Link to my Photo Book: Please, Father Help Me 

My intentions were always to have a book that explores family and how a belief and faith can connect a family as well as help it. Throughout my book I have placed photos like the one you can see below. This was useful to break up the photos as otherwise it could be considered very repetitive. Many of these family archive photos have been altered in some way or other. A continuing theme was red, this was meant to represent God as in the bible when the text is red it is Jesus talking. These photos are very symbolic. They were inspired by the photographer Jonny Briggs and Carol Benitah. Jonny Briggs is a photographer that actually visited our school. He asked us to manipulate, physically change the images to not be afraid of making mistakes. This opened a whole new realm of creativity for me and it gave me so many ideas of how I wanted to explore this. This played a part in the making of the book.

Throughout my book there were portraits which had either words from the interviews I had done with the people in the photos or bible verses that related to what could be seen in the photos. As you can see below there is a bible verse talking about the holy spirit being like a wildfire. In the photo you can see burning paper with the word holy on it. This was positioned around his chest area as Christians believe the holy spirit is inside of us. The subject seen in the photo mentioned the holy spirit in the interview. The words from the interview can be found on the previous page. This is just one example of how sections were linked. It was often a challenge to try and think of ways to link photos to the interview as the subjects did not always talk about things that were easy to photograph. However, I often focused on showing a physical representation of the emotion behind the words as well as what they were talking about.

The light in these photos represented God. This was very similar to the old painting of the 17th century. Most musicians that were painted were seen looking up at a light that was suggested to be God. This dramatic pose was what I was trying to achieve in my image.  As you can see the photo above shows the subject holding a guitar rather than a violin like the image opposite. The old 17th century painting does not feature in my book  however I thought it would be worth showing the similarities between. Although the painting is much brighter and colorful this was done purposefully.

The sub theme of my book was about having faith in God in difficult times. The darkness in these images represents these difficult times. The light represents God, hope and a future. Each person looks at the light in a different way. Each set of photos explore this with each person giving their own views on this subject in the interviews and the photos of them actually physically reacting to the light. At the beginning of my book there is a picture of just a light with a bible verse relating God to light. This helped set the ground for the whole book and loosely explained the concept. The chiaroscuro lighting technique was used a lot in this project as I found it gave the dramatic contrast of light and dark I needed.

The book ends with this bible verse. I chose this verse because it  relates to previous photos and things my subjects have said in their interviews. I thought this would be a good way to conclude and finish my book.

Overall, I think I have successfully made a book that centers around family and faith. The book has a clear concept but also enough unanswered imagery to leave the reader thinking. This project was a favorite of mine. It allowed me to expand my creative skill and freedom into a documentation style of photography as well as a more physical approach I had from the old archive images. The project was difficult to do because as a family the hard times have been very difficult and tackling this was a challenge for me as I wanted to do it respectively. However, I think I have created a book that creatively and successfully explores the idea of family and faith as well as having that faith in hard times. I have put a lot of work into this book and feel like the book has become something I will always appreciate.