All images © Colin Pantall
An upcoming workshop in London with Colin Pantall and Simon Bainbridge will help photographers communicate their ideas through writing
They’re often hilariously bad. And they’re notoriously hard to write. Especially about yourself. But a clear, succinct statement is an absolute necessity to identify what’s personal and particular about your photography, and if you care about giving people a way into your work.
Which is why we’ve joined forces with our former editor, Simon Bainbridge, and Colin Pantall, a photographer, writer and lecturer, to host a one-day workshop at our East London office on 19 October 2024 where you’ll learn how to craft the perfect copy to accompany your photography. Ahead of the workshop, titled ‘Writing for Photographers’, we present a lighthearted look at the pitfalls of the personal statement.
Today’s subject: Personal Statements.
Don’t your pictures do the talking? Why do you need words? You need words to build an opaque lexicon around which essential notions of space, place, and identity can challenge established dialogues on photography.
Excuse me? Why do you suddenly sound like a French philosopher? Because that’s how you write a statement, isn’t it? You have to show how clever you are, right?
Err, no. Try again. Tell me about your work. My work examines ideas of space and place within a non-temporal framework where identity, mortality, and geography exist on parallel strata.
Wow! That’s a bit pretentious! OK, let me start from the beginning. I first got a camera when I was seven years old. It was an old Praktica 35mm with a fixed 50mm f/1.8 lens. I began by photographing my immediate surroundings; the washing-up in the sink, my sister’s pet cat, the sweets I stole from the paper shop.
Yawn. I’m sorry. Am I boring you?
Yes, actually. Although I am wondering about the early signs of kleptomania. Do you think I should frame my urge to ‘take’ pictures as some sort of psychodrama?
No, I was joking actually. Oh, god! Why is this so hard?
Try and get to the point. What is it all about? In Space and Place – Two Aspects of the Human-landscape Relationship, Hunziker, Buchecker and Hartig examine ideas on the sense of place and place identity. These ideas are central to my work.
Enough already! This is not a thesis introduction. Stop hiding behind the words. Can you be more engaging? I don’t even know where to begin.
Start by defining what interests you. What’s your story? My story? Um, I guess it’s about how I’ve been walking the same paths around my home for 20 years and nothing stays the same, everything changes with time. You change, the landscape changes, your connection with it changes.
That’s better, but it needs a little more work. Can you make it sound more deliberate? My project looks at the repeated walks I took in the three valleys that surround my home in Bath; valleys where the presence of the past is evident. Through these walks, repeated over two decades, different histories emerge; geological, economic, botanical, physical, and family histories… Something like that?
You’re almost there with the intro. Thanks! Where can I find out more about writing about my photography?
Funny you ask. I’m running a one-day workshop in August and October. Details below. Uncanny… I’ll see you there then…