I have had mixed reviews of my work in progress to date which is to be expected at this stage.  However, after a sleepless night and much worry about how my images would be received I had a really helpful session with my tutor in which I showed her a very, very draft set of images, with even more rough words to accompany them.  I produced the turning pages with an app called Flipsnack.  I became aware of this software when researching the work of Ori Gersht.  Here is my very first draft of The Ephemeral Hiddenness of Loch Cill Chriosd using a selection of quite different images to give my tutor a sense of the type of work I have produced:

https://www.flipsnack.com/775AEC6D75E/alison-price-the-ephemeral-hiddenness-of-loch-cill-chriosd.html

I talked to my tutor about my search to capture those fleeting, transitory glimpses of the real Skye looking for depth and luminosity in my image making.  And, by focusing on the small gaining glimpses of the Island itself.

My tutor was immediately taken by my new working title of the work The Ephemeral Hiddenness of Loch Cill Chrisod.  The title I had used for my FMP Project Proposal had been The Essence of Skye and she had not liked it.  The new title is based on one of my own quotations from the proposal.  However, my tutor did not like the accompanying words and if I am honest neither do I.  As she rightly said the words were really duplicating what any viewer could understand from looking at the image.  I think this is a fair point and I am happy to think again about it.  What I am clear about is that I would like to add words to my work.  We discussed possible strategies:

1. Others narrations – prose
2. Writing with existing poetry by others
3. Using my own personal voice – possibly through diaristic fragments of my own text from my Photographer’s Journal which I keep

I need to do some more research on this area.  I am going to look again at the work of Alec Finlay, a contemporary Scottish poet and also Ted Hughes.  I will also contact the Scottish Poetry Library in Edinburgh to see if they can point me in the right direction in my research.  I should look again at the work of Fay Godwin which I reviewed in some detail in Positions and Practice.

We also talked about it being helpful for me to write a 300 word abstract clarifying my intent for this piece of work.  With regard to the seascapes we agreed that I should keep these in the frame at this stage and consider again as my project develops.

On a practical level my tutor suggested I should use a white background for my images and the font for the words should be much smaller.

We agreed to ‘meet’ again in a couple of weeks.

I also engaged in a Group Critique this week and benefited from there only being a small group.  My images were seen to be intriguing, they liked the square image format (which resonates with painting) and found them visually very impressive and seductive.  However, another valid point made by the tutor was that she did not see any connection between my images and the place ie Skye.  It was suggested that I do not need to add text to every image and I could be creative in how I do this.

We had quite a lengthy discussion about going down the”magical realism” route – the world of folklore and fairies – an imaginary realism route.  I could make up the mystery story.  My immediate response is that this is not what my work is about however, I can see how others might see my images in this way.

So much to think about and I am pleased there were some positive comments about my work to date.