Overall I am satisfied with the way my project came out and following the theme of “Occupation vs Liberation” it gave me many choices in terms of what to focus on for my personal study. However considering this was a personal study I gathered I would do something involving my family as then I know it would be something I could look back on in a few years time that would hold value. As my parents are both Portuguese and lived in Madeira growing up the concept of occupation didn’t quite fit with the idea that I wanted to do. Eventually I decided to have my own take on the idea of liberation. My parents divorce was a way they got liberated from each other. This was something that was personal to me and was something that forced me to be centre of all the problems. In a way I would say I was being occupied into a situation I didn’t chose to be in. However, this gave me a direction with how I wanted to develop my personal study.
Many edits went well and turned out great. However,my problem with exploring and documenting their divorce was the lack of images I was hoping I was going to be able to gather. I looked through old cameras and laptops and photo albums but couldn’t find many images of my parents together. As they rarely ever speak now a days I knew I wasn’t going to be able to gather new images from so I just had to play around with what I had. The part of this project that I found more challenging was how to actually put all these photos together in order for it to tell the narrative but without any written elements.
From this study I have been able to step outside my comfort zone and experiment with techniques that I wouldn’t normally use. I have done research that has helped me find inspirations from the works of photographers such as Mathew Finn and Diana Markosian. Using photographers like them I managed to create a question steer for my essay and allowed my research to gain a deeper meaning. I watched several videos and read loads of articles in order to back what I was saying and allow me to view things from other peoples perspectives. Overall, I am happy with the way my book came out and with the way I conducted research and produced my experiments. For my exam title I am going to try and broden my options in terms of what to photograph and how I’m going to gather my primary source.
