"A contact sheet is a record of a journey, of a pursuit. It carries all the wanderings around an idea, or as some would have it, a vision. In the process of making a selection from digital files, what is often lost is the chance to go back, to retrace one's steps - to follow the original journey." - Stuart Franklin
I've recently returned from a trip to York which I found quite transformative in terms of my practice and purpose as a Photographer (see the screenshot above of a page from the contact sheet of the final edit)
Inspired by one of my previous tutor's approach to documenting their travel experience in the West, I decided to document my journey. Although, what started as a representation of a personal journey, of travelling to a new place and realising the importance of the need for familiarity and structure, become a very subtle investigation into the sociology of tourism, the relationship between people and place, through landscapes and observations.
On a personal note, this shoot, this journey, allowed to revisit my initial training, the building blocks of documentary photography (the establishing image, the detail, the informal portrait, the relationship, the environmental portrait and the observed portrait)
Eventually, as time went by, I looked briefly into link between sociology and photography through a Google search (photography is championed by many sociologists as a qualitative research tool) I became a sociologist with a camera through a newly discovered sociology documentary approach. I became an observer, storyteller and sociologist.
Instead of my practice being about purely photography, on this occasion, my practice has evolved into a form of Phenomenography.