Contextualising Practice Presentation (Practice Run)

INTRODUCTION: 

In this presentation I will be discussing my previous achievements and proposing my areas of interest for this year's practice.

PREVIOUS ACHIEVEMENT 

In year one I was still experimenting with my style and learning about myself as a photographer. I was trying to figure out which kind of photography genre I was interested in. 

I feel that the first year enabled me to realise that I was creating photographic art, based on my own feelings and ideas to create conceptual images. I created a book based on a poem I had written about my anxiety, 

I wanted to create images that coincided with the poem. From this I felt very inspired and I 

wanted to then become a visual storyteller.

Below are some example images of some of the images that were in my book. 

Last year, on the second year of the foundation course, I based my projects on a personal journey of my life from when I was growing up and how myself and friends and family travelled from festival to festival. 

I combined images that I had collected from relatives and friends with images that I had taken throughout the summer as I worked away in festivals as a litter picker, which I then transformed into a modernised scrapbook. I called the book Movement and I included text and quotes which had been said by my mum.

Below is a screenshot taken from the a double page spread in the book, which is one of my favourite pages.

Both of my favourite projects from the first and second year have been the books I have 

created, I enjoy book making and I can see it being something I will carry on producing this 

year, that's why I want to combine the two.

THIS YEAR

I have been working with film the last couple of months and I have attended a few parties during lockdown  where I have captured some shots of the party goers. 

I wanted to peruse the idea of events photography as I feel I have found my passion, my work is personal to me, I feel like it shows a part of my identity, I have been attending festivals and parties since I was a child, I was one years old when I attended Glastonbury for the first time.

I feel like this style of documentary work describes me as a photographer however I have had some trouble when it comes to attending these events as they are now very difficult to put on as there has been new enforced laws. 

I have been conducting interviews with people to try and find out why people go to parties. I feel like we all agree that it is a way of expressing yourself and feeling free - I want to project these statements onto people and create photographic art, I could also use photoshop to overlay  text onto images I have already taken.

I wanted to create a positive story as there are so many negative stories online about raves, however there are a lot of stories I have heard from friends and from reading articles about police brutality, I have my own statement about how I was violently held onto and hit multiple times by a policeman with his batton. 

I feel this is an important statement to project and to show viewers.

Above is the bruise which appeared after I had been hit by the officer. At the same party my friend, along with the last party goers, which was around fifty people, were made to be cornered by policemen who had dogs, riot shields and bats. My friend was pushed onto the ground and threatened with a dog. At the same party a lady named Jessica Mae Andrew was mauled by a police dog for around 3/4 minutes and her leg has to now be reconstructed as the dog bit into the fat and revealed bone.

It's these kind of things which I would like to exploit.

As much as I enjoy taking images at parties and feel they tell a story in themselves I feel I want to take my practice to the next level and bring in my creative skills, I want to add a twist and embrace my creative side and bring in some text and poetry. 

I want to create another book or perhaps even a video which conveys these stories and messages.  

 

I have looked at the works of Seana Gavin, a London based artist who was involved in the rave scene in the 90's, she followed the spiral tribe and created a book which documented 10 years of her experience of the free parties from 1993 to 2003.

Matthew Smith is someone I am very interested in and have even been in contact with him and we are going to do an interview. He is a British photographer who documented the raves to protests against the criminal justice act.

I have looked at Gilian Wearing's project Signs that say what you want them to say and not Signs that say what someone else wants you to say. As this project involves text and self identification, as I want to project people's personal stories or quotes I thought this was relatable. 

I have also looked into the works of Chen Wei - his use of colour in his photography through the use of lights is very visually interesting,  I would like the images I create to have an atmosphere like these, using colourful lights, this could help me create a party like vibe as there are always bright colourful lights on display. 

One of Tobias Zielony’s photography also inspired me in the way I thought I could experiment with projecting colourful lights onto the models to create a party atmosphere.  The image also made me think about UV paint which is definitely a representation of the rave culture as UV paint is often used to decorate the rooms which are being used to party in and also people often decorate their bodies in UV paint.

My idea has only just evolved from the free party pictures into using the statements and projections etc on Friday the 20th of November so I will be making work and experimenting with my options this week.