Strategies of Sharing

Collaboration

With photography, I often feel that each photograph is a either collaboration or a transaction regardless of what I am shooting. If I am working with a client it feels like a transaction more than a collaboration, I know that I have to flatter the subject or let them perform their identity the way in which they want to be perceived. I don’t see this as a negative description as I enjoy providing a service and giving a client what they want. There is an element of collaboration but because there is a level of expectation from the client (and rightly so), and I am not able to have any expectations of a client, it is a one-sided experience.  

My WIP however, is based on a collaboration. My project conceptualises the relationship I have with partner, we perform our different and shared emotions and experiences for my camera and it is a journey together. I could not create this work alone, fundamentally it is important for the two of us to be involved in order to document our relationship.

Oliver Grabowski (2019)

The project is visually guided by my aesthetic preferences although there is a shared aesthetic value between my partner and I. I am unsure how far my project would move as a collaboration if we did not share the same aesthetic sensibilities.

Moving forward I would like to further the collaboration, my partner is a poet and has written about our relationship before. I would like for her to contribute excerpts of her writing to the project to be displayed alongside the images.

Making a Zine

For the task of making a zine I had attempted to start a group to create a publication on the theme of excess, however the response to the call out was limited. After receiving zero submissions I decided to continue with the task and upload my previous WIP as the zine.

My partner and I already collaborate through our artist studio Very Tender and we aim to collaboratively publish work in the future so this seems like an appropriate exercise for me in looking at publication layouts. Moving forward I aim to use Indesign instead of photoshop to design our publications.