I have reflected on the initial ideas and now ready to hone in on a final idea. To start I will reject the less personal ideas: Air pollution/germs; Food additives; Software; Wood for the trees. I liked all of these ideas especially as they would need another level of creativity to turn them into an ‘Art’ project.
I have also decided not to progress Hearing loss. Even though it is personal I am not able to envisage at this stage how I want to present it using photography.
That leaves me with the following 3 ideas:
Mental health – this would be based on my own personal issues with anxiety and stress which have begun to impact significantly on my day to day life and work.
Alternative futures/what if’s – reflection on life decisions and how they affect your current life and the future.
Nostalgia/Memories – Jodie Taylor’s Memories of Childhood [2] project gave me an idea of using old family ‘slide’ photographs and projector.
Re-reading my initial ideas on each of these subjects I could see a link between how life has led me to this point and how ‘minds’ work based on our life experiences. Everybody reacts differently to events in their life. Timing of those events can also have an impact on how we cope.
I see this project as an investigation in to my own ‘mind’ and another step towards understanding my mental health. It is not meant to be a depressing project but an exploration in to what has made me who I am. An explanation to, not only myself, but friends and family.
I was intrigued and troubled by Peter Mansell’s quote regarding his personal project Check up [1], “The effect of creating such images was cathartic. I had not realised just how much emotional pressure I had repressed for so many years.”
The key questions and ideas:
How to link the images? a prop, look and feel
Will I be in the images?
If I am in the images in what form? a shadow, a photograph of younger me, physically (all or part of me)
Using slides photos of myself growing up?
Shining a light through a slide projecting the effect on a photo of me now
What’s the story? stages of my life, key events
Presenting anxiety and stress in times of everyday normality.
Project childhood photo on to prescription/empty medication packet
Staged scenes – projections on placed items
References:
Martyn Rainbird 