We are involved in a gallery exhibition linked with Archisle called ‘ constructive narratives’. i have selected a few of my images which i think relates family and environment the most. The 6 images below that i have picked show a selection of child environmental portraits which i have captured. The images all link together showing the sense of community in third world countries and emphasise the maturity of these young people. Most of the images where taken on the building site we were working on having the meaning that they were all willing to get stuck into the project that was taking place and how they, no matter what there age wanted to be a part of developing their community and learning how to build and cook so they can transfer these skills to supporting there family and community as a whole. i refined my choice of images specifically down to images where and the subjects show strong stances and a straight facial expression and highlighting a way in which they are mature fore their age. In the top image the young girl is wearing shoes which are far too big for her, this is symbolic of how she is having to grow up quickly and step into the shoes of responsibility and look out for herself and possibly her family. In the second image we see a boy of 13 years old, he stands with his arms crossed and the low angle looking up at him implies he has become a grown up and could possibly be the man of the household if the dad is not around. This idea runs throughout all the images linking them all together to be a series of powerful portraits

Experimenting with layout:

I printed out a few different images and experimented with different sizes and different image combinations however none of the photos seemed to fit together to tell a powerful story. I decided that instead of trying to show one photo from all the different shoots i did, id just focus on one shoot and then save and the others for when i make a book which will combine all the series of photograph i have captured together. I therefore looked at my environmental portraiture shoot to experiment with layouts and combinations which worked, my final choices are shown below.

Below is how i am going to have my images layed out in the exhibition. They will all be in colour and in A3 so that you can see the images clearly. The way they have been placed has been thought through as the outer images all contain a subject which is facing slightly inwards, this has the impact that it is grouping the images together emphasising the link between the images and highlighting the community atmosphere. Although they are portraits of them standing alone looking independent the grouping of the images shows that they are not alone and that they are a community and one big family and working together to help each other out.

A State of Contentment  – Zoe Pannenborg

A State of Contentment is a series of portraits captured in Burkina Faso. In October I participated in a foreign aid project to Burkina Faso where I was surrounded by the local’s culture, natural beauty and sense of community. After spending 2 weeks photographing the children and that surrounded us on the building site every day, it was noticeable that even though they had so little every single one of them was full of energy and beaming with happiness, as if they were in a state of contentment. Inspired by the works of Gideon Mendel and Steve McCurry I have created my own photojournalistic style of capturing the community spirit the environment offered. This series of conceptual portraits show the maturity that the local children possess and that with so little they can be so content.