Body of Work or Work?

Body of work is when you're referring to a specific project or as a way of book-ending someone's practice. The emphasis on work is as something that is ongoing.
 
Michael Markey said:
That`s just continuing to do a series of pictures with a theme isn`t it. ?
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Not entirely sure what you mean. Continuing on a series with a theme that is unfinished is work, if that series is finished it is a body of work. Like "body of knowledge" or "body of evidence" it is an emphasis on the boundaries of a finite collection of elements.
 
Yeah, what Back Alley said, my Body of Work will be available a couple months after I'm dead, not before then. ;)
 
"Work" can be a hand full of work prints or a box of finished prints, a gallery on your website or a gallery on Facebook; "work" can be very specific or more generalized and is not dependent on quality or quantity.

A "body of work" is a photographic undertaking - finished or ongoing - that hones in on specific subject matter; it has a certain quality to it as well as a certain quantity. 40 finished prints is a body of work; three or four prints is not a body of work.

Both "work" and "body of work" are nothing other than descriptive terms; neither term is inherently pretentious, snobbish or elitist.

If a photographer shows three or four prints and calls it a "body of work," that photographer is putting on a pretense. He/she is also showing their ignorance and is acting/speaking like a buffoon.

That's my take on it. YMMV.
 
noisycheese said:
"Work" can be a hand full of work prints or a box of finished prints, a gallery on your website or a gallery on Facebook; "work" can be very specific or more generalized and is not dependent on quality or quantity.

A "body of work" is a photographic undertaking - finished or ongoing - that hones in on specific subject matter; it has a certain quality to it as well as a certain quantity. 40 finished prints is a body of work; three or four prints is not a body of work.

Both "work" and "body of work" are nothing other than descriptive terms; neither term is inherently pretentious, snobbish or elitist.

If a photographer shows three or four prints and calls it a "body of work," that photographer is putting on a pretense. He/she is also showing their ignorance and is acting/speaking like a buffoon.

That's my take on it. YMMV.
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The above is kinda my spin on it.

Perhaps the only "pretense" is the meaning that the photographer may or may not convey.

Subjectively I generate "work" by shooting and now printing, but I build a body of work, meaning giving it form and meaning, through editing to make my communication coherent and perhaps making any implied meaning understandable.

Working for me is easy (generating images), but I've created quite a mess, and making some sense out of all my work (efforts) to give it a "body" is the hard part. Editing and developing a vision is the hard part. Its all about process.

I went to art school, and the terms work and body of work is kinda used as a context of growth and struggle. No pretense (as a negative term) is implied.

Cal
 
"Body of work" is a term that I think any long-working thoughtful photographer deserves as a catch-all for their 'work'. For me its a term of respect. Obviously it can be misused or overused, but that's no reason to toss it out.

When I go to a gallery to see a photographer's body of work, I expect that I'll be seeing work that spans the photographer's life-long efforts, or some subset decided upon by the photographer and/or curator.
 
nongfuspring said:
Not entirely sure what you mean. Continuing on a series with a theme that is unfinished is work, if that series is finished it is a body of work. Like "body of knowledge" or "body of evidence" it is an emphasis on the boundaries of a finite collection of elements.
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Yep ...

I guess to my mind it just sounds rather florid and self important when applied to a collection of photographs.

I do take your point though although I doubt whether I`d use the term myself.
 
I've always taken the term "Body of Work", no matter whom it has been applied to (artist, architect, surgeon, etc), to mean ones accomplishments or finished projects from the beginning to now.

PF
 
I was thinking about something I heard on the wireless about understatement ... and some famous writer cautioned the use of superlatives, as once one used there was nothing left in the toolbox for later, and this struck me as the pictorial version of that
 
Sparrow said:
I was thinking about something I heard on the wireless about understatement ... and some famous writer cautioned the use of superlatives, as once one used there was nothing left in the toolbox for later, and this struck me as the pictorial version of that
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A very good point.

I'm probably like many and let my language become lazy. Sometimes you use a term that's used to popular effect simply to be understood, when perhaps that laziness means you aren't being fully understood by many...and deemed a pompous ass by most.
 
... that sort of thing, some conventions are just too handy

I started writing up a draft glossary, and realised appearing a pompous ass was likely
 
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