Barely a month has elapsed since we opened in Free Range yet the degree results are out and whether we like them or not, it is all water under the bridge. There is no going back and this weekend signifies a major step into my rehabilitation into mainstream society. Looking back on 2 years 10 months it is quite scary how one fitted into the regime of University. The end date was set on day one and it seemed a long way off in September 2011 yet now it seems just like last week. The ease with which most of us fitted in to the regime set for us by tutors in years 1 and 2 might have taken some people by surprise this last year given it essentially a self-directed year but the sense of relief of not being accountable to tutors and their deadlines is massive. I have always ploughed my own furrow and and I have for much of my working life worked in close knit teams to deliver high quality products to time and budget. I saw this last year as something akin to that, but the notion of close knit teams went out of the window very early on with small groups flying off to all corners of the campus to do their own thing. Luckily, and not without its consequences though, I was privileged to work in a highly motivated curation team that enabled the best photography show ever to be held under the auspices of UCS Suffolk. That, and a few highly motivated people from a the rest of the year group made this event happen but boy did it take a toll on my health.

I am a qualified agile practitioner. I have led and partaken in highly successful agile projects delivering business benefits to thousands of users. I am used to hard work and tight timescales yet I’d never want to repeat the car crash type approach that I witnessed over the past year. Project management is a game changer and it does not come naturally to most people. I believe UCS can up it’s game by teaching agile project management methods to students as a life enhancing module they can grow upon leaving the security of the campus.

As with all things subjective, there is nothing more subjective than a photography course. I’m sure most people who look on and see graduates tipping out of college might wonder whether a BA (Hons) Photography degree is up there in the hard earned category. I can assure you it is. I hear stories of handfuls of firsts emanating from various colleges around the country for people who have had to undertake just a proportion of what the Photography course at UCS requires. Not one student in our year got a first yet other courses had a good handful. One has to question the metrics and national benchmarks, if they exist that is, to see how subjective subjects are marked or even compared. In one breath we are told that our degree show content is one of the best seen in the Kingdom yet on the other hand no single person warranted a first. That is possibly due to the fact that there were several contenders for such a mark in terms of photographic ability yet the daunting task for many was a 10,000 word dissertation.

I actually enjoyed the whole dissertation experience despite it playing on my mind for quite a while during years 1 & 2. Part of my trepidation was and still is the style of writing required for academia. I have written comprehensive and detailed business reports for much of my career and found the whole formalized writing technique somewhat restrictive. At times I had to allow myself to flow and then worry about the referencing yet that itself caused aggravation as the stop start process of putting together a Babelesque standard bibliography and referencing system is the subject for a dissertation itself. Only academia could come up with such a mixed set of standards. If some TNF was applied I’m sure a normalized standard could be produced that made sense.

Enough of all this. I am  re-engaging with Kodak to kick start my extended project, am sorting out potential gallery space and ACE funding, I have applied for my ARPS- something I aspired to some 43 years ago and I have re-visited the place of my original portfolio for my  initial quest to study Photography at University in 1972. At one time I thought I could have used the location as a theme for the degree project but the 12 hour return trip added nothing to that desire. Some of the images below shot on Agfa Vista 200 using a Nikon FE2 35mm camera are the closest I could get to capturing something about the Prescot Street Triangle some 42 years after the event, but hey, is that not the answer to everything?

This image was made on a P6000 with the Three Graces just visible. My interview for a public sector career took place in the Royal Liver Buildings in 1973. So much has changed. It was almost a cathartic experience going back there in between the degree shows and waiting for the results. I have now graduated and the only reason I was interviewed in these building was because I failed in my first attempt to get into University by messing about too much in school. I can now lay that one to rest.