Summer Project

FDA SUMMER PROJECT 2019

Brief 1

Shoot on a mobile phone - within little more than a century, photography has evolved from ‘a thing of wonder’ to something that is so commonplace we barely take notice as we snap away on our mobile phones. To try to counter this and become more visually aware. Your challenge is to see if you can use your phone camera with purpose. Establish a clear theme before you go out to shoot. For example, you could compile a series of pictures in a park or at a beach - a place where people have fun and relax. You could try to shoot a broad representation of the place through people, environment and abstraction. At the end of the day, try to edit the work into the strongest set of 12 pictures. 

OUTCOME

I knew that i wanted this project to be 'people' focused, as they make for interesting subject matter but i wasn't sure how to approach that. I wanted to photograph people getting on with their everyday lives and see what kind of random scenarios i could capture. The camera can be seen as a rather invasive piece of kit- people are very protective of their image, which i understand. Asking for permission ruins a natural moment but it's necessary to ask for it sometimes. Even so, i just decided to take photos of what i wanted in that moment and meet the consequences if they came to me. I took myself out into Margate, Kent, and decided to just see what i could come out with. 

Margate- A Beautiful seaside town in the South East of England.

TURNER CONTEMPORARY GALLERY

Seaside: Photographed

       

Examples of Photographs from the exhibitions

This exhibition housed an array of the weirdest and most wonderful images from the 1950's all the way through to mid 2000's.

“From Victorian men in black to modern good-time girls, a tremendous history of seaside photographs reveals how Britons do love a day on the beach”

– The Guardian

It features the work of Photographers such as Jane Brown, Henri Cartier Bresson, Vanley Burke, Anna Fox, Paul Nash, Martin Parr and Ingrid Pollard.

'Images of hotel life, the beach, the holiday camp, dressing up and dressing down, wild waves and coastlines all combine to create a rich picture of the British seaside.'

          

After looking around this exhibition, i walked around Margate to see what photos i could take and how i could interpret this theme. This exhibition gave me enough motivation to do so. This is what i came out with: (see above)

Quite a moody atmosphere- obviously i haven't captured as much colour as the photos from the exhibition but part of that it due to the fact that i was using my phone camera. I had fun being inspired by the exhibition but want to build my confidence in capturing what strangers get up to in their day to day life. I definitely want to go out and do more street photography as it's not only exciting but it's also a little daunting as you never know what you'll come across. I like this element of the unknown.
 As the backgrounds of these images could be seen as rather busy, i decided to see what it would be like if i turned my attention to taking photos where you didn't have things like the ocean or buildings drawing the attention away from a person. I wanted to try and give all my attention to one person and see what the outcome was like- stray away from street photography and find a model.

That's when i came out with the series of black and white photo's, shown previously. I decided to focus on the vulnerability of people and what emotions i could capture just through body language. I wanted to do this because i realised, when taking photos of people on the street, that i had no idea what they were thinking, or feeling. I had no idea of the lives they lived. Body language can tell you one thing but it can also completely miss-lead you. This is what i have tried to show in these images- that not everything is what it seems. I've tried to loosely base each image on a certain emotion. For example, the one's where the subject is in a curled up position would evoke vulnerability, as they clearly feel the need to protect themselves.