Untitled Thought- Seeking Silence
The title of my body of work originates around the idea of seeking silence in the natural world. The feeling that I am creating and exploring visually is from inside and therefore is an “Untitled Thought” it is open to interpretation and may differ from viewer to viewer. I want you to be able to make this work personal to your life, the events in it and the philosophy that drives you. For me, it is about exploring the natural world in a physical manner to open the spiritual silence from inside me.A form of meditation practice that I embark on when I am immersed in the natural world with my camera and thoughts. The title “Untitled Thought- Seeking Silence” empowers the audience to create their own meditation when they are prompted to seek for silence in the body of work that I have created. This notion of seeking for silence was truly inspired by the legend Erling Kagge who spent 50 silent days crossing Antarctica after his radio broke.
Project Development
This project has developed with ideas and theory from the beginning, with the idea and photographs conceptualizing the inner feelings that I gather when I am in the landscape. When we were set the brief “Weird and Wonderful” I thought I wanted to work around narratives that have already been told. I begin my investigation into the stories that have come out of the famous Dartmoor prison in Princetown. With my first inspiration coming from the Mad Axeman, Frank Mitchell who famously escaped from the prison when fixing fences on the Moors. My first photoshoot was inspired by this idea of escaping and being found much like Mitchell’s story. After completing this shoot and thinking about the longevity of this project I wanted to look deeper into the idea of escaping and to begin to make this project personal, so I began to look from within.
I then read the book “Silence In The Age of Noise” by Erling Kagge and that was the catalyst for my new line of thinking which has been the underpinning theory behind the creation of this body of work. I was inspired and curious to explore the idea of silence and how it has be seen in photographic practice. I began shooting seascapes which captured as much negative space as I could find. The empty space leaving the viewer time to think and reflect on the location and emotional motive of the photography.
As well as the sea, Dartmoor is a space that I quite often find myself escaping to find peace and solitude. I began taking long walks on the moors which has become a form of meditation for me. Slowing the process of my photography and taking in the natural space that I am in allowed me to consider my frames and composition more than I have done before. Throughout the project, I have found my self taking less photographs every time I go out but being far more happy with the photographs that I am making. This was also the point in the project where I decided that I was going to shoot this project in black and white. The two tone images are more simple and capture the negative space in a more obvious way which I think help creates the idea of peace being found in the photographs.
Now being in the middle of the project I want to refine my ideas so that I can take some more strong images to round off this body of work. I took the Toyo 5x4 camera for a few test shots and shot a roll of 120 film to work out what might be the best medium to shoot the rest of this project on. I like the fact that shooting on film slows down your process even more as you dont have as many shots in the camera. I decided that I was going to shoot on 120 film as the Mamiya 7 is a much smaller camera to carry around and you do not need a tripod to shoot the photographs. However, I did enjoy using the 5x4 camera and I will most definitely use it in the future to shoot projects on. When I developed my 120 film I achieved a grainy and slightly bleached out photograph. This being much different to the higher contrast digital photographs that I have been creating. The bleached out images create a softer emotion anbd calming to the photograph which I think will help ignite a feeling of inner peace and silence to my viewer.
Timeline
I am now at the stage in my project where I am thinking about how I want to output my body of work. A few weeks ago we had a really helpful workshop about hand made books. This opened me to so many ways that I can display my work in physical form and I enjoyed thinking about the kinds of books that would work best with my project.
This is one of the designs that I think my body of work will look best in. Two books inside of one gives me the control to separate the two spaces that I have been photographing. I want to do this as I am photographing two environments that mean slightly different things to me but come together and create a sense of inner peace. This book will transfer these feelings to the viewer however separate the space and the feelings that I acquire from being in them.
This is another way in which I want to present this body of work. Digital format is so important as lots of your audience is going to be online and won’t see the work in the physical world. Thus I think it is important to show off the work in a more interactive way than just seeing a page of photos on a website. At the moment this is a developing medium of showing my work. I need to work on the sequencing of my photographs so that it corresponds with the feeling and narrative that I am conveying. I am excited to see how this works when I have shot all of the photographs for this body of work.