I have been exploring changes within masculinity, which has been inspired by Grayson Perry’s book The Decent of Man that looks in part, at the harm rigid masculine roles can do. The starting point for my research was to focus on my first male role model (my father) to perhaps understand how aspects of my own masculinity have been shaped by his influences. I may revisit this during this module as I believe there is still more ground to cover here.

I’ve been producing pinhole images with long exposures, which require a great deal of trial and error. Justin Quinnell's pinhole photographs and in particular his solargraphs have been a useful point of reference for me. The process of capturing images in this way often leads to unexpected results, so from that perspective, the research itself and the outcome are difficult to separate. Susan Derges works in a similar way with her camera-less images produced in rivers and doesn't feel that she really conducts research as mentioned in the case study in one of this week's resources ‘Shirley Read: Finding and Knowing - Thinking about Ideas’ p114.  I have included a composition below formed from a pinhole image I captured which was intended as a living monument to my Father. My intention was to capture an 8 day exposure of the Grandfather clock which would not require any development , but this produced rather poor results. The image you see below was a two hour exposure developed with a weak solution.

Another body of work I’ve been researching is Sophie Calle’s ‘Take Care of Yourself’ 2007 that used a variety of personal handwritten notes, emails etc that was a response to a relationship ending. This was a strong influence in my piece ‘Comes with Instructions’ (2nd image attached below) as it encouraged me to gather significant objects, whether they be personal possessions or even a handwritten note in the case of this image. I suppose I see this process of gathering relevant ‘things’ as a form of research that may inform or even feature in my work in some way.