Conclusions

My year has been pretty chaotic, with plenty of personal problems to hinder my concentration and drag my focus away from world issues. This is something that is clearly visible in my collected archive material and in my diary; a couple of years ago my diary would probably have been filled to the brim with politics and world issues, and now it is a lot more introspective and sometimes even ignorant of what has been going on in the world outside. Photography, school and my own life have kind of filled all my time, so that there has barely been time or energy to concentrate on anything outside of my own circles.

My photographic main interest is still, as is also visible in my diary, documentary and journalistic photography. I am interested in journalism and telling a story, and so, my photographic interests tend to revolve around that theme. But this past year I have also become more interested in so-called autonomous photography where the artist is perhaps not so much telling the story she finds in the outside world, but the one she creates from within. Self-portraiture, photography as a kind of self-therapy and working things out through images have all become important to me during this year.

Ethical issues in photography always interest me as well. How much can you change? How much should you enhance in Photoshop, or should you leave well enough alone? What is fake, what is embellishment, and what is just smart editing? And what part do the labels “documentary” or “autonomous” (or indeed, “art”) play in determining what one can change or enhance and what not?

All in all the year has been tough and interesting. I have worked a lot, tried to have fun some and managed to keep my fascination with photography and with the study. Keeping a (photographic) diary has proved to be an interesting way of  organizing my interests, thoughts and impressions. As this diary is in a blog format, I can continue working on it after the actual diary assignment has ended. I am also planning to collect the links for other blogs of the Redactioneel class and make a web page – that way we see each other’s influences and interests and can share the things which inspired us.