one year on

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Lida and her sister, yesterday. © Ciara Leeming.

It’s almost a year since I finished my MA. This is kind of weird: in some ways it feels like a lifetime ago and in other ways in feels like the past year has flashed past without me noticing. The creative process for me is not a gentle, easily-navigable road – it is potholed and frustrating and filled with periods of intense self-doubt and ennui. This has certainly been my experience over the past 12 months: after what felt like a huge shift right at the end of the course, where I had one of those moments where things seem to all come together just in time, the period since has been one of plateaus, of disappointments, let-downs and photos that just won’t come. Hardest of all has been the sense of working in a vacuum – I can see the attraction of groups of photographers forming collectives if only for this reason…while I’m too control-freaky to be a natural collaborator I do like getting the opinions of others about new approaches, aims and possible edits. Sometimes I think I have lost the ability to tell which images work – a lack of confidence which then makes me doubt my intuition when shooting and means what few images I do take continually disappoint. This sounds like whinging but it’s actually not – I’ve come to realise that this is all part of the process, and really quite common; necessary even. Despite the doubts on that front I have started to really feel lately that I’ve developed really good relationships with the people I’m photographing, some of whom I’ve now known for 18 months. I have a year left before I must report on my Arts Council Roma grant – lots of shooting time so hopefully the good stuff will come and the confidence will start to grow from these rather wobbly but quite deep and well-meaning foundations. We shall see.

My Roma project website can be seen here 

Geneva and Elvira

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I just returned from Geneva, where Ramona/Elvira shared her story with a UN meeting focused on issues of migration and global human rights. A few of my photos were used in the presentation but she was definitely the star of the show – and the only speaker who I saw get applause (to be fair she was the only one sharing such personal experiences). I was very proud. For more about my Roma project work click here.

Roma Source participatory project

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“It would be an understatement to say they liked them … absolutely loved them would be closer. They were clearly delighted and very VERY proud of their children. The teachers loved the way they tell a complicated story so eloquently. One never gets those vocational ‘I’ve been part of something worthwhile’ buzz moments as often as one might wish, but I definitely have one now” (JD, Roma Source)

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Earlier this year I was offered a project which ticked loads of boxes in terms of the direction my work has been taking. This was to lead a series of photography workshops with Roma children attending a school in Leeds, with the final output to be multimedia which said something about the children’s new lives in Yorkshire.

I’ve wanted to do more participatory work for a while and attended a Photovoice training course in preparation for this 18 months ago, but although I’ve introduced some of its concepts into my independent work I haven’t – until now – found the right partners to support a wider project.

This project was funded by Roma Source, with support from the EMTAS team at Leeds City Council, and of course the staff and young people at Harehills Primary School. I was able to rope in my friend Gemma Thorpe – a photographer with much more teaching experience than me – to help run the workshops, and then I took all the materials we generated away and used them to make photofilms. (More about the project here)

 

Now we have finally had feedback on the finished product from the children and their parents, and have been given permission to share the films, which will be used as an educational tool by some of the people in Yorkshire and beyond who work with Roma. Please check them out….

 

 

 

Ups, downs and elusive parties

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It’s been one of those weekends. Huge excitement on my part about being invited along to a Roma community party, which left me having to postpone my own 5th wedding anniversary and skip a rare reunion with old friends from school. A 130-mile drive, only to find that my family were out for the day – having neglected to tell me their change of plans – and that the party had been cancelled. I had no choice but to turn around and start the two-and-a-half hour drive home. Frustrating, yes, but just one of those things which happen on a fairly regular basis in this project – the only difference in this case being the distances involved. The good days are great and the bad ones irritating beyond belief…I’m now resigned to these blips though and certainly don’t hold it against people. There would surely be something wrong if a documentary project happened easily or without challenges. Anyway, a week’s holiday is around the corner – my first in three years. I think it is much needed.

onwards

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Above: Lida and Marek

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I’m just coming out of one of those weird periods that feel busy but are hard to explain when other people ask what you’ve been doing. I have very little to show for it but I have been plugging away. There’s my new Roma website for a start, plus a series of short multimedia pieces I’ve created using images, video and audio produced by Roma children in Leeds during some workshops I ran with my friend Gemma Thorpe – these have yet to be signed off. Then, after the disappointment and set-backs of various aspects of my Roma project falling apart I had some serious wobbles about where I was going with it all, but I’m feeling much more positive now. I have some new leads to follow up, a new camera to experiment with, and summer is finally here (well, kind of). The challenge is actually going to be balancing the competing demands of several people’s stories and managing my time properly. Middlesbrough and my Homelands Commission really need to be my primary focus but there is plenty to keep me going around Manchester as well. I’m looking forward to actually enjoying photography again because I was starting to fear I’d forgotten how to.

New Roma project website

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I spent a couple of days last week turning my Roma project wordpress blog into something which resembles a proper website and shows the work off properly, with customisable galleries and various kinds of background information. The Elvira gallery features a re-edit of the images I shot after it emerged during a recent photo workshop (Brenda Kenneally at the Hinterlands) that lots of people strongly disagreed with my original choices for the book. I stand by the book edit though as I was not only selecting on the strength of the photos – for me the final narrative and the way the words and images work together was the most important consideration.

Aaaanyway, it’s too late now. That gallery also contains some multimedia and at the end a little audio to show viewers/listeners what Ramona’s dialect of Romani sounds like. I will be adding more galleries and other bits of content as I go along so please subscribe via RSS if you are interested in the project. A section of the site which I particularly like is the scrapbook, which allows me to share odds and sods of material – phone photos for example, or bits which may not be project or even blog-quality, but which I find either interesting or relevant.

Please take a look at the site and keep an eye out over the coming months as the work develops and expands.