Research - Postcards from America

I found a Tumblr blog for the project some Magnum photographers are going to be undergoing in May called 'Postcards from America' which sees them road-tripping them and making images from it.

The photographers are all very well known and respected (Alec Soth, Chris Anderson, Jim Goldberg, Susan Meiselas, Mikhael Subotzky and Ginger Strand) and it's interesting to see them collaborating together and merging for this project. I also like the website, the way it's presented and it's obviously helpful for me to look at because of the use of postcards and text.

Idea for a book

Obviously the main aim for this project would be to eventually turn it into a gallery installation. However, I also need a better way to present and hand it in and something that is a little more accessible so that I can reach out to a wider audience for longer than a temporary installation.

I considered just doing prints of the images, however, not only would that be expensive due to having over 70 wishes, but it also wouldn't be practical to sum up my project and get the points across properly. Mostly because the point is that the postcards are part of it and were very much the large inspiration.

To compliment the project and particularly for my hand-in and degree show, a book would be a good way to show off the images well. I have in my head an image that it should be done landscape, one image per page and perhaps even in order of when the wishes were submitted to me (which is easy to do when Tumblr has them in chronological order).

However, that does rule out using the postcards. If I were making a one off book then i could hand stick in the postcards, but obviously if i want to exhibit elsewhere it won't work. But one way I could do it would be to photograph the postcards on just a plain white background, mix up their order and then have one photograph on one side and one plain postcard on the other. I'm not sure if it would be too repetitive but it's somethin to consider when I begin making the book.

Childhood beliefs...

To follow up the post from yesterday, i came across this article which looks at the development of wishes in children and how they believe them. Although of course I'm not focusing on children for the project it is interesting to see how we come to believe what we do and how we develop them. Too often it's easy to forget what we believed when we were 10 and I'm sure it also varies to today's 10 year olds as children are definitely growing up faster.
























The part i find particularly interesting is where it talks about why we are led to say 'I wish...' or hope that wishes could come true. "For example, our desires lead us to perform certain actions on the world that, in many cases, result in our obtaining the objects we desire. Similarly, our beliefs about things in the world guide our actions upon these things. We spend many a waking hour attempting to alter the world to bring it in line with our beliefs, desires and opinions. Importantly, however, the relation between our mental states and objects in the world is mediated by our actions - just wanting something does not cause it to appear; we have to undertake some physical action (whether it be going and getting it ourselves or simply asking someone to get it for us) in service of obtaining it."

That quote had me wondering how many people that submitted wishes to my blog will actually go through with the actions that would make their wishes a possibility or whether they'd even try. For example, some of the wishes are rather big (for example, the cure for cancer one) and taking action on them might not be possible and is utterly out of reach. But the amount of ones I'm getting related to relationships make you wonder why people are spending time writing the wish on a blog to someone they don't know instead of taking action and changing things. After all, actions usually speak louder tha words. It's just that they're rarely done first.

Wishes and origin

I have decided that since I am doing a project based around wishes then it's appropriate for me to look at the origin of wishes and how we have been brought up and influenced to think a certain way about them or how our expectations of wishes have changed.

As a child I know I grew up thinking that wishes could come true. After all, why else would my parents get me to make a wish blowing out candles on my birthday. Or why are you told that if you find a loose eyelash to blow it away and make a wish. Then there's the element of wishing upon a star, a lot of which started with Disney and the fairytales. There is also the popular lullaby written for Pinoccio.

Reading up about the lullaby it has actually become a christmas carol in several countries (Japan, Sweden and Norway to name a few). The Swedish version is called Ser du stjärnan i det blå, roughly translated: "do you see the star in the blue(sky)", and the Danish title is "Når du ser et stjerneskud", which roughly translates as "Whenever you see a shooting star". I really like the names they use and I'd be interested to see if i can find the actual lyrics and use them.

I'd be interested in perhaps putting the Swedish one to good use in my project somewhere because as a child i always use to wish to see the Northern Lights. It got me thinking that I could possibly have the phrase 'i wish' in several different languages at the front of the book I want to make that shows all of the photographs.

There's also if you have a wishbone you and another person break it and whoever is holding the biggest piece gets to make a wish. I'd forgotten there were so many of these!

You only have to consider how many times in your life you've said 'I wish...' and followed it with a material thing or a want from life to realise that the meaning of a wish may change to you and you may no longer have the same childhood beliefs, but the premise and the meaning is still there. Behind all of us there is the hope that wishes could still come true.

Plan for the next few days

Besides continuing to research and appeal for more wishes, I shall also be going home to see my family. This change of scenery and the oppurtunity to get some different handwriting for the postcards means i'm going to capatalise on this and take the next batch of wishes to be posted here and on the Tumblr blog for them.

Research - Gregory Barker

I stumbled across Barker's work while looking at the photography blogs I have bookmarked and his project caught my eye. It's a truly fascinating one and i'm not sure anyone has done anything like it before.

The project 'Me, you and him: portraits under hypnosis' is exactly what it implies. Using three subjects who know each other very well in real life, he had them hypnotised and then photographed them. This is the little bit of text that accompanies the images on his website and helps explain it more...

The thing I find really interesting about this project is the way that during portraits some people find it very awkward to relax and act naturally but the whole point of hypnosis is the relaxation and the release. You'd expect people to more easy around the camera and perhaps show the lens more of themselves (in the metaphorical sense).

It is this identity and personality aspect of the project that interests me as obviously I am not doing portraits or even using photographs of people in general. Particularly as he asked the subjects to impersonate one another. I don't imagine you would have them depicting them quite as openly without the relaxation of hypnosis.

Research - KayLynn Deveney

One helpful part of today's session was that I got pointed in the direction of this photographer. KayLynn Deveney's work isn't spectacular photography that you'll never have seen before, yet it's interesting and thought-provoking and life captured still.

The project I'm looking at is 'The day-to-day life of Albert Hastings' which is pretty simple yet lovely at the same time. She met Albert when he was 91 and he is definitely a survivor. His wife, daughter and his grandson have all passed away and so now he lives on his own. For his age he seems in good health and also in good spirits. He is lucky that he can still do the day to day aspects of life and take care of himself.

It's a simplistic project, Deveney photographs the simple, day to day activities and Albert wrote annotations of what he was doing below. It adds the personal touch of his writing and his thought and in some pictures you get an element of himself with how he talks or rather spells stuff. I also love that he becomes a co-author of the project rather than just the subject. I think it makes it more about the identity and less about invading privacy.

I need to get the book out of the library as it shows an even more personal touch than the online images suggest. It not only includes his annotations but also his poetry, drawings of clocks and family photographs.

It's made me think that perhaps I need to look at a more personal touch for my own project. Whether that be my own family's wishes and exploring them in detail or going back and looking at family photographs and letters.

Uni session the second years

Today was really useful for me and to help me feel inspired about the project. The idea was that we sat down in small groups and showed our work to second years to discuss and critique us and we did the same for them. I found the session really useful because we got to see a different style of work and a different project.

We also got feedback from people who hadn't seen our projects before and weren't afraid to say what they thought. While discussing with my tutor and peers,particularly my housemates, is useful, they have seen my work a lot and it's harder for them to suggest new things or be as objective as somebody seeing/hearing about it for the first time.

It made me feel happier that my project is a little bit different and interesting because of their feedback and they were not only able to give me feedback and suggest areas to improve or things to try but they questioned me and got me to think about it more. They also helpfully suggested a couple of artists that I could look at.

We did feedback sheets for one another and these are them. I would definitely like to do a session like it again and it's got me rathermotivated to push on, try new things and enjoy the project again. The suggestion I like the most is the one about personalising the project more. I started it to look at other people but in a way to help me learn about my own identity and it's become apparent that the project is very much about everyone else right now and not so much me.

I will be taking the ideas and feedback on board and experimenting more. I need to start putting together the experimental video that looks at the wishes and uses the narration.