reflections photography *4

From the brief ...

'In this unit you will explore the theme of memory. This could be through its relationship to the archive – the images, films, objects, documents and traces through which we recall and revisit individual and shared memories and histories. You could also consider or imagine possible futures and how these may link to the present and the past. For example you could choose to examine life cycles: replenishment or regeneration, the old constantly being replaced by the new, or even the young usurping the old. From seed to harvest, a cake baked and eaten, the repurposing of old things into new, the passing of genes to new generations and so on. The possibilities are endless.'

'Each student should produce a set or series of five still images around the themes of the unit. The images could incorporate found images and other media with your own digital stills. The project should also have a textual component and a considered design for presenting the work.'

My Idea

For my photography idea I have decided to convey the aspect of memory by portraying our childhood ambitions in contrast to our present day aspirations. As a child we all have a memory of what we wanted to become as we were older, I just find it interesting to see how peoples ideas and interested change throughout time. So I spoke to a few people and questioned them about there earliest memory of what they wanted to become when they became older, to my surprise the results from the research I conducted demonstrates that hardly anyone has the ambition as a child compared to what occupation they are currently striving for. 

I browsed through many ideas and techniques I could possibly but decided to the method of double exposure. It's an art form I have admired for some time now, artist's such as 

Andre De Freitas Sarah K Bryne who is a particular favorite and also Christoffer Relander.

Andre De Freitas

Sarah K Bryne

Christoffer Relander

The ability to convey more than one piece of information but still molded into the outline of a subject fascinates me and quite frankly looks incredible, so I began doing a few test shots  of myself to try and recreate this technique of double exposure.  

Test

Just for practice I found an image of myself which I then uploaded to Adobe photoshop. (I intend on using images of other people)

To help complete the objective of the brief I wanted to somehow incorporate the memory of a childhood ambition. Personally for me I remember me wanting to become a footballer, so I gathered some images online of a football and attempted to overlay it on to my found image.

Using the blending tool to double expose the image

The end result came out looking quite interesting but not as I had hoped. I then took the image to my peers for their opinion and the response was quite constructive they could not identify the person in the image and questioned the choice of image in consideration with the background and its relevance.  

1 attempt ( young andre)

2nd attempt ( present day andre)

Back to the drawing board

With consideration to the response I got from others I decided to try again think more about the image itself as well as its back ground and also identifying the subject ....