Evaluation
Contextual Study
For my contextual study research I chose to use deprived societies because it appealed the most to me. There is a wide selection of what can be constituted as deprived: deprived of love, deprived of education, deprived of a home, depriving one’s self of food (eating disorders), deprived of money or riches, deprived of achieving one’s full potential in life (terminal illnesses, etc), deprived of security and many more.
From the start I wanted to think outside the box from homeless people because this is predictable and also is not very imaginative as there are not many ways to capture the homeless that are different to what we see in everyday (or even tourist) photography.
I wanted to think outside the box of people as whole and not capture people at all. I initially I photographed places that were deprived and rather focus on leaving it open for speculation of how and why these places had become the way they were and what the people who owned the places had to do to survive their loss.
This idea came from my research of Pat Hogan’s urban photography of deprived places however while she wanted to focus on the ‘beauty of the neglected’, I wanted to focus on the effect on the people who suffered the loss on the places that would now become neglected.
At this point I did not have a set question for the unit as a whole because I was not certain and I did not actually have any ideas about how far this concept would develop.
I chose to photograph this concept in the Richmond borough because it is considered as the complete opposite of societies deprived. I started in Twickenham and to my surprise there were many business closed down on the high street as well as many homes vacated and not refurbished for new owners. Although, it was not as much as Twickenham there were still quite a few businesses and homes lost in Whitton and Teddington. The most surprising business closedown for me was in Whitton and the closedown of the Nationwide Bank:
I chose to photograph this concept in the Richmond borough because it is considered as the complete opposite of societies deprived. I started in Twickenham and to my surprise there were many business closed down on the high street as well as many homes vacated and not refurbished for new owners. Although, it was not as much as Twickenham there were still quite a few businesses and homes lost in Whitton and Teddington. The most surprising business closedown for me was in Whitton and the closedown of the Nationwide Bank:
In terms of reasons about how these businesses and homes may have been lost, speculation wasn’t open to many suggestions because they all lead to the same reason of being the result of the recession. This reason is why I didn’t want to continue with this idea. I first thought that I could capture these losses in the different boroughs in the rest of West London; however there would have been no development, personal to the people affected. Of the people I did speak to, it seemed that it was a situation so sensitive that they gave me brief and cold answers saying that it was indeed a result of the recession. I was back to starting point.
We were then given a task titled ‘Five from Fifty’ where we were to choose an object in relation to our area of study. I decided that, as I hadn’t a set point of research that I was going to do the cliché because I hoped that this could fuel ideas: I was going to use a newspaper, related to homelessness but then it was suggested to stick to 3D objects because they can more easily be experimented with. So I used a beer can which is associated with homelessness as much a newspapers.
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Taking fifty photographs of the same object of which they had to look completely different to each other and could not be edited in any form other than cropped of rotated was hard. As a result I did artist research, focused on David J. Nightingale, who helped me with focusing on a variety of locations as backgrounds to the can and Andy Warhol who helped me in focusing how I could manipulate the can itself.
I then decided to do the same thing with a different object: cigarettes. I chose cigarettes because they are closely associated with alcohol and they are both the most popular legal ‘drugs’ that everyone is aware of. I attempted to use backgrounds similarly to Nightingale however I decided that I would instead focus on lighting with it, because this proved to give me more successful photographs, although not as many as the beer can photographs.
Nevertheless it did give me an idea for research: I was to focus on youth, answering the question of ‘which of the societies deprived should be our prime concern?’ Alcohol and cigarettes are associated with adults but it also as, or even more commonly associated with underage young people as a means of, although unhealthy, solace. |
My question was now to be: What do these deprived youths fear? I researched Kidsco, which is a company that works with youths and helps them cope with personal issues and such by addressing their problems and fears and situations through a variety of artistic expression, which could include dance, graffiti, drawing, drama, and other forms of art. I looked at the art exhibitions that Kidsco used to help the youths to do this. |
(Kisco's Shoebox Living exhibition)
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Therefore I developed the idea of solace by focusing on the artistic side but almost as controversial as alcohol and cigarettes (the change of the youngest age legal to purchase, etc.).
This is why I focused on graffiti. We see it everywhere and while it can be legal art, it can also be an arrestable crime, depending on where it has been done. As I wanted to show graffiti in a positive light I decided to capture graffiti designs on legal sites because this keeps focus entirely on the artistic expressive beauty of it. I did research on the history of graffiti as proof of its positive aspects. I also researched Andrew Stottsan who photographed graffiti. However unlike Stottsan I focused entirely on the graffiti rather than its surroundings (Stottsan’s surroundings were also deprived) because I wanted emphasise graffiti as the positive seeking of solace.
(These are my own photographs below... which focus on the youth and life and beauty of graffiti. The reason why they are however not on my graffiti page is because there is not sense of appreciation of graffiti as an art or use of it as solace, the models don't give the graffiti any attention so the photos were not appropriate for my page.)
Finally in focusing on where youths turn to out of fear I wanted to use something that, similarly with cigarettes and alcohol, is associated with adults just as much as youths. When watching Maid in Manhattan, Jennifer Lopez’s character went to a park and sat on swings for comfort. Similarly in the horror film, The Grudge, the woman hid under her sheets when she was scared.
These are the kind of reactions that we associate with childhood but when adults are completely in trouble, or in fear, they turn back to their childish ways for solace. I chose parks because this can more easily be captured in my photographs without the need of having people to model but also because it will be the clearest association. I took photographs of other park rides as well as swings because the colours of the rides (swings don’t have colours) will highlight the relationship with the childlike mindset that has no age limit.
Personal Response
Initially I wanted to change my path and actually have models for my final piece response. As I had already done a child company that supported children in terms of their expressing themselves artistically, I wanted to move onto a different group that help children in a different way: The NSPCC. The first answer to my question was 'what does the future hold for us'. I wanted to maintain a similar concept as the NSPCC's campaigns which I researched. I did not want to do mini video clip but rather their photographic campaigns that I could recreate to answer my question. I did experimentations that replicated their work however I decided not to keep to doing my work like theirs because it did not allow much room for experimentation on Photoshop and also it would not have been my own original idea.
I decided that I would use a multiple of portraits and put them together because I wanted a variety of faces and races and cultures to show that fears of youths are common to all. This meant that facial expressions of the models and their poses as a whole had to fit in with sad expressions. The perfect artist in capturing upset and hysteria was Jill Greenberg. Greenberg captured toddlers crying and I particularly like that the toddlers were glowing although in tears, this reassured viewers that the toddlers were not going through any sort of suffering that their expressions and reactions suggested. On the other hand I wanted my models to look like they were going through suffering so I had to do the complete opposite in terms of not having their skin glowing at all.
With the idea of having a number of models I researched mosaic arts. I did not use a specific photographer. I looked at what amateurs had done on Flickr because the professional ones have hundreds of photographs that are put together in order to make a main big one which is not one I want to d because that would go back to giving these voices one voice and one representation which is exactly want I did not want. I wanted a mini mosaic.
Unfortunately, when I started creating my mini mosaic collage I realised that not all photographs were consistently good with each other and also I decided that by using the NSPCC as inspiration my work would come across as focusing on issues, way too sensitive and not necessarily the kind of deprivations that will or has occurred to every youth. I wanted the fears of focus to be on less sensitive issues and issues of fears that I as a youth myself can guarantee that at one point in life every youth has shared this fear: 'Who am I? What am I to become?'
So I decided that I would reduce the number of photographs to put in my final piece. I decided that I would gather inspiration from the works I did in my contextual study: I wanted to use swings; graffiti of some sort (I used more tagging graffiti because the artistic type can be difficult to read); and I even used a location that would be considered as deprived (a barbed wired fence).
Overall I think that my final piece really does answer my question successfully.