University Campus Suffolk

I began my project with square collages as i have shown in an earlier post. I used old family photos in the collages and i felt as though the photos were the more important part of them, they had more strength. i have since explored family photos and came to see myself quite taken with passport photos. I find them very unique from the starkness but more importantly the reality of them, as they capture the person in question in their most basic form, capturing them in their everyday.

Seeing a passport photo of a stranger, their is certainly intrigue, however what interests me is seeing and keeping a passport photo of someome you know, its more than having a photo of someone smiling and laughing these photos seem to be keepsakes.

I have for a while now been considering creating an instillation piece, perhaps creating a room. the more i thought aboit it the more the idea grew. To create an immersed environment as opposed to something flat on a page is something i was very interested in. Memories and the way they are formed and remembered deserve to be portrayed as the multi-layered fragments of ones self that they are.

To create a 3D instillation that takes the viewer away from the sometimes cold and clinical atmosphere of an exhibition space and throwing the viewer into a little bit of my world.

Lately i have been focusing on these passport pictures as momentoms, acting as an object that helps the veiwer remember.

Certain passport pictures have been sitting in my memory frozen without me even realising for years. One particular memory was of my Great Grandmas living room of where she had a large photo of her husband and just in the corner of the frame was a little passport picture of my father. This only exists in my mind now, however this is a common thing people do with these sort of photos. Also this is something that i would like to bring into my final exhibit. The nostalgia, and remembering.

Lately I have been reading alot of blogs. Blogs from America mostly, where people go around places and ask people random questions. sometimes they will ask about aspects of their life, or their hardest struggle, or biggest pain, and other times they will just listen to people and their memories or general wonderings. These blogs fascinate me, and i thought to really bring my images to life i could ask the poeple in them ( my family) similar questions that cangive the viewer a better understanding, and perhaps even a chance to relate to these lives that are not important to them but are everything to me.

Each member of my family is most definatley outspoken with a few quirks, each having their own story. Here are some of the information i gathered to potenially add to the images of them.

Mum

-‘If you could give any piece of advice to a large group of teenagers what would it be?’

‘Don’t do drugs’

‘Why?’

‘Becuase I can’t think of anything else to say.’

-‘Tell me something’

‘I don’t know’

‘It can be anything’

‘I like hot weather, I like it hot. I like the colour yellow.’

-‘What are your thoughts on growing old?’

‘No. It’s terrible, lets just out it this way I am all fro euthanasia Sophie, thankyou very much.’

Lucy

-‘What was the happiest moment in your life?’

‘Having my children.’

‘What was the hardest part of that?’

‘C-section. Ew, I could feel them tugging and stiching me up, pushing verything back in.’

-‘What makes you laugh the most?’

‘My mum, oh yeah, she is tapped. I remember the time i made her so angry she had a fag after wuitting for like years, oh man it was just so funny, just the way she does things, i mean that doesn’t sound funny but hell it was. She’s the smartest person I know but dear God she is tapped.’

I am awaiting to speak to my dad and brother yet I’m am sure I can get some interesting material from them.

I am also going to develope this idea, present the passport image and text beside it, I think this can progress alot, epsecially as I think it would make the images come to life.

Like most people whenever im bored and have a newspaper or magazine to hand I find images of people and doodle other them, which I have done with some more of my passport images. It brings an element of wonder and fun. I think it can also perhaps bring out the personality of the person in the image. I began just doodling simple things, for instance this image of my sister when she was a child, i have given her big bunny ears and in another a big top hat like the mad hatter.

These works reminded me of some of Arnulf Rainer’s work where he used images of people and famously painted over them. His however being in more of a dark sense and more nightmarish.