Philip Grocott’s Blog

Martin Parr (Blog Post)

Martin Parr was the last speaker at Burton College in my final year of photography there. As you might’ve guessed, I’m more than a bit late with this post. I had recorded the lecture on my iPhone and would’ve just posted the audio. But it was asked that any audio and video not be distributed and posted on the internet. So what follows is somewhat an account of the lecture. Hope you find it interesting.

There are very few towns Martin Parr hasn’t been to, Burton On Trent was one of them. But now he is no longer a Burton virgin. Brought up in Surrey, Martin Parr was a typical middle class kid. His Grandfather, a fellow of the Royal Photographic Society, lent Martin a camera and his interest in photography began. By the age of thirteen he knew he wanted to be a photographer. Martin Parr studied at Manchester Polytechnic between 1970 and 1973, this is before the notion of galleries and people buying prints. The idea was to be trained as an assistant. For his Diploma Show, Martin Parr made a living room installation which also exhibited at the Impressions Gallery (formerly in York now in Bradford). Between then and now, the photography landscape and photography education has changed greatly. 

Read the rest of this post »

Exhibition TwentyTen - Burton College

Still a few days of Burton College's end of year show. The Foundation Degree photography is situated at Burton Library. If you're in the area, it's worth checking out.

Catalogue - Burton College at the 10th Annual Free Range Art & Design Show

You are invited to attend the opening of

'Catalogue'

10th Annual Free Range Art & Design Show

17th June 2010
6pm to 10pm

A Vote for Ruth

During the four weeks preceding the General Election, Philip Grocott documented the Burton Labour Party and their candidate for the constituency, Ruth Smeeth. 

Burton Upon Trent and Uttoxeter is a marginal seat in the Midlands, with a strong campaign between The Conservatives and Labour. 

Philip's aim was to photograph Ruth and the Burton Labour Party during their campaign, giving an insight to the General Election on a local scale.

A selection of the images will be shown as a part of Burton College's Catalogue at the Tenth Annual Free Range Art & Design Show.

Opening: 17th June 2010, 6pm to 10pm. Also showing on the 18th, 19th, 20th and 21st of June 2010, 10am to 7pm. 

Location: F Block T3, Hanbury Street, London.
Philip Grocott joined Burton College on the Foundation Degree in Photography as a mature student.

In 2009, Philip was awarded a Merit in the Fujifilm Student Awards. More recently he has been documenting the Burton Labour Party in the run up to General Election.

Free Range Preparation

This is the first year that Burton College will be exhibiting at the Free Range art and design show. Free Range provides an excellent platform for students to showcase their work to the public and industry.

Students from Burton College on the Foundation Degree in Digital Media Production (Photography) will be showing work from the 17th to the 21st of June. As one of the students, I’ll be exhibiting thirty images from my recent A Vote for Ruth project.

Read the rest of this post »

Public Response

Prior to starting the photographs of the Burton Labour Party, I had wanted to have some sort of photographic public response to the General Election. To do this I simply wanted to take full body portraits of Burton Upon Trent’s public in their environment. I envisaged having these portraits dispersed amongst the photos of the local political campaign that I would also make.

I started out by just walking around the streets of Burton Upon Trent and asking people if I could take their photo. Along with this, I would ask them how they intended to vote and other questions related to their thoughts about politics. I made up a model release form and figured out what I was going to say to introduce myself and explain my intentions. I also made sure that I always carried my student ID and business cards as reassurance to the people I approached.

The process of walking about and randomly stopping people proved to be fairly fruitless. After asking hundreds of people I’d only gotten three people to agree to having their photo taken. I’d expected a few refusals, having your photo taken and being asked about your politics can be too intrusive for some. Most were pleasant in their refusals, but occasionally some were not. One guy began shouting aggressively at me after I’d asked him. This all proved to be incredibly disheartening. Repeated rejection was hard to take. At this time I was still negotiating with the political candidates to see if they would allow me to do a photo-documentary of them. I even entertained the idea of dropping the whole thing and producing something else. Thankfully, I didn’t.

I decided to set up a Facebook group and announce what I was doing through my blog and Twitter. Although over fifty people joined the Facebook group it only gained me a further three portraits.

By now I was fully into photographing the Burton Labour Party and it was becoming increasingly apparent that I wasn’t going to be able spend much more time trying to get portraits. Reluctantly, I decided to drop this aspect of my assignment and purely focus on my photo-documentary.

Out of the portraits I had taken, I was only really happy with two of them. Perhaps I hadn’t really conceived this part of my assignment very well. Portraiture is probably not something I’ll return to frequently, although it does remain popular amongst photographers. I was also disappointed by the amount of refusals I got when wanting to photograph people on the streets of Burton. I felt that this was to be an important election and with Burton being a marginal seat, it was an important part of the town’s history. On another level I wished I had no need to ask the public for their permission and about their politics, as many would’ve made for good street photography.

Still I gave it a shot. You just don’t know until you try.   

A Vote for Ruth

A Vote for Ruth is my four week photo-documentary of Ruth Smeeth the prospective Labour candidate for Burton Upon Trent, during the General Election of 2010. My aim was to give a behind the scenes look at the General Election campaign on a local scale.

Thirty of the images have been selected to be shown at Free Range, the graduate exhibition show in London. There will also be a solo exhibition more locally at Burton Upon Trent library. I’m also in the process of self publishing the work as a book.

Read the rest of this post »

Catching up, Results and What's Next

It’s been a while since I did a proper blog post. There’s been quite a few things going on. The college is now fully committed to being a part of this year’s FreeRange exhibition, work is starting on my final self-initiated project, UCAS applications for third year study have been sent off and we’ve had a talk from Laura Pannack. All of which I’ll go into more detail with individual posts over the next couple of days.

Recently, I received the results for the photography degree work I produced last term. I also met with my tutor to discuss the results and the work I'd be doing next. 

The mark I had gotten was an indicative scoring and proved to be much more than I had expected. The course is run in association with Staffordshire University and has a fairly complicated marking system. But in simple terms, work is marked out of a total of 15. I got an indicative grade of 12. That essentially means I’m at Merit level, on the cusp of a Distinction. Anyway, I’m pleased with what I’ve got!

This term will also mean that I have to produce a final self-initiated project. I discussed my ideas with my tutor. I’m looking to do something which I can get really involved with. I seem to be more focused on street and documentary photography lately. So maybe I can somehow combine the two. Certainly the street aspect would be useful for Format 2011. I certainly have a strong desire to photograph people more, typically my work is absent of people. I have been considering doing something relating to a drug and alcohol rehabilitation centre, but am now pursuing doing something around the General Election that should take place this summer.

New Year, New Projects

The Christmas decorations have come down, the country has become "Frozen Britain" and we're a week into 2010.

A little belatedly, I'd like to wish everyone a Happy New Year. I hope that it's a peaceful and prosperous one for all.

For me, there is much to look forward too. University has restarted and this will be my last year on the Foundation degree (although I am applying to do a third year to gain a BA Hons). This term will entail a final self initiated project, along with other assignments and the college will be at FreeRange this year as well. I also have my own small exhibition in the Summer.

Coming up soon, I intend to enter the AOP Student Awards and the Fujifilm Student Awards, amongst others. I'll be redesigning my website and giving further consideration to how my photography and studies will pan out into a hopefully successful career. In fact, I have so many ideas and things to do, I'm not sure when I'll fit it all in. But I'm looking forward to it.

Additionally, I've also started taking one photo each day for a year, inspired by the Project 365 group on Flickr. I'll only be using my iPhone to take these pictures and using iPhone apps to edit them. This is purely a personal project, which I had only being posting to my Flickr. However, I've decided to include them in my blog as well, having backdated previous Project 365 entries. To solely see them on my blog, just click on the Project 365 tag, or you can go to the Flickr set. I'll be using the tags on my blog a bit more so you can filter out what you want to see. I'll also post some more of those photos that I've taken that don't really have a home and I will be writing more about photography too.

All in all, it will be a busy year, but I intend for it to be a successful one too.

Merry Christmas to Each & Every One of You

I just wanted to wish everyone Seasons Greetings.

I hope everybody from family and friends to my blog readers, Twitter followers, Flickr contacts, Facebook friends and fans and everyone else has a fantastic festive season.

Sincerely, have a very Merry Christmas!

Phil

Brian Griffin & Anne Braybon

Recently, I went along to the Quad in Derby to see Brian Griffin and Anne Braybon give a talk. Brian Griffin is taking part in the Road to 2012. These are portraits of people involved with the London 2012 Olympics in conjunction with the National Portrait Gallery. Anne Braybon is the Commisions Curator at the National Portrait Gallery.

Anne Braybon began the talk, by explaining about the funding, how the portraits were to be organised and pretty much all the logistical concerns of the project. Brian Griffin then went on to show some of the portraits he'd already taken. It was really interesting as he showed different variations of shots and we got to see the work in progress. I found looking at the images fascinating, but specifically a portrait of Seb Coe stood out. As I understand it this portrait isn't going to be used, so it was a rare treat.

It was a very interesting talk and opportunity to see Brian Griffin's work and hear about the organisation this type of project requires. And it was amusing to hear how people on the David Icke forum felt the portraits were part of a wider conspiracy. After the talk, there was a networking opportunity, to chat with Brian Griffin, Anne Braybon and others attending. Sadly though I had to leave at this point. I'm told that the Quad will have more talks from photographers in the New Year, something to look forward to.