# data[].attributes.headline
Assignment 1: 'Living on the Edge' - Manifesto and Project Plan September 2021

# data[].attributes.subject
Assignment 1: 'Living on the Edge' - Manifesto and Project Plan September 2021

# data[].attributes.body
‘Living on the Edge’ (Assignment 1) started with plans that were purposely broad in terms of aims and approach.

The binding thematic element was ‘narrative of place’ and cross-linkages between work in different media to explore and clarify and communicate alternative subjective and objective narratives. Due to uncertain times and shifting opportunities and challenges I explored possibilities of projects on 12 familiar and also new locations in East Anglia, Cornwall and Northern England.

The main focus was on book publishing and on-line galleries and cards.

# data[].attributes.headline
Assignment 2: Edges in Time - Project Making and Testing February 2022

# data[].attributes.subject
Assignment 2: Edges in Time - Project Making and Testing February 2022

# data[].attributes.body
‘Edges in Time’ (Assignment 2) represented a narrowing towards a more subjective and on-line research-based approach. This was partly because the COVID pandemic continued to seriously restrict my ability to do the necessary location research to develop an in-depth understanding of local perspectives.

Inspired by reading of Mark Harper, Perec, Auge and others, I had also become even more interested in the multi-dimensionality of time in place place and the ways in which ‘reality’ merges past, present and future.

I was also becoming increasingly interested in how working in different media - photography, video, sketching and printmaking could be used to explore and merge different experiences of time in a place.

# data[].attributes.headline
Assignment 3: Tales from the Edge: Project Production and Networking May 2022

# data[].attributes.subject
Assignment 3: Tales from the Edge: Project Production and Networking May 2022

# data[].attributes.body
‘Tales from the Edge’ (Assignment 3) presented a further shift in narrative focus underpinning the body of work. Drawing also on some of the grunge aesthetics and Mark Harper's 'weird and eerie' discussion.

By May 2022 the wider political context and most pressing emerging ‘Building Back Better’ issues that formed the focus of my 'real life' documentary projects had changed:

Although Brexit was still an underlying issue, and cause of some of the issues, it was by then barely mentioned. This was partly because it was eclipsed by the impacts of the COVID pandemic.

Even the COVID pandemic itself had disappeared from discussion. But - as I had far too much work on as well as SYP to take time off sick - COVID continued to affect my own openness to mix in crowds and travel - and hence even more experiential subjective location work away from home.

Gender-based violence, mental health, racism and migration are perennial issues that surface now and then.

Climate change continued as an increasingly urgent issue. But also at the time barely mentioned since COP26.

The main emerging issues were around the war in Ukraine and the linked cost of living crisis.

I decided to focus on the more imaginative visual narrative 'Tales'. Aiming to evoke - rather than explicitly reference - social, political and environmental issues  suggested by, specific places or events. This would give my work both immediate and longer term relevance to a wide global audience.

# data[].attributes.headline
Assignment 4: Tales from the Edge - Realisation and Presentation May 2022

# data[].attributes.subject
Assignment 4: Tales from the Edge - Realisation and Presentation May 2022

# data[].attributes.body
I continued working on the subjective narratives in a cross-media approach applying insights from working on similar subjects in one medium to enrich my work in other media. For example from time-based moving image narratives to sequential book narratives, from sketchbook work to photography, or photography-based printmaking like photoscreen and solarplate. This included taking Illustration Sketchbook and Moving Image personal development courses with OCA.

By the end of Assignment 4 I potentially had:
8 self-published printed and e-books on-line (Blurb and/or advanced on-line drafts already exist for all these):
• Spectral Blues
• Anywhere Road: Framed in Noir
• Anywhere Road: Christmas 2021
• Tale of Pumpkin Wood
• Hast Thou Slain the Jabberwock
• Moot Histories
• A Mermaid’s Tale
• Reflections in Grey 2022
Photographic and print media images for dissemination and sale. Including:
• Cyano-Types: Garden of Mindfulness:
• Anywhere Printscapes
• BrambleScapes 1 : Topaz Magic
• BrambleScapes 2: Silkscreen and lithography
• Hagg Wood woodcut prints
• Aldeburgh etchings
Supporting video to be further developed from existing drafts for Moving Image projects:
• Edges in ‘Real’ Time animation
• Shadow Wall Tales
• Life in QuickTime garden wildlife animation clips
• Butterfly Effects
• Walking in Fragments
• Beasts of Bramblefield
• Tree Songs

# data[].attributes.headline
Assignment 4: Annotated Pecha Kucha May 2022

# data[].attributes.subject
Assignment 4: Annotated Pecha Kucha May 2022

# data[].attributes.body
When I tried to put my projects into the 20-slide Pecha Kucha format I found this constrained any real mention - let alone meaningful discussion. I was advised by my tutor not to let myself get too restricted by the format. But from Assignment 4 onwards there was a progressive narrowing of my output aims to a careful selection of best work for assessment. Leaving other work for further development after SYP - for example planned MAs in Photography and/or Graphic Design to continue to develop the quality of my work and approach.

# data[].attributes.headline
Assignment 5: Tales from the Edge - Your Exhibition and Marketing Plan June 2022

# data[].attributes.subject
Assignment 5: Tales from the Edge - Your Exhibition and Marketing Plan June 2022

# data[].attributes.body
For Assignment 5 I narrowed the submission down to just focus on:

Core portfolio of six books of photographic or illustration work, some with and some without text. Paying attention to typography.

Home Edges:

Spectres in Blue: Large landscape ‘coffee table’ high quality print book of haunting cyano-type photography of ‘environmental spectres’ in my garden with accompanying text narrative.

Garden of Zemni: contrasting small cheaper publication of tragi-comic illustrated fictions with creative writing text and creative photography-based or line illustrations from my sketchbook.

Anywhere Road: Framed in Noir: Large square ‘coffee table’ photobook with end text only of dramatic ‘Film Noir’ photographs of scenes and ‘happenings’ in the street with minimal end text only. Inspired by Daido Moriyama and ethos of New Topographics movement.

Anywhere Road: Life in Monochrome: black and white documentary photography of the street with challenging captions where relevant. Showing contradictions, alienation and occasional flashes of humour in life on the street. Landscape hard copy. Captions and possibly further images to be added.

Moot and Other Tales, Aldeburgh

A Mermaid’s Tale:  Large Square and Small square alternative publications of a textless narrative based on photographs of a wooden board on the beach. Small format hard copy finished. Large format to be finalised.

Moot Histories:  Large Square and Small square alternative publications of historical narrative of Aldeburgh based on photographs of flint stones in the wall of the Moot Hall Museum. On-line draft of images complete but historical text to be finalised with museum and others in Aldeburgh during further visits July and September.

‘Zemni voice’: Supporting media experiments

Moving Image as part of my stylistic and narrative development

Printmaking and creative photography-based images as cards

# data[].attributes.body
In the intervening period my work again broadened out a little, moving back to include some of the ideas I had earlier:

I continued with my personal development courses in Illustration Sketchbooks, a series of Creative Writing courses in poetry and short fiction and the final Moving Image assignments.

I was able to spend a week staying in a holiday cottage on the beach in Shingle Street. This enabled me to follow up on some original ideas I had in Assignment 1 and enabled me to get material for two further photography-based books that linked well with my work on my garden and street.

The opportunity presented itself to have a joint exhibition 'Shingle' in the Ballroom Gallery in Aldeburgh together with my partner who is just completing SYP in Painting.

# data[].attributes.headline
Tales from the Edge: SMUGMUG Portfolio February 2023

# data[].attributes.subject
Tales from the Edge: SMUGMUG Portfolio February 2023

# data[].attributes.body
What is a Zemni Voice?
Edge Manifesto poetry

Concept work from Edges in Time - animation

Apply this more to the text and treatment as I re-evaluate the books.

Shingle Street - Outsider on the Edge

Documentary context photography from Life on the Edge - Reflections in Grey updated

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.readable_text
"My work is about 'Edges'," I declare.

"Edges of what," asks the white rabbit, just pausing

About to disappear down another black hole.

"I'm not sure," I reply, with some hesitation,

Looking up through the sky then down through the ground

Not sure where exactly an edge could be found.

"I guess edges of possibility:

Between now and now, Between Me and You, Us and Them, Them and Them, Me and Me. Life and Death."

"Oh, my dear" scoffs the rabbit, superior pride puffing,

"You presume ancient ' Egges' are just slightly elongated squashed eggs Smooth comfort cradles of Life. Just waiting to break free.

But my dear, you are mistaken by your naïve etymology.

Egges are sharp swords, fashioned with consummate intelligence to pierce all defences

Slashing without mercy all embryonic skulls, to crush all in their way with suffering and starvation.

"I don't assume" I reply, offended "anything. I just refuse

To accept that edges should be petrified,

Dulled in lazy fear of imagined unknowns on the other side. I refuse

To sit complacently behind walls, fingers crossed, hoping King's men

Will eventually emerge down from gold-heaped towers or that galloping swords slashing

Will ever mend edges inexorably dissolving between burning land and rising sea."

My voice now emboldened, indignant "I hereby swear my work

Will ceaselessly probe all edges as worlds of potential, exploring all I can find

To work out how to stop Edges ossifying to Ridges then Ledges where you can only fall once. I want

To make Walls transform into mountains to be climbed right up to the top

With exhilarating perspectives, infinities of dawning possibilities on both sides and

Including investigation of all valleys and islands between.

Before our world disappears in a sea of mushroom clouds exploding ever larger

And the final fragile edges of me fall apart."

'Tales from the Edge' is a series of alternative visual narrative 'tales' exploring different approaches to creative visual documentary.

Aiming to challenge and change social and economic inequalities and human environmental impacts, each project explores interlinkages, interferences and tensions between:

- 'stream of consciousness now-time': ways of heightening personal experiences of place affecting 'hauntings' from past memories and future visions, hopes and fears merge in our experience of the present

- 'shifting histories': ways in which multi-layered and multi-perspectives on physical, social and environmental remembered and re-imagined 'realities' are manipulated for consumption in the present time

- 'unstable imaginings' of future uncertainties - where alternative potentialities are often shaped and restricted not only by personal experiences, but powerful economic and political forces.

The portfolios were produced for BA in Visual Communications final module 'Sustaining Your Practice' with Open College of the Arts.

The main focus of the portfolios here is on sequential book narratives in photographic media for physical and on-line viewing. But these portfolios are based on supporting work across different media - including sketching, moving image and printmaking to produce a more informed and in-depth understanding of place in both subjective and objective terms. My work also explores how the specific aesthetics that can be achieved in different media affect perception, understanding and communication to inspire activism 'to make the world a better place'.

- Everyday Edges is a series of photography and video-based books and card selections about my house, garden and the road where I live.

- Shifting Edges is a series of photography-based books based on Aldeburgh and Shingle Street on the Suffolk Coast.- 'Shingle' Aldeburgh Exhibition Portfolio Ballroom Gallery May 2023 is a portfolio of photography, printmaking, sketches and promotional materials produced by me as part of Sustaining Your Practice that will be part of a joint exhibition with my partner (OCA final year painting student).

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Tales from the Edge: Visual Communications Portfolio 2023

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
"My work is about 'Edges'," I declare. "Edges of what," asks the white rabbit, just pausing About to disappear down another black hole. "I'm not sure," I reply, with some hesitation, Looking up through the sky then down through the ground Not sure where exactly an edge could be found.