Project Statement and Ideas

'I think artists have a certain responsibility, or placeholder in society and that's to reflect life, create images, which help engage people in their own lives in some way' -Thomas Campbell.

Relevent Research Areas...

I am interested in exploring human experience and existence. I would like to explore the way certain images or texts or situations make us feel certain things, or conveying that emotional state in my work. I would like to consider the ideas of when and why we experience different emotion. I would like to evoke moods and atmospheres while also confirming or questioning our existence perhaps. An area in which I am interested in would include dreamlike states, the sublime... I would like to capture an essence of a slowing down of time, prolonging an experience, slowing them down and embracing them, highlighting small details in our existence. I would also like to capture the smaller details in human existence which go unnoticed day by day. The idea of Fragility of the human existence has become a new idea which I would liek to target in my work.

Artists I am looking at include Stefan Banz, Nan Goldin, Wolfgang Tillmans, Stan Douglas......

Aim of Project:
To make an indistinct narrative on the human existence and our experiences. To create images which evoke certain moods or atmospheres.

How I intend to Realise my Aim:
By taking photographs that focus on a particular area, or small detail instead of capturing the entire area. I might juxtapose this with photographs which are vast and expansive. The expansive images of city/landscapes I think would compliment the idea, as the city/land is the space in which we go about our daily lives in..

Other ideas of realising my project would include documenting experiences and emotions by asking people to tell me some of their stories, about when they were most happy or most sad or frightened, and then playing this over a video piece(or other ways of playing this) The video shots would be an extension of the images I would hope to capture on camera.

'Transport us to that moment, that's what photography does. To stave off the eventual loss of tis memory. There's usually some kind of intense emotional state that inspires the picture' Nan Goldin.

In the past I have worked with video footage exploring light and motion. This was done by recording traffic and recording whilst in a moving vehicle, capturing the light reflections in the buildings which I passed by. I would really like to explore light alot more in my project work, I would like to use it to create a source of mood or atmosphere in my work.

I don't know exactly what my final outcome will be of this project but I do hope that these words could be used to describe it...I hope at least one or two of these would be used to describe my work in the final outcome...
dreamlike...atmospheric...mood...speaks of human existence...capturing small detail...fragile...melancholy...notions of space and time... deranged voices... paranoia and fear(emotion)... blending of reality and fiction...hallucinary...sublime...hypnotically beautiful...capturing moments.

I also enjoy/would like to learn more about...
the fluxus movement
experiemental/visionary film/the poetic in film
the surrealists
(and other maybe more contemporary artists which are working in this way...)