Objective: Criteria from the Syllabus

• Essential that students build on their prior knowledge and experience developed during the course.
• Develop your written dissertation in the light of your chosen focus from the  practical part of previous coursework and projects.

From all the coursework (Personal Investigation) that you have produced write an overview of what you learned so far (both as Yr 12 and Yr 13 student) and publish on the blog.

1. Describe which themes (Nostalgia, Anthropocene, Home, Feminity/ Masculinity/ Identity etc,) medium (photography, film), approaches (documentary, tableaux, conceptual), artists (incl contextual references to art history, movements and isms) and photographic skills, processes, techniques and methods (incl learning new software) inspired you the most and why.

2. Include examples of both previous and current experiments and imagery to illustrate your thinking.

Ideas for Personal Study

Within my personal study, my plan is to do something linking to Vienna Bakery, a family business. One technique of photography I would like to include TYPOLOGIES, using the workers from different parts of the bakery i.e the shop, production, night shift and dispatch. I would like to take them in the same deadpan style of Ed Ruscha, the only difference would be that instead of taking images of buildings, it would be people.

Another technique I would like to use is Environmental Portraiture, taking pictures of some of the main workers in their usual working area, i.e the foreman, production manager, the manager and even some others that may have been there for longer periods of time than others. I’m hoping to take these images in the style of Michelle Sank, an artist who actually did a project in Jersey at one point called Insula, using locals workers from local industries to create environmental portraits.

I am also hoping to use some ideas linking to the still life aspect of our HOME project, taking images of some of our most popular products whether that’s the cakes or the bread taking inspiration from Mary Ellen Bartley, I will be taking the images in her simplistic style as I want the focus to be on the product and not the background or anything else. Within this I will also be taking images of the bakery and shop, hoping to capture what they look like while people are working and while it is empty.

The final concept I will be using is photojournalistic documentary style images, taking inspiration from Mitch Epstein, more specifically his photobook “Family Business“. In the middle of the book, he has stills of an interview with his father about the business, I am hoping to do the same with the owner of Vienna Bakery, David Dodge, my cousin and maybe even his daughter, Sarah Dodge, who is now the director of the company.