This blog post is being made in conjunction with an accredited education programme: MA Photography with Falmouth University. None of these mages are mine this week.

It’s been quite a challenging week on the MA. The focus was on collaboration but often in quite surprising ways. For me, I think the most challenging element was at the start where we were faced with many different approaches to collaboration. Some of which I really found to be more like theft.

Most extreme in this regard was the work Penelope Umbrico’s Sunset Portraits from 13,243,857 Sunset Pictures on Flickr on 10/08/13, (2013). Umbrico searched for sunsets on flickr, downloaded and cropped them to fit with the holiday snap aesthetic and set them out in a huge grid on a gallery wall. Along the way, referring to it as a kind of “collective practice”.

Penelope Umbrico (edit – I don’t even know how crediting this work or any of the others on this page works. It can’t be their copyright can it? Comment below if you know.)

I found this work highly problematic in a very fundamental way.

To be clear, this was presented to us in such a way that we were free to come up with our own conclusions. I certainly came up with one of my own, which is that if I were to walk into your house and take your TV, I very much doubt that I would get away with calling it “collective ownership”.

She has apparently received a fair amount of criticism for it around the theme of appropriating other people’s work. I veer further towards theft. From the context of certain technologies that are built on the wholesale and massive theft of creative works, I have a little trouble understanding why galleries would entertain it. Except of course for the all powerful fact that controversy gets people through the gallery door.

Idris Khan

Where I get onboard is the more transformative work like Idris Khan’s Homage to Bernd Becher (2007) , and work like Michael Wolf’s Streetview in which Wolf searched painstakingly through Google Streetview for interesting, odd, at times terrifying moments captured by the all-seeing Google Streetview Eye. This work, in my opinion, has something valuable to say about surveillance society.

Michael Wolf

Why, you may ask, is this under the theme of collaboration? Well because there is a train of thought that extends collaboration beyond willing and active collaboration towards a looser idea of collectiveness. I’m not sure I see the value in that. When I hoover the floor, I don’t consider myself in collaboration with either Dyson or Hoover. If I was, I’d expect them to do more of the bloody work.

However, there are some interesting ideas inherent in this. Concepts like re-photography and re-use do interest me. As long as I can push them without overstepping my own moral bounds (different for everyone I know) as regards these things. I think there needs to be a highly transformative element to all of this, and when I think about it for long enough, I must admit the boundaries do start to become a bit foggy.

For example, is my Bridges work simply reusing the work of engineers and architects? Certain buildings are copyright after all. If I continue my work on suburban environments, should that count any less because these are 2 up 2 down dormitory town buildings? Am I collaborating with the architect responsible for these buildings? I mean… no… but it’s still something I need to think about.

Or yes? I do feel sometimes that I am playing a game with the designer of a building when I photograph elements of it. It’s… really confusing.

We did, indeed, actually collaborate as a group this week too. And while I find collaboration can be draining because of my chronic illnesses, it was absolutely worthwhile, and I feel much less at a remove from some of my cohort now. We made some lovely work around the idea of memento mori. I might post mine at some point, I might not. It’s very personal and I’m not quite there yet with putting it ALL out there.

The MA is starting to kick into gear now, I feel. Onwards!