SAO Hangout—24 October 2021

Participants: KJ, MR, AO, HF, LS Reaction from tutor to MR’s essay for A4; very positive, but somewhat rigid in response; Started a series of self-portraits on 4×5 for A5; also parts of himself without showing his face (using remote app to trigger camera) AO received positive feedback on A1; writing a piece for EdgeZine

Reading Group—31 August 2021

Participants: KA, ZW, SC, NR, EP Consensus that this was not a particularly coherent article Is the renewed recognition of mutability a quantitative or a qualitative difference from what came before? What is a non-redundant image? (Flusser? Are we a function of the apparatus?) Meaning is never fixed? What is it all for? How are

Notes on work by Peter Mansell

Peter Mansell has a clear thesis statement for his Paralysis Unseen series “​You will see that paralysis is as much a cultural experience as it is a physiological one. “ As I read it, Mansell’s paralysis has “othered” him not only to people who do not have a disability, but perhaps also to himself. The photographs

Exercise 4—Hoek answers Wolukau-Wanambwa

Stanley Wolukau-Wanambwa’s article (2015) raises a number of pressing questions about the portrayal of The Other in photography using examples drawn from recent publications by photographers Jan Hoek, Viviane Sassen and Cristina de Middel. In this specific case, The Others are Black Africans and the photographers are White Europeans. Wolukau-Wanambwa’s primary objection to the work of

Reflection point: Encoding and Decoding in the Television Discourse

I took the time to find a copy of “Encoding and Decoding in the Television Discourse” (Hall, 1973) and read it through to make sure that I had adequately understood the author’s concepts and how he had arrived at them. Stephen Bull (2010: 70) places his reference to Hall’s work within the context of a

Read—Public, Private, Secret

I bought this book thinking that it would be a good resource for the “self” portions of SAO. It is a combination catalogue / proceedings of an exhibition of the same name held at the International Center of Photography in New York during the summer of 2016. The public/private reference in the title is construed

Reading—Photowork: Forty Photographers on Process and Practice

This is an interesting set of interviews, but it does become a bit repetitive. It appears from this sample of photographers that process and practice fall into four or five tracks, with minor variations. This could be a function of the way questions were asked of the photographers chosen to participate (quite a few seem