6) TASK 1: select a podcast and respond to it in an analytical and critical 10 minute presentation -

Today we had our presentation for Task 1 in Photography in Context, which was to select a podcast and respond to it in an analytical and critical 10 minute presentation. I chose Jenny Little's podcast from Ben Smith's podcast series 'A Small Voice'. My notes from the podcast as well as the presentation I went through can be seen scanned in below. As well as that, under the presentation is the 500 words we need to submit for the task.

Initial notes:

Presentation:

500 word summary:

In terms of the context of the podcast, I took it from a photography dedicated website which does interviews with many different photographers. This would lead me to hope that the information is non-biased, and also correct in terms of technical information as well as facts about the photographers work and life.

Jenny is an editorial photographer who lives and works in East London. Some of her notable projects are ‘One Day Young’ in which she was photographing women and their children 24 hours after birth, and ‘Hackney Studios’ where she captured a network of creatives in their studios who live alongside her in Borough. In the podcast she said her interest in photography sparked through her Art History A Level, where she was given the tools to look at things in a different way. For instance in this quote “I could really feel it calling me, I was a shit drawer, painter, but I love storytelling and pictures”, you can really see her connection to photography.

In the podcast Jenny stated that she reads into a lot of her own photographs from the influence of Renaissance paintings. She likes the symbols in these paintings and feels they can be reflected in her own work. This led me on to think about how John Berger highlighted that the devices used in advertising and the medium of photography can be linked back to oil paintings. The people and objects in advertising and pictures today can be seen to impersonate the people and objects originally depicted in oil paintings. Oil paintings and photographs share many of the same ideals all related to the principle that oil paintings show what you already have, and advertising shows what you could have and you aspire to have.

To further depict this point I included a 16th century painting by Clara Peeters of some food surrounded by elegant tableware, and I thought I could relate this idea of how oil paintings and photography share the same ideals in my own photography too. This image depicts the step ‘Treat Yourself’ from the 10 steps to happiness manifesto I’m trying to portray through still life. Although I’m trying to depict happiness and not wealth, there are still similar connotations of ‘you are what you have’ between the oil painting and my own photo.

I feel Jenny’s portraits are so engaging because she can connect so well with her subject and emphasize with them. You can see this from the way she speaks about her work and the people in it. For instance, her portrait of Corinne, Grenfell Tower survivor. Even in the small amount of minutes she had with Corinne, Jenny still managed to make her look so powerful and collected. Her empathy with the subject can be seen in these two quotes “She was so calm and together and strong and polite .. surrounded by absolute carnage and chaos”, “Maybe I have captured her, or maybe I’ve captured how I feel about her”.

Another portrait Jenny spoke about in the podcast was of Keira Knightly. A quote that struck out to me about this photo was “It felt really intimate, and it felt okay to have her sitting on a bed. I’d have probably got a very different picture than if it had been an older male photographer”. This photograph led me to think about Laura Mulvey’s Male Gaze theory and how it fits into the role of the photographer. It’s interesting how women can be portrayed completely differently when it comes down to if their being photographed by a male or female. For instance if you compare this photo to one of Helmut Newton’s images of women, the images have completely different connotations. Helmut’s image illuminates ideas such as “Women watch themselves being looked at .. The surveyor of woman in herself is male: the surveyed female.” (John Berger, 1972). However Jenny’s image portrays ideas such as “the one to one conversation with somebody” (Jenny Little, 2017).

My own reflections:

Overall I feel the presentation went really well, and Liz gave good feedback about the links I made from the podcast to my own work and other theories within Photography in Context. I couldn't really get much other class feedback as there was only two other people in the presentation, however they seemed to stay engaged and enjoyed it. I think having photos being the main focus of the slide and little writing to explain them worked best, as people could visualise your thoughts better with the images. As well as this, I think people prefer looking at an image and hearing people speak about it rather than being bombarded with text on the slide and not seeing any imagery to back up your thoughts.

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