Assignment 2 FEEDBACK & comments

My tutor has provided me with the following feedback for Assignment 2.

Overall Comments 

This is fascinating stuff. You’ve actually taken the trouble to shoot the exact same scenes that you located on Google Street View from your own car with your own camera (was that safe?!). Your project is given another dimension by the link to Freidlander’s classic series. You’ve included documentary and personal aspects too, which may be a little too much in terms of overloading meanings. I’ll try to ‘unpick’ some of these facets, using your notes as a starting point, below. 

I understand your aim is to go for the Photography/Creative Arts* Degree and that you plan to submit your work for assessment at the end of this course. From the work you have shown in this assignment, and providing you commit yourself to the course, I suggest that you are likely to be successful in the assessment. 

Feedback on assignment   

As per the exercise on mapping, I initially undertook my journey completely on Google maps and produced, what I consider to be, images based on different areas and incorporate the changing landscape alongside the changing road types.  

Yes - it is certainly road types rather than landscapes - we don’t get much feeling of the ‘landscape’ here. 

The Sainsbury shot is the only one with the nav icon - you could change this as it doesn’t cohere with the rest of the series. 

The shots are from several different times of day / weather conditions. This creates a distinction between your work and Google Maps - your is a journey, the Google street maps composite isn’t.  Do you want to comment on that? 

It was then important to attempt to produce a similar view to these images and crop and frame accordingly as though I was actually driving along the journey, to see exactly what the images would look like when I produced them for real while undertaking the actual journey.  Here is the final collection of those images. 

The first thing that we notice is that the Google Street View shots are taken from a higher viewpoint. This is quite distinctive in Google Street View so you might want to comment on it. 

Why black and white? Referencing Friedlander? Please make it clear in your notes. In one way I think it makes it less interesting: the unavoidable differences between your set and Google Street View are interesting enough; but if it is intended as a witty recontextualisation (into the present day) of Friedlander’s series then please go ahead!  

The main subject of my assignment will be the journey itself. I will attempt to include the viewer along my journey by photographing the different types of road, as well as attempting to document the realistic motions of long car journeys, and the hidden notion of a journey using service stations and petrol stations.  

Make it crystal clear that you are reshooting the images that you have retrieved from Google Street View as this is interesting. You have included the car interior in the framing which references Friedlander and makes a contemporary comment on his celebrated series. I’m not entirely sure if you can make a realistic documentation of a personal journey at the same time, although the series certainly does give the feeling of tedium of driving, of being dislocated from the landscape, of the space of the car interior. For me the comment is more on the human driver/photographer vis a vis the auto photography of street view within the context of ‘america by car’ within the context of landscape photography... but I’m sure you could argue it. 

The different types of road are also an important factor as it will be the main factor along my journey and in the same respect, it is important for me to include some of the car interior as it shows me undertaking the journey and documenting from the perspective of the driver. 

As above, maybe a comment is needed on the viewpoint of the 9 cameras on the roof of Google Street View car, vis a vis the driver viewpoint? 

Finally, perhaps include a reference to at least one of the contemporary photographers from your blog using Google Street View to balance the reference to Friedlander, who is only half the story. 

Learning Logs or Blogs/Critical essays   

This is progressing well. I would like to see more content under ‘context’ (I like the ‘what is a landscape’ entry). At the moment your references are too web based. Expand your reading by getting to grips with two or three of the titles on the reading list for example.  

Exercise 2:1 Territorial photography - good summary in your own words, Illustrated and referenced.  

Exercise 2.3: Typologies - good personal response, including appropriate contextual references. 

2.4 But is it photography in the more common way? I'm still doubtful. - You could expand this sentence, it seems a little unfinished. 

Suggested reading/viewing  

Plenty to be getting on with in this course. As above, a little more reading beyond the web would be useful. 

Conclusions and targets for next assignment 

This is really good stuff for the second assignment Manda. Your work (and thinking) here will provide an excellent springboard for Assignment 3. Continue with the fresh and lively descriptions of process and your final evaluation, and don’t be afraid to deepen your analysis with wider contextual referencing.  

As I have said from the start of this course, I feel a little lost and out of my depth but I couldnt help but feel some sense of achievement as I received this feedback. I think that my tutor is excited at the way I have undertaken this assignment and has given me some great feedback so now I will attempt to reply to some of the comments raised.

In fitting with the course so far, I tried to incorporate not only Friedlander but also the work of Wolf, Rafman and Rickard, in the sense of using the mapping technique to capture the first set of images to base the 'journey' images on. I have used Wolf's technique in the sense that I have screenshotted the images straight from Google Maps and not taken care with composition of the image, and in the Sainsburys shot, you cane tell this, like Rafman with the inclusion of the nav icon. My tutor made a comment about having the icon in all the images to keep the set together I suppose but this was not intentional and really I should've cropped it out of this one images as opposed to keeping it in all the images.  The reason behind this one image having it is that I have cropped all the other images to create more of a driver viewpoint, however with this particular image, I felt it needed more inclusion of the actual garage and not just as though we were driving straight past, as a fuel stop is more of a juxtaposition of a car journey but something that you tend to do before starting one so it was important to include, And of course, google maps wont actually allow you to drive 'through' the garage so this is as near as I could get.

The different weather conditions and times of day between my images that of google maps creates a difference between the two sets of images. The fact that google maps is created over a large frame of time, and therefore different times of day and weather conditions goes to show that it;s not a journey at all, more of a documentation. My images are a documentation but of a journey . Tha fact that my set of images are all the same time of day, pretty much, and have the same weather conditions show that all the images were undertaken the same day. These factors just add more definition to each set of images and the differences between them although they are technically the same.

Google maps images are captured from a a camera above the vehicle, giving them their distinctive high view point. My images are created from the drivers point of view and then understandable from a much lower viewpoint and from inside the car. This gives the viewer the illusion of driving the journey as opposed to just seeing the journey. I have used black and white images, not only as a reference to Friedlander, but also as a documentary. I like using black and white photography as a documentary to something in the past, or as a collective to a closely connected set of images and I think it highlights the images beautifully as well as connecting them as a direct reference to the work of Friedlander.

I am very happy with this feedback, even though i'm really still unsure of how I will progress through this course. I am hoping I can be as enthusiastic about the next chapter as my tutor feels I can.