Evaluation
| Candidate
Name |
Chloe Howard
|
| Candidate Number | 44691 |
| Pathway
|
Photography |
| Project Title | “Mum” |
| At the beginning of Unit 7, my starting point was to work with the relationship between image and text and so logically I went to the library to take out the book, Image Music Text. I then pulled out a few quotes that I felt explained the relationships between image and text that I wanted to explore.
Firstly, I was determined that I was going to produce work which had text that would be prominent and obvious like Ed Ruscha, Doug Aitken, etc. When I began to produce work where I digitally added text onto my images like my “Him & Her” and Sarah Jones inspired pieces, I found that the text made them look more and more like advertisements and that isn’t what I wanted at all. So instead of using bold, black text, I chose to try out combining the image within the text. Even though id tried using bold text in a different way, it still looked like it could be an advertisement. So then I started to look closely at the images id taken for this idea, and a prominent subject started to emerge. I was using objects as portraits without even realising it already, all I had to get rid of was the text over the top, and it would work a lot better. One of the images I chose was of my bedside table, with bits and bobs on. I thought that, this little cluster of things I have lying around says more about me than my actual appearance. It was an insight into the person I am, not the person I appear to be. So I decided I wanted to produce portraits this way. I would use my family as my subjects due to easy access and I would photograph their clusters of belongings in order to capture who I saw them as. I would include a certain object I related to them, which would reflect how I saw them. There was a problem though, after I saw the images together, I was uninterested, I didn’t want to work with them, and I just didn’t like them. At all. Looking at them for a while made me realise that what wasn’t working, was the fact that I didn’t have the connection with all of the family members that my images needed. They weren’t personal enough for me to show other people how I saw them. So I solved yet another problem, and the project “Mum” was born. I would produce a portrait of her through a series of images which I thought would best reflect how I saw her: her diabetic and insulin equipment. This is who she is, this is what keeps her alive and this is how I’ve always remembered her to be. Not only would it be a just a portrait though, it would also be a self portrait because it’s also reflecting my life as well as hers. Showing how I have lived seeing her, and how she has lived since the year I was born. In all honesty, I feel that my final piece has turned out quite well. I’m able to refer back to my original idea of using the relationship between text and image by using a caption through the quote: “Sometimes too, the text can even contradict the image so as to produce a compensatory connotation”. I’m able to link back to initial research in my proposal like the work of Hans Peter Feldman with the collective of the photographs of clothing and the photography work of Jessica Craig-Martin with the close up shots she has of people that do not necessarily show who that person is. What I also think worked quite well, and also added to the story behind the work, was the way I presented it. I did struggle at first with the order and structure of how I was going to present it, but in the end, by asking the for the opinions of others, I was able to decide of a structure that was suitable for the exhibition and the meaning of my work. The fact that it is in a controlled structure reflects the Diabetes that my Mum suffers with because it controls everything she does throughout her life. But the way I merged the studio shots with the natural shots also reflects how the medical side is just as much a part of her as the crows feet at the corners of her eyes, and the crevices of her collar bones which is what I wanted to put across. My work also received the reaction I was looking for too. When asking people what they thought of the work most didn’t recognise the equipment I photographed. The only people who did, had some sort of connection to either having diabetes themselves, or knowing someone that does. This reflects how intimate the subject can be, which I also tried to show by only having my images printed to A5. If they were bigger, they wouldn’t give across the right message and I don’t think it would have worked at all. They would have been too “in your face” which is what I wanted to avoid. As for aspects I would improve, I would definitely work on the technical quality of my images. Since I have only taken photography seriously for about a year, I haven’t necessarily worked on the technical part of it too much, but I think this comes with practice. Also, having to change the way I came at my work several times affected how much time I had to produce my final images. Which limited how many I could choose from and how much time I spent actually taking the photographs. One aspect I would develop on could be how many photographs I actually display. To reflect Hans Peter-Feldman’s work I could produced more photographs to add to the collection of 15 already up. Overall though I am happy with the exhibited piece. It is a sum of parts not a collection of single photographs but one unusual portrait. |
|
