Blog 3
Being on the Creative Direction course and always having a love for photography, I was very determined to strengthen my knowledge and my skills with the opportunity of joining the Portrait Photography course. Throughout my artistry, ‘people’ were a consistent theme in my work, specifically in the black community, as being of Russian/Jamaican descent, I have always wanted to explore my heritage and cultures. Thus, taking on Portrait Photography was the perfect way to continue my practice with the bonus of refining it.
From the first lesson, I was introduced to an array of diverse portrait photographers, who used portraiture to showcase their lives, tell a story or make a commentary on their culture or life situations. I gained inspiration from a few of them, noting down ideas for my own work, like using self-portraits to tell a story of my heritage and focusing a lot more on styling.
Halfway through the project, I became concerned with the current events that have occurred, and was questioning how I would be able to continue producing work, with the limitations that were at hand. We were set the task of creating a portrait in isolation, preferably looking at the theme of family, which I found to be a challenge as I have not been staying with my family during this time and it was quite a touchy subject for the time. I have been living in a house that is part of a semi-private area, with a big garden in the middle, and have recently been observing all the different characters that have been my neighbors for months and who I have never noticed. On sunny days people would be doing exercise in the garden, families would come out to play and some people would just come out to sunbathe (all one at a time). I was intrigued by this system that was created due to lockdown; if you get to the garden first it’s yours till you leave. I wanted to figure out a way to capture my neighbors each spending their own time in the garden but was struggling to find a way to do this discreetly but still with a good quality. So, I decided to scrap the idea.
Being in lockdown, made me very appreciative of the times where I would go outside and be at one with nature, so I wanted to showcase this element within my photography, yet still alluding to the idea of being in isolation. So, I decided to do a series of self-portraits, using a mirror in the middle garden, reminiscent of mirror selfies but doing it outside instead of indoors. The mirror was supposed to represent the element of being at home, despite being outside and also a symbol of not fully being able to go outside due to lockdown. I also styled myself using a dress I made from an old vest top, during lockdown, as I wanted to use more sustainable styling as I have said I would use this after the Better Lives themes we were given. Overall, I felt as though the photos were quite successful considering the difficulty of our current situation and gave me more ideas as to how I could use what I have available to me to create work.
8th May 2020 @ 4:48 am
After reading this blog post I think that Rada did an excellent job at reflecting on her experience of completing the Portrait Photography project. I thought that it was good of her to give a little context on what course she is currently studying on, Creative Direction, and why she chose to take part on her chosen project. She briefly discussed her aims for the project and how her inspiration was formed. I thought that it was relevant how she expressed her original idea and how the challenges of our current situation had started to impact her decisions on how she was going to continue creating and producing her own work. She also walked us through her creative process and decisions which led her to creating her final product and outcome, she also attached a photo of the portrait photography she took which I thought was helpful as it allowed us to understand what happened which eventually led towards the final product.
I think that overall this blog post was a good representation of a reflective writing piece, however she could’ve gone into more details in regards to the Better Lives themes, even though they were mentioned I think that she could’ve gone into more specific details which would then make this writing piece an even better reflective blog post. She mentioned her diverse culture and heritage which I’d say would be a good place to reflect on the diversity theme. In terms of social responsibility she could discuss how creating the final outcome and her process in doing so is a reflection of the current social situation of being in lockdown and how her working alone and the photography prompt was relevant in terms of being a socially responsible citizen and creating art within government guidelines. I think that the best theme she reflected on was sustainability as she explained how she made the dress she was wearing in the photo out of an old vest top that she was no longer wearing.