Our personal study project is based around the theme of nostalgia. For my personal study I want to explore identity, but more specifically femininity and what it means to be feminine. My interpretation of the theme nostalgia is going to be based on Girlhood and parts of my childhood that represent growing up as a girl. There’s a lot of women in my family who I’ve closely grew up around and my strong relationships with my friends and family are a big part of my life, which I appreciate a lot therefore I am creating my personal study around this.

I plan on photographing my friends and my family, my mum, sister, cousins, aunties and my grandma. I’m going to capture images of my friends in everyday situations when we meet up to create candid shots and to show real scenes of girlhood. As well as that, I plan on photographing my family at family events to create the same kind of images but with a different story.

Although I want to capture candid pictures that represent reality, I also want to do staged photoshoots. I am going to do research and study artists such as Justine Kurland, Sian Davey (developing my exam project from May of ‘Identity’) and Theo Gosselin. From then I will set up staged photoshoots in both rural and urban settings of my friends. For the exam project in May, me and my friends did a few photoshoots in rural environments, following the theme of ‘femininity’. These were inspired by Justine Kurland.

-Examples of Kurland, Davey and Gosselin’s work

For my final images, I plan to present them in a photobook, I don’t plan on putting any text on/ with them at the moment, however this might change during the process of my project. I intend to start my project by taking photos of my friends in every day situations, for example, in the car, on walks, in town, later on in the evening/night when we meet up. This will give me a starting point to then decide if the outcomes are worth it and when, where and how to begin planning my staged photoshoots.

I plan on taking a variety of different images, in terms of composition, framing and lighting. However, I am mainly going to try and take photos in the rural environments with softer lighting to give the dusty, vintage kind of look. So around the time the sun is setting or rising, or on more overcast days so the lighting is dim. As well as that, the images I take in urban settings, town, I want darker lighting or on the other hand, bright lighting to create harsher shadows. Both types of photoshoots I want to use natural lighting, none in the studio. As well as documentary and tableaux for variety, also to represent the reality of girlhood. Additionally, if I feel it is necessary, after I have my final images from the different photoshoots, I will create some edits using photoshop and Lightroom. Nothing AI based or artificial as that isn’t where my project is going.

I want my final outcome of a photobook to tell a story of girlhood and what it’s like growing up as a teenage girl on this island. I aim for the images to be quite relatable but also exaggerate the meaning of femininity.