A big part of my project is going to be formatting my photo book, with the mixture of old photos, my photos and scans of writing im hoping to include.

In order to do this in the best way possible I am going to look at some different ways of formatting photo books, and different ways of intergrating old and new images.

First i’m looking at Lydia Goldblatt, and her photo book, Still Here.

“In the series Still Here by Lydia Goldblatt (*1978 in London), the artist immerses her intimate photographs in sublime extremes of light and shade, tracing the fleeting shadow of personal existence onto enduring human narratives.” Source

Goldblatt’s book, similarly to my project, focuses on family, specifically her elderly parents, and they record three years in her parent’s lives.

“I didn’t want something observational, something with critical distance, and I never thought of taking the photographs as work; I don’t quite know what it was.” Lydia Goldblatt

These are a couple sample pages from her book Still Here, the layout is very simple, with her square format images being placed in the centre of each page. The images she has placed on each double spread compliment each other, having similar light levels, colours and/or subject matter. The images each focus on a singular thing, which I like because it highlights that one aspect object and brings it to the viewers attention, helping to build a story within the book.

“while the images depict the physical decay, indignities and vulnerabilities of old age without sentimentality, they also reveal the perverse beauty in wrinkled, mottled flesh and grey hair, making visual poetry out of a mole, a scar or even the stain of bodily fluid.” Source

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/features/farming-confessional-we-need-to-evolve-so-that-we-do-not-kill-to-eat-9152958.html

This was a very interesting documentary I found looking at the ethics of farming. Some of the views raised in this article are very conflicting as they are the views of a farmer, who makes I living out of something he is reluctant to do, kill animals. The writer talks of his moral dilemma, and how he attempts to find the balance by killing animals in the most humane way possible.

One morning, I woke up absolutely certain that killing animals to eat their meat was wrong. So it might seem as though I’ve sided with animal-rights advocates, but the long view that I’m taking on this makes my position more complicated than that. My feelings about the ethics of livestock farming ebb and flow. I have no plans to stop eating meat or raising animals for slaughter. But I believe that we as a species need to evolve into the sorts of beings that do not kill to eat. For now, I justify non-industrial farming as a necessary compromise that will gradually shift how we think about using animals as food.