PART 5 - PROJECT 1 - RESEARCH & REFLECTION POINTS

Before answering this question, I preferred to wait and complete Assignment 5.

In this way I was able to deepen my knowledge of myself as a photographer, starting from the choice I made of the topic and how I then developed it around the reality that I identified.

 
Now I can say with certainty that my approach is narrative and the whole text / photography tends to represent reality rather than fiction.

 
I don't know if I really need to represent reality, but I know that this approach is more congenial to me and makes me feel good both in the use of the camera and in the writing of a text.

 
My education is classic and perhaps this has influenced me in being excellent in writing texts and not stories: I probably projected this education / attitude in my photography as well.

While working with research in Assignment 5, I met Stephen Shore and his approach to Situationism: I found myself very close to this genre and, in particular, to the so-called "drift", which I explored in the support page for Assignment. 

In my opinion this approach is typical of those who want to narrate the reality that surrounds them, based on all that this reality transmits to them in the form of sensations and impressions.

I believe I have always adopted, albeit unknowingly, an approach based on the "drift" theory in my photography.

I thought about doing a Google search and I chose the phrase "photographing absence" in Italian. The results were many, not all relevant to the subject of the research sentence, but I found some links to authors who did not use the human figure to talk about humanity in their work.

BREDA BEBAN

Breda Beban was born on December 24, 1952 in Novi Sad, Vojvodina, Yugoslavia. She was a director and writer, known for Hand on the Shoulder (1997), For You in Me and Me in Them to Be (1988) and For Tara (1991). She died on April 23, 2012 in London, England. (https://www.imdb.com/name/nm1188604/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm , accessed on 02/09/2019 20:00)

Actually, my research on Breda Beban focused on another work: "The Miracle of death" (2000). 

A chapter of Charlotte Cotton's book entitled "Photograph as  Contemporary Art" is dedicated to this project.

"The Miracle of death" is dedicated by the artist to the memory of her husband Hrovje Horvatic, who died in 1997.

Beban used her husband's funeral urn as part of the photographic composition, photographing the object in the rooms of their home.

The Latin word "vacatio" connotes the meanings of "absence", but also feeling empty, missing. I believe that these meanings have influenced" The Miracle of Death "and this marks the difference between the work of Beban and, for example that of Nigel Shafran in "Washing up 8".

In fact, as Charlotte Cotton writes, since Breda Beban cannot give a fixed seat to the cinerary urn, projecting it everywhere and making us understand that she cannot resign herself to the loss of her husband.

"The Miracle of death" is linked to the multiple meanings of "vacatio" and not only "absence". 

Beban's photographs are decidedly intimate in describing a particular moment in personal life, in a sincere and simple way.

Michele Smargiassi, Italian journalist, analyzes the theme of what he himself calls "Latin Vacatio" in this article (accessed on 02/09/2019 20:30), in relation to a theme competition. 

In this article I found a phrase that is well connected to the subject matter: ".....So the emptiness in a photograph is never nothing. Who wants to photograph the emptiness, must do it metaphors, posing objects "full of emptiness"....."