The Aesthetics of Photographic Production is a media-rich Research Catalogue exposition emerging from an AHRC-funded long-term practice research project (2018–24) that investigates photographic production as a multisensory, material, and more-than-human field of making. The project’s dissemination strategy is threefold: this exposition, a published monograph (Jaeger 2025), and the performance and exhibition of artworks, each calibrated to communicate the research through distinct epistemic affordances.

This exposition focuses on the exploration and development of Subtle Ground, a method that directs attention during and through making with clay, in the context of creative practices in ceramics. The method takes a non-conventional approach to making; it focuses on being with the material instead of pursuing a conclusion in the creative process. The method directs the practitioner to follow aesthetic qualities in making understood from a pragmatist view on having an experience.