after shafran – chirgwin, 2017

“Go to the artist’s website and look at the other images in Shafran’s series. You may have noticed that Washing-up is the only piece of work in Part Three created by a man. It is also the only one with no human figures in it, although family members are referred to in the captions.

Coursebook (p.87)

1: Did it surprise you that this was taken by a man? Why?

While I cannot think of any male photographer’s whose work includes large chunks of the sort of scrutiny of their (naked) self that you find in Woodman’s work, or who would document the way going through IVF-treatment with their partner (or even just ” trying for a baby”) effects them in the way Brotherus does, there are plenty of women who take pictures of mundane details from their lives. Indeed, there is a strand of this running through Brotherus’ Annonciation.

So, I wasn’t at all surprised that Shafran’s washing up pictures were taken by a man, but I wouldn’t have been surprised if it had been taken by a woman either. Continue reading →

There are three questions posed on page 80 of the coursebook; I shall try and deal with each of them briefly… Continue reading →

I’ve just noticed that this post’s trigger from the coursebook says “Make some notes”. This is more like an essay. Or a short book.

The first time this post was saved was on – good grief! – the 28th of June 2015. I have written a bit, gone off to do an exercise, come back, written some more, gone away and done the assignment, put off writing up the other exercises and now come back here again, after I have completed all the write ups for part five and begin to prepare the module for assessment.

And so, for the umpteenth time, I realise that I really must start working in a way that produces shorter, more notey, blogposts…

Simon Chirgwin, April 2017

And now here is what I started writing last June; I have changed hardly anything; I cannot understand why I didn’t just hit “publish”… Continue reading →