I had collected the projector equipment and slides from my parents and set about viewing them all. I was looking for images of myself. I mostly wanted ones of me on my own but some of the family group shots were possibilities. The slides I was going to pick from were from 1968 to 1971 when I was 3-6 years old. This meant that the timeframe would not overlap with the dates of the life events I wanted to document.
Whilst previewing the old family slide collection I started to trawl through my document archives looking for documents of the key life events eg. redundancy letter, divorce court letter, building society letter, police case form etc. Whilst looking I came across my driving test appointment card and some secondary school exercise books. These would form the first two images in the series to give it a gentle start before more serious events kicked in. Although the exams and the numerous driving tests I failed was quite stressful at the time. These documents ranged from 1979 to 2017 which would be the basis for the series order.
Back to the slides; there were numerous shots of me on the beach wearing the same yellow trunks but the standout was me wearing wet white Y-Fronts. This image was an ideal pick for my testicular cancer composition (X or Y? also a reference to chromosomes). I had a few choices for the negative equity image eg. slide, roundabout but I went for the boating lake as it gave that sinking feeling (M’aidez! French for help me!). It also offered a different colour palette. The police horse shot was the obvious pick for my burglary event (Break-in! referencing the burglary and the horse).
I tried cropping one of the slide photos but it became clear early on that I needed the complete original composition to be able to produce a consistent dark border. I was then left with a shortlist to match to an event.
It was at this point I decided to give titles to my compositions. This helped me pair an image to an event. So the blowing out birthday candles matched with being ejected from my first job (Ejection. from my job and of the candle flame). The photo of me being unimpressed with the arrival of my baby sister worked with divorce by giving the composition the ambiguous title of ‘Someone new’ (referencing a new relationship leading to divorce and also the arrival of a baby sister). The family on holiday at the dinner table was a nice image with myself and my brother smiling for the camera whilst my dad continued eating. Having given the ‘sick note’ event the title of ‘Help me to recover.‘ It felt right to include a group photo as I required support from others to get me through my health issues.
The two remaining selections were made from a photo of me on a tricycle outside my front door (See Me! school book overlay). I originally paired this with the driving test but I decided this image was stronger than the older me sitting on my Noddy bike. I wanted the set to start strongly which was provided by a nice composition and vibrant colour. It was also the image of the ‘youngest’ me which led nicely in to the second image of the older me on a bicycle. This was paired with the driving test (Pass/Fail?). It was the only decision that was made where the order was based on the image. All of the other pairings were fixed because of the date of the event.
The next part of the process was to take photos of the projected image which I took hand held with a high ISO which was ok for the feel I needed. My simple tripod would not have been practical as I needed to get my lens directly above the projector lens to get the image as straight on as I could. The effect I got and the subtle differences due to variations in angle added to the uniqueness of each image. The consistent aspect was the dark border I achieved from the darker edges of the projector screen.
The next stage was the creative and most time consuming part. I took photos of all of the documents and went through various crops in Lightroom. I then opened the childhood image in the photoshop editor and tried various options of document overlays.
My first set was of small cropped fragments of key words, dates and phrases. The date aspect was key to the whole assignment and felt that it needed to be prominent. Reflecting on this initial set I found it too direct which felt like I was telling the viewer what happened. I needed the series to communicate the build up of stress and anxiety and convey feelings.
I then decided to overlay a complete section of the document which in all cases allowed me to include the date and enough detail of the event. I continued to use the text fragment idea by enlarging it and making it the prominent point of the composition. For consistency I made the fragment full width with small variations in the opacity.
Due to the document overlay some of the final images were too washed out. I still wanted some of the vibrancy of the original shots to shine through. As a result I increased the vibrancy and contrast on some images in Lightroom and sent them back in to Photoshop ready for the document overlay. At this point I was quite happy with the results but still felt uncomfortable with the contrast and readability of the document text.
At this point I trialled the idea of projecting the childhood image directly on the document. This went ok but surprisingly the results were not as eye catching as I hoped and no better than photoshop layering.
I was concerned that the composite images were too flat I thought I would add texture by having a layer showing medication and prescription boxes. This meant that I had to lose the document layer. I liked this but felt it was not conveying my original intention of the assignement.
Having tried these additional ideas I went back to my whole document overlaid images as the trials highlighted that the document was an important component of the project. It was so important I upped the clarity to show off more text. I also used a hard light filter on some of the flatter text fragments which made the composition more striking.
At the same time I gave titles to my images I also wrote a shortlist of possible titles for the overall assignment. I settled for ‘Can you see me now?’, referencing a combination of: the objective of photographing the unseen; the partial visibility of childhood me in the frame; and lastly the unseen grown up me dealing with my mental health.
The following thumbnails show examples of all stages of my process.
Martyn Rainbird 