Final Series Research

Douglas Gayeton

Slow: Life in a Tuscan Town

From my single image and me wanting to experiment with text, I came across this photographer, Douglas Gayeton who captured a unique series of documentary narrative images of a town and its people portraying the everyday processes of growing, preparing and eating food. He would spend hours capturing small sections of one particular place then joining them together to create one image, its almost like putting a jigsaw puzzle together. He then would write on top of his prints, writing small stories or little details of what is happening in the images. I would have never thought of doing this, or maybe rather I would have been to worried about ruining my photograph but from looking at Gayeton's work I think its a great way to combine text with images, its very creative. 

From getting inspiration from Gayeton to combine text with image, I was still a little unsure of what to ask people to write on their image. Although my narrative is insecurities its still quite a hard thing to write about (which I learnt when I was capturing my final series in the studio) So I was introduced to Trent Bell, who is an architecture photographer but captured a series of images "Reflect" which shows what some U.S convicts would tell themselves if they could go back in time. Bell ask the convicts to write a letter to themselves and took their portrait to later edit their letters on to the image. I find the images quite inspiring actually, its such a strong series. I think if Bell was to do the images without the text you definitely wouldn't get the sort of empathy you feel towards the subjects. I also think the lighting is really strong, at first glance it draws you to the subject and you get a sense of who they are in a way by the way they're sitting which is similar to each other. I wonder if Bell instructed them to do this...    

Keeping Bell's instructions he gave the convicts and that my narrative is based around insecurities in mind, I told my subjects to think about things they'd like to change, but rather them all being about their appearance I ask them to think more about their life insecurities (if that makes sense). I quite like the idea of these images, the thing with this sort of style you could say, is that you could capture endless amounts of photographs to create your series, which I find exciting. It always surprises me how others see themselves and what they want to change or do differently. I definitely think that I needed to capture more.

My own images

Gillian Wearing

One of Wearings most famous series is 'Signs that Say What You Want Them To Say and Not Signs that Say What Someone Else Wants You To Say', Wearing asked people in the street to write down their most inner thoughts and then photographed them. The images not only portray the inner thoughts and feelings of different people but also give us an in site of the lives of everyday people. Some of the images where quite surprising, Like a young man dressed in a business suit looking quite successful but holds a sign that says "I'm desperate" or a police officer holding a sign that says "Help". I think in a way Wearings images are giving her subjects the opportunity to be and show their true selves. I guess you could say the images expose them.

"I'm Desperate" 1992

"Help" 1992

I got a lot of my inspiration from wearing I think. I just like her style, the realness of her images and how she captured the publics most personal thoughts and feelings. I find it quite exciting that she asked complete strangers to reveal something so personal to them, I personally wouldn't have had the confidence to do something like that. But I would have liked to actually, it intrigues me what people think, their so mysterious. I always find myself wondering what they're thinking or where their going.

For my own work I decided to stick with the people I know well to photograph, I also decided to use the studio instead of being on location. I wanted my images to hold quite a simple look to them but to also have a loud, creative feel. I wanted my subjects to not only show their insecurities but to sort of portray in a sense their personality's, so I asked them to be as creative as they can with writing their signs. 

(My images so far)

 

I wanted each of my subjects to portray their insecurities in a different way so as well as being quite creative with their signs I also instructed them to hold the signs in different ways so that each image I captured was different to the next.
As well as having their (negative) insecurities I wanted to experiment with a more comical you could say insecurity, to sort of show both sides of it. I'm looking forward to experiment with this idea and I think it would be interesting to see what and how they would write their second sign.  

Steve Rosenfield 

What I Be

"I started this project in hopes to open up the lines of communication, and to help everyone accept diversity with an open mind and heart and empower those who feel they suffer for something they may see as a flaw."

“I am not my depression”

“I am not my quietness”

“I am not my weirdness”

“I am not my envy”

As well as Wearing, Rosenfield's series of strong and meaningful images, boldly displaying peoples insecurities and showing that they don't define who they are also gave me a lot of influence in my own work. The series started in 2010 when Rosenfield ask a close friend to write her deepest insecurity on her body. I think what makes these images so strong is that the subjects weren't afraid to show something so personal and secretive to others, I found that with my own images my subject held back on showing their deepest insecurities and second guessed what they wanted to tell.

"It is not aimed for people to say “You’re not fat,” or “You don’t have love handles.” It is to spread awareness on what people go through due to society’s paved roads."

I also think that the title of the series and the images play a big part in the images being strong and noticeable. Rosenfield was inspired by a song by Michael Franti what I be, and said that the meaning of the song fit well with his project so he decided to use the song title as his series title.

  
The series is made of hundreds of images all showing peoples insecurities wrote somewhere on their bodys. If I was to carry on my own project I'd definitely capture more images, I'd like to experiment with different generations, family, friends and strangers. It would be interseting to see how the older generations and yunger generatons portray and tell theirinsecuritie.  
http://www.whatibeproject.com/images/

Dove Real Beauty Sketches

I though this went well with the concept of my narrative. The clip shows how individuals see themselves opposed to how others see them. An image is drawn of a person from a description that is given from answering simple questions about their appearance, then a second image is drawn but from someone else's description of the same person. They answered with quite a negative response about how they look or rather how they thought they looked which created a stranger, someone that wasn't real opposed to the second drawing created by how others see them, which portrayed the real person.

Its about insecurities and people having an image of what they think beauty looks like and them not fitting in to the category of the 'beautiful'.