The first set of images I began to experiment with were digital archived images that my parents found of me and my brother, as well as singular images of my brother or with his friends from childhood. I imported these onto the computer from my phone and began to experiment with them in Photoshop using different techniques.

My initial idea going into this was to create adaptations to the images and convey a message of concealing his identity to protect him as these images are of me and him at vulnerable ages, susceptible to different kinds of traumas and the risks within the world that parents try to protect their children from. These images reflect a time of innocence and naivety to connote feelings of nostalgia. A very affluent theme within my personal study is looking at memories, so by making adaptations to these archived images that are associated with core memories from childhood, it changes the meaning behind the images to think back to how my brother used to be before this illness completely changed his identity. This also is representative of how these core memories with my brother are something I think back to all the time and reflect on the person who he used to be in comparison to now where the entire family dynamic has been altered.

However, although I am using family albums in my personal study, I still need to ensure that the image isn’t too under-exposed or over-exposed as I need to ensure I am using effective images.

My first few experiments are inspired by the aesthetic of the ‘unknown user’ profile pictures that people typically use when trying to be anonymous. This is because I think that this is an effective way to show how my brother is not the person who he once was, and demonstrates how he may feel out of touch with himself or like another person because of how much the illness has deteriorated him. This anonymity also contributes to my idea of showing the stigma surrounding men’s mental health in a subtle and muted way as it could be interpreted as hiding away due to a diagnosis due to the perception that men shouldn’t be emotional or speak out about their mental health.

What I began looking at was empty silhouettes of my brothers face, using the Lasso tool in Photoshop to create my selection and delete it to reveal a plain white background. I then added the gradient tool to the white page so that this would be shown through the selection, instead of being this cut out as a block colour as this looked too strange and was very plain.

Whilst I did like this idea of total concealment, I found that the image still looked quite plain and didn’t really convey the message in a clear way. Even though there was a gradient in the image, it still looked very flat and not very interesting, even if I changed the colour it looked quite odd.

I then attempted this again with another image, however this time I included the strands off hair that were laying on his face as this would not only add more texture to the image, but make it look more detailed and intricate rather than being a flat and simplified cut out. I also repeated this method with the same image I used before so that I could see if the images would link together and work cohesively.

I preferred the way this looked more, however the cut out still looks very exaggerated and dramatic and I feel like this has the possibility of taking away from the ‘memory’ aspect of the image as it doesn’t have that soft touch to it. However, I may still use these as I feel like it looks like an anonymous user profile picture which I could use to link to the present. However, I am going to have to think about this after I begin taking my other photoshoots to see it aligns correctly with my other ideas.

I didn’t really like these experiments that I created so I decided to try a different approach with this method where his entire body was surrounded instead.

I repeated this process again with another image as I felt that it would work very well with this technique:

I think that this was successful as it balances the aesthetic of the image instead of looking out of place.

I began thinking about the other ways I could represent anonymity and concealing identity in a way that I thought would be not only more accurate to the techniques that people usually use to remain anonymous, but would also have a softer touch to them to keep the same tone of nostalgia and protection as well as the aspect of remembrance. I did this because it means that I can include a variation of these methods in my final photobook.

I began playing around with the idea of pixilation. There wasn’t a tool for this in Photoshop so I began by using the rectangle tool to make reasonably sized squares to begin covering my brothers face. I also used the eyedropper tool to select the different tones of my brothers skin and hair so that the pixels looked accurate. I had to make sure that both the fill (the box) and the stroke (the outline) were the exact same colour so that this wouldn’t look strange and actually looked as if his face had been really pixelated.

I started duplicating them and then changing the colour to make sure that each of them were the same size.

Whilst I was beginning to experiment with this, I realised that the resolution of the image was quite poor, and whilst I am using the snapshot aesthetic, the image was still quite blurry and out of focus. I decided to go back to the image that I used before as I wasn’t too fond of the initial outcome anyway, and the composition of the image was nicer too, for example I’m wearing pink whilst my brother is wearing blue.

I repeated this process continually over my brothers face until I thought that the shape and size of the cluster worked proportionally. This resulted in a large amount of layers:

Similarly…

I didn’t really like the edits I made on this experiment as I felt that the pixels were too large so I attempted this again using smaller cubes:

I pixelated this image of my dad and brother playing pool on holiday when he was younger. Whilst the resolution isn’t as great as I would’ve liked, I am still going to use this image in my photo-book because it acts as a contextual cue for my images containing the keyring of a pool ball. This way, I can imply how my brother’s mental health restricted him from continuing with his hobbies, and I feel that this will be a very reflective way of what my brothers personality used to be like and his different interests.

I repeated these two methods in several different images to have an element of consistency in my photobook. I also experimented with cutting out just my brothers face and also his body to still keep them differentiated.

I found a few images of my brother in his football kit so I can enforce the same contextual cues.

I am also going to use these two images to pair them with my second photoshoot that took place at the same beach to show context:

Final and best images: