Since my previous post a couple of weeks ago, quite a few things have been happening.
An application I submitted for a place on a peer review session was successful: co-hosted by James Lowther of Berwick Visual Arts and North East Photography Network‘s Carol McKay and Amanda Ritson, it took place at The Granary in Berwick on Saturday 6th May. Reviewers were the above plus Document Scotland‘s Sophie Gerrard, Sarah Amy Fishlock and Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert. Reviewees were me, Nat Wilkins, and Tom King.
I wasn’t sure what a peer review was exactly, but at this stage in my book dummy project development any opportunity to talk about it is good, and it turned out to be like a cross between a portfolio review and a crit session. I think the advantage this format has over portfolio reviews is that, instead of being paired with professionals for whom your work may not be the best match (in which case neither reviewer nor reviewee get much out of the encounter), the work presented for peer review becomes the focus for a group discussion (in which negative criticism can be diffused or become constructive because it’s part of the broader range of views being exchanged?). And this process is one that reviewees can contribute to as much to as reviewers – as peers, in fact. It’s more roundabout than seesaw.
I took along with me the portfolio version of my DILLIGAF project plus two book page layouts I’d just test printed – these latter being what I most hoped to get feedback about and, given the laughter one of them generated, can say that taking part in the session was definitely worthwhile for me.
Then on Friday 12th May was an artist talk, as Wideyed, for Hexham Photography Group. HPG runs an impressive and varied annual talk programme (off the top of my head, photographers like John Kippin, Pete Fryer, Ian Beesley, Deborah Parkin, Ian MacDonald, John Darwell, Wolfgang Weileder, Julian Germain, Paul Hill, Mandy Barker…), so it felt like a huge honour to be invited to speak! What the group seemed most interested in was how Wideyed exhibits and functions as a collective, so there wasn’t much time or space to glean feedback about individual members’ works in progress, but enough still for me to introduce DILLIGAF, and mention my book dummy project and the a-n bursary that’s making its development possible for me.
In non-photobook-dummy but nonetheless DILLIGAF related news, a couple of festival calls for submission I responded to have recently resulted in selection for online features: one image for Cortona on the Move New Visions, and two (of mine here and here, plus Richard Glynn‘s here and here, all four signed as Lostness Club) for Diffusion, currently running in Cardiff with the theme of Zeitgeist.
Anyway, what next? The best opportunity I’ll have to shoot some new images for the book (to potentially fill one or two gaps in the project, mentioned previous blog post) is at a big biker rally called Farmyard Party, 16th-18th June. I’m hoping my project consultant, Julian Germain, will be free sometime towards the end of June so we can have a second editing/sequencing session that includes this new material. But between now and then no slacking: the plan is to do more work on book design by testing more layout ideas. Given that I’m still far from having a final edit and picture sequence, it might seem a bit cart-before-horse to be working on layouts, but I have the feeling – especially after the Berwick peer review experience – that some design decisions might influence the image edit, so I need to do a bit more work on design upstream.
I have to admit I had a bit of a wobble just before the Berwick peer review session – wobble meaning massive ‘your work is shit’ panic attack. But the peer review really helped me get over that. And progress on this project can sometimes seem slower than I initially hoped… Then I remember it was last May that I first decided to pull my finger out and really, finally do something with this work, and I’ve achieved more in the weeks since I got the a-n bursary than I ever managed in the months before. So, still think things are going OK.
