For this ‘political landscape’ project I am focusing on the theme of surveillance, and how surveillance actually effects the general public, in both positive or negative ways. I intend to focus on three subject matters related to this theme.

One being CCTV cameras which are a man-made tool of surveillance used all over the world (245 million professionally installed video surveillance cameras active and operational globally.)

One subject matter being replicated CCTV footage through the use of high angle street portraits manipulated to have the same aesthetic qualities to that of security camera footage.

And my third subject matter being urban / ‘city birds’ perched up high, this subject matter being a physical representation of surveillance in terms of looking/spying, as these perched birds are looking down onto the goings-on of populated areas.

As you can see with each of my descriptions of my 3 subject matters, I have already began to produce images focusing on these three subjects, and so far I personally believe that the work is successful and has a lot of meaning. In terms of the photographers which I have looked at for inspiration (Thomas Ruff, George K Sullivan and Trevor Paglen) , I believe that the work which I have been producing so far reflects inspiration and ideas which i have drawn from their work and used in my own way. Part of the reason as to why I believe that this project is working successfully so far is because it is a topic which I have great interest in and am very curious about. I think that photography is a great way to explore this political topic as surveillance its self is about looking, so with as a lens based media, requiring vision I believe that this is very well suited. As I stated in my original project specification I intended to produce visually unusual and borderline-abstract images in response to surveillance and the ideas surrounding this topic. I want to create images that will make the viewer question the issues and controversies associated with surveillance, which so far seems to be going in the direction of which I initially intended it to.

I have also then gone on to create composite images using multiple photographs of different subjects…