A Familiar Place that is Significant or Important to You

I plan to research this to find some examples that inspire me, but i had a few initial ideas that i wanted to try out first...

The street i grew up on and the surrounding areas such as the park and the places i used to play hide and seek and climb trees.

I want to try and photograph these places in both an Objective and Subjective way. I want to photograph them through my eyes as a child so i have been thinking of ways to portray this to the viewer. Things i have considered are a low angle, as children see things from lower down than most adults to look up at something suggests a child-like viewpoint- this is something that Photographers use to make the subject more dominant- to have them looking down at the camera suggests power. See below example.

Rodchenko- Pioneer Trumpeter- 1930

This is the kind of image i was referring to, although i do understand that this Brief is Places and not people, it illustrates the idea of the camera being at a low viewpoint making the subject or place look more dominant and perhaps scary.

Here are some photographs that suggest a familiar place or somewhere important:

Photo by Walker Evans

From http://pardonmeforasking.blogspot.com/2008/09/walker-evans-show-at-bond-street.html

Photo by Walker Evans

From http://argenteditions.com/images/large/fsa/walker-evans-church-52438-700.jpg

Walker Evans' images may not have been about the important or significant places but it is suggested in the simplcity of them, to photograph it as it is. Although we know that with him working for the FSA his job was to document the rural poverty to aid the FSA in improving the lives of sharecroppers, tennants and farmers these places were very significant and important to both the FSA and their owners. Having said this it isnt unreasonable to suggest that all places are significant or important to someone in some way. It is the way they are photographed that is the defining factor.

The derelict buildings that still stand derelict that i used to play around as a child- in Edenfield, i am going to these places this weekend and hope to find a way into them, if not then i may consider photographing the outside.

I have been very inspired by Sophie Calle's book Appointment with Sigmund Freud, i like the relationship between text and image and think this is something i want to experiment with.

Something else that interests me is how the title of an image/body of work can completely change the context.

When i was Photographing around the areas i grew up it hit me that some of the most memorable places are the seemingly sinister and scary places rather than the places where i have happy memories, this got me thinking about subjectivity and objectivity, and what i wanted the viewer to think.

I decided rather than to take a documentary approach to photographing these places i have actually made this more fine art than anything and i am very excited about what i could do with these images.

I plan to put my images in a small book and possibly use text on the facing page- as with Sopie Calle though i may not directly link each bit of text with the image but it will add something to it, i have also thought about a title for the work. Given that i plan to suggest a more sinister side to the place i grew up, i thought that childhood would be quite ambiguous as a title as this changes the context of the images.

Here are the six images i will use for this project:

F8, 1/125 Sec, ISO 100

F5.6, 1/100 Sec, ISO 100

F5.6, 1/125 Sec, ISO 320

F4, 1/100 Sec, ISO 100

F4, 1/100 Sec, ISO 100

F5.6, 1/100 Sec, ISO 100

I did plan to put the images into a book as i wanted to show how they would work as a set of images and i felt that i could do better than to simply hand in a pile of prints.

On mentioning this to Katy and that i would like to print them on board, she suggested i did this and submitted them along side an exhibition plan. So i made a plan using Photoshop to illustrate what my exhibtion would look like and printed my images on A4 3mm foamex board.

I had my Exhibtion plan printed onto continuous poster paper and will submit this along with my print box containing the 6 images.

Here is the plan:

I decided in the end not to use text as i wanted to keep the images as ambiguous as possible. I did use titles underneath them though as i felt that a title plays an important role with setting the context of an image, i chose these carefully as i wanted them to be true yet suggest something deeper. All of the images are genuine places that featured heavily in my childhood and are close to the home where i grew up. All of the titles reflect what the image means to me- but it is up to the viewer to decided exactly what that is.

I have tried to portray these places as scary and sinister because to me as a child they were, as a child everything is big and the slightest thing can be very frightening once allowed into a childs imagination. Despite this the titles and the images are all true, it is the veiwers interpretation based on the allegory from the series that may be a lie.

Obviously after reading this blog people would know that the true context of the images is not as dark as it may seem but as this is intended as an exhibiton it is the public that would be seeing the work and making up their own minds without the background information on this blog.

I am proud of  what i have achieved with this brief, although the images i have produced aren't my best work i think it is the over-all concept and idea that works. In my opinion this work is more of an artists expression using photographs to communicate rather than the work of a photographer, the strong point is the idea and concept behind this and not the images themselves.

This has helped me to think deeper about the reasons for doing things, to understand that the images with a story behind them and feeling behind then are perhaps the more successful ones. To shoot randomly may produce some good photographs but the originality comes from the story- the viewpoint and the concept.