The Box

For my final piece I have decided that I want to put everything inside a small box that looks like it is from the Victorian period. I wanted to do this as all of my work and images are based in the same time period of the late 1800s and so I thought it would all fit in quite nicely. For my final piece I have printed out 5 series of images that each have a caption on them with their titles, I wanted to make these images small as I thought it would be a good idea and they would all fit nicely into the box. The idea of the series was also to make them look more like film stills which is something that I have an outside interest in and wanted to incorporate my love of film into my photographic work. Another added element to my final project was that I created six flip books from one of my shoots based around hidden mothers from the Victorian period. These flip books are basically behind the scenes looks on how that kind of image is made and what goes into making them. A last minute final touch that I decided would be a good idea to add was a zoetrope. I made this all by hand and made it quite small so that it would also fit nicely into the box. The idea of the box was to basically make it seem as if it was a found memory style box filled with a load of old stills and showing the first forms of moving image before film and cinema were actually invented. I thought that this would be a good way of bringing everything together as I felt it was all a bit like odds and ends and didn’t really look much but now that I have come up with this idea for the box I think that my work looks more complete and put together nicely. This whole project can link back to the exam title of truth, fantasy or fiction as I show the truth behind how local islanders used to treat outsiders and those that didn’t fit in with the norm. I wanted to focus on lunacy within the island and how those struggling with it were treated before the asylum was built. I also did a series on transgender and looked into islander Colonel Victor Barker and how he managed to live as a man for so many years. The series I made out of this research was much more simple and basically my subject changed from being a female, wearing feminine clothing and long hair, to cutting her hair and slowly covering her female parts and she finally became a man wearing a suit trying to blend in with the rest of society. I feel that this subject is something a lot of people don’t understand and to help me understand it myself I wanted to do research and a project on it which I actually really like. Overall, my project is based very much on truth and what life would have been like in Jersey in the late 1800s. The element of fiction comes into my work with the box not actually being from the time period and the stills and flip books being handmade by me. For the box I went out and bought a plain brown one and found some old Victorian looking material and glued it to the top of the box with a hot glue gun, this took about 5 minutes and I think that it has turned out well and I am happy with how it looks.

The Zoetrope

Today I decided to make another little addition for my  Victorian inspired project. Presentation is really important to me and so I wanted to make it look as good as possible and have as many visual elements as possible. I also wanted to add things that relate to film as it is something I love and am passionate about. I made flip books to add moving image into my work that could have been created and used during the late 1800s and I printed out stills and wrote on them for something extra in the book. I then decided to make a zoetrope as these were invented during this time period and I thought it would add something more interesting to my project too. I really like how this has turned out as it was my first time trying this method out and it has worked out well. I chose to use the shoot Locked Up as I felt that this one would work out the best as it was the shortest one and it is also looks good with objects appearing in ever photograph.