Chapman, Mark (2024) God's Promises Mean Everything. Dewi Lewis Publishing, Stockport, England. ISBN 978-1916915046

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Abstract

'God’s Promises Mean Everything' is an intimate, long-term character portrait that extends over seven years, but limits space to a single room. As the project progressed and rooms became uninhabitable, the initial notion of a ‘single’ space became less defined by the physical and instead transformed into a semi-fictionalised interior; one comprising a number of rooms that combine to create a single, imagined site featuring disorientating perversions of space and spatial impossibilities.

I was given unique access to document the contributor’s life across seven years. We produced a photobook and accompanying workshops (presented at the Photojournalism Hub, et al) that explore interdisciplinary creative approaches to social documentary storytelling. The project drew on my existing research into filmmaking and photographic practice and how these creative methodologies impact on an audience’s awareness and construction of meaning around important social issues.

'God’s Promises Mean Everything' also seeks to address gaps in knowledge in interdisciplinary creative methods, particularly around ethical documentary contributor aftercare and working with contributors across projects and changing media. My intention was to find a way to document and maintain ethical long-term contact with a documentary subject after the collaborative encounter of a film production ended and avoid what John Ellis described as a ‘quick seduction followed by abandonment’, i.e. when a filmmaker and subject part ways after the completion of a production. Artists are reliant on the relationships that are developed during the making of a work and this comes with a special responsibility - an engagement and commitment that extends beyond the need to make the work, and in which they are obligated to enact the terms of Levinas’ ethical philosophy, ‘meeting, encounter, dialogue.’ (Renov 2004: 152) In this context, time becomes not only a creative necessity, but an ethical one. Through experimentation and intuitive engagement, 'God’s Promises Mean Everything' presented an opportunity to develop a recurring character across projects (this is the third project in which Derek has appeared), which aligns the research with the work of artists such as Stefan Jarl, Khalik Allah and Pedro Costa. Derek’s unifying corporeal presence creates a rigorous constellation of individual projects across disciplines that have now become an open-ended archive of experience.

The book was published by Dewi Lewis Publishing and launched during Photo London 2024 at Somerset House, which evidences the work’s originality and significance.

Bibliography

Ellis, J. (2007) Dancing To Different Tunes: Ethical Differences in Approaches To Factual Film-making’ in Pearce, G. & McLaughlin, C. (eds.) Truth or Dare: Art and Documentary (2007) pp57-64, Intellect Books

Renov, M (2004) The Subject of Documentary, Visible Evidence Vol. 16, University of
Minnesota Press

Item Type:	Book
Uncontrolled Keywords:	photography; art; book; social documentary; addiction
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > H Social Sciences (General) T Technology > T Technology (General) T Technology > TR Photography
Faculty / School / Research Centre / Research Group:	Faculty of Liberal Arts & Sciences Faculty of Liberal Arts & Sciences > School of Stage and Screen
Last Modified:	19 Sep 2024 16:11
URI:	http://gala.gre.ac.uk/id/eprint/47925

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