Project 15: Public space, public activity

There are two projects from section two of the course that I have not yet completed/written up.  Project 14: An organised event has been waiting for a suitable event, and is planned for next weekend, but this entry is intended to cover Project 15: Public space, public activity.  Actually, I think Assignment Two and a lot of the images that I took around the process of completing that assignment have pretty much covered this topic, and I’m not going to spend time doing further ‘public space’ sessions.  I will though just bring together a few images that were not necessarily part of the submission/planning for Assignment Two, but which illustrate the ideas mentioned in the brief for this project – “how people make their own personal or small group activities within the same general area” – though I stress again, the ‘personal space’ in ‘public space’ was very much part of the theme in Assignment Two anyway.

There are six or seven people grouped very closely together in a confined space in this shot, yet in very few ways are they interacting with each other or even showing apparent awareness of each other.  We have two young men on the left, probably in conversation as one smokes a cigarette; one young man sitting very close to them, also smoking, but concentrating on his phone; just far enough away to be separate and clearly interacting, is another couple, also looking at a phone; and finally, another young woman sits close by eating her lunch.  Not nearly as good, but I’m sort of reminded of the Garry Winogrand photograph of a group of people sitting on a bench – ‘World’s Fair, New York City 1964’.

These three are quite similar, indeed the first and last are taken close together, as the background in the last one shows.  The next one is a familiar activity in city centre environments.

And, finally, here is one showing a very different activity.  These people were busy making a film.

As I said above, I’m not going to spend any further time on this project because I think I’ve done enough over the last couple of months to explore the activities of people occupying public space.