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
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