Start
I went to the People's vote march in London. Brexit is about place, but also about identity, common and uncommon ground, and staying in or out of the EU. The movement in or out isn't physical, but it will definitely be felt, for years to come.
When taking my photos, I took a documentative approach, with relative objectivity in mind as well. The idea was to just document the march, and try and capture the atmosphere of the event in my photographs. Something that occurred during the march was the changing weather, which inadvertently became a sort of theme throughout the photos. While taking pictures of the march as it rained, I wanted to try and keep the feeling of the march as positive, as it stayed that way, despite the weather.
In general I wanted to portray the march positively, partly down to my own political bias, but also because it was a positive event. People from across the country came together to support a unifying idea, people creating ever more witty or creative placards. Thinking about this, and my theme of words and photos, I decided on creating a documentative work of the signs that people had made and brought to the march. I felt like these helped to highlight the atmosphere of the march.
When editing the photos I debated using a warm filter for some to make them seem more sympathetic and comforting, or leave a filter out of it to have the photos look bolder and in the foreground of attention. In the end I decided to go without a filter. |
Resolution
Despite the resolution of my own project, the focus of it was not yet resolved. Through this, I saw potential to add to the project, by documenting the day the the UK left the EU, the 31st of January . I thought that doing this would provide a stark contrast to the signs if protest.
The Deadline
The weather was, rather appropriately, depressing. Overcast skies and on and off rain provided a stark contrast the positive and bright attitudes of the march. I kept my ISO low and shutter speed high, to try and permeate the mood that that I felt into the photographs, similar to the photos taken on the march.
I did a small amount of editing, but tried to leave the photos as much as they had originally been, as I felt I managed to capture what I wanted without editing. I decided to take some images of my own discarded signs from protests, and put the two sets of images together, to give some more context to the images and help to better reflect the relationship to the signs from the original protest.