A NEW HOMe - April 2024
1 April:
This feels like a new beginning. I have relocated ShutterPod and Photopocene from my spare room to a great space at Mount Pleasant Eco Park, Porthtowan. Simply having storage for my photography workshop bits and bobs is a game changer - and I can run workshops on-site too!
Not only is it good for my practice, it’s also good for my PhD too.
Head over to the Photo Store section to book workshops or buy gift vouchers and check out the Events page for other activities coming up in 2024.
Planning process - March 2024
17 March:
Although I began my part-time PhD in October 2022, due to challenging personal circumstances in 2023 my ability to dedicate thinking space to my studies was hindered. To acknowledge this, my contribution to the 2023 summer symposium related to how I aim to use mindful and slow photography as a methodology within my research. Slowing down and ridding myself of any guilt about not necessarily meeting others expectations is a part of this. It has also meant a total review of what I can accomplish, given I am also working and running my photographic practice.
One way I have done this is to start seeing my PhD not as a separate entity but as my photographic practice. This has meant some soul searching about where my focus needs to be as an artist and also as a PhD candidate. As my employers have provided some support to my studies, I found I was putting their needs first - but they are not funding my time and so I have realised I am not encumbered to create a project solely aligned to benefit them. I also remind myself that I am part-time; so in effect I am only just over half-way through a first year - this certainly helps keep things in perspective.
As with many practice-based PhDs, my research, although fundamentally the same as my initial proposal, is flexing as I find new routes and discoveries. I relate this to the meanderings of a river, the subject on which my work is built.
My current focus is as follows:
Phytoremediation as a simile for photo-re/mediation: the power of plants to remove toxins from nature is like the power of abstract, eco-photography to ‘remove’ toxic human impacts on the riverine.
Speaking with scientists researching phytoremediation as a nature-based solution and comparing this to using photo-re/mediation as part of nature-based solutions.
Curating an artists call-out for an abstract, eco-photo-art element of Fringe Arts Bath which will be part of my participatory reserach into the use of abstarct images to evoke behaviour change and mediate for river health.
Devising a participatory, eco-photography symposium in collabortion with Falmouth University.
Building connections with fellow students following similar areas of study and external academics with subject synergy.
And of course, trying to write up my on-going lit review too. I did make a start on my final thesis too!
Rivercideotypes - 2023
Human-made challenges to water quality from issues such as historic mining, sewage pollution and chemical/pharmaceutical inputs are reeking havoc on freshwater ecosystems.
Based in the streams of St Agnes on Cornwall’s north coast, my PhD is researching how, or if, abstract, eco-conscious photography can mediate between humans and river health.
Through personal, citizen artist nature-made images and phytoremediatiion, I will address how (or if) abstract photo-art made in collaboration with the riverine can make an environmental ‘hyperobject’ tangible and prompt behaviour change in individuals to societal systems.