Photographers Gallery - A School Trip

The Photographers gallery has chosen to work with one of my schools, Parliament Hill. Last week we had a writer who collaborates with the gallery come in and talk to us. We will be working on a project with her alongside the course work for a couple weeks. We haven't been told much on what we're doing so there isn't much I can blog about right now. However, since we are working with her, my photography class with another Year 12 class went to the Photographers Gallery on Wednesday. We saw two exhibitions: Mass Observation: This is Your Photo and Mark Neville's Deeds Not Words. We had a few simple tasks set for us that got us to search for particular photographs around the two exhibitions with written clues to help us. By doing this we got to observe the photos in a lot more detail to see if it fits the clues. I liked this way of looking at photos as you get to notice a lot more about the particular photo than if you were just passing by. After this we went round the gallery again finding three of our favourite photographs and wrote on paper 'What Do You See?' Again this helped understand the picture a lot more as we'd have to look at every little thing we saw and write it down. My favourite photos were all from the same exhibition (which was also my favourite out of the two) called Deeds Not Words. 

''Deeds Not Words is an experimental documentary project and an urgent intervention. For 18 months Mark Neville photographed the town of Corby in Northamptonshire: its people, its culture and the effects of the environmental pollution led to several babies being born with serious birth defects... The photographs present the community as a whole, not simply the families at the centre of the case. They show persisting Scottish identity in the English town, young woman at nightclubs, entrants in a beauty contest, children dressed for the town's Highland games.'' 

My favourite pictures out of the whole exhibition were the sequenced photographs of two boys 
 both born with fingers missing, said to be caused by the toxic waste and contaminated land the mothers would have absorbed in at pregnancy. 

At first glance, these photos were just of a boy who had three fingers, popping a balloon in a dark room. I instantly felt they were very powerful but didn't really understand the purpose of the photos. A woman then came up to me and my friend and began speaking to us about the actual meaning of the photos. She had listened to the photographer, Mark Neville a week before who spoke at the photographers gallery about his exhibition. 

Neville had asked this boy to sit in a dark room, as soon as he popped the balloon the sound triggered the flash to go off taking these three photographs that a human eye would never experience: high speed photography. This mirrored the idea that we cannot see these pollutants acting on people but just see the after effects. Knowing this made the photos even more powerful and being able to understand the images of why Mark photographed it and what it means made me a lot more interested in the whole exhibition. 

More photos from the exhibition: 

After looking at the two exhibitions (I have to say I didn't pay much attention to the Mass Observation) we were asked to take some Street Photography photos. We had to make sure the photos we took linked someway to our favourite photos we wrote about earlier. This could be anything, from taking pictures of something red representing the balloon or a picture of girls representing the images above. 

                             

The pink of the rubbish bags and the bin are meant to represent the femininity of the two pictures of the girls I posted above. The dress links to the dresses they were wearing for their beauty contest. 

The red links to the red balloon photographed by Mark Neville. 

Apart from these photos I did get some more however they don't have any meaning and aren't the best I've done but thought I might as well throw them in there. 

After I got home I was too lazy to do any work so I watched a film instead. MEMONTO!!!!! 

I loved it so much, the whole story line was genius. ''A man, suffering from short-term memory loss, uses notes and tattoos to hunt for the man he thinks killed his wife.''  Christopher Nolan is a truly intelligent and talented man. 

The more and more I watch new films, the more I get inspired to make my own but having to handle school work, social life and my own interests is very time consuming and I seem not to be too good with it. But I have thought of some new ideas for short films which I'll be able to gradually film and edit when I'm out. So hopefully I'll be able to post some more videos soon! 

M x