Evaluation

Photography and the self, I really enjoyed this project. For me it was experimenting and learning things about myself, digging deeper to see how I wanted to present myself to everyone photographically. At first it was a bit of a struggle, I had to try a lot of different techniques before I found the right outcome that suited me. That’s another reason why I enjoyed this project, because its personal and reflects myself I didn't feel as much pressure on making my project 'likeable', all that mattered is that I was happy with it. I started off by continuing to look at and explore things that we had briefly covered in lectures, begging with shadow. I found it really interesting learning about shadow, its origin and the steps you take as a child learning about it. But I wasn’t convinced enough to produce my own shadow work, I felt like it was something that I did want to read more about, but practically didn’t want to pursue, mainly because I didn’t feel like it was right for this particular project. Next I looked at Sally Mann’s self-portrait, I have always been a fan of her work and I have not come across that image before. I produced a rough photograph of myself in my bedroom mirror, the quality of the image isn’t great but I like the idea of having photographs within a photograph. I continued this technique with my faceless image and was starting to think it was a theme I could use in my final photographs. However I wanted to experiment more with up close and personal pictures of myself, so after a lecture on narcissism and ‘performance of the self’ I decided to get creative with makeup. I knew that the idea itself was a little cliché but I wanted to give it a try. The instead task I think was my most successful up to that point. I was finding it hard to think of one object to photograph to represent me, and then realised that it was my messy, cluttered room with numerous random objects that reflected me the most. After a bit of background research I had my final idea. I took my Polaroid out and just walked around thinking what places reflect me or mean the most. The fact that it was an instant camera was really important to me, as somehow I thought it was a really effective, personal way to produce images about myself. However looking back now I do with I had taken some similar photographs on digital, just to compare results. My other piece started of just messing around and a bit of fun, but I actually really liked the wacky outcome and decided to mount it as well. Looking back on the project as a whole I feel like I could have improved by doing a bit more contextual research, as it might have helped me develop my ideas further. I also think I should have experimented more on my final piece by taking a wider range of photographs. Unfortunately the downside of using a Polaroid camera is that the film is extremely expensive and only comes in packs of ten, however unlike any other film cameras you can re-load it in the light. Overall I really enjoyed this project, nevertheless yet again if I had managed my time better I might have gotten a lot more research done and produced more outcomes.