Final Evaluation

Evaluation.

Editorial Photography, 'Extra-ordinary'
Level 5



In our first week of this project we were given a lecture by Richard Whitehead, Richards definition of editorial photography stuck with me throughout the project; “imagery that supports the written word.” Despite realising so early on just how open and diverse this project could be, i focused strongly on the other theme within the project, which was ‘extra-ordinary’. Instead of starting to create photos, I spent days and even weeks pondering over the idea of what extra-ordinary means, and what i could possibly shoot to suit this theme.

The first work by any photographer i researched and found inspiration from was actually the work of former CCAD student, Jessica Holloway. We were shown Jessica’s work during a professional studies session just as an example of how to present a digital archive, however i spotted some of her work which she had taken on coloured film around the streets of Middlesbrough. In this work she had captured images of run down streets and buildings and people she had obviously seen in these areas. When seeing Jessica’s work i just knew straight away that this was the style of work i wanted to create myself.

I began to shoot on the streets of places i was visiting in my day to day life such as Hartlepool, Newcastle, Blackhall colliery and Trimdon colliery, as one thing i knew i had a great interest in was North East street photography. Coloured film is something i had always wanted to experiment with and luckily this project did not require the use of any particular camera, so this was the perfect time to experiment with my coloured film.

The photographer who inspired me most during my research was Adrian Clarke. I came across his work in an old article by the Guardian called "The end of the tracks? the brief description of this article was: “What is happening in the former pit villages in the north-east of England? Photographer Adrian Clarke hears the personal stories of those left behind and of their battles with drug and alcohol addiction, poverty and violence.” During my shooting of streets within the North East, I found that the more I got into the project, the more particular I became about where exactly in the North East I wanted to shoot. In my last two shoots I chose to shoot in two colliery villages. For some unknown reason I feel very drawn to a lot of colliery villages, and have such a fascination with what these villages once stood for, and how the effects the pit closures once had are still quite evident even today. 

In my final edit of images I chose to use all images taken in Backhall Colliery, and submit my project as a vague representation of the colliery village today. A lot of the images I shot were quite ‘nitty gritty’ and showed the lack of wealth the village really has, however the images I were more drawn to were the bright and almost tacky images captured on the front street of Blackhalll, such as bold retro signs and shop fronts. I didn't want to present images that portray doom and gloom, as in reality, i don’t actually know whether most  who live in the village would agree or disagree that the closure of the pit has even had a negative effect on the village. The work I produced for my final outcome more so reminds me of the work by Martin Parr, scenes of the working class, bold, bright, tacky, with a slight sense on humour. 

Having Ian MacDonald come in as a visiting lecturer and actually being able to have a tutorial with him is something which helped me massively in this project. It gave me confidence in the work I had been producing and was amazing to be able to watch first hand such a successful photographer edit down my images to just a few finals images of his choice. A lesson I have learnt during this project is to not overthink any brief I may be given, rather than sitting thinking of ideas the best approach to take is to just start shooting, and ideas then start to generate from there. I chose to print my final images in gloss as I felt gloss may make the bright colours in my images stand out more, however if there could be one thing I could change in this project it would have been to print in lustre rather than gloss, as I feel lustre may have suited the more old fashioned retro feel the coloured film and old shop fronts and streets give off in the images.