For tomorrows workshop we have been asked to bring in an image that can be destroyed, I chose this:

I simply tore it up, and stuck the pieces back together in a collage style photograph as I wanted to show the idea of a broken relationship.

This was because Johnny started talking about failures and mistakes in photography and if they were necessarily a bad thing.  Interestingly, a wide range of viewpoints were expressed, including my own which felt that how can a creative subject like photography, ever have anything wrong.  Obviously this leads to then in this context that a mistake, is when something occurs unintentionally and from this, this causes for us to go on a tangent.  However I believe that it is hard to categorize mistakes in photography, because this comes very close to what the journey of photography is all about.  Therefore mistakes are normal and are in a sense intentional as that is natural in photography.

To demonstrate this, we drew faces with our eyes closed and analysed how despite what we intended to do, how differing our results became.  This task was very thought provoking because it led us to compare the figure in our head an how that can mask reality.  This is obviously a very prominent issue in everyday society when we can be so focused on producing an intended result, our ayes can be closed to other areas that are opened up and let us develop our ideas.

Here Johnny told us to get an image and have a “play” with it, and show how we could explore the root of family relationships.  I chose to create a torn effect by tearing the photograph into various parts, and stuck them back near together to create a jigsaw effect, with a stronger emphasis on the situation not being fixed, but permanently broken.  I felt this way because I wanted to explore how despite family relationships breaking down, arguably the long term feelings towards one another are somewhat impacted.  I like how I have created a smashed glass feeling which coincidentally links with our debate over the idea of mistakes as I initially was’t prepared to create this effect, and only after judging how close I wanted the pieces together I decided I could create a shattered glass effect.  This way I feel I made the photograph to exaggerate its feelings towards brokenness.