Proposal

I am unsure of whether or not my proposal has to be visible on my blog.. so just to cover myself - here it is….

I am going on a 10 day trip to The Gambia, Africa and so I will be undertaking the photographic work for this project whilst I am out there. I am unsure yet of what my project will look like at the end of this journey however, my plan is to just keep photographing. Therefore, I hope to have lots of images that I will then be able to fit into a few different series’. Themes for these could be documenting the local area, life in The Gambia or portraits of children for example. 

I know that I do not want to have a sense of ‘the other’ through my work, so I am going to try only to photograph the Gambian people and area, I don’t want myself or any of the other people I am traveling with to be in the images. I feel that if this happens it will change the whole meaning of the image. I want my images to be as close to a true representation as possible. 

In preparation for this trip, I have been looking at the work of Laura Pannack and have spoken to her about her experiences when working in a foreign country. I have also looked at the work of Meiselas, McCullin, Brown, Burnett and Vitale to name a few. All of these photographers have worked in Africa at some point during their careers, and so it is those works that I have focused on through my research.

I am unsure of my end product for the work as of now, but I feel that I will either produce a book of the images or I will make large prints for exhibition. As I am unsure, I will be conscious of composition whilst I am shooting. I need to stay consistent so that whichever images and outcome I decide on, the photographs will work well together. 

I will be shooting mainly on a Canon 40D with a 17-85mm lens, however I am also taking an iPhone and an iPad with me for personal use, so some images will be captured on these as well. I will Adobe Bridge and Photoshop to organize and edit my images when I return as I find these the easiest to use. 

Something that I am conscious of working in The Gambia, is their ‘Media Commission Act amended in 2003 by the Gambian Parliament.’ This act stops all media; journalists, television companies, radio stations and photographers from publishing anything publicly without the state approving it first. I am not publishing inside of The Gambia, so I won’t have a problem but it something that is in the back of my mind, and will be whilst I am photographing the local people and areas.

Research:

Badger, G (2010) ‘Without Author or Art: The “Quiet” Photograph’, In: Ciccotti, S The Pleasures of Good Photographs, New York: Aperture Foundation, pp 210-220.

Ingledew, J (2005) Photography, London: Laurence King Publishing.

McCullin,D (1971), The Destruction Business,  Leicester and London: Ebenezer Baylis & Son Ltd.

Langford, Fox and Sawdon Smith (2010), Langford’s Basic Photography, Oxford: Elsevier Ltd, pp 171-178.

Light, K (2000) ‘Central America and Human Rights: An Interview with Susan Meiselas’, In:  Traub, Heller, Bell (2006) The Education of a Photographer, New York: Allworth Press, pp 42-47.

Lubben,K (eds.) (2008), Susan Meiselas: In History, New York: International Center of Photography

Sontag, S (1979) On Photography, London: Penguin

Steel,A (2006) The World’s Top Photographers and the stories behind their greatest images Photojournalism, Switzerland: Rotovision SA

War Photographer, () Directed by Christian Frei [DVD], Artefact Films

Pannack,L (2012) Laura Pannack Photography, Available at: http://laurapannack.com (Accessed: 6th November 2013)

Goodman Gallery (2012) David Goldblatt, Available at: http://www.goodman-gallery.com/artists/davidgoldblatt (Accessed: 14th November 2013)

Grosvenor,I and Hall, A (2012) ‘Back to school from a holiday in the slums!: Images, words and inequalities’ Critical Social Policy , vol 32, no 1, p11-30 [online]. Available at: http://csp.sagepub.com/content/32/1/11

Henley, J (2011) Photographer Samuel Fosso’s best shot, Available at: http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2011/jun/19/photographer-samuel-fosso-best-shot (Accessed: 23rd October 2013)

Henley, J (2010) Malick Sidibe photographs: One nation under a groove, Available at: http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2010/feb/27/

malick-sidibe-mali-photographs-interview (Accessed: 23rd October 2013)

Unknown, (2013) “Antonio Perez Rio”, in British Journal of Photography, Nov 13, p20-21

Unknown (2013) “Hereros” in British Journal of Photography, vol 160, No. 7809

Resources:

40D Canon Camera

2x 32GB CF Memory Cards

1x Card Reader

1x 500GB Hard Drive

Canon 17-85mm Lens

Sony HDR CX220E Video Camera

iPhone 4s

iPad Mini

Abode Bridge

Adobe Photoshop

10 days in The Gambia

Output/Presentation:

I am unsure of what my final presentation of the project will be. The options I am looking into are a book, or a set number of prints.

If I decide to create a book of images it will be a documentary compilation of my photographs taken during my visit to The Gambia. It will all depend on the aesthetics and power of the images on their own and as a set. If the photographs are better as an overall group or collection then a book may suit that best, however if the images are more powerful as singular or as a small series, then printing and exhibiting them could be a wiser decision. I will not know this properly until I have downloaded the images to a computer and am able to really scrutinize and analyze them. 

Proposal

I started this module wanting to make a film. I felt inspired by the ‘Days like this - Washing of Hands’ film by Joel Simon. Whilst looking ahead to my trip to The Gambia I hoped that I would be able to make something similar using my own experiences. However, I am not very confident in film making, so I'm not sure that this would be the best thing for me to make.

I still want to use my own experiences from The Gambia, perhaps going down the diary making route. I want to hand make something, as this will reflect life in The Gambia. Most people are very poor and make a living by hand making jewelry, clothing and every day objects. To help with this process I will be taking part in a book-binding workshop. 

I have looked at the work of Dan Eldon, who hand makes travel journals using text, imagery and drawing. I find his work to be quite inspirational and helpful in my own creative idea process. I will also be looking at the works of Su Blackwell and Laura Jackson-Willis, who both hand-craft creative books and journals. 

As a way of integrating my own experiences from The Gambia, I have begun reading ‘Roots’ by Alex Haley. Whilst in The Gambia I spent a day on the roots tour, which is a day spent in the village and on the island where Kunta Kinte was captured and kept as a slave in the 19th Century. I want to use this journey as a part of my hand crafted diary for this project.

I want to use a range of materials in my work, including those with different grades of transparency, this is because Gambians are very friendly, happy and always smiling. It is very welcoming but you can’t help but wonder what this happy facade is hiding from deeper in their lives. The layering of materials with different transparencies I think would help to reflect this in a creative way.

I know that this project will be very much a process of trial and error.

Sneaky Peak

These are a few examples of the images that I took whilst in The Gambia. I need to go through them all and edit down which can be used and which can't, then decide the outcome I want to produce and then begin working to make that happen.

©Sarah Neuenhaus

©Sarah Neuenhaus

©Sarah Neuenhaus

©Sarah Neuenhaus

Return from The Gambia

I returned this week from my trip to The Gambia. It was amazing !! I feel renewed and my energy levels are refreshed, and I feel excited to finish my degree and do these projects.

I took almost 800 images during my trip, most of these are for my university projects. I hoped to have many more images but it is so difficult, when you are around the children they want to hold your hand and give you hugs and they want your attention. So it is increasingly difficult to turn your back on that, or say no to holding a child's hand to take a photograph of them instead. I tried to do both, hold their hand to start with and stop let go and photograph them and the area around. However, this means you do lose some shooting time.

I think in order to be able to shoot the whole time, you need to separate yourself from any group or bond with the Gambian people. The whole reason I went there was to be with the families and children and give them hope, the university work happened on top of that, so thats where my compromise came in.

Saying that, I am very very excited to start working with the images I did take. I have had a quick look through them and I just feel so excited. This is good, because hopefully it means I will really push myself to do well, because I put so much effort into getting the images, I don't want to let myself or the children/people in the photographs down. I have a responsibility now to represent them and show them correctly through my work.

Daydream realization

Whilst doing a bit of daydream thinking about this work, it struck me that the art & craft work I collected from the children in The Gambia is from very young children, and whilst I was with them creating it, they were just so excited to be doing this sort of thing, they didn't care what it looked like. It was a true expression of their creativity and not their thought processing creativity. They just wanted to make a picture, not construct it through what their mind wanted to create. 

I think thats the approach i need to take with this work too. I need to stop thinking about it so much. Make a true representation of my journey in The Gambia and how it turns out will not be through me sitting for hours trying to make colour to colour and fit the text in perfectly. 

The Gambians, make their own clothes, jewellery, they cook outside on the sand path. They are not overly worried about how they look, are their clothes, jewellery and hair co-ordinated. 

So I am going to stitch into my work, use beads and shells and whatever things I can find around me. Just like they do !

Caroline Dyal

http://www.carolinedyal.com/About-Caroline-Dyal

I came across Dyal's 'Rio Collage Diary' which is exactly what it says. A diary made from collage of Rio.. it is a much simpler looking callage diary compared to Eldon's work, it has more of a scrapbook feeling I think.

But it does document a journey and it tells a story. A story told with mainly images and documentation rather than text.
I really like that you can tell it is handmade. It gives the viewer more of an attachment and interest in it .. if it was printed and digitally created I feel that it would lose a lot of what it has to offer.

Dan Eldon

http://www.daneldon.org/adventurer/the-journals/

Looking at Dan Eldons work i feel quite inspired. It looks like collage and it looks very personal to his journey. It is really cleverly a mix of text, image and drawing.

I think my work could be similar to this.. I have already made the images, am in the process of gathering text and whilst in The Gambia I collected some of the art and craft work that the children had created. So all of these things can be incorporated in a similar way to this work.