Falmouth University MA Photography Projects

Image: Charlotte Eades-Willis ARPS

Several RPS members have recently completed Photography MAs at Falmouth University. Here we showcase a selection of images from their Final Major Projects and gaining an insight into their experiences.

The flexible online course runs over two years and aims to enhance the creative, critical, and professional skills of practitioners who are at an early stage in their careers, as well as to give those who have already established themselves within the professional arena, an opportunity to interrogate their practice and deepen the quality and sophistication of their creative output. It is designed to accommodate a broad range of practitioners, from those who use photography to question the world around them to those whose practice interrogates the medium itself.

For further information see: flexible.falmouth.ac.uk/courses/ma-photography Instagram: @falmouthflexiblephoto

Quiet Hour

Charlotte Eades-Willis ARPS

'A Complicated Issue' from the Surfaces and Strategies module

Charlotte Eades-Willis ARPS

The course appealed to me as it used distance learning. It relieved me of some of the barriers to education my autism presents, mainly the sensory impact of classroom environments, and the drain of continual social interaction with peers and tutors. I was given the choice as to whether I wanted staff to know about my problems, and this was well managed. I felt fully supported. I still had interaction via webcam and email which was far smoother for me than the conventional classroom environment. Being able to watch the lectures and rerun the live ones when needed, meant I was able to take the time to fully make sure I understood and was aware of all that was said.

'Resting Together'

Charlotte Eades-Willis ARPS

Despite being distance learning, the course provided a top-class environment for education with access to quality resources and teaching staff. The staff all come from varied backgrounds giving different, and much appreciated, insights into work and ideas for further development. The contact points on the course were variable in time and 1-1 meeting times were always made as mutually convenient as possible. I was able to complete the private study side of the course at times and hours which suited my other commitments and health needs. This meant that I could really concentrate on the work itself without social or health issues causing distraction. Whilst the time management was helpful, it is worth mentioning at this point, the work was intensive in order to achieve a satisfactory standard. The course content and expectations are hard, and a wealth of time and dedication is required. Although clearly photographic in nature, there was a reasonable amount of written communication and documentation.

There was also a helpful amount of contact with designated industry professionals, and while it may have seemed irrelevant to our personal journeys, it provided invaluable experience and ideas.

from the project 'Quiet Hour'

Charlotte Eades-Willis ARPS

Much of my work and experience through the course can be found on my Critical Research Journal or blog for short. This can be seen here criticalresearchjournal. wordpress.com. You will see the development of my work there as well as the change in topic.

from the project 'Quiet Hour'

Charlotte Eades-Willis ARPS

The majority of my work focused on migration, and I received consistently good feedback. However, despite the good grades for the final major project and final portfolio, I was guided to switch focus as tutors felt I could give a personal insight on autism as opposed to a third party approach to migration. The change in topics wasn’t as dramatic as it may first seem as there were many similarities, and I had full support with the challenges of changing. From my point of view I initially chose migration because many of the issues, although different, were similar in their impact; a stranger in a world/culture not fully understand, disorientation with the world and ability to settle. I had considered focusing on autism, but I had moved away from it, as I felt it would be too contrived. After the support I received and personal analysis of the development of my own work, as I entered into the final major project, my fears were minimal, and I felt I could do the subject justice.

from the project 'Quiet Hour'

Charlotte Eades-Willis ARPS

Throughout the course I focused my photographic work on non-portrait subject matters, leaning towards still life and landscape. This was a conscious approach as in both subjects I wanted to avoid ‘image fatigue’, a concept I interrogated throughout the course. I used the modular based approach to migration to tackle the same and associated issues from different angles. This is the same approach I applied to Quiet Hour, my final project on autism. Tackling one issue at a time also meant there was more room, and plenty of engagement from tutors, to experiment, whether that was by photographic methods, approach or final presentation. Previously with my photographic work, I always had prints or digital files as the final outcome, however on the MA we were encouraged to consider every possible means of publication and distribution. Finally my project was presented in several different ways; as an art instillation, photo book, physical exhibition and digital images. This has hugely increased my experience and opened a wealth of possible avenues for future publication, as well as opening my work up to a much wider audience.

from the project 'Quiet Hour'

Charlotte Eades-Willis ARPS

An important part of the course was to engage with and consider the audience both in the image making process and their thoughts on the final images. This has given me much more confidence as the feedback, whilst critical and not flattering, gave true and valuable appraisals of my work. Overall my work has been well received by both target and general audiences and this has encouraged me to further pursue my photographic aims.

Nigel Ready ARPS

Verso

The Landscapes of Seamus Heaney

Nigel Ready ARPS

One area of my photographic practice has been exploring the link between landscape and literature, and in particular poetry. For my final major project in the Falmouth University MA course, my intention was to produce a photo book encompassing the landscapes associated with two Irish poets, Seamus Heaney (1939-2013) and William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), both winners of the Nobel prize for literature. I wanted to draw out the contrasts between the prosaic countryside of Heaney’s childhood and the more romantic landscapes of County Sligo associated with Yeats.

Nigel Ready ARPS

Over the two years of the course I made six visits to Ireland, exploring the landscapes of both these literary figures. However, when all the images had been captured, selected and sequenced, it became clear that the landscapes of the two poets would sit together uneasily in a single photo book. Accordingly, I made a late decision that the book should cover exclusively the landscapes associated with Heaney, particularly those of south County Derry where Heaney’s childhood was spent, with the aim of demonstrating how these simple, rural landscapes informed the poet’s verse.

Nigel Ready ARPS

My decision seemed appropriate in view of the fact that 2019 is the 80th anniversary of the poet’s birth. Also, the creation of a photographic record of the Heaney country was more pressing in view of the irreversible changes to its landscape wrought by the extension to the Belfast-Derry motorway currently under construction.

Nigel Ready ARPS

On my three visits to mid-Ulster I based myself in the small County Derry town of Magherafelt, in the heart of Heaney country. All images were captured on Leica equipment (SL mirrorless or S digital medium-format). Locations included Heaney’s birthplace at the farm known as Mossbawn outside Castledawson; the Hillhead Road where Seamus’ younger brother Christopher was knocked down and killed by a car in 1953; the forge at Hillhead (Heaney’s ‘door into the dark’); the eel fishery at Toomebridge; the track of the disused railway behind Mossbawn; the Moyola river and the fields on its banks. Other important locations were Lough Beg, in the centre of which is Church Island, and Slieve Gallion, the easternmost mountain of the Sperrins range. Heaney described these as the two limits of his childhood imagination. The final images in the book are of the Flaggy Shore in County Clare, celebrated in Heaney’s late sonnet ‘Postscript’.

Nigel Ready ARPS

I have not sought to romanticise the landscape. The majority of the images were captured in autumn and winter and have a deliberately subdued palette.

As I explored and interrogated the Heaney country, I determined that my approach would be to depict the landscape in its present reality rather than seeking to recreate visually the imagery of the poetry. Many of the images in the book include water. The presence in the Heaney country of Lough Neagh, Lough Beg, the rivers Bann and Moyola lend an aqueous quality to the light and water features prominently in Heaney’s work.

Nigel Ready ARPS

I could not divorce my project from the historical context of the Irish Troubles. Furthermore, the unease arising from the United Kingdom’s proposed withdrawal from the European Union means that the border between Northern Ireland and the

Nigel Ready ARPS

Republic is once again of great topicality – hence my image of the lonely bridge over the Termon River which forms part of the border between Fermanagh in Ulster and Donegal in the Republic. The bridge was the scene of a brutal sectarian killing in 1969.

Nigel Ready ARPS

The book is cloth-bound consisting of 36 images with an initial print-run of 150 copies.

Verso

Nigel Ready ARPS

Victoria Forrest, well known to Falmouth students, designed and published the book. There was much discussion concerning the sequencing of images, in particular reconciling Victoria’s purely aesthetic approach with my desire for a sequence both chronological (i.e. following Heaney’s life) and geographical (i.e. in terms of location).

Nigel Ready ARPS

The concept of turning is a leitmotif of many of the images – turning sails, turning seasons, turned earth – and this gives a clue to the title of the book: the Latin versus (abl. verso) means both a line of verse and the turn made by the ploughshare from one furrow into the next, a double significance entirely appropriate for a book celebrating a poet whose work is rooted in the rural landscapes of his birth.

Further information on the project can be found at nigelready.blog and to purchase the book please contact me at nigel.ready@gmail.com.

Nigel Ready ARPS

Nigel Ready ARPS

Enterprising Croydon

Graham Land ARPS

Graham Land ARPS

How does a photographer represent someone who is ‘Enterprising’? That is the challenge I set myself in the project I undertook as part of my recently completed studies for an MA in photography with Falmouth University, under their web-based Falmouth Flexible programme.

Graham Land ARPS

Entitled ‘Enterprising Croydon’ the project began as a series of environmental portrait studies of certain shopkeepers in my local area, all along or close to the main retail thoroughfare running South-North through Croydon, a large town 10 miles south of central London. The chosen proprietors had retail places that were distinctively different from their competitors, either by their offering or the way they presented their shop, that is, these folk were enterprising, showing initiative and resourcefulness.

Graham Land ARPS

Like all four projects I undertook as part of my MA studies the inspiration was a singular event rather than a long thought out theme. My previous project had been environmental portraits of scientists and innovators, chosen as I’d been part of that community and had contacts. However, the difficulty of aligning suitable photoshoots with my academic schedule caused issues. A locally based project seemed to be the solution. Inspired by meeting and photographing Reg Roach, the octogenarian founder/proprietor of a photographic shop on Croydon High Street, this seemed an easier project to keep to a schedule.

Graham Land ARPS

In the first phase my project portrayed 12 proprietors. Choosing who to approach involved lots of walking and comparative assessment and my area of focus covered several miles of road. Happily, the majority of those I approached said yes, which surprised me as it was almost always the first time they’d met me. Whilst mainly shot in full-frame digital, I captured a number of portraits with a tripod mounted secondhand Hasselblad film camera using colour negatives. I also created moving videoshots using a stabilised rig and a small mirrorless camera to capture walk-ins from the street outside to the interior of the shop and the proprietors themselves. This linked the person and shop to their immediate street environment, an aim which I feel was achieved. Examples can be seen on my website www.grahamland.photography.

Interview

Graham Land ARPS

Later the project was expanded and became my final major project. My first choice, on a self-portraiture theme, had been abandoned mid-stream as something for another time, so this later stage was conducted quite rapidly. I was, however, able to add a couple of new High Street locations and in most cases was able to go back to my initial collaborators and capture large format environmental portraits and conduct videoed interviews. This phase was conducted in less than two months.

Graham Land ARPS

Within a few weeks of the last shoot and interview I exhibited prints and presented recordings in The Loft, an exhibiting space in Croydon’s main shopping centre, utilising what used to be the upper-floor storage area of a shopping unit. I was delighted to get this venue as it fitted well with my shopkeeper theme. Also, the choice of print width, dictated by the commercial Point of Sale (POS) hanging system that I chose, is normally only in large shops and department stores. The exhibition included a short piece in collaboration with a local historian.

Exhibition

Graham Land ARPS

The journey has been an extreme learning exercise with many firsts, and yes, I would have done it differently with hindsight. Whilst I feel the exhibition was effective photographically, more development is needed to bring out the documentary insights that the interviews have afforded me. However, despite the tribulations I gave myself, the project has been very rewarding.

Graham Land ARPS

The project isn’t over as I’d like to do more to portray the livelihood and character of these enterprising folk, and without my helpful collaborators this project would not have been possible. I should also add that, whilst I’ve had a long interest in portraiture, I’m indebted to my MA tutormentors for encouraging me to enter into environmental portraiture and gain an appreciation of the value of medium and large format captured film in the process.

Graham Land ARPS

Graham Land ARPS

Graham Land ARPS