Selection 1:
To create this selection of images, I chose the ones that best represented, to me, the aspects of youth culture. By including a portrait of myself making direct eye contact with the camera, I can personally address the audience. By having the remainder of my subjects facing away from the camera, it is clear that the project shows the characters within my life rather than depicting their own lives.
I converted all the images into black and white to give a timeless and archival feel to the images. The lack of colour allows the focus of the images to be on the concepts behind it. For example, the portrait depicting the back of my subjects head (when in black and white) shows the nature of his haircut- impulsive, choppy and d-i-y.
I felt that this selection of images presented themselves quite randomly and didn’t link together the way I had aimed them to. To rectify this, I decided to include the use of Polaroid images so as to amplify the archival feel of the set. Not only did this show the personal aspect of the images, providing an insight into the creation of the images and the nature of the project. An additional advantage of adding these images to the set is that it allowed me to place the images in a closer proximity to one another, which, in turn, amplified the link between the images. The lack of space from one image to another implies a sense of immediacy which shows the chaotic and frenzy-like nature of youth.
Selection 2:
For the second selection, I aimed to shift the narrative of the images from youth as a group to the life on one individual. Filler images, such as location and alcohol use, provides an account of the subject’s life and aids in giving insight into the lifestyle of the individual pictured.
When creating the layout of the images, I decided to maintain a sense of anonymity about the individual, by keeping the portrait taken of their back and removing the portrait where their face can be seen. My reasoning for this is to provide a sense of intimacy, as the person can only be recognised by others if they have been seen first-hand with this same intimacy. However, paired alongside my photo-book, the audience will already have knowledge of the identity of the subject and so the collection of images provides a new perspective as well as the possibility of a new narrative.
Choosing A3 for this portrait immediately establishes its importance in the narrative of the selection. I chose a second image to print as A3, a candid photo depicting three male individuals, whose focus is pictured away from the camera. This composition provides a sub-narrative, one of which implies promiscuity in accordance with the intimate portrait pictured alongside it. Having both these images as establishing shots creates a clear link between the two. The ambiguity of this link provides several different narratives to which the audience can interpret- The strong and dominating stance of the males (due to low camera angles) is contrasted by the fragility and vulnerability presented by the second portrait (due to the fact the subject is facing away from and possibly oblivious to the presence of the camera)