SPRING

In 2006, for what must have been PA02, I decided that the instant camera was to be the tool to approach the idea of vernacular photography, the central idea for our second semester. I bought a Polaroid camera, the one with no focus settings; it only has a button that makes a picture, and there is no control over the flash. I thought I would enjoy the lack of control I would have when making images.

It was during the Easter break that I got my camera, on my first or second day back in Oxford. I got it from Jessops.

After the work was made, after the work was assessed, after the end of the academic year, even, I decided to do something with my Polaroids. I liked the idea of making a magazine, so I tried to do that. I called it EDIT., and I thought there was the potential for me to make two or three a year. I didn't.

I called it EDIT. both because it was an edit of images I had already made, and because I spent a long time trying to make narratives within the work. I used the black pieces of card that come in each pack of Polaroid exposures to mark the end of a narrative.

Because I was away from university, I didn't have access to a scanner, unfortunately, and the place I went to to have my images scanned didn't do the best job. I don't think the printing was very good, either, but I think I must have simply accepted it just to see the thing finished; I am hopelessly untechnical and don't know much about printing.

Also, the place I went to to have the layout made were useless, and delivered rubbish insisting that they had done a good job of it. They very clearly hadn't, so I decided to do it myself in InDesign, learning the program as I went along.

Here is the PDF, anyway. It is in the order that it would be read once printed and bound.