Photographic Processes and Techniques

Over the course of the year, studying Love and Rebellion has introduced me to a wide range of techniques, mediums, approaches, skills, processes etc. This mainly included Tableaux photography where I planned and carefully positioned my subjects to my preference to create an aesthetic image. Tableaux came into play when I was creating my zine; the images were of myself and my partner therefore I had to position ourselves carefully in a specific position in order to get the shot right. Overall though, Tableaux photography was not my favourite approach as I found it quite tricky to position us correctly in order to get the perfect shot that I had envisioned. Tableaux photography occurred when looking at the theme of Love, my concept was how insecurities may influence the relationship and how the good times juxtapose the bad.

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Working with InDesign came after my tableaux approach, this taught me a variety of skills and allowed me to manipulate my images to my preferences. I had never worked with this application before exploring the theme of Love and Rebellion. Again, this was not my favourite process, however I love the idea of being able to make a booklet or a spread sheet simply on an application. My zine (which I created on InDesign) came out brilliantly and is one of my favourite pieces of work, and without InDesign, I wouldn’t of been able to do that.

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After these processes, we began working on Film Making, I absolutely LOVED this process. This came under the theme of Rebellion. Film Making isn’t something that is new to me, I’ve made short videos a number of times in the past as I love watching aesthetically pleasing videos myself. However, Premiere (the software that we had edited the video on) was completely new to me. I struggles at first to get a grips with it but after the first few stages I felt right at home and managed to edit my video with a number of different layers quickly and efficiently. This was definitely my favourite task within the overall theme of Love and Rebellion and most definitely the one that sparked the most interest and inspiration for me.

Here is a link to my video for reference:

https://youtu.be/Lom0Q0xb43c

Not only did the theme of Love and Rebellion introduce me to new software’s and ways of interpreting my concepts, e.g film making, it also introduced me to different topics that support certain ideas. For example, Culture Wars and Identity Politics were terms that I had never heard of before and most definitely sparked a range of ideas for me. I didn’t realise that things such as abortion, body image, misogyny, gender stereotypes, religious issues, etc were a part of a type of politics and I also didn’t realise that they were taken so seriously as they are regularly overlooked. These topics were overall part of the theme Rebellion, therefore I may look into certain topics more thoroughly within my personal study that surround Rebellion as it seems to spark more inspiration for me.

Interpreting Love and Rebellion

Statement of Intent

My initial idea surrounds my Mum. Several years ago now, she was diagnosed with Stage 4 Emphysema. The umbrella term for this illness is COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease). Emphysema is a lung condition that causes shortness of breath, in my Mum’s case it’s very severe. The air sacs in the lungs are damaged and over time the inner walls of the sacs weaken and rupture – creating larger air sacs instead of small ones. This in turn reduces the surface area of the lungs and therefore the amount of oxygen that reaches your blood stream. When you exhale with this disease, the damaged alveoli don’t work properly and old air becomes trapped, leaving no room, for fresh, oxygen rich air to enter. My Mum often describes it as, she cannot take a breath as she can almost feel her lungs knocking against her ribs due to the trapped air inside, she’s almost suffocating to death slowly. Her disease is a progressive disorder, and at the moment there is no cure except a lung transplant – which is something she is considering and has been to the Southampton hospital for on several occasions. There are other options for treatment that are unavailable to her though, for example, there is the option of lung reduction which involves removing the dead and most damaged areas of her lungs thus allowing her to have more room for her to breathe, however this isn’t an option for her as the doctors discovered there is a lack of blood supply to the area and is therefore too risky to operate on. Another option for treatment are coils – they will be inserted into her lungs and again allowing more room for her to breathe. However, this also isn’t an option for her as she travelled to Southampton for a 5-day allergy test and discovered that she is severely allergic to the nickel which is the metal that the coils are made of. So, after exhausting many options she is now down to the possibility of a lung transplant, a risky operation and years worth of waiting on the transplant list. There’s a possibility she won’t even make it to the day to see a transplant which will ultimately happen at the Royal Papworth Hospital in Cambridge.

Not only does she have to suffer with this intense disease, there are obviously other struggles that come with it. She suffers with severe anxiety; she constantly worries about going out as she often struggles to walk 100m without getting out of breath and having to stop and use her inhaler, which hardly works also. Struggling to breathe in itself would give anyone intense anxiety and often panic. I have to help her at the shop as she cannot deal with the heavy lifting of shopping items and shopping bags. The pandemic also gives her anxiety, with her having to be extra careful being part of the super vulnerable group, this means I have to shield often and keep my cleanliness to a T. She also suffers with severe depression, I can imagine having a terminal illness is not a light subject and especially not light when having to deal with it. As much as she tries to keep her head up I can imagine how tiring, frustrating and saddening it is to know you are living with a progressive illness. She finds it hard to carry on, which is again, understandable and often feels like giving up. Additionally to all of this, she suffers with insomnia. When I have a cold and when i’m struggling to breathe I find it very difficult to sleep, this is how I imagine it however in my Mum’s case it is obviously much, much worse. Due to her being unable to sleep, she then gets really tired and lacking in oxygen and therefore the flow to her brain also doesn’t help either and she often gets foggy.

Along with her illness she also has to take a variety of different meds every morning. One of which includes steroids that reduce coughing and enable her to be able to catch her breath, however, like most meds do, they come with side effects. Side effects from the steroids include: coughing and wheezing, heart palpitations, nausea, headaches, dizziness and often infections in the mouth as the steroids have to be inhaled. I know for a fact my mum often suffers with severe headaches – again causing her to lose a lot of her much needed sleep time.

My Mum’s illness has affected our family in a variety of ways; it has caused for me and my little sister Mary (14) to become more independent than the average teenagers, and often means we have to cook for each other, clean for each other and give our emotional and physical support to our Mum when commonly it is the other way round for most teenagers. I often do feel isolated from other people in my friendship group, I don’t go out that often as I enjoy spending the quality time with my Mum that I may not have in a few years time, and I am scared to leave the house sometimes as on a number of occasions, if it weren’t for me being there, an ambulance wouldn’t have been called in order to save my Mum from having a severe attack. However I don’t want the focus to be on me and my sister, as this has become the norm for us now, I want something to be dedicated to my strong, beautiful Mother in order to let her know that we understand, we’re here to support and that she is not alone. The topic may be a bit morbid when thinking about dedicating something to my mum, however like I mentioned before, I want to let her know that I understand (often she feels like no one does) and I want to turn a sad, morbid time for us into something almost beautiful and moving.

Overall I wish to show the ‘inside’ of what it’s like to live with a mother with a terminal illness, what you see on a daily basis. Things like her medication, the struggle to walk places, that being in the street or up the stairs, the tiredness she experiences, her appearance, the way her skin looks and how her eyes look. Generally, an inside look at what’s it like living with a terminal illness.

This concept moves between the themes of Love and Rebellion. In one sense I am showing my love for my Mother and the ability to understand the pain and struggle she is going through. But on the other hand it intertwines with Rebellion as she is fighting against the illness with every bit of strength that she has.

There are a few artists that I enjoy looking at that explore the idea of Mother’s in general, sometimes with illnesses, Depression and Anxiety and other family members that have suffered with other things. For example, Richard Billingham, Shannon O’Donnell, Laia Abril, Matthew Finn, John William Keedy and Christian Hopkins. I will go into these artists in more detail in my artist research. There is also a former student, ‘Mattie’ Knapman whose work I really enjoyed about his Mother having a terminal illness.

My aim of the outcome of this project is to push myself and make a book and a film. I feel as though I have the ability and work ethic to produce both. However, I am more confident in making a film and love to experiment when it comes to footage.