For my first response
to the brief 'First Impressions' I was unsure of whether to go with landscapes
and respond more to the document and location themes that were stated in the
brief. I decided in the end to do portraiture and go with the themes identity.
My first impressions of Swansea weren't to do with the town but more to do with
the people that I was about to live with for the next year in halls. Looking
into the themes of documentation and identity, I thought about creating
portraits of people but in their own rooms at halls, maybe not having them even
in the photograph and just documenting their surroundings that they're in every
day. For me, when I first moved into halls I wanted to make my room a
representation of myself and what I'm like. It takes us one tenth of a second
to figure out our first impression of someone. Rooms may not always be a clear
representation of people but I felt people would want to represent themselves
through their rooms as clearly as they could. In halls you get to know someone by
their possessions first than you do their personalities. Even though I thought
this was an idea I could elaborate more on the fact I only knew my hall mates
for about 2 weeks seemed a bit forward to ask them to photograph their rooms,
also the fact that everyone seemed to be out whenever I was free to do photos
and whenever there was good light!
I
finally decided to look more into photographers such as Irving Penn, Bill
Brandt, Cindy Sherman and explored more into different types of portraiture. I initially
knew that I wanted to do black and white portraits and what better subjects
than my housemates, although only a few agreed to let me take photos of them, I
was quite happy with the end result. I think I could of planned out the shoot
much better than I did, by the time I had thought of a new idea I was very
short on time and had to create a makeshift studio in my own room at halls. I
did the best I could with lighting etc but what I wanted to portray in my
portraits was how kind their personalities are. The way they are in the
photographs is completely natural, I didn’t want it to be posed or to have
props or anything like that. I caught them all off guard and asked if I could
have a quick photo of them, half of them are getting ready for bed/showering
and the rest were in pyjamas. I wanted it to be as natural as possible and hopefully
showing how kind they’re personalities are. I did get a lot of different
results from the shoot but the ones I chose for the finals I think go well with
each other and portray them the best.
