Blog 3 – Reflection on project outcome and personal development

After all the lectures have been done in Better Live unit, I was able to gain many inspirations from sessions that I attended which is Contemporary Portrait Photography. Since we have been under the circumstance that everybody feels isolated and anxious because of the coronavirus, it is absolutely limited that we can do for creating some works or conducting activities for the sessions. However, lectures run by tutors (CPP) introduced us a lot of works that were really interesting and made me think more positive way. 

I was inspired especially by ‘Home Portrait’ in the lectures. For instance, Nigel Shafran, who is a photographer, created the works which captured images of the ordinariness of everyday life. His works contain the sense of bleakness at first glance, yet they have an inherent beauty in daily life. Another artist is Heather Glazzard. He used a Facetime as a medium for taking portrait photographs during the quarantine. Especially young queer people, who can especially struggle with the loss of support networks during the lockdown, are models of the works. Both of the provocative outcomes broke my boundary of limitation in terms of restricted place. Utilizing accustomed things and place in a house such as a kitchen, bedroom, and living room tend to become disinterested for the reason that it presumably would be looked a little bit personal.

Nonetheless, either work delivered a degree of intimacy and warmness to the audiences. I realized that we have been ignoring potential aesthetics in everyday life. Even the moment you see it casually in our house (an instant of cooking something, tiding clothes and selecting garments) looking through the lens may be beautiful depending on the hue, amount of light, and angle.

Thanks to the development of digital, we are able to create some works as a collaboration even being different places in each other. At this time, we didn’t do that in our session, yet I saw the other students’ works through Padlet. We updated works there our interpretation of portrait photographs as home portraits. I saw many of students capturing part of sections in their room (house) in their practices and they are genuinely affectionate as a result of the intimacy. I did take photographs of my dog with black and white style. I have never thought about the power of the effect, and always rely on how it looks for my satisfaction rather than the story behind when taking a picture, however, I have learnt that the process of my selection and decision making is what facilitate the works stronger.

Due to the pandemic, we are not able to take a picture outside, yet I have learnt about many photographers and their profound works; thus, I’m going to delve furthermore for my future projects.

Image : Portrait of my dog (project outcome)

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