Review: Caruana & Fox, Behind the Image: Research in Photography, Chapter 5: Research and Practice, 2012

After you have been working for a while, research becomes connected to practice in a way that makes the two things hard to separate — the working process becomes second nature. A reflctive practitioner automatically engages with research methods and a continuous process of critical analysis right from the start of a body of work. 

From testing the relevance of your work, determining your audience and taking time to view your work from new angles, to the final production decisions on how to present your work, your research will continue to inform your practice. p121

This chapter is another grab-bag of issues, from ethics to exhibition.  The authors begin with the idea that photography involves testing ideas.  In order to find out how things look, photographers devise ways to view their work in different ways, such as test prints hung on a studio wall to determine how images work in space - size, color, lighting and relationship to other images.  They suggest that besides testing out technical methods, photographers may also test out audience reaction.  Ethics in practice, such as full disclosure to interviewees and model release forms, is briefly mentioned.

Allowing adequate time for reflection is recommended.  New meanings and ideas may emerge on viewings separated by some days, weeks, months, or even years.  Maintaining flexibility and allowing new ideas to not only emerge but influence the original project are suggested.  

The authors close by considering how projects are to be presented to an audience.  These days it is not uncommon for photographers to be intimately involved in shaping the books and exhibits that showcase their work.  

A case study of Clare Strand is included, but it is not clear from the text exactly how the processes discussed in this chapter play out in her work.  The chapter ends with quite an ambitious project requiring shooting a location, interviewing people who use it, putting together and staging an exhibit in that space, collecting data from exhibit attendees, then staging the same exhibit in a second location unconnected to the first to compare the reactions of attendees.  

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