Evaluation

At the beginning of this project we were told the exam theme was covert and obscured. We then made a massive mindmap in a group to help us gather as many ideas for what theme inside this could be, photographers for inspiration, locations to take the photographs and synonyms of the exam theme to help get us started. Next we were given a number of different briefs to choose from, for example city life, family and life and collections/obsessions. I chose to go with the family and life brief as I enjoy photographing people and felt that I had a lot of ideas for it as it inspired me the most. For my first film shoot I came up with four ideas; objects in obscure places, stalking people, hidden identity and my cats point of view. I then experimented with a few of these in the darkroom using techniques such as sandwiched negatives, stencilling and layering with handmade negatives. From this I decided I wanted to develop the hidden identity theme for my final outcome, this reflects the exam theme well because the persons identity will be obscured.

The two photographers that inspired my work the most are Anton Corbijn and Mario Corea. Anton Corbijn's sandwiched negatives prints made for the Travis album cover inspired my own sandwiched negative prints as he used a close up picture and distant picture of each band member viewed from the front. Since the exam theme is covert and obscure and my own is hidden identity I decided to try the same idea but of the back of my subject so that their identity is not shown. Mario Corea inspired the second half of my outcome that is a collage. I liked the way he used photographs in the background and then painted around them/on top of them to make a powerful effect that makes the work stand out. I used a similar technique within my collage but not as heavy on the paint as him as I wanted each collage to represent the person.

Anton Corbjin:

Mario Corea:

The experiment that influenced me most was the sandwiching negatives technique as I found if really effective and I enjoyed producing them and finding different pictures that work well together. 

I really enjoyed this project as there were so many possibilities and ways the exam theme could be interpreted. I also enjoyed it as I got to try out a lot of techniques in the darkroom and I feel ive learnt a lot from it. I think the exam theme was fairly easy as it gave you a broad range of ideas and techniques to choose from. I'm pretty sure I will be happy with my final outcome as my experiments so far have been successful.