For my project I took some inspiration from Michelle Sank and her ‘Sixteen’ collection where she had UK teenagers from Cornwall answer questions about their lives and how it feels to be 16 as well as growing up in poverty and isolation from big cities. I thought it was very impact full how she would connect a portrait of each teenager with their answer showing viewers the diversity in their small town. I liked that you were able to get a deeper insight into the teens lives just by their answers not matter how short or how detailed their made them. I wanted to do something similar in my photo book so that it would help viewers get a greater understanding of each subject and their lives.

Questions

For this part of my project I came up with seven questions which ranged from being quite generic to more specific questions that have meaning to me and my friends. I wanted to have a wide variety of questions which gave a lot of detail to help tell a story of what it is like growing up in Jersey as a teenage girl as well as how important friendships are as they become people that were most comfortable around.

One of the questions in this questionnaire is catered more for my friend group specifically, it I the second to last, it may seem strange that I have asked what they do on a random day in the week but to us this is a specific day where we all try and meet up. Depending on the week sometime there only be 4 people but there can also be the whole group, it is a day where we make time to spend together which I think is very important especially for teenagers at stressful times.

Responses

As I wanted a more personal feel to my project, I got myself and my friends to had write our responses. I also wanted to show the difference between how each of us write which I think gives a deeper meaning to the answers and overall concept. I think the way people layout their answers on paper and their handwriting can tell you a lot about their mind. For example, my friend on lefts responses are shot and straight to the point as well as being simple and some could say that they look sweet with the little hearts draw on the side where as my friend on the right has a louder personality which I think can be shown through her responses and the way she has laid out her answers.

Photobook Layout

I have decided to use this layout in my photo book as I want viewers to be able to see the person and what they look like as well as their answers before they see any other images which I have taken. I wanted to keep all these portraits in black and white so that it can be shown for when a new persons section is being shown in the book. I think this was a very successful part of my project as viewers are now able to get a deeper insight into each of the subjects lives as well as their thoughts of certain matters.