My next stage of development led me to the documents that captured key moments in my life that built and accumulate to a level of anxiety that impacts to getting on with day to day life.
School book – 1979 – work hard, pressure to do well
Driving test appointment card – 1987 – nervousness, trepidation
Redundancy notice letter- 1995 – anger, uncertainty
Negative equity letter – 1998 – must keep earning, stay in a job
Divorce court letter- 1999 – regret, acceptance
Tumour ultrasound x-ray – 2008 – shock, pain
Burglary police case note- 2015 – disbelief, sadness
Sick note – 2017 – Help!
How many times can you get back up from the trials and tribulations of life?
One idea is to create composites of a childhood photo slide overlaid on to the letters/documents.
Decisions:
Balance of scale between the two images?
Choice of photo scene and matching document (outside house for burglary)?
Feelings evoked by each event?
How to make a photo of a letter artistic?
Not want it morbid as it may appear to be about loss of a child.
I initially looked for photographers that used paper/documents in their work and looked at Wolfgang Tilmans’ [4] ‘paper drop’ images which was a study of the materiality of photography.
A Google search led me to a BJP article[1] on an exhibition, ‘Alpha’ from November 2015 about ‘masculinity and mental health’. Jennifer Pattison’s [2] project Edward [3] was featured in the article which was a collaborative project with her father who suffered from severe depression while she was growing up. The objects she captures are items that he made or collected during occupational therapy sessions. It is a very personal project covering a difficult and upsetting subject.
I wanted to find a photographer who used mental health and or documents in their work. A resource I went to was Art and Photography [5] where I found a triptych by John Hilliard (b. 1945) called Depression/Jealousy/Agression. The images had titles and captions on the two bottom corners. The three images were of the same scene but the point of focus varied for each one. I noted that the point of focus was on the man in the foreground and the background subjects were soft focus. The next image, jealousy, showed a couple hugging which was in focus. The man in the foreground was now out of focus. The use of focus to convey feelings and emotions would be something I could use in my assignment.
Continuing to leaf through the book [5] I came across an image by Mari Mahr (b. 1941) from a series called A Few Days In Geneva. It was a scene where a torn piece of music was overlaid on to an image of a building with open windows. It was the use of the two images overlaid that intrigued me. I delved deeper in to her work and found that she uses the technique in all of her projects, which were mainly about the past and memories. I have written a post [2] to describe her work in more detail.
References:
- BJP Article Exploring masculinity and mental health through the image [accessed 07/11/2017]
- WARNING Contains nudity: Jennifer Pattison website [accessed 07/11/2017]
- Jennifer Pattison, Edward post
- Wolfgang Tilmans Tate Modern post
- Campany. D, Art and Photography, Phaidon 2007
Martyn Rainbird 