This project is inspired by the work of Sohei Nishino – I have mentioned his work briefly I a number of posts on the degree pathway so to start off this is an opportunity to look at it in a little more depth: https://photo515050level3.wordpress.com/2022/10/18/sohei-nishino/.
At first I was unsure whether it was worth pursuing this route since I am “borrowing” the technique of diorama mapping. To the best of my knowledge this was developed by Nishino and is not used by others, although one could argue a similarity with David Hockney’s Joiners (but the latter is on a much smaller scale more a POV than a map). However it began to feel more and more important as a way of describing a constructed place – another way of including a 3D-like dimension.
At the Friends AGM I saw a number of old photographs of the Warden and volunteers “building” islands for nesting birds and undertaking other maintenance and indeed development of the Local Nature Reserve (LNR). This gave me the possibility of including the 4th dimension of time (which of course is an essential but often silent element of all photographs, which reference its passing by freezing it), if I can get permission to use the images. I felt it was important to have something to show the Friends before asking, so in the spirit of learning by doing I have started my own map.
This gives me a point of differentiation with Nishino’s work. Furthermore I will construct my work digitally – this gives me the ability to create further options. My map will be constructed in Affinity with links to all the individual processing files. This means I can update any image and it will update on the map and potentially include links to them in a final digital presentation. I can also, of course, print any of the individual image and use my digital map as a template for a final physical construction.
Before sending my camera off to be mended (for which period I had agreed a deferral with Student Services) I took several hundred snap shots of the LNR while walking round a section. Working digitally also allowed me to use a map of Rye Harbour with reduced opacity as a template layer for my construction:
I have made a simplistic start using 35 of my photos – this is very early days and I am not sure I would use many (if any) of these images in any final map. Nevertheless this experiment can be used as a basis for a discussion of the process, to help decide if it is worth pursuing. If I chose to continue this experiment it would take several months and be a very significant section of any final degree piece. For my way of working I find it more effective to have a go at creating the image rather than overly pre-visualising, particularly for something on this scale – this also allowed me a feedback loop with Nishino’s work, trying to understand how he does things (see link above). The reader will find it very helpful to look at this link in conjunction with this blog, as it gives an idea of what I am aiming for…
Level 3.1 Learning Log 