Planning and Preparing for Assignment 4

For my essay I chose “Using case studies, discuss whether single images can ever fairly represent others or self?

I began by looking through my books for appropriate essays that has explored this subject and I took notes of book titles and page numbers to refer back to in preparation for the essay.

From this list I selected the most appropriate and suitable then read them through and blogged them in order to have a full understanding and to take notes of passages worth quoting in my essay. Through my reading I discovered an essay written by Jo Spence that was published in a magazine called Spare Rib in March, 1978. This I found useful; so I included it in my essay. My reading research consisted of: Facing Up To Myself, Spence. J, 1978; Remembrance, The child I never was, Kuhn. A, 1991; The Suit and the Photograph, Berger. J, 1979; Uses of Photography, Berger. J. 1978; Self Image, Personal is Political, Kelly. A, 1979; Reading Photographs – In Our Own Image, Ritchin. F, 2005; Photography and Belief, Strauss. D,L, 1991; After You Dearest Photography, Reflections on the work of Francesca Woodman, 1998. Reading these essays helped me get in the correct frame of mind, get a better understanding of the nature of the question and gave me ideas. In my thought process I also thought or self and other as paintings which led me to think about Rembrandt and da Vinci.

As I started to write my essay, it occurred to me to look in the Oxford English Dictionary to understand the meaning of image and was inspired to use the dictionary’s six different definitions of image for my essay.

I decided that the essays by John Berger were not needed for my essay; but I thought about Roland Barthes and so I added him to my list of referrals to quote from. The essays that I had read and blogged helped me speed up my writing as I had already copied all the passages that I thought worth noting and now had only one place to find them again, and add if required, to my essay.