Ian Clegg

Postgraduate student profile

Ian's research addresses photographic challenges that high street artisans encounter:

In what ways can a photographic practice empower the high street artisan?

This practice-based research explores a new and unprecedented support mechanism through the medium of advertising photography giving new insights of collaborative working and methodologies of how photographers and artisans can achieve mutual photographic goals.

The investigative question was a basis for a collaboration with three case studies in the region of Ulverston, Cumbria. The artisan traders’ place in the high street is threatened in an environment of economic turndown. The implications are that artisans must produce effective visual assets which enable them to compete. The research considers, deliberates, and finds new solutions to issues surrounding the interaction between artisan and photographer. Processes are examined by applying a practice-based methodological approach including interdisciplinary methods; immersion within the artisan businesses; sharing advertising industry experiences; photo-elicitation and autoethnographic analysis. These methods bring together photography, literature reviews and real-world case studies, culminating in the co-creation of new practice-led images.