<CP>
Today Eddie and I had our first project meeting. We have chosen not to develop a rigid plan in terms of outcomes as we are both keen to see what emerges from a period of sustained discussion and exploration. This blog will be a place to document our conversations and findings, post test images, and record our action plans to move forward after each working session.
What we achieved today was to discuss what we are excited about by our collaboration and also what we fear may be problematic during our working relationship. Our conversation about ‘common ground’ led to us identifying a list of key themes that we are both interested in exploring or responding to during our work together. Most of these we agreed on, a couple needed some debate to define them in ways that we both felt comfortable with, but we now have a starting point to develop further:
PAPER — PROCESS — LIGHT — LINE — ANALOGUE — COLOUR/MONOCHROME — VISION
We have agreed on an action plan for the next two weeks, based on two of the key themes: LIGHT and LINE. We have booked a day in the photographic studio on Saturday 23rd November to explore light and line within a series of graphite and paper constructions. Before then I will prepare the graphite surfaces needed for the studio shoot and Eddie will identify the necessary materials, including cameras, film, and lenses. We will shoot digital images to test exposure, composition etc, but the main concern of the session will be to shoot the work on film.
* Like a police investigation, our blog has a name that is completely neutral and unrelated to the subject of our exploration.
<CP>
I applied for an a-n New Collaborations Bursary to support a period of practice-based research between the photographer and photographic printer Edward Otchere and myself. My practice predominantly exists within the field of drawing, often starting with rudimentary media such as paper and graphite. In my most recent work, drawings have been developed into densely worked reflective surfaces and manipulated through interventions in the paper plane, engaging with light, space and materiality. Otchere and I have previously collaborated on the photographic documentation of folded, graphite covered paper forms. Up to this point our initial explorations have used a digital camera and natural light to produce a small series of pigment prints. The a-n New Collaborations Bursary will allow me to collaborate with Otchere, a practitioner who has extensive experience of photography, studio lighting and printing to develop these initial photographs further. Otchere has a commitment to analogue production, shooting on film and printing on alternative paper stocks in a darkroom. His work is actively engaged with the chemical and paper-based materiality of photographic printing – often using obsolete chemicals and – as mine relates to the materiality of drawing on paper.
Through the collaboration we hope to produce a series of exploratory photographic prints. By working with Otchere, I also aim to develop my understanding and knowledge of analogue photographic processes and have an opportunity to explore the relationship between the material aspects of photography and similar concerns within my existing work, thereby facilitating a progression of the conceptual surrounds of my practice in addition to producing a new, exploratory collaborative body of work on paper. We will be using the studio and darkroom facilities at Photofusion, London (http://www.photofusion.org) during our collaboration.
