Click on the image above for a larger view of the set click on the images below for a larger view of the individual images

Evaluation

Is this assignment my strongest work yet, well no it is not. I started this assignment and got sidetracked by the sculptures in the park, and my initial submission was more about the individual pieces and not the place, I also made the mistake of randomly swapping from landscape to portrait for the output. My tutor’s comments were spot on the mark.

If I am honest the point at which I did the initial assignment back in March I was very acutely aware of my impending deadline and probably panicking and rushing a bit. Getting the extension was useful in two ways it made me plan the completion of the module and gave me time to get the work done, however, the weather had other ideas and so the final shoot was forced on to Christmas Eve.

So that’s the excuses but did I achieve what I was trying to and could I have done it better.

Firstly I did achieve what I intended too in as much as the work now shows the sculpture park and the way it contains the sculptures as part of the landscape, it is really a gallery much like the art galleries we visit to view other works of art and photography. People come to look at sculptures and to buy them, and much like an art gallery they also come to look and enjoy them especially where they neither have the room or the money to house them at home.

This place is a former bit of woodland that has been transformed from an unused space into a place of art by the park. It addresses much of the PPS Wheel discussed earlier, it has elements of Sociability, being a place to visit with friends or family the people are extremely friendly and welcoming and made quite a fuss of me being in a disability scooter. It addresses the Uses and Activities section putting a tick in almost all of the boxes, above all a visit is fun and there is a lot to see and if you return there are always new sculptures and many of the old ones are sold and gone, so it’s always fresh active and vital. In terms of comfort and image, it is again all of the suggested things especially if you are able-bodied. The place is accessible and has ample parking. It seems to me to be what the wheel would call a great place.

Could I have done better, the answer is yes, I would like to have had more time and done more research and found somewhere I could demonstrate this principle in a better way where more of it was accessible to me. It occurred to me as I was writing all of this up that a theme park may have been a great place to base this assignment on. For now, I am mostly happy that the work tells the right story and is far better for the re-shoot.

Having eliminated all of the bad images and the out of focus pictures I set aout picking a super set of candidates from the large set.cThe following are the results of that initial edit.

Here are the contact pages from the reshoot, I too 613 images on the day and did a first edit to 296 eliminating the bad and the out of focus images. This set of contacts represents the first starting point for my edit.

When we consider the landscape, there are many different types of place or space. Some are towns and cities; some are the countryside, some are industrial, some spaces are just wasteland, and sometimes a space gets a twist that makes it somewhere special.

I can remember as a child there was a space in the old lane behind our house that was part of a former drainage stream it was overgrown and no one went in there. As children, we explored this space and made a camp in there, and we even built a treehouse in one of the trees with the help of my Dad. To say this space became a place is not a difficult thing to do. The time spent in this space transformed it into a very special place that I am still fond of almost 50 years later.

If as a child I could make a space a place by spending time and developing it in my own way, what influence does an organisation like Disney have on a space when they build a theme park. Indeed any development that attracts people can transform a space into a place. From the big attractions to a simple nature trail something about the lure of people into a space tends to create a place. This is my opinion so is there any research that corroborates my opinion?

I found this diagram in a post on HASTA, the history of art magazine affiliated with the University of St Andrews’ School of Art History. By following the link, I discovered its origin on The Project for Public Spaces.

The PPS states:

Great public spaces are those places where celebrations are held, social and economic exchanges occur, friends run into each other, and cultures mix. They are the “front porches” of our public institutions – libraries, field houses, schools – where we interact with each other and government. When these spaces work well, they serve as the stage for our public lives.

The model looks for Sociability, Uses and Activity, Comfort and Image and Access and Linkages. At Disney World, all of these are very carefully catered for and one imagines they have teams of people creatively addressing each point with scientific precision, My camp addressed all of these points but more crudely.

Based on this does that mean that any place that has been developed or adapted to entice visitors qualifies as a space that becomes a place? I assume its is not until you actually visit or is the publicity enough?

Escher’s Staircase

Why the title, well for most people the following would be a piece of cake:

“We discussed the images by Yann Arthus Bertrand, specifically the shots where the

horse, landscape, backdrop and lights have been included; although it would be

quite challenging, consider transforming the sculptures, by adding a backdrop and

lighting and shooting in the same style.”

I fully get it and Russell is right. However, the following factors exist:

• Bad Weather
• Very Bad legs preventing walking
• Very short time frame due to my extension

I have really struggled to do something about this assignment as going back to the sculpture park is extremely difficult at the moment, I suffered a nasty case of cellulitis and my walking is terrible at the moment not helped at all by a change in insulin causing a massive weight gain. The good news is I am actively working to address all the health issues and am confident that next year I will be a lot fitter again.

The downside is that in the short term, the work proposed by Russell is next to impossible for me. Couple this with the fact that I was granted an extension to Landscape because of the health issues I only have until the 31st of December to complete this work.

My solution is to hire a disabled scooter and visit the sculpture park to reshoot these images. This is not as good as being fit and shooting the way I initially did as the bulk of the park is not accessible by scooter and I will be limited to the access paths and a smaller group of the sculptures.

The second problem has been that the weather has been atrocious and there has not been a window that will allow me to enact this plan. I had to wait until Christmas Eve for a weather window and a day when the shop mobility centre had a scooter to rent for the day.

I picked up the scooter the day before when the sculpture park was not open and visited at 10 am when they opened on Christmas Eve. I struggled to get the scooter out at the park and undertook the hairiest ride of my life getting stuck in mud and wheel spinning all around the sculpture park. I finished and came home covered in mud and exhausted with almost 800 images in the can. The job now was to edit it down into a meaningful series but first I will describe in more detail the research that sent me there in the first place as I did not do that very well for the initial submission.