I want to use photography to explore and uncover stories about a place. I also want to explore the relationship between photography and writing, and how the use of text can help to emphasise a photo and add to its interpretation.
Thinking about the relationship between words and photos, I thought of some key words or phrases that related to what I want to pursue, and used their definitions to build up my idea and how they relate to it. These definitions are a combination of my interpretation of the word and meaning, and an actual dictionary definition:
- Place- Somewhere, a place with an identity of sorts. A town, a building, a landmark, anything is a place. A name is not needed per-se, but a memory of a place is
- Journeys- Going between two places, a start and a finish. the finish is not necessarily always set in stone, and does not have to be known/planned from the start. What happens between the two destinations is the important bit
- Travel- A series of journeys, with no single destination or finish in sight. Journeying to many places to document and explore them
- Exploration- Seeking out and discovering what can be found in somewhere new, or examining something to its smallest degree, to build a better picture of it
- Urban- Heavy human presence, towns and cities. Man-made mazes to be explored, purpose made and almost calculated in design
- Natural- Lack of human presence, the world outside of human life. An old and pre-existent place to be explored, almost free-flowing in its structure
- Memory- Perceptions of the past, and how places can influence these,
- History- Objective (to an extent) memories, written down fact and old stories of a place, building the identity of a place
At the time of developing my proposal, my school were donated a huge collection of books, on the subject of art and photography. I was drawn to books on the topics of travel and places, finding several that related to what I want to do, and writing about them and how they were associated with my aims and goals within photography. My books were chosen not only because of their relation to travelling and photography, but also because of the way some of them talked about perceptions about places and their histories and cultures.
Part of what I wrote about focused on the ideas of people's perceptions of a place, and how the images seen, particularly in the media, are cherry picked for whatever reason, distorting in some way how that place is seen. What I want to be able to do is provide a view of somewhere that is honest or truthful to my perception of that place, through photos and stories.
Part of what I wrote about focused on the ideas of people's perceptions of a place, and how the images seen, particularly in the media, are cherry picked for whatever reason, distorting in some way how that place is seen. What I want to be able to do is provide a view of somewhere that is honest or truthful to my perception of that place, through photos and stories.
As an experiment in itself, I decided to display my text in three forms: A photo of the handwritten response, a scanned version of the original text, and a typed out version, to show the different forms that text can have when used in an artistic context, and how each version has its of benefits and downsides.
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For my video I decided on creating a "map" with destinations based on some of my proposal keywords. I filmed a time-lapse of me drawing the map, and intersected it with footage of packing a bag with objects relating to photography and travelling. For the audio I used clips of people talking about exploring and travel.
The reason I chose a map as the key point of the video was because it acts as a functional design and focal point for displaying the 'journey' both visually and conceptually; a map is also one of the key steps to beginning a journey. Without a map, it's easy to get lost, so by having a map with these key terms/aims, I can keep them in mind on my own journey through year 13. |