Week Five – The Feedback Loop (Part Two)

On Tuesday I had feedback from Wendy on my FMP Project Proposal document at the second of my 1:1 supervisory meetings. I received a slightly disappointing mark of 64%, with the highest mark out of the learning outcomes given for my written skills (which has little to do with photography or the project). I then realised why this was so.

Wendy probed me, asking me to think about my personal motivation for the project. Is it just about free mining? Is it a metaphor for something else? What is it that I want to say? This makes my working title somewhat redundant and irrelevant. But more importantly, it is forcing me to have to make a decision on how deep I want to go. I have to say that I felt deflated by this.

She encouraged me to research specific work by two photographers that I am already aware of and have mentioned in previous posts – Chloe Dewe Mathews (In Search of Frankenstein) and Raphael Dallaporta (Chauvet Pont) – to look for guidance and ideas on integrating research with the end photographic output. This I will do. I also need to re-watch the lecture by Chrystel Lebas from last September which, having just read my notes from it, I remember finding really very interesting. I also (as already noted before) need to try and find more old family archive photography and possibly consider putting this together with current work for a zine. To that end, whilst I’ve just completed the university’s really useful and well-taught free introductory course on InDesign, I need to consider finding a designer to work with.

Wendy also clarified that it is desirable in FMP to have a public outcome, and that therefore a physical exhibition (if allowable) is preferable. 

Over the past three days I’ve given a lot more thought to Wendy’s feedback. Whilst I am all for being challenged, and indeed I think that is one of the reasons someone like me actually wants to take this MA course, I believe it’s important to have an FMP that is true to oneself. By that I mean, to both enjoy the process and produce work that has integrity, it is important to balance open-mindedness and critical feedback with the objective of delivering a body of work that is true to the intent of the author. In my case, I chose free mining as my FMP subject because of my family connection, so in that sense it is obviously a personal project. But it is not a project about me, I simply happen to be the person behind the camera lens creating it. The central characters are the free miners and the location of my project, the Forest of Dean. Wendy has asked me to be really honest with myself and self-analyse why I am doing this project. Like probably all families, there is a slightly dark side to mine, and it happens to be on the Forest side of my family; I do not need to explain these details, suffice to say that it is not one that I wish to explore for a number of reasons: I never set out to do work which has a narcissistic, self-indulgent, ‘poor me’ feel to it as that does not interest me; if I was to dig deep (no pun unintended) and search my own soul, I do not believe that it would necessarily produce a better or more interesting FMP; in fact it quite possibly might require me needing therapy, which is not something I feel I want to trigger. That is not to say that I am conveniently sweeping ‘stuff’ under the carpet, it is more a recognition, call it self-awareness, that it would do no real good, and would ultimately end up with me unhappy at producing an FMP that wasn’t really what I wanted to do….and possibly make me ill in the process. I value my mental health too highly for that (and I guess this analysis is a form of mindfulness). So my conclusion, writing quite openly as I’m baring my soul, is that my FMP will be what I’d always envisaged it was going to be – about contemporary free mining, the practitioners, the community and the location; the end output will serve as a documentation of free mining in 2020; it will be primarily for Foresters to consume (although clearly all will be welcomed to engage and hopefully enjoy it!); and the exciting, challenging part for me will be delivering the huge amount of work required between now and 11th December (the deadline) in terms of developing and finalising the shoots, the narrative, the curation process, and hopefully an exhibition and draft book.

I now feel much better for writing the previous paragraph.

Moving on to more practical things, I’ve decided to take advantage of the relaxation of the lockdown, and have booked myself into an AirBnB in the Forest for the whole of next week so that I can crack on with my shooting plans. Ahead of this, I spent last Saturday in the Forest with the Wallsend team who were making safe an old mining ventilation shaft. They also had a visit from a local journalist, Janet Hughes, who is a senior reporter for Gloucestershire Live who covers the Forest and is writing an article on free mining. We exchanged details and she seemed enthusiastic about my exhibition and book plans for the end of this year (and we have subsequently exchanged email correspondence). The free miners at Wallsend have a private group page on Facebook (I was invited to join it last autumn) which is updated regularly with reports of all mining activities, and this week even I got a mention: (“The Silverbacks, Adam and Iain, on the surface, continually prepared material for Paul and lowered it down the shaft. Thanks must also go to Nick who not only took photographs but gave the Myners a helping hand with the operation”).

I then caught up (at a social distance) with James who owns the Phoenix gale and his partner, Di, who is a distant relative. Di’s grandfather was Caleb Gwilliam, one of the brothers of my great-grandfather Joseph Henry Gwilliam (called Harry in the family, but known to all ‘Foresters’ as Slen or Slenny). Di has accumulated some fantastic old family photographs which we spent a few hours pouring over.

James has old mining maps of Arles gale and the Hillersland area, which is where my great-grandfather mainly free mined.