Anne Giddings
I’m grateful to tutor Clive White for drawing my attention to the interesting work Anne Giddings is doing for her level two Landscape course. This is what she says about here ‘Alleyways’ project:
In this project I explored the idea that “…we know a patch of ground in a detail we will never know anywhere again. In Welsh it is called ‘y filltir sqwar and it exists in the Welsh psyche as one of a series of cognitive maps around home and locale” (Pearson)
I believe that this intimately known area from childhood has stayed with me and is resurfacing unbidden in my photographs. In this work I visited this idea consciously, mapping one part of that cognitive map from childhood onto my current surroundings.
The resulting work seems to reflect feelings of disorientation and uncertainty as though in a shifting labyrinth, maybe there is a sense of a need for transition from one place to another through or within these liminal spaces.
Great work – check it out on her website here
23 thoughts on “Anne Giddings”
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Great stuff Anne and good to seeing being seen by a wider audience. The Projections set is just awesome as it raises so many questions about representation, the real, memory….
Go Anne! Lovely to see it featured here. The more the merrier! 🙂
Really strong work. The attention to detail in the composition is great. I love that you’ve obviously waited until the light is shining from the far end (or not), and taken the time to get stuff right. The light green leaves framed by the black of the wall in the image above, for instance. I’m a firm believer in looking hard in order to see more. And this is evidence of that.
It would make a superb show. Congratulations.
Bryan, you’ve reminded me that while I was photographing one of the things I was doing was playing with the light so that it became a clue to what might lie further on, although I deliberately concealed what did lie further on, which sometimes seems to make the light/dark have a sort of presence.
I’ve found it fascinating to watch the progress of this work, particularly the ‘Projections’. The whole project will certainly make a wonderful show. Great work Anne.
They were ginnels and snickets where I grew up…and viewing these conjures up strong childhood memories of my own web of shortcuts . Inspired and inspring Anne.
Thanks very much everyone, I’m hoping to get some of it exhibited later this year. so – I’m working on it !
Thanks very much also to Clive and Gareth.
Well done, Anne, and good luck with exhibiting.
If you do get the chance to exhibit, make sure it’s not just one. If it’s a solo show, no matter (though mixing them with other sets of your work might make things too messy), and if it’s a group show submit three as a triptych in order to get more than one in. The different but similar images start to talk to each other, which is a good deal of their clout. Good luck.
By the way I’m reminded of this painting by Pieter de Hooch from the 17th Century: http://www.oceansbridge.com/paintings/artists/masters/big/h/hooch/2/14hooch_painting.jpg
They also have a relation to the paintings of George Shaw: http://ichef.bbci.co.uk/arts/yourpaintings/images/paintings/gac/624×544/gac_gac_17879_624x544.jpg
Thank you Bryan, that’s such a good idea – I’m working on putting them in a book layout at the moment with pairs of alleyways on each page, and the pages folding so that different alleyways can be juxtaposed in different ways … I don’t know if its going to work as yet, but that’s the plan ! The feeling intended to be of a confusing labyrinth like structure. For exhibition triptychs would work so well.
Thanks for the references too.
Excellent. If you want to get really intellectual you might want to look at the the ideas the Situationists had about ‘drifting’ through the city. All very political and perhaps way off beam, but there’s some thing interesting about the pedestrian ways through a car-filled world that’s beguiling.
Flaneurship… there’s not enough of it in photography these days. It’s not as susceptible to intellectual interrogation as stating one’s aims up front then making work that can be critically compared with one’s ‘mission statement’. There needs to be more discovering what one’s doing by doing it and investigating what one’s already done to see what it now might mean in one’s developing context.
here here.
Good to see your name in lights Anne
Thanks Rob
And also agreeing about the being open to what is there when making work, I feel sure that the kind of working process resulting from a more literal approach wouldn’t be half so interesting to be engaged with or demanding intellectually and/or emotionally.
(And I’m still involved with the investigating of what one’s done :-))
I think this is very important. I try to encourage students to make their initial proposals more in the spirit of a direction of travel (I am thinking of longer term projects that develop over several assignments in OCA terms) and only make a firm and fixed proposal at a much later stage to take into account work done to date and what has evolved.
Completely agree – always fancied being a flaneur – drinking coffee, musing over photography, art and life, wandering around – here, there, anywhere with no particular direction ….. could OCA offer a course in flaneurship (with free coffee stops provided) 🙂
I’ll reflect on this Andrea. It might take some research trips to Paris, etc
It ties in so much with the place I photographed, my research showed that these alleys originated as paths between fields, allowing people to get from road to road using shortcuts, then over time the town got larger, all the fields were built on, in time the buildings changed but the same sites were built on again, leaving only the small gaps between as alleyways. They went from the high street to surrounding residential areas. But in the 70s they built a ring road around and the alleys were cut off by it so now they don’t go anywhere. I only found this out from my exploration, I felt like there was something there in the alleyways that was missing from the rest of the place. Some kind of remnant of something.
Fascinating Anne: it is really interesting to explore areas and see the traces of past times and places and structures underneath what we see today. It’s great to see your work here at last – congratulations.
It is great to see your work here Anne, it is very inspiring!
Thanks Eileen and Stephanie. Its so great to have the support of your peers. I don’t know if anyone reading is feeling a bit left out or isolated in any way – if so please feel free to join in our flickr community, I find that its been so helpful with really getting the most out of distance learning.
http://www.flickr.com/groups/ocarts/pool/
Hope its ok to ‘advertise’ Gareth 🙂
Great work Anne, you are really flourishing in your level two studies. I love the shot that has the graffiti image of a black cat.
Keep up the good work
Russell
Thanks very much Russell; I’m really enjoying it.