Germain visited my university to carry out a presentation in front of the year and then he completed a portfolio review which I partook in.
One of his projects that he talked about was called Hidden Presence and traced the life of Nathaniel Wells, who's mum was slave and dad the sugar plantation owner. At the age of 9, he was sent to Britain to be educated and inherit his dads fortune. At the age of 23 he purchased one of the finest houses in Wales, and lived out the rest of his life as a country gentleman.
Germains exhibition was in a derelict Customs house in the Cardiff Bay which used to process new immigrants from the West Indies. This is a good place to hold the exhibition because it connects directly with what Germaine photographed, and the fact that its derelict suggests the projects history.
He has printed his images very large, which as you can see below helps the viewer feel like they are apart of the work and viewing the scene in real life instead of looking at a photograph.
Because this print doesn't have a frame, it makes the tree's look like they are growing out from the ground right in front of you. I think this helps the viewer to feel closer and more connected to the piece, because a frame separates the viewer from the work.
I think the size of this print and also how its been suspended create a highly impacting effect, which is definitely something to think about for my end of year exhibition. Although unlike the image above, the frame makes you feel like your looking through a window into the photograph, as the frame puts in a sort distance between the viewer and the image. I think for the viewer to feel involved within the image its better to not display it with a frame.
These two pieces which are in frames and mounted on the wall are still visually impacting due to their large size, but I don't think they catch the viewers eye as much as the previous two images in terms of presentation.
It was useful to have Germain talk about his projects and exhibitions because its meant that I have started to think about how the different sizes and ways of displaying images impact the viewer in different ways, which is a very important part of final unit.
After he talked about his own projects we had a break and then the ten people that signed up to it had a portfolio review with him. I felt that this was very useful because it allowed me to talk through my ideas and photographs and get instant feedback from a practising documentary photographer. Luckily I stayed until the end to ask him a few more questions which actually allowed me to have a much deeper talk with him about which of my images worked best and which don't and then also exhibition ideas.
Firstly he really like the interior of the different tents that I had captured so far, and strongly suggested to me that I carry on with that which I will do. But he thought that the before and after images, even though they have their place within my project, aren't as visually interesting as the tent interiors, which is definitely something to think about for the future.
I then spoke to him about potentially exhibiting my tent interiors at life size, which he really liked the sound of. But he stressed that because I had used a wide angle lens to capture these images, I would need to scale the print to objects in the foreground instead of the background because if I didn't I might end up with huge foreground objects.
Overall I felt that this experience was really useful because he gave honest feedback with some very helpful suggestions in terms of my project directions and also potential exhibiting techniques. I think that I will take on board his suggestion about carrying on with the tent interiors, but stopping the before and after images. Although I would still include these images in my project book at the end because I believe that they still tell an important story to the viewer.