My first project of the year was photography.
Our theme was 'The Environment'.
We created mind maps and lists of everything that represent the environment, this was to start our off our initial ideas.
I explored many new techniques like emulsion lifts, pinhole cameras, photograms etc.
My favourite of which was the emulsion lifts:
1. Print out your photograph onto plain or thin paper (in colour or in black and white)
2. Paint over the photograph with a thick layer of emulsion paint (I used white)
3. Flip it over onto your chosen surface ( I experimented with fabrics, plastics, different types of paper, leaves etc.)
4. Leave to dry out completely
5. Get a wet cloth or place your hands in water and start to rub away the paper. you will find it starts to peal or flake off. Be sure not to rub away the image underneath the paper.
6. You should be left with a mirror image of your photograph. Be sure to print your image out in reverse if you are printing out words or letters!
After all my experimentation with emulsion lifts I was sure I wanted to use this as my final piece I also loved how it looked on the leaves so I knew this was what my surface would be.
Now was the time to find a subject matter. After looking back over my work I decided to focus on the work place. After a lot of thought I based my subject matter on 'Workaholics' My final piece would be a message to all the people who put work before anything or anyone else.
I bought a work suit and photographed myself in numerous of work situations: in an office, out side the work building, talking to colleagues, in college etc.
After all the photographs where taken I decided to take photographs of the suit hanging off trees floating away in water etc. this represents leaving your work life behind to focus on family and friends, letting your work suit get lost and putting on everyday clothes.
After taking all the images I picked out my my favourite ones and used an emulsion lift on them all. I decided it wasn't working and wanted to go down a new path with the photography but still including the suit. In the end I settled for this new idea...
I got an old rickety garden chair and placed it under a tree. I set up the suit and hat so it looks like the suit is sitting down with its legs crossed the way men do. I tied green cotton to the hat and then tied the other end to a branch on the tree this is so you couldn't see the thread and so it looks like there is a head there.
I took my picture and each time I took a photograph I took away a a piece of the suit. First the hat then : jacket, tie, shirt and finally the trousers.
This represents the worker slowly forgetting about his job; as he forgets about it the suit starts to disappear.
These are the photographs that I took I decided to make them black and white because after all the emulsion lift experiments I found that black and white images work much better and end up clearer than coloured photographs...
I got an old rickety garden chair and placed it under a tree. I set up the suit and hat so it looks like the suit is sitting down with its legs crossed the way men do. I tied green cotton to the hat and then tied the other end to a branch on the tree this is so you couldn't see the thread and so it looks like there is a head there.
I took my picture and each time I took a photograph I took away a a piece of the suit. First the hat then : jacket, tie, shirt and finally the trousers.
This represents the worker slowly forgetting about his job; as he forgets about it the suit starts to disappear.
These are the photographs that I took I decided to make them black and white because after all the emulsion lift experiments I found that black and white images work much better and end up clearer than coloured photographs...
My next step was to emulsion lift them onto the leaves. It worked really well and I am very pleased with how it has all turned out.
To display the images I got two pieces of clear plastic and drilled holes in the corners. I placed all the photographs in between them and put mounting screws in the holes to keep them together.
It was finally displayed in the window of my college for people to see along with my sketchbook.
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