Monday, 26 March 2012

COMMISSION: Critical Appraisal


I knew I wanted to incorporate portraiture within my project immediately. My concept for this project began as a series of photographs that documented what happens to our household waste once it is taken from our homes, I wanted to capture images of the people that deal with it on waste disposal sites etc. However, after looking for visual references I found some that inspired a slight changed to my idea. My photos are meant to capture people that use waste to make a living, not work with it but selling it. From charity shops to flee markets, waste for one person can always be turned around to become another person’s gain.
The two visual references that I began looking at and that have now at the end of the project still had the biggest influence on my work/ideas are Pieter Hugo and Melissa Moore. Pieter Hugo; an incredible photographer created a series called “Permanent Error”, which gave me the idea of capturing portraits whilst the person is surrounded by the waster they have transformed. I looked at Melissa Moore because I have seen one image by her before from her series “Know the Edge” and fell in love with it, I loved the concept of her work and how she pulled it off. Her work is the reason I settled on using a 2nd hand clothing store as my final images.  
 These are two of my contact sheets; these are the ones that I picked my final images off.


My three final images;


When it came to choosing my final images I knew I wanted to have one portrait and two or more other photos surrounded the portrait of where I found that person. I went into bookshops, charity shops, skip yards etc but my favorite was this woman in a second hand clothes shop. She goes to yard sales, house clearing, antique markets, jumble sales every weekend to get the stock for her shop. She wasn't the easiest person to photograph as she was nervous but i really love the composition and colours of the first images (the clothes rail). Im not sure how brilliantly these three images go together as a set but I like that the two environment images frame the portrait, surrounded the image quite like she surrounds herself with this transformed waste.
I think the reason I’d like my work best in an exhibition is because even though I can see it as quite commercial work and therefore suiting a magazine publication etc, I think that with an exhibition there is more freedom for your work to be viewed as its own piece of art rather than a visual aid.
My studies for this project, I feel have improved greatly from my first semester, however not completely as this project was running alongside the fashion constructed images project and I found myself getting overwhelmed at times and confused at which project to put first. I also reshot a lot more for this project which I am pleased about, as when printing came round I was confident in my three final images and could make logical connections as to why I chose them! So far, research was my most challenging hurdle, I found two visual references that I carried with me for the whole project as I adore them but I find talking about them difficult and finding strong connections to my work hard as well.