Photographer/ artist Jonny Briggs visited Hautlieu school yesterday to host a session based upon fear/ anxiety and mistakes. He developed upon how these feelings or outcomes are not always a bad thing and tested our pretensions of what makes a successful or ‘right’ image.

Briggs opened the talk with a discussion upon the affects of fear on creativity in which students in the class gave their varied responses and shared how they react differently under pressure. He moved onto to talk about how mistakes can be positive as they’re unique and how unplanned outcomes can be just as valuable as meticulous planned pieces as long as they’re executed properly. Following this, the session consisted of drawing an illustration of a face with our eyes are closed as he developed upon this sense of mistakes can be a success.

We moved onto drawing a fellow class-mates face with our eyes closed which everybody seemed to find funny as our illustration was so different to the actual face. Briggs moved onto to talk about how we have this instilled sense of fear of getting things wrong.

Briggs introduced a task using an old image that we don’t mind damaging in order to expand on this idea of mistakes. Following Jonny’s first session, I opted for a traditional photo with a smile in a formal format which he openly detested.

I chose to quickly swap mine and my girlfriend’s face as in the relationship, she definitely wears the trousers and bosses me about. The rushed and inaccurate nature of the photograph enables the photo to look more like a mistake like Briggs wanted us to do which I also followed by not executing the task with meticulous and careful planning.

The image displaying our role reversal coincides with my study of Claude Cahun as her androgynous nature shines through and although we’re not playing on the illusion whether the characters in the photograph are male or female, the principle of role reversal still inverts society’s expectations of how genders should act like in relation to their stereotypes.

Briggs’s open-minded nature is refreshing in a photography session as he focuses internally and purely upon himself rather than meeting the expectations set by teachers. Jonny Briggs has a main focus on psychology which is where his interest lies and this is evident through his work as well as incorporating his family which gives him inspiration.