photocultures

Photography has become part of our visual culture; it is our visuality some do even argue. Photographic images define the space where we live and who we are, they form both our public and private identities. Whether we stroll our streets or browse online, photos and photobjects surround us, from billboards to consumer items, from newspapers to online homepages. They are part of advertising, branding, surveillance. Photographs appear not just as images but also as the language of design and social interaction. In this sense they are a photoscape, a landscape of photography that surrounds us in our private and public spaces.

As profession and a service, photography is more than a century old but our basic premise is that photography is now more than ever a catalyst for a culture that generates, reproduces and monitors itself through images. By creating both the images and the culture of photographic images, photographers not only manufacture daily life, but also crucially have the potential to “imagine” better places.

So what if you were asked to do a site-specific photographic project for Elephant & Castle (E&C)? Would you be able to think of a way to improve people’s lives? Or develop a project that would rescue the space and its users from the urban troubles it is facing now? For example: the re-settlement of the council estate residents, the loneliness of the urban dwellers, the homelessness of street beggars, the ugliness of the crossroads, the high pollution levels, the dehumanising architectural features, the semi-decadent shopping centre?

Together we will explore how photography can be used as a bridge, between the public history of a place and the urban future of the city using utopian services and scenarios. We will also examine photo-participatory practices as models of engagement with the social and the communities.

Outline
The unit surveys photography in urban space and examines it as socially engaged practice, working with critical public issues.
1- We begin with an initial study of earlier community and spatially oriented photography projects (for example, 1980’s Dockland Community Poster Project and Stephen Willat’s tower block projects)
We will progress to examine works by photographers who are engaged in developing critical spatial practices, using photography and space in alignment with a critique of mechanisms of representation. We will survey photography in public space (from photographic billboards, to public screens and network projects) and the commissioning agencies and funding streams that support such public art approaches.
2-The practical component of the unit consist in rehearsing some of these strategies in the real space of E&C in the attempt to become familiar with the space and identify an opportunity for intervention.

You will be expected to design a site-specific photographic intervention, keeping in mind that to make it achievable your targets have to be very specific. Within our time frame it is more important to articulate the concept and your proposal (demonstrating it through a prototype or a fictional scenario) than resolving the problem. Keep in mind that “if the hurdles you set for yourself are too high, you will never succeed. On the other hand, the secret to intervention-based practice is that it really changes something. (Wochenklausur)

For part 2 you will research and respond to a local site. This a summary of the steps involved in this process:

• 1. Walking/Drifting: see/ feel the invisible city
• 2. Researching: identify the site and the social group for your intervention
• 3. Mapping: articulate a narrative about the perceived conditions and the imagined answer
• 4. interacting: participatory tools/probes for audience involvement
• 5. Intervening: prepare your intervention and test it in the public arena
• 6. Documenting: share the results of your work
• 7. Analysis: writing about your work

2. AIMS OF THE UNIT
To develop critical frameworks for photographic research-based project
To introduce you to site-specific photographic methodologies
To introduce you to site-specific curatorial and commissioning practices
To prepare you to write proposals in response to briefs that demand a response to local conditons

3. LEARNING OUTCOMES
By the end of this unit you will be able to demonstrate:
3.1 Knowledge and Understanding
Knowledge and understanding of site-specific photo-participatory methodologies and key cultural and critical theory that informs good practice
3.2 Intellectual Skills
The ability to analyse and evaluate different theoretical positions that put space and its representation and at the centre of their critical and aesthetic discourse
3.3 Practical Skills
An awareness of a variety of methods for researching, designing and producing a publically sited photographic intervention, self-initiated or in response to commissions.
3.4 Transferable Skills
You will have the opportunity to develop:
- photo and research skills through brief-led activities
- ability to respond to commissions of public- and community based art
- marketing and communication skills through online activity (blogging), proposal writing, and online publishing of your work