a2 photography Harlow College Personal investigation

1. Personal Investigation
12th and 15th 17th and 22nd October

2. Personal investigation.
Aim: To conduct a sustained photographic project
based on a concept, issue or investigation.
• Produce images related to your chosen area
• You may work within the studio or on location
• You will edit images and show progression
• You will continue secondary research on
artists/photographers relevant to your chosen
topic

3. Personal investigation.
Assessment objectives
• Develop their ideas through sustained and
focused investigations informed by contextual
and other sources, demonstrating analytical
and critical understanding.

4. Personal Investigation.
Assessment objectives
AO1: Develop their ideas through
sustained and focused
investigations informed by
contextual and other sources,
demonstrating analytical and
critical understanding.
Ideas gained
from research
of artists,
photographers
Ideas gained
from practical
photography
Apply critical thinking
when evaluating own
personal resecarch and
secondary sources.

5. Personal Investigation.
Assessment objectives
AO2 Experiment with and select appropriate
resources, media, materials, techniques and
processes, reviewing and refining their ideas as
their work develops.
Experiment with e.g.
camera techniques
and processes
Refining ideas through
evaluation and developing
work further
Experiment with e.g.
Photoshop
approaches
Planning and
gathering approriate
resources e.g. props
lightiing, location

6. Personal Investigation.
Assessment objectives
AO3 Record in visual and/or other forms ideas,
observations and insights relevant to their
intentions, demonstrating an ability to reflect on
their work and progress
Recording in blog, ideas,
plans, reflecting and
evaluating
Producing new work in
response to
observations and work
in progress
Recording all forms of
ideas and insights during
the project

7. Personal Investigation.
Assessment objectives
AO4 Present a personal, informed and
meaningful response demonstrating critical
understanding, realising intentions and, where
appropriate, making connections between visual,
written, oral or other elements.
Visual outcomes
(final images)
linked to research
Producing work
based on personal
insights
Drawing sound
conclusions from
Research sources

8. Personal Investigation.
You should be either
1. Research photographers relevant to your
personal investigation.
– Use Critical analysis to evaluate imagery (context
(background info who, what, where) connotation,
denotation)
2. Start preliminary test shoots
3. Draft a plan for executing your personal projects

9. Location shoots
• Students to inform tutor prior to departure.
• Equipment used (tripods, cameras) to be
booked out and returned by the close of the
lesson.

10. Studio
• Key access Teacher use key A to enter studio
• Access to cameras via Brendan (technician) or
from cupboard using keys available in sixth
form staff room
• Studio lighting to be switched off after use.

11. Research
• The following notes on research will be
covered in more detail after the 24/10/2015

12. Research
Critical Analysis
• Art criticism is responding to, interpreting meaning, and making
critical judgments about specific works of art.
Contextual studies (similar to textual analysis in Media)
• Is about how art work including photograph exists within a wider
context of e.g. a social, political context
• Your research of a photograph must therefore be much broader
than just examining the photograph.
• Ask your self why was the art work produced, for what purpose and
so on…
• The following slides should help you to critically analse
photographs/artwork.

13. Researching, Artwork, Contextual Studies.
Contextual studies in art.
Guernica: to understand Guernica I need to know when it was created (1937)
and where (Basque town). By whom (Picasso) and why (commemoration of
the Bombing of the Basque town). What were the artists intentions (to alert the
world to the brutal killing of innocents by German bombers).

14. Researching, Artwork, Contextual Studies.
Subjective and emotive
Good,Bad, like, awful
I don’t like it, terrible, fantastic,
super, sick, disgusting.
Objective and analytical
Composition, tone, colour palette,
Black and White, abstract, cubist,
symbolic, propagandist, terror,
anguish, screaming, emotive,
sympathetic, political, agenda, etc.
Describing Pictures (Guernica).
AVOID USE

15. Researching, Artwork, Contextual Studies.
The flat Iron, 1905 Alfred Steichen
Contextual studies
Edward Steichen (1879-1983)
Steichen took up photography in 1895, at
the age of sixteen, and was self-taught.
he was associated with a style of
photography known as Pictorials. The
Pictorialists felt that the aesthetic promise
of photography lay in an emulation of
painting.
Steichen’s early work, adopted many
Pictorialist techniques (a jiggled tripod, a
lens bathed in glycerin, or various darkroom
tricks).
Context
(who)
Context
(what)
Context
(why)
Context
(How, or
process)

16. Researching, Artwork, Contextual Studies.
The flat Iron, 1905 Alfred Steichen
Contextual studies
This pictorialist approach is evident in
Steichen’s photograph of the flat iron,
the image is vague, with no clear
point of focus. Like a painting the
composition is tonally divided into
foreground, middle and background.
The imagery is evocative (connotes
to) of an impressionist painting where
the detail of the imagery is left
unresolved. It suggests the romance
of a by-gone era where people where
transported by horse drawn carraige
to their homes.
denotation
denotation
connotation