Looking back through my work I did in Contemporary Themes I, the topics that I really enjoyed was the relationship between place and identity, by Heike Lowenstein, and Neil Campbell’s talk mainly focusing on Robert Frank’s ‘The Americans’ and the outsider looking in approach. I responded to Neil Campbell’s talk in two ways, the first was a photographic response with images of my brother who is on JSA and has been for many years, this linked to Frank’s work by photographing the minority, and the themes that we all know about but changes aren't being made. The other way I responded to his talk was a comparative essay with one of Frank’s images and an image from ‘The Family Of Man’ exhibition. As for place- identity relationship talk, I hand made a concertina book containing 9 images, 3 images of 3 back gardens that when the pages were pulled across they created a panorama of the three gardens.
The themes that really interested me of Robert Frank’s ‘the Americans’ is how he photographed themes that were known of but never seen, like black people and women being a minority and not having equal rights as men, and how it was an outsider’s view looking in on America. As for Heike’s talk, I was really interested with identity theories and how we relate to a place and how a place isn't a place, it’s a space until we have memories and emotional connections there, that’s when it becomes a place.
