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.