For my final project, I am interested in creating a photobook situated around the incongruencies between capital-w War and my own Christian faith. As it stands now, I have a whole range of ideas for the project:
- Collages, pulling on stock images from WWII (provided by pop history books board games, etc.) and splicing in the various victims of war – Holocaust survivors, interned Japanese, starving Russians, or desperate African villagers.
- Voices of victims of war, such the atomic bomb testimonials from Nagasaki and Hiroshima.
- Biblical quotations, from Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane to Isaiah prophesying a time when swords will be beaten into plowshares.
- War propaganda imagery
- Original photos; I have some cool conceptual ideas, but they might get me arrested for trespassing onto the Patuxent Naval Air force Base...
As the semester goes on, I hope to experiment with all these ideas and more. If anyone has any suggestions, or knows of any photobooks / artists I should check out, please let me know.
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Wow.
ReplyDeleteIt's funny going back to read this earlier entry, as my idea for the final, semester-long project has taken a markedly different turn. After spending some time in Photoshop, as well as reading through many of the photobooks open to students in lower Monty, I decided that I would prefer to do a project with a larger focus on the actual act of shooting rolls of film. In other words, rather than spending all my time doing digital manipulation or planning out "shots", I really just wanted to head for the hills with a camera and see what I could find.
As I read (is it reading?) through Frank's The Americans, I realized how a large body of largely unplanned images, properly studied and sequenced, could become a very powerful work of art.
With all of these thoughts mixing in my brain, I eventually decided that my hometown -North East, Maryland- could be a source of inspiration. In a word, I could take photos there and, with a little luck and a great deal of editing, create a photobook that related what my home was like. At the moment, I'm still thinking about this concept.
For instance, it might be interesting (and conceptually sound) to split the book between photos taken at night and photos taken during the day. It might be worthwhile to pass up a general study of the town and adopt a tighter focus - say, North East's liquor stores, or its churches. Additionally, I might want to integrate text into the book.
All of these questions are still buzzing around my head. As it stands, I intend to do the bulk of my photography over Spring Break, when I travel home.
And that, right now, is all.
Over the break, I've looked at the work of several different photographers for inspiration. As I've studied Joseph Mills's book, "Inner City", I've begun to appreciate how treating a photo as an object on a page, rather than a page itself, can open up a whole new level of interpertation. (Colby's books have shown me how Mills device can be done in entirely different ways - digital photos of projected slides, etc.)
ReplyDeleteI'm also really impressed by the photobook created by Hillary Dempster, a photographer I got to work with last year. Hillary's photos are incredibly simple, but her brilliant use of sequencing and juxtaposition makes ordinary images exceptional.
Just a few days ago, I dsicovered an abandoned farmhouse a few miles form my house. Visting that building, I started to think about how relatively simple photographs of decayed buildings and objects can, if properly organized, have a very powerful effect.
I've staretd taking photos in that old house, lurking in the shadows like another of my favorite photographers - Francesca Woodman. Moreover, as I've traveled around during th break, I've paused to look at other forgotten buildings and places and take photos. So far, I've been using my old Nikon to take black and white photos with 400 speed film.
I'm looking forward to putting some spreads together when I get back. I'm hoping I'll have time to actually make prints in the wet darkroom, as I think treating my images as object -to be varnished, burnt, and otherwise mistreated- would add another level to a project tha already focuses on abandoned spaces and things.