There were 12 of us in the group today, and Sylvie Duncan start us off with a well-judged but short introduction pointing out the things we could look for in viewing the images, including subject, form, composition, texture, the use of contracting light and dark, colour/monochrome, the type of paper and printing, and the choice of mounting.
We then spent about 30 minutes having a good look at the images, which were very varied in subject matter, style, scale and effect. One of the gallery staff came and gave us some further thoughts about the competition itself, and some of the technical issues we could look out for in making our own photographic images. And finally we had a bit of a free-for-all discussion about what we'd seen and learned. It was a very useful session, and everyone, even some who started out saying 'I'm not interested in photography", had things to say and had found things to hold their interest.
I found I really liked the portraits, especially several striking black and white portraits, which were immensely strong in conveying the sense of the person behind the face. I wondered whether the choice of black and white is the trick here. We see people and faces around us all the time, always in colour, and very often without really looking at them. Partly because, culturally, we have been trained not to look closely at the faces of people we don't know: it can be seen as intrusive and sometimes an almost hostile thing to do. By taking portraits in black and white we remove the distraction of colour - it doesn't matter about hair colour or the clothes being worn. And we are also allowed to look closely, to really study the face, the lines, the skin quality, the shapes and expressions. Which we could not do if the real person was there.
I found the several colour portraits less compelling. I also found that I did not terribly like the prizewinning image, (shown above, copied from the grant Bradley website linked above, and by Gareth Iwan Jones). In the Gallery, it looked less like a colour photo, and seemed to be almost entirely black and white except for her scarf and her very red lips. I was confused because it seemed to me to be so obviously contrived, constructed, a posed 'character' rather than an 'ordinary' but real person. I wasn't sure of the point of this constructed person.
Moreover, its title, "The Third Woman' was obscure to all of us. Whereas for some of the photos, the caption seemed to be an integral part of the whole, and added meaning, in this case it caused puzzlement but no enlightenment.
Which is something I need to think about for my final project piece(s), for which I still don't have a title, and must do before much longer.
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