On Tuesday we had a workshop with a photographer called Tom Pope. He was accepted at the Swansea Metropolitan University where he got a 1st Class Ba(Hons) for Photography of the Arts in 2008, and then got a Ma at The Royal College of Arts in 2011.

He has his own website where you can view all his work. We had had a look at a few of his videos and photos in class on Monday but I personally didn’t quite understand all of his work. He showed us a fair amount of his work within his presentation and it was then, when he was explaining the process and reasoning behind his work that I started to understand what he was trying to achieve through his work.

One of these photo shoots which I now really like is titled Weak Anarchy. His intentions behind this set was looking at social norms and unofficial ‘rules’ society has seemingly put in place, and seeing how far you can push them, going from simply wearing socks on the wrong feet, to making a fountain in a public space with a lemonade bottle and mentos. Pushing societies rules is a fairly common theme among his work.

He mentioned a lot of things which he tries to incorporate in his work, like Time, Play, Situationism, Humour, Repetition, Psycho-geography, differences between public and private, Failure, collaboration and more.