Project_02 Assessment

Photo Book Self Assessment
Project_02


Having the book in-hand was not as positive an experience as I had hoped. I immediately felt that the book was too large for my section, as well as a couple others. Because the pages were so large, the pages were far less rigid than I thought they would be and it seemed that some details were easily lost in the physical act of trying to hold the book comfortably. There was also the things that don't survive the computer-to-paper translation: for example, I was disappointed by how pixelated some of the images turned out. I was also surprised by how the colors on the front cover, which were much more pastel than they appeared on the computer.

Individually, I think we all achieved our goals for each section we worked on. For me personally, I was glad that I was able to get feedback from the class about resizing my student portraits so that they were roughly the same size as the admissions photo that they were juxtaposed with. Correcting this detail helped the section flow together much better. Conceptually, I was happy with the way the student portraits and quotations represented both positive and negative perspectives of St. Mary's (without being overly disparaging or overly complimentary). It was a difficult process, because I struggled to find a diversity of students who were also willing to be quoted/photographed - not to mention that I got extremely sick toward the end. Despite all of the hurdles, the project did come together and my group was extraordinarily patient with me. I was glad to see that the others in my group seemed to be happy with their own work.

As a collective, however, I did not think that our book was very cohesive. I mentioned earlier that our topic wasn't quite focused enough, and seeing the physical book reaffirmed this. Aside from the unifying divider pages, I think our stylistic choices (text, color/bw, subject matter) was so varied that it did not have a continuous flow. Considering that we had such different takes on St. Mary's as as whole, I do think that we arranged the book was thoughtfully as possible. The flow from one subject to the other was done as best as we could. In some ways, the fact that we didn't have more unifying features is regrettable, but I wonder if it might also be a good thing. Given the topic that we selected (The Spirit of St. Mary's), I think it would also be disappointing if we had produced a book with cookie-cutter uniformity. A balance must be struck, and although I'm not sure we achieved it as a group, I do think that it represented our individual visions clearly. Midway through the project, I remember a group meeting we had in which everyone was worried about asking each other to alter their visions, and the few alterations that we did try to make were often objected to. In the end, I think we were all trying to preserve each other's artistry to the point of forsaking cohesion.