Family and environmental photography can be captured through modern forms of photography telling a story of their lives through the way they present themselves, their environment, their family all being in the same photo. But all of these photos are in a modern form showing community and family as they are in the present time.

To further my investigation into the community way of life in Burkina Faso, i want to investigate certain families deeper and be able to have a proper discussion with them about their family the jobs the do, and the way that the parents support their children. I think that alongside this information should be any family archives which they have collected. These may range from photo albums to letters which the family have sent between each other. I think that this shoot shows digging deeper into the real meaning of community as it shows their family its its raw form.

This shoot is going to be more closed than the previous two shoots. It has a more specific focus and i will only focus on a couple of familys to make sure that i take time in creating a story of these families and their lives. linking the archival images with modern day images of the family and family members creating a meaningful response to my personal investigations focal point of family and environment.

My inspiration for this shoot comes from previous investigations of the use of archives to create a photobook which has a story as well as just a message of peoples lives. Photographers such as Laia Abril have inspired me. Abrils book gives  a voice to the suffering members of her family after losing her 26 year old daughter, Cammy. Through this set of memories, pieces of text, diary entries, objects and memories, the Robinson family reconstruct the memory of Cammy, after losing her to Bulimia, a serious eating disorder.

This reinforces the fact the through the use of archives a powerful investigation and message can be constructed. Although Abrils series was a form of grief for the family it had the wider message of informing the world of social issues such as eating disorders. I was compleatly inspired by her ability to create an emotional series of archival images which created portray an important message.  I hope to use archival images from specific sponsored families which i can tell the story of how being sponsored impacted their family.

Rita Puig-Serra Costa is another influential photographer who links archives, objects and present day photographs to tell a story about her family. i think the idea of contrasting archival images with modern day images is very interesting and an aspect i want to focus on in my archive specific shoot.

Contact Sheets

the first images in the contact sheet are background work i had done on the project. I went to people who had either sponsored a child/family or had previously been on the trip. I gathered a variety of archives including past promotional leaflets to encourage interest in participating in the trip which include information and images taken on previous trips. I also got access to an individual who has a sponsored child and writes to them regularly and receives replies. These were attached with images of the sponsored child,their home and their family so i found these crucial to my project.  the second screenshot are of images which i took Whilst in Burkina Faso. I was then able to visit the family which i had researched through previous trip members and sponsorship archives. This was a really fore filling experience as i was able to have face to face contact with this family i had found so much about. With the help of a local translator i interviewed members of the family asking them about their current living situation, whether the children where in schools and their thoughts on the local community. Following this i photographed the members of the family in the style of formal portraits. They also then showed me their family archives of images that had had taken of the family prior to sponsorship as well as letters they had received from their sponsor.

I felt like doing this mini archival project alongside my project on the African community really enriches my project as it gives greater inside into the lives of the family’s and how they use photography in the form of archives as well.

For my second shoot my aim is to be capturing portraiture images, this is similar to my first shoot but it is important to plan so that i have a clear idea of the differences i need to focus on to create the different sets of images. My first shoot focuses on environmental portraits, capturing the natural sense of community and the individuals going about their daily lives. My second shoot is different to that because i will be focusing on formal portraits. The aim of my  shoot is to capture slightly planned portraits. For this shoot i will be manipulating where the individuals are standing, hoping to get a relatively plain background so all focus is on the individual. Their environment will not be included as i want all eyes focus on the subject and for people to have to read the clothing, facial expressions and stance to understand certain individuals stories.

Influential artists such as Gideon Mendel had a huge impact on me for me to decide to experiment with this style of formal portraiture which ive never really done before. Im hoping that the neutral background and straight faced pose will great a strong image with powerful message behind it. To further these images and push myself i want to try and speak to the individuals i have photographed and find out their name and age and a bit about there background as the community often dress and present themselfs well but live a very hard life.

Contact sheet

Again doing the same filtering technique as i had done with shoot one. i went through all of the images selecting the best formal portraits out of all the 2000 images i had captured. I think that i was a bit less successful in terms of producing good outcomes as i don’t have as many strong formal portraits as i did with environmental portraits. I think that this may of been because they were more staged. I had to position the individuals in front of a plain background and then stand and take a picture of them. This was not what i had initially thought of my images looking like. Nonetheless i continued to experiment so that i could compare the different styles of portraiture. I found whilst taking these image however i got to know the individual better because i would be having more contact with them through asking them to stand a certain way or in front of a specific background, i think that this aspect therefore enriched my projects and my knowledge of what its like working with third world countries as a photography project

For my personal investigation i am looking into non- government bodies and how they impact family and community life in third world countries. My main aim when i go to Burkina Faso is to focus on this impact and try to capture it in my photographs. The style i am aiming to capture and spend the most time photographing is environmental portraits. I think these are key to showing the community spirit because firstly a portrait shows a lot about the people and the community and what and of jobs they do and secondly the background of environment hints at the conditions they are living in and the harshness of their society. It is key to capture their surroundings as this has a massive impact on their community , family and general everyday.

With the inspiration of photographer, Steve McCurry i hope to capture powerful images of individuals going about their daily lives, however slightly staged the image as i am aiming to have them looking straight into the camera lens and not smiling. This will push my photographic ability as communication will be difficult and some people may not want their photo being taken in this way. However i will attempt these images because i think they are bolder and stronger and show more of their facial feature and make a more interesting photograph than if they were smiling as this is more just a vernacular family portrait. Although Steve McCurry is my influential artist for this shoot i will vary from his work creating my own style. I am slightly staging the image with getting them to purposely look at the camera but i will not stage/plan their stance, action, job, ect as i want everything to be very natural and in the moment as it is documentary photography but as they are looking at the camera it takes a slightly more tableaux approach, telling a important and powerful story of their lives, community and family.

Steve McCurry is my main inspiration for this shoot and these are a few of his most influential images which i will keep in mind when doing my shoot.

Contact Sheets

i placed all of my best environmental portraiture images from the shoots that i did across the three week period into on folder in light room. i then went through each image and flagged the best images if there was for example three of the same photo but from different angles. I then filtered the images so that i could only see these images. then i went through using the coloured filters as you can see above to select my best images and possible images which i would then later edit. I think that  my shoots where i tried to capture environmental portraits was successful, i was able to make images which contained both a portrait of the individual swell as include some of the environment in the background which tells you a bit more about whats going on. This shoot was probably my favorite to do because i enjoyed both ways i captured these photographs. sometimes i would should approach a situation and take an immediate photo which was completely natural and then other times id intervene a bit more in the situation and ask the individuals to stand still so i could take a photo of them. Both these types of photography show environmental background the difference is that some were more staged than others.