Project: Yorkshire Fashion Industry

Project: Yorkshire Fashion Industry

For one of my University assignments this semester, I have been tasked with creating a body of work that encapsulates a genre of photography. In my case, I was more or less directed to stay away from fashion and contemporary portraiture for obvious reasons. With those limitations in mind, I also thought it would behoove me to steer away from still-life and music photography as well. 

It took a few weeks of very hard thinking to conceptualise a project that would maintain my interest as well as help to further my individual pursuits. Inspiration finally came after I remembered a little snippet I read on Joe McNally's blog quite a while ago regarding how National Geographic spreads are shot. Now, I know most people associate National Geographic with wildlife and pretty landscapes, but I associate it with brilliant reportage and documentary on all manner of subjects; the article I always think of first when I think of National Geographic is one on Caffeine. In Joe's post, he reflected that it used to be 1500 rolls of film used to be shot for a single article. That single sentence provided incredible insight to the quality of photography that National Geographic is famed for. Also stuck in my brain, were that these articles were not comprised of any one genre of photography, but rather encompassed all genres.

With these two notions in my head, I proposed to my tutor that I actually prepare a documentary article on the subject of the Yorkshire based fashion industry (focusing on South and West Yorkshire) and present the final product in the form of a magazine. 

Once I had her approval, I began evolving the idea further. More inspiration for the project came from the unlikely source of Magnum photographer Martin Parr during a lecture he gave in Huddersfield. Mr. Parr is currently working on a project based on his fashion work in which his output is no other than a magazine. The inspiration comes from the fact that he is actually including advertising (produced himself) in his magazine as well as the content. 

Along with my own ideas for the project, the bits of inspiration from these two legendary documentary photographers helped me to provide a solid plan for my project as outlined below:

Goal: To create a photographic and journalistic article that documents the current state and history of the fashion industry in the region of South and West Yorkshire and produce  the final output in a magazine format with intent to exhibit the body of work at a later date.

In order to achieve this enormous task, I intend to research and document the following:

• Independent Designers and their workspaces
• Fashion Retail
• Independent Boutiques
• Street Fashion
• Textile Industries
• Independent Craft Fairs
• Fashion Recycling/ Charity Shops
• Shopping Culture
• Beauty Industries
• Fashion Shows and Trade shows
• Fashion Related Advertising (Billboards, shop windows, etc)

I need to have the majority of the work done for the beginning of May in order to prepare the final output for the hand-in date, but it should be entirely possible to finish the project in that time frame.

I am open to virtually anyone getting involved in the project as long as it is fashion and beauty based (even if it's not covered in the list above). Please feel free to get in touch via the comments section, the contact forms on my website or by Facebook.

I'm very excited about undertaking a project with huge potential and I very much appreciate the time you took to read this! If you can help in anyway, please don't hesitate!

Martin Parr

Martin Parr

The other week, I had the incredible pleasure of attending a lecture by legendary Magnum photographer Martin Parr!

Honestly, I had no idea what to expect from the lecture. Of course, I was well aware of Mr. Parr's work and while I'm one of a seemingly minority who can say I didn't hate it, I was on the fence about whether I loved it or not. I certainly appreciated the messages, the technique and the ability to create those images; however, I didn't understand the "why".

In a short hour and a half, not only was the "why" fully explained, but it was truly inspirational. Martin removed any doubt that he might have been relying on shock factor in his images and that fact alone turn me into a fan. The point I had been missing was how much of himself he had put into the work. The reason his images come across as awkward is because he shoots subjects that make him feel awkward, not to shock and make the viewer feel awkward, but to confront his own perceptions.

Amazing.

Also addressed in the lecture, Martin discussed how he conceptualizes entire projects and such rather than focusing on a single image. Though not a new concept to me, it is one I often struggle with resulting in the fact that I more often than not wind up subconsciously focusing on the single image. This again left me full of ideas and inspiration on how to carry my work forward.

The final aspect of the lecture I'm going to discuss here is a project that Mr. Parr is currently developing. I first read about the "Fashion Magazine" project quite a long time ago, but I admittedly forgot about it amongst all the other information taken in from similar sources. As one of my projects in this second semester is very, very similar hearing Martin talk about his project gave me a ton of ideas to incorporate into my own project. For example, shooting advertising for the magazine along with the editorial parts.

In short, for an hour and a half, I was able to listen to the most inspiring yet humble man I have ever seen. I am certainly no longer on the fence regarding his work as I am now a total convert and utter fan! I can only hope I can imbue some of the passion he talked with into my own work in the near future!

Second Semester

Second Semester

Well, the first semester of the Commercial Photography course has come and gone and my classmates and I are a good few weeks into the second.

I don't know what I can really say about the first semester. It was a learning experience for certain, though I feel that I didn't actually learn much; except for the darkroom stuff and that was nothing short of amazing.

After the feedback for the assignments though, I feel that I really let myself down. I could have achieved much higher than I did. Though I feel as if I didn't completely comprehend what was expected of me until the last few weeks, I also realise that I didn't push hard enough, internally and externally to find out exactly what was expected.

With that lesson in the bag; however, I feel I know exactly what I have to do this semester and I am going to use the opportunity to really push myself to the limits. Several of the module assignments are stupidly exciting and allow for maximum creativity whilst pushing my existing knowledge and capabilities to their absolute limits. Needless to say, this is exactly what I signed up for.

I will be outlining one of the projects very shortly, but in the meantime, I leave you with an image I had to create for one of the modules in the first semester. The goal was to recreate a still-life from an old master (painter). I chose Van Gogh as a bit of a challenge to myself as I am really not particularly a fan of his work. It was also a bit challenging because I was not the only student to choose this starting image.

Alas, here is my version of Van Gogh's "Boots".