My Tutor’s assessment – Assignment 2

In my video conference with my Tutor we discussed the style of work that I am using which is a controlled and planned method, my Tutor thought that this style worked for this project’s narrative. He could see the influence of artist such as Cindy Sherman and Jeff Wall who both create contrived pictures in order to tell a specific narrative and control the picture. My Tutor mentioned Jeff Wall as my project had been planned using a storyboard to script out my project’s intended narrative in perhaps a similar way that Jeff Wall must plan his epic pictures. This is what I was aiming for, I wanted to create a narrative that could be related to other people going through their own experiences of being furloughed. I chose compositions such as watching daytime TV and the passing of time as common factors and as my Tutor pointed out, drinking tea a very typical British thing. The Britishness of tea drinking was a very successful subject for Martin Parr as I recall. Larry Sultan, Pictures of Home (1992) and Tina Barney Theatre of Manners (1997) and Cindy Sherman’s, Untitled Film Stills (1977) were still the influencing artists for this project as they had been for assignment 1, as I felt their styles and methods most suited my ideas for assignment 2, being both constructed pictures and constructed narratives.

As a suggestion my Tutor has suggested that I try producing some snapshot photos made throughout a day from morning to evening as a form of ‘sketch’ to see what sort of natural narrative comes out of it and what lessons may or may not be drawn from the exercise.