ESP1 - Daniel Vann

ESP1 Daniel Vann

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Table of Contents

4. - Shopping List Idea #1 6. - Shopping List Idea #2 8. - Shopping List Idea #3 10. - Shopping List Idea #4 12. - Research - James Casebare 16. - Research - Broomberg & Chanarin 18. - Construction - Coffin & Grass Applicator 20. - Shooting - Wales, Contingency Plan 22. - Discussion - Talking to Simon Roberts and my Ideas 24. - Construction - First Diorama 26. - Shooting - Studio 28. - Research - Landscape Phenomenology 30. - Shooting - Landscapes with Coffin 34. - Research - Archive 36. - Research - Bronze Age Objects 38. - Research - Pottery 40. - Construction - Second and Third Dioramas 42. - Shooting - Barrows in Wales 46. - Research - Joan Fontcuberta & Nigel Shafran 48. - Shooting - Final Studio Work 52. - Final Edit and Resolution 54. - Evaluation

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Shopping List Idea 1 - The Keystone State

Through travels, I’ve visited and learned a lot about the state of Pennsylvania, and experienced the differences in lifestyle between the UK and the eastern United States. PA carries the nickname ‘Keystone State’ for a variety of reasons, such as it’s physical location in the 13 British colonies, and major events such as the signing of the Declaration of Independence happening within the state. This made the state a sort of metaphorical keystone - the central stone in an arch, holding up the rest of the stones on each side, and a symbol of completion.

Knowing some history gives some context into the reason for nickname, and explains in part why it’s become such a widely recognised symbol.

I remember initially asking someone what it was after seeing it on multiple occasions, but the answer I got was a sort of “I don’t remember, but it’s on government things.” I haven’t been able to figure out its exact origins, but keystones seem to be used as a masonic symbol, sometimes the same shape, sometimes others. If this bears any relation I do not know, though there are a number of masonic villages around, which is a strange coincidence.

The Keystone itself isn’t really that central to this project idea - at least at this point. As I’ve travelled back and forth over the past three years, I’ve simply been keeping a visual record of my time there.

I needed a name for it, something to hold it all together. The keystone has always been a strong and noticeable symbol for me, which made the nickname good enough for use as a working title.

I believe I’ve already started to build up a small selection of strong images, though not nearly enough to become a finished project. Even with strong images however, what the project really lacks is a direction. A lot of photographers have made journal style projects or publications, Stephen Shore’s American Surfaces fills this role to an extent in my opinion. The work has a strong theme of travelling, but it has a powerful focal point of using the lens of a ‘typical’ tourist. It’s this sort of more precise focus that I think brings meaning to a work, something that my work currently lacks. As of now, it’s just my experiences with the state. There’s certainly many different directions I could take the work, from much more personal, to being more documentary.

It’s a project that may simply continue in the background in its

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current form until the time comes that it’s complete - as a pure documentation of an outside perspective on a place, or until I think of a more precise project, and re-purpose my current images to fit into it.

The project is 6x6 medium format currently, and though I’ve been shooting on other stocks and formats. I’ve only been considering the medium format as part of a series as of now. There’s at least 10 images that I’m very happy with, out of around 60 or so total.

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Shopping List Idea 2 - Centralia

A few years ago, while also in the US, I explored a small abandoned town called Centralia, and made a book about it as a college project. The story behind the town, is that a coal mine underneath it caught fire around 55 years ago, and it’s still burning. The town was forcefully evacuated, though around 7 stubborn residents managed to remain in their homes. The rest of the homes were demolished. The project I made on the town was something I thoroughly enjoyed making, but looking back, some of the photographs seem incredibly weak to me now, and I thought I could benefit by going back to explore it a bit more.

Something that sticks with me between both visits, a few years apart, is how difficult the location is to shoot in a traditional manner. As an abandoned location, there really is almost nothing to see. What you find are really remnants of a place, that are hard to put into a visual format.

My previous visit was in the winter, with no one around, but this time I visited in the summer, and the experience was drastically different. Previously, I was the only person there, walking around exploring dull half tarmacked roads, and a cracked up mile long piece of highway. This time, the experience was rather different. I really noticed the re-purposing of the area, and got a picture of what the town is like in modern life. Rather than feeling like the ghost town it is, there’s tourists around, exploring the area and asking where everything is. There were groups of people on dirt bikes and ATVs, using what once were old roads and lanes, as pump tracks and stunt tracks. On the old destroyed highway there was a biker gang at the bottom, riding up and down the steep and cracked highway, seeing where they could get some speed up.

They really were a showy bunch, and would start racing or wheelie at first sign of a camera. It’s a refreshing change from

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my winter visit, and shows the other half of what this strange town really is. A town as small as an English village, with just a few houses containing stubborn residents that probably want to be left alone, and a hotspot for locals from towns over that want to have a place to blow off steam. The lack of any real law enforcement presence probably helps with this.

I shot my visit here over the summer on 35mm film. I’m personally much more inclined to shoot 6x6cm, and while I’m not a huge fan of the 2:3 ratio, using a 35mm SLR did allow me to capture anything in the moment that I might have missed using a slower medium format camera. I’d used a digital camera the last time I visited, which meant that my use of 35mm film this time had potential for the images to be used seamlessly together with the older digital images, if the need arose. Honestly, I’m not completely happy with how my summer work came out. I had some metering issues with the camera that caused some underexposure, leading to some of the shadowed areas being black as pitch. I do have another film or two to develop though, so there could be some great shots yet to come.

Turns out the film didn’t wind on, the other roll was blank.

That’s what I get for loading in a hurry I suppose.

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Shopping List Idea 3 - Coal and Industry

While I was in the US over the summer, my mother was moving house from the south coast of England, to south Wales.

I got back just as she was finishing moving, and had a chance to explore the area to some extent before moving back to Bristol.

Coming from Centralia and upstate coal country in Pennsylvania, the landscape felt extremely similar to me, which was strange, as the landscape of the UK compared to the US usually feels drastically different. I’m assuming that areas heavy in coal have a large impact on the land above them, providing a certain type of soil which encourages growth for specific types of grasses and plants. Of course, this is just my assumption, though I’m sure this is something I can prove true or false through pretty basic research.

It was this initial aesthetic of coal-rich areas that drew me in, and got me thinking about the logistics, past, present, and future of coal and the coal industry. In PA, coal mining is still very active, with it being the 4th biggest coal producing state. While the amount of coal produced by the United States, along with related jobs, has been gradually dropping, it’s a completely different story when compared with the UK. There are no longer any deep coal mines open in the UK, and a handful of open mines. The entire industry has declined astronomically, to the point that it’s essentially dead. In 2015, there were around 2,000 people employed in coal mines nationwide, and we now import far more coal than we produce. The nation famously had it’s first ever coal free day this year, which demonstrates exactly how much our coal production and usage has dwindled. I imagine that the modern downfall of coal must be at least partially attributed to the Thatcher administration, something I don’t currently know much about. As a natural resource, the downfall

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of coal was always inevitable anyway, but the handling of the situation and loss of jobs created a huge political rift that lives on this day. With this in mind, a project about coal in Wales could come with a lot of intentional or unintentional political messages or baggage, which is something to remember.

The house we moved into sits atop the South Wales coal field, one of the largest historical coalfields in the UK. There’s mines/ex-mines and coal washing plants absolutely everywhere, which puts me in a prime spot to go out, explore, and shoot. I think I have an interesting base for a project here, and I’m definitely going to shoot and explore the idea on some level. I have a couple of qualms with the idea however - I don’t know how deep I could get into the project without interacting with people, which is something I don’t think I’ll manage to do. I also feel like the idea is a little tame and standard compared to my previous Barrows project. Though the project was landscapes, I felt like the idea was fresh and exciting, which was a reason I enjoyed it so much.

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Shopping List Idea 4 - Barrows

My Barrows project from last year, Golden Coffins and Gappergennies,was my most enjoyable, and in my opinion, successful, project to date. Delving into neolithic and bronze age history was a fun experience, and bringing that forwards to today through a mix of ancient man-made landscapes with modern myths, felt so fresh and exciting as a work.

Despite all this, I just feel like there’s so much more I wanted to explore that I never got the chance to, that the project still has so much untapped potential that I’m desperate to try.

Even from the beginning of the project last semester, I wanted to experiment in the studio, with still life of found or recreated objects, and hand-made miniature versions of barrows from an isometric or aerial view. Due to the length of the project last year, I really didn’t have the time to play with, but I feel that this time around, I do. I wasn’t sure if the studio work would work in tandem with landscapes, and I still don’t, but I’m desperate to try.

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I want to continue from where I left off, but bigger and better. I’ve done a considerable amount of landscape shooting at this point, and so I’d like the focus to be on different elements, like construction, literal and photographic. I plan to make a golden coffin model, and I’d like to try and find/make other props that I can shoot in a studio or on location. I’d like to be able to use 4x5” film, which could be important if I want large prints at the end of the project. As I’ve got some landscapes that I love already, I’d like to be able to re-shoot some scenes with large format if possible. My mother has moved to Wales, making shooting in Dorset a much bigger task than before. It’s still easily do-able due to all the link I still have, but it has to be a much more planned process, meaning I might only manage a few trips per semester, potentially being a huge hindrance if the weather goes against me. This is the idea I’ll be perusing, as it’s what excites me most, though I’m interested in shooting Wales too.

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James Casebare - Miniatures

After my initial mention of wanting to explore the use of miniatures, it was suggested I take a look at the work of James Casebare. It’s a good think I did, as Casebare’s work has some incredible examples of miniature studio work. I can use these photos as a benchmark for quality of miniatures, as well as giving me ideas for ways I can utilise elements in the studio that can translate well into images.

Casebare has a lot of miniature interior photography, something that I’d also be interested in, though it may be a stretch to somehow include interiors in a project about Barrows.

Continuing to browse Casebare’s work, I came across miniature landscapes that are much more like what I’m going to be aiming for. While the landscapes may not be Casebare’s most well known work, I do think it’s the most useful for me personally.

Like my ideas, I believe that all or most of the sets are based on real locations. It’s possible that they could even be made after actual photographs, though this is less likely. Casebare seems to mostly use the miniature sets and lighting to create realistic scenes. The studio provides incredible power in this capacity with light colour and placement - For example, the warm light and soft shadows of the early evening on this page, or the cold light and long shadows indicative of a winter morning on the page following. As useful as it is being able to create any lightning condition on a whim, what’s perhaps even more exciting is the ability to create much more unrealistic situations, something that Casebare has also utilised to great effect in some of the work here.

In the image on the page to the left, Casebare presents us

with a complex image, and one that feels both constructed and behind the scenes at the same time. Shot from an angle closer to the models, this scene wouldn’t be outside the realm of reality, and would appear to be a suburb forest fire in the background.

The image isn’t shot like this however, we see what we normally wouldn’t - The backdrop, stands, piping and a smoke machine.

This means that the imagine completely breaks the ‘forth wall’ as it were, and initially appears like a sort of behind the scenes shot. The image certainly doesn’t end there though, and at least personally, I get a lot more from it. A model building is falling off the edge of the set towards the ground, while another teeters on the edge. While it’s just a painted board that they’re falling off, I picture it like a receding cliff, or a sinkhole opening up, and it brings me back to the fire. It’s like the image mirrors a ridiculous disaster movie, with fires, earthquakes, and the earth’s crust splitting open. It bridges a strange space between fiction crashing into actual reality, almost literally. This playing with reality that Casebare employs is something that could be incredibly powerful for me to play with. With my landscapes of barrows last year I tried to explore construction and otherworldliness, but it just wasn’t something I could realistically do, so I opted for the project to subtly hint at stories, rather than embrace them fully.

With miniatures and other elements, I’d be able to keep subtler real life landscapes, with otherworldly miniatures to make the project into more of an unclear and experimental work, that leaves the viewer intrigued and captivated by what the whole thing is about.

Casebare’s use of water is another way to create an eerie atmosphere on a small budget, as we can see in the flooded

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corridor on the next page. Actually flooding a corridor is a Gregory Crewdson level task, and would need a budget to match. The small models are so realistic that it almost appears real, but it’s given away by the amplified looking water ripples and bending of light. Casebare is actively trying to creature this feeling of unease, something proven by the name of the project that the flooded hallway is a part of: The Spacial Uncanny. Without being able to view the project in book form, or its entirety, I can’t know exactly what Casebare’s work is doing, or if it succeeds, but I can get some insight from the book description. The models are apparently based on locations such as prisons, tunnels and factories, and use the uneasy atmospheric images to explore certain ideas, such as concerns around institutional buildings, and relationships between social control and social structures.

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Broomberg & Chanarin - Fig.

Broomberg & Chanarin’s aptly named Fig. is possibly one of the best examples I’ve come across thus far of what I want my project to ultimately ‘read’ like. Keeping this in mind, there are some very key differences, and I think that both projects could suffer from some of the same issues.

Like my work, Fig. is incredibly difficult to actually work out what it’s meant to be at first glance, which can be either intriguing or frustrating, depending on who’s viewing the work.

The name of the work is the first hint into what the project is, with the theme of numbered figures having clear scientific connotations. The project then takes this further, using the wide variety of visual mediums, but presenting them in a numbered indexical manner not just contextually, but also often visually.

I think some early difficulty in comprehension is acceptable for a viewer is acceptable to some extent, especially when the subject matter is very dense or very vast. The name, presentation, and installation of Fig. give the viewer just enough to go on - it appears to be somewhere between an art project and a study of something. The viewer then only really has to figure out what the actual topic is that the work is focusing on, and they will be beginning to understand to understand what the project is trying to do. Broomberg & Chanarin are able to give enough of an explanation to make the work understandable within the first few sentences of its accompanying text. “traces links between photography, imperialism and the

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colonial impulse to acquire, map and collect. The publication’s diverse imagery harks back to an era of Victorian collecting, which resulted in strange accumulations of objects being deposited in local museums throughout the UK.”

Within a tiny amount of text, the aim of the work is all of a sudden understandable, with the wide variety of imagery being not only a factual representation of a wide variety of collected objects, but also a metaphor for this immense variety through the use of so many different styles and mediums.

This is where the context and reasoning between my project and Fig. become immediately apparent. This style of presentation as ‘Organised Chaos’ is more or less what I’m hoping to achieve. Where landscapes and still lives together may feel like two separate projects, once more types of visual representation are included, I feel that the project starts to get a sense of being more whole. Broomberg & Chanarin had a great reason for this eclectic style of project though, in the nature of their subject itself. For me, it’s more about what I think would make for the strongest project, and at this point, it’s what I see working. I suppose to an extent, I’m also looking at my subject in the way of a study of sorts, though I don’t think it would be a good idea for me to approach the topic from such a scientific-feeling angle.

Though I’m looking into the real, somewhat patchy history of the barrows that interest me, I like to use this knowledge to help me think about the space in terms of photography, helping me

choose my subjects and construct images. If I began to make the project indexical and scientific, I believe it would completely hinder my ability to play with myth and folklore without making the work feel quite dishonest. I’m looking to get to a point where my work is documenting an amount of reality, but is perhaps more emotional and stirring than what I get from Fig.

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Construction - Building a Coffin and Static Grass Applicator

The act of making things is something that I’ve really come to enjoy. Last year with this project I’d been looking to begin exploring still life and constructed imagery, but was finding it difficult to really break into. I’d considered picking up objects when shooting and later photographing them, but it just didn’t feel quite right to me - it was hard to pick up anything that felt like it held any relation to my work. With the extra time from this academic year, I’ve decided to attempt to actually make objects myself to shoot in a studio or location setting. I’m looking to come at my work from a partially fictional angle, and I’m hoping that this will allow use a visual style that might be found within a museum collection, but with a sort of acknowledgement that the objects are not real bronze age artefacts. This will mean that I can sensationalise and construct artefacts with my own vision

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in mind, which will let me better convey the story I’m trying to tell.

The first thing I though I’d try and make was a small scale coffin. I wanted to try and take the golden coffin idea at face value, and actually make a gold painted wooden coffin. I mocked up a design before making an appointment in fabrication to discuss it. The process was incredibly quick from there. We used my file to cut the front and back on a CNC Router, before measuring angles and lengths for the sides. A lot of the work was done by Justin Day in the wood shop, as I wasn’t authorised to use most of the machinery that was required. The end result was a simple MDF coffin, with a simple recess in the front to hold the front door of the coffin in with friction. I had tried to get the dimensions of a realistic coffin, but it was actually easier said than done.

Coffin Rough Sizing

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12 inches

The proportions ended up a bit unrealistic, and the smaller scale alongside with it being exaggerated in shape means that the coffin looks about the right size for a dwarf. This isn’t really a problem, as the mythological nature of the ideas I’m looking at could easily accompany a coffin for a dwarf, though this is not the route I’m going to go. Mythologising dwarfism may have been a common thing long ago, but if I was going to play into this, it would have to be a real critique, or otherwise risk seeming massively insensitive and celebratory towards mythologising medical conditions. If I avoid this topic entirely, I don’t think they’ll be an issue, as it’s difficult to actually get a sense of the coffin size in photographs. If I present the coffin in installation there could be an issue, as “Is that a coffin for a dwarf?” Is a common reaction after seeing it. The confusion about its size does add to the sense of wonder, but depending on people’s reactions, there could be a small ethical issue. If I don’t actually hint towards dwarfism, I don’t see it being a problem however.

I also created a ‘static grass applicator’ to help be apply grass to miniature dioramas in future. I made it by buying a cheap electric fly swatter and a tea strainer. I dissembled the fly swatter and attached the tea strainer to it. The

electrical circuit runs through the metal strainer, and a wire out the bottom is pressed against the diorama. Tiny ‘grass’ fibres are placed in the strainer, and when it’s placed near the diorama, a lot of static electricity is generated as the electricity tries to complete the circuit. The grass fibres collect the static, fall through the strainer onto PVA glue on the diorama, and stand up straight due to the static. This creates a realistic fuzzy looking grass, which should pay off in photographs.

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Shooting - Wales, Contingency Plan

Although I’ve decided on continuing my work with barrows from last year, I felt that it remains a good idea to test the waters of another idea as a backup plan. As I now have fairly easy access to the area, it seemed like a crime not to at least get a feel for the area and see if the project would have any potential.

The area really is lovely in my opinion, though not in a conventional way. Unlike the deep pastoral greenery of Dorset, Wales’ mixture of dark and light greens, ambers and oranges works amazingly on analogue film. The landscape is colourful yet muted, and feels somehow calmer and more peaceful than much of England. Both of the coal related areas I visited had a lot for me to explore. One was a Colliery Museum, and the other was a coal distribution centre beside an open-cast coal mine.

The museum was closed, though I believe it was just due to the fact it’s nearing winter. The area was interesting, with what looked like an old runway running for about a quarter mile with various old mining structures atop it. Unfortunately I couldn’t get any great shots of the structures due to a closed fence running alongside them. I tried to get up as high as I could, but without a large format I couldn’t get high enough. The imagine in question is directly to the right of this text. I like the shot, but the hight I was at means that the brown of the foreground fence begins to distracting blend into the rusty mining structure behind. I did manage to shoot over the fence to get some shots of the forest behind, which I was happy with. The slope of the trees matching the hill in the background, and the colour palette of the images make for a lovely scene in my opinion. Even without access, I like the shots I got and the historic view of mining that I experienced.

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If I ever needed to, I imagine I could get access to shoot inside the premises.

The other location, near the open-cast mine, was probably more successful, though I didn’t get as many images.

The location was extraordinary, sat right at the top of a valley. It was also very empty, because it was a Sunday. The website of Poseidon Energy, the company that owns the space, says that the mine is projected to continue coaling until 2014 before being ‘restored mainly to upland common.’ But as of now, it’s certainly still doing something. From where I was I couldn’t see the actual mine, and I wasn’t going to break into the site to go and have a look to see if it still seemed in use. It still seemed in use to me. I walked up a small hill beside the site to get a view over the edge of the site, and it certainly paid off. The sheer amount of ‘stuff’ about means that the images just have so much to give, so many little things to look at and think about. The lack of people means that the landscapes (like the one below this) retain my personal approach to human landscapes, but it’s interesting to think about what impression that gives of the mining industry, and if perhaps it shows it in a more negative light than it should.

I’m sure a large area such as this would have much more to offer, but I wouldn’t be too hopeful about being allowed access to inside the facility. There are some public footpaths around, so I could make use of those.

While I probably won’t pursue this idea, at least at the moment, I think that the images I’ve gathered in such a short time are a pretty good proof of concept, and show that there would be a lot to explore around the subject.

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Project Accessibility, Talking to Simon Roberts, Future Plans.

Something I struggled with my barrows project last year, and into this year, was actually explaining the project to others, and what it was that I was trying to do. While I wouldn’t say that I’m there yet, I’m getting better at explaining my project to others, and I’ve reached the stage where I can tell that people are actually understanding my work to some extent when I explain it to them.

I think that the difficulty in explaining my project to others arose for a few different reasons. Firstly, I believe that it’s in part simply due to the fact that many people have no idea what my subject matter even is to begin with. This means that not only do I have the task of explaining my concept and ideas, but I have the responsibility of a history teacher and explain what barrows are in the first place. Generally if I start discussing barrows without an explanation, people find it impossible to connect as they don’t have a clue what I’m talking about. With a big enough visual format however, I would imagine a viewer would start to understand even with no previous knowledge, due to archive material and heavily symbolic imagery. Another reason I struggle with explaining my project to people, is because I suppose there are elements of my working that even I don’t fully understand yet. I’m interested in the power of ancient and large landscapes, the shapes in the earth and their persistence through time. I’m interested in history, myths and tales, ritual and magic. All these topics that excite me go into my process of making work, but exactly why I find them interesting is something I have to fully comprehend before I can explain it to others.

Something that really did help me begin to describe my project more concisely and accurately was the sort of speeddating format. Talking to the first person took me a very long time to explain my project, but they understood eventually. As I was saying things about it to them, I was trying to take notes on my own descriptions to help me speak better to the next person.

I think doing this was a huge help, as by the third person, I’d come up with a sentence to describe my project, and with that and a few other talking points, they fully understood my project and were excited by it. The sentence that I’d come up with by the end of the session was as follows: “My project is an eclectic exploration of burial traditions in ancient societal history, and the modern myths generated hence, through a range of image types, like still life, landscapes, miniature dioramas, and archival material.”

This sentence obviously can only roughly describe the themes of my project, but I think that’s fair considering I’m covering quite an in-depth subject, and it’s only a single sentence. Afterwards I wrote up another paragraph of historical information to describe my subject, without directly discussing the aims of my project.

“A Tumulus, Barrow, or Burial Mound, is a raised mound of earth and stones used to bury one or multiple bodies.

They are generally around four to six thousand years in age.

Most have at one point been excavated and re-filled, and as well as skeletons, ritualistic symbols and artefacts were often found within, like daggers, antlers, beakers, beads and necklaces. Myths have emerged about them, possibly due to the objects found, but also perhaps the general mystery and unease naturally generated being around such imposing, natural, yet unnatural structures. Common myths include hearing faerie music from within, digging up golden coffins, and excavating a barrow and feeling tremendous p.g 22

heat emanating from within.”

Initially it doesn’t sounds particularly useful writing out descriptions of what you’re working on, but it really pays off.

Not only does it make it easier to describe your idea to others, something that you’ll inevitably have to do, but it really helps you come to terms with your own project. With a subject like mine, I always have massive amounts of information and ideas floating around in my head, but without taking some time to put everything down on paper, it’s hard to come up with a coherent way to talk, or even think, about your work.

Another useful bit of information I got in the same area was from Simon Roberts. While Roberts’ style of very humaninteraction oriented landscapes aren’t exactly what I enjoy, his style did have an impact on my way of thinking and working for this project, and there’s some clear inspiration visible in my work from last semester. Naturally, the chance to show him my work seemed foolish to pass up. It wasn’t really going to be possible to get accurate project feedback, as I hadn’t shot any work for the project this semester yet, so I had to show him last years work for the same project. This still allowed me to get some feedback on my landscapes from a visual perspective however. As my work was landscapes, Simon questioned my use of the square format for landscape photography, and picked out some of my images that he felt gained nothing from being square. In the examples he chose, I did agree that they could work better in landscape orientation, though I defended the 6x6 usage as there were many other images that I think benefit from being square. Personally I enjoy shooting in a slightly different format, as it really changes the way you look at your subject and environment.

I did explain my project ideas to Simon, though I hadn’t yet thought of a good way to describe what and why I was doing next. He found it pretty clear that perhaps my project wasn’t too focused at that time, but didn’t actually see fit to criticise that fact. He stated, quite accurately in my opinion, that due to the nature of my project, that it was most important at this stage simply to gather material, before figuring out exactly what I’m trying to put across. I do think that it’s actually good advice, despite the fact that it may seem counter-intuitive to some.

Rather than knowing precisely what I’m setting out to achieve, I’m filled with ideas that I’m compelled to make, about a subject that I find immensely interesting, but find it hard to describe exactly why I’m approaching it in the way that I am. In just pushing forwards and making work anyway, I believe that the process will help me understand why I’m compelled to use the mediums that I’m working through. Simon also gave me some good advice on putting my ideas into words that I can use to help evaluate and explain my project. He said that I should try sitting down with someone and just explaining the project, going through photo by photo, telling that my motivations and ideas behind the image - and recording the conversation to listen back to. From that, I’d not only be able to hear myself and understand what does and doesn’t make any sense, but I’d be able to hear the other person’s reaction, and be able to learn what people are and aren’t connecting with.

Overall, it’s been useful talking about and describing my project to Simon and others, and has given me a lot to think about when it comes to where to go with my work and making it connect with an audience.

Left: An image of mine for this project last semester. Right: The same image cropped to a 5:4 ratio

Left: An image of mine for this project last semester. Right: The same image cropped to a 5:4 ratio - in this case I much prefer the square image.

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Construction - Building a Diorama

After biting the bullet and deciding I was going to try and make a diorama, I can say that it actually went very well, and I think I’ve come out with a good result. I initially spoke to people in fabrication, which was when I made my grass applicator, but I ended up opting to work at home rather than at campus. The nature of creating a diorama has multiple stages, and it seems to be a lot easier to work somewhere you can easily access, as I was frequently having to wait overnight for things to dry fully.

If I was working at university, scheduling to go in and work on it would be a nightmare along with the other things I’m doing.

Something I was prepared for was the start-up costs associated with miniature modelling. Anything designed specifically for hobbyists comes with a hefty price tag, so where possible I used regular art supplies. I’ve complied a list of my purchases and any comments about them: • Styrofoam Base, £6 • Lightweight Hydrocoal Plaster, £10 - Special plaster for miniatures, not sure if necessary, plaster of Paris is probably exactly the same.

• Brushes & Tools, £7 • Regular Paints/Glues, £20 • Green Liquid Undercoat, £9 - ‘Special’ miniature undercoat.

Does a good job of colouring the plaster, but it just seems like expensive watered-down green paint.

• Miniature Grass, Bushes, and Rocks, £20 - Expensive for foam, fibres, and stones, but it would be difficult to find an alternative.

This comes in at £62 in total, though I definitely could have saved at least £10 by making different purchases. This really isn’t a huge amount of money, though some things need to be purchased for every diorama (like the base) and some every few, like plaster and more commonly used paints. It might seem pointless to discuss purchases, but I think it’s important to understand the cost of creating things, as the money you can or cannot spare can directly impact the quality of the final

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outcome. You could create an excellent diorama if you had the money to buy many things pre-made, but not factoring in costs and running out of money for good materials will mean you end up with a bad quality diorama. I’ve already been taking steps to save money, such as using regular acrylic paints as much as possible, and making a grass applicator myself, something which could have cost upwards of £100 for a pre-made one.

Things like this mean my budget’s going to last longer, letting me make more dioramas, and giving me more room for error.

The process of making my diorama was fairly straightforward, partially due to the information in my book ‘Dorset Barrows’. The author has an incredible index of barrows, and most of them actually have measurements of their height and diameter. With this knowledge, I was able to take the measurements, and scale them down to fit on my Styrofoam base. I wanted to have an accurate scale to make everything to, so I looked at common scales used in miniatures in case I need to buy anything already made. I was hoping to be able to use 1/72 scale, but the barrow I was trying to make was too big, so I settled for 1/144, a common scale for model aircraft. After deciding, I just divided the barrow measurements by 144, and marked it roughly on the foam.

I wasn’t sure how to go about shaping the foam, as having to use a hot wire cutter at Bower wasn’t ideal as I couldn’t cycle with it. I ended up using a palette knife to saw the foam, something that sounds ridiculous, but actually worked incredibly well. The extremely thin edge meant that it was very sharp, and didn’t crumple up the foam like all the other knives I tried. It was a tiring and messy process however, and there definitely would have been an easier way. After cutting the rough shape, I plastered over the top. I began with the palette knife, but ran my finger over the plater when it was drier to create a more realistic texture on the ground.

Once the plaster was dry, I painted it with a variety of paints. Any areas that were rough I just used grey and brown paint to make rough rocky areas, something that was present on the actual barrow. After painting, I put down a layer of watery PVA on the areas that I wanted to apply grass to, and used the applicator I made to create a fuzzy green field. I sprinkled down miniature train track ballast as small pebbles and rocks, before misting the diorama with a diluted PVA spray to set everything in place. Finally, I used the same tiny ballast pebbles mixed with brown paint, to create a dark rough paste, which I put on the sides of the diorama to emulate a crosssection through the earth.

Overall, the process of making a diorama has been really enjoyable. It was fun to come up with creative solutions to problem to get good end results, something that there seems to be a lot of with miniature making. It wasn’t too difficult either, which was good. Some things do take some practice, like working with the plaster before it dries, and getting the grass to apply properly. I watched a lot of YouTube videos beforehand, listening to people’s various tips on making environments, and I think it paid off. The whole process took about four days, putting an hour or two in each day.

A lot of my process was very experimental however, so I’m sure it could be done in much less time.

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Shooting - Initial Studio Experimenting

My initial studio work has actually happened much later than I would have hoped, partially due to the time taken for me to create things, but also due to the amount that the studios were booked. As someone who previously almost never used studios, I had no idea just how far in advance you have to book. I have a lack of studio experience, which is why I really wanted to get in to do some experimenting, and discover what techniques and lighting setups I get on with. I have a good understanding of the nature of light and flash though, so it’s not too hard for me to pick up techniques.

The first thing I noticed when I went into the studio was that the infinity cove floor was disgusting and marked, due to people not removing their shoes when using it. Digital manipulation means that this isn’t always a huge issue, but it stops me from making any manual C-Type prints in the darkroom from negatives, as all the images would have disgusting brown stains all over them.

I set up the coffin to shoot first, which took a couple of hours. It wasn’t particularly difficult to shoot, but it took a while for me to get a setup I was happy with. At first I was experimenting with having the coffin cast a long shadow towards the camera, but this just didn’t work, as I couldn’t find a way to do it without having a light in the shot. I took some images with the shadow being cast backwards, but the shadow reveals the shape of the infinity cove, which I’m not so sure I like the look of. Setting the lights up for casting a very hard deep shadow can also introduce the problem of hotspots in the image, which can be difficult to solve and throw off the weighting of the image. I ended up with a fairly soft three-light setup, allowing some soft shadows to cast around the coffin to distinguish it from the background, while not becoming distracting. The setup still had some amount of

colour gradation or hotspotting, but it was subtle enough that I think it adds to the image rather than detracting. The light is brightest in the top left, hitting the coffin hardest in that area, and almost giving the impression of midday sunlight due to the direction. The amount of light gradation I ended up with strikes a good balance in my opinion, as too much white would just make the image completely flat. The setup in question is shown at the bottom of the right hand page.

With this project ending last year with the name Golden Coffins & Gappergennies, a white coffin naturally throws a spanner in the works. Despite this, I wanted to shoot it anyway, as I wasn’t going to get another opportunity to shoot it white, as it was a coat of primer before I painted the coffin gold. I’d rather have to potentially change the name, rather than miss a chance to experiment. I like how the images turned out, but if it fits well enough thematically to go into my final ESP2 submission remains to be seen. I think it’s great for the ESP1 submission however, and I’ve learned what lighting setups work if it comes to shooting in again in future when it’s gold.

Moving onto the diorama, something that I don’t think was as successful overall, for a variety of reasons. For a start, the dirty floor that I talked about previously became a huge issue, as the diorama had to be close to the camera, but the large studio tripod would damage the studio floor, so the diorama had to be placed close to the middle of the room, where the floor was at it’s worst. This meant that any photos with the floor in needed a massive amount of cleaning up , so much so that the texture of the floor would start to lose it’s structure. Ignoring that issue, shooting such a low down object introduces a set of it’s own issues. I became restricted in the angles that I used, and the tripod became immensely cumbersome which meant I ended

Leaving the plane of focus

Ugly Halos

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up resorting to hand-holding. Being on the ground is useful for the amount of space you have for the lights and to move around however, so it’s a mixed bag overall. A tabletop studio seems like it may be best in future, though in that situation it’s will be harder to get up as high.

The sync cable for the Mamiya Leaf was missing at the time of my shoot, which meant I was relying on the small camera screen to asses my images. There were some technical issues that arose in part due to this. My lighting pattern was one of them. I was using a soft box as the main light source, but the angle and location of the light meant that there were some small shadows. Unlike an intentional shadow, they were very small, soft shadows that halo around the base of the diorama. This is actually a massive issue in my opinion, as the object gets a muddy glow around the bottom, almost making it look like it’s floating, or been badly superimposed. I’ll have to be very aware of this to make sure I don’t make the same mistake in future.

The other technical issue I has was with depth of field. Once you get to macro-levels of shooting, DoF becomes razor thin, especially with a large sensor like the Mamiya Leaf has. The tiny screen meant I actually couldn’t tell this, and some of my images were so shallow in DoF that they suffered as a result despite me stopping down the lens as much as I could. I still got some photos I was happy with however, such as the image below.

I think the reason that I like this image is because it doesn’t have the backdrop in it. While I created my diorama intended to be shot completely in view, I don’t think that it can work with a

white backdrop. It feels a little too sterile, even for an archive image, and imposes some restrictions on lighting. One of these restrictions is the use of different colour or temperature lighting.

This affected the shoot directly, as I tried using colour gels, but as the gels completely change the blank white shade of backdrop, it just looks like a colour cast or technical error, rather than just changing the shade of the object. The images that don’t contain the white backdrop don’t have this issue, and the colour can be changed and keep the image looking good. The close-up image of the top of the diorama demonstrates this, with the cool lighting making the scene appear more like night-time, with a blue moonlight looking colour-cast.

I used some medium format film as well as the Mamiya Leaf, such as in the image below and in the bottom left. I think in future I may continue to use the Leaf however, as the difference in minimal, but film often has issues such as lines running through the negative, and other various blemishes from scanning or processing that really show up on such a plain backdrop.

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Barrows and Landscape Phenomenology

When I was looking for landscape theory books for my dissertation, I took out a book called A Phenomenology of Landscape by Christopher Tilley. It wasn’t until I got home and started reading it, that I realised that it applied far more to my ESP1 project than it did my essay. Here’s the blurb of the book, to give you an idea of what I mean: “This book is an extended photographic essay about topographic features of the landscape. It integrates philosophical approaches to landscape perception with anthropological studies of the significance of the landscape in small-scale societies. This perspective is used to examine the relationship between prehistoric sites and their topographic settings. The author argues that the architecture of Neolithic stone tombs acts as a kind of camera lens focussing attention on landscape features such as rock outcrops, river valleys and mountain spurs in their immediate surroundings.

These monuments played an active role in socializing the landscape and reacting meaning in it.

A Phenomenology of Landscape is unusual in that it links two types of publishing which have remained distinct in archaeology: books with atmospheric photographs of monuments with a minimum of text and no interpretation; and the academic text in which words provide a substitute for visual imagery. Attractively illustrated with many photographs and diagrams, it will appeal to anyone interested in prehistoric monuments and landscape as well as students and specialists in archaeology, anthropology and human geography.”

I’ve never come across phenomenology before, so it’s good so have a fresh theoretical perspective to look at my project through. Analysing landscape from an anthropological point of view makes perfect sense for barrows and ancient earthworks, as they’re a piece of land that has an undeniable, measurable connection with humans and society. Not only in the now, but back thousands of years, with archaeological discoveries giving us an insight into how the landscape was interacted with by people living at the time - something not measurable with many landscapes.

Phenomenology is not a measurable approach of unified field of thought, and thus is hard for me to describe or even fully understand. For me, from what I’ve read, I think about phenomenology as a sort of study of experiences, how different things in the world are acted on, and act on one another, and the experience or ‘structure of consciousness’ that creates.

The author, Christopher Tilley, describes some different ways to approach the idea of space, beginning by describing the concepts of ‘new geography’ and ‘new archaeology’. These approaches view space as a sort of abstract container. Space as a meaningless box for activity to take place in, divorced from any meaning and viewed as a neutral area. Tilley describes the reason for the popularity of the approach, stating “The attraction of this perspective was, no doubt, its purity and simplicity and the potential it offered for comparative studies of the organization of artefacts, sites, populations, and flows of information and exchange across regions of landscapes.” This approach is great, and obviously necessary, but it’s clearly missing out on a lot of information about a space just because said information is harder to quantify. Tilley next describes another point of view for reading space, saying “The alternative view starts from regarding space as a medium rather than a container for action, something that is involved in action and cannot be divorced from it. As such, space does not and cannot exist apart from the events and activities within which it is implicated.” This discourse is an interesting and powerful way to approach the idea of barrows, as they’ve existed and persisted through so many different types p.g 28

of interaction, which can be though of as each being separate spaces. It’s this thinking that forms the basis of being able to understand phenomenology in landscape.

“Space is socially produced, and different societies, groups and individuals act out their lives in different spaces. Space in itself no longer becomes a meaningful term. There is no space, only spaces. These spaces, as social productions, are always centred in relation to human agency and are amenable to reproduction or change because their constitution takes place as part of the day-to-day praxis or practical activity of individuals or groups in the world.”

I’m starting to get a real idea about how much of my theory is beginning to fit together. The measured, scientific approach of new geography and new archaeology is much the same as the traditional archive. The way the alternative view attaches spaces to events, works as a critique of the sort of status quo of cataloguing space, the same way that an approach like new museology critiques the classic museum authority. This phenomenological approach to landscape also harks back to previous things I’ve read, specifically Robert Smithson’s Entropy and the New Monuments. Smithson talks about how artworks can become a part of time, rather than a part of space. Barrows as spaces do the same thing - the location creates a ‘space’ any time it’s interacted with, which aren’t just a piece of space, but are also intertwined with a piece of time.

This has me thinking about all of the different, more memorable spaces that have existed around the barrows I’ve looked at, and how that could have an impact on the work I create. A barrow has existed in numerous states of place - an empty area before the earthwork was constructed with minimal interaction. As a space with people physically creating the structure. As an atmospheric, dark ritual space as the burial is complete. As a site of discovery and excitement as the barrow is excavated - or robbed. As a powerful monument, a place of peace and solitude, and a place to take the dog for a walk. These are all different slices of time, where the ‘space’ has been created by the social interaction that’s happening there. The cut-away diorama I’ve created is an interesting metaphor for this, with the little chunk of reality almost being a physical representation of one of these spaces that has previously existed. There’s actually potential for me to take miniatures one step further, and make fictional dioramas based or inspired by some of these events, like a ritual taking place or a barrow being unearthed. I even came across excavation photos in the Dorset Museum that I could use for reference.

I don’t have the time in this module to read this whole book, but I think I’m going to try and read the entire book over the Christmas period, as it seems like it could be a key text for me discovering way to approach my subject.

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Shooting - First Landscapes with Coffin (1/2)

Not long after shooting my coffin in the studio, I got a lift down to Dorset to explore some barrows and continue painting it. Painting the coffin at university turnout to be a huge hassle, and transporting it around was almost impossible, so it made sense to leave it with a family member, as I’d be using them to drive me to location anyway.

I was staying with my father in Dorset and using his garage to paint the coffin in. I gave it a couple of coats of metallic gold, but left it a bit patchy. The washy gold paint job actually looks good in my opinion, and sort of encapsulates the myth, golden from a distance, but becomes apparent that it’s not up close. I imagine the same would hold true upon discovering the actual truth, if any, behind much of the barrow mythology.

I first tried shooting the coffin in a domestic setting in a garden with houses around. It’s interesting, and I think it works as an intriguing single image, but it’s very jarring when put in the context of the landscapes for this project that I made last academic year. It’s a much closer sort of shot compared to what I generally shoot, which is usually either a landscape from a distance or vantage point, or a close up textural shot. These were framed more like an environmental portrait, but with a coffin in place of a person, so they feel very different in style.

The rest of my shoot was more like my regular style of shooting, and went rather well. As I was leaving my dad’s home I looked across the car park and noticed a recognisable lump up on the hill in the distance. I don’t actually know if it’s a barrow or not, but I’m not sure that it even matters. I could find out easily, but I don’t know if I want to. By the time I’d set up the tripod the sun and gone behind the clouds. I got a couple of shots, but then as I was packing back up, the sun came out again. I scrambled to get another shot with better light before I lost it again (photo on the next set of pages.) As I didn’t want the light to go again I think I opened up the aperture and so I could shoot hand-held at the cost of some depth of field. I plan to crop these images to a 5:4 ratio to fit seamlessly with my large format images anyway

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though, so I don’t think it’s a problem.

The location I actually wanted to go and shoot was Eggardon Hill, a nearby Iron-Age hill fort. My mother pointed out that it was a strange coincidence that I wanted to shoot my gold coffin there, as it’s where we scattered my grandmothers ashes, and she was obsessed with gold and gold jewellery. By the time we actually got there it was beginning to get dark, and that was before the time it took to carry two cameras, a small coffin, and an enormous tripod up some fort ramparts. I identified a scene I liked the look of, and took a photo before introducing the coffin into the scene. Despite me already liking the scene, seeing it beside the same shot with a coffin in makes it seem very dull without. The landscape itself is filled with form, shapes in the background, bumps from the earthwork, and a track for the eye to follow. It lacks an actual subject though, or any part of the landscape significant enough to engage with as a viewer. The flat space in the centre of the frame seems like a blank canvas to put a subject in - probably why having the coffin there looks so good.

After taking the two photos of the scene with my medium format and finishing the film, I moved over to the large format to take a couple of slides. I took a shot of the same scene, hoping for the winning shot to be with the 5x4, which thankfully it was. With the bit of additional time it took to set up the Toyo, it had gotten slightly darker, and with the added exposure time I needed after stopping down the large format lens, I was looking at a minute long exposure. I had an archaic 150mm lens that didn’t have a ‘bulb’ or ‘time’ setting, which meant to take a long exposure you had to hold the cable release before manually cocking the shutter. This carries a risk of shifting the camera and having a slight ghosting effect in light areas, but thankfully I didn’t have this issue, probably due to having such a heavy tripod. The light I’d lost between changing cameras was a worry, as once all light is lost it’s almost impossible to capture detail in dark places without light painting. Thankfully I just about managed

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Shooting - First Landscapes with Coffin (2/2) to beat the darkness, though admittedly just by a hair. After my initial exposure was one minute, when I set up for the next exposure, I was shooting completely blind, as the ground glass was completely black, and the exposure I had to make was now four minutes. The exposure being so long meant that there was time for a car to come along and leave a trail of light through the frame, which, while I’m not really pleased about, at least adds another element to the image, as the composition itself has the same sort of lack of engagement that the last scene would have had without the coffin. That’s not to say that very plain, subtle landscapes aren’t something I like, but it’s just not the style I’ve been shooting this project in.

One huge upside to shooting in such dark conditions though, is the colour. Just like the moonlight-esque colours of the macro studio diorama I shot just before, the night time brings in dark, deep greens and blues, that isn’t only indicative of night time, but also reminiscent of some pastoral painting, and fits my personal imagination of the sort of nostalgic, magic

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picture of the British landscape. I love that I’ve ended up with this outcome, as the mood and colour palette of romanticised British landscape is a huge inspiration behind my visual style, the same sort of tones and landscapes that you might see in work by someone such as Jem Southam or John Spinks.

Despite only shooting one medium format roll and two large format slides during this shoot, I’m very pleased with my outcome, and it’s given me a good idea of how my coffin can fit into the landscape.

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The Archive.

From very early on in this project, I’d been envisioning the finished body of work as something using various types of photography, like landscape, still life, old archive photography, and potentially even physical items. For a long time, however, I wasn’t exactly sure why I wanted to do this. I wanted more than just landscapes, but I felt that it would seem disjointed and clunky to view, more like two separate projects. Like I’ve stated before, I wanted my project to amass various types of work or photography until it descended into a sort of organised chaos, at which time it would start to make more sense and become more interesting for a viewer.

Early on in the book Staging the Archive, Ernst Van Alphen talks about Jacques Derrida’s book Archive Fever, and the idea that everyone has, on some level, a compulsion towards archiving. I can personally attest to this, as I’ve always gained immense satisfaction out of archiving things in many different forms, and half the time I don’t even realise it. Thinking back on it now, there are a lot of examples I can think of - When I first began digital photography, I was shooting absolutely all the time, taking my camera everywhere I went. With the date and time set, over a few years my collection of images grew to about 700GB, all categorised in Lightroom by year, with subsections for the month and day. The larger my collection grew, the more pleasure I somehow gained from it. I’ve started to do the same thing with my negatives, out of pleasure as well as necessity, though it’s much more effort to record exact dates, so recording by season will suffice. Archiving in my life crops up in other ways as well, such as amassing a variety of weapons and armour in a video game, before meticulously sorting them into specific containers. This certainly isn’t a traditional or ‘true’ form of archiving, but personally I think that people’s collection of things generally goes into a couple of different categories - Archiving, and Hoarding. Hoarding is less about collecting and sorting, and more of a reluctance to ever dispose of things. Archiving on the other hand strikes me as an actual activity, and an enjoyable one, such as having a personal library or a large collection of shoes. Getting back on topic, I agree with the fact that everyone is compelled to archive, some more than others, and some in different ways.

It’s no surprise then, with my tendency to try and amass and organise, that it was subconsciously manifesting in my project from an early stage. Almost all documentary photography work is a sort of archive, but I’m going further than that, and wanting to use influences and create work through a variety of discourses. Now that I’ve figured out some of my own drive behind my approach, I have to delve deeper in what I can use the archival approach for, and how I can most effectively utilise the format to make a piece of work that deserves attention.

After doing some reading, I had a bit of an epiphany in regards to this, and have begun to view my work in a completely different way. I started by reading an article in the Routledge journal Mortality, about the treatment of human remains in British museum collections. The article is mostly concerned with the remains of oppressed or previously oppressed peoples, the ethics of having their almost illegal seeming remains in British museums, and the act of repatriation, returning these remains to the culture or group of their origin. While I can’t apply this directly to my work, it has made me think about burial as well as the treatment of remains and culture in regards to their age.

In the article and interview results within regarding repatriation, there seems to be a general consensus that having any foreign remains from the past 150 or so years is already questionable, and remains that have been gathered via a group being wronged should most definitely lead to their return. While this may seem like it has no relevance to ancient burial as most barrows would presumably contain Pre-Ancient Britons, this isn’t always the case, as demonstrated by the Ridgeway Hill Viking burial pit, containing 54 decapitated Scandinavian Viking bodies and 51 p.g 34

heads. This is a mass grave, not a barrow, but the point remains - should those remains be returned? Who would they even be returned to? I suspect the answer to this would always be a no, and I think the reason for this is that due to the age of the remains, no culture from today really has much of a connection to those killed. As the article puts it: “It is thought that negative historical experiences have created lasting emotional damage for communities today, which may be repaired by return, or further damaged without.”

I doubt that there’s somehow a Viking community around today that feels harmed by the mass execution of their ancestors by the Anglo-Saxons. So if remains aren’t connected to a culture that’s still perceivable, do they somehow lose some sacredness, and simply become an object to be stored in an archive? It’s a difficult question, because on some level it feels unethical to excavate every barrow before putting the remains in a regular graveyard or a museum, but at the same time, no-one is being wronged, there is literally no one to be wronged. The culture at the time would have found it despicable I’m sure, but it seems reasonable to accept that modern knowledge is perhaps more important than the sanctity of an ancient culture that no longer exists. At the same time, a powerful earthwork containing a prehistoric person of import can produce an almost tangible sense of power, something lessened by the fact that they’ve just been removed and put somewhere else.

This subject gave me a lot to think about, but I’d feel that it’s not strong or related enough to be a driving force behind my work. When I got closer to the end of the article however, I came across a topic that I felt could be more relatable to my work, that being the archive itself. The article is talking about museums rather than the archive specifically, but the two are closely connected. The writer talks about the classic museum system being seen as objective, or ‘value-free’ and the debate surrounding this, stating “A substantial body of work developed that argued the emergence of museums in Western society occurred in specific historical circumstances and actively supports the dominant classes and groups maintaining the status quo as natural” I don’t know how I’d never considered it before, but yes, obviously museums aren’t just some objective body of knowledge, nothing ever is. Museums are curated for specific reasons, often I suspect to attract viewership, but especially in the past may have been more nefarious reasons, like picking and choosing what they would show in order to control the narrative of history, to benefit them in some way. This could be political and make a divide in cultural opinion, or push the views of the government or ruling authority. Like the writer puts in the article “Historical scientific analysis of human remains was used to identify and measure racial characteristics central in constructing the case of Aboriginal and Native American people as inferior.”

Times may have changed, but museums will still be influenced by those running them. The writer mentions The New Museology, a book and essays about museums and ideology, not simply criticising the museums feigned objectivity, but , as the writer Tiffany Jenkins puts it, the movement looks to “understand the meanings of museum objects as situated in social contexts and socially influenced rather than as having inherent value.” I think it’s important to understand this and apply it to my work, something that it seems to be tackling already. More modern cultural history has been very influenced by criticism, and is more open to a two way discussion about history. With ancient history, it seems like there is less thought about different approaches to archiving and presenting, and is still shown as a ‘thing’ in a specific period of time, disconnected from the relationship with more modern society. With my work and it’s focus on mythology, I’m critiquing this point of view almost through parody, purposely taking

pieces of fiction, and presenting them in the same manner that non-fiction historical artefacts would be presented.

Not only am I using mythology because it’s interesting in itself, but to critique the museum or archive, and ask whether perhaps these stories also hold a place in history.

As it turns out I’m far from the first to explore this idea, and in fact seems to be a common theme among archive styled artwork. I found this out through my reading of Staging The Archive, a book by Ernst Van Alphen. In just the introduction, the exact topic I’ve been starting to explore is already being discussed. Talking about archivists after the ‘paradigm shift’ of postmodernism, Ernst states: “They are no longer the passive guardians of an inherited legacy. They are now seen as active agents who shape cultural and social memory.”

This is something that mirrors the sentiment of the article I looked at previously, and I suspect the book will go into much greater depth as I move further through it. Ernst also mentions the ability for the archive to construct human identity through things like drivers licences, credit card receipts, and medical records. He gives an extreme example of this, with a tale about an east German archive categorising certain people as hostile or dissident. Due to this categorisation, the treatment they received hence forced them into actually being in the role that had been arbitrarily set for them.

This may be an example using people, but it shows how the mechanism of the archive can be used to construct an identity of a person or thing with extreme results.

Ernst goes on to begin talking about the archive in terms of art, and the rethinking of it. He states that 21st century art’s use of the archive wasn’t due to the digital revolution (and presumably the ease of now archiving or gathering archived material), and says “Instead it concerns a use of the archive as genre or model, which shapes the coordinates of the work of art.” He goes on to say that art using an archival format isn’t only meant to say something about the artwork, however, and also serves to explore the nature of the archive itself, stating “They use, explore and foreground the principles on which archival organizations of recollection are built.” This seems to be exactly what I’m beginning to explore, which makes this book a great reference, and I imagine there will be some good reference artworks talked about and analysed also.

This longer exert from the book describes the approach to the archive model very well, and is

exactly on point at describing what I’m going to be trying to do: “This use of the archive for artworks does not, however, imply an unreflective instrumentalization of the archive as artistic medium. On the contrary, these artworks interrogate the principles, claims, potentials and effects of the archive. They usually interrogate the self-evidentiary claims of the archive by reading it against the grain. The interrogation by these artists may take aim at the structural and functional principles underlying the use of the archival record; or it may result in the creation of another archival structure as a means of establishing an archaeological relationship to history, evidence, information and data - a structure that gives rise to its own interpretive categories” The points about the creation of another archival structure really strike true with me, as I’m beginning to look at putting together an archive or things, but in a way that would go completely against the process of a museum. I’m using an archaeological view, but looking at fabrications, interpreting them as fact, and archiving them in the same way.

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Objects in Burial in the Bronze-Age

In order to come up with ideas for objects to create and shoot in a studio setting, the most important thing to look at is going to be actual Bronze-Age artefacts. I am looking at myth, but it’s still vital to understand the objects that really existed.

This will let me recreate mythological versions of items that have clearly been inspired by an accurate knowledge of real world history, giving credence to the work. A project about the BronzeAge without actual knowledge of the time would be quite ethically questionable, as elements of the work that appear more non-fiction would effectively be spreading misinformation about history.

One tool that would have A Bronze-Age Palstave Chisel Head. been used through much of the Bronze-Age was the Palstave Chisel. This was a sort of axe head, with a thinner rectangular back-side with a stop in the middle. This would be mounted on a (presumably wooden) handle via the handle being split to go around either side of the copper alloy head. This would have then been hafted through a loop on the head with a material such as sinew to keep it in place.

Another way of attaching to a handle is socketing, where the head of a tool has a hole inside, for the handle to slot into. This obviously would have been more work due to the shaping of metal, but would have offered a better hold, allowing something like a A Palstave Diagram. spear or arrowhead to rely on friction to hold the head in place. Many arrowheads still use the same socketing method today. Axeheads, like the image on the right, still had a loop for hafting. I imagine this could have been to keep the head in place when dislodging the axe from something hard, such as a tree.

A Bronze-Age Socketed Spearhead.

The final common way to attach that I can find is using a Tang.

This is where a part of the head or blade extends, usually in the opposite direction, to then be attached onto a handle or grip. In the case of a spearhead or arrowhead, I believe it would usually be a ‘Tapered Tang’ or a ‘Push Tang’, a rod designed to stick into a gap in a wooden shaft, effectively the same as a socket, but in reverse. A sword could attach to a hilt the same way, but there are various different tang methods, used in various time periods, but also differing across geographical location. If I’m to make accurate recreations, or partially accurate but altered versions, I want to have objects clearly modelled after what would have existed in the Bronze-Age South West. Luckily, the huge presence of barrows in the region means that it’s not a massive challenge to find out what styles of tools and weaponry were used. BronzeAge sword styles varied a lot over Europe, though don’t seem to have as much within Britain. British swords generally had a p.g 36

leaf-style blade, like the swords shown on the right here. There were three main periods for swords: the ‘Knighton Heath Period’, the ‘Ewart Park Phase’, and the ‘Llyn Fawr Phase’. These were periods of time in the Bronze-Age, named after a ‘founder’s hoard’, where the finder of a significant hoard of materials would have the time period named after them. The swords here, apparently found in Scotland, will be from one of the latter two phases, around 800-700 BC. This Bronze-Age Leaf Blade Style Swords. was effectively the end of the Bronze-Age and start of the Iron Age, and barrows would have been less common. I believe most of the barrows I’ve been looking at in Dorset are from the very early Bronze-Age, so it’s unlikely they would have contained blades of this style. On the one hand you could say that such a detail really doesn’t matter, but on the other, a historian with knowledge of the time may see the barrows I’m photographing, the sword that I may have made, and clearly see that the two would have been up to a couple A Well-Preserved Late Bronze-Age of thousand years apart.

Socketed Axehead in a Modern Handle.

Generally I think I’d like my work to have an accurate depiction of history where it would make sense, like the general background, with any fictional elements either obvious, or not large enough to have a historical impact. While you could argue that this could make my work too easy to read at times, I want to have to make the viewer work to find narrative within the obvious myths, not always to work just to find them in the first place. Potentially, I could have nothing in the project at all have any historical accuracy, but I think this would just pull the work into complete obscurity, when the concept is obscure enough to start with. I have to explain what a barrow is to most viewers, and once that amount of historical information is given, it wouldn’t seem right to me to then have nothing more. There are older swords in the Knighton Heath Period around 1300-1200 BC, A Riveted Tanged Spearhead, Riveted but examples seem to Daggerhead, Crutch-Headed Pin, and Collar

Bronze-Age Camerton-Snowshill Type Copper-Alloy Daggers.

be incredibly rare. The best examples of weaponry as well as being the most accurate are probably the many daggers found, dating back to the early Bronze-Age. The early daggers are more crude than the later swords, though they’re still nothing to be sniffed at, and still wouldn’t be easy to make today. I could potentially make a recreation in fabrication, though I’m not sure whether I’d be better off making my rendition of an original, or of a modern day degraded example. I’m not sure which would be easier also, as I imaging shaping metal accurately isn’t an easy skill to learn. There’s also the issue of how to mythologise my creation, as a recreated sword alone may just confuse people about whether I’m using any real artefacts, which I don’t think is a very good idea.

Something that I think would be easier to create and mythologise is ceramics or beakers. Not only would this be easier for me to make due to the primitive appearance of many beakers, but would be fairly easy to implant myths into through engraving and Bronze-Age Bell Beaker Found with a marking, shape, and colour.

Woman’s remains in Wales.

Beakers actually have a lot of history, including migrations, beaker culture, and urnfield culture.

I’m going to look into this at greater depth another time, as it’s a huge topic, and there are some other links I’d like to make to the whole subject of ceramics.

Jewellery is something that wouldn’t make any sense to avoid looking into, as jewellery was, and is, deeply symbolic and ritualistic, A Bronze-Age Beaker from Spain. arguably more so than anything else. Just think about the persistence of the wedding band and wedding ritual to this day. Jewellery was just as symbolic, if not more, in the Bronze-Age, and was often buried with those important enough to warrant a barrow. A common material used in necklaces was amber beads, though occasionally gold was used, such as in

An Early Bronze-Age Gold Lunula Found in Ireland.

the golden lunula below. The distinctive crescent moon shape already conjures myths in my head. Gold working isn’t really possible for me, obviously, but gold fits thematically within the work I’ve done so far and is heavily involved in legends. The metallic gold paint I have could be re-used to paint a necklace perhaps. The prevalence and significance of gold isn’t just noticed by me, and the Wiltshire Museum actually offers a gold and

silver pendant with a replica of the golden lozenge that was found in Bush Barrow, overlooking Stonehenge.

This could be a good object to photograph or display, demonstrating the cultural significance of gold, and how it’s powerful and ritualistic enough to warrant people wanting a replica of a piece with an unknown meaning. Unfortunately I don’t have £110 to spend on a necklace.

A common and more naturally ritualistic A Golden Lozenge, Belt Buckle, and item found in Bronze-Age Copper Dagger from Bush Barrow, Part of the Stonehenge Complex in Wiltshire. burial was Antlers. I’m not sure what the exact reasoning behind this was, but I imagine it could have been as a sort of offering to a god, or perhaps a trophy of the buried person’s best hunt. There’s a lot of speculation about prehistoric belief in an afterlife, with items such as trophies and well crafted tools or weapons being buried alongside individuals as a way for them to take them with them. Some antlers were actually found

in 2016 on a beach in Wales. These weren’t part of a burial, but what it reveals, is that they seemed to have turned completely black, including the skull. Not only this, but these antlers were found under a meter of water, and the story about them in an online magazine was accompanied by a folk tale about a town that now sits underwater. It definitely has some basis in truth, as there actually once was an ancient forest in that location, proven by old oak stumps. A black skull and antlers is already a disconcerting sight, and something like this shot in the right environment or conditions could be a powerful image. It’s even made me think about portraiture. A mask of helmet constructed from antlers could work as a studio or environmental portrait, though it’s more than likely it would end up looking like a fashion shoot, so I think I’ll just stick to still life for now.

With all the information I’ve gathered about objects that may have been buried with important persons in the BronzeAge, I can let this knowledge float around in my head, to help me conjure up scenes, images, or ideas that I think would have a narrative that helps my project achieve its potential.

My information on these pages has come from various sources, mostly from online museum collections like the Wilshire Museum, Museum of London, finds.org.uk, and the British Museum.

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Beakers, Grayson Perry, Politicised pottery.

Pottery has actually turned out to have far more to offer than I first realised, and my research and experimentation into ceramics as a medium is seeming that it may be fruitful.

Bronze-Age bell beakers, which I talked about briefly when talking about objects in burials, have been found on many occasions, all over Europe, and make up much of the archival material from the time. Just like I’m starting to toy with ideas surrounding the archive, like critique and re-purposing, other forms of publication or work are able to do the same. While researching trying to find archived examples of Bronze-Age bell beakers, I came across an article by the Daily Mail Online that serves as an extreme example of how historical records can be presented in a certain way to push an agenda.

The story that the Daily Mail Online is reporting on is a fairly simple one - Beaker Culture moved around or expanded across Europe and into Britain, and recent DNA testing suggests that Beaker Culture grew and the native (at the time) population dropped. What the paper presents is generally just history, and by most people isn’t a topic that carries thoughts of bias. The Bronze-Age is so disconnected from the current day that there’s generally not much to gain from a bias on the subject. The Daily Mail however, has taken what would have just been a piece of information and a theory, and transmuted it in such a way to apply a modern anti-immigration sentiment to ancient history. The article carries the same ‘us versus them’ approach that is used in the modern immigration debate. In this situation though, rather than being anything relevant to life, the article is talking about the ‘Immigrant group’ of ‘intruders’ that forced out the ancient British farmers. It’s such an arbitrary thing to politicise that I couldn’t help but laugh. Even most of the comments on the article were making jokes about the topic, like “Blinking immigrants! We don’t want their beakers!” There were also some more extreme views however, such as one comment: “That’s nothing, watch what happens when the Mohommedans breed themselves into the majority........they’ll happily take Britain back to the stone age.......” This might not seem directly relevant to my work, but it’s a potent example of how archive material can be politicised and attached to a

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point of view.

After seeing this, I was struck by the massive similarities between the discussion around Bronze-Age beakers and Grayson Perry’s Brexit Vases. It’s a completely different approach, but it has me thinking about how I could personally augment pottery to connect to the idea of mythology or a critique of the archive. Perry’s vases use a pictorial depiction on the vase itself, as a way of mixing the approaches of pottery and painting, illustration, and other visual media. There’s also the huge social element due to the topic, and the interaction with people as a way to decide what to depict. In my case I’d most likely be mixing pottery with photography, with the photographic element changing how the ceramic is viewed from a installation setting to a print one. I’d lose control over this element if I displayed a ceramic work as an installation however, which has made me thick perhaps I should try and incorporate another element to put a sense of my narrative in the physical work. The way I may use an installation could potentially solve this issue anyway - something as simple as what’s used as a podium, how the work is described, etc.

I don’t think I’d want to put anything too pictorial on my pottery, but rather keep it more similar to actual Bronze-Age beakers, perhaps with deviations in shape or pattern to make it more relevant to mythology. While Perry’s pottery is always very visual, shape is also an element he plays with. I’m not sure whether shape played a significant role within his Brexit work, but it certainly did with the work shown below: A huge ceramic phallus that talks to masculinity and gender bias in the banking industry. I certainly wouldn’t be taking it to such an extent, but the work shows how ceramic works can play with shape while still adhering to some of the rules of traditional pottery forms.

I’ve gone on to create a simple, small bell beaker inspired by the sorts of beakers I’ve seen discovered in Bronze-Age burial, the same sort talked about in the Daily Mail Article. I was working with what I had, which was some air-drying clay and no tools. It also would have been more suitable for me

to use a terracotta clay, but that wasn’t something I had access to at very short notice. I had to get a beaker made very quickly, as it was approaching my studio slot and there weren’t any others free before the end of the project.

I have almost no experience with pottery, so there was a steep learning curve to figuring out how to shape effectively. Next semester I’ll be looking to use some of the university ceramics facilities to try and make larger and more intricate pottery, but I purposely avoided it this semester as I didn’t want to spend a huge amount of time on what’s still an experiment at this stage. I enjoyed making a beaker inspired by Bronze-Age pottery, as it meant I had no need for a potter’s wheel, and could end up with a very crude result, and it still be a success due to the nature of what I was using

as inspiration. I spent an evening with some clay, shaping it into the shape of a beaker just using my hands. The softness of the material made it quite difficult to get it to hold it’s shape properly, so I had to have a thicker bottom than I did the top.

It wasn’t a huge issue, but from the appearance of BronzeAge beakers they appear to be thinner, so it could be a case of using different materials.

After making the beaker I was thinking about how to decorate it. Bronze-Age beakers generally have a lot of intricate decoration all over them often with diagonal patterns.

At this stage, not only was I not confident that I could achieve this successfully, but also, I wasn’t sure exactly what I’d gain from it. Obviously I needed something, as I wanted a degree of accuracy, but I felt that I could use engraving to somehow have a tiny nod to modern mythology. I actually ended up managing this, almost completely by accident.

I was sat with the beaker in my hand one day, a few days through the drying process so it was no longer soft enough to accidentally mould, but still soft enough to press into. There was a paintbrush beside me and so I decided to pick it up and use the end of the handle to press small circles into a circumference on the outside of the beaker. I was interested in finding a way to use circular shapes, as they seem to almost never appear in bell beakers, so I was interested to see what I’d end up with mixing the shape of a bell beaker with a completely different engraving style, as a way of making flawed archive material. After I’d put the indents in the beaker, I immediately turned it over and noticed how much it resembled a sort of childish stereotype of a UFO. This was so strange and exciting, as just a day or two before, I’d been shooting my gold coffin up on Eggardon Hill, an Iron-Age hill fort. The place is very famous in local mythology for UFO sightings, with multiple accounts of seeing lights in the sky, and queues of cars stalling as they pass by. This strange coincidence was something I really wanted to play with, and has spawned even more ideas. When I went into the studio to shoot my work (something I’ll talk about separately) I shot the beaker both upside-down and right side up. Upsidedown is perhaps a bit too obvious, but it’s made me want to make more pottery, perhaps with other hints toward mythology that most people wouldn’t pick up on. I’ll certainly be making more ceramic works next semester, likely at university as I’ll have more time to work. p.g 39

Construction - Making a Second and Third Diorama

The first diorama that I made was very successful in my opinion, but the skills I picked up when constructing it gave me new ideas about what I could accomplish, and made me think I could an even better job. I decided I wanted to make some of the Bincombe Bumps, a barrow cemetery up on the hilltop that I could see from my old house, and the first barrows I ever researched. There’s a very distinctive set of three small barrows that sort of melt together into one, that I photographed last year. Of course, like before, I looked in Dorset Barrows, found the measurements of each, and scaled down to 1/144th size, and marked them out on a foam base, allowing for them to overlap somewhat like the real environment. I’d learned from last time, and instead of carving into the foam, I used air drying clay to build up from the base.

It was important that I did as well, as the foam I was using this time was slightly thinner than before, so if I’d carved away, the cross section ground element would be thinner than the last

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one I made. The clay worked well for shaping, though it does add a fair amount of weight to the model. After this, the process was exactly the same as before - plaster, paint, grass, decorations.

Rather than just making the landscape like I did last time, I decided to use some of the things I’d been thinking about through talking to people and research, and make up a fictional scene based off a real event. Undoubtedly the most distinctive photograph I found in the Dorset Museum archive, was one of a curled up skeleton in a excavated barrow pit. This could be the same barrow, though I’m not sure. I do know that it would at least be in a very close vicinity. I was thinking about what I’d read on phenomenology and the ‘space’ that existed at that time, the photograph being taken, and how that social interaction with the land differed to when I visited the location, or when I viewed it from a window or on the ground. I decided to try and take that piece of historical space, fictional and sensationalise it, and put it into a diorama.

Not only is it interesting visually, but it explores the ideas of phenomenology, as well as beginning to critique the form of the archive. I had some small 1900s style figurines specially 3D printed to use in the diorama. At such a small size, he wasn’t easy to paint, but I actually did a very good job. I’ve really tried to pay a lot of attention to detail, and chose a model of a man in a official looking uniform, with a clipboard in his hand, as if he’s taking a record of what’s inside. I’m extremely happy with how the diorama turned out, I think it’s to a very high standard, and it didn’t even take me that long, only a couple of days. The fictional element not only makes the environment much more intriguing for a viewer, but adds space for me to make use of light differently, such as using the man to cast a long shadow on the grass.

As soon as I was done what that diorama, I immediately got on with making another. I’d bought enough foam for three, so I wanted to make and shoot three separate dioramas in this module. The next barrow I made was the Culliford Tree Barrow, not much more than a mile or two away from the last. Again this is a barrow that I’ve personally visited and photographed. This barrow perhaps has even more phenomenological spaces associated with it, as sometime after being constructed and used as a barrow, it apparently became a local beacon, a meeting place for the ‘Culliford Hundred,’ all those that lived within the area at the time. This falls into the realm of mythology, but isn’t far-fetched like other tales, and could easily be true. The barrow has a lip around the bottom with huge trees growing the whole way around, and some more in a half circle at the top. The trees are old and tall, but were clearly planted at some point. The trees are all living and despite their huge size, can’t have been planted in the Bronze-Age or anywhere close. It could have been that they were planted if and when it was being used as a beacon a few hundred years ago, as the trees would make it easier to spot. So not only does the barrow have ancient spaces, but it’s probable that it has other old but completely different spaces, and more modern spaces, as when I was there a class of school children was being taken up onto the barrow to learn about it. A strange mirror of past events.

The construction of this barrow was the same as the last, but perhaps even quicker in construction. Where my diorama process is still hugely experimental, I’m adding different sorts of elements with each diorama I make. I used my first miniature figure in the last one, and this was my first use of trees. I think I paid almost £15 for a pack of 57 tree armatures, an unbelievable price for some plastic, but unfortunately it was necessary. It’s possible to use real twigs as miniature trees, but I wouldn’t be able to at such a small scale. The tree armatures start off flat, and you have to bend and twist all the branches until you get them looking realistic and varied. I decided where I wanted the trees and poked holes for them in the plaster while it was soft. After resting all the trees in the holes, I noticed that with the bright white plaster it looked like a snowy landscape, which makes me want to explore that in future, perhaps somehow making the grass look snow covered. I wasn’t prepared to do this at the time though, as the plaster didn’t look like snowy ground up close, and I’d need something to make it appear like snow had collected on the trees. Perhaps a sort of cotton fluff would

work. I had to take a photo and move on though, as I’d already planned out what the diorama would look like. T painted the flatter ground green, and the barrow itself brown, which was has how appeared in real life. I used the same brown gravelly paste that I made before to apply a muddy texture to the ground, and I used the same thing to add a knobbly, less plastic look to the trees. I stuck all the trees in, and put some foliage on just one tree, as I want distinctive shadows from the trees branches when I shoot it in the studio. Not only this, but it gives the appearance that only one tree is alive and all the rest are dead, which seems slightly mythological, as if there is perhaps something underneath the tree keeping it alive. The trees are slightly shorter than they are in modern day reality, which to me makes it feel as if it’s a slice of the past, before the trees were the size they are today. I could look at populating it with some people in future, playing off the ideas of the beacon or the meeting point. I’ve enjoyed making both of these dioramas, and I think it’s strong for the project to contain more than just one example.

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Shooting - Barrows in Wales.

For my second landscape shoot, I decided to have an explore of some barrows in Wales, rather than down in Dorset does have an incredible amount of ancient earthworks, there are some good examples in Wales also. Obviously with the book I was using to locate barrows only applying to Dorset, I had to get information from elsewhere on their whereabouts. Thankfully, Megalithic.co.uk is an incredible resource in this department, and has a record of just about any ancient landscapes in the whole country.

Part of my reason for looking to Wales for areas was convenience, as difficulty in getting to Dorset means that I’d ultimately end up with much less shooting. This isn’t to say that Wales a sub-par replacement or something I didn’t want to do however - there’s pros and cons for expanding the area I’m shooting. The difference in the landscape between England and Wales is huge, and when put alongside my work from last year, builds up a much more varied picture of the landscape.

This could be seen as a double-edged sword though, as you could argue that this means the work loses some of its Dorset identity. While the landscape may differ vastly in shape, colour, and vegetation between England and Wales, I think the range of subjects that I’ve been shooting, landscape and otherwise, begin to look past the local visual identity of a place, and make many of the photographs hard or impossible to place regionally within the UK. So, while a strong link to Dorset within my work could be nice, I don’t think my work has really been using Dorset as an important contextual subject anyway, so also introducing Wales doesn’t change much.

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The landscapes I took on the shoot were a real success in my opinion. Like before, I shot just a single roll of 120, and two 4x5 slides. It might not seem like a lot, but I think it’s good practice - the less you shoot, the more time you spend taking in your subject, and the more time you put into thinking about your composure. The site itself is Crugyrafan barrow, and the top of the round barrow is actually the peak of the hill, around 1,800ft above sea level. The peak itself is convex though, so the peak doesn’t actually have any sort of view. To make use of the larger size of the 4x5 negatives I found some nearby points with a better view. The barrow is in a sort of national park area, and the closest parking spot is perhaps 3/4 of a mile down the hill. It’s not a particularly hard walk, though I did have to carry my huge cameras up. The atmosphere of the location was very different to Dorset, and I think the time of year was great for shooting too.

The yellows of the grass against the dark evergreen make for a gorgeous palette. Like any shoot of barrows I seem to do, I was stumbling across mythology everywhere I looked. One photo was of a load of fallen trees, and the next of a concrete fence post bottom that looks like a giant’s head, as if he’s climbed the hill to get to the resting place atop. The barrow (where the post is) wasn’t in great condition, but was a good shape, and even looked like it had a filled in cairn entrance, seen in the shot of the stacked up stones in the ground. I got some great images during this shoot, and I’ll be looking out for other burial and ancient sites to have a look at shooting or exploring over Christmas.

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Joan Fontcuberta, Nigel Shafran, Archive in Artworks.

The use of archival ideas in artworks is actually extremely widespread, and while many works that I’ve looked at and enjoy such as the Bechers, make heavy use of archival methods, I’ve never really connected them to the archive itself. While works from the Bechers or Ed Ruscha approach their subject in a way more akin to the traditional archive, others use a similar method to create work that reads more like a critique of it.

Joan Fontcuberta is perhaps one of the most potent examples of an artist that uses archival methodology, but makes works that couldn’t be further from truthful. His 1982 work, Herbarium, is a study of plants, except, none of them are real.

The description for the work reads as follows: “Fontcuberta elaborates on a botanist’s work, analyzing through conventional methodology a series of found objects.

Close to the photograph of the plant the artist specifies its localization, general characteristics, etc., combining real and invented data. The plants, supposedly true, are, as the artist mentions: “pseudoplants: small ephemeral assemblages constructed with industrial detritus, pieces of plastic, bones, plant and animal parts of a diverse sort, that I found wandering in the industrial outskirts of Barcelona.”

What Fontcuberta is doing here bears much resemblance to what I’m currently doing. He’s started with ideas of scientific discourse, combining actual data and plant pieces, with ideas of his own. He’s approached the work from a visually scientific and archival approach - consistent through all photos, well lit, with a long lens and from a parallel angle. The images perfectly replicate the visuals of a botanical study, with roots all the way back in cyanotypes. I’m doing a similar thing - shooting objects and dioramas in a way that makes them appear official and archival, appearing as an important artefact. In reality these items are meaningless in an actual scientific context.

I noticed that Fontcuberta has incorporated another archival idea into the work, perhaps by accident, perhaps not.

The prints are “treated lightly with selenium”, a process of toning

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prints as to make them into archival prints, as the selenium toning extends the longevity of the print, giving it more resistance to degenerative damage from things like light and heat. It may more common for artworks to be fixed with an archival toning process, but it does seem like it could be more than just a coincidence that the process mirrors that of an old scientific or historical print. I’d heard of Fontcuberta’s book Documentary Fictions before but couldn’t get hold of a copy to read. After seeing how relevant his work is to mine, I’ve ordered myself a copy to read through, as it does seem like his writings could prove invaluable to me.

Another artist blurring the lines between archive and fiction is Nigel Shafran, though his work couldn’t be further from Fontcuberta’s. Similarly though, the theme of a fictionalised archiving or documenting is persistent throughout their artistic career. Where Fontcuberta’s work explores that way that sciences that be fictionalised through his methodology, Shafran seems to catalogue and explore the mundane and the everyday.

While Shafran’s work practices archiving to the Nth degree, his works aren’t always that fictional, or not clearly so anyway, which adds to the mystery of many of his projects, trying to work out what’s stages and what’s real. Some of his works really begin to point this out, and his 2000 work Washing Up is a good example of this. The project is made up of fairly arbitrary photographs of what I assume to be Nigel’s kitchen, with washing up in the sink or the drying rack. Many of the images appear to be completely natural, and look like what you’d expect from a kitchen or sink full of washing up. Then you come across an image in the series, such as the one at the bottom of this page, and wonder what you’re even looking at. Whatever it is, it doesn’t appear to be an accident. With that in mind, I found myself looking through the images thinking about every small aspect of each image and the scenario surrounding them, beginning to wander what’s natural and what’s constructed.

For example, there are repetitive elements such as the photographs on the wall and the little purple plug socket monster or night light that come across as natural. Other elements such as a Christmas decorated wire and the placement of washing up begin to enter a place between reality and construction. The tinsel may have been placed for the photograph - but even if so, it wouldn’t surprise me if it stayed their all winter. For me, the series really breaks down the idea of truth in images, and puts forth the idea that even constructed imagery is a version of reality. The many menial constructed elements that I’m certain exist within the images blend with the less constructed archival elements of the series and create an image that simultaneously feels like life and a set. The washing up sometimes appears cleverly and precisely placed for that moment, all the while the small potted plant persists through the images, growing, moving.

This unclear blend of fiction and reality is a powerful idea, and works to criticise the photograph and the archive, questioning the authority of the image as well as archiving techniques and presentations. These ideas inspire and influence my work, even when the topic is drastically different. The same construction that Shafran may partake in by moving dishes around is similar to be positioning stones or greenery in a landscape, while the heavy construction of fake scientific material by Fontcuberta is like my idea of fake or folklore inspired Bronze-Age artefacts.

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Shooting - Final Studio Work.

My second and final studio session had a very different setup from the first, and was much more suitable for shooting dioramas and still life images. I used the tabletop studio instead of a full length, which generally made it a lot easier positioning the lights and the camera.

I picket out three backdrop colours that I though would suit an archival style: A light, non-vibrant green, a dark grey, and a cream. Realistically I didn’t expect to use them all, as it effectively means starting over. I began with the light green, but was running into a lot of issues at first. I didn’t want a soft, perfectly lit scene, as I’d purposely designed my dioramas with shadows in mind. I left the trees bare on one of the dioramas so that they would cast shadows of trunks and branches, rather than just blobs. The shape of barrows requires at least some level of shadow anyway, as having an evenly textured bump will begin to look flat if lot too evenly. I also felt that intentional hard shadows would put a bit of a twist on the traditional idea of trying to photograph without any ‘interference’.

The trouble came them, in trying to achieve hard shadows, without having huge hotspots of light in the image. Where the light was on the right side of the image as to cast a shadow, the right side of the backdrop was naturally much brighter, distractingly so. (Bottom left of this page.) I wasn’t really sure how to solve this, as adding an additional light on the other side to even the light seemed like it would just have the effect of eliminating the shadow. I first attempted to solve the issue by using a snoot, which I though had two potential usable outcomes. The first being that with the snoot up extremely close to the model, it would only light the diorama, and not the backdrop. I could then use another soft light to even lift the backdrop somewhat. This didn’t work, as the snoot had to be so close that it entered the frame. A thinner or more focused snoot would have worked, but I’m not sure where I’d get one. The second solution I thought of was to try and embrace the hotspot and extreme shadowed effect, and move the snoot far back enough to light the whole scene. This very nearly worked, but had almost the exact opposite problem of the last idea. The snoot couldn’t quite get far enough back to fill the frame with light, leaving two corners of the frame extremely dark. (Top right of this page.) Apart from this, I do actually quite like the image, and it makes me think of shining a flashlight through a forest, both due to the quality of light and the subject. The dark corners were a bit too much though, so I decided to look for an alternate method.

What ended up being the most successful, was actually a mix of a softbox, and a very hard tungsten light. The softbox kept the light fairly even, and I could use the continuous light to alter the amount of shadow cast from the diorama. The continuous nature of the light source meant that I could get an idea of what the shadows would be like before taking each photo, which sped up the process of achieving the results I wanted dramatically, as

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it meant less guesswork and blind shooting. The one downside to the tungsten bulb was the colour temperature, though this actually ended up very much in my favour.

As you can see in the image below, the tungsten light made the image extremely warm. It feels imbalanced, and the green backdrop becomes muddy and unattractive. As this was an error of temperature rather than actual light, it was an easy fix once put into Adobe Lightroom. Once I balanced out the colour, the backdrop became grey, rather than green. This was excellent, as I was finding the green backdrop to be too light, and once it was grey it appeared darker. Soon after I changed to the dark grey backdrop anyway, which I much preferred. Balancing the light also cooled down the green a lot, making the grass colour more similar to some of the landscapes that I’ve been making.

I moved on to some macro shots as I’d done before, removing the camera from the tripod and hand-holding for extra versatility. Even at f/22 or f/32, I wasn’t able to get too close due to the thin depth of field, but I didn’t have many issues compared to my previous shooting. I was able to get some topdown images even with the tabletop studio, though it did mean I had to stand on a chair. My attention to detail with things such as the painting of the man, the texture of the dirt pile, and the static grass pile really paid off, and helps the image look like a realistic scene with a miniature take.

Once I had results I was happy with, I moved on to shooting some more conventional still life, with the true dark grey background this time. I dropped the use of the tungsten light, and just used a very simple, single soft light source. It was soft enough that I didn’t even need a fill light or reflector, the backdrop was nice and even, and there were some soft shadows in roughly the same direction as the shadows in the diorama

images. I found that it was far easier than shooting the dioramas, and it didn’t take long for me to get results I was happy with. The idea for the bread as a still life image was spawned by an account I read in Dorset Barrows. It described the opening of a suspected barrow in 1650, and an extraordinary heat emanating from within ‘sufficient to bake bread.’ It was a myth that caught my attention immediately and gave me the idea to burn and shoot some bread. I purposely picked out a loaf that has a more home-made appearance, and I think the image will do its job in making people wonder.

I won’t reveal my meaning of the image, but rather let people make connections to the rest of the work themselves.

Even with such soft light, the loaf shot very well. The side facing light meant that all the details in the bread crust were exaggerated, and the burnt top became cracked and shiny, and the bright reflective highlight reveals this.

I tried a couple of different lighting patterns with the shadow cast in different directions, but the soft shadow at the back of the loaf was my favourite.

The beaker was perhaps slightly more difficult to shoot, as the round shape meant that shadows would form underneath. It was a balancing act between too much shadow and not enough, and some shadows would look intentional, and some would appear more like technical errors.

It didn’t take me long to find a good balance, and a resulting image that sits not only a photography and art genre, but also a historical and archival one.

I decided not to bother with any analogue photography this time, as I just didn’t think it was worth it. Something I found was quite common with analogue still life images was the amount of technical glitches I’d encounter. Analogue film often has problems with things like stripes through the images, subtle uneven exposure on the image, and other processing related faults. Usually errors are very minor, and made unnoticeable by busy scenes. With vast areas of the same tones though, such as having a lot of backdrop in an image, accentuates even the tiniest of discrepancies, and makes them a pain to fix. Film also means that you aren’t getting instant feedback on your images, so unless you are using both film and digital, images will be very hit or miss. Using both takes a lot of time though, and would mean that I didn’t get as much done in the time I had. I also

feel that due to the fairly neutral style that I use in my images, the visuals of the analogue landscapes and digital still lives can blend quite seamlessly together, especially because the subjects are so different that there’s no side by side comparisons to be made.

The editing process for most of the studio images was generally very small. There’s the matter of while balance and getting colours to match across the images and with my landscapes, though this was generally a small task. The only difficult part of editing wasn’t so much hard as it was tedious. As I was shooting stopped way down in order to retain a wide depth of field, all the muck on the leaf sensor shows up in the image. Just like errors with film, they show up clearly the images because of how flat the background is. This meant going through every image that I liked, and cloning out tiny hairs or specks of dirt and dust. It wasn’t the end of the world though, it was just a time sink.

Overall, it’s been a really great shoot, and I’ve definitely come out with results good enough for prints and final images. The next two pages have some more of the images from the shoot.

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Final Edit, Prints, Publication, and Audience.

The edit tutorial and process has been massively useful and important for me, and has helped me think a lot about the ways I can submit or present my work. I want a portfolio of prints as part of my final outcome, but the project will never be fully realised with prints alone. For this reason I’ve submitted a selection of prints, as well as a mock-up publication.

For my print selection, I went with 8 images, with the same or roughly the same edit from the edit tutorial session. I decided to print the images around A2 size, though not quite as wide, as 5:4 is narrower than the regular paper size. While A2 may be considered a cumbersome size to some, I was trying to think about the submission in a wider context, and how I’d want most viewers to consume the work. In my case, a publication may be purchased and interacted with at home, but prints would

be viewed in a gallery space. I chose A2, not only as a size to display on a wall, but as a good size to view a portfolio in a gallery. It’s not too large, as it will ideally be in a space where a viewer has room to handle a larger print. With enough gallery wall space, I could have framed prints at A2, along with larger A0 size images. I think A2 is a good size for print sales, as it’s not so small that people can’t see the detail in an image at a distance, but it’s not so big that people would be put off by not having enough wall space in their home, or money in their wallet.

I don’t know that I have expectations of print sales at this stage, but it’s something I’d like to aim for. Standardising my size now seems like a good idea, as I can add to the same body of work next module, and carry it all through to exhibition. My audience and context for this work really does sit in the gallery space and publication in my opinion. The work is very much situated within a fine art and historical context, and is going to interest viewers whose interest lies in these areas. As such, I think the gallery, the book, and prints, would be the way forward for this work.

The printing process almost went smoothly, but unfortunately not quite. I spent a lot of time and care editing the photographs for large printing, resizing, print-proofing and editing, and sharpening with the prints at A2 size on the monitor - in order to get an accurate representation of what the final print would look like. All but one of the photographic prints came out looking exactly how I wanted, but the print that came out badly was completely unusable in my opinion. The image in question, is the one directly left of this text. On the library print, the image looks okay, perhaps a little dark. The photographic print however,

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came out with huge, soft dark strips running vertically through the image. I don’t know why this happened, as on screens and regular prints it’s almost unnoticeable. It may be salvageable, but I don’t have the time to re-print right now, so it will have to remain in the publication mock only.

The image selection for the publication was slightly larger, at about 13 images from my work in ESP1, as well as 7 archive images that I gathered from the Dorset Museum during my last module. The archive shots are just low quality versions at the moment, but I plan to contact the museum to pay for some higher quality images in the future.

For the sequence for my publication, I first decided what images I wanted alone, which ones I wanted as a diptych, and which pages may have one images on a page and two on the other. I selected the images that were to go together through some level of association between the two. For example, the images below would have the coffin on the right page, and barrows on the left, at a sort of nod to an un-located barrow that supposedly contains a coffin. Other diptych pages contain things like excavation photographs along with my beaker, suggesting it may have been found within, an archive landscape beside a dioramas of the same location, and a skeleton in a pit, with a similar scenario in my diorama.

Once I had my image order all set up, I just stuck them into a sort of mock-up document or folder that I’d made earlier. This was a simple design, just 2 pieces of brown 300gsm card for the front and back, and thick ‘archive’ colour paper for the pages.

None of the paper is folded, but is all single sheets, meaning I had a lot of different ways to attach it all together. I bought things like paperclips, treasury tags, and other simple paper binding items. I decided on a simple plastic side-binder, and while I wouldn’t want it exactly the same for my ESP2 resolution, I think it is a good example of the sort of style I could go for.

I started to run with the idea of mythology alongside the sort of ‘official document’ aesthetic, but I figured that there was a couple of approaches I could take. I could make the publication seem very official and professional, purposely at odds with the mythology contained within. I still like this approach, but I think it would take longer to do a good job. With the time I had, I decided on a different approach - a faux official type file, that comes across like an important document, but also somewhat like the documentation of a conspiracy theorist, similar to the sort of vibe of Jack Latham’s Sugar Paper Theories. Not only did this make more sense due to the time I had, but it also opened up some interesting opportunities for how a viewer reads and interacts with the work.

Following the theme of a sort of belief and chasing of something thought of as fictional, I decided to buy a load of write-on overlays and a paint pen, to sort of annotate the images.

By doing this, I can provide information on a barrow or a myth, but a viewer has to work for it. There’s a lot of clear sheets with shapes or writing on them, but it’s unclear which overlay applies

to which image. In placing the sheets over images, a viewer may discover that I might be trying to say - or they might put it over a completely different image, and find something entirely different.

I believe this could be very enjoyable for someone consuming the work, as the of feeling of solving something can really bring fulfilment and excitement towards the subject. I could even include blank sheets and a pen for a viewer to interact directly.

Calling the idea gimmicky or over the top is a completely fair criticism, but I think that sometimes that’s acceptable. Think abut Stephen Gill’s Buried or other over the top book ideas out there. Sometimes an element of fun is what people want in a work, it’s a celebration of mystery, and can make a topic usually seen as very dry and scientific have more appeal to a wider audience. It’s certainly a divisive idea with niche appeal, but I think it doesn’t necessarily go too far, and the optional nature of the overlays doesn’t water down the photographs, but simply augments them, adding another way to consume and think about them. Even if it does seem over the top to some, I think an idea such as this could mesh well with the image I have in my head for my final ESP2 outcome - A sort of miniature fake museum of curiosities surrounding mythology. Overall, I’m very proud of my edits and outcomes for this work, both publication and prints.

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Evaluation

My work for this module has been continuing my work from last year, Golden Coffins & Gappergennies. It’s an exploration of

burial tradition and culture in ancient society, and the spaces that contained such things. I’m not only exploring these spaces with culture and history in mind but also folklore and legend. Barrows - ancient burial mounds, have many modern myths surrounding them, which have inspired my working, and some of which have inspired their own photographs. Whereas last year I was only exploring my topic through landscape photography, I’ve now introduced still life, photographing props of my own creation. These vary from small dioramas to Bronze-Age style beakers, and often also pertain to or are inspired by folklore.

The landscapes that I’ve shot during this module have been in Dorset and South Wales, on ancient sites that I haven’t photographed

previously. Some of these landscapes I visited due to their mythology, and some due to their physical appearance. I visited a Neolithic hill fort with masses of mystery around it, with stories dating back from the 1600s to today. A barrow I visited in Wales may or may not have specific mythology linked to it, but was my start of an exploration of the use of a vastly different landscape within my work. My landscapes are all shot on analogue film, specifically Kodak Portra 400. I make sure to use the same film stock for visual consistency, as it’s a part of my visual aesthetic. I’ve used a mixture of medium format film and large format slides, which has allowed me the versatility to shoot more images while retaining the ability take some photographs that are of a much higher quality, and blow them up to an extraordinary size. The downside to this is that the images are a different ratio, and the medium format images must be cropped to 4:5. The loss of detail is negligible for use in a visual format such as a book, but it means that your final result differs in composure to the image that you took.

The bigger difference on the work I’ve done on the project compared to last year has been my use of hand-made props and

studio still life, something I really haven’t done much of before now. I made three dioramas around a foot square in size. These were all scale models of real locations that I’ve explored and photographed, though sometimes with a twist somehow relating to a myth, my ideas, or my experiences. It was actually easier than I thought to start making miniature dioramas, and they didn’t require too much more than regular art supplies. I made a crude Bronze-Age style bell beaker from air drying clay, which became slightly embedded with a myth about UFOs. I also made a small coffin, around 1.3 metres in height with exaggerated proportions. I didn’t perform all of the construction, though I did paint it metallic gold. The idea of the golden coffin - half of the project title, was also inspired by a specific myth I learned of. My last ‘creation’ was a loaf of bread with a blackened top, once again inspired by a tale I read in a book on barrows.

I photographed all these props in a studio environment, something that needed a bit of getting used to, as I don’t use the studio all that often. I shot them in a variety of ways, but I was ultimately trying to create a sort of archive-esque photo environment. The reason for this is because my work has begun to expand its reach this year, and use certain visual approaches in order to enter a conversation in multiple different discourses. Previously, I was shooting landscape images surrounding myths without a real resolve, it was just a topic I found extremely interesting and hoped others would too. By using studio photography in an archival fashion, I’m not only giving the work more chance to actually express mythology, but also entering an existing discussion about the use of the archive and what it imposes. My work can then begin to comment on or critique the archive, and its use in conjunction with historical fact and fiction.

My final resolution for this module is a portfolio of large prints and an early mock publication. The prints are around A2 size, which I chose as they can be displayed on a gallery wall, in a portfolio, or sold as a reasonably priced print. They would struggle to hold the context of the project alone, however, which is why I think the work will be most successful in a gallery space, or alternatively, as a publication or book. The publication I’ve come up with expands on ideas around the archive but also has heavy themes of conspiracy or investigation. This could integrate seamlessly, or it could stand out and become intrusive. It’s a very early concept at the moment, so I’ll have to get some more opinions from others.

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My inspirations for this work have come from a wide variety of sources, some more directly, and some as a more passive or

aesthetic influence. My idea for dioramas formed naturally, but only after seeing the works of artists such as David Casebare and the Chapman brothers, did I realise the potential and extent I could use them to. My thoughts on the landscape have been informed by a range of landscape theory, and I’ve recently started exploring the approach of phenomenology. I’ve developed an understanding of the archive through writings of Ernst Van Alphen and works from artists such as Joan Fontcuberta. My visual style also draws from a huge pool of influences, from painters such as Constable and Turner to photographers such as Jem Southam and John Davies.

Like any work, my work for this project in this module isn’t perfect, which I generally find to be a good thing. There are some things I’d like to go over about the successes and downfalls of the work. Something I’m really beginning to solve in my opinion is the sort of muddled mess of ideas that this project was last semester. I had so many thoughts and ideas I was putting into the project, but I was struggling to put them together into a cohesive resolution. This time around with my exploration of the archive, the work now has other things to add to a discussion besides it just being an interesting topic. Admittedly, the project is still far from being fully formed and completely cohesive, but it’s come a long way, and it’s now in a state where I’m finding it much easier to explain the work to people and have them understand quickly. While I want the work to be mysterious and elusive to an average viewer, I need to be able to explain it to people, which I can now do much more easily.

Generally, I’m proud of my process this module, and I feel as though I managed to get a lot of meaningful work done in the time

I had. I started constructing objects very early on before I’d had tutorials and really figured my project out. I had high hopes that they were going to work, but I wasn’t sure exactly how everything would fit together. It actually turned out to be very important that I went out on a limb and starting making props early on, as once my schedule got busy it became much more difficult booking appointments in fabrication and the like.

I feel like a big mistake I made was not booking studio time early enough. While I’m perfectly capable of using a studio, I haven’t

made much use of them, which means I don’t have masses of experience. I was shooting subjects I’d never shot before, in a manner that was also new to me. Thankfully I’ve ended up with results I’m happy with, but my times in the studio were always very rushed, as I experimented with the lighting to try and get the results I wanted before I ran out of time.

I wish I could have done more reading on landscape and archive theory, but I simply found that I didn’t have the time. I was able to read bits here and there, exerts and important passages, but I don’t find it as enjoyable as just having the time to sit and read. Not being in a hurry allows me just to read slowly, and contemplate the ideas and their relationship to my work in a more relaxed and ultimately successful state. Over the Christmas break, I plan on trying to do a lot of reading, as I can immersive myself in a book much more successfully if I’m not having to take notes down every few paragraphs.

I’m very happy with my landscape images, though I do wish I could have gathered more. Only being able to do a few full-scale

shoots has left me feeling like there’s a slight lack of variety through my images. This will be mostly eliminated if put alongside my work last year, but it still would have been good to explore some more, as it’s fun as well as productive. This could have been putting too much on myself though, due to all the other work I was doing with studio and construction.

In my opinion, my final result is quite successful in the amount of time I had to do everything. Most of the images printed very well, and I think my publication concept has some potential moving forward. I’ve had an amazing time with the module, and I feel like I enjoy each more than the previous.

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