Story Options/Planning:
STORY TITLE: DISQUIETUDE
3 Words: A Love Story
A Sentence: A Reflection of Deeper Issues Within My Relationship.
A Paragraph: Within my love story I am looking to photograph my own relationship and how my own personal insecurities and personal issues effect my relationship. This includes things like low self confidence, trust issues, anxiety, stress, family problems etc. These issues cause arguments, feelings of loneliness and isolation, feelings of paranoia and overall make a relationship very stressful and harder than normal for me. On the other hand, I am also going to be photographing the good side of me and my partners relationship. Thus, my photo zine will almost be a battle between the two sides: the good vs the bad.
AUDIENCE: The audience will mainly be aimed at teenagers. This is because young teen relationships face a lot of pressure and a lot of struggle when it comes to making this work. This is down to things like social media, social expectations, toxic friendships, our age and naivety etc. These factors make it hard to maintain a strong relationship in this day and age. I feel as though a lot of young couples, or even teenagers not in a relationship will be able to relate to these every day struggles which will form a sort of relationship between my images and the viewers.
NARRATIVE: I will be exploring this idea of isolation and own personal struggles through images and most probably texts – most likely hand written notes to my partner or to myself explaining my emotions that were shown in the images i will take.
My aesthetic and inspirations come from Hsin Wang with her series named De-Selfing:
She is a Taiwanese photographer currently based in Portland. Her work is “arresting through the intimate, honest and provocative approach, turning her personal stories into powerful metaphors and symbolic images of the complex relationship not only with the other, but with one’s own self.”
Analysis
TECHNICAL: The type of lighting used within the image is most likely to be studio lighting. This is because it looks very artificial and quite harsh, probably a type of fluorescent lighting. There is clearly a high level of control in this particular image. You can tell that everything has been carefully located and positioned, this includes the lighting and even the subject’s within the image. This would enhance the overall metaphorical meaning behind the images. The camera would’ve most likely been selected to a lower f/stop in order to allow more light into the camera as these images appear to be moderately bright.
VISUAL: The colours within the image are very pale and dull and overall un-exciting. Again, this could help with the overall metaphorical meaning that the image holds. The tones are also very bland with no range at all in them. Everything in the image is of a light, bright tone. The composition of the image is clearly very well planned and very intricately located. She really wants to get her emotions through, through her and her partners body language. You can see, as they look away from each other and lean away from each other that they are visibly dealing with their own struggles or that they are falling out with each other over one person’s struggles. Whatever the symbolic reason is, there is clearly and element of discomfort and isolation that has been represented within this image.
CONTEXTUAL AND CONCEPTUAL: As mentioned in the description of Hsing Wang, she is exploring her complex relationship with herself and her partner. You can really see this through the composition of her images as i said before, especially her/their body language. She almost always seems to cover her face also, which says to me that she is dealing with her own issues such as confidence which is having an effect on her relationship. The lighting and tone of the images as well also hint to me that there is a struggle. Usually, within photography, happiness is shown by bright, bold, warm colours whereas Wang’s photographs have a bleak, pale tone to them indicating that there is a lot of unhappiness or loneliness trying to be put across.