PaR Learning Log @ 514841

  As I have found from my research, in different periods and historical contexts the practice of walking has often been considered an anti-system act and a questioning of general culture.  In contrast to what Rebecca Solnit said  "...and doing nothing is hard to do. It's best done by disguising it as doing something, and the something closest to doing nothing is walking." (Solnit, Rebecca. Wanderlust, 2001, (p.5). Penguin Publishing Group. Kindle edition.)   some authors have highlighted how the act of walking can be considered anything but nothing.  Walking doesn't make you invisible, walking anywhere in the world makes you part of that world and brings about a change, whether we want it or not.  Walking is a statement of intent  and can be considered a threat.  Walking can be dangerous. "The Pakistani British novelist Kamila Shamsie’s words remain true: “A woman walking alone after midnight is always too conscious of being alone to properly inha...

After a period of time during which I did not have the opportunity to participate, finally, on 11 August I followed the TGWS (Tutor-led Group Work Session) conducted by dr. Ariadne Xenou on the topic: Learning Outcomes. It was an interesting hour and a half, in which Ariadne explored the theoretical and practical contents induced by these two words and stimulated everyone's interventions. First of all, it is essential that we students realize that the practice and research activity at level three (specifically in this unit which has the name "Practice and Research") is carried out independently and that we are expected to analyze and realize aware, equally autonomously, of the results of our learning path.  In our learning log, it is also essential that we provide evidence of our progress, explicitly linking the research activity to the practical activity (informed connection). In summary, it is essential that the project we have chosen does not develop in a separate way...

I wrote these notes after a drift that lasted twelve hours, from 7am to 7pm, for a walking distance of about fifteen kilometers. During this drift I took on different personalities and different ways of doing as a photographer: I was the photographer who enters the living space of other people and interacts with them, I was the photographer who is not noticed, who keeps away from the subject, who is indiscreet without showing up and without asking for permission.  I was an insider and an outsider.  I wondered what influenced my behaviour and the consequent assumption of the two roles: I must admit that the type of photographic instrument can influence the assumption of a role. In the next notes I will reflect on the unlikely connection between the size of the photographic sensor and the behavior of the photographer in urban photography. The medium format sensor is a "niche" for professional photographers: the cameras that are equipped with it have as ancestors, in film photog...

When I started level 3, I had not yet fully realized that my learning path would not have the characteristics of levels one and two.  Level 3 is about me not as a student, but as a practitioner: what kind of practitioner I am and will become is totally up to me. Level 3 is the growth path that I will do to develop myself in the discipline of photography, according to what interests me most.  As a start, I combined my love for street and urban photography with the localization of similar currents of thought and art. I started from the "theory of drift", of which I had seen some traces in the previous units, and I arrived at the psychogeography, the wanderer, the flaneur, the ley lines. These themes define the boundaries within which I will move, research, reflect, express myself, and complete my practice. I can define myself now as an "emerging practitioner", also because I am in a phase of my life where my professional activity prevents me from dedicating myself tot...

  When I started to get interested in psychogeography, I encountered definitions and concepts that, in some cases, refer to political movements.  Given that, as a budding photographer and artist, I am not particularly fascinated by the political implications of certain artistic currents.  I was struck by Merlin Coverley's previous statement. The mere act of walking and, while walking, the "remapping" of a geographical area on the basis of personal perceptions and to grasp equally personal signs and meanings, would be an act of resistance to those who, through roads and architectural boundaries, have given the imprint to that area.  While I wander and let myself go, I do not think of carrying out a political and/or resistance act: I believe and hope to establish a flow as natural and spontaneous as possible between the environment I am travelling through and my feelings, my emotions, even my aesthetic perceptions. Rationality also has its role, at the moment I prepare...