The purpose for producing these final images, was to present them in an exhibition, which will be taking place at The Jersey Arts Centre on the 27th of November. The exhibition is entitled ‘Constructed Realities’, The intention of the exhibition is to:
“Bring together work by Hautlieu School A-Level Photography students including their responses to a series of inspirational workshops, masterclasses and lectures delivered by Archisle International Photographers in Residence 2017 Tanja Deman and Jonny Briggs. The classes have been hosted by Hautlieu School in partnership with the Archisle educational programme and represent a range of multi-media creative outcomes inspired by the themes of family and environment.”
I have been using the last month of my studies to construct my own personal study surrounding the ideas of loss in my Granddad’s life and also planning the photoshoots I will undertake in Scotland- which will be more recent and documentary style photographs . In my previous blog posts, I have given a justification of what my project is about, as well as its purpose.
The project is kick-started by my granddad’s first stroke, which then branches out to a much wider topic of loss – loss in that things lost in my Granddad’s life such as family members and friends but also the lost person my granddad as become. He is different to how he used to be and this is due to the strokes. From a stroke, I have experienced a conflict of knowing who he used to be and who he is now and I have had great difficulty not comparing the two version. From the stroke I have had to build a different and more serious relationship with my Granddad, which conflicts with the fun-loving relationship we had before this. It was hard for me and the family to let the old him go, honestly I don’t think I ever can.
However, this narrative is not yet constructed enough to tell a cohesive story as I have not been working on it for a long enough for people to understand the concepts and meaning behind the project as my main part of my project is not yet been conducted, which means the audience can connect with this. When I have conducted this part of my product which will be done in a time period of 2 weeks I am hoping it all comes together and people start to understand my ideas.
However, explaining this series of work will be done more concisely and poetically in my artist statement which will be present at the exhibition for my audience to get an idea of what the work is.
When I had chosen the images I wanted to use for the exhibition I printed them out to arrange them in a format, to show how I wanted it to be set up on the exhibition wall. I first did this on a white background so I could experiment with the layout before making a final decision. These were my 3 layouts I liked the most:
I went for this layout and so then designed this in photoshop to make a digital version of the layout.
Here is my artist statement which will go alongside my series of work at the exhibition. I have been as descriptive as possible in order for my audience to get not only a cohesive visual narrative of this series but also a text driven perspective of the project which should complement the imagery well enough to tell a story.
ARTIST STATEMENT: S troke challenged him T rampled on his dreams R earranged his relationships O rganized his days K idnapped his future E xtracted hope from despair. In this catalogue of works, I have explored my Granddad life, particularly focusing on the theme of absence and presence in his life after experiencing two strokes, one in 2006 and another in 2008. My granddad is now eighty years of age and has been affected significantly from the strokes, which resulted in his loss of eye sight, difficulty to walk and he often struggles to perform his daily routine. For this section of my project I have worked with archival images of my Granddad specifically, showing absence by using coloured overlays to remove or block things/people out of the photograph, which were originally there. This is showing things he has lost and displaying things, which are still present.
Evaluation:
For the exhibition which is beginning on Monday 27th November, I will be presenting images produced for my study into my Granddad so far. If I am honest I don’t feel happy with the work I have produced so far this is because I have not produced any new photographs as of yet, however this could have not been helped as my Granddad lives in Scotland- which restricts my access to him. However, in 2 weeks I am going over to conduct my photoshoots, which have been thoroughly planned in advance. For now, I am happy with most of the photographs produced to fit the theme of loss. I feel they were relatively successful as a collection, however, I am more excited and interested in the new work I will be developing soon for my book as it is more what I wanted my book to be about. My main inspiration for this series of work would be the photographer Liz Steketee, although she doesn’t really manipulate her images digitally covers or removes certain parts of the image, which is a technique I used in the series to show loss. Evaluating the photographs individually has been done in a previous post, to show the meaning, the concept and the subject matter around the group of images.