For my first photo-shoot, I will be taking inspiration directly from photographer Bill Voila, and will be editing together a series of 3 photographs to present the journey an individual experiences from birth until after death, essentially condensing a whole life experience into 3 pivotal moments, including childhood, a main life event, and the changes that occur due to the death of an individual.

I will be using 3 different photo-shoots in 1 in order to produce the 3 different styles of images, that I will then merge together in order to form the layout for the final images.

The above image is a montage of image I found online (NOT my own images) in order to represent the layout that will be used in my own work. From left to right, the images will display a journey from childhood to adulthood, where a single event that represents the life work of the individual will be represented in the middle image. In contrast, the final image will be a representation of the death of the individual, with the way they are remembered/ have influenced the community presented as an example of how the journey through life doesn’t necessarily come to an abrupt end at death.

Examples of what I will use to represent the middle event of the subjects life include:

• Securing a career/job
• Achieving a life long goal
• Illness or disease
• Family crisis
• Personal crisis
• Loss (of family/job/house e.t.c)
• Random event changes the direction of an individuals life

Examples of what I will use to represent the first event of the subjects life include:

• Childhood/archival photos
• Images of children playing
• Life before the large event (showing contrast)

Examples of what I will use to represent the last event of the subjects life include:

• What the world is like after the death of the subject
• A representation of the reason behind the death of the subject
• A scene showing the contrast between the beginning of life and what it looks like towards the end

Viola is a contemporary video artist who usually incorporated a mixture of audio, visual and spacial features in order to present his artwork. His work often focuses on conveying visual representations of basic and fundamental human experiences such as birth and death, while also experimenting with attempting to convey different aspects of human consciousness and spirituality using a visual format. Viola often works with contrasting images such as life and death, or different images conveying the opposite themes of one another in order to draw attention to the polar ends of human experience, and the contrast between the different stages of life.

Viola’s exhibition “Life, Death, Rebirth” looks into the 3 different stages of life; birth, death, and the events that occur in the space between the 2. Viola uses imagery of his own mother, lain in her hospital bed during the last days of her life, in order to convey the blunt truth of death, while at the same time uses audio clips of heavy breathing to further reinforce the reality of this stage in life. The first frame depicts a newborn child, or in some cases a clip of a woman in the late stages of labor. Accompanied by the audio of crying intertwined with the audio of heavy breathing, Viola is able to merge the presentation of different stages of an individuals journey through life in a more sudden, and almost sensory overloading manner. The presence of the subject suspended in water in the centre frame is used to represent the “suspension between birth and death”, or the journey of an individual between the 2, which Viola uses to represent the majority of an individuals life experience with a single frame. By presenting a subject as broad as “Life” simply and starkly through the use of 3 frames and overlapping audio recordings, Voila is able to present the journey of life in a very realistic and blunt manner, while at the same time allowing the viewer to experience a very engaging visual spectacle.

Violas work will influence my own as I am looking to experiment using 3 different photographs depicting the journey from youth to death, with the depiction of a life changing event as the centre image. I will be taking influence from Viola to do this, as the images will carry the same concept of his work, and will be laid out in a similar way, however my images will focus less on the conceptual, hidden meaning of being “suspended” between birth and death, and more on a meaning that can be easily deciphered from the visual images.