At the start of the negotiated project I had the idea to work in an area of showing the body as a transitional space. I wanted to achieve this by showing exactly what kind of transitions we go through, in particular the largest one of all; the transition of a child becoming an adult.
I first wanted to examine the emotional stages during our development into adulthood, and the personality changes that occur.
After experimenting in this area and not really producing the work I wanted to, I began to focus on using my own body as a transitional space. I put this idea into practice by first of all producing a time-lapse video of myself sleeping.
When I researched more into this idea, I found a few artists who have used taken their childhood photos and recreated them. With this idea I found it was very fun and simple to do. However after a few pieces of work were produced I did feel as though I had literally ran out of ideas.
I knew that I still wanted to use the old photos of myself, and so in an attempt to gain more inspiration I looked through more photos. This worked as I came across my mothers childhood photos, taken by my Grandfather.
The images instantly inspired me as they were well taken and I adore old photographs.
After producing more research and finding a number of photo-montage artists, I decided to use my grandfathers photographs and my own childhood photos to not only show my memories, but also my families.
I also wanted to somehow use the idea that whenever we speak about our memories, aspects of them get 'blown up' and exaggerated. At one point I was trying to incorporate all these ideas together at once, but this didn't work at all, and so I was forced to yet again re-think my plan.
From here I thought it would be a good idea to sit back and think about all the different elements i had to work with. Eventually I came up with the thought of using my own childhood images, and my grandfathers [like I wanted to] to 'go back in time'. The fact that I've been constantly compared to my mother since I was very small came into my mind. This and the fact that I have always wondered what kind of a person she was as she was growing up, was she really like me ?
My plan was to select a handful of images of my mother as a child from the found photos, and then to take images of myself in poses that would match each one. I would then photoshop myself into them, to give the appearance that I was there with my mother, watching over her as a kind of 'ghostly apparition'.
The prospect that I could use these photos and 'be' there even before I was even born excited me!
Once I had produced a few 'test' images, I decided that they were really working and saying what I wanted them to. I also thought it was important to use not only photos of me as I am 'today', but also photos of myself as a child, as we have been compared all my life.
The next stage was to make sure that the audience would fully understand what I was trying to achieve. To aid this, I began trying to write small captions to go along with the images, to explain them. These captions would include something from my mothers childhood, and my own. Comparing us both. A sort of narrative through each image.
When testing different methods for presentation, I decided that I want the book to appear as a scrap book would. A kind of rough, cut out and stuck down kind of feel. Like a family photo album. This is why I used handwriting and I kept all the boarders on the old photos purposely.
I wanted it to feel personal, as it is very personal to me.
Overall I'm very happy with my work. I have achieved what I set myself and I have gained more knowledge as well as photography techniques.
I learned to expand my horizons in terms of thinking;- before this negotiated project I defiantly found it hard to think 'outside the box' in terms of different ideas, however this project has helped me to realise when I need to look at my work as a whole, and to develop and keep pushing my ideas onto new levels.
