Preparation for Assignment Three

Although still early days for planning Assignment Three - I have an idea that I want to explore.  The idea stemmed from seeing Justin Minns' photograph Sweeping - Sea Defences, Felixstowe at the LPOTY exhibition in December 2013 and realising that this is not a scene that I recollect from the time I spent in Felixstowe as a child.

While I was growing up in North London I spent many childhood holidays in Felixstowe, Suffolk where my grandparents lived.  I think I would have been about 16 maybe the last time I went to Felixstowe, but the bulk of my memories span from the ages of about 4-14. 

Assignment Three requires a series of  5-10 photographs on a theme or subject in Monochrome (I like the idea of 9 - this makes a nice 3 x 3 panel).  I would like to explore whether I can reproduce my memories from my childhood holidays with my grandparents, aunts, parents and sister, and also a friend at a later age, as a series of monochrome images.   This idea is also borne from arguments I've heard that taking photographs destroys memories, because you eventually remember your photographs and not the experience.  In this case it is the reverse.  I have memories intact, albeit idyllic and in the eyes of a child,  but what I am now trying to do is to see if I can recreate them, and to see if during that process, forgotten memories resurface and expand my collection.

Typically, I associate long exposure landscapes with escapism, solitude and tranquility, which aren't really the emotions I want to recreate here, so although I was originally inspired by Minns' image for this exercise, I'm not sure that this is relevant as a technique here.  Although I will probably try anyway and then perhaps save it for Assignment Five!  But, this said, might be relevant perhaps for one image trying to reflect the memories of walking on a beach extending into the distance?

Monochrome is an ideal medium for this subject as it will help with the times gone by aspect, and also will stop me taking my usual seaside route of creating gaudy "in-your-face" type photographs that I usually do by the sea!  Shooting with mono in mind will force me to focus on shape and form and I hopefully I'll be able to achieve some images evocative of idyllic memories.  I've seen in other photos, or in film sequences, that high key imagery is used to denote flashbacks or step backs from present to past.  Although my memories are obviously not in black and white, I do want the output to have an antiquated feel. 

The things I remember are (in no particular order):

• Two houses that my grandparents lived in: first 30 Leopold Road, and then 43 Brook Lane.  The former seemed huge (but I was much smaller), and the latter seemed smaller.  Both walking distance from the beach, which as  I child growing up in Barnet was the ultimate way to live! (I think it still might be, although I have now chosen to live near mountains...)
• I remember a house very near 43 Brook Lane, which had a front garden big enough to keep a horse in - I thought that that would be where I would live when I grew up
• The Pier, which as a younger child I remember had a giant inflatable whale on it, which blew away one day in a storm.  I remember playing in the arcade also - the coin falls, and hockey game in particular.  Apparently the old pier has been rebuilt now
• The fairground (I was older then - about 14) - going on the dodgems at different ages - slightly younger with my sister and slightly older with a friend
• Hours walking along the beach with my grandfather looking for stones that he would polish and make into jewellery
• Playing on the beach with my family, digging sandcastles etc
• Beach huts
• The "Prom"
• Ice cream
• The Spa Pavilion where I saw the two characters from "It Ain't Half Hot Mum" played by Windsor Davies and Don Estelle in a show with my aunt
• The terraced garden in front of the Spa Pavillion
• Jacob's Ladder in the sandy part of the beach (north end)
• The Chinese restaurant "The Mayflower" in Hamilton Road - in those days going out for a Chinese meal was a real treat.  Not something you did mid-week because you can't be bothered to cook!
• My aunt's flat and her friend Angie
• The Marks and Spencer in the High Street (why do I remember this in particular....?)
• The cold north sea
• Very pebbly beach with concrete breakwaters
• Rock pools and sea creatures living in them
• Completing my I-Spy At the Seaside Book
• People on the beach with brightly coloured windshields
• Martello towers
• The shop that sold dried sea urchin shells and other sea creature animal artefacts
• People playing bowls
• The railings on the prom by the ice cream hut

There are risks too though with this exercise (apart from the obvious rubbish weather on the day): these are mainly that the new images and memories will replace my old ones, effectively destroying them,  and secondly that the things that I remember won't be there anymore.  I did check the address of the Chinese above, but decided not to check anymore, it would be better to find out on the day, as the objective of the exercise will be to see if memories can be recreated.

Thinking about denotation and connotation (which I am currently reading about), the denotation will be the structure of the photographs, what you see in the images will be what exists today, but the connotation will be the perspective of a child and happy holidays, if that is possible?

I'm also thinking about personal voice a lot at the moment, I don't know at the moment what direction my work is going in overall; it changes on a daily basis, so whether this exercise helps or not, remains to be seen.  Perhaps if I get some good street photography along the way then may be!

This will probably take several trips, so my planning might evolve after the first trip, which will    hopefully take place sometime in March!

In talking to people about this idea (including my tutor, the LIP Crossing Lines group, and Gill Golding), I was given a number of pointers to reference materials to consider, some relevant, some not so:

• http://www.abbothall.org.uk/coffee-house-exhibitions
• http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dear-Photograph-Taylor-Jones/dp/0062131699 - I did check this book out on Amazon, but didn't seem relevant - I would not be using old photographs, and I didn't think I'd be on an emotional roller coaster either
• Try researching photographers and how they show time and maybe the work of the Re-Photographic Survey Project - this I found interesting but my purpose was not re-photography - it is new photography of old familiarity
• http://www.mymodernmet.com/profiles/blogs/chino-otsuka-imagine-finding-me - this was a very interesting piece of work, but I would not be in these photographs
• Family Frames: Photography, Narrative and Post-memory by Marianne Hirsch - I read this book, and although relevant to the subject matter, my pictures will not be of people but of locations.  Write-up saved for another occasion when it is relevant to the work!
• Modern Nature: The Journals of Derek Jarman by Derek Jarman - a very interesting piece of work - and relevant from the point of view of look back into the past - but Jarman's life was very different to mine and his purpose was not to discover old memories, but to link the past with the present during the time of his seropositivity.
• Dolores Hayden - who writes about landscape, memory, place - I read sections of The Power of Place.  Definitely a text to consider for Landscape module.  In respect of this exercise, pages 46-48 were relevant to my experiment.
• Jo Spence - Putting myself in the frame (not reviewed - I was not going to be in the frame and I wasn't trying to dispel taboos and myths)
• Annette Kuhn - Remembrance the child I never was (not reviewed - I was a child and this experiment was about recapturing happy memories)
• Rosy Martin - family photos, memory, archiving, worked with Jo Spence in relation to photo therapy (again - this was not about family photographs or photo therapy)
• Val Williams - Who's looking at the family
• Tate Catalogue - Louise Bourjois
• Royal Institute of Photography
• See CL blog (someone mentioned something about Freud?)
• Richard Billingham - Ray's a laugh

The Crossing Lines group also gave me the following thoughts:

• Old memories are robust
• I may not connect the old memories with the new ones I will create / new ones will be disjointed
• Places change and my response to location as an adult will not be the same as it was a child; the ambiance/atmosphere will also be different
• I will find aspects of life that I haven't occupied for a while/aspects of my childhood
• I will find out that some of my present choices are related to childhood experiences
• Think about how honest I'm being with this work and what I'm leaving out (this is possible a bit too deep - it's ultimately a landscape/documentary exercise?)
• It might help to collect some artifacts from the time (think this is going to be hard)
• It might help to write an account of the original memories (see bullets above)