'A Fine Art Appendix' Degree Show Publication

I wrote a piece of text for the degree show publication based on a photograph taken on my first day of school - 1st September 2002. I studied the photograph for some time and tried to remember how I felt then in that moment the photo was taken, trying to capture it through text. I interlocked my study of the photograph, what went on in the image with my own feelings and experiences at the time. This created an interesting read of two perspectives. 

Edited by Nathan Jones

Typeset by Mark Simmonds

Printed and bound in Liverpool

.................

I hold this photograph in my hand. It is a memory. I feel if I blink I am going to be an old lady. But then, as though the photograph is leaking, I feel the pleasure my parents felt in me that day. My first day of school. The 1st September 2002. We are six and seven years old. I am led to stand in line with the other new children, by an older pupil. We are waiting for our turn. Standing in line is something that grown-ups do, and it is as though we have gotten older just by this simple action. Guided to experience our first bell. The first step to growing up.

I am moving closer, step by step

I am becoming older

I am wearing a white blouse that is too big, and I can’t walk because the bow on my skirt catches my knees. The ruffles in my blouse, even then I knew they were over the top. The boys are wearing white shirts and neckties, they feel silly, too old, like men at a wedding. I imagine them now, fifteen years older in the same clothes. The same look of worry and boredom, the same long stem carnations in their hands. Funeral flowers! Later we will hand the flowers to our teacher. I pass the five boys in front line. Four of them are holding flowers upside down, their mums have told them that if you hold flowers upside down the sap is kept in the blooms, not the stems. Is this a tradition? I think it is. Has the blood left my face?

The sound pierces me, it holds me

It shakes my core

What catches my eye in this image is my long silver hairclip on my thick brown hair. It reminds me of the morning of the ceremony, when my mum proudly pushed my hair back and clipped it, patted my head. I was her only child then. I think my dad is behind the camera.

A moment, a snap

It’s the sound of time

It surrounds me, it is with me, It is in me

Right in the middle of the photograph there is a woman with fluffy brown hair, she is also the only person looking into the camera. Is she smiling? Is she staring? Her hair makes her look like a clown. Above sun is shining onto the windows of the school.  You can just about make out people standing at the window of the first floor. Two women, one in light blue top and one in white and a woman in black top with folded arms. All standing and observing what is happening outside. They are part of the ceremony and part of the experience, looking down.

Harsh and kind

I blink

It’s gone

My eyes are captured by an older woman in the right corner of the photographs, dressed in white linen with gold buttons down the center. She is looking behind her, helping to guide the first years into their line. My first ever teacher - Ludmila Gurjevna. She was never happy. Ludmila Gurjevna are you grumpy now? Ludmila Gurjevna did you like me? I was so so quiet. I used to draw trees and flowers didn’t I. I hated the feeling of chalk on my fingers. You would call me out, and I knew the answer to the equation, but I couldn’t write it down.

It begins

 .................

~ Ev 

First and Last Bell + Roland Barthe’s Punctum

For the preparation for the degree show publication I went to Nathan Jone's seminar in which he talked about Roland Barthe’s book, Camera Lucida, focussing on his ideas on what makes a photograph stand out. For the publication it was proposed that we do not talk about our practice but approach it from a creative point of view, artistic response to the form of text. 

The overall project of Barthe’s Camera Lucida is to determine a new mode of observation and, ultimately, a new consciousness by way of Photography. When we look at a photograph, it is not the actual photo that we see, for the photograph itself is rendered invisible; thus the photograph is unclassifiable, for it resists language, as it is without signs or marks - it simply is.

In his personal, subjective examination of multiple photographs, Barthes proceeded to note a duality that was characteristic of certain photographs: a ‘co-presence of two discontinuous elements’- what he terms, the stadium and the punctum.

The studium speaks of the interest which we show in a photograph, the desire to study and understand what the meanings are in a photograph, to explore the relationship between the meanings and our own subjectivities. The punctum on the other hand inspires an intensely private meaning, one that is suddenly, unexpectedly recognised and consequently remembered (it "shoots out of [the photograph] like an arrow and pierces me”); it ‘escapes’ language. Punctum is an ‘element which rises from the scene’ and unintentionally fills the whole image.

Clearly this element is powerful and compelling to the spectator. Basically it could be anything, something that reminds you of your childhood, a sense of deja vu, an object of sentimental value, punctum is very personal and often different for everyone.

For the session I brought a photograph that was very important to me and also relevant for my degree show piece. I used this image to find its punctum in hopes of producing a piece of writing for my publication from it.

In this writing session I focussed on a photograph of myself on my first day of school (1st September 2002), guided by a high school student in her last year, to stand in line and celebrate the first day of school and start the ceremony. I remember that a bell was rung when everybody was in their place in line, which I can still remember the sound of. It was a symbol of the beginning of school for the first years. Every time I look at this photograph I can hear the sound of the bell.

This led me to question whether a sound could be a punctum. However, the way Barthes describes, punctum is something that is evident in the photograph. In relation to a photograph then, can a punctum be an absence of sound? I would say yes. I would say the punctum here for me is what isn't seen in this image. It's the memory of the moment of the ringing of the bell and the emotions associated with it. The bell gathers a lot of concepts together: history, time, nostalgia, memory, past and present, the moment. It depicts anticipation of the moment of hearing the bell. The weight and authority of it.

It is possible that when I do ring the bell on the day of the degree show to symbolise the end of studies, I will have this image in my mind and the memory of the moment in my head, whilst also creating the moment in the present time. Layering these two important moments together. (Ringing of the bell on 25th May 2017 which is the official day of end of studies which also fall on my degree show. this will be my degree show piece that will exist in Latvia, which I then will bring to degree show the end of the day through the recording of it).

~Ev