Sunday 6 October 2013

First Project Ideas




For our first university project we were given the title "When one looks again" which can be interpreted into either portraiture, still life or landscapes. We were all given different photographers to look at from a list and we could also chose from the list others that we were interested in. During a presentation showing us examples of their work I was drawn to a photographer called Keith Arnatt who produces beautiful still life photos of rotting food and rubbish. This gave me an idea for me first project as initially you look at his photos and think how beautiful they look and it's not until you look again and realise how grotesque the content of them is!

On the way home from our trip to Polperro I was reading my daily bible app and the verse for the day was "And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. but the greatest of these is love". In my tired state I put together a concept for the theme. With the inspiration of Arnatt's work I thought of creating a series of three images, each one standing for either love, hope or faith. I wanted to capture ugliness and horrible content but make the photos look beautiful when you first look at them.

Another photographer I connected to my idea is Sally Mann as she does the opposite by capturing photos that look quite dark and sinister but in actual fact are innocent stills of her family such as one photo of her son naked having dripped jam (or something) all down his front giving the effect of blood.
 
My first idea was to have an image showing someone with a crown of thorns (representing Jesus) with blood dripping down their face. The concept being that the photo itself presented beautifully has a grotesque content but also that the reasoning behind it (Jesus dying for us) was an act of love and the photo would represent faith. The second photo would be of someone who has been domestically abused with bruised eyes and lip, the concept being that they are staying in an abusive relationship because of love. The last photo in the series would be someone who is bulimic showing sick around their mouth to represent (maybe far fetched) their hope of a "new" life.

It's quite difficult to explain and make sense but this is the initial concept I came up with from our project title. I decided for the third photo just to use cuts as I wanted to shoot them quickly as they are just a rough idea and I didn't think I would do the crown of thorns idea justice so improvised with a less dramatic concept. I wanted to take the photos to see how the concept would work and get some feedback to improve my idea and approach. At the moment I am happy with the concept however I think the photos are quite weak as they don't have the dreamy beautiful look that I want to achieve.


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