Overall Comments
This is a good attempt at critical writing Amanda - an area that is clearly not in your ‘comfort zone’ - and builds on your successful second assignment based on Google Streetview. The topic is interesting and backed up with some relevant research. I will suggest some revisions before submitting for assessment below.
I understand your aim is to go for the Photography 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, providing you commit yourself to the course, I believe you have the potential to succeed at assessment. In order to meet all the assessment criteria, there are certain areas you will need to focus on, which I will outline in my feedback.
Feedback on assignment
Demonstration of technical and Visual Skills, Quality of Outcome, Demonstration of Creativity
Your introduction relates Jon Rafman’s Streetview work to smart phone photography / Instagram under a discussion of landscape. I suggest you introduce here the three photographers you’re looking at who use Streetview, rather than discuss smartphone photography, which doesn’t particularly relate to the question of landscape photography.
In the following paragraph your definition of landscape from Google is too simplistic and has caused you a few problems later on. Use a reputable dictionary such as Oxford and also refer back to the course text, which discusses the problem of ‘what is landscape’ in greater detail.
Your following paragraph discusses landscape as an aesthetic. I would define aesthetic here. You might like to use the definition from the Liz Wells reader:
‘Aesthetic: Pertaining to the senses, and, by extension, to the appreciation or criticism of beauty, or of art… [the] criteria primarily include formal conventions (composition, tonal balance, and so on)’. Liz Wells (ed.): Photography, A Critical Introduction (4th Ed.), Routledge (2009) p.345.
This paragraph generally is one of the weakest parts of your essay. There are no references and it appears too subjective.
His work depicted the landscape as developing and industrial as opposed to aesthetically beautiful. O’Sullivan’s work was undeniably landscape but as a contrast to Watkins, O’Sullivan showed the landscape as baron and wasteland, areas that could not be inhabited but yet again, not the conventional images that people were used to
– Include references and examples.
It is now considered the ‘norm’ to create images that are more controversial , as Watkins and O’Sullivan did, and to produce images that are more outlandish and unique.
- Clarify?
Deborah Bright (1985) discussed that “intuition and expression were central issues, not visual style.”
- In ‘Of Mice & Marlboro Men’ Deborah Bright proposed that ‘intuition and expression were central issues, not visual style’ (1985) …
In order to create a project, whether traditional or controversial, it was the ideas of what you want to produce mixed in with the way you choose to present it.
- Clarify?
In 2007, Google had a unique idea to create virtual maps of a select few US cities and since have expanded to most accessible public roads worldwide.
- and has since expanded the project to…
The following section on Rafman is a good piece of critical writing. You start by describing Rafman’s project, include a quote from him and then pose some good questions as a way to develop your own point of view. You then bring in Rickard and Wolf – good, but perhaps include a sentence for each to say who they are, what they do etc.
the style of 30-year-old Rafman seems far more aleatory” which is alongside my own views.
- Perhaps expand this a little by saying it again in your own words.
Traditional style but an uncommon processing as in classic photography, the ‘photographing’ comes first. But as they are more aesthetic and the tell tale Google signs have been removed, how would we know how the images had been created? Rickard’s work can more easily be accepted as landscape photography. However, Rafman appears to want to be different. He chooses to retain the tell tale Google signs on his images;
- Good point. Perhaps use ‘navigation icons’ rather than ‘Google signs’.
Whilst I am not sure that I agree with this statement, I can appreciate it. He has created something new…
Good development of the argument in this paragraph!
Joan Fontcuberta’s project “Landscapes without Memory”
- Reference?
The universal view on this subject is, of course it’s part of the artistic view of the photographer themselves but ultimately the viewer will decide for themselves how they will depict the image.
- ‘interpret’
No one can deny the expression of the artist the same as no one can influence the opinion of the viewers.
Here you return to your idea above that it’s all about personal opinion. This is true of course, but what forms the personal opinions of the viewer, and of the photographer? Are they completely autonomous, free? Or are they to a great extent formed by external influences such as class interests, gender or racial stereotypes, inherited national outlooks, etc.? That’s part of what criticality tries to examine.
If photography has evolved to incorporate the means of creating images of this style, then surely we have to evolve our minds and way of thinking to move ever so slightly away from the norm and the traditional and accept the aesthetic views of some, slightly uncommon, modern photographers.
- Hope so!
So we should not be so easy to dismiss the peculiar.
- ‘unconventional’
Without these new wave artists, like Watkins
- ‘artists’ or photographers?
Finally, don’t forget to address the second part of the question in your conclusion.
Learning Logs or Blogs/Critical essays
Context
As above
Suggested reading/viewing
Context
Reading your review of Bright’s essay in your log I would like to see you return to her essay and give it another go. I know its long and quite difficult if you’re not used to the language (and she does show off a bit) but the central idea is crucial for this module. She makes the point that landscape is ideological, challenging the ‘formalist’ (ie. aesthetic, fine art) ideas put forward about landscape by the influential curator John Szarkowski in the 1960s and 1970s. Note the sentence towards the end – ‘small wonder then that most art-photography teachers and students are unprepared for and hostile towards a methodology that demands accountability for what is being shown in their photographs in terms of discourses other than that of a disinterested formalism’. Yes it is long-winded (I’m irritated by her style myself!) but she’s saying don’t be afraid to look at the meanings of your photographs in a deeper way than just their aesthetics.
Pointers for the next assignment
I’ll feedback to your proposal for assignment 5 in a separate email. Please include in your learning log development.
Overall, you’ve had a good go at this Amanda and there are some good passages and developments. It reads well. Please feel free to send back your revision if you would like me to have a read through.
All I can say is wow! I am extremely happy with this feedback and have spent a few hours going back through and making the suggested amendments to my review, which I will now forward back to my tutor just for a final read through. After my last feedback from Assignment 3, I was really fearing the worst for the remainder of this course but this feedback has given me a much needed boost to suggest that I may actually get through this module without failing miserably in the middle somewhere. I have now included the link to my original submission in my Assignment 4 post and I will post the link to the revised submission shortly on the assignment 4 page.
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