Notes from the session with the Tutor
On 18/5/2021 I had the Assignment 2 feedback session with my Tutor, and, beyond some technical issues on videoconferencing, it was a very useful and stimulating meeting.
I was pleased that my Tutor was in agreement with the choice of the theme and I believe that the advice he gave me, with which I totally agree, will improve the outcome.
As I was completing the rework, I also received formal feedback, which helped me complete a small revolution of the first version of my Assignment.
First of all, it is appropriate that starting from the basic concept that inspired my body of work (half - the unseen), I choose a more focused and coherent series.
The first set of photos I chose, in fact, introduces different messages and contents: this selection can result in a dispersive narrative.
My Tutor also pointed out that "... It is necessary for the viewer to reflect on your idea throughout the series, changes in lighting, focus, composition of depth of field, etc. They start to distract us.".
In fact, the narrative introduced too many themes for a group of about 24 images, and I realized that, during the selection, I let myself be influenced too much by aesthetics.
"....Your key message, ‘unseen’ invites
us to imagine – from the clues in the bottom half – what is going on in the top
half (mind) of people. I think if you guide the viewer more, by pointing to the
similar acts being performed, i.e. ‘waiting’, then we are looking at
commonalities and difference within a framework...."
To select a more homogeneous set, I will work on a chain of concepts, summarized in this outline:
HALF - unseen - waiting - resting - private lives in public -modern/western/fast life versus take your time and enjoy the small things
In summary, I will make the selection on a group of images that adhere to these concepts and are consistent with each other: the modern and metropolitan world, fast and whirling, remains outside the boundaries of the image (unseen). A partially hidden human being lets the viewer to complete the content, imagining the various situations in which the subject is represented: is he/her waiting for a train to arrive, a train to leave, another person, is he/her resting?
In this way, the images, which are not conclusive, can stimulate the imagination and favour different interpretations.
Rework
Introduction
Over the last few years, I have engaged in some photographic projects, induced by academic exercises or assignments.
However, in this period, I have tried not to lose the impulse to design and complete works that interested me or whose inspiration came from reading, or even from some particular occasion.
The HALF project was born by chance, during a short stay of mine in New York, United States. One afternoon I was hanging around the streets of this metropolis so fascinating for us Europeans, when I saw something that inspired me and that I immediately photographed, without thinking too much about it.
Soon after I started to reflect on why that image of a person, half-hidden behind a wall, had hit me. Was I perhaps on the way to participate, as Joachim Schmid stated, in the reiteration of the production of typological images, to be classified as legs, or arms, or other?
I believe instead I was interested and stimulated by not knowing exactly how this person was, but also and mainly what he (or she?) was doing, sitting on the jamb of a door, half-hidden by the corner of a wall.
I was induced to complete the unseen/uncomplete image (according to the "normal" aesthetic and composition canons) with my own conclusion. At that moment I was the photographer but also the viewer, with my interpolation of what I did not insert in the image as a photographer and did not see as a viewer.
I was sure that I would find examples of my idea in other photographers, but I started my research with a very typologically connoted keyword, so I searched in flicker with the keyword "legs" and found hundreds of photos.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/umberto_babusci/21488206526/in/photolist-t4mR3G-SNqMJK-uTXdLe-6ZZjKB-8CW83X-yJQFaq-6xUX7p-5y2QdE-8bz5M-jrgnhR-5y2Thy-vXCXbw-2hWcGrk-2g897YK-5y2Thq-2g87Y9B-nn2ARS-3cmSMK-bY2M5m-3cmQMD-J3kyj-K1J7ce-6CSdgw-5mbDtj-5DoPPc-5ANGxA-nnCPfG-poumyn-2jhMX64-4bDzXC-3cQP2B-r7Hf8o-3xRasF-Grf54f-3xVESE-2g87MBF-216WDn9-5oKpxb-2g87Mfo-3xR9Zn-wLovj-hsRBxV-26VNi2y-2h7dvS5-2fR4Z45-vdodsM-2jv5emg-2gA4eLL-E1D3Qd-2fxybC9/lightbox/
https://www.flickr.com/photos/berlyfuster/38418284356/in/photolist-21wTKt3-KPyr2h-riGDno-tzsqqd-2c5vaTh-oyMgJN-2aui5eC-29hUxZt-2hxYGhS-pBedks-7FX4a6-28UrtYh-fAn5H3-5bfyyd-apUyW2-71dbHZ-fbWzmR-22SNssj-2hiDDhJ-V2EuYb-2ezRHRT-Cd4exq-2aKhFsB-84nnhQ-6kZ84P-5FRjzF-Ev9gZV-2hwuQZY-FU2DAU-6pz6gR-FU2Brd-bBUJAC-piBmVg-8TqroC-9w7VqR-bzdszp-aWd1AR-6MEHEt-8zm7SG-6SG6K7-EsM7BZ-y1qbw8-9HhqzK-atFrFQ-xyMU5s-6pKpta-bogtnQ-6jgVic-icoSup-xjBh4r
I then searched with the keyword "unseen". Only in very few cases are there images that subtract part of the body: in most cases, it refers to a subject who does not look or does not see (for example, he covers his eyes), to extremely blurred subjects, unused objects (for example shoes).
I, therefore, had the confirmation that "unseen" is a theme that identifies a concept, in all its multiple interpretations.
https://www.flickr.com/search/?text=unseen&safe_search=1
Given the great variety of interpretations and approaches, even very authoritative ones, of the theme of "unseen", I have had the confirmation that I have kept away from the pure search for a typology.
However, I should concentrate on a less vast subject and composition than that induced by the mere mechanism of not making visible part of a body (that is a typology).
During my studies, I have already dealt with the theme of the "unseen" in photography. It is linked to what is seen in the boundary of the image and what, outside this boundary, the viewer can only imagine: this could be a good example of a postmodernist exercise, where the author leaves everyone the freedom to interpret and derive meanings.
In his essay "The Ontology of the Photographic Image" (from "Classic Essays on Photography", Alan Trachtenberg, page 242), Andre Bazin discusses the different perception and representation of the surrounding world by the painter (in particular the surrealist current) and photographer and states "The aesthetic world of the painter is of a different kind from that of the world about him. Its boundaries enclose a substantially and essentially different microcosm. ..... For him (the surrealist), the logical distinction between what is imaginary and what is real tends to disappear......Hence photography ...... produces an image that is a reality of nature, namely, an hallucination that is also a fact.".
These statements by Bazin lead me to think that the separation between what is seen and what is not seen in a photograph is not, as in a painting, between reality and the imaginary, but between two realities: one that I see within the boundaries. of the image and that exists objectively, and that which I do not see and which, being able only to imagine, could nevertheless not exist, or not exist as I imagined it.
I believe then, that this "half-seen" stimulates the viewer to imagine what he does not see, in the spontaneous search for completion of the narrative.
From this situation/occasion, the idea was born to continue with this project, which I then called HALF. The title can be interpreted with the meaning of the word itself, but it can also be a typological acronym for Hand, Arm, Leg, Foot. In fact, the common point of view that binds the photos I took inside this, ongoing, project, is the absence of part of the body and in any case and always of the head.
The lack of part of the body leads to classifying the subject and the situation, starting from personal expectations and habits, being influenced by stereotypes, based on standardized criteria of aesthetics and expression and ways of behaving in the modern western world: whoever is publicly stationary or is waiting or resting. There is no space for in-between ways such as simple reflection or disengagement from the whirlwind world around us.
From a half-view, a mental process of completion arises that each of us is expected and stimulated to deliver: to complete, we draw on all our experiences and beliefs, according to our own way, to be, have been, think and have thought.
