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. 

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Burton College at Free Range 2010

This was Burton College's first time at the Free Range Art and Design Show. I was displaying photographs from my 'Vote for Ruth' project as a part of this. Easily the biggest exhibition that any of us had been involved in, I think most of us underestimated how much there was to do. Preparations and putting everything up was as equally manic as the opening night. Still it was all good fun and certainly an invaluable experience.
 
     
Putting everything up.
 
My 'Vote for Ruth' work.
 
Ruth Smeeth, the focus of my project came along too.
 

       

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.

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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.

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Jill Cole ~ Photographer

Jill Cole came to Burton College to show her work and speak about being an emerging art photographer.

 
Jill moved into photography as a second career after working for twelve years as an agricultural economist. In 2004, with two young children at home, joined Cleveland College of Art and Design, to study for a degree course and graduated in 2008.
 
Wanting to find a way of producing work without travel or huge cost, Jill produced Guns in 2007. It was a way of commenting on larger issues in a local way. In this case, about how guns are present in our everyday lives.
 
Leading from that, Jill went on to photograph army recruits, noticing how young they were. This work won her the Fujifilm Student Awards in 2007. This was a great boost and as this was significant, Jill decided to revisit one of the recruits a year later. He had since left the army and Jill made a short documentary of him.
 
Living in North Yorkshire, surrounded by moorland owned by military, the nearby Catterick Garrison is an ever present part of Jill's life. At this time there was much in the news about lack of equipment for soldiers and embedded photographers. Taking a slightly oblique look at war photography, Jill produced a small series called Firing Range. 
 
Within the overall title of Training Land, Jill produced a third chapter of work, Birds. Within the army garrison is a nature reserve where a bird ringing programme takes place. Jill created a series of eighteen images hoping they would encapsulate what she was trying to say about the army and people caught up in war. Much of Jill's work is referenced to conflict and also explores beauty and renewal.
 
Jill also completes commissions for local design agencies and does research work with Majority World, who work with indigenous photographers.

Frede Spencer - Twenty Twenty Agency

Frede Spencer of Twenty Twenty Agency, completed a photography degree course at Nottingham Trent University in 1999. After graduating, Frede went to London, with his portfolio intending to make it as a photographer. However after spending many years preparing for this, Frede had a kind of epiphany that he didn't really want to be a photographer. This proved to be a huge weight off of his shoulders.
So not wanting to be a photographer, Frede found a different direction to utilise his degree and passion for photography.

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The Campaign Trail Starts

So it's been a week since the date of the General Election has been announced. With this, the photography for my Final Project of this academic year has gotten under way. In the run up to and including the Election, I'll be following Ruth Smeeth, the Labour candidate for Burton Upon Trent, hoping to provide a behind the scenes photo-documentary.

This project started sometime before the General Election was announced though. The Final Project is a self initiated piece of work and I already had a few ideas of what I wanted to do. My self imposed prerequisites for this project were to do something with people and to make sure it was something I could really get my teeth into. I soon settled on doing something related to the General Election. To keep it achievable, I decided to focus it purely on Burton Upon Trent, a town local to me. From there, I wrote a proposal and began a long period of emailing the candidates, at the time those that had announced they would be standing were from the Labour Party, the Conservatives and the BNP. Choosing to ask the BNP was something that I deliberated over for sometime, as I have absolutely no love for them whatsoever. However, this project isn't about my politics and it would provide another aspect to the photos.

Regardless, the BNP didn't bother to reply to me. However, Andrew Grittiths of the Conservatives did take time to reply to me. Sadly though, after discussing with his campaign team, he declined to take part in the project. Thankfully, Ruth Smeeth from the Labour Party met with me to discuss the project further and agreed to take part. I started photographing the week before the Election announcement. Ever since it's been an ever increasing whirlwind of activity, including conferences, meetings, visits and campaigning. Ruth, her campaign manager, Steve and the rest of the Burton Labour Party team have been very accommodating and supportive of my project. It certainly helps to have built up a trust between us.

I decided to shoot this project digitally. Mostly this makes things a lot easier for me. As I'll be spending a lot of time with the Burton Labour Party, it enables me to work from home afterwards to select images and see how it's going. I'm gravitating towards using prime lenses, typically a 50mm and a 24mm. I prefer the look and feel of the resulting images and it means I sometimes have to get in close to what's going on. I don't want the images to be purely a documentary, they've got to be aesthetically interesting too. This is sometimes a struggle and I have to remain alert at all times and work hard at seeing potential shots. The other issue I have is ensuring the photographs have a distinguishable style, something I can call my own. But I'm sure this is something every photographer faces.