Using Titles As Information
The first thing you look at when you come across a display of photographs are, funny enough, the photographs. The subjects, the mood and the story it may be telling. Every time we see a photograph we try to imagine the situation, try to guess who the subjects are, creating a backstory for images we know nothing about. It's only then we look at the labels, the tags and the information next to the photograph.
Within my images I want to make a point of this. I want to make my images look rather similar to each other with a huge sense of simplicity. Uniformly blank faced, my subjects will look into the camera and challenge the viewer to create them a story or two. Who are they? Who were they? These are questions that may be asked, as little information will be given visually. All that can be apparent is how they look.
However, below this will be a single word. The titles of each image. 'Architect'. 'Farmer' 'Toothfairy'. To an audience, these titles being professions could be what they are, what they were or what they want to be, it won't be known by them. In fact, the titles are what these people wanted to be when they were younger. The viewer will try to make sense of this word in relevance to the image. For all they know, it could be a random word there to confuse them.
This challenges the way we look at photos and try to extract as much information out as possible, that may not even be there in the first place. To perhaps help or further challenge this, each shot will be taken with a different background, which the viewer will automatically try to gather information from.
It may cause frustration among the viewers, however I think it proves a point that what you see (the photographs) and what you hear (the titles) are perhaps only small extracts of their being and really how much do we know about each other?
Within my images I want to make a point of this. I want to make my images look rather similar to each other with a huge sense of simplicity. Uniformly blank faced, my subjects will look into the camera and challenge the viewer to create them a story or two. Who are they? Who were they? These are questions that may be asked, as little information will be given visually. All that can be apparent is how they look.
However, below this will be a single word. The titles of each image. 'Architect'. 'Farmer' 'Toothfairy'. To an audience, these titles being professions could be what they are, what they were or what they want to be, it won't be known by them. In fact, the titles are what these people wanted to be when they were younger. The viewer will try to make sense of this word in relevance to the image. For all they know, it could be a random word there to confuse them.
This challenges the way we look at photos and try to extract as much information out as possible, that may not even be there in the first place. To perhaps help or further challenge this, each shot will be taken with a different background, which the viewer will automatically try to gather information from.
It may cause frustration among the viewers, however I think it proves a point that what you see (the photographs) and what you hear (the titles) are perhaps only small extracts of their being and really how much do we know about each other?
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