Following what has had to have been the most disruptive, and extreme series of events unfolding globally in decades during this term, what resulted was one of the most disrupted, disappointing and diluted stretches of education ever experienced by myself and other students on the course. With the decision made, without student consultation, to continue as if nothing were wrong and as if all the means of production and systemic education available to us had not been stripped without suitable replacement. This presented one of the most challenging obstacles with no real way of circumnavigating them without severe degradation in quality or provision. These obstacles included closure of all essential facilities for creative arts students including studio space, film processing labs and scanning equipment, darkrooms and printing facilities, access to the library where essential texts and reference materials are available in physical editions only, no access to the kit stores and IT suites meaning students would have to invest large sums of money in equipment of suitable quality for the standard of work needed for Masters study, and to top all of that off, still being expected to pay full price tuition fee’s despite the teaching provision not being even close to upheld (something that would render the students no longer liable to pay according to the very terms and conditions put out by the university). This has left myself and many other students feeling let down, abandoned and simply seen as a source of revenue, rather than respected as creatives and academics or even human beings. The level of which has left me in particular so disenfranchised and disappointed that these feelings are now having a severe impact on my practice, motivation and mental health, in turn affecting my ability to progress in my practice & education at this University.
However, despite these unfair conditions imposed on us, I was determined to try and gain some value from my only opportunity at a funded Masters programme. Using what limited resources I had available in my own inventory I set out a plan to target areas of my practice that I felt were lacking and/or were areas that I wanted to develop and incorporate into my practice moving forwards into future. The most important to me of which was being able to work and produce pieces in the darkroom, something that with the rise and proliferation of digital alternatives, is becoming increasingly niche in contemporary practices, and as any businessperson will tell you, niche and hard to come by skills are ones that can be used to create revenue and support the practice financially allowing it to continue. Obviously without any access to those facilities for months, I instead decided to focus on the other module that I had to balance alongside this one, the research module. Luckily by the time that had been completed and submitted, The situation had been improving somewhat to the point where I was able to book in some very limited sessions in late July and early August. With some time secured I set about selecting what Images I would want to print, after a mishap with my camera that I had been using to shoot more topical scenes to my Liminal Infrastructure style resulting in the loss of images shot during the lockdown, I used some from my existing backlog of shots that had yet to be used or incorporated into my practice. This was insightful as I could still see these themes that I had wanted, present in my earlier work, this to me cemented the knowledge that this was indeed a deep running theme in my creative eye.
Working in the Darkroom was a profound experience to me, and one that I immediately fell in love with. The ability to sculpt and utilise light to forge your images into print in real time, with tactile and sensory input being able to play a part in determining and working through the creative process of printmaking being one that suits my educational needs extremely well. The ideas and philosophies surrounding things like the chemistry involved or the physics behind colours and wavelengths of light and how all of these combine to create and develop an image onto paper simply astound me. For example, the discovery and utilisation of multi-tone papers and the profound effect techniques like split-grading had in transforming otherwise dull, flat and grey images into ones with diverse tonal ranges with strong blacks but also crisp whites in the details. I have described this process in further detail in my blog. It was a steep learning curve, having to fit so much into so little time, but ultimately one that resulted in me being a far more accomplished photographic professional many times over, compared to when I started the module. My development in ideas surrounding, tone, atmosphere, visual weight and balancing, grading, framing, mounting, display and situational impacts on prints as artefacts have been numerous and far reaching beyond simply my ability to print “the old way”. My outlook on my other practices such as painting, audio and soundscaping, and of course photography have all had influences and thought changes as a result of this deeper understanding of how, where and why my creative outputs might be produced, received and preserved as a result, such as ideas around form, tone and display. This will undoubtedly shape my practice for the foreseeable future and most certainly into the basis of my final major project.
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