W4 Collaberation​

For me, collaboration is not new. I have done various commercial assignments together with others and also own projects. At my work, a school, I also initiated and led various cooperation photo projects both internally and with external parties.

It is often a bit of giving and taking when working together. Feel each other and take the initiative because otherwise nothing comes of it. Especially with bigger groups there are always people who are less involved and who therefore hang back making himself invisible. If everyone is equally involved, you can come up with something better together. With large, long-term projects, you see people dropping out because they apparently can not oversee a longer span of time; a matter of distributing energy

This week we had to work with one or more people by placing an image or phrase on the forum. I placed a picture and looked at what others were doing and since collaboration often takes time to reach an agreement, I wanted to start soon. Other people thought so too. Already on Saturday night I could go photographing at the same time with Chris around the theme "After dark". Smart choice of course because I often work during the day and photographing in the evening is much more practical.

The image where we started with was placed by Chris and made by Joshua Jackson. About artificial light and also people because it was on the example photo. I live in Rotterdam and therefore I only have to get out of the door. In the neighborhood where I live it is not entirely safe to photograph during the day, let alone at night. Fortunately I have a big, scary looking dog that I could take with me and because of which I did not have any problems.

For Chris, who lives in a small town, it was a little harder to find good places. He had to go out by the car to find them. After the first recordings we found out that our photos matched well. We had made the same kind of photos and it would be square cutouts. We also found the photos with people better than those without and we decided to concentrate on that for the second and third evening.

Day 1

Day 2

Day 3

So far, all communication went via e-mail. Since I like working with keywords, I have written down words from the e-mails and processed them in a kind of wordweb with on one side the theme and the photos and on the other hand the part about cooperation. While I did that, Chris put the concept into words. We had not made a list of tasks beforehand and it was therefore very special that this fit together exactly.

"Artificial light is a truly life changing technology.

In the 21st century, light is readily available, at any time, at the flick of a switch.

Artificial light has liberated human beings to do anything they want, at any time.

Our project celebrates the liberty afforded by artificial light.

We took our cameras out into the night,

to find out where people go … After Dark"

On Tuesday evening we had agreed to time London at 8 o'clock to Skyp. But we were both 2 hours early and that meant we could get started faster. We had already done some sort of preselection of our own photos and looked at the other ones. It turned out that diptych worked pretty well. We have looked at the form; black, gray, white background and various sizes and finally ended up placing the photos tightly together, because this resulted in continuous combinations.

The end selection:

The comments

The images were sometimes as if they were one, and other times not. Some of them were lined perfectly. Cemre suggested that they could become better not being so seamless put together. At one point we told them the left one is Chris’ and the right one is mine but working together it is not about whose is whose it is about the end result and without ownership. I am not sure if I agree, but we could try. In the 1930’s big photographers started at night with their own projects because they worked at they time. Brassai- Paris de Nuit, Bill Brant, a night in London and Wegee, nakes city were mentioned.

The conclusion

I have never done a project that was so short and that went this smoothly. While we never met for real, I had the idea that we complimented each other and were both focused on bringing this to a good end. We took on both tasks without making agreeing on it in advance. That's why it went fast. The beginning with one photo and a few sentences of text turned out to be an excellent starting point for getting photos. The first taking photos and then setting boundaries, to see what similarities with which we could continue, is something that appeals to me. Working together you have to trust in each other and have faith. When that works out the feeling is great. If the project would take longer, it would be interesting to also focus on the differences. A small English town opposite to a large Dutch city in a multicultural neighborhood.

Some extra images

You always have to "kill your darlings"; In a group process, there are always photos where you yourself have feelings for or compile another series that do not fit within the concept. These are two images. Inside looking at people you see lonely elder sitting, hanging on the couch behind the curtains. Would be an idea for a next series.

A slideshow with some of the the images I made and didn't all make it to the final selection.