Considering Collaboration,

Lately I’ve been collaborating quite a bit, something that I honestly never saw myself doing seriously in the past, or at least had never had the idea of considering previously.  But now I honestly I think it’s something that I will continue to consider.

My first collaboration came out of friendship and a mutual understanding of work ethic and interest.  My roommate Rachel King and I decided to take a journey together and photograph our experience within the place.  We traveled an hour north on the train to Lawrence, Massachusetts.  We haven’t finalized anything from the trip yet, we’ve just chosen the best images, scanned and edited them.  Here's a sprinkling of random images.

all above © Rose Tarman/Rachel King

I’ve also done a collaboration in one of my classes, as a required assignment, but it ended up really great.  My friend Erika Duran and I combined our separate photographs into a sequence and created text to go with it.  The piece is here, with a statement:

© Rose Tarman/Erika Duran

This collaboration came about through the common thread of physical and internal aspects of sleep.  We wanted our five images to evoke the vivid, visceral moments left behind when sleeping and upon waking.  Like the imprint left on the screen after turning a television off, these traces of dreams hint at the body’s restlessness; a movement and temporal element is also referenced by the filmstrip design, so a cinematic mood avails within the piece.  The words spoken aloud access an aspect of the rhythm of sleep as well as the textural elements of the photographs.  They create a cycle of sounds, repeated and turned over, whispering from their mask of dark grey.

 

Because we thought our process worked out so well Erika and I decided to collaborate for our final project in our class.  I’m really excited about our plan for the project, but it’s proving to be extremely elaborate, technical and detailed.  There are a million factors to consider, but I think as a collaborative effort we work really well with figuring out all the details together.  I hope it works out, even if it doesn’t I think it’ll be a novel effort. Cross your fingers for us! I’m seriously really excited about it and in some ways it’ll be a departure from my regular work but I feel like it still has some thread of similarity.  I’ll leave you suspenseful, be ready for a surprise (hopefully)!

Have any of you ever tried collaboration?  If you did, did it work out well for you?

Rose