Study Visit

On June 15th I attended my first OCA study visit with a small group of students and two OCA tutors; Gareth Dent and Maggie Milner. We looked at and discussed an exhibition in Bank Street Arts, Sheffield. The work featured was a selection of black-and-white images from the distinction grade project of a level 3 student. Following this, we visited Hallam University to look at an exhibition of the work of Year 3 photography degree students. I gained much from the opportunity to discuss the exhibitions with students and tutors and it was also very useful to share ideas about the OCA courses in general.

The student whose work was featured in Bank Street Arts is Tanya Ahmed and the title of her work is 'I call this place home'. The photographs were taken in East 100th Street in New York, where she lives, about 40 years after the Magnum photographer, Bruce Davidson, published his images of the same street. Bruce Davidson's book was on display in the gallery so we had the opportunity to compare the two pieces of work.

It quickly became obvious that Tanya wasn't using Davidson's work as a model. She used a different approach based on having a very different objective for her work. Davidson worked as a social documentary photographer seeking to convey the message that change is needed in this 'ghetto' for immigrant families. His images are often, but not exclusively, gritty and negative and are taken from the point of view of someone external to the situation selecting and composing pictures according to his agenda. Tanya's, on the other hand, were clearly taken by a 'participant observer' looking more for the typical than the exceptional and involving the inhabitants in deciding location and composition. Therefore the images are lighter and they largely communicate optimism and aspiration.

A possibly negative slant in Tanya's work is that most of the pictures are of families seemingly 'isolated' in the 'cells' of their homes, with very little activity of any sort in communal areas, which is not the case in Davidson's photographs. A very telling image of Tanya's is the security guard standing alone on an empty street with nothing to enforce and nobody to keep safe. However, it is important to say that Tanya's exhibition comprised 13 images, which is a very small proportion of her portfolio and may not represent the whole story.

The quality of the images is stunning although we had some very interesting discussion about how the framing and arrangement of the prints could have been improved. The exhibition certainly gave me a clear notion of what I am aiming for, both in terms of conceptualisation and technique. A full report of the study visit appears in 'We are OCA' on 21 June 2012.

The OCA report describes the student show at Hallam University as somewhat 'underwhelming'. This sums up my reaction to some of the work, but I also saw work that made me stop and think. In trying to define what made the difference, it is as simple as this; Tanya's work and that of the best of the university students had a clear unifying theme, told a story and every image contributed to a clear brief. Some of the students' work lacked impact because a number of images were mundane, arguably irrelevant to the brief, badly composed and exposed and, sometimes, out of focus. It was a sharp reminder to me that if you are going to show your work to someone else, make it worth looking at  - and that means that I have a bit of work to do yet. The display also got me thinking about the range of methods of presentation in addition to simply putting images in a rectangular frame; plastic cover, 3D on blocks, diorama, postcards, books, projection etc.

All in all a very useful day during which I made great contacts with fellow students, learned a lot and started thinking about a lot more.