In the last post, I said that I would produce a draft of an ‘Artist’s Statement’ for the Portraits series.  The Google search that I reported on there did help, by providing me with a ‘way in’; and some of those reflections helped to confirm what the series is ‘all about’.  So I did produce a ‘draft’, which I shared with some of my fellow students, via Flickr.  I did get a little bit of feedback, and I’ve subsequently left it to lie for a couple of weeks.  Going back to it today, I’ve felt that it is ‘fit for purpose’.  I made one minor amendment, but the version here is likely to form part of my Assignment Three submission.

I am conscious, on re-reading, that it poses an awful lot of questions and seems to range over a wide territory – but that’s how I feel about this Body of Work.  Above anything else, and this goes for the Studio Projects as well, my interest lies in the mysterious relationship between Photography and the Real.  My Contextual Studies – both theoretical and practical, taking in Philosophy and Psychoanalysis along the way – confirm that this remains mysterious, perhaps even more so, in the so-called ‘digital age’.  That is what I’m trying to explore through the Body of Work – but more along the lines of creating uncertainty in the mind of the viewer than suggesting that there might be answers.  I don’t know whether, come assessment, that might look like a ‘cop-out’ – but I am genuinely more interested in having viewers of my work feel puzzled than informed, uplifted, amused, etc.  Hence the form of the draft statement.