25th May 2014

Soup for Sluts

I probably should of wrote this blog a few weeks ago as I have been neglecting it, but recently some people have been telling me they read it and I should carry on with it, so here goes...

At the time of me writing this, it has been 101 days since I fractured my femoral neck, I can't believe I missed the 100 day mark, but hey 101 is a good number.

I can finally see the end of this entire ordeal and it will hopefully be coinciding with me moving into a new place in Manchester, not that I haven't loved every minute of living where I am now and I have had the best, most understanding/caring landlords/adoptive grandparents anyone could of asked for (shout out to Barbara and Frank here), but I feel like moving somewhere new will revitalise me so I can move on from this horrible part of my life -  a fresh start.

Before I feel that I can move on from this I would like to address a few things that I have experienced whilst I have been 'out of action' so to speak. These are feeling of hopelessness that I had at about the month and a half mark of my recovery. I'm not really the kind of person who likes to talk about their emotions openly, I'd much rather just ignore them and put on my best face, but I have during these last 3 months experienced what being sad really feels like and truth be told I wouldn't wish it upon my worst enemy.

I felt so isolated, It was a massive shock to my system, one day I was having a great time, living with great people, had a great job, uni was going (relatively) well and I was probably in the best/happiest position I had been in for quite a few years. Then one day it was all taken away from me, it may sound selfish but it was a massive shock to my system, going from being busy pretty much every day of the week to not being able to do anything for what seemed like endless days. I have been working part time for the past 6 years, so having such a massive amount of free time was horrible and needless to say I began to think about things, I don't really want to go into the specifics of it but I started to get really down, and I would just lie in bed all day and tension between me and my family, I was seeing my consultant regularly but it seems like every time I was getting worse news, and I was just getting really down.

But there was a point, on Tuesday 13th May, (exactly 3 months after I broke my hip) that I had an appointment with a new consultant, one that was a specialist in hip surgery, when he gave me some good news that I began to start to feel better about my situation, his diagnosis wasn't what I had been expecting to hear, it was much better! And just hearing him tell me the bone is healing well and I can begin weight bearing raised my sprits and it was shortly after this that I began to test using public transport on my own, which I was a bit shaky with at first, but now I feel a lot more confident, but this meant that I could begin to visit my friends, and start to build my life back together, and I'm not saying theres not times when I still get really sad, such as when all of my friends handed in their final uni projects, but in order for me to keep going and recovery fully I need to ignore these feeling of sadness and focus on what is important, which is that although this has so far been without a doubt the worst year of my life, it has given me more optimism, hope and ambition to succeed in what I'm doing, and I would like at some point when I have made a full recovery to begin raising money for The National Osteoporosis Society, but that will come in due course.

I would at this junction like to thank all of my friends and family who have helped look after me/kept me company in hospital/visited me/texted/messaged me I definitely don't know where I'd be without you's all. There's probably a million more people I should thank but I don't want to Halle Berry circa 2002 this.

Tom.

Sorry if I have been too melodramatic, I just felt I needed to get these things out in the open before I can start to move on from what has happened.

P.s. I've really been neglecting my photographic practice for the last few weeks, so thats why I've not written anything photographically based. Here is a picture of my rabbit.

Not Kenneth Parcell.

24th March 2014

Times flies when you're doing fuck all.

If I was naming my blogs, that'd what I would call this one.

I've started reading Concrete Island by JG Ballard, and I'm not too sure if this is the kind of thing I should be reading in my present state. Basically it is about a guy that gets stranded on a small piece of land between several motorways, injures himself and has to survive, and this piece of land becomes his island. Basically a contemporary Robinson Crusoe for the Postmodern era.

He is secluded from the rest of society and loses track of the amount of time he has spend on the island, wasting away days by trying to escape his modern prison, but of course he has injured himself so this makes it tricky.

I can kind of relate to him in a sense, as at the minute, my parents house has become my island, within which I am currently existing, unable to leave due to an injury. I am cut off from what I would consider society, in real terms. Not the society that exists over the internet or through a variety of group messages and 'Snapchats', but real life interactions with people other than the four other people I share this house with. I miss socialising over gin, and complaining about the weather in Manchester, I miss the society that exists within Manchester, the culture, the people, the penny whistle man from Market Street. I am aware I am talking about Manchester as if it is some far off country I visited once, for two weeks, and may never return to. But I consider Manchester home and I am feeling somewhat homesick.

In respects to Robert Maitland, and Concrete Island, I haven't yet lost track of days, as I am continually counting the days between one hospital appointment and the next, but I have lost track of the importance of weekends. To me, everyday is the weekend.

Some might say that I am lucky for having so much time on my hands, and that they would kill for this amount of free time, but believe me, as soon as I am back on my feet and back in Manchester I will never again be spending copious amounts of time in bed, procrastinating, killing time.

Maybe I should slow down of the Ballard for the meantime.

In regards to my actual accident, (6 weeks on Friday, since my surgery) I have now had my treatment referred to my local hospital, and had an x-ray taken, and been told my right leg cannot bear weight for another 4 weeks, when I have another x-ray, when hopefully the bone will of shown signs of healing, and I can begin my physiotherapy to start putting weight on my leg. My physiotherapy currently is focusing on building back the muscles that were damaged during my surgery, and making sure they are being used despite me not really being able to use my leg.

The orthopaedic Doctor also informed me, that my rehabilitation will take 2 years in total, and it is at roughly the two year mark they will be able to tell if the bone has healed properly or if I will have to get a full hip replacement, due to the blood supply being cut off. Wherever I have read articles relating to this though, or in fact anything to do with hip-surgery, they have always been aimed at older people, and whenever they refer to 'younger patients' that generally means people below the age of 80, yet above the age of 65. So it's anyones guess what the odds of me getting a full hip replacement are. I'm staying optimistic.

I haven't wrote anything about photography, in this blog, because I've been too immersed in Concrete Island too, but next time I will. Maybe.

I haven't taken any photographs either this week, so have my x-ray instead. (You're probably already sick of seeing it.)

P.S. EyE dOwNt gIvE aY FuK aBoWt ThE GrAmMer & spEliNg nEmoRE.

Free Time

16th March 2014

So many people keep pissing me off.

If you have in the last 4 weeks posted any sort of status on any social network I may follow you on, alluding to or in any way indicating that you are bored, or disinterested in leaving the house then this probably applied to you.

I know there are people in worse situations than me, and I'm sure people will argue that to some extent this is self inflicted, but the people that are probably going to argue that this is self inflicted are also probably the ones who inflicting boredom upon themselves.

Now, there have been times whilst I've been injured, where I have gotten so bored it has resulted in me taking (and thankfully deleting) countless 'selfies', but for the main part, I have not really been faced with any gaping holes of boredom where I felt the need to share this with the other people on my Facebook timeline or Twitter feed.

I have been housebound/limited mobility now for a little over 4 weeks and in that time, any time that I have had free (which is a lot) I have spent, either talking with my family and friends, watching movies or television, reading, writing (though somewhat neglecting this blog already), sometimes drawing, surfing the internet. This I have done from the comfort of my own home, well my parents.

This is why it really pisses me off when people who have the option to leave the house whenever they want can be audacious enough to complain they are bored. Go for a walk, go to the shops, go to a gallery, go to a library, just bloody go outside, or you could even partake in one of the activities I have been killing time with. I'm sure theres a movie or two you haven't seen, or a book you've never read. Maybe instead of refreshing Facebook on the Internet, you venture out, after all there are a billion and one other website - (sidenote: stumbleupon is a really great site for helping to find these other websites).

If I, whilst housebound can find something to kill the time, then I'm pretty certain that you can too.

Apologise for being all high and mighty, but I was bored so I decided to write this blog, and this was the first thing that came to mind. - There you go, maybe you could start a blog.

In terms of my actual injury, I think it's healing, but I won't know for sure until I get x-rayed in 2 more weeks (fingers crossed).

At the end of my last blog I said that in this one I would start to break down some of my ideas about the context in which a photograph is taken, and before I begin I would like to stress that these are MY PERSONAL OPINIONS and I am not trying to belittle anyone else's opinions of photography or say that my opinion is the right one, I am open to other peoples views.

I would like to address this subject by trying to answer the simplest and age old question of 'Is Photography Objective or Subjective?'

I will begin by first looking at what the different between objective and subjective is, as it is something which has baffled me ever since I began studying photography, 7 years ago. Objectivity can be defined as something which is not influenced by personal opinion or feeling, something which is unbiased. Subjective on the other hand can be defined as something which has been influences by personal opinion or feeling.

When applying this to photography, an example of subjective photography could be a holiday snap, which evokes memories when you look at it.

Whereas an example of objective photography could be given as one of Bernd and Hilla Becher's topographical studies of water towers, where its doesn't resonate any emotional impact to the viewer, more serves as an documentation of this particular type of structure.

There are however times when these overlap, for example the holiday snap, this might create a certain feeling to certain viewer, but to others it holds no emotional merit, so to them it becomes and objective image, a documentation if you will.

I found this great description of both (http://artsattrinity.weebly.com/subjective-vs-objective.html)

Objective: To record a fact, even(sic) or happening or

Subjective: To comment on something, or to give an opinion about a scene, person or issue

I know I haven't been very in depth about this, but the basic point that I am trying to make, although probably not expressing it very well, is that I don't think that photography can be classed as being either subjective or objective I think maybe that it is a bit of both, in many cases, but ultimately it is the viewer, and nature of the work which decides, where it sits.

Maybe I will try and make a poll on my next blog to see what other people think, I'm going to try and talk about an exhibition I went to a couple of years ago, which I think fits into the subjective category quite well, but has also been described as an objective look at the world.

Hope I haven't wasted your time/helped in someway to alleviate your boredom. 

P.S. Again, apologise for any bad grammar and spelling, I'm an artist, not a writer.

Blue Room

27th February 2014

Two weeks ago today, on the 13th February 2014, I broke my hip. Don't ask how, its a long, embarrassing story and frankly I'm sick of telling it, but I broke my hip.

I have also for the last few months been considering starting a blog so I can discuss my ideas about photography. It just so happens that I now have an abundance of time on my hands in which I can begin such a venture.

I would first, and this isn't photography related like to make a note here of how fantastic, supportive and helpful everyone has been over over the last two weeks. Thank you to all my friends, thank you to my family, thank you to my tutors at university, but most importantly thank you to everyone at Manchester Royal Infirmary as well as Manchester Central Ambulance Station for looking after me and my fractured femur.

Obviously, whilst I have a broken hip, (I prefer broken hip, over fractured femur as its more dramatic) I have had to put a hold on my grand plans for completing my degree, taking part in a group exhibition in London, and here the stinger, graduating. It isn't nice knowing that come July all of the people I have spend the last three years of my life with, made friends with, been inspired by, lived with will all get to graduate and face the big wide world together whilst I'll be stuck at university for another year, something which I find very bittersweet. Sure I get another year before I have to be a real person, get money for doing something I love and have free range of darkrooms, but come July, I'm going to need a hell of a lot of gin to sedate me.

As far as photography is going, I have begun, whilst I'm incapacitated begun to think about what photography actually means to me. This is solely my own personal opinion of photography and is not here to try to dismiss other peoples notions of photography as the subject is such a diverse, changing form, it can virtually be interpreted in a number of ways, maybe even in an infinite amount of ways. Probably infinite. 

The idea of questioning what photography means to me, stems back from a tutorial I had at university in which the usual format of a tutorial was taken away. Instead of talking about each others work, for one or two hours we were prompted to write about our own work for ten, fifteen minutes. I found this idea of writing about my work a lot easier than actually making the work.

Allow me to explain. Recently, (before aforementioned incident) I have been working on my final major project, the big one, the one that the last three years and £25,000 has gone towards, and for the month prior to my accident I haven't made any photographs. This shouldn't of been the case considering the position I was in, but I think that it was the pressure of this being my FMP that had gotten to me and I was worried that the work I would of created wouldn't of been worth creating, so instead of trying and failing and then trying again, I just didn't do anything and reverted back to what I know best, which was helping other people with their work and forgetting about my own.

Anyway, I have been sidetracked here. 

It was something in the tutorial that the tutor said that initially made me think about photography and that was 'You are here to study photography, not learn how to be a photographer' and that made me think, do I really want to be a photographer? I think the answer to this question is probably No.

I love everything about photography, I love spending hours in the darkroom, printing photograph after photograph until it is perfect, I love reading and writing about photography, I love loading cameras, I love collecting different types of film, I love helping other people with their photography queries, I just absolutely hate taking the photograph. I feel that I am more interested in the context of when and why a photograph is taken as appose to the actual photograph being taken.

Photography to me, personally is an art form and it is a process and the reason I chose to study it is because of this process, I have for the past 4 years in which I been studying photography full time always favoured working in the darkroom as appose to working with digital as I feel that this hands on process led idea, that is at the heart of what photography means to me. The 'photographer' should be involved at every stage.

I have had enough of writing now, and my hip hurts (going to play on that one as much as possible). Next time I will try and open up some of the ideas that I have discussed about the context in which a photograph is taken and how this relates to my own practice and indeed what a photographer who hates taking photographs even does for work.

Lots of Love

xo Gossi...Tom

P.S. Apologise for any bad grammar and spelling, I'm an artist, not a writer.

Hospitality #01

Hospitality #02