Joey Rolph: London photography portfolio crit

The Year 3 BA (Hons) Photography London portfolio crit. The source of anxiety and excitement for many on the course. A 13-hour day of reckoning where students display work to industry professionals who pass judgement on whether the student has wasted their mortal life on bad work.

Except it is far more relaxed than that. You are put into groups then you discuss your work, what is and what isn’t working and what you could try differently. The industry professionals have an active and positive relationship with the University, they want to help us!

Before we get to the details, some more about me…

I’m Joey, and I am a photography student in Year 3 at Norwich University of the Arts. Am I going to be a photographer? Maybe, we’ll see, spoilers. Before pursuing photography at Norwich, I wanted to be an engineer. After years of study and work falling into Civil Engineering, I realised that it wasn’t fun anymore and I most likely would not be able to build an iron man suit. So, I uno-reversed myself into photography and art, as you do.

I started out by photographing nature, cars, and events. I quickly realised I was bad at it, but I loved it and I wanted to get better. It turns out I enjoyed making stupid art far more than the professional stuff, and I felt a need to stretch my funny bones after spending so many years being serious all the time. My way of working has gone through many stages, but right now I have a practice focused on humorous still life imagery inspired by advertising and graphic design.

My current project *Batteries Not Included. is a series of images showing visual puns in creative, ridiculous, and stupid ways. Each image has a pun associated with it and this pun is hidden within the image. The viewer engages with the piece based on its look, but then must hunt for the pun if they can’t figure it out based on the image. Some images also have small print text at the bottom, inspired by the small print in advertising. This small print text rambles on criticising the art, the viewer and myself. Since the crit, this approach to text has changed and developed based on the feedback I received.

Enough about me, let’s get onto the event!

Like every milestone in this degree, it was daunting, but once it was time to go it wasn’t that scary anymore – my fear had turned to excitement. As you can see by the photos, we all had a terrible time! Never again. 0 Stars.

My crit started with a talk with Christine Harding, Sam Christmas, and Tim Flach. They pointed out that the work is stuck between a still life look and a graphic look, and I would need to stick with one. The text is far too small and cryptic. There are certain images where the prop selection could be better. There are inconsistencies in colour quality, and I also need to be more selective between vertical and horizontal images. Tim stated “If you want to work in advertising, it needs to be simple. The viewer needs to look at it and get it within three seconds. No one is going to spend time figuring it out”. At the time I took this to heart; it’s hard to take criticism on something you have poured passion into.

Fresh from lunch I came back with an open mind, and I started my second crit with Andy Earl, Amy Foster and Emily Salmon (a Norwich graduate! Go team!) Their thoughts echoed that of the previous group. The general message was why have I created a barrier to the enjoyment of the image? The enjoyment is in knowing the pun, not figuring it out, and I was mixing this up. In doing so, I was losing focus on the photographic practice by spending far too long on the concept. After this chat I was feeling motivated – I knew what was wrong and I knew how to fix it.

As I was helping to clean up the event, I was beckoned over by the very passionate Olivia Pomp and I am very glad I was. She looked at my images, and I started to explain the outcome of my previous feedback. Before I could get my spiel out, she started correctly guessing all my puns! She was absolutely on my wavelength and shared my energy and passion for the work. She called the images ‘Genius’.

Having struggled for a while to see any commercial potential in what I do, I felt so seen and, honestly, I held back a tear. Olivia explained that I should add character to the text itself and tie it into the image, and she also discussed her history at German GQ and Esquire. It was far more relaxed one on one rather than having three voices at once. I thoroughly enjoyed the chat, and it gave me that little boost of passion and drive that I needed.

The evening concluded with us moving to the bar, discussing life, networking and even having some extra impromptu crit sessions.

So what happened next?

Building on the advice from this crit I have re-edited images, reshot images and shot new images, with the help of BA (Hons) Film and Moving Image Production student Abi Plant (prop design/lighting assistant). Working with BA (Hons) Graphic Communication graduate Tatiana Diakonova, we have created text filled with character to accompany these images. The images on the left were shown at the event, the images on the right have been produced post event.

My images feel far more connected as a series, the look and feel is more consistent, and I feel much more confident in the project moving forward. The event has given me a newfound perspective on my work, my images and how an audience views my work. The most important thing I was told was to make the concept simpler, a point absolutely driven home by Tim Flach. By simplifying it I can allow the audience to enjoy the images rather than examine them like a scavenger hunt. It’s not exactly Shakespeare, so why over complicate things?

My advice to anyone on the earlier years of the course, or about to join Norwich, would be to make something you care about. Be the goofy kid, be the weird one, don’t make something to fit in with the crowd or you won’t stand out at all. Oh, and make something bad. Don’t attempt perfection all the time – that’s a great way to freeze and achieve nothing.

The event was a very good experience – thank you to Olivia Duckmanton for capturing images of me during my crits,and thank you to James Smith for organizing the event. Finally thank you to the professionals that joined us and to Andy Earl for having us. You’re all awesome, it was a great day and a very useful experience.

Event photography: Joey Rolph and Olivia Duckmanton

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