Monday

Ophelia

So...Other than stumbling in, say oooh 10 minutes late to the first contextual studies class and not having my images either (which i wasn't aware we had to bring), I thought this part of the course was going to be somewhat dodgy and supposedly unenjoyable. That however, changed within the first five minutes though; the friendly environment of the class made it easy to talk and our Tutor, Kate, was pretty cool too. We discussed the few images that had been brought to class and then went on to discussing the first chapter of the book "Ways of seeing" by John Berger, and although his twisted and lengthy ways of writing didn't appeal to me, i liked his subject matter and general underlying tone as well as his ways of questioning social outlooks on artwork and presenting issues like the statistics of educated people and they're likelihood of going to galleries in comparison to the likelihood of uneducated people visiting galleries, which i found was quite interesting. For me though, the part of the discussion that was most interesting, was the discussion of that photographers work (who for the life of me i can't remember his name) but stages these set-ups which generally could take up a staff of, I believe it was said, 50 people and up to a year of creating the actual set and all for a single, intensely dynamic photograph. My personal favourite was the photograph entitled Ophelia, it encapsulated the essence of Shakespearean Ophelia with a modern day twist and adaptation to modern day society with the same implication and suggestion of women's depression/possible oppression.

Safe to say it was a good start and introduction to Contextual Studies. So...here's to hoping the rest of the year goes like first class went, minus the late entrance and abscent work that is! :P

A.

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