See: 21. Reviewing and Reflecting:

Statement of Intent:

For my personal study I want to focus on mental health, specifically, what its like to experience a mental illness such as, anxiety and depression. For this reason my study to focus more on the ‘Occupation’ side of the theme. I hope to use my images to give people a better understanding of what mental illness is like for a student.

Artist references:

• Francesca Woodman
• Mary Ellen Mark (Ward 81)
• Maren Klemp

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I intent to do at least one shoot for each artist, repeating shoots for the artist that I think will best fit my ideas.

In order to get a first interpretation of what Occupation and Liberation are, I researched about them and made mind maps on aspects which would be included in the subjects. Following this took place in an independent study where I looked at previous students work in order to grasp knowledge of the different types of photo books as well as give me inspirations to my own.

Looking at the aspects above have allowed me to focus on the ‘Occupation’ aspect of the course. This will be done through expressing fashion and dance in the same photo shoot. I feel as if doing this subject is a good idea for me as dance is personal to me and adding an element of fashion into it would allow me to explore both dance, portrait, fashion and still life photographers. When looking at these subjects I feel as if i would like to separate each shoot I create in order to show a narrative throughout the book. However, to do this I will combine all the different shoots together (ie, not separate each shoot to a certain section of the book) which will allow for each shoot to be linked and create smaller stories within my whole photo book. I will do this throughout three different shoots which will all be taken in a different style to another to create the intended narrative of me sharing my dance journey growing up and photographing the different elements such as accessories/ medals/ etc to include sentimental elements which have been important in my process. The first shoot I plan to take images in the photographing studio of ‘Archival Images’ both from when I was younger and at my age now as I feel as if this will allow me to show important aspects which would have been photographed such as my first ballet exam, my first dance competition, my best award etc. these imaged will be taken from a bird eye view and I feel as if this shoot will create a strong basis to work from in my project as I would like to combine this with my second photoshoot which will be a still-life object set up. Carrying on with this, during my second shoot I plan to take images from a straight on angle in the photography studio where I will showcase the important objects that have encouraged me to carrying on dancing all these years. These objects will include elements such as certificates, medals, trophies, magazines, newspaper articles, exam notes, CDs, ballet shoes etc. Following this, I intend to use my camera ability to photograph images of old costumes when I was younger as well as ones which are being used at the moment in order to include an element of fashion into this narrative as the audience will be able to see that costuming has grown over the last ten years, while still relating to the overall narrative. As previously mentioned, I will combine all these shoots during my photo book as I would like for there to be a relation between archival images, objects and costuming to show a time period of my life throughout different occupations.

I overall feel as if this will be a strong idea for my project as it is very personal to me, therefore meaning that I will be able to create relevant analysis and images.

Small Plan of Each Shoot

First Shoot- For my first shoot towards my photo book, I intended to have an introductory page which will be the first written page of the book. This will explain a little about the images on following pages in order to have both a text explanation as well as a photo evidence of the time period. The actual shoot its self will be taken on a birds eye view to allow for the printed images to be seen clearly with a white background to add simplicity to the images as I don’t want there to be distractions to the relevant images. I will use this shoot to allow me to show dance performances when I was younger, as well as to show the audience the style of costumes I wore in those days etc.

To go along with this idea, I found a female photographer named Diana Markosian who I will use as an artist reference towards my project so that I know more about archival imagery.

Second Shoot- For my second shoot, I plan to use the same location of the photography studio however will be using a straight on angle in order to allow for the objects I will be taking to be seen. During this shoot I will take fully focused images of different objects which are important to me growing up as a dancer. These objects will be items such as certificates, medals, trophies, magazines, newspaper articles, exam notes, CDs, ballet shoes etc and will be in important part in the photo book. I feel as if this is a good idea as I can match my archival images to items in this shoot (example, if I have a archival image of me wearing a blue costume with a blue hair piece, I can photograph the hair piece In this shoot as a representation of that initial time, as well as the certificate which I received for that dance.) I feel as this will allow me to make an aesthetically pleasing selection of images.

To go along with this idea, I will be researching on still life photography as a whole in order to gain an idea of what still life is, how it was originally photographed and now it is these days, as well as the best type of angles to use for these type of images.

Third Shoot- To carry on sentimental values in photography, I intend to use self portraiture as a way of showing myself in my recent costumes which would have been previously seen in archival images to be able to section these shoots together more and create a set of images. I think that showing costuming is a good way to showcasing development of fashion which will be my main subject in this particular shoot as the different costumes can be seen as a documentation as to how style has changed. As for the smaller costumes I won’t be able to fit into anymore, I will photographer them in front of a white canvas in the photography studio to allow for them to be seen, as well as creating detailed images from these.

In order to support the idea of Fashion, artist Hasson Hajjaj who explores fashion in her photography will be my inspiration for this last shoot.