I got new business cards printed for the Coventry Degree show and my London exhibition, here is a photograph of one of them.
I chose to print new business cards off for the exhibition so that I could put my professional email address off and put a simple picture on them. I think my cards are nice and give people the information they need. I got them from vista print.
I wanted to have one photographs framed to place inside the suitcase, to carry on the scrapbook aesthetic and to fill the suitcase and give people things to look at. I want the suitcase to look like it has spilled open, throwing all the photographs out and the contents of the suitcase. I think it will bring the entire piece together.
I wanted to add the letter to self that I wrote back in first year into my installation because I felt it really showed how I was feeling back when I first came to university. I also decided to add the reply letter to self I wrote at the end of my first year to show how much I grew in one year. My reply letter to self now would be very similar, except I’d have to say how nervous I feel about being out in the real world all the worries that follow. But I didn’t want my installation to be about that, I wanted it to be about how I have grown as a person from my childhood to now, always carrying those memories with me, and how I was always at home. Now it is different, I feel myself becoming disconnected from home, that’s what the ghostly photographs are trying to say, that I never really visit home much now, I have moved on. But I will always carry my childhood with me, symbolised by the childhood photographs, and I will always have my imagination, symbolised by the photographs of the sky.
I sewed each of the letter on their own piece of ribbon, so that they can move when people walk past them, and so people can get close to read them. I want the installation to be a mass of suspended photographs and words, hopefully letting people use their imagination when they look at it.
I drew a quick drawing on paint of how I imagine my installation looking when it is in the gallery. I want the light ribbons to twirl and twist in the air, in the wind created when people walk past. I have my four main parts of the installation holding the small photographs, and I have the four larger photographs suspended on ribbons of their own, like they have floated out of the suitcase. There will be clothes and toys in the suitcase but I felt I didn’t need to draw these in. The suitcase will be propped open with a few old children’s books, to carry on the childhood theme.
So far I have created my our main sections of my installation, they each have 4 photographs on at the moment but I may decide to add more once I have seen what it looks like hung up. I don’t want to overwhelm the viewers with too much information to look at, especially because I haven’t added the text sections to my installation yet. Here are 8 photographs of my installation sections, two photographs of each section showing you both sides of the photographs. They are not fully finished yet, I need to finish making them look exhibition worthy.
I have sent 7 more photographs to be printed and they should be here sometime this week, they are larger than the ones in those photographs and will be on their own pieces of ribbon. This is to give the viewers things to look at, and so they can almost move in between the photographs. The photos will move in the breeze created by the people walking past, so my installation will always be changing like a journey.
These photographs were taken of the sky but looking at the pond in my garden. I moved the water slightly so that the image of the sky is blurred, this will cause the viewers to think twice about what they are seeing, some may not even realise they are looking into a pond. These images will go with my other sky photographs into my whole installation, looking at how we use our imagination to imagine new things, and how this is from our childhood, one that im leaving behind as I leave uni, but that I will always carry it with me on my journey.
These photographs will be used in my final project installation, showing my childhood where I came from, what I left behind when I moved to university. The photographs are all of me with toys or having fun, showing the imagination of a child, they will accompany my sky photographs and my ghostly room photographs.
I don’t really look like my self when im not wearing my glasses. These photographs will keep the entire project personal, as it is a kind of self-portrait of my experiences at uni, and how I feel about leaving.
I love the aesthetic of the photographs, I scanned them into my computer so there are a few lines, but I don’t feel they detract from the photos. I really like the colours in the photographs, they remind me of Martin Parr photographs, and John Hinde postcards. I like the kind of vintage feel the photographs have, even though it makes me feel old. I think these images will hold the entire project together and keep people’s attention while they are looking at my images.
French photographer Julien Mauve was hanging around in his grandparents’ attic when he found a box full of toys that he used to play with as a child.
Each toy reminded him of a particular moment during his childhood, which then prompted him to embark on a nostalgic series where he reimagined how toys might function in adults’ lives.
Titled ‘Back To Childhood’, Mauve’s clever works will bring any viewer on a trip down memory lane.
“Going further than their power to generate nostalgia, toys offer those who animate them a marvelous power to reinvent the world,” says Mauve.
Images from here.
I really like Mauve’s work, it brings toys from his and others childhood into the lives of adults. Looking at his work has really helped me with my project, I start to think how toys could be incorporated into adults lives, and how that spark of imagination could be carried with us from childhood. My work is focused on the journey from childhood to adulthood, how we move on leaving our homes and childhood behind, but it is always with us, maybe in the form of our favorite toy or a photograph.
Denver-based photographer Sarah Haney pokes fun at Barbie and casts a dark shadow over the ‘perfect’ doll—to show viewers that life in plastic is not always fantastic.
In her photo series ‘Welcome To The Dream House’, ‘Life In Plastic’ and ‘Things Fall Apart’ that was shot on 35mm film, Haney portrays Barbie and Ken in compromising positions—such as drug trafficking, eating disorders, drinking problems, cross-dressing, having external marital affairs, and paying seedy worlds a visit.
“On the surface, Barbie appears perfect. She’s beautiful, has great clothes, several good careers, and a perpetual smile on her face. As a child, I was always bothered by that smile—I put her through any number of tragedies, but no matter what befell her she kept that fixed little smirk.” Haney wrote about her project.
“As an adult, the thinking about that fixed expression of pleasure made me start to think about what she might be hiding behind the façade of perfection—after all, how great could life really be for a woman who clearly has an eating disorder, an addiction to plastic surgery and nothing between her ears?”
“My photographs portray the dark side of life in the Dream House: Barbie’s obsession with her body, Ken’s quest for sexual gratification, all the dirty little secrets they attempt to hide as they present themselves as icons of the American Dream.”
Images from here.
To me using toys, a symbol of innocence and childhood, to portray bad things has been done before. But most photography has been done before in some way, I don’t think there can be an original idea, it has always been done before. I like how Haney has taken Barbie dolls and transformed them from their innocent perfect selves into something they could be hiding behind those painted on smiles. I like how she has used the dolls to create her scenes, like a child would when playing with the doll. This goes with my project that every adult is still a child inside, they just don’t have the time to let their imagination out.
With imagination you can turn something into something else. It helps you read books imagining the scenes in your head, you get drawn into the story. I just wanted to draw the word imagination to see what would come from the letters as I drew around it. I do like my image showing that our imagination is always working.
Chloe Short's Photography Blog 