Brief

Photography and the Studio Aim: In this studio paper students will learn controlled lighting techniques both in the photographic studio and on location. They will develop a self-initiated lighting project in order to enrich other strands of their creative practice.


Overview: The medium of photography hovers between ‘discovery’ and ‘invention’, or ‘finding’ and ‘staging’. These two strands have been at play throughout the history of the medium. The impulse to discover the nature of the way the things look was there from the beginning. There has always been an appetite for the ‘straight’ documentation of people, place and event . There has also been a strong impulse to use the medium to ‘construct’ worlds. In the first few decades of photography’s history artists were staging elaborate tableaux and creating allegorical artistic imagery (e.g. Oscar Rejlander, Julia Margaret Cameron). And photographic constructions were happening in the worlds of advertising and propaganda (e.g. Dr Barnardo’s staged portraits of children posing as ‘orphans’). This assignment is directed towards the activities of invention and staging.

Assessment Two: Constructed Worlds In this assignment you will develop a photographic body of work, based on a selfdirected concept. You will work with this concept and develop your own visual language, taking into consideration lighting, props, gesture and formal qualities. You will locate your work within a particular convention or genre, e.g. fashion, architecture, conceptual art, illustrative art, advertising, propaganda, documentary… Your research will involve:

a) Practice-based photography – explore studio and on-location lighting technologies to test and refine visual ideas.

b) Contextual research – investigation into ideas and relevant photographers working in your field. You have two options to guide the conceptual basis of this body of work: i) Concept based on a visual response to a piece of literature, e.g. non-fiction article, poetry, short story, novel etc… ii) Concept based on a visual response to a piece of music