Hawkwood Press is born ..................... making your own barcode from ISBN

my barcode made using an on-line barcode maker

It is early in the morning and I feel under tremendous pressure; there is much to be done before the 6th June when all our project work has to be submitted. Between now and then I have to make a hand made book, a Blurb book, a portfolio of work, and complete my workbooks and analysis of the project.

It was with great relief, then, that my ISBN numbers came through from Nielsen yesterday, which means that I can get on with my books. I have 10 numbers, the first of which is shown above. This is allocated to "Hawkwood" , my personal project of a poem and images in a limited edition hand made book. The second will be allocated to a Blurb version of the same book for a wider audience.

On Monday I had a chance to show the two strands of my work to a tutor. She feel that I should show the suburban images rather than the Hawkwood images in the final show. This is not the work that I feel so emotionally attached to, but this probably means that I am not able to be objective about it. The images of Hawkwood were described as visually appealing and "suitable for an image library". That worries me as the images that I like best are more abstract and I would not wish them to end up in an image library. The suburban shots are not attractive in a  conventional way, and I wonder whether they fall into the category of conceptual art, not something my work has ever attempted to be before. They will not necessarily appeal to non photographers or even some other photographers; during the tutorial I could sense some students questioning the advice that was being given, and my other half, for one, was deeply disappointed with the change of tack.

Hawkwood by Caroline Fraser

This leads me to considering how much to follow my heart, and how much to follow the advice of very experienced tutors. There is one image from the suburban series that I feel does truly represent my feelings and has a beauty of its own. It is of cherry blossom and telegraph wires. I shall compromise by accepting the advice given, and making this the key work.

I am in the fortunate position of having a two week show in Chislehurst in September as part of the Chislehurst Festival at which I can show the Hawkwood work to local people who will have an affinity with it by nature of it being on their home territory.