year 2 – Positioning Statement Task

Task: Create a 200 – 300 word statement contextualising an example of your own practice. Most of you have work in the current FD Photography 2^nd year exhibition. If you do, then use the work in the exhibition, and if you do not, then choose an example of your work and print it in a suitable format so that it can be seen by a group of people.

Aim: Your aim is develop a language in which to communicate your photographic practice, using one of the critical frameworks we have examined this term.

Process: (1) Work in groups to examine the statements from professional practitioners in small groups. Consider how, given the brevity that artist statements require, these practitioners have communicated the focus of their practice, their aims, methodologies, and achievements. (2) Consider how your own practice is structured. What are you trying to achieve through photographic media, what themes / subjects do you examine, how do you make your work, how do you present your work, and what critical frameworks inform the development of your practice. (3) Once you have considered these areas develop a short presentation describing a particular example of your practice (preferably in the current exhibition). Your focus should lie here in linking your own work to critical frameworks we have examined this year. (4) Write up the analysis of your own work undertaken today, to develop a 200 work statement that contextualises an example of your practice in relation to a critical framework we have examined this year. (5) Post this statement on your blog with relevant imagery.

Globalisation Task

Globalisation Research Task

(1)                     Research the practice of one of these artists, focusing upon how they deal with issues of globalisation. Andreas Gusrksy, Gabriel Orozco, Simon Starling, Allan Sekula, Yto Bararda , or Ursula Biemann. Consider: (1) How issues of gloalisatiion enter and structure their working practices; (2) What area of globalisation they focus upon material processes, spatial production, or human movements?; (3) Where do they go to make their work?; (4) How do they interact with their environment to create their work?; (5) Where do they present their work?

(2)                     Read the extract on Documenta 11. Write a review of the exhibition focusing upon how the curator Okuwi Enwezor addresses issues of globalisation.

(3)                     Create a series of photographs emphasising the global in the local. Choose a particular place and take photographs looking at how it is constructed from parts that come from elsewhere. What of it can be said to be born of the place itself and what elements have been brought in from elsewhere.